Mandriva Media Machine

The other day we built a multimedia computer for the shop. I chose Mandriva Linux because I wanted to provide volunteers with a different experience from the typical Ubuntu Linux they're used to. And it was an experience for me. I've worked quite a bit with Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE, Debian, and Ubuntu, but not so much with Mandriva. I actually found myself a bit lost when it came to package management. I was unfamiliar with urpmi. So I did a bit of research and found a few interesting links. See the story I wrote here:

http://www.charlesmccolm.com/content/helpful-mandriva-linux-links

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Canon BJ-30 Bubble Jet Printer

A few days ago we received a Canon BJ-30 Bubble jet printer as part of a group of printer donations. We tested this tiny printer which measures about 1 foot wide by 1/2 foot long when the lid is closed. Amazingly the donated printer still contained ink. Sadly it seems that Canon has discontinued making any drivers or information for Windows available on their web site. We tested the printer under Ubuntu Linux version 10.04 and it printed a test page flawlessly (we even got a full tank of ink). I called our favourite ink re-filler and found that the do indeed still carry the cartridges for this portable printer. We looked around for information about the BJ-30 and discovered that this tiny printer is 720dpi x 360 dpi, although we suspect that number is a software-interpolation number that depends on a Windows driver. As anyone can see from our screen shot above the printer seems to print just fine. The biggest downside to the printer we felt was the lack of a USB port, and the

Considering Godaddy hosting?

I've been a Godaddy customer for several years. When I first signed on with Godaddy their hosting was reasonably efficient and very affordable. While the afford-ability has stayed the same the quality of hosting has dropped magnitudes. Godaddy simply hasn't been a good host now for several years, and it simply isn't worth the "affordable" price anymore because of the lack of stability. What am I talking about? Regular 500 Internal Server Errors resulting from the servers simply being overloaded. Godaddy just can't handle their success and as a result has commodified everything to the point where their offerings are just crap. If the site's not available most of the time it isn't worth the money, no matter how little you spend.

Update: Linux Laptops, desktop computers.

Much has changed since the last post was originally posted here. The biggest change is the Computer Recycling project has started selling AS-IS Linux Laptops. All laptops go through several stages (not necessarily in this order): Evaluation Testing Wiping Linux Installation Cataloguing/Processing All laptops are sold AS-IS with no warranty. This brings up the obvious question "why even test/wipe systems?" if you're just going to sell them AS-IS. The answer is a combination of things: We rely completely on donations, Computer Recycling doesn't buy equipment through vendors or anywhere else (we simply don't have the budget to do this). Much of the equipment is difficult to get parts for. Laptops tend to be very proprietary - two laptops with the exact same model number may have a different keyboard connector depending on the date and factory they were manufactured in (we've actually seen this when we tried replacing a particular laptop keyboard).

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