The web interface is professional in appearance (along with the Community edition, there is an Enterprise version as well) and had many features built right in that were convenient to install. I decided to try it out. As part of this upgrade, I decided to use a gigabit (10/100/1000) network card for my LAN so what I could get better internal speed for copying files within my network. Along with that, I bought a gigabit switch as well. I chose the intel GT nic (many other gigabit cards were not compatible including a Dlink one I tried and a Linksys one that I researched and noticed would not work) and I bought a green friendly Dlink gigabit switch.

The install went fine however, I would have liked to see better instructions along the way. For someone who may not be familiar with setting up a home gateway/router, it could be very confusing. At times, I was unsure what the prompts were asking me and yet I was quite familiar with what I wanted to do. I could imagine some people giving up after not knowing what information to enter. Once done, I removed my previous box which had served me well and replaced it with something a bit more powerful but still not a powerhouse: P3 450 mhz, 256mb ram and a 12 gb HD. I could have used more ram but the motherboard was picky and would accept certain types. I tried several banks but was only successful getting 256 to work. I decided to give it a shot anyway although the recommended amount was 512 for a network of under 5 users. Instantly after plugging everything in and power cycling my cable modem, I was able to visit the Clark Connect internal web interface.

Some of the added features that I can now use are intrusion detection (snort) which IP Cop did have built in but my previous box could not realistically run as well as Windows File Sharing (samba), Web Proxy Filter, Content Filter, Web Server, Mail Server, FTP Server as well as a DHCP server and Name Server. I may not use all of these services, but it would be easy to try them as the built in software retrieval method will download the appropriate packages after simply checking off a corresponding box.

I am still in a testing phase with Clark Connect but so far it has been reliable, fast and easy to use. I like the web interface and the ability to configure things further should I desire. If you have a reasonably decent older box at home that you want to make use of, I would highly recommend trying out Clark Connect and if you want something that can run on older hardware like my P166, then IP Cop could be for you. On older machines, several services may not run well or be practical such as snort intrusion detection. Research the sites and consider replacing that standard big name hardware router if you are having issues with it. You may never use one again as in my case.

A coworker had mentioned wanting to get an LCD tv but was on a tight budget so I had found some great deals several months back but he didn’t have the cash to pick one up. I subsequently stopped looking around. Eventually my own LCD monitor’s condition worsened to the point where I thought about replacing it. I opted for the idea of getting an LCD TV. This is to be used in my room and I could get cable working there as well as a bonus. I was flipping through a flyer for the source and first noticed a Sony Bravia 32″ on sale for $599 which was $200 off the original price. I decided to go online and look at it in more detail. I searched for the TV and sorted by price and ended up finding an LG 32″ which was originally $849 on for $599 also. Having just recently upgraded my main TV to an LG 47″, I decided that the 32″ LG would be best for me so I bought it.

Now, onto the geek stuff… My main concern was the limited resolution compared to my previous 22″. The new LG, even though it was 32″, was limited to a resolution of 1360×768. I was concerned that this might be too large compared to the 1920×1200 resolution I was getting from my 22″. It ended up being fine and I am writing this entry on the new LCD. The color is fantastic and it’s great to have such a nice big screen. It doesn’t look ridiculous on my desk as it only a 32″. It also helps with playing games like Fofix (Frets on Fire fork). All 4 operating systems look great on the screen as well.

I would definitely recommend going with an LCD TV with a larger screen size for a computer, if you can afford a few exra dollars.  It is definitely worthwhile. Now, what do I do with that damaged 22″ inch LCD?

Finally, after all of these releases, I encountered a problem that I could not seem to fix entirely. Not surprisingly, it was with Nvidia. The issue that I noticed was that I was not able to play any 3D accelerated games in full screen. I am not talking about high level graphically demanding games but rather Frets on Fire. I even installed a derivative of Tuxracer from the Ubuntu repos to test and it would not work either.

Normally I would have continued attacking the issue, but I really wanted to get Frets on Fire but mainly the fork called Fofix working. So, instead, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10 on a different partition for testing. I had testing the same software on a couple of different machines running the same version of Ubuntu and one even contained an Nvidia graphics card. Both worked fine. In fact, the full screen mode had been working fine on my own install until a recent upgrade.

The main issue was with the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 file which apparently was owned by both the Ubuntu Nvidia package and one called libgl1-mesa-glx. The issue was reported as a bug. My system was actually a 32 bit install but no matter what I tried, I could not fix this issue. I tried using aptitude, dpkg and apt-get along with synaptic to force and overwrite just about anything that I thought would fix the issue. In the end, I figured that after numerous alpha and beta transitions it might be time to try a new install. So, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 final release on a different partition and everything seemed to work as planned. I did uninstall network manager and manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces file in order to achieve using a fixed IP address. Network manager seemed to allow me to edit the settings, but didn’t seem to change them properly. For example, there is no much thing as a Netmask value known as “24″, yet every time I entered 255.255.255.0, that’s what it returned. Network manager is fairly advanced in some respects, but in other ways, it needs a lot of work.

With my fresh install, I have Frets on Fire working and Fofix fires right up in full screen. I had no trouble installing the Nvidia driver provided by the Ubuntu repositories as well. My old install must contain some old files or rules that interfere. Yes, I did use the “Cruft Remover” which is a handy new tool but that didn’t solve this particular problem.

I am fairly confident that had I not taken my install through all of the alpha and beta releases that I would not have encountered this issue. It also makes it nearly impossible to get help on it as not many people would be so masochistic. I am not sure what I will do with my current previous Ubuntu install. I may just keep it around for non-production use and to see the new features only and leave my new install for official releases only.

One of the bonuses with the new install is a faster boot time, nicer and more modern boot screen. In the meantime, I can try a really thorough clean up on my previous install and see what happens from there.

Ubuntu  – I’ve done several installs for people lately on newer systems and they just work. Even webcams are working instantly right after installing ‘Cheese’.

Arch Linux – I’ve had Arch installed on several boxes at home for about 5 years. It runs solidly. I use custom kernels (2.6.26) and use 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need nor want to make any drastic changes to them.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it is quite good, but it does take away the challenge I used to enjoy.

So, when I get into the mood to break something and then try to fix it, I think of using Ubuntu Alpha releases but as mentioned in an earlier post, even those don’t cause me any issues anymore.Moreso than fixing things I’d like to try something that offers some unique value in doing things differently.

I do try out some different distros here and there but I am not really finding anything unique enough to pique my interest. Recently I’ve tried OpenSolaris (just because) and it was a disaster and pretty much unusable (very slow package manager, missing common packages I wanted). I did an upgrade and it wouldn’t boot afterwards.  I also tried OpenSuSE 11, Mandriva Spring and Mint. That’s the story with Linux lately. At one time I did set up a box in only command line and I currently use a custom built Linux router as well. What else is there?

OK, so there is OSX. I’ve used OSX86 and it is a decent OS. I really don’t have anything negative to say about it. I do miss a lot of things that I have in Linux when I use OSX but I understand that it is a designed in a specific manner so I can’t criticize the product but perhaps the concept but I’m not even going to do that. The truth is that it’s decent enough, but doesn’t provide me with anything really interesting and innovative in terms of configuration and such. Also, I am of the belief to truly get the full OSX experience, one needs to switch over to it fully which I am not prepared to do right now and likely never.

In terms of Windows, I’ve made my comments on Vista already and I’m pretty tired of XP. In fact, I would be all over using Vista at work if the opportunity presented itself (assuming Linux was not an option either).

So, where does that leave things now? If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to trying something out, but I’d like to try something that is unique somehow and offers some kind of benefit or optimization. I’ve tried just about every desktop environment and window manager as well.

Firstly, my initial disclaimer is that while there will be technical information in this article, it is also based on opinion and personal experience and therefore if anything, it is a personal account of the usefulness or lack thereof of a swap partition and thoughts, ideas and assertions are welcome.

When I first started using Linux many years ago (maybe 6 now), one its distinct unique qualities was the use of a Swap partition. Initially, I didn’t ask too many questions as I was eager to leave behind the OS that had caused me frustration over the past years. As time went on and I gained more experiences with Linux, I continually would use a swap partition on any new installs and would be asked by anyone for whom I created a set up about the reason for creating this swap partition.

In basic terms I was always told that the purpose of the swap partition was mainly to allow the system access to more memory if your RAM was used up. Therefore, this was useful on systems with low amounts of memory or on machines where there would be a lot of RAM usage thus causing it to be fully used and therefore require additional memory which swap would provide.

Even with older machines or ones lacking RAM, I observed that swap was barely used. Typically on systems with at least 1GB of RAM, I never see any swap used. I suppose this could happen if there was a great deal of memory usage due to intense audio, video, compiling or some other kind of processing.

Newer machines will often have 2 CPU cores and at least 1GB of ram and usually I recommend that at least 2GB of RAM is a decent amount for a newer machine. Considering the processing power and inexpensive nature of adding more RAM, what happens to swap? Swap once had a purpose on older machines but now it seems that it is not only becoming unnecessary but also a burden perhaps?

Swap can have some negative affects as well. With the size of new hard drives these days using up 512mb or 1GB or swap space is certainly not an issue but if you like to use all Primary Partitions like me, then all of a sudden out of the gate you are down 1 of 4 Primary Partitions used on a hard drive (I’ve heard there are ways around this but I am not including using third party software to create more Primary Partitions). So, for example, you are building a custom machine where you want several Primary partitions for a particular reason such as:

swap

/boot (to store your kernel and boot settings)

/ (your root filesystem)

/home (a separate home partition to keep your personal files on their own or even to share it with another distro installed on the same machine)

/var (separate log files or perhaps used for package building)

/usr (holds the majority of your application executables and global application settings in /usr/share)

/opt (could be used for applications you compile youself placed in a different directory other than /usr/ to keep them separated)

Clearly, partitioning is a personal choice and the decision is based upon your specific usage. However; if you use a swap partition, all of a sudden you are losing 1 primary partition. So, unless you create logical or extended partitions, it could be that one of your planned partitions is negated.

Swap Partition Pros:

May help speed up older machines lacking memory

May help speed up machines that require an industrial amount of processing (high tech audio, video or compiling) while performing other tasks

Makes your install ‘feel’ more like nix

Swap Partition Cons:

Uses up space and a primary partition

Disk Thrashing over time can damage your hard drive

Accessing the hard drive to use virtual memory is slower than RAM

Alternatives:

If you don’t want or need to use a swap partition, you can instead use a swap file. I am not going to post any links on how to do this right now, but if you do a web search for it, you can find lots of examples.

Although I do not plan on changing any of my current long running configurations as my swap partitions are typically the first partition in my table, I do not plan on using them anymore on any new systems – especially any that I plan on which I have multiboot configurations. I have one now where I can share the swap partition, but more than once I have wished that I did not create the swap partition in the first place. To me, there does not seem to be a need to use such a thing on a dual core machine with 4GB of RAM, better yet, it seems like a waste of a primary partition.

Among many reasons why I use Linux is the freedom from the large proprietary company that invariably will shove their ideas down their throat akin to a mother bird feeding her young worms or perhaps unsavory droppings.

I have been doing PC work on the side for many years so I have to admit that I am quite tired of XP so that is one bias of mine. I have read criticisms aplenty about Vista citing its incompatibility with software and hardware along with its UAC (which prompts the user to approve any admin actions) and flashy Aero theme which many have scorned for eating up too many resources. While there is some truth to all of those claims and others, I am not going to regurgitate them here.

Instead, I’d like to discuss the mistake that Microsoft made that people don’t really talk about. Microsoft has made a huge mistake with their system requirements for Vista which they have posted on their own website. Microsoft claims the following as minimum requirements:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

To me, this is plain foolish. Sure, a major criticism of the masses prior to Vista being released was their crazy hardware expectations. Realistically, I do not find the requirements to run Vista unreasonable – and I’m not even talking about the ones Microsoft recommends. I’m talking about what I would recommend:

• CPU preferably dual core but at least 2 Ghz or equivalent if not dual core
• 2GB of memory
• An add on graphics card with at least 256mb of its own memory manufactured within the last 2 years

I know there can be some scrutiny over these recommendations, however; times have changed and while some people may expect a new operating system to run on even lower specified hardware than one may currently own, newer features sometimes require more power. Vista Aero is a much nicer and more professional looking interface than XP in my opinion. It was time for the masses that use Windows to evolve. Of course I am not going to complain about those users who moved to Linux or Mac either

The point of what I’m saying goes back to Microsoft making a poor decision about their hardware specifications and then communicating this to the Vendors. Here is an example: I recently worked on a computer where someone said they hated the installed Vista mainly because it was too slow. The first thing I noticed was that this brand new machine was that it had only 512mb of memory. It had an AMD 3800 Sempron processor and an onboard video card. To me, Microsoft is basically asking the user to get frustrated with this setup. I bet if I upgraded the ram to 2gb even, the user would have a much different experience. Also, if I added a modern video card independent of being onboard, it would not only improve the resolution but also the usability of the interface by quite a bit.

If Microsoft really wanted Vista to be successul then they should have made the requirements higher and enforced vendors to do the same. If every PC shipped with Vista had a decent processor, adequate ram and a proper video card, the reviews for Vista may have taken a different tone. I’m sure people would criticized the OS for demanding too much, but realistically speaking, Apple doesn’t release any new machines with poor specifications that cause OSX to run sluggishly so perhaps Microsoft would just be lumped into the same category. I think perhaps being seen as a bit of a standoffish or expectant company for requiring higher specs would have been much better than the collective masses viewing its release as a failure.

This blog post was written on a Linux machine, but I would have done it on a Vista machine instead of an XP machine given the proper hardware if those two were my only choices.

Is Vista truly a failure or was its inauspicious release just doomed to failure based on performance issues due to weak hardware causing the masses to snowball negative publicity until it was buried?

I received some responses to my article and decided that I could look into the distros that I had listed under the CD/DVD method in more detail to see where they stood. This article is about Mandriva.

As a disclaimer, Mandrake/Mandriva and I historically did not get along well. Back in the days when the defacto easy distro race was between Red Hat and Mandrake, I always managed to get Red Hat to work very well, but I could never get Mandrake (then) to work properly. I knew people who swore by it, but it was never a good fit for me. I don’t have any bias toward Mandrake/Mandriva these days though as I don’t use it regularly on any of my boxes.

Due to my inactivity with Mandriva, I feel quite apt to evaluate it from a newbie perspective which is ideal for the type of experiment I am conducting – What it is like for a newbie to upgrade Mandriva to the latest version?

I have to also admit that I was given some tips via email on certain commands and such so I may appear a bit more familiar with things than my inexperience with Mandriva realistically would have elicited.

On to the test….

The first thing I did (upon recommendation) was download Mandriva 2008.0 Live CD for Gnome and the aim was upgrade it to Mandriva 2008.1. The point of this test is not to evaluate Mandriva as a distro, but I will make some comments along the way about my observations.

I managed to install Mandriva to my system and generally speaking the install went well. There is a very convenient Install button the desktop which was nice to see as that seems to be quite a friendly method. I was also impressed that not only did the live cd recognize that I had an Nvidia graphics card, but it also loaded the driver for me. So far, so good. I set up custom partitioning as I typically do. I recall feeling a bit off about the partitioning wizard though. Unfortunately I did not do any screenshots, but it seemed a bit too quick on formatting without double checking with the user on whether that was really what they wanted. A confirmation would help, I think. I can’t really dwell on it though since I didn’t take any screenshots of that scenario. The install went well otherwise and was done in about 5-10 mins on my AMD XP 3800 with 4GB memory. One thing that really bothered me was that I was forced to install a bootloader. I was given the option to install to the mbr or any other partition I wanted, but there was no option to bypass installing a bootloader. Maybe this was added to the 2008.1 installer? I added Mandriva to my bootloader on a different distro and was able to boot up fine.

Upon booting up for the first time I had to go through the paces of a first time boot configuration wizard. I have seen this before with other distros so it was no big deal. There was a small part about registering with Mandriva which made me feel like it was a bit commercial but there was an option to skip it so that was short lived.

When I arrived at the desktop, I was surprised to see some really odds things which I will list here (click on the text in each line for corresponding screenshots):

• Only 1GB of my 4GB of Memory was recognized (high memory support enabled in kernel by default?)
• Fonts were set at 60 DPI (I changed them to 96 and things were much better)
• Nvidia Driver was running but maybe my monitor detection didn’t work so well as my 22″ LCD had a max resolution of 1024×768. I ended up editing the xorg.conf file to get 1680×1050.
• The special Mandriva Gnome menu had some major redundancies here and here.

And onto the upgrade procedure. I didn’t see any pop up in the Gnome toolbar or anywhere in the menu indicating how to move to the next version. It was recommended to me to use the easyrpmi website to upgrade my version. I proceeded to (text is linked to screenshots again):

(keep in mind that I needed to use the “old” easyurpmi website since I was using 2008.0 or older)

• Pick the version of Mandriva I was using
• Select the Mirrors and Repositories I wanted
• Copy and Paste the output provided by the website into a root terminal

I was already feeling that this was quite the laborious process compared to other methods, but I continued on, undaunted and determined to give a fair evaluation.

I opened a terminal and became the almighty root user and copied the information as instructed. It went through some terminal lines and then stopped after only updating 2 additional packages – one of which was urpmi. I decided that I was going to try the same command again. This time it wanted to update 216 packages – now we’re getting somewhere. I let all of the packages update and rebooted for good measure and was disappointed when I didn’t see any evidence of being at the aim of 2008.1. So, I made sure my updates were completely done but that didn’t make any difference:

• My kernel was old
• My Firefox version was old
• My Gnome version was old
• My Nvidia driver was outdated
• My release was still at 2008.0

Easily, I am no expert at Mandriva, but I have been using Linux for several years (although anyone who reads this article only would think I’m a newbie for sure), however; the idea for this test was for a new user to the distro to be able to upgrade to the next version. I wasn’t able to do it so that doesn’t bode well for total neophtyes in my opinion. I know that I could have missed some steps or done some things wrong, there is no doubt about that, however; the point is that I should be able to do this upgrade notwithstanding or at least that was my hope. Any distro with rolling release cycles (although perhaps more difficult to set up, will automatically update you to the next version and while they may not do so in a 100% problem fashion all the time, I find them generally very stable). Ubuntu, for example, that has Update Manager which is a built in upgrade system and alerts you to moving to the next available version (not just package updates).

Mandriva could really use a step up in this department if it wants to capture more new users, but of course, that all depends on the intentions of the powers that be at Mandriva. If that is not the goal, then so be it, but it would be a great feature to add nonetheless.

The good news is that Mandriva is almost there. They have a graphical update tool that integrates nicely into the Gnome toolbar (green circular checkmark beside the volume speaker icon) and also some decent output of what is available for updating. The part that is missing is how to get to the next version.

I sincerely hope this is something that gets added to the Mandriva distribution as it will make it more accessible to more users.

One of the major advantages of using Firefox is the accessibility to a variety of great add-ons. One of the major disadvantages is that some of these add-ons don’t get updated as frequently as you may like. Here are the add-ons I used and results of upgrading:

FireFTP is an FTP client built into FireFox. There was only a development version that was compatible with FF3 until a new release on June 17th. I like using this built in plugin as it provides the basic but necessary features. It would have been nice to have a proper release during the earlier FF3 betas, but at least the developer came through once the official FF3 came out.

AdBlock Plus is a great plugin that not only can block ads and flash content but also consequently makes web browsing faster due to not loading unnecessary garbage. This is one of the best plugins available and perhaps even a necessity. If I recall correctly, this plugin was available during the beta stages as well.

TabMix Plus became a quick favorite of mine after I realized that Tabbrowser Preferences was a dead product as it hadn’t been updated since October of 2006. It was a great plugin that offered the ability to open a new tab using your homepage instead of just a blank page. This was really the main option I wanted. Unfortunately, since it has not been updated, it is no longer compatible with FF3. I ended up finding TabMix Plus when I was looking through the add-on page for Tabbrowser Preferences. I’ve come to like TabMix Plus better in many ways. It has numerous more options and does of course include the homepage new tab option. Right now it seems only a development build is available, but at least it works fine with FF3. You can download the development build here.

Download StatusBar is something I’ve been using for quite a while. It is a highly configurable download bar that appears in the bottom left of the FF window and shows you progress of your downloads. It is quite handy and a lot more elegant and less clunky than the separate download window that FF provides. This add-on works fine with FF3.

Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in some ways with the lack of development of some of the plugins, but one has to remember that these are hobbiest projects sometimes so therefore there cannot be expecations placed on the developers to get these updated. It would be nice to have a smoother upgrade including all of the previous add-ons but it is nice to find ones that are equivalent or even better such as the case for me.

Either way, find a way to upgrade to FF3 and find comparable or better plugins as the upgrade to FF3 is worth it.

It is faster, but it was a recent install so I have further testing to do to see how much faster it is. I have it quite optimized though running Arch Linux with a custom 64 bit kernel on their 64 bit OS. I am running Gnome on the desktop and have beryl enabled which runs seamlessly. Switching workspaces appears better than instantaneous if there is such a thing.

The installation went smoothly other than one thing which was my board reverting back to using the onboard video somehow. Also, I have a PCI-e Nvidia card in this box which I had to remove after setting up the bios as my 22″ LCD didn’t seem to detect the signal from the DVI connection. So, I powered off and removed the PCI-e card, connected to the onboard vga port and powered on, changed the bios setting, powered the system off, then re-inserted the PCI-e card, plugged the DVI cable into the PCI-e card, then powered back on and it worked. It was a bit of a hassle and unexpected, but I figured it out.

Linux VS. Windows…

Linux — Prior to installing the new CPU, I recompiled my Linux kernel with the latest version, ensuring I had the correct options for the new CPU in place and downloaded the new Nvidia driver so it was ready to install when I booted back into my system. My kernel booted up fine and I was able to install the Nvidia driver without issue. I would say this took about 10 minutes including the kernel compile and driver install. (The Ubuntu 64 and FC7 64 installs on the same box booted up as if nothing was changed due to using a stock kernel and accompanying Nvidia driver distro package).

Windows — It boots up to the login screen (does not show my username) and just sits there. It will more than likely require a reinstall or I may just ditch it altogether as it is only on that machine should I need to do work for a customer who uses proprietary software. Thanks Microsoft, what versatility!

This weekend I setup operating systems on 4 older PC’s that were dontated. This was very tedious and time consuming despite the provided Windows 2000 discs taking much less time to install than Windows XP would have especially considering these were older systems ranging between 400 – 700 mhz. The incessent reboots from the updates accounted for a lot of the time of the installation. The fifth PC had a defective hard drive so that will be done at a later date.

I also set up a wireless home network for someone else which went well although the built in Windows XP wireless configuration did not support WPA2 and the link I found that could add support on the Microsoft site could only be installed on a system with Service Pack 1 or lower. It is possible that the card built into the laptop did not have support for WPA2. Either way, wep should do fine as the houses in the area are not side by side and the one neighbor existing is well known.

Anyway, back to the hard drive. I managed to pick up a brand new Samsung 100GB drive at 5400rpm for $120 Canadian. This was a reasonable price. This upgrade was justifiable for a few reasons: 1 – it was a huge upgrade in a space going from a 20 to a 100 which meant that I could put a lot more of my music on it and assorted files and not worry about running out of space, 2- it would enable a more reasonable opportunity to multiboot on this portable device, 3 – a speed increase in the sense that my previous drive was only spinning at 4200 rpm. It has worked out great overall and I would recommend it to anyone wanting more space. The hard drives are universal so as long as you get sata or pata that is compatible with your laptop, then the rest is easy. My hard drive was very easy to remove and replace. Although I did end up reinstalling Linux, it was very easy to backup my original data across the network and then copy it back after the reinstall. I do notice a difference in speed.

For my leftover 20GB previous drive, I went out and picked up a 2.5″ external casing which is very small and can fit into most jacket pockets. This was around $20 Canadian. Now I can use this drive as a portable device if I like. When I decide to get a new laptop, I can also transfer this 100GB to it down the road if I want so the investment is something that can be relatively long lasting.

The entire setup took me about 10 minutes. It was about 5 minutes to rearrange some internal drives and then I had to set up the partition on the new drive. I used cfdisk to create the partition and I used the terminal to create the filesystem:

cfdisk /dev/hdb

mkreiserfs /dev/hdb1

Then it was just a matter of editing my fstab so that it could automatically mount and then I just started copying files over which didn’t take long at all.

I did end up going with another IDE drive as I did not have any more free sata ports and I found that getting a sata controller proved to be more of a hassle and more costly than just buying another drive outright.

The Diagnostic

I probably won’t recall all of the details but I will provide some information on what has preoccupied me for the last several days. One of the first things I did was a Google search on the issue that had apparently plagued this machine for about 2 years or more and caused frustration to its owner and others who had tried to fix it. My first Google search produced that originally there had been a class action suit against the makers of Emachines for rampant overheating issues. The end result was compensation offered on 3 tiers depending on how many times the unit had been unsuccessfully repaired or you could choose a repair. By the time I got the laptop it was about a week and a half past the due date to apply for this restitution. I advised the owner to call in anyway if desired to see if anything could be done.

The Repair

I did find a nice forum post on how to clean the internal fan which tended to alleviate the overheating issues for a lot of owners. It seemed fairly straightforward and since it was past its due date for the class action suit, I figured I might as well try it. The fan turned out to be quite dirty so once it was reassembled, it not only didn’t seem to get as hot, but also was quieter. The next day I was using the laptop while lying on my couch and I noticed the strangest thing. I was connected wired to my network and was talking to some friends on messenger and I noticed a very strange occurrence. When I pressed enter, my message would just stay where I typed it instead of going above to the body of the conversation. Then I instinctively picked up the laptop and was looking under it and such and when I returned to the screen I noticed my message had sent. I repeated this a few more times and noticed that the message would send almost immediately once I lifted it off my lap. So, something was still not right. I decided to do further testing. I ran the Maxtor Power Max Utility to test the drive which works on almost any manufacturer of hard drive. It came back with errors on several tests. Since I was given permission to erase the drive, I thought I would try a zero fill (low level format) which I have seen rescue several drives over the years – this failed also. I had never seen this test fail before. With the hard drive test not going well and the strange activity, I knew in order to eliminate some variables, the drive needed to be replaced. So off I went to my local computer store and managed to pick up a supposed 20Gb drive which actually turned out to be a 6Gb instead. I am keeping in mind while doing all of this work that I am trying to get this laptop into a condition to where I would be interested in buying it.

The Setup

Once I replaced the drive, things seemed much better. I used the laptop for quite a while with a nice trim Arch Linux install and it was working fine. I used it all day for probably about 14 hours off and on. At the end of the night, it mysteriously shut right now from out of nowhere. Was this due to overheating? Perhaps – the underside of the laptop was extremely hot. I knew the hard drive was not the issue. It could be in much better condition but still struggling to stay cool. More testing is needed. I did manage to get a moral victory tonight though – I got wireless working. It comes with a broadcom internal wireless card and used bcm4306 chipset which I loaded through ndiswrapper. I had tried ndiswrapper v. 1.26 the previous night and it would not pick up my access point. It was suggested to try the latest 1.28 version (thanks Brad!) and it went ahead and loaded up fine. It’s nice to have one less cord. It’s also nice to be able to have wireless working in the sense that it wasn’t a high priority due to all of the hardware issues which means that perhaps a lot of them have cleared up.

The (in)decision

All in all, it is a nice laptop with very decent specs. It was purchased about 3 years ago as a state of the art machine with a 15.4 widescreen (quite uncommon then), 20Gb hard drive, dvd rom and cd burner, internal wireless, 3 usb ports, modem, wired nic, firewire, 512mb ram (odd config – one 256 soldered on and a 256 added as there is only one ram slot and only upgradeable to a max of 768 – the upgrade would be worthwhile though) and the cpu is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 (1.8Ghz). It does run well, but I am still wavering on buying it. New laptops are very cheap these days and I don’t really need a new laptop by any means, I don’t need any computer related things to be honest, but if it is a decent deal and I get working, I may consider it.

The first step was deciding on whether I would even bother to install Windows again as naturally it prompted to self-destruct as expected when I changed motherboards. This is just one of the disadvantages of using Windows over Linux. I couldn’t really justify re-installing Windows, but eventually did decide on keeping a copy of it around and justified this by at least installing the 64 bit version.

After the Windows section was complete, it was time to work on my Arch Linux re-install. Arch Linux was installed on its own hard drive which made things easier. I always use the following partition style whenever available which makes life a lot easier such as in this situation:

• swap
• boot
• root
• home

These are all primary partitions. Extended partitions can be used, but primary tends to create a much cleaner situation. If I were to only have 3 primary partitions available, I would select this style:

• swap
• root
• home

Even though leaving boot out in this method, the separate home partition can pay off dividends such as in my recent situation. I did not reinstall my home partition whatsover to obtain the 64 bit version of Arch. I only installed the swap, boot and root partitiions. After the re-install, I found that all of my settings for all of my applications still existed. The one thing I did ensure of was that I used a custom 64 bit compiled kernel. The main thing to remember in regard to this is to enable hyperthreading in the kernel config as well as choose the correct processor. Else, I made sure that copied arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage to my /boot directory instead of the typical arch/i386/boot/bzImage file which would defeat the purpose of the 64 bit kernel compile.

What’s the difference? I do notice a fairly large difference in speed between my previous box parts (AMD 2600) and the new AMD 64 bit enabled 3200 processor with the optimizations. Not only is there is a difference in this configuration but I also did run the box with the 32 bit enabled system before I reinstalled and I have noticed a difference in speed there as well. While I didn’t run any certified benchmarks, I am noticing a difference empirically.

What happened to Ubuntu, FC5 and Frugal? I did erase these distros from the secondary slave drive on which they were installed in an attempt to install the X86 version of Mac OSX just for kicks, but it was unsuccessful (details in a future blog), but I may install the 64 bit versions of one or more of these other distros on that now empty hard drive.

Final opinion…  The combining factors made it all worth it in the end. The price of the hardware, the ease of installation, the effectiveness of the 64 bit version of Arch.

More to come on OSX86 later on.

I built the system tonight which didn’t take long. The CPU and motherboard were separate even though it was purchased as a combo set. Affixing the cpu with some thermal paste was straight forward as usual. The case itself looks very nice, having a gamer type element but not to an unsightly degree. I ended up getting the Aspire X-Cruiser which is pictured below.

The X-Cruiser has several drive bays to accommodate for years to come. It can fit a Micro ATX Board like the Biostar that I purchased or a regular ATX board as well. I almost bought a mini tower or a shuttle case, but with 3 hard drives, it may have been difficult to fit everything in and allow for adequate cooling. The case was around $130 but ever since I bought the Chen-ming case pictured in the ELG Gallery, I learned the value of having a nice case if you can afford to spare a few extra dollars. The case came with 2 blue led fans. I replaced the one in the back with a 120mm fan instead of the smaller one provided. There is also a fan pointing through the top of the case as well. The front guages were very easy to get working with the included power cables that can be attached the power supply. I have yet to get the volt meter working, but that is not a concern at all at this point.

In terms of software, I had 5 different Operating Systems on the hard drives I transplanted into the new system. It contained my only Windows install which is almost entirely useless other than being something I have around in case I feel like getting infected with viruses or spyware. Upon bootup, as expected, Windows XP self destructed. I will almost surely have to reinstall, although I am contemplating just eradicating it entirely as usage is very infrequent. I had 4 versions of Linux installed as well including Arch, Frugalware, Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu 6.06. Arch was using a custom kernel which required an upgrade to 2.6.18 (all done using a Linux live cd) to ensure the newer drivers were available for this board, otherwise all other distros load modules during boot using a default kernel so they automagically worked. The next step is to slowly migrate to 64 bit distros on that box including the customized Arch install. I will also have to decide on the necessity of having 3 hard drives in that system. Once the hard drives start piling up, it starts to feel more like it should be a server.

The payoff… I immediately noticed a difference in speed. Once into the Gnome desktop, all applications were more responsive using the same 1GB of DDR ram as the previous configuation. A kernel compile takes about 5 minutes which is about the same as my server which contains an Athlon 64 3000. So, I have a case, motherboard, cpu, some fans, a geforce mx440 video card, usb 2.0 card left over. This will have a dvd writer and hard drive added to it shortly and will be customized and sold to a set buyer. Again, justification.