Tag: Linux

Writing bootable disk images (.iso, .img, etc.) to a USB stick from Windows

Because Windows doesn't have dd, and I want to write the latest Mint LTS release to a USB task, I had to face the unpleasant task of finding a Windows tool to perform what's a basic Unix operation. The good news is that I found one, and it's open source: Win32 Disk Imager. It even has a version ≥ 1, titled: “Holy cow, we made a 1.0 Release”. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 2 years ago, on December 17, 2017, at 19:12 | Comments closed

Master PDF Editor for Linux

While trying to find out the quickest, cleanest way to install PDFedit program in Linux Mint, I stumbled upon Master PDF Editor for Linux, which is basically the same thing, but more advanced and closed source, but free for personal use. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on July 13, 2015, at 19:07 | 1 comment

Keeping an unsupported Mint/Ubuntu installation ‘up-to-date’

When a Linux Mint release goes out of support, together with the Ubuntu release on which it is based, the Ubuntu packages become unavailable. This can be annoying for old fossils like me who stubbornly contue to use a release that has gone out of support, as I'm doing with Mint 14 (Nadia), based on Ubuntu 12.10, (Quantal Quetzal). (“Yeah, yeah; I'll upgrade soon; I promise.”) Luckily, the out-of-support packages remain available in a different location. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 6 years ago, on November 20, 2014, at 21:11 | 2 comments

Ubuntu Desktop Linux and Acer TravelMate 7513WSMi

My youngest sister has retired her big-ass (17") Acer TravelMate (model 7513WSMi 7510) with a more modern offering from Sony. That was last year. Now, she thought it'd be a good idea to donate it to our oldest sister. But since the thing has always “run” like a pig with Windows Vista, her girl-geek instincts thought it better if I'd equip the old monster with Ubuntu Linux instead. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on February 03, 2011, at 00:02 | Comments closed

Ubuntu and SiS 671 VGA chipset driver

The video on my mom's laptop, A Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile V5535, had recently gone awry. At the time, the laptop was running Ubuntu 9.04 (I think). Reconfiguring the driver didn't do much good, so I upgraded the machine to 10.04, hoping that that would fix it. It didn't. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on January 18, 2011, at 23:01 | 7 comments

Effective CLI habits

Just an example of some effective CLI magic that I copy/pasted into a draft aboutexactly a year ago. Can you see what's happening? I'm moving some selected files into a subdirectory. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on December 24, 2010, at 01:12 | Comments closed

Posting to WordPress via the command-line

In February I was interested in posting to WordPress from the command-line, a possibility that I enjoyed when I wanted to apply some CLI-magic to some of my MediaWiki installations in the past. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on December 24, 2010, at 01:12 | 2 comments

grml

grml seems like an interesting Debian-based Linux Live CD. It seems interesting because “[it] includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators and users of texttools.”

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By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on December 08, 2010, at 22:12 | Comments closed

Finnix Linux Live CD

Finnix is another Linux Live CD. Like SystemRescueCD, it's not intended for the average desktop user, and does not include any desktops, productivity tools, or sound support, in order to keep distribution size low. But Finnix is based on Debian, not Gentoo.

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By Rowan Rodrik, 10 years ago, on June 29, 2010, at 12:06 | Comments closed

Damn Small Linux

Damn Small Linux (or DSL) is another Linux distribution that deserves a closer look someday. It's light enough that it should even run on a 486DX with 16MB of RAM and it can run fully in RAM with only 128MB of RAM.

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By Rowan Rodrik, 10 years ago, on June 29, 2010, at 12:06 | Comments closed