LOGIN:
Let's see... the last column I actually
wrote (Ralph filled in for me on the last
two), I had an uptime of 144 days. Man, the
last three weeks have absolutely sucked.
First of all, my wife has been put in a state
hospital for up to 90 days due to depression
and I'm a temporary single parent just trying
to cope with it all. Secondly, my laptop died
with some sort of power problem... because it
would no longer turn on. I took it into a
local computer shop and after looking at it,
they decided that there must be a break or
short in the motherboard somewhere... and
that it is too costly to fix given its low
value. I decided to take the hard drive out
of it to put in my desktop but am having
trouble locating a converter that will change
the PCMCIA interfaced hard disk into standard
IDE. My father was able to find one in
Memphis (I sent him the original HD from the
laptop when I last upgraded to a bigger one)
but I'm in Billings, Montana... and here they
have to do some research to find one. And
lastly, I got demoted at work which lead to a
1/3rd drop in pay? Well, as you can see, it's
not been a good last three weeks. I do like
my new job a lot better than the last one
though. Much nicer boss. :) In any event, I'm
keeping my chin up. Pardon me for dumping my
personal life here in the column but I
thought it might help my readers to
understand my lack of columns recently.
NEWS:
Item #1: Legendary inventor's computer
comeback - Anyone remember Clive Sinclair? I
remember him well because the first computer
I ever owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 which
was about the size of VHS tape, only a little
shorter and wider. Anyway, supposedly Sir
Clive is working on a Linux machine. Cool,
huh? Check out one of the couple of stories I
found on the subject at the
following URL: http://www.lineone.net/express/99/04/29/city/c0100splash-d.html
Item #2: NEC Launches New Linux Software -
This is only one of several major software
announcements I've found recently and I'm
wondering why I include it... seeing as how
they are coming so common place it is getting
boring. Anyway, check out the following URL
if you so desire: http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/04/30/news7.html
Item #3: Optimizing OpenGL drivers for Quake3
- For those who read fluent computer geek,
the following very technical article about
designing QuakeIII doing graphics with
OpenGL. Pretty interesting article at the
following URL: http://www.quake3arena.com/news/glopt.html
Item #4: Mindcraft II - You know how everyone
griped at the Mindcraft study... well, it
appears that they are going to do another
one... but seeing as how it is funded by
Microsoft, they don't appear to be taking
much help from the Linux pros on how to
optimize Linux for the test... and it will
probably lead to Mindcraft III. Eventually,
they are going to have to face the facts.
Read some opinions of the situation at the
following URLs: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/27/mindcraft/index.html
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5424.html
Item #5: Christian Science Monitor writes
about Linux - The following is a rather
healthy introductory article about Linux in
the pages of Christian Science Monitor. I'm
not that much of a fan of the publication,
but I thought it was interesting that Linux
has found it's way into that publication.
Read for yourself at the following URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/04/29/p15s1.htm
Item #6: KDE Team releases KDE 1.1.1 -
Figures, I was over at a friend's house and I
was getting him all setup with Linux and so
we go and download all 18MB of KDE 1.1. About
an hour later, they release 1.1.1. :) I went
home and picked myself up a copy. Read the
news for yourself at the KDE site: Main site
- http://www.kde.org
Press release for KDE 1.1 - http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-BW-1.1.1.html
Change log for 1.1.1 - http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelog1_1to1_1_1.html
Item #7: VMWARE ROCKS! - Not really a news
article, just check out the following URL
before you read the spotlight section: http://www.vmware.com
SPOTLIGHT: VMWARE ROCKS -
No, no, really!
So, did you read http://www.vmware.com
from news item #7? If not, go do so now.
Ok, are you back now? Good.
I actually downloaded the latest beta test
version of VMWARE for Linux and even though
they say that they recommend a Pentium II
with 128MB of RAM for serious usage, I
found it acceptable on a my Intel 200MHz with
32MB of RAM. Of course, I wasn't doing much
other than running Windows 95 within Linux at
the time and I know that if I was trying to
run Windows 95 and multi-task the hell out of
Linux, it would have bogged down pretty
poorly with only 32MB of RAM.
Full screen mode is just amazing. When the
OS you install (and it works with several,
and you can even run multiple OSes at the
same time) boots you see the BIOS screen and
everything just like you would with the real
experience. It was so real in fact that I
could hardly tell the difference between a
real powerup and VMWARE one other than the
fact that the VMWARE logo is to the right of
the Phoenix BIOS startup screen. Amazingly
enough, you can even to into the BIOS setup
within your virtual machine.
I choose to install Windows 95 within
VMWARE (again, running in a window on my
Linux X Window System desktop running KDE)
because it's the only OS I had an install
media for. Although installing Windows 95
from 15 floppy disks took forever (and it's
the original version too), it worked rather
well and I was simply amazed.
Getting logically out of order for a
minute, I must say that the installation of
VMWARE was a breeze. It is very polished
looking and I was very impressed. I don't
know how much it is going to cost when it
gets out of beta but I'm going to buy a copy.
Some of the screenshots on the VMWARE site
actually show running Windows 98 and Windows
NT 4 at the same time on a Linux desktop. I
even read about a dude who installed Linux
within VMWARE just to see if you could run
Linux within Linux.
As if what I've told you already wasn't
amazing enough, and I'm sure you probably
don't believe me at this point until you
check it out for yourself, VMWARE has a
networking feature whereby the various OSes
running simultaneously can actually be
networked together. I just installed it a day
ago and I haven't gotten around to try
networking my VMWAREd computers but I've read
other places that it works great.
I was able to make a few screenshots but
nothing too amazing yet. I took them during
the windows install so they are pretty boring
but you get the picture. I should have taken
one of the BIOS screen but I just wasn't
ready for it myself.


Let it be known that the screenshots were
NOT taken in full screen mode just so I could
show the Windows 95 install running in a
window on my KDE desktop. If you don't
believe me, check out any of the following
URLs which inspired me to check VMWARE out
for myself: http://www.vmware.com/news/pressarticles.html
Cool, huh?
LOGOUT:
After playing with VMWARE for a night I
decided that it was time to upgrade the RAM
in my desktop computer. I went to my local
OfficeMax and picked up some SIMMs that I
thought would work. They worked standalone
but I couldn't get my machine to recognize
all of the RAM... so I took it back to the
store and got some DIMMs since my machine can
do either or. My darn machine wouldn't see
more than a single DIMM at a time and I was
getting pissed. Hopefully I'll have it
figured out by the next column and give a
better rundown of VMWARE. Feel free to
download your own copy of the Beta version
(which I found no problems in) for free and
send me some rants about it and I'll put them
in the next column. |