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OS Roundup: Linux XP: Installation

Linux XP

As we move into 2007, I’ve decided to review three operating systems: Linux XP, Ubuntu, and Vista. To kick off my reviews, I will be starting with Linux XP.

Introduction
The main problem most ordinary people find with switching to Linux is that Linux is not Windows. Most Linux users don’t find a problem with this as they consider Linux superior - HOWEVER, typical Windows users find the idea of switching to a new OS or way of doing things simply too daunting.

Linux XP seems to be aimed at solving this problem. Basically, this OS tries to mirror XP’s look and feel. In this review I will install LXP, and see how well it functions in terms of performance, ease of use and compatibility.

Note: Unlike typical Linux distros, Linux XP is not free - you can install it and use it around 99 times after which it will require Activation - I guess they copied this feature from Windows XP also . Thankfully Linux XP costs only around $19, which is relatively affordable.

Quick Installation Guide

Download the ISO image of the installation disk from http://www.linux-xp.com/ - and burn that image onto a CD. Thankfully Linux XP requires just one disk
Boot your PC off that CD.
Welcome: At this point, you will get a welcome screen showing “Linux XP desktop 2006″ - for some reason the text was garbled on my monitor (a Viewsonic LCD). I tried another monitor, AND another graphics card, but no luck. Anyway, pressing enter here will take you to the installation screen.
Partitioning: (image) next, you will be asked about how you want to set up your partitions - you have the choice to select automatic partitioning or manual partitioning. I selected manual - if you select manual, remember you have to set up (at least) a root partition (think of it as your “C:” drive) and a “swap” partition (unlike windows which uses a swap file, Linux can use a whole partition as a swap drive - this approach makes more sense really. I set up a 2GB root partition and a 1GB swap partition. (Tip: click New and select / for root partition, and enter size, click OK;, for the swap partition, select swap under file system type).
Boot loader - LXP uses GRUB which is fine. Click next.
Network config (If you have a network card). I just clicked next here, you can edit the options if necessary for your network.
Time zone - select your time zone.
Root password - this is the root account for administration - enter a password and click next.
About to install: LXP is now ready to install - at this point you will get a warning that this is the last opportunity you will have to chicken out (so far nothing has been changed on your computer). Click next to continue.
Installing Packages: LXP now starts the installation process - first, the partitions will be set up and formatted, after which LXP starts to transfer an image to the hard drive. Like XP, the installation process is graphical with a status bar showing completion of each project.
System Installation Progress: (image) At this point, a taskbar will show installation progress.
Note: My installation froze and popped up an error message complaining of a problem in the CDROM. I fixed this by burning another CD and continuing the installation (did not need to restart).
Reboot - after installation completes, the CD will eject and you must reboot.

Coming up next: a review of Linux XP.

3 comments January 1st, 2007

Spam Lanka

The latest trend here is local spam companies. For 500 - 1000 bucks, they promise to spam your message to anyone Sri Lankan.

So here’s an idea: how about someone sets up a database of local spammers/companies, as well as those who advertise with them, so we can make a note to avoid them/anything they sell.

5 comments December 23rd, 2006

Dual Core and Heat

Dual Core Goodness

Over the last few days I’ve been experiencing problems with heat in my PC. I’ve found out that dual core CPU’s run quite hot, even in an air conditioned environment.

Modern intel processors ship with a round heatsink which has a copper core. Due to this:

The processors integrated heat spreader (IHS) which is usually square, does not contact fully with the surface of the heatsink (which is round).
Due to the small area in contact, (and the fact that most intel processors generate a lot of heat), heat transfer between the CPU and the heatsink becomes a big issue - basically, for the heat to be transfered fast enough there must be remarkably good contact between the surface of the processor and the heatsink.
Lastly, mounting the heatsink is a complex task. I highly recommend you remove the motherboard, or mount the heatsink before you put the motherboard in the case - the reason for this is so that you can hold the board from under as you push in each of the four connectors. Doing this when the board is already installed isn’t too easy as you need to use a lot of force and risk damaging the board by flexing it.

Experiments on heat conductivity:
The importance of thermal paste

Heatsink affixed on processor with no thermal paste: CPU reached 87 degrees within 1 second and was shut down via bios, before throttling kicked in.
Heatsink affixed with generic unity plaza heatsink paste (aka toothpaste like stuff) - this worked surprisingly well under idle conditions, the cpu reached around 47 degrees. The problem occured when loading each of the two cores - at a 100% load of both cores, I recorded around 76 degrees - very dangerous and well over Intel recommended specs. (The problem with this paste is that it does not transmit heat fast enough - i.e. when idle it is capable of transmitting heat across but under full load the processor generates so much heat it simply overwhelms the ability of this paste to transfer heat.
Intel original heatsink thermal pad - achieved best results with an idle of 40 - 42 and maxing out at around 60 degrees - still not ideal but considering the ambient at 24 degrees approx, this wasnt too bad.
Intel original heatsink thermal pad reseated - heat rapidly rose to above 70 and system was shut down for safety - this is because the thermal pad is not designed to be reused - i.e. if you remove the heatsink for any reason, clean the thermal pad fully from both CPU and heatsink, and apply a new original intel spec thermal pad! (what happens is, when you attempt the reuse the thermal material, it simply does not flow correctly over the IHS, and lumps build up leading to uneven contact.

On contacting the official intel representative, I was told that intel thermal paste/pads are not available in Sri Lanka! I.e. I gather, if someone removes their heatsink for any reason, they should buy a new heatsink with thermal pad!

Thankfully, a local Intel representative (eSys) did have the relevant replacement thermal pad on stock (Honeywell PCM 45) and were kind enough to give me 2 for free - thanks guys!

Heat and Dust*

In Sri Lanka, due to the increased ambient temperature and high amount of dust we face a few problems which include:

Huge amounts of dust build up in the system, blocking the fans and heatsinks (as lanetop pointed out to me) this can rapidly cripple a system. Whereas modern CPU’s include thermal throttling and other technology to protect the CPU in case of heat, many other components do NOT include any safety feature as such.
Ambient temperature - due to the high ambient, most components (such as northbridge/southbridge, graphics, and hard disk require EXTRA cooling).

Humidity and corrosion:

Many PC’s experience rust, due to the massive amounts of humidity in the air. This causes the following problems:

Connections failing - copper contacts, e.g. in memory chips start to fail causing system crashes.
Rust - cases/power supplies are particularly prone to this problem.

The only way to protect a PC from this is to use it in an airconditioned room/low humidity environment.

Cooling other components in your PC:

Aside from the processor, many other components are vulnerable to heat

Hard disk - the hard disk is extremely sensitive to heat. Operating at temperatures over 50 degrees could easily lead to data loss. Simply put if your hard disk is hotter than around 35 degrees you should use a separate fan to cool it down - you have two options here - a dedicated hard disk cooler (you can buy them at unity plaza) or simply suspend a small casing fan above the hard disk (this is a better option IMO)
TIP: You can monitor your hard disk temperature via any software that can read the SMART output, e.g. speedfan.
Chipset (northbridge/southbridge)- these two chips heat up rapidly. Even if your case is well cooled, they can rapidly build up heat - the simplest solution is to install a heatsink for each (usually they come with heatsinks) and a fan if the heatsink is hot to touch.
Airflow through case - ensure that air flows properly through the case - ideally you should have a powerful fan at the bottom of the PC drawing air in, and a fan on top pushing air out.

Monitoring heat on your PC.

Most modern PC’s come with a number of inbuilt sensors. You can read them via free software such as Motherboard Monitor or Speedfan. I recommend speedfan as it is easier and works with modern dual core CPU’s.

Conclusions/Summary

Do not remove the processor heatsink - unless you have a spare thermal pad.
Ensure that all components in your PC are cooled sufficiently (CPU, Chipset, HDD, Graphics card)
Regularly clean the PC, to prevent dust build up inside, remove the case cover and use a vacumn/blower to remove the dust.
Use software to monitor temperatures, enable bios overheat/fan failure shutdown.

*Not a reference to M. M. Kaye’s excellent book

12 comments December 21st, 2006

Mystery painting

Original painting

Copy of painting by person with mental disorder (large version)

The Story

This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia (undisclosed).

His (the poster’s) psychiatry professor showed this painting in a lecture, and said there was one tell-tale sign in it that showed the painter’s insanity.

The professor didn’t say what that sign was, leaving the students to do the guesswork. The only clues he gave was, “don’t look for small details, look at the whole; if you figure out what the phobia was, you’ve got the answer; ask yourself what could have preceded this scene; think of what the place would look like with all the objects removed“.

Looking at the paintings, one thing I notice is, in the copy, most things are not in proportion to each other (size)… the buildings are too large, the horses/people too small… maybe this has a meaning?

Also, the copy is so dark.. instead of snow theres mostly bleak ice.. the horses are black, and the people seems malevolent.

1 comment December 3rd, 2006

Speed up your PC in four simple steps.

Simple steps to improve your PC’s performance.

Upgrade your memory - Use at least 256MB ram for Win2k/98 etc, and at least 512MB ram for XP/VISTA (1GB recommended).
Reinstall your OS - if your are using a windows based OS, reinstall it at least once every few months (or you can mirror a clean installation and restore it easily) Windows tends to get slowed down after a few weeks of operation. (make sure you format the partition before you reinstall). Also, when you reinstall, install only the software you need.
Turn off unnecessary startup/taskbar apps (run MSCONFIG or SYSEDIT)
Turn off unnecessary windows services (XP and 2k). XP Unnecessary services list

More tips:

Use a firewall software - zonelabs zonealarm is relatively OK but they tend to phone home which is disturbing.
Use an antivirus - try AntiVir which is free for personal non commercial use.
Have an OS and Data partition, where the OS partition contains the Operating System and software, and the data partition contains… er… data. Mirror the OS partition so you can restore it easily.
Don’t visit dodgy sites (dOH)
Don’t download suspicious software - if you are downloading anything, download it directly from the manufacturers site or a reputed site like download.com. Beware anything which has spyware/adware.
Use firefox to surf (a bit safer than IE)
Use a simple version of any software. I use Office 97 for wordprocessing as it does most of what I want (and doesnt require gigabytes of space and GHZ of processing power like newer Office/Open Office releases)

Have a tip not listed here? Please add it as a comment! Thanks

2 comments November 8th, 2006

lkHOT widget

You can now add lkHOT headlines to your blog or website. Please give it a try and let me know if it works.

Note: Code has been updated for xhtml compliance, see below

Background:

I was looking for a nice way to enable anyone to use the output of lkHOT. It already outputs RSS, but not everyone can easily add that to their site. So, I decided to write a script to parse the RSS output to JavaScript

The javascript basically prints out the links only, without any formatting(bracketed by LI’s). You can format it via your stylesheet, and hopefully it will automatically pick up the default formatting and nicely match up with your site.

Please help me by trying this out. Even if you don’t intend to use it on your site, just try it out, let me know if it works. I want to know if it works in different sites and browsers.

About:

This code gives six headlines, which link directly to the source websites (not lkhot) and a link to lkhot at the bottom, which the visitor can click for even more links.

The headlines automatically update as new links are added to lkHOT.

Example:
(See an example in this sidebar, under lkHOT)

Code:

Note: The UL here has a class lkHOT. You can format that by formatting UL’s (and/or) in your stylesheet.

Suggestions/bug reports?

Please post suggestions or bug reports as comments on this thread, or email to bugs - [at] - lkhot dot com

Note:

Links at lkHOT are SFW and checked by me so you can (generally) use them on your site safely. Are the links boring? You can fix this by submitting your own favorite links!

Tip:

The links have descriptions if you hover over them..

Add comment October 26th, 2006

Test drive lkHOT

Background
The idea behind this site is I want to be able to see a one page snapshot of what’s cool in Sri Lanka, at any time. It doesnt matter where the content originates from - it could be blog posts, GOSL, Sri Lankans drag racing on youtube, whatever.

What?
lkHOT allows you to view interesting local articles, based on user votes, or submit your own links

Think: A local version of digg.

Where?
http://www.lkhot.com

How to:

Go to http://www.lkhot.com/, and click away. (Send me bug reports please)

TIP: To submit your favorite articles, or vote, just register there (it’s free)

Adding lkHOT to your site.

You can add a “submit to lkHOT” link, on your site, as a mini button or a text link, this way visitors can submit your posts to lkHOT with a simple click!

TIP: The code automatically gets your URL in wordpress! See an example of the code in action, at the top of this site (lkHOT this!) and a button example below (the little lion picture below this post)

Get the code here: lkHOT code

Need your help

Calling all bloggers on Kottu and elsewhere. Guys, help me out with this - please register and submit some of your favorite articles - better yet, integrate the voting code to your site so visitors can add your posts to lkHOT with a click!

Add comment October 19th, 2006

MS Dewey

At last, personalized search (and free insults)

http://www.msdewey.com/

(Direct links to searches)
Censored1
Hollywood personality types
The elusive Ricardo
Censored2
Art

Best search answer I got so far?

“Ricardo, get the wood chipper. This guy’s too nosey”

Fun searches you can try:

“nintendo”
“How to fight a Ninja”
“George Bush”
“how to do the robot”
“linux/microsoft”
“Janina Gavankar” (Tip, that’s her!)
“arts”

Via: Digg
http://digg.com/design/MsDewey_com_New_Interactive_Flash_Search_Engine

Update: Originally posted on digg, this link got buried.
See the bottom of that thread

Wonder why msdewey does not show up in google, or digg - is this a site still in alpha that hasnt been officially launched or something? and why was it buried on digg?

TIP: Duggtrends have a list of stories that got buried on DIGG.

“If you have not noticed yet, but there are many “controversial” stories which make it to frontpage but then get buried. If you have missed them, this page tracks them up for you. ”
http://duggtrends.com/buried.aspx

2 comments October 14th, 2006