Got A New Laptop

[ki4jgt]

Just ordered a new laptop and I want to customize it. Anyone have any suggestions?

Specifications:

- Inspiron 15R

- 8 gigs RAM

- i5 processor (64-bit)

- 1 TB hard drive (which I'll never use LOL)

- Wifi (and I believe bluetooth but not sure)

What I plan to do so far:

- Install Ubuntu

- Had a wierd desire to make it Dvorak instead of QWERTY

- Also wondered what it would be like if the keyboard had no letters, so I purchased black stickers to go over the keys.

- If no bluetooth, I plan to solder a bluetooth adapter into the motherboard.

- Getting a wireless mouse

- Getting a wired headset for comm purposes

- Going to setup a VNC server for remote access

- Thinking of donating some cycles to the folding research projects

- Installing DVD support

- Adding a live radio feed for my local police station to Rhythmbox

- Want to look into setting up a DDNS url for it and possibly SSH

Any other ideas?

[MDKwlan]

The specs look fairly good to me.

Do you plan on doing any Pen testing or is this just for doing HAM Radio related things?

Also what flavor of Ubuntu are you going to use? The stock Unity (ew, Sorry)?

And again are you doing stright up Ubuntu or are you doing a multi-boot since you have 1TB?

All questions no answers. Sorry :X

[ki4jgt]

The specs look fairly good to me.

Do you plan on doing any Pen testing or is this just for doing HAM Radio related things?

Also what flavor of Ubuntu are you going to use? The stock Unity (ew, Sorry)?

And again are you doing stright up Ubuntu or are you doing a multi-boot since you have 1TB?

All questions no answers. Sorry :X

Well, I can't figure out how to build the native echolink program (truth be told, I can't even remember what it's called anymore) so I'm stuck using it through WINE. I probably won't install echolink as it never has met my needs under WINE but I plan to rewrite my original field day logger (from BASIC into Python) and use it as a general purpose logger. I dislike the Unity interface but I prefer it over the others I've seen :(. KDE is too configurable and bulky. XFCE is too light and isn't configurable enough. blah blah blah. GNOME 3 just gives me headaches. Gnome 2 was my favorite but I don't want something that has moved has moved on to "bigger and better" things. If I could change anything in unity though it would be a better way to manage windows. Because every window takes the same space they're always interfering with one another when the menu bar is concerned :(

I will install the compiz cofiguration program. I like having the ability to add graphic appeal (mostly making my windows transparent with certain key combos). I mostly plan to use the laptop for 3D rendering with Blender. I want to do short movies and images in HD. I also would like to get into pen testing. I used to be quite good at ******* ******** but that was back in the day when ******** were simply one command after another of mostly instructions on how to function and didn't take into consideration security vulnerabilities. However, I don't plan to use this knowledge for illegal purposes (anymore) as back then they were just member based things that ripped you off by making you pay for something that the authors themselves had released for free. Anyways, I still enjoy fooling around with that stuff and wouldn't mind a good base on how to get started again :) Don't worry about it. The questions help make decisions.

[MDKwlan]

Aw. Wine kinda sucks for some applications so unstable sometimes but what do you expect lol?

Personally i like LXDE11 but you said that you don't like XFCE so I don't think you'll like it.

I just don't care for the unity in scheme at all but another fairly good one is Mate. In my opinion it feels like KDE (kinda).

Pentesting is what i do for a living also its just a ton of fun. Especially if you find a 0-day. Oh when that happens my day just got 1000000000x better lol.

I love the whole Linux GPL "thing" but for 3d rendering i would suggest Windows. I know i might get flack for that but honestly it will make it easier for you to dual boot because as you said your echolink program might not have a linux variant.

Compiz when i was using it for xfce got under my skin. Every time i would go to edit it something would happen either i royal messed it up or its not as stable as i thought.

[ki4jgt]

Aw. Wine kinda sucks for some applications so unstable sometimes but what do you expect lol?

Personally i like LXDE11 but you said that you don't like XFCE so I don't think you'll like it.

I just don't care for the unity in scheme at all but another fairly good one is Mate. In my opinion it feels like KDE (kinda).

Pentesting is what i do for a living also its just a ton of fun. Especially if you find a 0-day. Oh when that happens my day just got 1000000000x better lol.

I love the whole Linux GPL "thing" but for 3d rendering i would suggest Windows. I know i might get flack for that but honestly it will make it easier for you to dual boot because as you said your echolink program might not have a linux variant.

Compiz when i was using it for xfce got under my skin. Every time i would go to edit it something would happen either i royal messed it up or its not as stable as i thought.

I totally forgot about MATE. That would be perfect. The only question I have is will the Ubuntu programs interact smoothly with it since the default desktop is Unity in Ubuntu? Last night I decided to dual-boot backtrack 5 and Ubuntu. I would give Backtrack around 10 gigs and use it only for hacking/pen testing. I want to also install spoonwep on it :). Is there something particularly wrong with 3D rendering in linux (I plan to primarily use Blender) or is it a gut feeling? I ask because I've already had to redo some of the shortcut keys in Unity because they interfered with Blender. Once I got past though, it started acting smoother also, with all the settings and wistles of Compiz messing it up is fairly easy to do. You forget which shortcuts you set for this or for that, you forget which aspects of it you have activated and which ones you've deactivated, you change shortcuts the way you like them and then learn that they're interfering with something else. If you can develop a system with it though the process goes a LOT smoother. As for the Windows dual-boot, I'm considering it but back in the day I used to deal with a lot of infected files (WAREZ and such). I ended up getting in the hundreds range of infections on my computer each month :(. That's why I switched completely to Linux. I'm still paranoid about Windows. If you care to pay attention it could be avoided I guess. I mean I work on Windows machines daily fixing them and telling their owners how NOT to get infected but I'd just prefer not to have to worry about it. Linux has all I need. (except for quality games but that one is steadily coming).

[MDKwlan]

I just tried it out so i could see as a POC (Proof of concept). Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running with MATE it works fairly well considering that for what ever reason My pc hates Unity. Hate meaning that i can run say a high end game and get no lag but unity will lag hard. The reason i said that for 3d rendering is more of a gut feeling. Say you wanted to do a ton of video editing i would recommend Mac os x. I would think that Windows would work best for it because of the 100% driver support for any video card where linux can be hit and miss even with proprietary drivers. For as far as it goes with games for linux in a recent news post Gabe newell said that they are looking for Steam to come to Linux (I'm thinking mainly Ubuntu). Reasoning was that Windows 8 is horrible and i can honestly say that it really is crap. I defended Vista for a long time before i was like "Oh they are right..." but no I'm not even giving Windows 8 anything at all. I'm surprised you had so much happen with dual booting Windows and Linux. I currently am multi booting Arch BT5 Windows 7 and Mac os X (hackintosh).

[ki4jgt]

I just tried it out so i could see as a POC (Proof of concept). Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running with MATE it works fairly well considering that for what ever reason My pc hates Unity. Hate meaning that i can run say a high end game and get no lag but unity will lag hard. The reason i said that for 3d rendering is more of a gut feeling. Say you wanted to do a ton of video editing i would recommend Mac os x. I would think that Windows would work best for it because of the 100% driver support for any video card where linux can be hit and miss even with proprietary drivers. For as far as it goes with games for linux in a recent news post Gabe newell said that they are looking for Steam to come to Linux (I'm thinking mainly Ubuntu). Reasoning was that Windows 8 is horrible and i can honestly say that it really is crap. I defended Vista for a long time before i was like "Oh they are right..." but no I'm not even giving Windows 8 anything at all. I'm surprised you had so much happen with dual booting Windows and Linux. I currently am multi booting Arch BT5 Windows 7 and Mac os X (hackintosh).

That's how I feel about w7. My sister has a w7. Let's just say after doing the same cycle of:

(Download File)

You can't run this file because it doesn't belong to you

(change file ownersip)

This appears to be a malicious file. Windows has removed it to protect your safety.

-file dissapears-

for an hour trying to adjust window's security settings, I don't want W7 LOL. That's however the distro my system includes :(

I've also noticed the game lag from Unity as well :( I thought it was because of my system becoming obsolete. I have 1 gig RAM with an i386 and 150 gigs of HDD currently. I've never heard of steam. What is it exactly?

[linkstojustice]

That's how I feel about w7. My sister has a w7. Let's just say after doing the same cycle of:

(Download File)

You can't run this file because it doesn't belong to you

(change file ownersip)

This appears to be a malicious file. Windows has removed it to protect your safety.

-file dissapears-

for an hour trying to adjust window's security settings, I don't want W7 LOL. That's however the distro my system includes :(

I've also noticed the game lag from Unity as well :( I thought it was because of my system becoming obsolete. I have 1 gig RAM with an i386 and 150 gigs of HDD currently. I've never heard of steam. What is it exactly?

Yes sometimes windows can get really annoying but i find little things in any OS that bothers me..

Steam is a program similar to something like itunes except for games... Pretty much you can buy and play your games through the program.. Any game you buy will be saved to your account letting you install it on any computer that you can access steam from. They also offer a good variety of free 2 play games and a rumor is going around that they will start offering software also.

As for using blender inside linux I've never had any problems with it. Personally i think installing and setting it up is easier using linux.

I currently run

Windows 7 ultimate 32 bit

backtrack 5 r2

linux mint 13 (mate)

[Malachai]

What i suggest and you do is keep your windows machine the way it is. You might need it just load vmware or virutalbox and run the ubuntu from there. Trus tme much easier and better.

One other thing to do is download truecrype and encrypt your whole drive. that way if you lose it or something comes up you won't be to scared if someone found something they shouldn't see or if you want to keep your privacy to yourself only.

Just my suggestion.

[MDKwlan]

That's how I feel about w7. My sister has a w7. Let's just say after doing the same cycle of:

(Download File)

You can't run this file because it doesn't belong to you

(change file ownersip)

This appears to be a malicious file. Windows has removed it to protect your safety.

-file dissapears-

for an hour trying to adjust window's security settings, I don't want W7 LOL. That's however the distro my system includes :(

I've also noticed the game lag from Unity as well :( I thought it was because of my system becoming obsolete. I have 1 gig RAM with an i386 and 150 gigs of HDD currently. I've never heard of steam. What is it exactly?

Wow O_O I've never had this happen to me on windows Lol. Guess i must be lucky?

Steam is in not so many words cloud gaming in a sense. You buy games from it download them ??? profit.

My specs are:

i5 overclocked to 3.8 Ghz

16 Gb of Ram

6700 Raedon Ati Video card

1TB HDD

32 gb SSD

Cooling kit

And even with that unity sucks for me. Could be because i need proprietary drivers for my video card? Not too sure.

[ki4jgt]

Yes sometimes windows can get really annoying but i find little things in any OS that bothers me..

Steam is a program similar to something like itunes except for games... Pretty much you can buy and play your games through the program.. Any game you buy will be saved to your account letting you install it on any computer that you can access steam from. They also offer a good variety of free 2 play games and a rumor is going around that they will start offering software also.

As for using blender inside linux I've never had any problems with it. Personally i think installing and setting it up is easier using linux.

I currently run

Windows 7 ultimate 32 bit

backtrack 5 r2

linux mint 13 (mate)

Thanks for that info. It'll make the Ubuntu transition easier. I also don't like the quirks of Ubuntu but they're a little more barable for me than the ones in Windows. Someone else may feel differently though.

What i suggest and you do is keep your windows machine the way it is. You might need it just load vmware or virutalbox and run the ubuntu from there. Trus tme much easier and better.

One other thing to do is download truecrype and encrypt your whole drive. that way if you lose it or something comes up you won't be to scared if someone found something they shouldn't see or if you want to keep your privacy to yourself only.

Just my suggestion.

I was going to download truecrypt. I love the program and usually create an encrypted container (around 5 gigs) on every computer I get for securities sake.

Wow O_O I've never had this happen to me on windows Lol. Guess i must be lucky?

Steam is in not so many words cloud gaming in a sense. You buy games from it download them ??? profit.

My specs are:

i5 overclocked to 3.8 Ghz

16 Gb of Ram

6700 Raedon Ati Video card

1TB HDD

32 gb SSD

Cooling kit

And even with that unity sucks for me. Could be because i need proprietary drivers for my video card? Not too sure.

Wish I knew. I would like to see where Unity is going but it drives me insane to see it lagging. If my system has this many resources and still lags, I don't know why I even got it.