Linux Infusion

As someone with a soft spot for out-dated hardware I have a tendency to acquire and fix unwanted machines so that they can be useful one again. My most recent project was definately no exception to the rule.

It was a filthy Apple //e Enhanced computer that had years of grime and some ball point pen markings tracing around its edges. Aside from that though it was in pretty good shape and I am fairly pleased at how well it cleaned up (even though I couldn't get some of the pen marks completely off of the case).

To make a long story short, after purchasing a Monitor //, 5.25" floppy drive, and a few other things it is now happily chugging along once again.

I'll mostly be using it for retro gaming and to connect to some of the Bulletin Board Systems that I frequent via a serial connection to one of my GNU/Linux machines. Of course the latter will have to wait a few days until the Super Serial Card clone that I bought comes in the mail. I would have added one already but I just couldn't bring myself to break the seal on the box containing my still 'new' Apple II Super Serial Card which I've had laying around.

It is a great feeling to bring new life into an old computer and also relive some of the finer moments of your youth at the same time. If you are interested in the specs of the Apple //e, you can see them on the "My Computers" page.

Now if you will excuse me.. Oregon Trail is calling. :)

SliTaz, a GNU/Linux distribution which weighs in at only 25 megabytes, recently caught my eye and as a fan of light-weight distributions I had to check it out.

Everything is fairly straight forward. During the boot process it asks you a few simple questions regarding your preferred locale, keymap setting, audio card, and finally the resolution and color depth that you wish to use. Unfortunately for me (and not surprisingly), Dvorak was not among the items that were offered in the keymap prompt so I had to settle for the US (Qwerty) option and attempt to remember the layout.

The latest install images for Archlinux (2008.04-RC) were released today and I figured I would make a quick tour for it.

In this release grub launches instead of the CD dropping you to a boot: prompt. The grub menu gives you a multitude of choices and I have to say that this simple change will really make a good first impression for first time users.

I finally got around to replacing my aging multimedia setup that consisted of an Creative Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100 sound card combined with a Cambridge SoundWorks (Creative) DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT2200 speaker system.

Having been a loyal Creative customer that has used their products since the days of the Sound Blaster 16, I had wanted to wait until the Sound Blaster X-Fi had proper drivers for GNU/Linux before making any major upgrades again.

Unfortunately, I finally tired of waiting and I did what any normal consumer in this situation would do. I voted with my pocket book and gave my money to another company.

I ended up purchasing the M-Audio Revolution 5.1 sound card and a Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System.

Everything sounds great and I am now left with the feeling of "why didn't I do this earlier?".

I would have to say that my new favorite tool has to be SSHFS.

I stumbled across it earlier this week and it has quickly become an essential part of my daily routine. It uses FUSE, a user space file system framework, to log into a SSH server and mount the directory locally.

It gets the job done and is extremely easy to use, just issue the following commands: