Wilsonsway

Linux / Life / Open Source Alternatives

Posts Tagged Linux Mint

VirtualBox, Health and The Mystic Bird

Feb 28

Posted by ScottW in Computers | No Comments

It’s been a while since my last post and it’s mostly due to my playing  around with VirtualBox on my Win7 box. That and some minor health  issues that mostly have to do with my knee. Not going to bore you with  bum knee stories so let’s dive in on the good stuff!

I now have CrunchBang Linux, Linux Mint 8 and Fedora 12 installed in  VirtualBox with CBL being the only one giving me any issues so far to  date. The issues don’t stem from the VirtualBox end of things but more  along the end of the OS itself. Seems they take a humorous view of  their system and say that the name means that at any given time it may  go ‘Crunch!’ ‘Bang!‘ and that’s all she wrote! At any rate, I’m still  working it out to see if I can solve it without re-installing the OS. Read the rest of this entry »

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Pandora One – Music App for the Ages

Jan 24

Posted by ScottW in Music | Comments off

With the trusted recommendation of a friend of mine (Thanks @michaelramm), I’ve subscribed to and downloaded the Pandora One desktop app. It’s been one of the easier apps to install as it does so with the Adobe Air Installer and runs under this as well.

Did I mention I installed it on my Linux Mint laptop? :D

After first setting up a station and naming it, adding some music to it I prefer (Classic Rock), it’s all set. Pandora suggests songs and artists I might like and all I have to do is give it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ to continue. I can even bookmark certain songs or artists I like. How’s that for cool? And all for $36/year? Now, that’s way cool!

From what I can tell, it’s not too bad on the processor in my HP dv9335nr laptop either. From the screenshot below, you can see what it was pulling while Firefox 3.5.7, Twhirl, Gedit and Pandora was running along side of it.

Now, this app will run on Mac as well as Windows. Linux was also named but with all the many different distros available, they couldn’t support it. Pandora DID however, provide a page for helpful suggestions on how to best install it so they weren’t leaving us Linux folks out in the cold. Another way cool point when considering what type of music app to use.

Just as an after thought, this also will enable me to free up some hard drive space by eliminating my Music folder if I wanted to. So far, Pandora One has been playing all my favorites anyway. So, why need the space used for Music? Add to this the fact that subscribing to Pandora One also eliminates any break in the stream with an ad and so on, you have one sweet music app that will be there with you all the time. How’s that for way cool?

Pandora also is available for mobile too! ;)

How do you get your music fix?

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Operating System Wars Heat Up!

Oct 27

Posted by ScottW in Computers | Comments off

365 x18 My Laptop On ZenWalk Linux
Image by David Masters via Flickr

Just when we thought it was remotely safe to slip back in the deep, dark depths of the internet, along comes the release of Win7, Google’s Chrome (coming soon), Ubuntu 9.10 (released on October 29) not long after Apple’s recent release of Snow Leopard.

Decisions, decisions! What’s a self-professed ‘techie’ to do?

I could go out and pay a lot of $$ for a new Mac with it’s newest operating system called Snow Leopard. Over $1000 actually. Many freelancers love theirs.

Or,

I could go out and drop a C-note for a Win7 upgrade from Vista for my sole Windows machine. About $120 dollars U.S. and hope for the best. The history of Windows and their upgrades makes me think about this choice.

Or,

I could wait on Google to release their new operating system called Chrome. Imagine someone actually waiting to release an operating system to make sure it was ready. Hmmm. ;-)

Or,

I could wait till the 29th and just download the latest release of Ubuntu’s operating system called Karmic Koala (9.10) which will be free to the masses as Linux usually is.

Decisions, decisions.

Seeing as I run Ubuntu 9.04 on my HP dv1000t laptop, Linux Mint 7 dual boots with Vista on one of my desktops and the other one serves as my testing machine….I’m curious as to what each of these OS’s has to offer with the exception of the Mac which only runs on a Mac.

I’m familiar with Ubuntu and Linux Mint (which is derived from Ubuntu) and feel right at home with them. I know Windows will sooner or later let me down but I have quite a bit of software that I need Windows for. Whether it will run on the new Win7 platform is unknown yet. According to their upgrade advisor app, it ’should run’.

What are you running and why? Have you upgraded to Win7 yet? If so, do you like it or hate it? Will you hold out and wait on Google to release their new system or go for the latest version of Ubuntu when it releases on the 29th? Or are you a dedicated Mac user?

I’m curious to hear what you think.

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Dual Booting Vista and Linux Mint

Oct 25

Posted by ScottW in Computers | 1 Comment

Screenshot of Linux Mint 5.
Image via Wikipedia

Got tired of constantly searching for some errant this, that or the other with my other Ubuntu installation on my other box and decided that a dual-boot option worked great once before. So, I decided to go with Linux Mint this time as it installs with pretty much everything needed to start off with.

I first backed up everything I wanted to keep to an external drive. I trust the installers on the various Linux distros I’ve tried over the years but I also follow their suggestion to make a backup first. Better to be safe than sorry, right? Right!

Next up was the dividing of the hard drive. I partitioned half of the 500 Gb hard drive just for Mint because if this worked out like I hoped, then both would have their own space to grow. Seeing as I could access my Windows partition from the Linux one, it makes the best for both worlds for me. Anything I needed from the Windows side can be easily grabbed and used.

So far, everything is working out just fine. Only glitch is the sound card not being recognized by Linux Mint yet. I’m working on that one but other than that, nothing much else needed to be sourced out and installed. Mint is working just fine.

I also installed a new DLink DIR- 655 Xtreme Gigabit Router a few days ago and let me tell you, this is a much faster router than my old Linksys ever was. More on it later.

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