moving category archive

Still Here

Hi, Everyone. I’m still here. I seem to have a few regular readers, and I appreciate your continued interest. I’ve mentioned before that my goal at a minimum here is to post once a week. I’ve tried doing more than that because I crave attention and the statistics that say people are visiting. But I’m aware that’s not a great way to look for validation.

And there are priorities to consider. I kidded recently about how my daughter interferes with my ambitions, but it really was a joke. She and my wife are way first on my list, and then comes my day job which sustains us.

I was feeling some stress earlier this week, trying to find time for all the things I want to do, and I decided …

Ubuntu/Xubuntu Live CDs

I mentioned that I tried running Xubuntu GNU/Linux from a CD (a Live CD, I guess you call this kind of thing). I had been seeing these CDs of the various Ubuntu systems and the exhortation to try them without having to install anything. I was skeptical about how well that would work.

Well, it worked great. I wasn’t even sure if my old machine would boot from a CD, but it started up with no problems. (And with plenty of screen resolutions to choose from, which was nice after my earlier travails.) I didn’t do much other than verify Firefox could get to the Internet and that OO.o Calc …

A round of GNU/Linux, heading in to the back nine. (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1: How was your round of GNU/Linux?

Irksome Screen Resolution Problems

Everything was pretty well set: I had network connectivity and could get to a network server for sharing spreadsheets and use Firefox for browsing. But the display resolution was too “big.” I found where you can set it, but there were only two options: 800×600 and 640×480. And getting it to go higher was a bother.

It felt a bit like going back in time. Suddenly I had to try remembering things about the hardware, and it reminded me of when I had to hop through a lot of hoops to make things work in Windows. For quite a while now in Windows, things have gotten so well supported with drivers and “plug and play” installation–which works …

How was your round of GNU/Linux? (Part 1)

As threatened, here is an account of my GNU/Linux adventures of last weekend. It was enjoyable and frustrating. And I’m still struggling with how to write about it. What level of detail will serve you the best? There are dry technical details to be mentioned, but also some observations on the experience that might benefit others trying to make this same move to freedom. For me, it seems to be as much a psychological test as a technical challenge.

I hope that some of you will gain something from this. There are many good technical help and reference web sites out there, but that’s not really what I’m aiming at with this blog. I’d love it if people found this site on a search …

Eeyore is Dead

Originally published in Free Software Magazine.

No, not Winnie-the-Pooh’s friend, but that computer I mentioned last week. Do you feel cheated? Maybe you were expecting a murder mystery instead? Although Eeyore the donkey seems more like the died-of-natural-causes type. Let me briefly eulogize Eeyore the computer before wandering erratically to a new subject: copyright control.

Eeyore-the-Computer is dead

My plan to install Ubuntu on an old computer named Eeyore didn’t go so well. I finally sat down Friday night (I know: life in the fast lane) to give it a go and it turns out the machine is totally dead now. Disconnected all the drives and still couldn’t get to the BIOS. As is …

Ubuntu for Web Surfing and Spreadsheets

Originally published in Free Software Magazine as Moving to freedom, one step at a time.

Time to get on with the move. Giving up Windows is like kicking a drug habit. It’s easier to take the path of least resistance and keep using. If quitting proprietary software was a twelve step program–although let’s not push the analogy too far–maybe after admitting we were powerless over our proprietary programs, coming to believe that a Higher Power could restore us to Freedom, and so on and so forth, maybe we’d… make a searching and fearless inventory of cross-platform free programs we could run on Windows first so that a new operating system wouldn’t be entirely alien when we …