[Herts] Closed Windows.

Sun May 11 08:06:22 BST 2008

This rings so true for me as a distinctly amateur user.  What I found 
very quickly was that the man pages and Google are invaluable, but it 
does depend how far into the system you want to go.  I have got Mandriva 
(I started with Mandrake 7.0) on my main machine, Suse on my laptop and 
a Sharp Zaurus, all of which are pretty good at shielding one from the 
command line.  I bought the very good Linux Bible, published by 
O'Reilly, but have only needed it when I have done something stupid.  I 
am going to put the new Mandriva 2008.1 onto the laptop, because this 
seems to be truly excellent for someone who just wants to work rather 
than fiddle.

I have still got Windoze on my laptop in a dual boot, only to run my 
Nokia synch software, the updates for my Tom-Tom and a few other bits.  
I keep planning to run a VM or emulator, but have just moved to France, 
and have too much on to risk messing it up and having to sit through a 
re-install right now.

The laptop came with Vista, and it is truly appalling.  I get about 60% 
more battery life with Linux, because Vista is constantly running the 
hard disk, apparently to check that I am entitled to run software and 
own the files on my system.  

Simon Powell

Tim Gibbon wrote:
> Hello Andrew,
>
> In the Linux world, you may find that someone will have scratched your
> itch and documented it. A bit of Googling will usually turn up a
> solution. This is not always the case in the Microsoft world.
>
> Here is a link to reset the root (cf Administrator in the Windows
> world) password. You will need to download and burn a Knoppix CD
> first:
>
> http://f241vc15.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/reset-lost-root-password-and-more-using-knoppix-linux-live-cd/
>
> Parent site:
> http://www.knoppix.org/
> Good site to download the ISO CD:
> http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> tng
>
>
> On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 7:30 PM, David Honour <thegoatee at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> I don't think we'll be able to help you with the password (unless
>> someone is good with john the ripper (password cracker)).
>>
>> On the subject of instructions in linux there are in fact several ways
>> of gaining usage instructions for most things you could want to do
>> (these usually work best for command line apps).
>>
>> The man (short for manual) and info commands do what they say on the
>> tin and the '--help' option is pretty handy too.
>>
>> Hope that helps:
>> David
>>
>> On Sat, 10 May 2008 18:42:41 +0100
>> Andrew Porter <andrewchoras at supanet.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> To all,
>>>
>>> As a person who is new to this group, and wishing to pursue Linux as
>>> an operating system, I can confirm that it is my dissatisfaction with
>>> Microsoft Windows products, and Microsoft  Office software that has
>>> driven me to find alternatives. Even when moving to Fire Fox,
>>> Thunderbird and Open Office in a Microsoft operating system, the
>>> underlying flaws within the Microsoft product remain. These include a
>>> massive amount of software code to do very little, packages that
>>> simply expand rather than have the underlying flaws removed, US
>>> English as the default, and in many case what Microsoft consider to
>>> by UK English, rather than English, is still full of faults all
>>> biased towards US English.
>>>
>>> To resolve my frustrations, I took the advice to have a new computer
>>> configured as a dual boot system with SuSE Linux, and Microsoft
>>> Vista. This was done through Q-Tek in Stevenage, and after fighting
>>> against the problems with Microsoft Vista, I have eventually managed
>>> to get a computer that communicates with the Internet, and the
>>> printer. Problems such as fighting against faulty driver software in
>>> Microsoft Vista for my printer when trying to install the correct
>>> software took many evenings of frustration. Perhaps the warning
>>> should have been that Microsoft Office 2000 requires 1.4GByte of
>>> memory, against 91MByte for Open Office. I  none longer use, and I
>>> have not installed Microsoft Office.
>>>
>>> Having resolved the Microsoft problems, I turned my attention to SuSE
>>> Linux 10.0, as installed by Q-Tek. Sadly, this does not work, as
>>> Q-Tek forgot to give me the password needed by SuSE Linux 10.0 to
>>> install the printer software, and access the Internet. In other
>>> words, I cannot down load the printer software through SuSE Linux,
>>> and therefore I cannot install the printer software?
>>>
>>> Question: My car provides my with a manual on how to use all the
>>> controls, options, etc., in the car. Why does software come without
>>> any instructions, and comments such as, 'contact your PC manufacturer
>>> for product support.' Does this mean that Q-Tek will come to my home,
>>> at their cost, to show me how to use Microsoft Vista and SuSE Linux?
>>>
>>> I await for an informed response.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Andrew Porter
>>>       
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Herts at mailman.lug.org.uk
>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/herts
>>
>>     
>
>
>
>   

-- 
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