Fed up paying with Windows what is free functionality with Linux?

Want to edit a PDF under Vista, good luck with that, at best you may have to install trialware. Official HP driver refuse to print with unofficial carts, well shucks!

Quote of the day.

“Times of adversity elicit rare talents that otherwise may stay hidden in prosperous times.”

How to defragment your XFS partition

http://st-on-it.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/how-to-defragment-your-xfs-partition.html

Microsoft Hardware Tax

Anything that ran on Win2k hardware generally would work with XP. The same with Vista, it would run Win 7 as they shared the same code base. Today a PC that runs 8.1 will run Win 10. That leaves me out in the cold for the technical preview as my tower only has Vista drivers. So it looks like Linux wins out especially as 7 runs sluggish on an SSD. Booting aside, elementary runs really responsively on a traditional spinning platter vs 7 on solid state media. I will be wiping 7, which increasingly I do not use, to replace with elementary OS Freya when out of beta.

Hello Moto!

Ditched the Firefox mobe & getting acquainted with the joys of Android. Apps that actually work! Total night & day, though unfair to compare the two. Maybe some of the major players will take to FxOS to avoid the Google lock in? Still I wish Mozilla all the best with their fledgling project & will follow with interest.

The word on the street is no need to sink big bucks on a iPhone, Android is far better value, none more so than the Google owned Motorola G. Ever so slightly under specified than the Nexus 4, why go the second hand route? I must say I am very pleased, slap on a Numix Circle icon theme & we’re away. The only downside I can foresee is the measeley 8GB of internal storage in that, not all apps will install to SD card. This could be a real bummer!

What with no Ting this side of the pond, I would heartily recommend giffgaff. Data allowance shooting up? No worries! No contract, just change tariff. Simples. The only problem with an o2 shop bought phone is the hard coded answer phone number. This can be, however, circumnavigated by some crafty dialer remapping using VoIP app CSipSimple, otherwise always buy an unlocked phone.

Booting openSUSE From USB

I recently could not uninstall FGLRX proper from my Tumbleweed laptop. Now that Factory is getting automated testing towards stability & Tumbleweed is not true rolling release (about 15-20% of packages on top of the latest base.) I decided to wipe & install Factory fresh! I did, however, run into problems getting the live KDE image to install. Firstly the USB stick would not boot. Using UNetbootin & the like damage the SUSE image by trying to make it bootable. The images are already bootable & really just need dd-ing across. Determined to use a GUI I tried Ubuntu’s own utility, but failed, I think this is just meant for official Ubuntu images, if it works at all?!? I then tried ImageWriter, it would not see ISO or IMG files (essentially the same.)  Getting very frustrated, I tried Rufus under Windows, no dice. In the end I hit upon using Gdiskdump, a GUI for dd, it worked perfectly!

This may now be sorted, but installing from the live media images results in some, largely, harmless extra hoops to jump through. It has been advised to install from the DVD iso.

Thunder All Through The Night..!

Got the new Fx OS reference mobe delivered from Malaysia in under a week by DHL. Buyer beware! You will be liable for import duty, the British Value added tax.

First thoughts; 1.3 seems stable & performance is night & day compared to old ZTE Open. Thundersoft aim to supply OTA updates with each major point release as per their contractual obligations with Mozilla. What with any rough edges being forgiven for regular updates coming down the pipes, this stands in stark contrast to ZTE, who dragged their feet on releasing (any) updates, effectively crippling the Open then foisting the Open C on their customers as an upgrade.