Risen From The Ashes Like The Phoenix

Wow! What a way to start the New Year.
Started out in ashes but ended up like the rise of the Phoenix.
Day after New Years I turned on my computer. It powered on then off. Turned it on again. Powered off.
What!???

Time to troubleshoot it. First thing I did was disconnect all my drives, Ram and video card.
Tried powering it on. Few seconds later it powered off. Only thing left is the power plug on the motherboard for the cpu. Disconnected the connector and turned on the computer.
Powered on and cpu and case fans spun up and continued spinning. Hmmm??
Turned it off, disconnected the power supply and did voltage tests on it. Tested good.
That meant either the motherboard or cpu was shorted out.

To old to update it. It was a cheap closeout combo I bought online about 3 years ago.
A micro-atx motherboard with a 3.0 Ghz single core AMD Sempron cpu and 512 Megs of DDR Ram.
It was only a matter of time until it died. Unfortunately it happened right after the holidays.
Made a few phone calls to get a loaner until I could order new parts. Here's where the story really begins.

Got a loaner motherboard and cpu. I was using an AMD setup. This was an Intel based motherboard with a 3.0 Ghz Dual Core cpu and 512 Megs of DDR2 Ram. What's going to happen to my Linux install or the XP I have installed on a small slave drive that I use when helping people still using XP?
Time to find out.

I picked up the loaner board. I must make a note here that the heatsink mounts on Intel cpu's is very cheesy and cheap. Reason I say this is because the heatsink had been removed and I had to redo the heatsink thermal compound then mount the heatsink. Put the loaner board in my case and fired it up.
Booted into Linux and held my breath.

Linux starts it's normal boot up routine but just before it boots in to the desktop it sits on the splash screen. Uh-Oh! But another 30 seconds later it finishes the boot and there is my desktop. I check everything out including the network card. It all works!
No downloading drivers or uninstalling old ones. Linux reconfigured itself during the boot to use the new hardware it found. Amazing.

For fun I restarted and booted from the grub menu into XP. That didn't fair to well.
Blue screened with a Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap. Oh well! I didn't expect anything less. LMAO!!
No big loss. Going to eventually run XP in Virtual Box anyway.
So I reboot back into Linux.

Meanwhile I ordered a new Asus AM3 socket mobo, AMD 2.8 Ghz Dual Core cpu and 2 Gigs of DDR3 1333 Ram. It arrived yesterday and I installed it last night. That meant removing the Intel board and installing a new AMD board with a dual core cpu. How will Linux fair with this 2nd change in under a week?

Got everything installed and powered it up. Linux boots up and gets to the last part of the splash screen before the desktop. Sits there for about 20 seconds and there is my desktop and all my software.
Totally amazing. What's more amazing is that it found the 7.0 surround sound audio chip and network adapter chip both of which are built into the motherboard. And for once my 5.1 surround sound speakers work properly in Linux.

Again I had to do nothing for all my hardware to be installed or configured. No installing drivers, no reinstalling OS, no nothing other then boot up and get ready to use it.
As for the new hardware performance?
Fast!!! As in extreme speed.
When I originally bought the AM3 socket mobo I had plans to possibly update to a quad core later in the year. Forget that! This dual core is more then sufficient.

The only thing I will need to upgrade is my power supply. I have 2 brand new Sata hard drives waiting to be installed but my power supply only has 2 Sata power connectors on it which are already in use. I looked at the price of IDE to Sata power adapters but the price of 4 of them including shipping is about 35% of a new good quality 600 watt power supply. It's not the price of the cables that they get you on. It's the S&H charges that kill you.

So from the ashes the Phoenix has risen. It's my new pc that is now flying with jet engines instead of propellers.
I plan to do some stress testing on the new hardware by trying some video conversions and rendering some Blender 3D scenes.

Catch you later if I don't overshoot this page.
LOL!!
It turned out to be a Happy New Year after all.

TaZMAn

Another New Ubuntu User

I'm still on my 100 person crusade. My goal is to convert at least 100 people over to Ubuntu. Today I didn't add another person to that list. I added a business!!!
A local home center that is owned by my relatives were having major problems with viruses and spyware in XP. More about that later.

My nephew finally had enough. He had heard me talk about Ubuntu numerous times and asked if I could convert them over. Yep! No problem. I'll be down to do it.
And today it happened.

I got there and using my flash drive, I saved their documents. Then I popped in the new Ubuntu Ibex Cd and restarted the computer. Started Ubuntu as a Live Cd and checked out the hardware. Everything was detected and worked. Also to my relief, the printer they use is an HP. Opened up Firefox and went to HP's site to make sure it was supported. Found that it had full support. Good! Now to click the install link and start the process.

The system this was being installed in to is an older Pentium (1 Gig) CPU with 512 megs of Ram and using 32 megs of shared video. Not something that would be conducive to a Vista upgrade. Besides, the idea is to have a system that is immune from spyware and viruses.

The install was painless and took about 30 minutes. Once it was fully installed and I did the customary reboot and remove the Cd I was back up to their newly installed Ubuntu desktop. And I was also starring at the Updater blaring the Updates Available message. 68 of them including a kernel update.
Clicked on it and about 25 minutes later I was restarting the computer due to the kernel update.

Now I have the full system updated and ready to go. I still have some stuff to do. Get their bookmarks into Firefox and test out the printer. Everything works and looks good. Next I install VirtualBox. Huh!??? Why???
Well one of the sites they use to submit orders requires Internet Explorer because it uses ActiveX plugins to handle the login and displaying the catalog.
Talk about a security risk! Why anyone would require ActiveX to handle passwords is beyond me.
I also believe this was one of the backdoors that caused them problems with viruses and spyware.

So I install Virtual Box and XP from the Cd that came with their system.
The PC was a local computer shop build that came with a real XP Cd. But being a custom system presented it's own problems later on. I got XP installed in Virtual Box and got online with it.

Went to HP's web site and grabbed the XP drivers for the printer. Installed them, rebooted the XP and went to test the printer.
What The!.........
No printer is found! Checking around I find that there are no system drivers installed to support the USB for the motherboard.

Motherboard. What make is it? Don't know??? Nothing that identifies it. But from Ubuntu I see the audio drivers are Alsa drivers for an SIS motherboard.
Okay. Time to run some Google searches while I'm kicking myself in the arse for not bringing along my multi-driver Cd's.

Found a likely driver candidate for the USB and popped it in. New Hardware detected.
That's a good sign. Get it installed and now have a USB bus.
It's at this point I need to mention that XP had me very annoyed. Not only did it not have drivers for the USB unlike Ubuntu but everything I installed including the printer driver required a restart!

Got the USB drivers in then had to uninstall and reinstall the printer driver which required 2 more restarts! Grumble.......
Finally I got it up and running. Set up the security in Internet Explorer and shut down XP. Then I took a snapshot of the Virtual Box XP as a way to get back to a clean slate should anything happen.

I then advised them to only use XP and IE for only that site.
That using Firefox in Ubuntu will keep them clean and secure.
The job was finished.
Ubuntu install was nothing compared to the hassles I encountered with Virtual Box.

And before anyone screams foul, I will mention right now that I am not an XP newbie. I was an XP junkie and power user. I used to hack the shell and even rebuilt the dll controlling the animation for files being transferred to the trash. My version had a stick figure guy wiping his butt with the paper then put it into the trash bin.
I know my way around XP and had been using it for years.

Today was a triumphant day due to me converting a business over to Ubuntu but was also an eye opening day. I saw Windows in all it's ugliness and all I can say is I'm glad I made the switch from it.

I'm sure they will have a few questions as they get used to Ubuntu but at least they won't be calling about virus problems. And if they do, it will be in the Virtual Box XP and that will be fixed with one or two clicks.

TaZMAn

Create a Software List In Linux

Real quick and easy technique that creates an alphabetical list of all software packages that you have installed on your system.

Open the terminal and type in the following;

dpkg --get-selections > installed-software

This will generate a text file in your Home folder named Installed-Software.

Now if you ever have to redo your computer or build a new one and you want the same software installed all you have to do is make sure the list is in the Home directory, open the terminal and type in the following;

sudo dpkg --set-selections < installed-software

And then this command;

dselect

That's it! Short and sweet.

Enjoy!

TaZMAn