MaximumHoyt

Most hardware will need a BIOS update at some time and it's relatively easy to do. When you use Linux, however, you face an additional hurdle since occasionally upgrading the BIOS requires an installer that only works using Windows. Of course, no one wants to install a full Microsoft Windows OS just to spend less than 30 seconds to update the BIOS, then turn around and re-install Linux. What if we could boot into Windows using a CD-ROM and run the win32 BIOS update program using that? Check out FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD . The best source for it is his Facebook page or his Wordpress page . Those pages provide a link to download it via torrent or a direct link. The current version is v4.61. Simply boot into the WindowsXP environment and run the BIOS installation program. It's that easy. In my case, I was updating the BIOS of an HP 1120NR notebook.

Slashdot ran a story about getting Quake2 running in a browser windows. That is very cool. There were installation instruction at quake2-gwt-port except the instructions were not for "Linux" but only for Linux distros that provide apt-get (probably Ubuntu). That is not cool at all. While it would have been possible for them to write their HOWTO instructions in a generic way (provide a list of all dependencies, provide links to source code for needed apps not included in every Linux distro, etc.), they just assumed that everybody uses Ubuntu. Bad. Bad. Bad. Here's what I needed to do to get it compiled and installed on my Mageia5 system. Read those Ubuntu-ed instructions first for the details. You should be using sudo to run commands that need root privileges. (All the following commands are written on one line even if they appear to be on multiple lines.) $ sudo urpmi mercurial ant gcj-tools javacc lame vorbis-tools   $ hg clone https://quake2-gwt-port.goog...

There are several Dynamic DNS clients available for Linux. I have never had them work satisfactorily with my DNS provider ZoneEdit. Fortunately, it is possible to use wget to send the current IP address to ZoneEdit (put this command all on one line, of course). $/usr/bin/wget -O - --http-user=USER_NAME --http-passwd=PASSWORD 'http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/auth/dynamic.html?host=DOMAIN_NAME.COM' This can be run as any user. I have found it useful to use cron to run it. Instead of a specific time, I just use the macro @daily in my crontab. It might be better for ZoneEdit to only run it every few days. NOTE: ZoneEdit is migrating to a user key rather than a password and, while they are maintaining backwards compatibility for now, you should migrate as soon as practical.

This page is just a placeholder for links to DOS applications and games. Old Apps at http://www.oldapps.com/ provides old versions of popular software. The 6.0 DOS version of Norton Commander can be downloaded at AbandonwareDOS . DOS shareware versions of Doom and Hexen are here: http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/shareware.php Other classic PC games may be available from here: https://archive.org/details/classicpcgames A great source for DRM-free games is GOG . Software for MS-DOS machines that represent entertainment and games at https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games&tab=about  Free classic games on DOS Games Archive at http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/ And if you need DOS, there's FreeDOS . To make DOS games run better, update the DOS extender they use. Have fun!

It appears that "the cloud" is the popular buzzword now. All cloud computing is is a remote file server where you can store, access, share and manipulate your files. While several commercial services are available, it's possible to create your own cloud service using the ownCloud software. As with any powerful server software, it's not out-of-the-box easy, but with some preparation and understanding, it's not that difficult. Most of this HOWTO is Mageia-specific; a lot of the configuration details are enumerated at the ownCloud website documents . We're installing ownCloud on a minimal Mageia4 virtual machine using VirtualBox just to go through the process. There is no X-server, so it's all done on the command line. Mageia5 documentation, installation discs and Errata can be found here . Part One -- Installing the Apache Webserver We must begin by installing the Apache webserver. It's certainly possible to use alternative webservers, but Apac...

This will describe how to install and configure the Transmission torrent application on Mageia5 in a headless configuration, how to make it automatically download torrents by placing a .torrent file in a particular directory and admin the client remotely using both a cli (command line interface) and a GUI (graphical user interface) application. Transmission has both a Homepage ,  a Wiki and a Forum , so there's no lack of help and support. But as for installing it as a headless server on Mageia, all we found were HOWTOs for Debian/Ubuntu systems. We're assuming that you have Mageia5 installed and have configured your user to use the sudo command. INSTALL Begin by installing the transmission daemon and the command-line client. $ sudo urpmi transmission-daemon transmission-cli This installs  transmission-daemon, transmission-cli and transmission-common (which is mostly the documentation). All the binaries will be found in /usr/bin . The transmission package also...

I'm always looking for ways to speed up my computer, especially when it comes to the boot process and loading applications. A good overall discussion or improving system performance is at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Maximizing_Performance , just remember that it focuses on the ArchLinux distro, not the Mandriva (now Mageia) distro I use. READAHEAD A useful utility is readahead . According to its manpage, readahead populates the page cache with data from a file so that subsequent reads from that file will not block on disk I/O. On my Mandriva 2010 system, the default installation of readahead places a default file at /var/lib/readahead/default.early . To create custom files based on your system, you should reboot the system and pause the GRUB menu and add the following to the command line. init=/sbin/readahead-collector This will examine your system as it boots and create a list of what files are to be loaded in the order that they are loaded. The configuratio...