Exhausting Weekend

Exhausting when you don't spend some time on the weekend to catch up on rest. For parents with young kids finding this time may be quite difficult.  It also affects your concentration and productivity when you are tired.

Anyways, we should have a 500GB disk dedicated to ubuntu and freebsd mirrors within a day or two. Announcement of the urls will be available via the usual channels.

Help fixed the two computers for the family. One of them the CPU fan was so clogged up with dust, that it stopped running. Repairing it was simply a matter of taking things apart and applying a strong vacuum cleaner to it.

While two of the family computers now run Ubuntu, unfortunately one of them still runs Windows XP. Beyond MS Office, Microsoft also has an entrenched position in Malaysia's "Smart Schools", which means kids use MS Office and also other programs such as as MS Publisher. While the latter can be dealt with using OpenOffice, you can't actually just load MS Publish formats. It's not so much the functionality (my family has no problems using OpenOffice or Gnome desktop), but file formats which are preventing Linux usage. I need to dig a bit more into the use case of MS Publisher to check what they need it for.

For all other needs, they are happier with Ubuntu as it provides all they need in an easier environment.

• Watching movies/dramas with subtitles (gxine)
  
• Burning DVDs and CD-Rs
• Safe/virus free use of Internet using a Web Browser
• Importing photos from cameras
• Listening to music
  
• Share printer

Another interesting observation is how hot older PCs run (Athlons and P4s). It may actually be worth it to upgrade motherboard to take advantage of new low powered chips that run more efficiently and quieter.