Sunday, May 1, 2011

Finding a Sound Driver for Windows-It is real pain in the neck.

I did a little search on windows drivers for posterity.
It is done automatically by most of the well known Linux distribution in which ALSA does a good job of doing the background check and then install it at live as well as install time.
So I did not bother about drivers for some time.
The other ally was Knoppix which does automatic scan and writes it at live session and I often use it to detect unknown drivers for unknown hardware (secondhand stuff and the owner often has no clue ).
In this scenario I went up with SuSe and YAST and from it got the details.
Then typed all the details at Google and I could not get anywhere close to the source of a free download.
After several tries and I only get to the users comments and asking for help (tired and fed of trying to get at the web forums and find a solution).
No helpful hints.
Failing which I typed autoscan on Google for drivers and I get handful of exe files which I cannot use.
Then I found a site which specializes in drives called Drivers Guide.
It was the only site which gave some helpful instruction but you have to register with them.
With several tries with lot of other advertisement all over the page I managed to hone down to the probable driver and click download (lot of distraction by Microsoft guys).
It was only 14 MiB and the link broke down and went back to the site then get the latest download from the site but the one I wanted not in the list.
So I went back to my history tree (history tree is helpful when a link is broken) in the web browser and clicked where the link broke and re-did all the steps to download.
Now it says it takes 32 minutes to download and all these took one hour and more and thank god it is May Day Holiday and I had time to spare.
This just to illustrate what a pain a windows guy / girl goes through to get his sound working.
I am not going to use the driver now but put it in my archive in case one day a guy who is using a similar IBM computer and was stuck with driver installation.
In any case I have decided to charge him or her for asking my help and for the driver or chase him away telling either you get me to install Linux or go and do it yourself without any instructions from me.
Or tell him visit my blogspot for help with no charges of course.

My Selection of Linux utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Archives

My Selection of Linux Utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Archives-08

Archiving is essential if one is downloading images like me.
I use CD/ DVD and and external hard drives for that purpose.
If one is archiving music and video then the requirements are different.
Real archiving is into different electronic media like good old dates mechanical tapes.
Amanda was Linux utility that are used storing huge amount of data including server output.
I am not referring to that.
RAIDs and other methods are for industrial needs and mission critical 24/7 services but what I am referring here is for an ordinary desktop user who has files that can be managed easily.
If the hard disk size is a problem one does not have lot of partitions ARK is a compression utility one can use I am not personally in favour compression and encryption (if you forget the password, you are in for trouble) and if one wants to open a file in Windows setup you are in for a big headache.
The list can be very simple.
1. K3b is my favorite
2. Light Scribe if you have a similar DVD ROM
3. LaCe
4. AcetoneISO for images
5. K9copy
6. QPxTool is comprehensive and covers all types of data (I have not used it, since my requirement are simple enough to cover with K3B and a external hard drive)

What if I format my hard disk with Dropbox in it?

What if I format my hard disk with Dropbox in it?

It is my habit to format my hard disk leaving sometimes home partition intact towards the end of the year but this year I waited till March to do that since some of the Linux Distribution new versions are released around that time.
What would happen to my Dropbox content if I format my hard disk.
I did not have a clue?
What I did was to save all the contents (Copy them to a DVD) in my Dropbox (which was little over 2GiB) except the 2 Linux images I have saved there.
Then I completely forgot about restoring my Dropbox to its original content.

Then just to see what is up there I logged into Dropbox but I could see nothing in my folder.

So disappointed I went on with my work and later hovered over Dropbox icon on my desktop panel to see it is downloading the files back to the Dropbox folder.
With over 1700 files it indicated it might takes 7 days to download the entire content.
Well it was not a shock of the day for me.
It took 7 days, 7 hours and 7 minutes to download Debian Multi DVD and my Dropbox folder took 7 days I can take it sitting upright not lying down.
My only worry was I was downloading the last 1.4 GiB of Supreme Super Gamer (0f 8 GiB in total) and it would adversely effect the completion of the download.
Mind you I was downloading Pollipix which was at snail pace.
Quickly stopped other Torrents downloads from the queue and went to sleep.
It was not something I am going to worry except I have to keep my computer running overnight (not day time, which is even slower).

Got up early in the morning the My DAY Holiday (unlike workers who are never on work on working days in this country but fully worked up today) doing something or finishing something not finished intellectually was my intention and I looked at the Dropbox to see it had downloaded all except two images.

While I was typing this Puppy (Wary) was completed and the other Linux image which is over 1 GiB would be downloaded in its own time.

But to my surprise the net effect on my Torrent download was about 250 MiB (usually 1.0 GiB overnight but today 750 MiB).

That I can live with it with painfully slow download speed in this country and I am not going to pay enormous amount in addition to Peo TV and the ADSL (which they fail to keep optimum contractual obligations) for a little bit of extra pace on download speed.

If politicians are slow here especially after holidays so can I be!

So synchronization does work but that depends on the download speed of the link you have.

Whole idea of having the Dropbox was to keep some live images there for my friends to share but I am reconsidering my wisdom on this issue and thinking on having a Light Weight Dropbox Folder or delete all the heavy files before formatting the hard disk.
Even the problem here is I have several computers and in which computer I keep my Dropbox Folder active.
Certainly not in my laptop.
In any case i believe the Dropbox has a way of synchronizing like in Torrents to the last second and start at the point I switched off the computer.
This is a question I post to all the Cloud Hosting Companies out there.
Have you got the correct solution without compromising my downloads.
In my case I was smart enough to give a rest to the Dropbox when I was doing (mission critical activity-the catch phrase of the corporate complainers) my last few downloads that is also the games and not mission critical in any sense but me have to wait few ours more to play a game or two on my Weekend or the May DAY Holiday!