Monthly Archives: January 2009

/dev/random, Linux

Random Ubuntu Support Calls

Ok it’s been an odd morning.

This morning i got a phone call on my home line from some old man wanting help with his ubuntu install, well more to the point is that he wanted to format ubuntu and start again.  After asking a couple of questions about what he wanted,  I told to format the drive and do a fix MBR in windows is probably abit more complex than he wants, and since he was dual booting that he should just continue to launch windows instead.

His orginal problem was he couldn’t get on the internet at the time, It didn’t click at the time when he said he was with optus that the reason he couldn’t get on the net is the weird way that optus modems are setup.

After talking to him for a while i finally got around to asking how he got my number because it was becoming more clear i didn’t know the guy.

Apparently he found my ubuntu wiki page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Gabz and assume I could help him looked up my phone number in the address book since my last name isn’t very common my home (parents house) is the only listed number.

So this was the first time i’ve been rung by a 85 year old man wanting to know how to fix ubuntu. It was an odd experiance.

If how it all ended, was well I got over the slightly weird feeling told him to keep ubuntu there, since he mentioned he lived in Toronto (NSW) we exchanged email address and I sent him the link to Westlakes Linux Learners

Anyone else recieved random phone calls asking for linux help ???

/dev/random, Kymoie, linux.conf.au

LCA updates.

3 Comments

Lots of mini-news so time for dot points

  • I Checked my site visit statistics and noticed that I’m now on the Linux.conf.au planet, I don’t normally put my blog up for planets but it was part of the registration and was easy. so hello my extra blog readers from http://planet.linux.org.au/lca2009/
  • Linux.conf.au, I have tickets to for the conf. Tiger airways are now on my list of banned airlines, In 1 year they’ve gone from alright to horrible. Basically they canceled our flights from Melbourne to Hobart. and put us on other ones but then we can’t get the Jetstar flights we have to connect us to the Newcastle to Melbourne Part. So more money had to be spent Tiger gave a less than expected refund.
    • Related on the 18th January we fly into Melbourne from Newcastle at 7:40 am our next flight to Hobart doesn’t leave until 17:55 so we have 8 hours in Melbourne to kill, please leave suggestions in comments if you have some ideas of what to do.
  • Kym and Linux.conf.au. Not so good she is trialling her talk out at work the week before, but the robot isn’t ready yet… it was meant to be ready for her last year but the processor still isn’t inside the bear yet. As for the talk well the OO.o sliders aren’t finished yet either.
  • Still looking for a new OS for my Acer Aspire looked at Kuki.me but it’s still not near production stage yet.

Anyway welcome to the new Planet readers 😀

/usr, Linux

Acer Aspire One

5 Comments

Christmas was very good to Gabz, he scored Wii controllers, remote control helicopters and of course what this post is about, a new netbook, namely a Acer Aspire One, Linpus 512 Mb Ram 8 Gb SSD.

Impressive Parts

  • Size, Weight and Keyboard.
    It’s small like you would expect but the keyboard is easier to type on that the XO olpc which is the only other netbook sort of thing I’ve gotten to play with. It’s really light weight and the battery is giving me 2.5 hours.
  • Boot time – Linpus got one thing right 14 second boot time from cold boot it also does hibernate but that isn’t really any slower than a cold boot.
  • 3G Modem support. If your 3G modem is made by Huawei (Optus, Vodafone or 3 ) then your in luck once you download the software from the acer site the Huawei modems work great. They even use the same software as you would under windows so you can still send those SMS messages. only extra step is making a new profile for your modem.

    Mobile Partner
    Mobile Partner
  • If the 8 Gb SSD Isn’t enough for you, you can expand with a SD Card they even merge the 2 drives together to appear as a single drive.
  • Also the webcam is builtin, the Mic is placed well and once you download Skype from the acer website it works great.
  • If you brought the extra USB DVD-RW like I was given you be pleased to know that under Linux you have DVD playback out of the box. Also the DVD-RW DL powers just from the USB port so no extra cables needed.

Unimpressive Parts

  • LINPUS ! – For starters it’s based on Red Hat (Fedora) being a Debian guy I find this to be a negative.
    Limited Range of Software, Acer isn’t supporting much they have an Acer game installed which is trial ware. Not really impressed that the full range of linux software isn’t easily available on this distro.
  • Security ok when you start linpus for the first time, you set the root password. Ok fair enough but there is no User password. Which is ok by it self. But guess what the user has no password but has Full SUDO rights ?! So if you ever want to change the root password on any linpus Acer try “sudo passwd”

    Root Password changing
    Root Password changing

Basically I’m very happy with this Netbook, and most of my problems will be solved in the coming weeks when I get Ubuntu on to this netbook. Though I would love a way to decrease the Ubuntu boot to the 15 second range.