In my case people just recommended various distributions for me to try out. In my case, whatever most of them used ended up as the one I’d use during the time I’d be searching. It made it easier for me because I could easily ask them about using it. My use of Ubuntu started out as a convenience more than anything. These days, I work in an office where the Linux machines are on Ubuntu so that also makes it easier for me when other users ask me about it too.

There are so many Linux distributions so it’s not easy at all to pick one distro. A bad experience with a particular distro would be able to affect your perspective about Linux. For one, you could try the disro and end up hating it. That or you wonder if there are other distros that are better. On one hand, you could try this distro chooser. Or you could keep trying one on live CD until you find something that you like enough.

The difficulty about trusting the distro chooser is that you might not like the distro at all when you try it for yourself. The problem about the latter is that you could be spending a lot of testing them one after the other. Then again, if you are the type of person that would like the hands on approach, it’s probably worth it. The difficulty is how much time should you give it. Even you knew what applications you want there by default, the hardware compatibilities, etc. sometimes things could be subjective and you would see that there are other personal reasons you might need to factor in, after everything.

I guess these are the main things I see which are necessary for choosing a distro:

• The applications you need.
• Hardware compatibility issues.
• Package manager.
• User interface
• Users

If the distro checks out against all these things and you think you’ve found your distro, maybe you could stick with it for a while and see if it’s all you expect and more.

From the looks of it, that is. It sounds like a cool thing to me. If more people have access to OLPC for their children, the better. If governments do not want to make that investment in tools for learning, then it’s up to the people to decide what to do. It’s access that shouldn’t be taken away from people especially those with a desire to learn and improve themselves and their children.

While OLPC pilot projects are currently on in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the $188-laptops are also expected to start retailing in India by the end of this year. OLPC aims to provide low-cost laptops (XO laptops) to children in developing countries. The World Bank has earlier provided funds for OLPC pilots in Sri Lanka. … Later this year, the XO laptops are expected to hit the retail stores. Sources say Reliance Communications, which partnered OLPC Foundation to conduct an XO pilot project in Maharashtra last year, is looking at retailing these laptops bundled with its CDMA modems. - OLPC looks to World Bank for India funding

Though there’s an upcoming generation of XO laptops that’s targeted to be worth 75USD, that is for 2010. Still a long way to go. I just hope that the 188USD price tag is affordable in India. And maybe they could do something like the Get One Give One promo they used to have. Or maybe a lower price if in case an NGO in India wants to buy a bunch of them laptops.

I wonder if they’re excited about this news. If it were to happen here in Manila, I’d be glad and probably give one to my cousins.

I also want something light and powerful enough to be my work machine. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any yet. Well, anything affordable, that is.

To someone who travels by riding buses, trains and jeeps, going light is a big factor. There are days when I have to take a cab going to the office because I feel that my bag is too heavy or I am carrying too many bags - one for the laptop, the other for books, and other supplies I need.

The Asus EEE PC is something I’ve always liked because of the form factor. It’s really small and I like that. It has Linux pre-installed and if ever, I could always install the eee Xubuntu on it. It’s just that I wish that were more options for consumers like me. Of course, we could always choose any and install Linux anyway. But not’s the only point: Why should we still get the one with Windows and pay full price when we wouldn’t be using the OS anyway?

In terms of form, I think that my Lenovo C300 N100 isn’t too bad if it were lighter and thinner. Though I find the current generation of Acers lighter than this laptop, I still prefer the look and feel of my Lenovo, in general. I still have ifs and buts about the bluetooth and wifi switch — because there’s only one switch for both, dagnabit! However, I love the fact that I have 4 USB ports and I love my keyboard.

Others say get a Mac anyway. But for the price? I’d think twice. Maybe more than that. But still, I envy Mac users because of the form factor of their laptops. Oh well, I am still thinking about it anyway. And maybe I’d find in the next few months that there’d be several ultra-thin laptops with Linux pre-installed (or maybe they’re OS-less). I shouldn’t probably whine about it. It’s just that the article from Computerworld reminded me about the ultrathin laptop envy.

Here’s an awesome tip I got today:

On the old computer, run dpkg –get-selections >> packages.list. Get the new computer online and install dselect (yeah, it’s not part of dpkg anymore). Copy the packages.list to your new computer. Then run sudo dpkg –set-selections < < packages.list. Finally, run sudo dselect and choose Install. (Oh the fun of migrating data)

Thanks, Ubuntu Linux tips and tricks! I often forget what other software I install apart from the defaults and my usual ones, this is especially true for the apps that I installed for the heck of it or for other people. I’ve had problems about configuration files complaining to me about not finding files or the app, etc. This would solve it! But, folks, please note that this tip only works for those that came from the repos, not the ones that you just downloaded over the internet or installed from source. So it’s still better to note those other things, ok?

I wish I knew about this earlier. It surely would have saved me from headaches of trying to remember things I installed or not having an application I need. (This is especially bad when I have limited or no internet access.)

If you have other similar tips when migrating data, please feel free to share them here!

I saw a blog entry on Slashgear about the Alpha 400. At the moment, I am still looking around to find out what Linux distribution is running on it. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of information from the manufacturer’s official site.

At 250 USD, you might get tempted to buy this ultramobile laptop. Why? Because it’s small and light. And it’s got Linux on it. But there are drawbacks: No webcam, no built-in wifi. Those two things are worth buying in the Asus EEE. Well if you want more space there’s also the Cloudbook to satisfy your needs.

These days Linux users have a great variety to choose from and it could be overwhelming. But in this case, I think I’d have to agree with Slashgear that you could let this opportunity pass. Even if you’re thinking you’re just going to surf and watch some videos, this ultramobile might not be worth it unless you’re sure you could get wired internet access.

I am disappointed that there’s not much information about the Linux distribution they included in this laptop. Really, I am curious. But with this lack of information what does that mean? You could choose any?

For lack of space, people compress files before copying them or sending them via email. If you guys didn’t talk about the archiving, you might have some headaches especially if you haven’t used Linux before. There are tools like XArchiver and when you’re using Gnome, there’s FileRoller and in KDE you have Ark. These are all graphical ways for you to use the tools like the tar compression and zip compression applications. I haven’t seen a distro without one of these three yet.

For users of Gnome and Kde, you could simply click the file you want to extract. You might have some trouble though if it’s a rar file you need to extract. If that’s the case, you need to download unrar from the repositories first. That or you get it as source then build it.

I also learned recently about the 7zip archived files. I haven’t encountered them myself but there is a Linux tool for compressing and extracting them. P7Zip is the project you need to check out if you have to open some 7zip files for work. Well, if ever you couldn’t use the graphical tools after installing 7zip, there’s an online guide on how to make the compression work for you. It’s called the 7zip Helper.

I hope that helps!

After reading the articles on Computerworld and the Inquirer, I felt disappointed. Why? Because it seems that the OLPC team is backing off from their original plans. They are now thinking about using Windows XP instead of Linux on the OLPC. Uh… Hey, that’s so weird, dude!

*sigh*

Reasons mentioned:

• Compatibility with Flash sites
• Compatibility with other software

And speculations seem to imply that the move by Intel to sell the Classmate PC for a low price was one of the triggers. Why? Because consumers would buy that. And it seems like this shift to Windows XP would help them sell them machines better.

Here’s the thing: Windows XP would make them change their hardware. They need more harddrive space for the operating system alone. Another: How much would those modified machines cost?

Here are some suggestions which I think could help the OLPC team:

• Why not team up with a group such as Asus? I’d rather see them do that than ditch Linux in favor of Windows. Then again, maybe the teaming up with a particular hardware manufacturer would tie them down further? And after what Intel did, they probably felt really bad already so maybe not this one.
• Prepare other educational materials which would cater to the target audience. There are groups out there who could be tapped as resources for materials if they’re worried about educational sites out there.
• Don’t give up yet! Rather than going with the Windows-way, find out if there are other groups who’d be supporting them in their endeavors. Their project could change the way of the world, so why not go through with the changes?

Maybe I sound idealistic but I don’t think that cheap laptops in the hands of children should be the end-all be-all. There are other benefits of having an open source operating system and applications in the hands of these students. We don’t just want them to have the tools. We want them to have the freedom and power in other aspects as well. I don’t know what else to say except that I am disappointed with today’s news.

Laptop prices have dropped considerably lower over the last two years and it’s even getting lower with the Asus EEE. Dell apparently wants to introduce laptops which will have a competitive price against the Asus EEE. They have Red Flag Linux running on one of their low-end machines.

This sounds great to me! No lock-up with Windows. You could either go with the default Linux installed or you could install a distro you are more comfortable with.

News from PCWorld.

If you’ve been wondering if there’s a lite version of Inkscape, there’s a possibility that there might be one in the future. Bryce Harrington blogged about keeping the toolbars simple and changing some settings. He also noticed that the dialog boxes appear bigger so it will probably look smaller when they implement it in Inklite.

A snippet from his blog entry on Inklite:

The main challenge was the aux toolbar - I think we’ll need JonCruz’s toolbar rework (which missed 0.46 but will definitely be in for 0.47); I just hacked it down. Deciding what to keep in the left toolbox was a tough choice, but I think I kept the most useful tools; the paint bucket would be the next on the chopping block, but I understand kids love it, so it just made it.

You’ll note I turned off the scrollbars, ruler, and color palette - this was trivial to do via the menus, and could be turned back on as desired.

Sounds like it’s going to be a dream come true for those who love using ultraportables with low resolution screens, and also for those who are newbies who might have found Inkscape bit intimidating.

I own a Lenovo C3000 N100. It’s not that new and I’ve been dual-booting Windows XP Home (it came with that) and Ubuntu Linux since I got it. Over time, I’ve installed Windows apps which I couldn’t uninstall and for some reason or another, my directory containing the shared files of all users became inaccessible. On Linux, I’ve messed up the device settings for the sounds. I think it must be when I tried to fix the problem about the sound channels. To cut the long story short, it’s been one huge mess which was usable but I’ve been experiencing pain points. One of them was about not having enough space when working on Windows (because I gave my Linux home the bigger partition) and the fact that I had no more sounds on Linux.

The Lenovo laptops issued at work had no installer discs. We all had Windows on the hard drive itself. Bleh~ I know. That is one reason why I didn’t wipe it out. Anyway, I backed up all my files to an external hard drive which had a capacity waaay bigger than my hard drive. Then I booted up my laptop and had to select the system restore option. System restore took quite a while (I opted to make it go back to factory settings).

Problem encountered: Windows XP Home didn’t load after system restore. Ack!

But it wasn’t so much of a problem. I had to fix the Master Boot Record by booting up via a Windows XP installer and selected that option. I had to reboot and then Windows XP Home booted up nicely and it seemed to continue the rest of the system restore stuff.

After an additional hour or so, Windows XP Home on the Lenovo was restored to its factory settings. It was then that I booted up with the Ubuntu installer disk. I had to resize the NTFS partition of Windows and allocated space that will be shared by Linux and Windows as well as my home partition, the root partition and swap.

Note: Lenovo users must be careful about that. You might end up wiping out the installer!

Anyhow, the Ubuntu install took roughly one hour. And there it was. A fresh dual boot system! Maybe some of you who have Lenovos have such dilemmas too. Please feel free to comment and email to me and we could share tips with each other.