Support for Windows XP has ended, this means that there will be no further updates for Windows XP on the desktop. This is a good time to upgrade either to Windows 7, which is supported until 2020; or to use Linux Mint and enjoy a faster and more reliable desktop operating system. I am using … Read more
The support for Windows XP will end soon. April 8th in fact. This means that existing installations of Windows XP, and there are many around the world will be rendered vulnerable to exploits. Windows XP has been around since 2001 and it is time that is was replaced by something better. Windows 7 is still … Read more
Ubuntu 12.04 has proven to be more secure than Windows and Macintosh operating systems. This is not surprising though. The preponderance of Linux distributions based upon Debian is making it even easier for people to get started with computing. Ubuntu has always been a good choice for desktop computing, the easy to use desktop and … Read more
How to use the Remmina client to RDP to Windows from Linux. The Remmina RDP client allows a Linux user to log on remotely to a Windows computer. This is just like using the built-in RDP client on Windows. This is the main Remmina window. The new document icon with the green cross allows you … Read more
I have just installed FreeDOS and Windows 3.1 in qemu on Linux. Firstly; create a new HDD image to install DOS onto. qemu-img create -f qcow msdos.disk 85Mqemu-img create -f qcow msdos.disk 85M Then boot the FreeDOS CD image to begin the installation. qemu -hda msdos.disk -m 64 -cdrom fdbasecd.iso -boot dqemu -hda msdos.disk -m … Read more
Vista running in Virtualbox and how to RDP into Windows from Linux. Here I am running Windows Vista in Virtualbox. This is an older version of Windows, but I really wanted to try this out on my laptop. I installed the 32bit Virtualbox Guest Additions in Vista and now I can make full use of … Read more
How to setup Windows Server 2012 in Virtualbox. I have just installed Windows Server 2012 in Virtualbox to experiment with and this works very well with the Virtualbox Guest Additions installed. Firstly, type this command to install the required software. homer@eren-titan /usr/share/virtualbox $ sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-guest-additions-isohomer@eren-titan /usr/share/virtualbox $ sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-guest-additions-iso … Read more
The new Windows operating system, Windows 10 will be a cloud based operating system. This means that a very basic installation of the OS will reside on the users computer and the cloud based office 365 will be used over the Internet to allow users to create documents and do their daily work. This is … Read more
The Linux Mint 15 distribution I have just installed is even better than the 14 release. Hopefully it will not have that annoying bug from the 14 release that would slow your computer to a crawl when you were copying large files from one location to another. The new login screen has many new HTML5 … Read more
Nice Windows 8 theme for Linux http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Windows8+%28GTK+theme+2.x+%26+GTK+3.x%29?content=158560. This is a theme for GTK 3.0 that allows you to theme Unity or MATE to look like Windows 8. Sure the Windows 8 and Server 2012 interfaces are ugly; but it is kind of cool to theme Unity and MATE to resemble Windows 8. This theme also … Read more
The early days of computing were dominated by computers that required constant maintenance. For example the Defrag program needed to be run constantly to keep your hard disk speed at an acceptable level. Otherwise it would gradually slow down as your hard disk became more fragmented. Watching the little blocks move around the defrag window … Read more
This is a Metacity theme that will work with MATE. This is the Metro UI theme for Gnome 2.32.2 or MATE: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=157024. This is for those of you that want the Metro UI look for the Linux Mint 14 MATE desktop. There is also a Windows 8 iconset that is available for download in png … Read more
Using the Putty application to log into an Ubuntu server is very easy; simply download Putty from here: PuTTY download site and then run the executable which will be in your Users\Downloads folder in Windows 7. Then enter the IP address and port used by SSH on the remote server. The default is 22. Then … Read more
This is not really applicable to Linux, but I am running Windows 8 Pro dual booted with Linux Mint 14 and I encountered a bug that stopped Windows 8 from fully starting up. I found out that if you press the F5 key just after booting Windows 8 you will see the test “Please Wait” … Read more
This is the old drive space indicator that was used in old versions of Windows. Such an image is so retro looking it is hard to believe that we use to use something like this. The days of using 1.44 Megabyte floppy disks and Iomega Zip drives are long gone. Now we have 16 Gigabyte … Read more
The Microsoft Surface tablet due to the implementation of the UEFI Secure Boot is not being very cooperative in terms of allowing the installation of Linux. This could be a very good portable tablet for running Linux on the move but if you can not overcome the limitations of the Secure Boot system then Linux … Read more
The Windows 8 launch is past and there are stories floating around that the computers running this operating system are polluted with crapware that slows down the machines and provides no real benefit. When I bought my ASUS eePC netbook; it was running Windows XP Professional with the extra ASUS crapware installed that is supposed … Read more
The Ubuntu 12.10 Linux distribution has been on my computer for a short while and I have tried out the KDE 4.9.2 desktop and Gnome Shell. The KDE desktop works pretty well in this distribution; but I prefer Gnome Shell right now. Just type sudo apt-get install gnome-shell to install the Gnome desktop. I have … Read more
The Windows 8 operating system forces you to re-boot to install updates. This is 2012; why can the operating system not install updates whilst the operating system is up and running and there is a user logged into the system doing their work? Apparently after 2 days it forces you to re-boot to install your … Read more
The MobaXterm application for Windows is a good way to practice Linux commands if you are stuck on a Windows only machine. This application is extensible with add ons such as the gcc compiler and Vim editor as well as many other add ons to make the application even more useful. This is good for practising programming … Read more