Boom!

Arch 64-bit + E17

boom — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:07:33 +0000

I decided to backup my files off of my 1TB Windows XP Pro install and install Arch. So, after an hour or so of backing up music, pictures, documents, movies, and software; I took another hour and half to format the drive. Let’s start with the system this install is going on: CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940, RAM: 4GB, HDD: 1TB, Graphics: GeForce GT 240. After booting up to the Arch install disc and installing the base OS, I come to the point of what Desktop Environment/Window Manager I’ll be installing and using. I am a one DE/WM person, meaning I do not install multiple DE/WM’s. For a while now I’ve been looking into going back to Enlightenment, but not so sure about using alpha software, until I decided to be a little spontaneous and went to the Arch Wiki search for E17. Installing E17 was very easy, just a few pacman lines away. After running pacman -S e-svn e17-extra-svn, I proceeded to edit my ~/.xinitrc and adding the line ‘exec enlightenment_start’, then I started X. I fell in love all over again with Enlightenment, it was much prettier than it use to be and seemed to be much faster. I went away installing the theme and icon packages from the AUR and customizing my shelf and gadgets. Now I have one heck of a customizable, multi-functional, and sexy desktop.

Mom’s New Computer

boom — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:27:14 +0000

For my mom’s birthday I put together a small barebones machine to replace her computer of 7 to 8 years. The barebones consisted of a Foxconn R10-S4 housing a Dual-Core Intel Atom 330 CPU, 2GB Kingston DDR2 RAM, 250GB WD Caviar Blue HDD, and a LG DVD Burner. The machine is running 32-bit Archlinux with Gnome as the primary desktop using only 100-200MB of RAM after logging into the desktop environment with no custom kernel of any sort. I would recommend this machine for any student that needs to do basic computing such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, checking email, surfing the web, and watching YouTube videos.

Audio Equipment

boom — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:58:23 +0000

One of the best pieces of audio equipment that I have ever used was a small computer with a 1Ghz Via C7 CPU, 1GB ram, 250GB hdd, M-Audio 1010LT Delta audio card, Windows XP Pro, with Adobe Audition 3. This little machine could record up to 10 analog devices at once and never lag once; it was mostly used to record 2 to 3 church services every Sunday. It is now retired and runs Archlinux running a Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory server.

Wallpapers

boom — Sat, 09 May 2009 06:57:31 +0000

As I sit here customizing my Desktop I realize that the one thing that is so hard to please me is my wallpaper. On my MacBook Pro I use Desktoptopia which is ok since it changes the wallpaper for me every 10 minutes and a lot of the wallpapers are great. On my Archlinux machine I can’t use Desktoptopia, so I go to deviantArt which I have found many great wallpapers. If you have that problem finding the right wallpaper and use Microsoft Windows or OS X, then Desktoptopia is right for you. If you use Linux, there is a program called Wally. Wally is more customizable and less system resource dependant than Desktoptopia and it is available for OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.