"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Blog-Birthday Three

It seems just yesterday when I started writing my first post, but  three years already passed and I'm just now entering in my fourth year of blogging. Thanks everybody for coming and reading! I'll never be tired repeating this: I'm only sharing the things I do, It's konwing they are useful to somebody what make the difference. Thanks again and see you for the first year-4 post!

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

Edupup : Education-tailored Puppy Linux

I decided, at last, what to do with that old HP Omnibook I recently got. I'm going to stuff it with educational software, I have a nephew or two who are of the right age to learn while having some fun even with a such old computer.

Edupup

I had Puppy Linux already installed on the Omnibook but, since I had found a education-tailored distribution on this Italian LUG page, I decided to install it over the (still unused) previous installation. The distribution is a bit old, last update is in 2010, but is not a vital detail since my computer is far more old than the distribution. Speaking of specialized versus general purpose distributions I often prefer to start with a general purpose one then install the software I need. In this case I instead I decided for installing a specialized one since I'm not fully used to Puppy installation mechanism and having a distribution with some software already installed could save me some time.

Installation

Puppy Linux installation is simple but sometime it might result tricky. My thirst Installation tentative concluded without error messages but it refused to start in any way (even by booting from Edupup CD) I suppose that it was because the previous Puppy installation on the same disk that the installation wizard did not clear. I formatted the disk and then repeated the installation, everything went eventually fine.