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  • Sharing resources between Windows and Linux computers

    Since I have two main computers and one runs Windows while the other runs Linux, there are inevitably going to be some ways in which I will try to share resources between the two computers. Linux of course comes with Samba preinstalled to allow shared folders to be accessible to Windows. One of the key…

  • Irfanview on Wine

    With any computer system there is a point reached where the software you like is on a different platform and you have to find some workaround. Various types of virtualisation are common workarounds. Wine is a type of virtualisation that allows some software packages designed for Windows to be run under Linux. Well, IrfanView can…

  • Mint here we come

    Well finally I have put my main computer onto Mint. The preparation was mainly making the various backups to ensure I don’t lose any data on switching over. As you can imagine it is not always straightforward especially if doing something a little out of the ordinary. Some of these different elements in my setup…

  • Enable Presentation Mode and Mobility Center on a desktop computer

    Presentation Mode is something I am trying out with Windows 10 desktops that are permanently connected to a projector. Microsoft don’t seem to have got their head around the idea that people will use a desktop to do presentations, and so these capabilities are disabled by default on a desktop. But they can be enabled…

  • Mislabelled ADATA Pen Drives

    So another ripoff by the look of it. I have two Adata pen drives that are reported at less than the labelled size. Even if we understand that there are two different ways of defining what a gigabyte is (one uses 10^3 as the multiplier and the other uses 2^10), the size of these devices…

  • Another Intel rip off – Core CPUs

    One of the annoying things about Intel is how much they mix and match features on their CPUs to try to screw you into paying more money. It gets that you have to drill right down into the specs of individual CPUs to make sure you are getting the features you need, for example virtualisation…

  • DON’T USE POLi or Account2Account Payment Services they are bad news

    These services are for people who do not use a debit or credit card to make a payment. Instead they are transferring funds directly from a bank account to a merchant. The idea of these services is they can make that type of payment as “easy” as a credit or debit card. However they are…

  • Switching to Linux [4]

    Continuing on my series of investigations into switching the most powerful of my computers to Linux. There are now some important questions to be resolved in the area of running a software based RAID 1 array on a pair of disks (a mirror) as this is somewhat of an advanced area of knowledge and unlike…

  • Switching to Linux [3]

    Running Qgis 2.12.3 with one of my map projects.

  • Switching to Linux [2]

    Since my last posting I have made some progress in developing my case for switching one of my home computers to Linux. The other home computer will probably stay at Windows for the time being, but with the maximum amount of privacy configured on it. This computer will run a few packages I haven’t yet…