Asus Tech - You will NOT fool me Twice

So I wrote a post at the start of this month describing a positive experience with Asus's support involving my netbook that was running Linux. I would like to advise all the other Linux users out there not to make the same mistake I did -Just because tech support doesn't blame your operating system, doesn't mean they know what they are doing.To recap what happened, after a little over a year of usage my T101MT up and died. It got a power light, but...

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HOWTO: Linux on the Dell Inspiron Duo

I recently invested in a new toy. A Dell Inspiron Duo netbook/tablet convertable: I was pleased to see that most all of the netbook was functional OOTB with the 3.0 variation of the Linux kernel my latest Bodhi build was running (including multi-touch on the track pad). I plan to write a full review later on, today however I would simply like to share two tricks for getting some important functionality out of your Dell Duo while running Linux. Making...

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HOWTO: Create a Debian Meta Package

The following is a short tutorial on how to create a Debian meta package. Just as a brief background for those that do not know what a meta package is - a meta package is a Debian package that simply tells the package manager to download a whole bunch of other packages. Meta packages are useful for allowing for the quick installation of an entire group of packages. I use meta packages in the Bodhi repository for our theme pack and software bundles.Fair warning for this tutorial I am assuming you have at least some basic command line experience.Lets...

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Five Things the Enlightenment Desktop Does Best

Fair warning, I am a huge fan of the Enlightenment desktop. The following items in this post are things I believe the Enlightenment desktop (and it's developers) are doing better than some of the other open source desktops.Maintain Old ReleasesPeople are always resistant to change and switching your desktop environment is a major change. When KDE and Gnome both had their last major releases they promptly dropped their previous releases like a bag...

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Getting Connected to Illinois State University ISUNET from Linux

This week I started a masters program in mathematics and a job as a graduate assistant at Illinois State University. My laptop is never far from my side, so of course one of the first things I did on campus was connect to the internet.Or at least attempt to.There are three main wireless networks at Illinois State University.isunet - The main network for staff, students and alumniisunet-guest - A guest networkisunet-setup - A wireless network for "easily configuring your isunet"I connected to ISUNet-Setup, opened a webrowser and was on my way. It...

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HOWTO: Easily Share Files between Linux Machines using sFTP

Sharing files between two different computers on a network is something that I feel is often harder than it should be. Maybe it is just my bad luck or some poor configuration settings on the various networks I connect to, but Samba shares seem to almost never work for me. In the past year I've taken to using sFTP to transfer files back and forth between my various devices. sFTP is nice because it works over the internet and with any Unix devices...

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Set Penguins Crawling on your Desktop!

There are a lot of great Enlightenment modules out there. Today I would like to feature one that is far more fun than it is useful. It is called simply "penguins" and it sets your choice of Penguins (or Lemmings!) crawling all over your desktop and interacting with your windows.Like everything in the Enlightenment desktop, the module is fairly configurable. You can define the number of penguins you want on your desktop, their size and how transparent...

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Asus Support - Excellent and Linux Friendly

I've been recommending Asus computers to friends and clients for some time now. After my recent dealing with the Asus support/repair center I will continue to recommend them for the foreseeable future. It is rare that I keep whatever computer I have for more than a year's worth of time. Because of this I had never, until last month, had to RMA an entire laptop. It just so happened that last month my Asus T101MT (that I have been very happy with)...

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Why the Tablet Craze?

I made a post last year titled "The Year of the Tablet Computer". It is now over half way through 2011 and it seems the touch screen craze is far from over. Apple has released the second iteration of their iPad, we are up to our ears in Android tablets from various hardware makers and a Meego tablet or two might still exist before the year is up. I've played with the iPad a bit, I've used more than a few different Android tablets (I even own one for purposes of developing Bodhi for ARM) and I must say I'm confused what all the hype is about.Beyond...

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