I was recently computing happily along, not suspecting anything, when suddenly things began to go terribly wrong. Web pages stopped loading. My email connections timed out. I could not remotely access my clients’ networks. The situation was serious. Then my wife told me that she could not get to any web sites. The situation had…
Category Archives: Linux
Core i7 VirtualBox Server: Why Virtualization?
When I’ve talked to a small business owners about using virtualization in their IT infrastructure, one of the most consistent questions I’ve gotten – well, after “what’s that” – amounts to “why – what’s the advantage?” This is certainly a valid question, and it’s one I had to think about in order to articulate the…
Core i7 VirtualBox Server
I’ve been using virtualization technology for several years now – first with VMWare (Workstation, Server, and Player), and then with VirtualBox. I tried Xen very briefly while looking at OpenSUSE, but never did use it on a day-to-day basis. Until now, I had only ever used desktop OSes (operating systems) (mostly Linux, but some Windows…
Okay, well, back to Ubuntu!
In my post Returning to Windows After 15+ Years I wrote that I was switching to Windows 7 after using various distributions of Linux or FreeBSD for over 15 years, and provided a brief explanation for the move. After several months it became apparent that the honeymoon with Windows 7 was over, and I wrote…
Returning to Windows after 15+ Years
Recently, Jason Hiner of Tech Republic posted an article on his blog saying that he was moving away from Windows and is now using Ubuntu Linux as his desktop PC’s primary OS (Operating System), with Windows 7 running in a VM (Virtual Machine). This is basically the way I’d had my desktop machine running for…
The Failed Linux Desktop Migration Effort
The Backstory In December of 2007 I built my wife a very nice PC – Gigabyte AM2 motherboard, a fast AMD Athlon 64 x2 CPU, 4 Gb of dual-channel DDR2 RAM, an nVidia-based PCI Express video card with 512 Mb of onboard RAM, two SATA hard drives (a 160 Gb boot drive and a 750…
Preventing the Heartbreak of Lost Data
One of the questions I hear most often from my residential clients as they drop off an ailing PC is, “will I lose all of my pictures?” In many cases, I am able to save most, if not all, of the data on their hard drives (pictures, emails, addresses, browser bookmarks, etc.) My commercial clients…
The Safe Computing Triad
In Beware of Social Engineers, I wrote that I’ve recently had several clients that have contracted nasty malware that masquerades as security software and claims that the victim’s PC is infected. It then offers to clean up the infections – if you pay for the software. Of course, by that time the damage is done,…
Category Archives: Linux
VMs on RAID save Bacon
I was recently computing happily along, not suspecting anything, when suddenly things began to go terribly wrong. Web pages stopped loading. My email connections timed out. I could not remotely access my clients’ networks. The situation was serious. Then my wife told me that she could not get to any web sites. The situation had…
Core i7 VirtualBox Server: Why Virtualization?
When I’ve talked to a small business owners about using virtualization in their IT infrastructure, one of the most consistent questions I’ve gotten – well, after “what’s that” – amounts to “why – what’s the advantage?” This is certainly a valid question, and it’s one I had to think about in order to articulate the…
Core i7 VirtualBox Server
I’ve been using virtualization technology for several years now – first with VMWare (Workstation, Server, and Player), and then with VirtualBox. I tried Xen very briefly while looking at OpenSUSE, but never did use it on a day-to-day basis. Until now, I had only ever used desktop OSes (operating systems) (mostly Linux, but some Windows…
Okay, well, back to Ubuntu!
In my post Returning to Windows After 15+ Years I wrote that I was switching to Windows 7 after using various distributions of Linux or FreeBSD for over 15 years, and provided a brief explanation for the move. After several months it became apparent that the honeymoon with Windows 7 was over, and I wrote…
Returning to Windows after 15+ Years
Recently, Jason Hiner of Tech Republic posted an article on his blog saying that he was moving away from Windows and is now using Ubuntu Linux as his desktop PC’s primary OS (Operating System), with Windows 7 running in a VM (Virtual Machine). This is basically the way I’d had my desktop machine running for…
The Failed Linux Desktop Migration Effort
The Backstory In December of 2007 I built my wife a very nice PC – Gigabyte AM2 motherboard, a fast AMD Athlon 64 x2 CPU, 4 Gb of dual-channel DDR2 RAM, an nVidia-based PCI Express video card with 512 Mb of onboard RAM, two SATA hard drives (a 160 Gb boot drive and a 750…
Preventing the Heartbreak of Lost Data
One of the questions I hear most often from my residential clients as they drop off an ailing PC is, “will I lose all of my pictures?” In many cases, I am able to save most, if not all, of the data on their hard drives (pictures, emails, addresses, browser bookmarks, etc.) My commercial clients…
The Safe Computing Triad
In Beware of Social Engineers, I wrote that I’ve recently had several clients that have contracted nasty malware that masquerades as security software and claims that the victim’s PC is infected. It then offers to clean up the infections – if you pay for the software. Of course, by that time the damage is done,…