1. Merry Christmas 2009
(About/Site Blog)

Earlier Goosy Christmas cards:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=634 Mr.Goose's infamous Webfooted Weblog:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/mrgoose

2. Trying to buy a PC without Windows part 5 - Acer, the most shameful response so far
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

On 2009-11-26, I wrote to Acer UK to establish what its policy was regarding the Microsoft Tax. This was its response:- Hello, Thank you for contacting Acer. Regarding your enquiry, The value would ...

3. Making Ubuntu look good
(Articles/Technology)

Seems that Canonical has woken up to the fact that the basic Ubuntu looks, well, rather turgid. Fortumalely help is at hand in the form of a theme called Blubuntu. Now, Blubuntu is a great looking theme ...

4. Upgrade to 64 bit Goosebuntu (9.04 & 9.10)(Jaunty & Karmic)
(Articles/Technology)

...  You also can use a package manager to select and install these applications. However this is an example of where using the Linux Terminal could actually be quicker. To make things easier for you, I have ...

5. Update - Laptops Direct
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

... for money and seem to be very robust and business-like. We also know from experience that the Lenovo range is Linux-friendly and performs well on that platform. The model we are interested in is:- http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenovo_N500_Laptop_NS75SUK/version.asp?PID=1246 ...

6. Why we object to the Microsoft Windows Tax
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

... it to the retailer for a refund or credit." Yet retailers are not honouring this. This means that Linux users such as ourselves are effectively forced to pay a what amounts to a tax, to a large foreign ...

7. Surely Ubuntu Linux is only for a minority of geeks & programmers?
(FAQ/Technology)

Minority interest? Yes. Only used by geeks & programmers?  Not necessarily... Ubuntu is a minority interest insofar as it only has a fraction of the users that M$ Windows has. Moreover, despite great ...

8. Update - Dell
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

This is an update to the Dell OS-free laptop fiasco:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=182&Itemid=331 Seems that whilst Dell cannot be bothered to respond ...

9. Trying to buy a PC without Windows part 2 - Laptops Direct
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

This is the second article in a new series of case studies illustrating the difficulty one has purchasing a PC in the UK without being forced to pay a "Microsoft Tax". We use Linux on all our PC's and ...

10. I want to try Linux, is it best to dual boot? or what?
(FAQ/Technology)

... could also flirt with Linux in relative safety. We never stored data on the boot disk. So swapping them around was a doddle. However, when we dumped Windows 2 years ago in favour of Kubuntu Linux, we decided ...

11. Trying to buy a PC without Windows part 1 - Dell UK
(Articles/Microsoft Windows Tax Scam)

This is a new series of case studies illustrating the difficulty one has purchasing a PC in the UK without being forced to pay a "Microsoft Tax". We use Linux on all our PC's and have done so for several ...

12. My Ubuntu sound system suddenly stopped working. Can I restart it without rebooting?
(FAQ/Technology)

... then the browser will perform at a snail's pace! As a Linux user, you will no doubt consider rebooting to be a personal failure! It's also annoying if you have loads of apps open, as I usually do. However, ...

13. It's war!
(Articles/Technology)

... These sit upon the Azure Services Platform, Microsoft' new cloud based OS, intended to rival Google Apps Meantime on 2009-07-07 Google announced its new Linux-based Chrome OS operating system that some ...

14. How do you install Google's Chromium browser on (K)Ubuntu Linux?
(FAQ/Technology)

Unfortunately the new Google Chromium open source browser is not included in the Ubuntu software repositories yet. Therefore installing it is a little more complex than other Ubuntu applications. But ...

15. What is the best media player for the GarfNet internet radio tuner?
(FAQ/GarfNet)

... selector picklist. This is actually a fairly good player and should work fine on Windows systems. We use Linux and our machines use either MPlayer or VLC player. I am a big fan of the French-developed ...

16. Internet radio tuner
(Tools+Tables/Radio Frequencies)

... use Linux and our machines see either MPlayer or VLC player. Whatever player you use, it can take up to 10 seconds before a stream engages. My trusty Icom IC-R20 scanner (pictured below) is much faster ...

17. What is LAMPP?
(FAQ/Technology)

LAMPP is an abbreviation for Linux | Apache | MySQL (database) | PHP ((Pretty) Hypertext Pre-processor) | Perl (programming language). Today, many Linux distributions come with Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl ...

18. Would you use Debian on a desktop or laptop PC?
(FAQ/Technology)

Yes and no! Debian is great but there are other Linuxes that are easier for the end-user to configure. My current favourite is Ubuntu. In fact if you have an old PC lying around, say a Pentium c/w ...

19. Didn't you use another Linux at one time?
(FAQ/GarfNet)

In 1995 our ISP set us up on a server running FreeBSD. Then in 2005 we built our own server, moved to Linux and chose a 'live CD' product based on Debian Linux called Simply Mepis. At the time, if you ...

20. Which Linux 'flavour' did you choose and why did you choose it?
(FAQ/GarfNet)

Debian 5.0 Debian is arguably one of the most stable platforms upon which you can build a web server. It's also free and so are its frequent updates. http://www.debian.org