Linux

I used to use Linux is my preferred operating system for almost everything. It's got all the software I need to do useful things, it's stable, and everything generally works better than other non-Unix operating systems. I now use a wide mix of Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, and others for everything. The Cloud is where it's at.

I used to use Mandrake (Mandriva) Linux extensively, although I used Debian and Ubuntu in grad school.

And if Android counts, I have Linux in my pocket.

Linux on Laptops

This section is largely legacy at this point since I don't currently own a Linux laptop. I'm leaving it up in the hopes that it will be useful to someone who has an old (IBM) Thinkpad and wants to get it running. This information is obsolete and not maintained.

Read about Linux (Ubuntu) on the IBM Thinkpad T40.

Read about Mandrake/Mandriva Linux on the IBM Thinkpad T40 (along with supplemental files).

Read about Linux on the IBM Thinkpad T22.

If you use Mandrake (Mandriva) Linux (or even if you don't), you might find my very brief URPMI and RPM Tutorial useful. Do as I say and you can avoid the "dependency hell" that haphazard use of these powerful tools can get you into.

I also have a collection of miscellaneous (and probably outdated, since I haven't touched it since 2006) Linux tips and tricks.

Free Software

I'm too lazy to put up a lot of the code I write, but every now and then something useful gets done.

This software is now hideously obsolete (I haven't touched it in years), but I leave it up on the off chance that someone will find it useful

Licq History Converter

This script converts a Windows ICQ (99b or 2000a) database file to a format usable by Licq. This is handy if you wish to preserve the history information as well as contact information when migrating to Linux. Since I no longer run ICQ on Windows, I can't test it on any other versions, so I'm making this available under the GNU GPL in the hopes that someone else can update it. Please read the script before running it.

I wrote this many years ago and at this point I'd be surprised if anyone is running such an ancient version of ICQ. But if you have an old ICQ DB file and want a usable plaintext version, knock yourself out.

iPod Shuffle Software

For those of you who were wondering, the iPod Shuffle (1st gen) does work quite nicely with Linux. At the time that I got mine, gtkpod didn't yet support the Shuffle and gnupod was very user-unfriendly, so I wrote some stuff to simplify things. Newer versions of gtkpod do support the Shuffle, but the Shuffle is so ridiculously simple that it's actually more awkward to do things with the GUI than with a single command. I only own a first generation (chewing gum pack shape) Shuffle that I haven't used in a long time, so I can't be of much help with current Shuffles.

gaim2adium

I used this when I was converting from Gaim on Linux to Adium on Mac OS X around 2007. Since it's all in human (and script readable text, why not take my logs with me? It is based off a script by someone else that I can no longer find nor remember (and it shows in the comments!) but is left here in case someone finds it useful.

I have no idea if this works for current versions of Gaim and Adium, as I haven't used either in a couple of years (I use Google Chat now)

Vintage Computing

I'm also interested in old computers and reliving The Way Things Were. It's how we, as geeks, connect with our common cultural heritage. At least that's how I explain it to people, but then they look at me funny.