Archive for Death To Windows

Upgrading my Linux..

August 10, 2010 Death To Windows, Move your ass to Open Source No comments

I’ve been using Linux at home as my desktop now for over a year, and in that time I’ve grown to love it.. and learned to live with upgrading it frequently.. in the windows and mac world you may keep a version of an OS for the life of the machine.. this is why many of you are still running OS X 10.4 and Windows XP.. they cost you money, and you got your machine with them pre-installed.  Linux moves alot faster, for one the development process (like all things Open Source) is out in the open,  so many of the distributions release frequently, somthing along the lines of 2 or 3 releases a year.

I use Mint which was begat by Ubuntu, which in turn was begat by Debian.  This weekend I’m going to move from Linux Mint 8 KDE Edition (which is based on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic) to Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid, which is an LTS release of Ubuntu running KDE.   I don’t mind using Mint at all but I feel like I’m a bit of a different user than I was a year ago.. who knows in 5 years I might be a Linux from Scratch guy.. rofl.. riiiight..

So this weekend I’ll be:

Backup up anything from my installation drive to other places.

Documenting things I may have running on my Linux box that need to be reinstalled / set up on the new installation.

Then wiping and installing. Because I don’t do upgrade installations.. EVER.

Restarting a Remote Session

March 25, 2010 Death To Windows No comments

I’ve been administering and supporting Windows machines for a very very long time, and since Windows XP, it’s shipped with a Remote Client which you should all be familiar with if you are in any sort of similar position.   There is another Remote Client called “Remote Assistance.”

If you search windows help you can search for “Offer remote assistance”  and this will allow you to see a users desktop the way they see it.

On occasion you may need to restart a machine when you are remoted in. Alas when connected with Offer Remote Assistance you have no restart option.

You can open a command console (start > run > cmd)  then type

shutdown -r

and a small countdown windows will open and the machine will shutdown in 30 seconds.

Pretty Elementary.. but good to know in a pinch.

Here is a good link with some shutdown.exe switches

Apple Announces iPad

January 27, 2010 Death To Windows No comments

Apple announced the iPad earlier today.. it’s more or less a large fast iPhone /iPod Touch without the phone.. some models will have 3g and will be unlocked, they did show off iBooks which will be an eBook store… I guess if I had to choose between a Kindle and this I’d choose this anyday.

It’s priced $499 to $830, runs a custom Apple branded CPU running @ 1ghz, has 16 to 64 GB of storage.. and will be out in 60 – 90 days.

See the Engadget live feed here for more info and more on Apple’s website here.

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