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Written by Randall Wood
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Saturday, 24 January 2009 |
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 This short article describes how to get a Zoom 3095 USB Modem working on Linux. This cool little USB telephone modem sells for about US$50 and proclaims proudly on the package that it is compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. That was clearly the work of the marketing team, as in reality, we Linux users need to do a bit more work to get on line. I bought one of these modems in order to rescue an old Linux box (PIII 555Mhz, 128M RAM) running SuSE Linux 8.2 and was immediately frustrated to learn it was going to take more work than I'd been led to believe.
Do not despair. This guide is going to get you connected. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 28 July 2009 )
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Written by Randall Wood
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Thursday, 16 March 2006 |
 The real inspiration to try out BSD came from wrestling with Linux’s sloppy virtual console configuration. I love the console and use it for a lot of my work, not because I’m forced to but because it’s a less distracting environment for when I write or answer my mail. But goofing around with mutt, emacs, LOCALE environment variables, and console fonts that were missing important glyphs made me wonder if there wasn’t a better way. BSD's reputation for excellence piqued my curiosity, and a free CD made it easy to experiment. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 09 March 2007 )
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Written by Randall Wood
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Sunday, 26 February 2006 |
In November 2004 I wiped the hard drive of my PIII Compaq laptop in irritation at how slowly SUSE Linux 9.2 was running, and installed Xandros Open Circulation Release 2. It was lean and mean, ran quickly on my old hardware, and was in general a positive experience, so in January 2005 I purchased their Deluxe Desktop 3 and installed it. I later moved on to SUSE Linux 9.3, but reinstalled Xandros again in January 2006 after FreeBSD hosed my MBR and I was unable to fix it without reinstalling something else, and Xandros was the first disk I reached for.
Here are some thoughts on Xandros. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 November 2007 )
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Written by Randall Wood
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Wednesday, 25 January 2006 |
January 2001. I'd completed my service as a Peace Corps volunteer in the dry mountains north of Estelí a year previous, and returned to Nicaragua from a brief shopping trip to the States with a Compaq laptop running Windows 98 SE, a 12 string guitar, and a whole lot of enthusiasm for a modern lifestyle in Nicaragua's unassuming capital. The Internet had become huge in the quiet years I'd spent in the mountains. I'd been essentially glad to give technology - computers, specifically - a miss in all that time, but after such a prolongued drought of information and intellectual stimulation I was thrilled to be able to connect to the Internet and feel my horizons expand. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 January 2006 )
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Written by Randall Wood
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Monday, 02 January 2006 |
 Chalk me up as another satisfied Ubuntu user. Kubuntu, really, which is Ubuntu with the KDE desktop in lieu of Gnome. That's an important distinction, as far as I'm concerned: when I first abandoned SUSE and was looking around for a new distro, I checked out Ubuntu and rejected it because I simply prefer KDE over Gnome. It's not religious to me, the KDE desktop just fits the way I work, and that means a lot. So when I heard about Kubuntu, I was excited to give it a try, and after a couple of days tinkering with the live distro, I made the decision to install. And no regrets! The following comments apply to Breezy Badger, the second official release.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 26 February 2006 )
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