>> ^MarineGunrock:
You can actually down load Ubuntu and put it on a disc - and reboot your computer with that disc in the drive. From there Ubuntu will load up as your operating system without writing any files to your hard disc - that way you can try it and see if you like it before you decide to wipe out Shitsta (or create a partition for it.)


I soundly recommend doing that. The biggest problem is drivers, specially with a laptop, a lot of vendors have proprietary parts and they'll only provide Vista drivers. This has been a problem for people wanting to 'downgrade' their Vista systems to XP. The Linux community seems to be pretty good about supplying Linux drivers when the manufacture won't, but that's never any guarantee.

I found Ubuntu pretty easy and straight forward, most everything was automated including updates, but I ran into a few problems that required I use the command prompt, and some that were extra annoying and had me scrounging Linux help forums for hours trying to get rid of some miscellaneous error. That said, that was 1-2 years ago so things may have gotten even better since then. You might also want to look into dual booting, a vista partition and a linux partition, depending on how much harddrive space you have.

I tried Ubuntu about a year ago and installed it in a new partition on my laptop. Then last November when I decided to make the leap to ubergeek and build my own desktop, I installed Ubuntu as the main (and only) operating system.

Personally, I just can't get over how much I love it. Love, love, love!!! But I still wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, because there were a few things that took me a LOT of time to get working properly (printer, video card), and I consider myself pretty computer-savvy. So it really comes down to how much you are willing to learn and spend time getting to know your way around Linux -- if you don't mind spending the time, it will definitely be rewarding as Linux is only getting better all the time and I can't imagine ever switching back.

As MGR suggested, you can burn a LiveCD of Ubuntu and/or Kubuntu and/or other Linux flavours and try them out to check your system compatibility. They load slowly off of CD but you can try everything out to see if all of your components work out-of-the-box or if you will need to do some tweaking. You can also look up all of your peripherals to see how Linux-compatible they are. Linux actually has a better range of drivers than either Windows or Mac, but not all manufacturers are good about releasing Linux versions so if you have a newer model of something it may be harder to get it to work.

Some of the things that blow my mind about Ubuntu:

• It has a built-in list of thousands of open-source software packages that you can just click to install via the Internet, and they're all free. The commercial OS's will never have this.


• Virtual desktops. This has been a life-changing feature for me.


• Incredibly fast searches for files and folders.


• Speed and stability. I haven't run into a single situation yet where having many programs running at the same time has slowed down my machine in the slightest. Plus I can reboot in less than a minute as opposed to 5 minutes in Windows.


• Infinitely customizable everything.

On the downside, there is a steep learning curve, and you WILL spend time typing on the command line. For me this is actually kinda nice since I grew up in DOS days and have worked with Unix workstations, but it's not for everybody.

Lastly, if you want the latest and greatest in Linux, you can expect to pay for it in stability. If you want a system that never ever crashes, you'll want to look for a distribution that focuses on stability rather than features. I like having the most up-to-date feature set, but that means living with occasional glitches and system hangs, though I am far far happier than I ever was with XP and especially (from the sounds of it) would be with Vista.

So there you go -- I didn't realize I would be writing an essay here! Maybe should have made this into a blog post on its own. But if you decide to go for it, I'll be happy to give whatever support I can!

You can actually down load Ubuntu and put it on a disc - and reboot your computer with that disc in the drive. From there Ubuntu will load up as your operating system without writing any files to your hard disc - that way you can try it and see if you like it before you decide to wipe out Shitsta (or create a partition for it.)

The GParted Live CD is what I used to extend the XP NTFS partition.

karaidl, you may want to try burning a GParted Live CD -- that's what fixed me up with the partition issues I was having a while back.

I built myself a new computer about a month ago, and it is proudly microsoft-free. I haven't got absolutely everything running the way I want it to under Ubuntu yet, but I know that I will, because there are no restrictions on how much things can be tweaked.

I'm still not recommending Linux to everybody, because it can take a LOT of time to get things working just right. But for me, it makes me very happy.

Man now I'm really screwed. I was messing around with installing Ubuntu and I've seriously messed up on my partitioning. Both Linux and Vista are recognizing my whole hard drive, but XP is only seeing 132 gigs of it. I tried installing XP on that 132 gigs and then extending the partition, but that didn't work - instead I got a boot error. So I tried wiping the whole drive with Killdisk, but that didn't work either - still reading the drive as 132 gigs. I'm using Vista right now cuz that's the one that installs the fastest, but I'm trying to figure out what could be doing this.

I like the idea of developers seriously considering more Linux support, but the idea seems quixotically romantic at best, unfortunately.

The main reason I hold back is the non-desire to create a new partition for it, and the fact that there doesn't currently feel like there's a "Killer App" kind of reason prompting me to check it out. Unlike, say World in Conflict, which you want to load and play now just because it's so much fun. Psychonauts fun.

My tone on the phone is clearly not begging, though. I'm like, yes, many dead computer components. Many replacements. How's the weather in Mumbai? Cool cool, ciao.

From a first hand source, It happend to all kinds of people, not just people with 2 partitions. I don't know what happened but this is what happens when you let the quality developers burn out. (but i have no idea really) Also, Eve cost $39 for 3 months. Not $30 per month. see: http://www.evetimecode.com/index.php#30_day_code
I am "Richard Third" ingame.

Eve is also notorious for random shutdowns of the universe. They shut down the servers for a whole day for what turned out to be one unauthorized user logged into SQL server.

You really had to be running a pretty non standard system to have this happen.

One it had to be windows XP SP 1, which came out in like 2001, and then beyond that you also had to have your windows partition set as something other than c. Which is a non standard configuration, and THEN you had to also have eve installed on the c drive instead of on your windows drive. Anyway this happened to maybe like 200 people, maybe. Yeah it sucks that they didn't catch it, but it's not surprising that they didn't.

Or, you could run BootCamp on a MacBook Pro, and you'll have zero issues with installing XP (plus you'll have a Mac partition, too... oooOOOOoooo). Though, there's no way around the "lap scorching".

I love these old 50's video of the future. Is Plexiglass all that pervasive now (apart from partitions - but in shower doors, bathroom cabinets, closet organisers), or do we just lump it in with what we call "Plastic"?

Now, where's my jetpack, flying car and house-sweeping robot?

Correction, one woman was trying to help. Gent named Paul Pritchard was recording the vid. On a sidenote, yelling "Russian" at an agitated Polish man doesn't help either.

Funeral news: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=9dd7f34b-5ee3-49a4-bffd-9c7c6dcfc927&k=71634
Additional article with mourners' comments: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=1cbb88d4-bf54-4926-a037-9b18905eed20

Transcript (translated too): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071115.BC-TaserTranscript16/BNStory/National/home


Vancouver — Voice off camera: Computer's on?

Voice off camera: What language do you speak?

Muffled responses, comments off camera.

Voice off camera: Just look at his face!

Voice off camera: There's 300 people coming in...coming in.

Muffled comments off camera.

Voice off camera: He did it. He almost threw the chair through the window to get out. Look at it. Look...

Muffled voices talk excitedly off camera.

Mr. Dziekanski paces the whole length of the secure arrivals area, walking back to the entrance doors.

Dziekanski: Breathing deeply. I'm going to break this desk. Is this going to continue?

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Is there anybody at the door?

Voice off camera: I can't believe he's ... out!

Voice off camera: Nobody's here...from security.

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Just five minutes before ...comes down with 300 people on it...

Dziekanski: Holding and waving a small wooden fold-up stool at the entrance door, speaking in Polish. I'm going to break windows. I'm going to break this window here.

Voice off camera: ...something's wrong with him.

Voice off camera: ... is Russian. He speaks Russian.

Voice off camera: Is that what he's speaking? I don't even know what he's speaking.

Voice off camera: What language do you speak?

Voice off camera: He doesn't speak English...

Voice off camera: Russian? Russian?

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Ruskian? Nope.

Dziekanski: Mr. Dziekanski holds and waves a small wooden fold-up stool in the entrance doors. I will not allow them.

Voice off camera: There's nothing wrong! There's nothing wrong...it's okay.

Voice off camera: We need a Russian interpreter. We need someone to open the arrivals area...

Dziekanski: Still holding the stool in the entrance doors, I'm going to report on you and the rest of them.

Voice off camera: Calm down.

Dziekanski: Fine, fine. Takes a breath. We'll see.

Woman walks over to Mr. Dziekanski, motioning to him, holding out her hand.

Woman: Calm down. She motions to him, holding out her hand in order to communicate with him.

Dziekanski: Still holding stool, pacing in the entrance doors,. Get away. Get away.

Muffled voices off camera.

Dziekanski: Swears.

Muffled voices off camera.

Woman : Motioning to Mr. Dziekanski. Calm down please.

Woman tries to communicate through the clear glass partition, with Mr. Dzienkanski who has gone into the arrivals area.

Dziekanski: (Inaudible)

Woman: ....Excuse me...I know I know...

Mr. Dziekanski and the woman speak through the partition, nodding and motioning.

Woman walks back away from partition.

Muffled voices off camera.

Voice off camera: Look! He's got a computer...

Mr. Dziekanski throws some laptop or computer on to the glass partition.

Voice off camera: Whoa.

Voice off camera: Right in front of the cops too.

Voice off camera: Jesus Christ.

Mr. Dziekanski holds up an electric equipment and attempts to throw it.

Voices off camera: No no no.

Mr. Dziekanski puts down the equipment rather than throwing it.

Two airport security officer come to the entrance doors and Mr. Dziekanski comes to the doors to meet them.

Voice off camera: He speaks Russian and nobody can help him...You need a Russian interpreter here to calm him down. Cathay's coming down in five minutes.

Voice off camera: ...Russian interpreter.

Voice off camera: ...Can you call Customs and tell them to stop it....

Voice off camera: He is so scared...just leave him.

Voice off camera: Why are the police not here? We called security, we called the police.

Voice off camera: Calm down, calm down please.

Camera turns to police.

Dziekanski: Mr. Dziekanski screams. Police! Police!

Police speaks to him and points. They motion him to inside and they point to a spot on the ground and they encircle him.

Dziekanski: What are you doing? An RCMP officer points at him. There's nothing here .

An RCMP officer shoots him with a Taser.

RCMP officer: Get down, get down!

Dziekanski: (Screams as he falls to the ground)

Police fire two more Taser blasts.

RCMP officer: Get a Taser.

RCMP officer: Put your hands up.

RCMP officer: Get him down, get him down!

Dziekanski continues to struggle, scream

Security guard: Operations…(unintelligible)

Dziekanski: Oh, no! It's pinching.

Four RCMP officers pin Mr. Dziekanski as they restrain him.

Dziekanski: Bandit!

Pritchard: Jesus.

RCMP officer: Get his knees, right…

Pritchard: How is he still fighting them off?

Off-camera: Noboby knows why. He speaks Russian. Nobody knows why. No rhyme or reason.

Pritchard: Prime footage for my home videos.

Pritchard: He's unconscious…I heard him say Code Red.

Pritchard: I've only got three minutes of footage, three minutes of memory, three minutes of memory left.

I disagree, Israel does not concede land, it paints itself as being the ever ready benefactor waiting for a 'deserving peace partner', while it builds new illegal settlements, asking the Palestinians to sort themselves by which time they claim new stretches of land because lo and behold Israelis live there now.

The problem is not, as Israelis often claim, that Palestinians do not know how to compromise. (Another former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, famously complained that ‘Palestinians take and take while Israel gives and gives.’) That is an indecent charge, since the Palestinians made much the most far-reaching compromise of all when the PLO formally accepted the legitimacy of Israel within the 1949 armistice border. With that concession, Palestinians ceded their claim to more than half the territory that the UN’s partition resolution had assigned to its Arab inhabitants. They have never received any credit for this wrenching concession, made years before Israel agreed that Palestinians had a right to statehood in any part of Palestine. The notion that further border adjustments should be made at the expense of the 22 per cent of the territory that remains to the Palestinians is deeply offensive to them, and understandably so.

The whole process of Peace in the regards to Israel and Palestine is non-existent, there is a huge imbalance of power that allows Israel to constantly come off as being the retailator of enemy attacks when it stages so many incursion of it's own into Palestinian areas. You claim that they use precision strikes when they form just one component of Israeli occupational strategy which works through road blocks, choke points, incursions into areas, random searches, arrests, house demolitions, removal of citizens, attacking civilian centers. The whole Gaza strip and West bank areas are enclosed open air prisons, movement to and forth is highly controlled.

I don't see how you can reduce this issue to them just needing to get a job and make peace as if violent fighting against Israeli is coded in Palestinian genes, maybe the reasons that attacks continue is because there is actual legitimate abuses that are committed?

Not that this is in any way legitimaizing the terrorist attacks that occur, but after so long I don't see how else the Palestianin people would have not responded.

You mention that Arab countries prosecute Christians and Jews, yet in Iran itself plays host to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Iran is not against Israeli people but against Zionism.

Not fair to compare Military prisons to blatant terrorism? So The Decider can pick and choose who he defines as a enemy combatant hold them and torture them as long as necessary with any heabus corpus rights? What of Abu Graibh then? Was that a military prison? Water boarding? I don't understand how degrading our moral standing makes us come off any better. As for the results that this practice produces we are never allowed to know for reasons of national security, yet the government expects us to give them a blank check for everything that they carry out, if we ask too much there 'will be bodies in the streets'.

Sam Harris states: "I don't know how many more engineers and architects have to hit the wall at 400 miles an hour for us to realize that (the problem of homicidal religious fundamentalism) is not simply a matter of education" and to anyone observing recent events in the UK, he is utterly vindicated in this reasoning. Of the eight people arrested thus far for the attempted London and Glasgow bombings, FULLY SIX are doctors and one was a laboratory assistant. "It is actually possible to be so well educated (whilst simultaneously religiously deranged) that you can build a nuclear bomb, and still believe you're going to get the 72 virgins. That's how balkanized our discourse is and how easily partitioned the human mind is."

I'm thinking a partition. (the "multi-walled annular voids" seems to comples)

One wall along the diagonal with angled walls to reduce volume.