Linux Expo Live

The Next Generation of Open Source Event
Thu 23 - Sat 25 October 2008, Olympia, London

LinuxExpo Live will focus on the benefits of open source to all companies from large enterprises through to SMEs, showcasing just how much the technology and service levels have developed over the last two years.

LinuxExpo Live is uniquely positioned to raise the profile of Linux and Open Source and add far more to the mix, in order to encourage new adopters of Linux and other open source offerings, for their business solutions, rather than preach to the converted.

Is your PC running slow?

Recently on a forum, a person said they were given an old PC running Windows and it was getting very slow. If you are in that position, read on.

If you have an old Windows XP PC, there is probably a lot of defragmentation on the hard drive, and lots of files from software that was installed and then uninstalled as well.

You should defragment the hard drive. Also scan for viruses and spyware, and rootkits. If it is still slow, then it might be best to back up all your data, make sure you have installation files/disks for all your software and OS, and then reformat the hard drive.

I always find it best to have a separate partition for the pagefile/swapfile, following the Linux model. This is because if the pagefile is mixed in with the Windows files and your documents, etc., it will get very badly fragmented. And as Windows uses the pagefile as an extension to its RAM, it needs to be in one contiguous file rather than lots of smaller files scattered all over the hard disk.

Decide on the size of pagefile you need. For example, if you have 1 GB of RAM, you might want a pagefile of 2 GB. Although if you have 2 GB of RAM you might want a max of 3 GB pagefile, I do not think there is a need to go larger than that. Now, assuming you are using Windows XP, you need to make sure that there is going to be at least 10% free space on the partition for the pagefile. Even though nothing else is going on there, other than one large fixed-size file, Windows XP complains if any partition has less than 200 MB of free space. So make your pagefile partition 2.2 GB if you intend to have a pagefile of 2 GB.

If you do not know how to create partitions, then you can use a program like GParted. Go to http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php to download a live CD of the software, and then burn the ISO file to a CD as a disc image (not as a file on a disc). When that is completed, you should (after backing up all your data, etc.) then reboot the PC from the GParted CD. (Remember to change settings in the BIOS if the PC will not boot from a CD, to set the boot priority to CD before HDD).

It will then allow you to erase your existing partition and create new ones. Or you could just resize the existing partition and create a new one for the pagefile in the space created. More instructions on using the software can be found at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/generalities/gparted.htm. Remember that for Windows XP you will need to make any new partition an NTFS partition.

Also, the first partition on the hard disk should be a primary partition. The second partition should be an extended partition, with a logical partition inside it for the pagefile. You can have several logical partitions if you wish. I tend to prefer to have a separate partition for my documents and data, away from the partition where the operating system is installed. Then if you need to reinstall the OS, you can format the OS partition without touching your data files.

You might also want to consider creating more logical partitions for other operating systems. For example, you might want to try out Linux in another partition. Ubuntu is very good and nearly all Linux distributions are free. You can download it for free from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download or request a CD completely free from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ (choose the desktop edition, unless you really want to set up a server and know how to do that).

The Ubuntu installation CD is also a Live CD, i.e. you can boot from it into a full version of the operating system to try it out before installing it. The Live CD will do nothing to your hard disk unless you request it, so it is perfectly safe. If you like it you can install it. It also comes with GParted, so you could use the Ubuntu Live CD to run GParted and manage your partitions if you so wish. If you do install Ubuntu, it will need its own partition (ext3 format, not NTFS) plus a swap partition. Ubuntu can read and write to NTFS partitions, but Windows XP cannot read or write to a Linux partition.

Whatever you do, I hope you end up with a faster and reliable PC.

Ubuntu - A Fantastic Free OS

Ubuntu is the new big thing in the world of operating systems. Not everyone has heard of it yet, nor seen it or used it. But I have and it is a fantastic operating system you can use on your computer.

It originates from South Africa, from a company called Canonical Ltd, run by a billionaire called Mark Shuttleworth.

There are two famous billionaires in the world of IT: Bill Gates (the richest man in the world, surely have you heard of him) and Mark Shuttleworth (not so well-known). One charges lots of money for an operating system that has bugs, crashes, is unstable, comes with spyware and is prone to being infected by lots of spyware and viruses, and if you want to do office work you have to pay out a lot more money, and it is a popular OS and people are willing to put up with paying for a faulty system. The other billionaire is giving away an operating system that can do pretty much the same as the first, but with less bugs, less security holes, no viruses or spyware and lots of free applications for the office and graphics, that come with it, that allow for good productivity.

So which one do you prefer?

I used to use the former, the one sold by the mighty Bill Gates empire (Microsoft Windows) until I got so fed up with the constant crashing, spyware, errors, expense and the need to continually reinstall the OS every year. Then I decided that it was time to switch to an alternative. The main alternative that people think of first would probably be Apple Mac OS X, but that is more expensive than running Windows (need to buy a whole new computer). Of course, to run the Windows Vista, I would also have to buy a whole new computer due to the heavy system requirements it has. But I chose the cheaper alternative: Linux.

I had used Linux many years ago, I dabbled in Red Hat Linux in the late 1990s, but it was not really ready at that time for the masses or to take over from Windows, but it showed promise.

I also tried Xandros 1, but it was not quite ready either.

But in 2006 I decided to try Xandros 3 (Open Circulation Edition, free), and really liked it. The only things it really lacked was the ability to write to NTFS paritions (necessary as most of my data was on NTFS partitions from using Windows 2000 and Windows XP), but when its successor arrived, Xandros 4 Home Premium Edition (paid for, but cheaper than Windows), it had the ability to write to NTFS, so I bought a copy and used that for a while.

But then I decided to reinstall Xandros 4, onto a new hard disk, as the old one was having problems. But the new installation had a few problems and a graphics driver that caused the system to freeze. So I tried Ubuntu, which I got free on a DVD-ROM with a Linux magazine (I could have downloaded it for free from the Ubuntu website at www.ubuntu.com).

I was pretty amazed with Ubuntu. It worked very well and recognised all my hardware correctly, and even now had the ability to write to NTFS (something that most Linux distros could not do just a few months previously). Xandros is also a very good OS, but I liked Ubuntu more when I tried it, and so I installed that and decided to make it my main OS on this computer.

I just love the special eye-candy graphic-effects, using Compiz-Fusion and Emerald, giving wobbly windows, bendy and flexible windows, transparency, zooming out to see all desktops, zooming in on any part of the screen and the small preview windows when pressing ALT-TAB (most of this eye candy is missing from Xandros).

You really have to see it to know what I mean, but it really does have a great WOW factor. Microsoft, in promoting Vista, kept going on about its WOW factor. But having seen Vista in action and Ubuntu, I am certain that the WOW factor in Ubuntu is greater than that of Vista, and more productive. I love having multiple desktops (as in all Linux distros) and being able to zoom out and see them all at once, updating in real time, is more of a productivity boost than the 3D-effect when switching applications in Vista.

If you are considering a new OS, look at Ubuntu. It is free, it does not require you to register or enter any serial numbers. It does not contain spyware that reports back to the manufacturers (at least I don't think it does) and it comes with genuinely useful software like OpenOffice, the Gimp (for graphics), Firefox (web browser), Thunderbird (email), various games, video and music players, and in the online repositories much more software that can be installed with just a few clicks (so long as you have a broadband Internet connection).

I am very happy since switching to Ubuntu and will probably stay with it for a long time to come; I recommend it to all computer users. At least try out the live CD/DVD and boot from that, it will not alter anything on your hard disk and lets you see what the OS is like without installing it.