The quest to add Linux to my Flash drive.

Every once in a while I get fed up with Windows, I swear that I will wipe XP off of my old Toshiba laptop and replace it with a free operating system that will not be so bloated and slow. I then always step back a step or so and think to myself “I still have programs that I like to run on XP that won't run on Linux.” I have tried splitting up my hard drive and dual booting but why waste hard drive space when I could stick a whole operating system on a flash drive and use it on any computer. So my quest began to find a Linux package that would be somewhat stable and operate reasonably for me to use.

I will cut to the chase and then tell you the steps you can take to do the same thing. After trying out about 10 different Linux packages on my flash drive I decided that I really liked Kubuntu. Ubuntu has come along way and I really prefer a KDE environment over others that I have tried. Plus it works really well for me.

Here is my system:

Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 Laptop

P4 1.8 GHZ

1 GB of RAM

2 USB 1.1 ports

2 USB 2 ports using a PCMCIA adapter.

40 MB hard drive

Kubuntu on a 4GB flash stick.

My first hurtle was the fact that the BIOS for my laptop didn't have USB boot support. But I was able to work around it with a program called Plop Bootmanager. This gave me the ability to choose one of my USB ports as the Boot drive. I am still only able to boot from the 1.1 USB ports but it's better that nothing. I think that the driver for the USB 2 ports that are on the PCMCIA card don't load until after the boot menu. Click this link Scroll down to “Harddisk install using the Windows boot menu (2K, XP and VISTA)” and follow the instructions to allow USB booting on a machine that doesn't have the USB boot option in the BIOS.

If you have a flash stick that doesn't let you use the full space on the disk because of secure space reserved on the flash you might want to reformat the whole disk. Now this is easier said than done, my 4 GB flash drive was split into 2 partitions. I wanted all 4GB in one partition. I found a very small free utility from HP that reformatted the flash drive into 1 partition. It's called HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

The next step was to actually put a Linux package on my flash drive and test it out. The best way to do this is to use Universal USB Installer found on pendrivelinux.com. There is a list of many Linux packages to choose from. I started out thinking I wanted a small package for my flash drive and tried some of the small packages like DSL (Damn Small Linux), Puppy Linux, and Slax. They were all kind of fun to play with but a little too unstable for me. I finally decided on Kubuntu. With this little program you can even download the exact disk image you need. Remember to use persistence if it is needed. I found 2GB worked just fine for my setup. Persistence allows you to save changes on your flash stick.

Update:
After playing with Kunbuntu on my hard drive for some time I opted for Unbuntu the regular installation. It just worked better for me all the way around on my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100. I was having some issues with scanning that corrected by switching.

 

Netflix streaming video to your TV, so cool and basically free.

About the time I got my coupon for a digital converter box I got fed up with my cable company. All I wanted was to be able to watch the very few TV shows that I enjoy and PBS. Cable was going to charge me some outrageous price to watch basic cable so I dumped them and switched my internet from cable to DSL and got my TV from over the air channels using the digital converter box. We were getting most of our movies we wanted to watch using Netflix getting the 2 DVDs out at a time for $14 a month was a real bargain. No more trips to the video store and we could control our choices from our computer. I knew they had streaming video you could watch on your computer screen but one day I thought I want to watch these on my TV.

I started thinking about taking the outputs of my laptop and hooking them up to the video input to my TV when the same day I see an article talking about Netflix releasing a disk so you can get Netflix through a Wii. WOW we had just purchased a Wii for Christmas for the whole family and it hooks up to the internet with a wireless network adapter that is built in. I got on Netflix site and reserved our disk, it wasn't but a few days later when Netflix announced that they were shipping Wii disks. I clicked on a button to have them send me our disk right away and the disk showed up the next day!

After inserting the Neflix disk into our Wii we were up and running in no time. All we had to do was enter a number off of the disk online on Netflix to activate. Now we can watch any movie available for instant view anytime we want, or we can pick from a large selection of TV shows. (I can watch Myth Busters again, yeah!) The Wii doesn't show everything available for instant view, you can search online and add movies and TV shows to your instant queue, they then show up instantly on the Wii to watch. If you can't watch the whole show you can exit out of it and Netflix remembers where you left off.

I always thought Netflix was a bargain for DVD rentals. But for $8.99 per month you can have DVD rentals and unlimited streaming video into your home. The quality of the videos isn't HDTV quality but so what, they are crystal clear and as nice as any DVD I have rented. You can also get disks for the other game consoles and internet connected devices, the selection is large.

I would have to say this is the biggest home entertainment bargain available today, I love it! Now my problem is trying to keep my kids from turning into TV vegetables. It looks nice outside maybe we will go for a bike ride.

Jarte, my new favorite Word Processor

I purchased my laptop used on ebay, it had Windows XP installed and has the sticker on it showing that I actually have a valid copy of Windows XP. I didn't get an XP disk to go along with it however which I thought was unfortunate but I had a copy of the XP disk for another computer that we own. My thought being if I ever needed to re-install something maybe I could use that disk. So what does this have to do with a new word processor? Well the laptop also came with Microsoft Word installed on it. I didn't get that disk either, I really didn't know if I had a legit copy or not and didn't intend on using it because of course I would much rather use a free word processor instead. One day I decided to open Word to see if it worked. I got a message saying that I didn't have a genuine copy of the program. You could click on a link to learn more, I did that and Microsoft said it wanted to install some other software onto my computer. At this time I had had enough of this BS and went on the internet to get a fresh copy of Open Office. But before I downloaded it I paused for a moment and said to myself "What else is out there right now?"

After doing a search on Google I found the web site for Jarte. Jerte is a free word processor that is compatible with Microsoft word and can read and save file in Word, Rich Text, or text file format. Those word processor formats are really all you need anyway. But you can also save a file as a PDF or as a HTML file.

The first thing that struck me about Jarte was the interface, the interface looks very slick, but is very easy to use and is customizable in several different ways. You can switch back and forth between minimum, compact, and classic by clicking a button and getting different tools displayed, you can customizes each one of those to display any set of menus you wish. The true test of an interface for me is can I play with it for a few minutes and have it figured out. I don't want to read the instructions on how to use a word processor. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could figure out Jarte. I was able to find all of the essential things that I use a word processor for very easily in a few minutes.

Here are some of the features that I really like:

• Screen Capture: When clicking this button it shows my desktop then I can select an area to capture and click it. Going back to Jarte I simply past it into the document. Wow that makes it very easy to make documentation that references anything else you have on your computer.
• Export to PDF. It is so nice just to be able to just do it without using a bunch of other bloated software to turn my file in to a PDF.
  
• Finding features that I need: One of my main big gripes about programs like Word (other than the price) is that I can't easily find features that I need to use. I don't want to have to hit the help file to figure out how to center my text or with some of their newer version simply how to save my work. It's a huge waste of time if you have to do that. I'm going to use the tool that is easy to use. Jarte has some easy Menus and bars that show pictures of functions that don't really need much explanation.
• Jarte comes with a dictionary in many different languages. My son is in a school where they use English as well as Spanish. This makes editing a lot easier for us.

Jarte also comes in a version that you can pay for. I don't see me doing that anytime soon because Jarte already does everything I need it to do. However if you want to purchase Jarte Plus it will only set you back $19. A bargain when you consider what Microsoft hits you up for Word, $229 at the Microshaft store.

The Internet Security 2010 Virus

I did battle with the Internet Security 2010 Virus yesterday and I think I finally beat this malicious piece of programing. This Trojan poses as a malware removal tool but in fact infects your computer with malware. I was finally able to kill it by using SuperAntispyware with Windows booted up in safe mode. (It's always best to run removal software in safe mode, this way the virus has less places to hide when you run the removal program.) After removal I couldn't connect to the internet with Firefox. I could connect to the internet using a game that connects to game servers however my web browsers, Avast, and Malwarebytes,couldn't connect. Which means that the virus had turned something off. When I ran Internet Explorer it gave me an option to diagnose the problem. I didn't expect much but decided to give it a try. Well Internet Explorer came back and told me a setting needed to be changed and asked me if it wanted it to fix the problem. I told it yes and everything was fixed.

I have come to the conclusion that writers of spyware, malware, virus, and trojan horse programs should be put to death in a most painful way .......... or at least ban them from using a computer for 80 years. This would cause their brains to explode and take care of the painful death part. A Win Win situation!

This particular piece of software is really scary especially when it looks like it is a real program. It eventually gets to a place where it wants you to enter credit card information to steal your money. Here are pictures of what the InternetSecurity 2010 Virus will look like if it infests your computer.

I hope this helps, and may the force be with you.

Dan