Another year another operating system (openSUSE defeats Mandriva)
About this time last year I decided that Linux simply wasn’t good enough and returned to Windows XP. A week later I discovered that Mandriva was actually up to scratch, and so I ditched Windows and moved completely across to Linux. Since then…
Mandriva 2008: The perfect distro for KDE + Compiz
My attempts at switching to Linux since Christmas have been finicky and largely unsuccessful… until today when I installed the x86_64 free DVD version of Mandriva 2008. The things this distro configures perfectly and without effort, all out of the box, are endless. If you prefer KDE and want a bit of eye-candy with Compiz, look no further than Mandriva…
Distro hopping all the way back to Windows XP
This past week I have evaluated five Linux distributions to see if any of them would make suitable replacements for Windows XP so that I could avoid Vista. Sadly, Linux proved to be far more finicky and troublesome than I expected. Take it from me, if Windows XP is behaving itself, then don’t try to fix what ain’t broken; stick with what works…
The world’s most useless “recovery” CD
At first sight you might think that the Windows XP installation CD might contain an operating system, but more importantly, some sort of tool that could prove useful if your computer should ever run into trouble. The CD has a nice, blue, cloudy watermark on it and the interior rim has a shiny hologram. Clearly, there must be some goodness locked inside – it just oozes quality…
The migration of a fussy Windows user to Linux
I’m a very fussy user when it comes to my operating systems and I have managed to get by with Windows XP for a long time, but its days are numbered. Vista is looming and I refuse to install that rubbish, so I have chosen Kubuntu 7.10. Normal Ubuntu users might be wondering why I chose Kubuntu. To demonstrate just how fussy I am, I installed Kubuntu because…
iTunes Preparation
For the past ten years I have converted most of my CDs to MP3 format and, gradually, a sense of order has evolved. Now I have my collection sub-divided into the following folder structure: d:\mp3\artist\album. This is all good and well but the ID3 tag information in these files isn’t as pretty as my nicely-ordered folder structure, which became apparent when friends, family, and colleagues wouldn’t shut up about the virtues of iTunes and I tried to import my collection.
What I once regarded as a lovingly-ordered collection of music was reduced to rubble when iTunes tried to make sense of it all. It seems that I never before cared enough about ID3 fields in Winamp which resulted in iTunes separating “JS Bach” from “Bach” and “Bach, JS”. Needless to say, I was not impressed, and quickly discarded iTunes. However, I have grown tired of navigating through my folder structure in Winamp’s standard Windows common dialogue, so I have finally done something about it and have written a program to tidy-up my entire collection. Introducting: iTunes Preparation…