I, uh, broke my laptop somehow…  I had Ubuntu, installed Xfce on it (it’s really slow), and it broke.  So I reinstalled Ubuntu 7.04 from a CD I have, updated it to 7.10 and then to 8.04.  It’s still broken!  Gaaah!  I thought I had it fixed after another quick update, but then it wouldn’t finish an update!  Then Firefox and several other programs wouldn’t open at all.

So what did I do with it?  I through it on the ground and ran it over with my Hummer.  (Okay, I need that laptop, and I can’t afford a Hummer, and what a waste of gas anyway.)  I installed Fluxbuntu, and everything (mostly) works fast(er) and seamlessy!  We’ll see in the long run.

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I have recently acquired an old HP Compaq from my work.  It has 256 MB RAM, 40.0 GB HDD, Intel Celeron Processor, and that’s about all I looked at to know when I got the thing home, I was going to put a low resource Linux install on it.  I had been researching one such install, called Fluxbuntu.  Well, I already burned the ISO, which is around 310 MB, very nice and waayyy smaller than a similar Ubuntu ISO, weighing in at about 696 MB (+/- 5%-ish).  Well, I brought the old thing home and tested out the Windows XPSP2 (I think).  The boot took about two minutes, log in another two minutes to set up everything that was installed from the company I work for.  This thing was sluggish like no other.  Now, I had previously tried Fluxbuntu on an old Tablet PC that I had lying around, and it would not install, so I just stuck Ubuntu on it, and it runs smoothly.  This made me slightly nervous to use partition the whole hard drive and get rid of everything.  I did it eventually, and the install started and ran very quickly.  It stopped however, nearly finished at 90% and sat for over an hour at 90%.  I restarted the install three times, before finally it worked!

Fluxbuntu Start Up

I was so excited to finally have the system run.  The computer restarted, and to my amazement the boot time was less then 30 seconds and I was totally logged in to my new Fluxbuntu system!  Amazing!  The graphics are really nice, and there is plenty of support for it, as it is based off the popular Ubuntu.  I even installed Globulation, a pretty awesome game, which runs pretty fast (unless you have more than five computer players!)  I like the browser, although it could use some more features, but it does have some unique things.  The tabs could use some work as well, as they seem slightly jumbled, and sometimes can be hard to use.  I have not looked at all the features of Fluxbuntu, but it seems to be a nice, extremely lightweight, mostly stable system.  I have used e-mail, Internet, games, and messed with desktop settings.  It uses Fluxbox (hence the name FLUXbuntu) as a window manager.  It is a little different, due to the fact that there is no start button, or application menu on a bar at the top/bottom of the screen.  You simply right click anywhere on the screen and BANG, there’s your menu, with all your programs.  You have Synaptic Package Manager to install programs, pretty much everything you can get in Ubuntu is there.  The only problems that I have found with it have already been reported as known bugs, and can be found and most likely solved here.

Fluxbuntu

This system is awesome, but I would recommend to experienced Linux users, and make sure you back up everything first.  Also, if you have another Linux flavor, I would recommend trying Fluxbox out first, to see if the interface is for you.  It is a little different, but is easy to get used to.  Anyone with an adventurous spirit, a low resource system, and some Linux and command line knowledge should definitely give Fluxbuntu a try.

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Hey, it’s me, Nemesis General again (of course, I am the only one who posts on this blog…) but anyway, I am switching over from Sprint to AT&T, on their new(ish) 3G network.  I only have one dilemna (yes, I already got a better plan for the same price as Sprint, so yes it’s a good deal.)  I need to find a phone.  The competitors for a new phone are listed, with pictures here.  I have been doing lots of research, and so far the top one, MOTO Z9 seems to be the best choice.

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=Motorola+MOTO(TM)Z9&q_sku=sku1250193

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=LG+Shine(TM)+-++Red&q_sku=sku1160036

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=Samsung+A737+-+Orange&q_sku=sku1090020

Oh, and by the way, if you want pictures of phones, do not get them from the AT&T website to save to your computer.  These ones suck.

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Who can’t wait for Android?  You can find their website here.  Not much activity going on right now though… They hope to get a phone with android to the public pretty soon, but not until the end of the year at the earliest.

Android in action: Android Videos

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