House and Household

If you have one of these beasts linux installation can be a pain. Seems they use a 32 bit efi for the boot. So when you put any of the standard CD disks - yes disks as booting from USB doesn’t work -  it hangs asking you if you want method 1 or 2…. Early disks of ubuntu or fedora will boot but then you have to do a series of online updates. A total pain. I did want to do a Arch install but debian works - as ever so thats what I did. Debian will boot if you you use the mac image see;  http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/amd64/iso-cd/ Described in the following blog; http://sadevil.org/blog/2016/01/24/replacing-os-x-with-linux-on-my-mac-mini-21/ I did eventually get Manjaro linux installed by using a 686 net install version. https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Installation_Guide_for_the_NET_Edition_0.8.10 It boots well on the 2.1 mini  boot and but you must ensure when installing that you set the whole thing up to boot in BIOS mode on all the i...

Since 1996 I have been stuffing round with Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Opensuse and Mandrivia. I have shyed away from distributions where things were compiled. Tries Sabayon a few times but always whipped it with something "better". Enter my Little HP Pavilion X360.. Absolutely crap with Windoze. Sooo Slow. Tried all of the above too but battery life was woeful. Tried Xubuntu and Powertop.. Wow suddenly I was getting 2.30 to 3 hours out of it. Better than under windoze. Then one day out of madness I went lets try Manjaro - its XFCE based. Install was - just an install - worked nicely. Seemed to be getting 3.30 to 5 hours out of a charge. OK What about all the stuff I normally used in my workflow. Scrivener, Xmind, Zotero-standalone Wine and Aeone and Simplemind. Little did I know how easy it was to install those. No searching the web and downloading hoping youd got the right version. Just enable the little AUR button in the software manager and they installed. Yes some took...

Updated my iMac 27-inch, Mid 2011 to 32 gig of ram. Before that I’d been running windows or and linux thru bootcamp directly on the disk partion. The box was slow no matter how I looked at it. 32 gig of ram helped no end.  The aim was to have enough ram that I could run windows and linux in VM’s so I did not have to reboot to use my favourite programs. I was septical... fitted ram.. removed partitions. installed parallels 9. Installed windows 8 - installed office 2013— installed a few lines just to be sure - ubuntu 12.04.01 opensuse fedora debian testing mint and ... all worked. windoze 8 went in and integrated well with the desktop in coherent mode as dis ubuntu 12.04 and fedora. Opensuse, Magiea and debian would once you got the tools installed so the mouse is not grabbed by the VM. Mac and win doze will be my main work tools. Ubuntu my play time. Oh have yet to overstreach the ram.

This blog was meant to be a log of work done. Decisions and compromises.... But lack of a reliable network in the house made that hard. Now we have internet and warmth. But winter is not the time to work outside. So I'll start by outlining progress to date. Condition as Acquired  Two front windows were smashed and had structural problems. Paint and wood had not seen much work in the last few decades.  Nice large Yard but not a tree in sight..   A cleanup had been undertaken and the stuff not taken to the tip was burnt. The main door is on the eastern ish side. the gutters were full of rubbish and overflowing in all directions. Note the green on the wall near the end of the Verandah.    Kitchen is simple and usable. Once water leaks thru the valley gutter. And mould were overcome.   Entrance to "the laundry" It was just filthy, wet and grease covered. The mud room had been used as a kitchen and was grease coated. The lounge - note the shake and cigarett...