Linux · Grey Nicholson

Mandrakelinux

2004-04-18T18:15:00+00:00

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and install Mandrakelinux (10.0 “Community”) on my Windows XP box, for some dual-booting fun. Mandrake installed remarkably easily, and I found I could easily access my Windows documents from Linux.

And then I rebooted into Windows... oh, no, wait - I couldn't. Neither of the bootloaders that came with Mandrake could run Windows. I figured the only option was to reinstall Windows... which, of course, requires formatting the partition onto which one installs (I remembered this only after trying)... which entails losing everything.

Windows refused to install. I don't relish the idea of seeing Error loading operating system. ever again.

The eventual resolution was to remove all the partitions on the hard drive (none of which now contained anything useful) and reinstall Windows. I had my documents backed up, but my music and settings are all gone - for ever and ever and ever amen.

So if you fancy trying Linux, but are still rather fond of Windows, either stick to Knoppix, or buy yourself a cheap second box. You have been warned.

VirtuaWin

2004-03-12T17:45:00+00:00

Multiple-desktop-ery is allegedly a somewhat standard feature of Linux desktops; here on Windows, however, it's incredibly cool. Two desktop multifiers for Windows that I've recently used are DoubleDesktop (http://www.fatfreesoft.com/) and VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sf.net/).

DoubleDesktop, as the name aptly suggests, doubles your desktop's width; windows can span desktops and there's a nice, simple switching arrow icon in the system tray.

VirtuaWin doesn't allow windows to span desktop, but it does pretty much everything else. You can have up to nine desktops (or up to several tens of thousands if you fancy editing config files), in any rectangular arrangement you like. To switch desktops, you just move the mouse and keep going; or, if you prefer, you can require one of Alt, Ctrl and Shift to be pressed; you can specify a delay of up to four seconds to prevent accidental switchage. You can cycle through desktops, move to the next desktop in a given direction, and switch straight to a specific desktop, using configurable keypresses.

Other than the lack of desktop spanning (which is pretty fun), VirtuaWin's pretty damn good. And it's open source.

No Knoppix

2004-02-20T19:05:00+00:00

The 2004-02-09 version of Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/) doesn't seem to want to play nice with my computer. It's probably something to do with Nero's burning of the CD; if it's as good as its proofreading, I've got no chance. A couple of days ago, when writing over a CD-RW, Nero kindly warned me that I might loose some data. Yes, loose, not “lose”. As in “My shirt is quite loose.”, “Did you lose weight?”.

I'm redownloading the previous Knoppix version, 2003-11-19, using eMule (http://www.emule-project.net), which tells me I have another forty hours of downloading to wait. Why was it that so few people use Linux...?