More Options for the Old Machine
07.Sep.08
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This is a follow-up to a year old post titled Another Option for the Old Machine.
A year ago I determined that Windows 2000 standard was the most reasonable OS for my old Thinkpad 600e laptop. It is just the most “usable” as far as performance goes.
However, during the past year I’ve installed and removed enough stuff on this thing that has started to get annoyingly sluggish. Reload time! I decided that before I reloaded Win2K I’d try out some more Linux options first to see if anything new has popped up.
Fluxbuntu is the first one I tried. It is an Ubuntu (7.10?) derivative running the Fluxbox window manager. It runs tolerably well, but would probably be better suited to a Pentium III based machine. I liked it, but ultimately decided to look at other options to see if I could find something that liked a P II based machine a bit more.
The bundled Kazehakase web browser works quite well (in spite of the fact that I’d never heard of it). All my usual Web 2.0 sites seemed to work well and the browser performance was decent in most cases.
Next up was Puppy Linux 4.0.0. It runs incredibly well on this old laptop! To be honest, I’m amazed at how fast things happen. Feels like 1997 again and the laptop is reborn.
For web browsing, puppy relies on SeaMonkey which does a fine job. I learned, quickly, that installing Firefox 3 was not the best way to treat this old machine. Even though the OS was fast, that browser (also in Windows 2000) just clobbers this laptop. While I’ve not traditionally been a huge fan of SeaMonkey, it seems to be just the ticket in this case.
I might try to install Kazehakase though. Just for grins. If I get bored and want to work out the dependencies…
Based on the site, it looks like Puppy will do fine on Pentiums with 32MB and up. Highly recommended.
I next wanted to try DeLi Linux. Looking at the site and some reviews, it might be just the ticket. However, after the installation I couldn’t get it to boot. Some sort of lilo issue… Unfortunately, I ran out of time – I need this laptop back up and operational! – and tabled that for another day.
I’d like to find a live CD option for DeLi to try it out. The image I grabbed appears to only be for installs though.
What Now?
So here’s where I’m at: I’m currently (even as I write this) installing a clean Windows 2000 onto the laptop. I’m then going to run Puppy on it, via boot CD and take the options to store the kernel and my files and stuff on to the local hard disk.
In other words, I’ll be easily dual-booting between Win2k and Puppy.
Based on my testing, I’ve realized that most of my perceived sluggishness on Windows 2000 was coming from trying to use Firefox 3. I need to ponder what browser to use this time around…
Auditing Windows Server Shares
06.Sep.08
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Suppose you had about 20 Windows servers to manage. Furthermore, suppose that you’ve lost track of what file shares are on each server — and who has permissions to them.
That’s the situation I’m in. I really need to document the shares and associated permissions for all of my servers. If nothing else, just to get a line in the sand and have something to use as reference when new shares are requested.
Help me find a better way!
Right now I visit each server (via remote desktop) and go to the Computer Management console. Expand “Shared Folders” and click on “Shares”:
Then, for each share listed (at least the non-defaults) I right-click on it, choose Properties and go to Share Permissions to see what’s really going on. I then write that all down on that particular server’s wiki page.
Does that work? Sure. Is it tedious as all heck? Yes. Yes it surely is.
Any good tools or scripts that I can run against my local network segment and get a report? For somewhat obvious reasons I’m hesitant to just grab any ol’ tool off the Internet and run it. I’d rather have some suggestions first.
Dropbox for Linux
05.Sep.08
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According to a forum post (behind a registration wall) Dropbox has released their beta Linux client. The download page has some good info (and great ASCII art too!)
Currently Dropbox for Linux consists of two major components. dropboxd is a per-user closed-source daemon process that makes sure your $HOME/Dropbox directory is properly synchronized. nautilus-dropbox is a GPL‘d Nautilus plugin that connects to dropboxd (via a pair of Unix domain sockets) and presents a GUI based on the information dropboxd provides.
Dropbox now covers Windows, Mac and Linux. Good stuff!
I have a few beta invites left, drop a comment if you’d like one.
Chrome Adoption
04.Sep.08
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Looking at browser stats for this site, yesterday and today, I see:
- 53.99% - Firefox
- 32.58% - Internet Explorer
- 7.24% - Chrome
- 2.88% - Opera
- 2.14% - Safari
Wow. That’s some fast adoption for a beta browser! I’m a bit stunned.
Zoho Docs: The Glue
04.Sep.08
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Zoho Docs was announced today and looks to be the glue that ties Zoho’s Writer, Sheet, Show and Chat services together. It also appears to have replaced Zoho Start. At least, when I click on the Start link I end up at Docs…
You can create folders. You can organize and tag files. You can upload any sort of file – in fact, you don’t have to upload one by one. You can also zip up a bunch of files, upload the zip and then tell Zoho to unzip and scan them on the other end. That’s a nice feature.
Click a file and it’ll open in a little tab as read-only. If you want to edit that file, you’ll click a button and get the appropriate app in a new browser window/tab.
Sharing is supported as well (I’m not sure if this is in conjunction with Zoho Share or in addition. I’m assuming the latter). As far as I can tell, you have to share files individually. I think it’d be nice if we could also set sharing at the folder level.
I have no clue what the storage limits are. The aggregate of what you got from Word, Sheet and Show? Heck, I don’t know what their individual limits are either!
If you’re familiar with the Google Docs interface, it is similar – just a wee bit late to the game. Well, similar in that you see multiple types of documents. Zoho Docs offers a bit more though. I spend a lot of time in Google Docs since it is part of my company’s Enterprise Google Apps solution. It’s OK… but the Zoho stuff is generally far superior in my opinion.
If you don’t have a Zoho account to play with, at least check out the video. It’s worth a look.
I’m not sure I’d call Zoho Docs revolutionary, but I’d certainly call it evolutionary. For folks considering going full-time online office it might just tilt the scales in Zoho’s direction.
And heck, the price is right.
