How To Deal With Computer Problems

Written by Fred Renoudet


It seems that nobody realizes that I'm alive unless they need something. I'm beginning to feel like Rodney Dangerfield - I get no respect! I always getrepparttar "I need" calls. As in - "I need a ride to go to Tako's Pig Roast or I'll starve to death" -

The other calls that I get are ofrepparttar 107879 variety - "My computer doesn't work" - "Excel is acting funny" - "My computer's locked up, what do I do?"

Well, I can't authorize you to go home or torepparttar 107880 mall, so what about trying "the three finger salute (Control, Alt, Delete) or rebooting your computer"?

I have no idea why everyone asks me how to fix his or her computer problems. I can answerrepparttar 107881 easy questions like- "How do you fix Charbroiled Oysters?" or "Where's a good place to eat?"

To prove my point - At home I have a 20Gig hard drive with a Pentium III processor, 500Mhz and I'm lucky enough to have a cable modem. I got fat, dumb and happy thinking I would haverepparttar 107882 resources to run any program.

I got a wake up call when designing our web site and my resources dropped to 30%. Some people in a similar situation would reformat their hard drive. But I would not - except as a last resort - because it is a real pain, time consuming and I'm too lazy.

Doing computer cleanup is not foremost in anybody's mind. What'srepparttar 107883 old saying - If it ain't broke, don't fix it? This is similar to "Backups" -

Everybody tells you to backup your data andrepparttar 107884 tendency is to wait till tomorrow. You become a convert real fast when you lose everything you've spent hours, days or weeks entering and you have to start from scratch.

If you suspect your system resources are low, you may want to try these options that I always suggest to those with similar problems. --- These are a layman's instruction. If you need help from a professional - call a professional, I'm notrepparttar 107885 one to listen to.

The first thing to do is CHILL OUT!

Step1: Have a glass of wine, beer, soft drink or whatever - For Windows 95/98 - You may want to check your reading with a program running such as MS Access (or any program that eats your resources).

Try again with nothing but windows running to seerepparttar 107886 difference - go into "Control Panel", click "System", click "Performance" (or you can right click "My Computer" and select "Preferences").

If "System Resources" is above 50% with MS Access running, you should be in relatively good shape. With nothing running you should be around 88%. Don't fall for that garbage that says, "You are configured for optimum performance". If your resources are down - something ain't right!

While you're looking atrepparttar 107887 resources click "Virtual Memory" and make sure "Let Windows manage…" is checked. Unless you know what you're doing, don't try to changerepparttar 107888 settings (I don't). If your resources are running @ 90 %, you don't need to read any further.

Step2: Have another glass of wine, beer or whatever - Look inrepparttar 107889 bottom right corner of your screen. You should see some icons like Volume, Virus protection, Time, etc., etc, etc, etc.

A lot of that is a lot of needless junk that is put in your startup group needlessly by programs. Stuff like Printer status, Real Player, Scanner status, AOL, IOU, DEQ, AEIOU or whatever - those use resources needlessly.

Try disabling them one at a time and check your resources again. If one of them is a hog, delete it from your "StartUp" group. You can check to see what's in your "StartUp" group by right clicking your "Start" button.

History of Linux

Written by Ragib Hasan


History of Linux

by Ragib Hasan (Copyright: Ragib Hasan 2000)

Table of Contents

a. In The Beginning b. New Baby inrepparttar horizon c. Confrontation and development d. Some Linux Cookies e. Ackknowledgments

a. In The Beginning

It was 1991, andrepparttar 107878 ruthless agonies ofrepparttar 107879 cold war was gradually coming to an end. There was an air of peace and tranquility that prevailed inrepparttar 107880 horizon. Inrepparttar 107881 field of computing, a great future seemed to be inrepparttar 107882 offing, as powerful hardware pushedrepparttar 107883 limits ofrepparttar 107884 computers beyond what anyone expected.

But still, something was missing.

And it wasrepparttar 107885 none other thanrepparttar 107886 Operating Systems, where a great void seemed to have appeared.

For one thing, DOS was still reigning supreme in its vast empire of personal computers. Bought by Bill Gates from a Seattle hacker for $50,000,repparttar 107887 bare bones operating system had sneaked into every corner ofrepparttar 107888 world by virtue of a clever marketing strategy. PC users had no other choice. Apple Macs were better, but with astronomical prices that nobody could afford, they remained a horizon away fromrepparttar 107889 eager millions.

The other dedicated camp of computing wasrepparttar 107890 Unix world. But Unix itself was far more expensive. In quest of big money,repparttar 107891 Unix vendors priced it high enough to ensure small pc users stayed away from it. The source code of Unix, once taught in 1universities courtesy of Bell Labs, was now cautiously and not published publicly. To add torepparttar 107892 frustration of PC users worldwide,repparttar 107893 big players inrepparttar 107894 software market failed to provide an efficient solution to this problem.

A solution seemed to appear in form of MINIX. It was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a dutch professor who wanted to teach his studentsrepparttar 107895 inner workings of a real operating system. It was designed to run onrepparttar 107896 Intel 8086 microprocessors that had floodedrepparttar 107897 world market.

As an operating system, MINIX was not a superb one. But it hadrepparttar 107898 advantage thatrepparttar 107899 source code was available. Anyone who happened to getrepparttar 107900 book 'Operating System' by Tanenbaum could get hold ofrepparttar 107901 12,000 lines of code, written in C and assembly language. Forrepparttar 107902 first time, an aspiring programmer or hacker could readrepparttar 107903 source codes ofrepparttar 107904 operating system, which to that timerepparttar 107905 software vendors had guarded vigorously. Students of Computer Science all overrepparttar 107906 world poured overrepparttar 107907 book, reading throughrepparttar 107908 codes to understandrepparttar 107909 very system that runs their computer.

And one of them was Linus Torvalds.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

b. New Baby inrepparttar 107910 Horizon

In 1991, Linus Benedict Torvalds was a second year student of Computer Science atrepparttar 107911 University of Helsinki and a self-taught hacker. The 21 year old sandy haired soft-spoken Finn loved to tinker withrepparttar 107912 power ofrepparttar 107913 computers andrepparttar 107914 limits to whichrepparttar 107915 system can be pushed. But all that was lacking was an operating system that could meetrepparttar 107916 demands ofrepparttar 107917 professionals. MINIX was good, but still it was simply an operating system forrepparttar 107918 students, designed as a teaching tool rather than an industry strength one.

At that time, programmers worldwide were greatly inspired byrepparttar 107919 GNU project by Richard Stallman, a software movement to provide free and quality software. The much awaited Gnu C compiler was available by then, but there was still no operating system. Even MINIX had to be licensed. Work was goingrepparttar 107920 GNU kernel HURD, but that was not supposed to come out within a few years.

That was too much of a delay for Linus.

In August 25, 1991repparttar 107921 historic post was sent torepparttar 107922 MINIX news group by Linus .....

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing ; since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout ofrepparttar 107923 file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi) PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

As it is apparent fromrepparttar 107924 posting, Linus himself didn't believe that his creation was going to be big enough to change computing forever. Linux version 0.01 was released by mid september 1991, and was put onrepparttar 107925 net. Enthusiasm gathered around this new kid onrepparttar 107926 block, and codes were downloaded, tested, tweaked, and returned to Linus. 0.02 came on October 5th, along with this famous declaration from Linus:

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT Message-ID: <1991Oct5.054106.4647@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Do you pine forrepparttar 107927 nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your ; needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just for you :-) As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reachedrepparttar 107928 stage where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put outrepparttar 107929 sources for wider distribution. It is just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it. Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) inrepparttar 107930 directory /pub/OS/Linux. The directory also contains some README-file and a couple of binaries to work under linux (bash, update and gcc, what more can you ask for :-). Full kernel source is provided, as no minix code has been used. Library sources are only partially free, so that cannot be distributed currently. The system is able to compile "as-is" and has been known to work. Heh. Sources torepparttar 107931 binaries (bash and gcc) can be found atrepparttar 107932 same place in /pub/gnu. Linux version 0.03 came in a few weeks. By December came version 0.10. Still Linux was little more than in skeletal form. It had only support for AT hard disks, had no login ( booted directly to bash). version 0.11 was much better with support for multilingual keyboards, floppy disk drivers, support for VGA,EGA, Hercules etc. The version numbers went directly from 0.12 to 0.95 and 0.96 and so on. Soonrepparttar 107933 code went worldwide via ftp sites at Finland and elsewhere.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use