Belkin 54g USB Wireless Adapter

For some reason that is beyond me now, about a year and a half ago I decided to purchase a bargain-basement Dell notebook, the model B120, that has no built-in wireless. The computer is what I expected for $500 dollars and it performs decently enough, for what it is. As of late, however, I have become annoyed at the fact that it has no built-in wireless, and I am regretting not adding it to the original purchase. Now I am in a situation where I actually need the wireless connection, and in the interest of time and saving money, I decided to try out the Belkin 54g USB adapter.

I knew that the USB adapter would work in Windows, which was what I would be using most frequently, but I was very skeptical about it working in Linux. Fortunately, from the Kodak camera incident a few months ago, I learned an important lesson: Just Plug it in And Try It!!!

At first, there was nothing, not even an indication that Mandriva had recognized a piece of new hardware. Before getting too frustrated, however, I decided to look at the hardware information applet in the control center.

Listed right under the network adapter section was the Belikn 54g. Thinking it was working, I opened Firefox, though I did not expect much, because I had not configured the adapter yet. I was correct, there was the standard "page not found" message.

My next move was to open the network applet in the control center. i noticed that the USB wlan was disabled. After enabling the adapter, and connecting to the wireless router, it worked like a charm. Upon reboot, the network was automatically connected.

Compared to how the Belkin works in Windows, its performance in Linux is very hassle-free. In windows, Belkin includes its own program to connect with access points. That program does not do a very good job at maintaining a connection, and if you choose to use the built-in zero configuration program of Windows, the Belkin program tends to interfere with the connection and it must be shutdown.

So, in conclusion, once again, with Linux, if it is recognized, the hardware just works... No problems...

Acronis Disk Director Suite

As I have been experimenting with different Linux distributions, while still holding on to Windows for certain programs, I soon came to the conclusion that there must be a better way to manage the boot process than with the GRUB or LILO boot manager. For one thing, it is text based, and the boot options can be very confusing to understand. In addition, each version of Linux that is installed wants to use its own bootloader, often overwriting other boot loaders on the system. Finally, when one bootloader is overwritten, it can be hard to add the first version of Linux to the new Linux's bootloader menu.

After a little bit of research, I began to try out various boot loaders, but very few had all of the obtions I was looking for. Then, in some random forum, I came across a posting that advocated the use of the Acronis O.S. Selector, which is part of the Acronis Disk Director Suite. I looked it up online, and found that, unfortunately, it is not a freeware application, like many of the programs I had been trying, but that it was priced at 49.99. After reading the features, however, I decided to give the 15-day trial version a shot.

Included in the Acronis Disk Disk Director suite is the O.S. Selector, a partition manager, a partition recovery tool, a disk editor, and a tool that creates a rescue disk.

My immediate focus in testing was the O.S. Selector. I installed it on my computer that had, at that time, Windows and a copy of Mandriva on it. I then ran the O.S. detection wizard included in the suite. To my disappointment, the wizard only discovered Windows. after a few more attempts, I realized that it was not happening. I was expecting that, however, because the person who had recommended the software said specifically to install it FIRST. [A while later I would find out that it was not the software's problem, but an error in the way I had partitioned my drives.] I then went on to install a fresh copy of Mandriva, which was no big loss since the installed copy was only a day or two old.

I was very pleased with the results. On boot, there is a typical Windows-looking dialog box, with icons representing each installed operating system, plus any bootable external media connected to the computer. The program provides its own mouse drivers, and the user simply can double click the desired O.S. icon to boot the machine For security purposes, the program can be password-protected, and, for convenience, a default operating system can be booted after an adjustable timeout period.

At the time, I was only running Windows and Linux, but after I purchased a copy of the program, I did some more experimenting. I found it was very easy to run multiple distributions of Linux. For those that are more daring, the program can also be configured to run with a wide array of other operating systems. For instance, I installed a version of OSX on my Dell notebook [Thanks to OSx86project.org], and the O.S. Selector recognized it as a bootable operating system and allowed it to boot, even though it did not actually recognize the operating system or file structure.

Beyond the O.S. selector, I found that the other tools in the suite proved quite useful, as well. The included partitioning tool recognizes Fat16, Fat32, and the NTFS file system for Windows, and it also supports and works with Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux Swap file systems as easily as it does with the Windows file systems. It can create, delete, format, stretch, shrink, split, and merge partitions, and it can even defragment the file system. In addition, the program can hide partitions and change the drive letter of a Windows device.

The bootable media builder can create a restore disk for the O.S. Selector on several types of media, just in case an operating system that is newly installed decides to overwrite the MBR. I have not had the need to use the disk editor, but it is capable of fixing many problems with the file system, or, if one is not careful, destroying the file system.

All in all, I am very happy with the Acronis Disk Director Suite, and while there may be many freeware tools out there that can perform the same functions, I feel that the software is easily worth the 50 dollars I spent, and the fact that all of the tools work together as one application is a great bonus.

USB MidiSport UNO

Recently, my installation of Mandriva started to boot up really slowly, hanging for nearly a minute at the "setting hostname" message during the boot process.

Some research concluded that it could be a USB device causing the system to hang, and by unplugging one device at a time and rebooting, I tracked the problem down to my USB MidiSport UNO. I had not even considered looking for drivers for the unit, because the available software for producing music under Linux is not very mature yet, unfortunately, and that is one of the reasons I continue to have Windows installed on my machine.

After doing some research, however, I realized that there is actually a driver for the device, and it is included in the Mandriva package manager. It is called ezusbmidi, and after installing the package, my boot problem went away. I have yet, however, figured out how to actually use it in LMMS to receive MIDI signals. That is a project for another time I guess.

GNOME 2.20 officially released

GNOME 2.20 officially released: "The GNOME community announced a new release today after six months of development. GNOME is a desktop environment primarily used on Linux and other open-source platforms. GNOME 2.20 includes numerous improvements and new features that benefit users, administrators, and developers.

GNOME's image viewer features a significantly improved image collection interface and a new Open With menu. The Nautilus file manager can now display a disk usage pie chart in the filesystem properties dialog. Desktop search integration, which first appeared in Nautilus in GNOME 2.14 and can optionally leverage the Beagle and Tracker indexing systems, has now been added to the GNOME file dialog."

Being that I am a Windows user, I prefer the look of KDE over GNOME's MAC-like appearance, though I have been thinking about installing a version of GNOME. I am still a newbie in Linux and I want to experiment some more before I settle on what distribution and GUI combination I will use permanently....

KDE 4 Live CD

Well, I downloaded the image of the lice CD and burned it to disk. It is based on OpenSUSE, with KDE 4 as the GUI. The OS booted, and I logged in, but unfortunately, several components crashed. This left KDE running but severely crippled. In fact, I could do nothing useful at all.

Perhaps it does not agree with my hardware. Maybe I will actually install a version on my machine, if that is possible, but until then, the review of KDE 4 is on hold...

KDE 4: The Shiny New Linux (and Windows) Desktop

KDE 4: The Shiny New Linux (and Windows) Desktop: "Linux users are as evangelical about desktop environments, the all-encompassing graphical user interface software responsible for providing everything from taskbars to office suites, as they are about operating systems. It shouldn't come as any surprise, then, that the first major release in over five years of the most popular desktop environment available is causing quite a stir. Due to be released on December 11th, KDE 4.0 is bringing exhilarating graphical, usability, and functionality improvements to the Unix-like systems it is designed for—and Windows users will get a taste, too."

This new version of KDE is looking pretty interesting so far, though it appears as though there may be a bit of a learning curve with the re-design. Right now, I am downloading the Live CD so that I can check it out for myself. I will come back with a general review of the new system...

Linux.com :: It's official: ATI Radeon drivers to be open sourced

Linux.com :: It's official: ATI Radeon drivers to be open sourced: "AMD briefed Linux.com this morning on a pending announcement regarding the open sourcing of drivers for ATI graphics cards. It's official -- AMD will make code and specifications for ATI graphics cards available on the Internet on September 10."

This is absolutely great news for anyone who is running Linux and is stuck with the current available drivers for ATI cards. If all goes well, perhaps we will actually be able to use our cards to their full extents, at the very least in 2D mode. Apparently, they will have issues with the 3D side, because some of the 3D instructions are based on closed-source software...

I would be extremely happy if I could just be able to use the TV out function the way I would like to. Thank you AMD/ATI, and the open-source coders who will contribute to this project.

Success, I have printed from Linux!!!

No matter what I tried, I could not get my printer working. The other day, I was in Linux, and needed to print something. I could not wait for windows to boot, so I turned the printer on. Much to my surprise, there it was, ready to go. I did nothing more to fix it, since my last post about the printer. I can only imagine that one of the automatic updates fixed it.

One more piece of hardware down, before I fully switch to Linux...


On another subject, I had hoped this blog would be filled with more stories about the difficulty of the Linux transition, but, in reality, it just works. Hardware problems aside, that is, and that falls into the hands of the hardware vendors themselves.

So, support Linux, you hardware people!!!!

I am very happy...

I now have the time problem solved, and I plugged my Kodak c310 into my computer under Mandriva, and it was recognized. The pictures I had taken were transferred successfully...

That means that I am one step closer to switch to Linux permanently.

Users of similar cameras take note: The camera must be in the Auto picture taking mode, in order to be recognized by the digicam application. The camera will not function as a drive/storage device, however. (That is the way it works in windows)

Fixed Windows clock update...

It turns out that ZoneAlarm was blocking the incoming transmissions from the server. Once I added the server to the trusted zone, the clock could update. I also edited the registry so that the clock will sync every 5 minutes. Now all I have to do is boot into Mandriva and set it up for internet time sync. Hopefully I will no longer be ripping my hair out in frustration...