el rinconcito

Yesterday, I was sure my hard drive was failing, but it seems OK now. I'm keeping an eye on it.

Why not use that as an excuse to buy some fun geek stuff. I went and got a 750GB hard drive and a USB enclosure. At some point I'll just install the hard drive internally, but for now it will be a portable backup storage device. My first computer hard drive years ago was 1.5GB, and I paid a princely sum for that. I remember the excitement when I got a 7GB one. Oh, I'll *never* use all that! There were terabyte drives looking at me from the store shelves today, but I got the 750GB. I'll *never* use all that! I got the usual Western Digital. Never had nuttin' else.

Below you'll see the sexy sleek black drive enclosure. Then you'll see the partition being written. I'm just doing one big partition for now to use it as backup storage. Later, if I put it into "production", I'll divide it up into swap and ext3. Geek fun on a Saturday night. Now I just need some geeks to play with.

The obligatory screenshot after upgrading my netbook to Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

It just gets more beautiful with each release, jawdropping almost. The Netbook Remix makes the most out of the small screen sizes of netbooks. I can use it fine, even with my weak near vision.

Image is clickable for greater detail. Select "all sizes" after landing on the flickr page.

All you *buntu freaks, it's almost here again, upgrade time. Distro upgrades are always fun. This Thursday, 29 October 2009, is the next release, 9.10 (Karmic Koala, WTF!) so fire up those torrent clients and look busy.


See my CD-less speedy combo method of upgrading. Download servers will overload on Thursday, so if you use bittorrent to fetch, you'll save a lot of time.



All of these are fun and run smooth as silk:

• Ubuntu - for you Gnome-ers. Safe with most medications.
  
  
• Kubuntu - KDE eye-candy fantasy. Goes well with spicy Chinese take-out, or Vietnamese.
  
  
• Xubuntu - for people who like the military-like precision of the Xfce desktop like I do.
  
  
• Edubuntu - Ubuntu enhanced with educational applications, tools, content, and themes.
  
  
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix - runs dreamy on my Sylvania Meso netbook.
  
  
• Microsoft Windows 7 - obligatory "I'm kidding" link. What a freakin' downer!
  

If you can't decide which one to get, just pick any of the first few listed above. One can be converted to another with little hassle.

Reminder, if you are upgrading from a previous *buntu system, get the *alternate* CD iso file, not the main one. If it's a virginal install, any of the iso files will do. In fact, if you're new to all this, get the recommended main file. You can boot it live and see how it looks before you install it.

Upgrades: get the *alternate* file! Virgins, get any file, especially the main one.

All install easy as pie, especially with beer. Don't forget to install Opera after you get 'er running.

Control + C. I'm done!