[caption id="attachment_10099" align="alignnone" width="497"] Be vewy, vewy, quiet. Hunting the wascally Windows XP -- and penguins.[/caption]

Microsoft has a habit of using fear marketing to keep Windows customers from leaving the fold; for nearly 20 years they've tried to hold back the threat of open source software by sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the Linux operating system; belittling it, calling it a cancer and ultimately claiming it infringes Microsoft's patents.

Lately, Microsoft has taken to throwing mud, or "FUD" as the technique is known, at its own popular operating system: Windows XP.

XP is still, after 13 years, the second most popular operating system, used on an estimated half billion computers.

But, except for a small percentage of enterprise customers using embedded XP under long-term service contracts, XP is dead to Microsoft. Both they and PC makers can only see a lot of potential new computer sales.

When Microsoft executive Stephen Elop took the reigns in 2011 as CEO at Finland's Nokia he wrote a company memo that compared Nokia's predicament -- surrounded on all sides by challenges -- to that of a man trapped on a burning oil rig. In such a circumstance, Elop said, a person -- or one of the world's premier cell phone makers -- had no choice but to jump.

The memo became famously known as the "burning platform" memo. And Elop, a Canadian, was widely praised for telling it like it was.

Elop succeeded in getting Nokia to jump... into the arms of Microsoft, and he pocketed a healthy $25 million profit for his trouble (after which his old employer rehired him).

The praise has taken a turn towards Greek tragedy as Elop is frequently compared to a Trojan horse.

Now that Elop is back at Microsoft he's even been suggested as a possible replacement for outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer. That's all the more reason to suggest that he jumped from one fire into another one.

Microsoft, in fact, has several burning issues on its plate. There's the matter of finding the next great leader and the matter of making the next great operating system.

A team at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, is already hard at work building the replacement for the badly under-performing Windows 8 operating system.

There's been a threat of snow in Vancouver's weather forecast for a few days. This is in contrast to my friend's iPad -- no matter how much she wants it to snow on her iPad, it's forecast to stay clear and bright through the holidays and beyond.

It's a WordPress.com thing. You know... the free Internet blogging dew-hickey?

My friend couldn't really think of much to do with her WordPress blog, after a friend created it for her. Then she heard about the festive feature to make it  snow on a her blog until January 4th.



She turned on the "Snow" option in her WordPress General Settings, but waited in vain for the expected flurries -- not a single snowflake. Even her friend with a 7-inch, "door-crasher special," generic Android tablet could see snow on their WordPress blog -- and I could see it on my Windows 8 waffle iron, if I cared to -- it was only her new iPod Air that couldn't. She wasn't happy about that. It didn't help any when she found out we could all see the snow falling on her blog.

WordPress.com explains the feature is "disabled on mobile devices because it’ll drain the battery too much." So to WordPress, all iOS devices look like iPhones.

[caption id="attachment_7407" align="alignnone" width="497"] Henry reflects on the Dell booting Ubuntu 12.04.3 off the USB stick. We used plain 12.04 to install though.[/caption]

My friend Henry is one of the worst things that can happen to a laptop. He can't explain it. They all break. The Acer Aspire One he spent an entire welfare cheque on -- broken. The enormous Toshiba he found beside a dumpster -- broken. And what about his latest dumpster find, the HP dv6000? Guess.

When he dove the dumpster that yielded the HP dv6000, he also fished out a Dell Inspiron 1525, with AC adapter. We got the HP up and working because, well, we could. The Dell had a password, and I didn't know the F-key to change the boot order on the Dell.

Well, Henry would rather have access to the Internet than not, so over breakfast two days ago at McDonald's I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on the Dell. After one little bobble, it went without a hitch. For the first time, Henry the binner and dumpster diver, and Windows user, would get to dive into Linux.

"There is nothing wrong with your computer. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. ... We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour (if you're lucky!), sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awful and mysterious way Microsoft automatically updates Windows, which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits of your patience!"

Apologies to the classic Outer Limits TV series -- see the 1963 opening ►

I can tweak Windows 8 to be fairly unobtrusive. I can disable, and hide the Metro/Modern interface. I can run Windows versions of most of the opensource programs I use in Ubuntu Linux. And I do like how fast Windows 8 boots up, and shuts down, But one thing I don't like is the awful way Windows 8 handles automatic operating system updates -- the same as Windows 7, which was the same way updates were handled in Windows Vista: When you least expect it, instead of your laptop shutting off, it informs you that it is "Configuring Windows updates," and whatever you do, "Do not turn off your computer." Both Ubuntu Linux, and Apple's Mac OS X can perform system updates in the background while you -- the User -- are using your computer. Windows does not seem to be able to install system updates while the User is logged in. You can't actually turn this off, but you can turn it down a little.

[caption id="attachment_4203" align="alignnone" width="497"] When I first saw the attractive Fuduntu cloverleaf logo, which embodied an "f" for Fedora, I suppose, I thought it also, evoked the Windows logo, and the Apple cloverleaf key.[/caption]

I've continued to gnaw away at why Funduntu turned out the lights; I'm like a none-too-bright dog -- and no, that's not a Puppy Linux crack. I love Puppy.

Of course Andrew Wyatt, and company would rightly say they've explained why, but I didn't quite get it (see above dog reference). So I've been reading, back to 2010, and forwards to just a few months ago. For better or worse, here's what I get: Fedora's a bit of a mess under the hood (and they didn't have enough mechanics), and the Fuduntu team wore their name like an albatross around their collective neck for nearly three years. The former explains rebasing on OpenSUSE, and the latter explains the new name for the new distribution.

It's been big news throughout Linuxland that Canonical's planning for mobile Ubuntu (let's call it Mobuntu) may include an application packaging system which sounds like it has more in common with Apple's Mac OS X, and iOS, than with Linux.

According to this mailing list posting by Colin Watson -- Canonical's Ubuntu Installer Team leader -- The Ubuntu phone/tablet could get a new, simplified packaging format and app installer, in line with the lightweight nature of Ubuntu mobile apps. The new packaging format, called "Click packages" would have no dependencies between applications, no maintainer scripts and each app would be installed in its own directory. That certainly doesn't sound like your grandfather's Linux, although it sounds almost exactly like the innovative, but currently quiescent GoboLinux, and It sounds a lot like what goes on inside a MacBook Pro, or an iPhone.

Wherein I pine for Apple's Preview, and Quick Open, but console myself by  installing Irfanview in Windows 8.



They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, I couldn't be any fonder of Apple's Preview application than I am right now, toying with Microsoft's "pieces o' eight" operating system. Preview is part of the Mac OS. Double clicking on PDFs, JPEGs, GIFs, TIFFs,, and 25 other image file types, automatically opens them in Preview. It's a cornerstone of the Macintosh User Interface. Users generally take it for granted -- until they don't have it anymore.

[caption id="attachment_3673" align="alignnone" width="497"] Resourceful folk, might admiringly say this was "Mickey Moused," or "MacGyvered."[/caption]

A street fellow came up to me in McDonalds this evening requesting some help with a Samsung netbook he'd fished out of the garbage.. He explained It had a password, but he knew something which would get around that -- would I download it for him? I said I would, knowing it wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't, be so easy.

It took him a while to get the laptop all set up -- "I had to make a power cord," he explained, as he fiddled with a clearly jury-rigged arrangement of stripped wires, a stretched out key ring, and by golly, a key! When he finally got the wires to stay in place, it indeed charged the laptop. He explained the particulars:

Using an actual laptop AC adapter, he cut off the end which plugs into the laptop's power port (only because it wasn't the right end for his Samsung), then he unsheathed several inches of the positive and negative wires, and stripped an inch-or two of each wire, He took a thin wire key-ring, and pulled it out more-or-less-straight -- he connected the positive wire to about the middle point of this keyring wire. He took a small key, as for a medium-size padlock, and connected the negative wire to the key, where the hole for the key-ring is. The "positive" key-ring wire went into the netbook's  power port -- dead center he said. The "negative" key was wedged in a USB port -- to provide the ground, he explained. This wasn't the first time he'd done this.

We fired up the once white netbook, and gazed upon the Windows 7 Starter login screen. Before I went to download whatever password cracker it was he'd heard about (I halfway expected it to be a program called KON-BOOT), I took a particular 16 GB USB drive, that I've set up as a kind of keyring of live Linux OSs, and booted Ubuntu 12.04 on the Samsung. This showed me that Ubuntu understood the wireless driver, and determined that the harddrive was more-or-less healthy. I hoped to convince him to just install Ubuntu.

No convincing was required. "You have Ubuntu? That would solve all the problems," he declared. Great, but did I have an ISO, and a stick I could lend him? I wasn't letting the 16 GB mult-boot stick out of my sight. I used the Windows LiLi USB creator program to put the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 12.10 -- all I had with me -- on an 8 GB stick. The Wi-Fi in Broadway and Granville McDonalds wasn't taking callers, as usual, so he'd have to find a Wi-Fi connection somewhere else. Having done my good deed, I headed off in the direction of bed, and he headed off to find Wi-Fi and install Ubuntu. He promised to return the USB stick, and tell me how the install went. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_3624" align="alignnone" width="497"] A wallpaper to tide me over. It's rougher than I intended, and there's a typo. Click on the image to see the 1366 x 768 pixel image.[/caption]

I've put the Pavilion dv6000 in my storage locker, so I can "bond" with the Pavilion g6 -- same size, but half the weight, and twice the hardware specs of the dv6000. It doesn't feel twice as powerful, but it smoothly plays any HD video I can throw at it., and it's USB read/write is much faster. However, compared to the three or four earlier Pavilions I've played with, the g6 looks, and feels cheaper; the case actually creaks a bit. The real issue though, is Windows 8. Since my previous post on the same subject, I've done a few more things:

Turned off the lock screen

This is the doorstep Windows 8 drops you on when it finishes booting up. In principal it's supposed to be a dashboard the user can customize with live notifications, and stuff. By default, it's just an illustration of the Seattle Space Needle which is between you and the log-in screen. The function of both screens could be rolled into one, thus eliminating a step, but this would appear to go against Windows 8's "journey of a thousand steps" approach. The lock screen can be turned off several ways. I chose the easiest, a Registry hack, neatly packaged as two little apps -- one on, one off, courtesy of How-To-Geek.

Pinned a folder on the Taskbar

Pinning is one of the ways Windows allows users to customize how they access the contents of their harddrive. The Taskbar is always visible along the bottom of the desktop, so I think it's a good place to "pin" frequently accessed applications, or directories, aka. folders. Apps can be pinned to the Taskbar from the right-click menu, but not folders. You have to make a shortcut, and in the right-click menu > Properties, add "explorer" at the beginning of the Target field. The instructions are here, scroll down to step 5. Under Properties I applied the basic User icon from the C:\Windows\System32\imageres.dll directory.

Turned off the Start screen

Boot screen > Lock screen > Login screen > Start screen > desktop screen; Windows 8 opens the way the Control headquarters opened in the credits of the 1960s TV series Get Smart, except in Windows 8 it's not funny. I installed Classic Shell 3.6.8, a freeware package of Windows enhancements, which goes back to the Vista days. Among other things, Windows 8 users can restore a desktop Start menu, and disable the Start screen.

Installed more software

The g6 is a 64-bit computer, so I kicked plain-old Firefox to the curb to try Waterfox, the 64-bit variant of Firefox. It's supposed to be way faster -- it's certainly not slower. I'm considering installing the Windows version of Banshee, an opensource audio player, which was once the default audio player included in Ubuntu, but for Ubuntu 12.04 was replaced with RhythmBox, which I don't really like. Banshee, which I do like, is built partly using the Mono development framework, which implements components of Microsoft's .NET development framework, and is thus controversial within the opensource community. I assumed the point of Mono was so Banshee code would be easily cross-platform for both Linux and Windows, yet the Windows version of Banshee is an alpha preview, and two versions behind the Ubuntu version! I installed the portable Windows version of Audacious, which is a very lean music player I use in Ubuntu. I'm not planning to install iTunes.

Installing Ubuntu Linux on the HP Pavilion g6, which happily fell into my lap, will have to wait. Not because of UEFI, or Secure Boot, but because the wireless card -- the Ralink RT3290 802.11bgn Wi-Fi Adapter -- is too new for Ubuntu -- versions 12.04, and 12.10 couldn't see it at all, while Ubuntu 13.04 saw the card, and Wi-Fi networks, but couldn't connect to anything. Sadly, being able to simply download and install a Linux driver for the Ralink RT3290 is not an option, so far as I can see -- just not Linux-y enough.

Linux distributions seem to unfurl, and fold like sheets at a laundromat. Now, another Linux distro I liked is gone. Fuduntu was discontinued in April, just as people were saying it was the best new Linux in years.

Fuduntu was created in late 2011, by Andrew Wyatt as a fork of Fedora Linux -- a sort of Fedora for the Ubuntu desktop crowd, tweaked for netbooks, and laptops. It came with an up-to-the-minute Linux kernel, apps like Chromium, Adobe Flash and Fluendo MP3 codecs, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and VLC. It used the Gnome 2 desktop, Fedora's YUM package manager, and it was a rolling release.

By early 2013, with version 2013.1, the Fuduntu team seemed to have a winning distro -- reviewers were loving it. I kind of loved it too. But it's repositories didn't include Synapse -- You just couldn't beat Ubuntu for software choices; and I was loathe to throw away all that time I'd invested memorizing how to spell "sudo." But, Fuduntu was definitely one to watch. By March, into April, Fuduntu version 2013.2 had Netflix and Steam in the repositories, and reviewers were having to dig deep into their reserve of superlatives. Then at the end of April, on the 28th, The Fuduntu website announced that the distribution was dead. The team was starting a new distribution, based on openSUSE, initially called FUse Linux, but now renamed Cloverleaf Linux (In Canada, Cloverleaf means canned tuna, for better or worse).

What seems to have killed Fuduntu, and I don't want to get too technical here (no chance of that), wasn't the Gnome 2 Desktop Environment as I originally wrote -- and as many others have written -- but rather it was underlying code libraries, including GTK. Another factor was Systemd, a new system services manager, adopted by Fedora in 2011. Andrew Wyatt explains here ►. Wyatt actually says of the Gnome 2 DE:

We had no issue with our GNOME 2 code base; it was mature and functional, and we had no problem supporting GNOME 2 itself at-all.

Interesting post about the future of Fuduntu, now that it's not Fuduntu ►
Oh FUD! Another look at the death of Fuduntu ►

[caption id="attachment_3539" align="alignnone" width="497"] Hot, hot, hot! I did steal this graphic though. Click the image to go to the original source.[/caption]

I wonder if a laptop is stolen every half-hour in Vancouver, or once every five minutes, or maybe one-per-minute -- I have no idea. But I know all-too-well they get stolen, along with iPads, cell phones, and everything else that isn't nailed down, and people naturally look for culprits among the poorest people they see -- the homeless. Understandable, but a bit ironic, as the homeless are frequently themselves victims of theft: Their loaded shopping carts are walked-off with while they cash in bottles at supermarkets; their bikes are stolen for lack of a good lock; their sleeping gear is taken from a stash spot in bushes. I've had a loaded backpack stolen at a library while I dozed off, while other patrons watched ("your friend came and took your bag"). I've had bags of bottles yanked off my trailer while I was in McDonalds getting a coffee, and I've even had people steal the empty garbage bags.

So, speaking of stolen laptops -- in the Waves coffee shop on West Broadway at Spruce, day before yesterday -- I overheard a man at the counter asking an employee to keep a lookout for any homeless person with a MacBook Pro computer, or, any rubby who didn't look like they should have anything that nice -- boy. That got my undivided attention! He went on to say that someone had broken in to his office through a security-barred window, and made off with a "plate full of change, two X-boxes, and a MacBook Pro."

Being the outgoing, friendly person I am, I waited till he took his drip coffee to the condiment station -- which was happily near where I was sitting -- leaned towards him, and caught his attention: "Excuse me. I heard what you said at the counter. I'm homeless, and this is my laptop," I said, waving his gaze towards my satisfyingly glossy black HP tanktop, which lumbered quietly on the little marble table in front of me.

His reply started something like "Bhu, bhu ...," but we settled into a chat ranging from homeless folk I know, who all have laptops they didn't steal, to the sad fact I'd had my MacBook Pro stolen in the very coffee shop we were sitting in. "Then you know how I feel," he said. Sure I did. Though it turned out it hadn't been his MacBook, but his friend's -- he had his with him.

I mentioned his friend might consider getting a webcam security app for his next MacBook. He thought Macs had that built in. I mentioned MacKeeper off the top of my head, but I see it is quite controversial.

I thought about how some of us let our Web browser "remember" our passwords, so I also suggested his friend consider changing passwords to any Web-based services, like Gmail. He called his friend, and asked him if he'd kept any lists of passwords on his laptop. He went on to tell me his office was in the Downtown Eastside, and he'd gone to all the places where you might find a stolen laptop in that area, with no luck -- I found this statement curious to say the least -- Was the theft there, or here, in Fairview? How would he know all the places?. And not once did he say anything about reporting the theft to the police. Whatever. theft is wrong, unless it's food to feed your family.

My laptop runs the Ubuntu version of the Linux operating system. When I install Ubuntu, I choose the option to encrypt my Home folder. So, assuming a thief can't crack my password ("pudding" -- all lowercase) then, if they boot my laptop using, say an Ubuntu live DVD, and they don't have the long encryption key, they should only see gobbledy-gook in the place of my personal content. And I think, in a future install, that I should look at password-protecting the boot loader itself, which should stop thieves from being able to boot from a live image.

Prey is an impressive looking opensource anti-theft application for Linux, Apple, Windows, Android, and iOS. Here's Lifehacker's review and feature walk-through.

Password protecting Ubuntu's boot loader ►

I've switched back to the HP Pavilion dv6000; the loveable lugable laptop. It took me about three months to find the right AC adapter, which meant there were software updates in the pipeline for the dv6k's Linux operating system: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I sat through the updates yesterday. The Update Manager had quite a list. The first download failed, and I dutifully changed the download server, which is accessed In "Update Manager" window > "Settings" button, bottom left corner > "Ubuntu Software" tab > "Software Sources." Here you have a "Download from:" pull down menu.

Ubuntu, trying hard not to look like the GNU/Linux of old, gives it's users a single graphical pipeline to install software over the Internet, called the Ubuntu Software Centre. But under the candy coating of the Unity graphical interface, all the old ways of installing software still work, and many would argue they still work much better than the user friendly, lumbering Software Centre  -- I say it's good to have choices. One benefit of understanding the various methods, is that it gives you the freedom to install most any Linux software, not just the wares in the Software Centre.

The AC adapter that fits my HP Pavilion dv6k packed it in yesterday. It was a cheap-o multi adapter which reeled in the cords to save space. This seemingly handy feature doomed the thin cords to a hard life of wear-and-tear, and an early death from friction. So, for the moment, back to the good, old, Acer Aspire 533, which has been sitting in the storage locker and ... malfunctioning. Hardware-wise the left click had stopped working. OS-wise, Xubuntu 12.10 had lost window decorations -- you know, Close buttons-'n-stuff.

So, booting off the Ubuntu 12.04 live stick I always seem to have (I should force myself to try Linux Mint for more than three hours, right?), I was checking my blog, and  installing. The public WiFi only cut out once (how many language packs does Ubuntu install?). Then almost by reflex in the Terminal, I sudo apt-got busy:

Post-install install:

• Gnome-panel (bye-bye Unity)


• Synapse (semantic launchers rule!)


• The GIMP 2.8 (how else to crop the photos on this blog?)


• qBittorrent 3.0 (It's a free country, and Bittorrent helps keep it that way!)


• Blogilo (a KDE offline blog editor. The best Linux can do, I think)

[caption id="attachment_1150" align="alignleft" width="233"] After the 15-inch HP, the Acer's screen is tiny -- better click the image.[/caption]

I also disable the overlay scroll bars (Ick!), and toggle mounted volumes and trash on the Desktop (I like the Apple-flavoured Ubuntu best).

After I get a new trailer, I'll save up and get a new multi-adapter for the HP, just so I can discover that the power supply is also kacked, but in the meantime, I want my Internet.

The "Standby" image is from here.

Both for my Acer Aspire One 533, with it's little 10.1-inch screen.

My basic Ubuntu wallpaper, referencing the Aspire's Atom processor, and the Windows 7 Starter OS. There's my G4 iBook, and the awfully fun HP Pavilion TX1000 I had prior to the Aspire. The woman pictured on the wall is a cosplayer in the character of Radical Ed, from the late 1990s anime series, Cowboy Bebop.

This was specifically for various experimental versions of Ubuntu 12.04 running on a 16 GB Patriot USB stick. Click the images to see the 1024 x 600 versions.

I Found this HP Pavilion dv6000 in the garbage well over a year ago. I didn't have an AC adapter for it so I left it in my locker, then it went off with Toad, who said he had an adapter; he didn't, and I finally got it back about a month ago. Now I had an adapter so I played with it. The casing was very clean and unmarked. There was no internal hard drive, but it booted a variety of live media. I was pleased it booted Ubuntu with no problem, making it the first computer driven by an AMD proccessor to do so. It still had its wireless card, which was recognized by every distro I tried. It had a much faster proccessor, and about twice as much RAM, as my little Acer Aspire One 533 netbook.

The HP also had a standard ratio screen, unlike the Acer, who's 10.1-inch netbook screen (1024 x 600 resolution) was, height-wise, 40 pixels off standard ratio. I had found that a number of Linux applications, including GIMP, but mostly KDE applications, such as DigiKam, would draw windows 1024 x 640, and somewhat important buttons such as "Save," would be stuck down in the right-hand corner -- in that 40-pixels below the bottom of my Acer's screen.

The HP was more a tank-top than laptop, but I had a bike trailer.

I bought a 250 GB Apple Toshiba SATA laptop drive from another binner for $5, or $10 dollars. I cajoled Toad into helping me install it, which he did with the aid of an adapter doo-dad. In gratitude, I gave him a bag of $13-worth-of-nickels.

The six-cell battery didn't hold more than a ten-minute charge anymore. Research showed that brand-new it was only rated for two hours. Luckily I found Leading Age Computer, a store at Kingsway and Joyce, in the Collingwood neighbourhood of Vancouver, which was selling a twelve-cell battery for a mere $60.00, taxes in. This thing may weigh as much as my Acer, and it's twice the thickness of a six-cell, but it's giving me over four hours of charge.

I installed Ubuntu 12.04.1, because my experience with 12.10 on the Acer made me remember all the better qualities of 12.04. Now that it's installed I'm remembering that it's not without blemishes. But I know I can successfully un-install Unity from 12.04, which absolutely wasn't the case with 12.10.

---

The specs:

OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 32-bit
Memory: 2.9 GB
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 × 2
Graphics: Unknown (to Ubuntu)
Disk: 240 GB

---

True there is a vertical blue line (sometimes lines) that sits about two-inches in from the right side of the screen, but I knew that was there from the first distro I booted -- I'm told it has to do with the graphics card, which in this HP, is soldered in. Any ways, I believe HPs have poor build-quality by design, so any or all of it could go poof at any moment. So far though, I'm pretty pleased.

"I do like a lot about Ubuntu, but I find the same thing: too often when you are up against a roadblock, a google search shows that the answer is to bring up the terminal and type a string of random characters."

Posted by: Merlin, on Aug. 31st, 2012 to macobserver.com