New laptop

I have had my laptop for about three years already, and I kinda feel like I want to buy a new one. Well, I don’t have the money the buy a new laptop, but, other than that, I’m left with not much of a choice (In terms of operating systems).

What is there to offer? Winblows (I meant Windows)? Nah, sorry. I’ve had enough of Microsux crap, Win ‘95, 2000, Xp, Vista and soon Winblows 7? Well, it has a cool eye candy (Aero) and GUI, but it’s still Microsux product. I’ve never had Vista, but I have helped some friends with Vista problems. My only comment about it is, I don’t like it. It is more difficult to customize and NOT user friendly. Xp is much better, although it doesn’t have a cool eye candy.

Besides, if you buy a new laptop, you’ll get ‘millions’ of crapwares inside (Regardless of its brand name, except for an Apple): AOL, eBay crap, Norton anti-virus and lots of other junks that you don’t even need (Or you don’t even know, what the h311 they are for). It will take hours to uninstall them and customize your laptop and you are left with a prone to BSoD, RSoD, Trojan Horses, etc. operating system. You need to install Spybot, Ad-Aware, an anti-virus and a firewall. And you HAVE TO update the first three everyday, and you know, running an anti-virus takes a lot of memory. It slows down your system. In the mean time, some background Winblows processes, like explorer, overcome (I’m just exaggerating here) your system, and you’re still left with a fragile operating system.

And, the main thing that I don’t like about Winblows is its file system. Why use NTFS or FAT? You have to defrag your system every now and then, and, like running an anti-virus, it takes up much of your memory. If you rarely or never defrag your system, it will take forever to finish the entire process and it slows down your system. Indeed, after defragmentation and cleaning your disk from unnecessary stuff (I dare to guarantee), your system will run a little faster, but you are still left with an unstable operating system.

So, there is really nothing to offer out there. I could get a Mac, but it costs more money. It is more secure than any Winblows products; besides, its kernel is based on FreeBSD, which is far more superior than my system, Linux. You don’t have to worry about the annoyances that I mentioned above. It has a cool eye candy and GUI; it is more stable and customizable; it is well recommended for any types of graphics editing needs. You may not have to worry about installing an anti-virus. And, if you are gamers, you can play some Winblows games on a Mac.

However, I still prefer Linux. I am no hardcore programmer, but I enjoy the freedom of using the operating system. Of course it is not easy at first; of course, you need to learn everything (again) from the beginning; of course, you will suffer while customizing it: your graphics card, your wireless, etc., but after you are completely satisfied with your system, you don’t have to worry about spywares, adwares, crapwares, viruses, trojan horses, BSoDs, RSoDs, and so on. And, there are a lot of different choices of desktop environments, flavors (distributions), eye candies, etc, including file system. You want a secure file system? You can try ext3 or ReiserFS (NO defragging necessary). You are free to choose. Above all, it’s FREE!!! You don’t have to spend your Dollars or Euros for any kinds of software. You can even use it in your own language (I’ve been switching between English, French and German), .

The whole point to this is, do you want to know how a computer works? Use open source operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, etc). Or do you want to use a computer, without even worrying what a kernel is, what memory allocation is, and so on, as long as you have a user friendly, easily customizable, secure and stable operating system without the annoyances I mentioned above (This is a tricky one as long as the computer world is dominated by Winblows empire)?

So, I guess, there really is no point in buying a new laptop, unless I want a faster processor or graphics card. You know, AMD recently released a 2.7-GHz processor? I am no hardcore gamer, but it won’t hurt having a faster processor.

I wish LAPTOP manufacturers would sell laptops without pre-installed operating system, but I still have the option to choose which processor, graphics card or network card that I want in my laptop. That is just perfect!

Browser Security Test!!!

Warning!!!
This is just a suggestion. If you don’t like it, ignore this post.

For those who surf the web (Well, we’re living in the 21st century. Everybody surfs the web now), you may want to consider testing your (favorite) web browser once in a while (No matter what browser you use). Flaws in you web browser can be fatal. Some guy can steal your data and turn them against you.

It’s just a matter of security. Go to this site and find out your browser’s vulnerabilities, click here.

Have fun!

I ditched Winblows

So, on Saturday, I ditched Winblows on my laptop. I installed openSUSE 11.0 instead. Everything, except wireless, works fine. I still don’t know what is wrong with the configuration. I already installed the bcm43xx driver and, as recommended by some guy on #suse channely on Freenode, I uninstalled knm and use gnm. But there is still no change. My lappy still won’t detect a wifi, although there are about three wifis in where I live.

I installed Virtualbox and now I run XP under Linux. It used to be the other way round, and I need to make the USB work. It takes sometimes, but I don’t know if I have the time.

I also ran OpenSolaris with Virtualbox, but the speed is slow. It doesn’t recognize sound and network. I might try Solaris or FreeBSD soon.

The only thing I want to try doing is installing my TVcard to Winblows under Virtualbox. Too bad that openSUSE 11.0 still cannot read my TVcard, but I am pretty sure it is just a configuration problem. I checked it, and the kernel can see my TVcard, but I still don’t know how to make it work.

I’m no programmer, but I don’t think that problem has been solved yet. My TVcard my work well on Ubuntu, but I don’t like Ubuntu.

How do you deal with Windoze?

I haven’t used Windoze on my laptop for a while, except when I use my friend’s or when I go to the computer lab at the university. I’m not sure if I find it sad, but I don’t know how to tweak XP anymore.

I helped a friend with his laptop problem yesterday, but I forgot everything. I could just change the registry, but I was nervous. I don’t want to mess up anything. I decided not to go on. I didn’t even remember how to disable some start up programs, “What is that thing called again? If you click ‘run’ and type a ‘word,’ then you can disable some programs on start up.” I forgot what it’s called.

There were some other things that I wanted to do, but I was really lost. I told a friend about it, and she said, she has the same thing too when she uses Linux too much. I thought I was the only one.

[...] more days to go

By now, it is 22 more days to go and I am so excited about it, openSUSE 11.0 will be released. Even so, I am a little nervous, although the 10.3 version is running very well on my laptop. I know, people say that Linux on laptops are a little risky. There will always be a few things that won’t work.

Apparently, I didn’t make a wrong decision for choosing openSUSE. Everything went well on my laptop when I first installed the 10.2 version. Wireless worked, 3D worked, sound card (and sound blaster) worked. Everything worked! I was excited when the 10.3 version was released and I soon installed it. Until now, I am not sure if the wireless works. I just haven’t gotten the chance to test it, but I guess it will be too late because the 11.0 version will be released soon.

After the 11.0 release, I hope can use my Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 TV card (Maybe I picked the wrong TV card). And maybe, it is the time to ditch Windows!