Monthly Archives: July 2009

Almost every single user had at least once encountered the situation when he/she wasn’t able to find the documentation and installation disks for all the hardware. That’s why many users when they need to download and install the drivers for a particular hardware try to find out “who the vendor of this hardware is”.

In fact it’s not as hard to do as it may seem to be. There are just 5 simple steps…

1. Find out all the hardware connected to the bus

Launch the terminal and enter the command:

lspci

The list of all connected hardware is displayed. For instance, we are going to check the vendor of Audio device. In this step we need to remember the digits located in the very beginning of the line.

…

00:1b.0 Audio device …

…

We have the following digits: 00:1b.0

2. Determine ID of vendor and device itself

Enter the following command:

lspci –n

We get the list of the same devices, but displayed in a digital way. Find the line which starts with the numbers we got in the first step.

00:1b.0 0403: 8086:284b (rev 03)

Here we need to remember (or write down) the following digits – 8086:284b. IN fact these digits represent the passport of device: 8086 – ID of vendor and 284b – ID of device.

3. Right now to find out the real names we need to visit this site.

Using ID of vendor (8086) we find out that the vendor is Intel Corporation. If we click on ID we get the list of vendor’s devices.

4. According to 284b we get the name of the device itself. It’s 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller. ID represents the link to the list of subsystems for given device.

5. Possessing all the data we can easily check the vendor’s website (or any other website with drivers) to get the driver we need.

Many of users, though hearing a lot about free software and Linux in particular, have never tried to install any of Linux distributions. Of course, there are a lot of different reasons for that, but the one of them we are going to discuss consists in the fact that they don’t know how to do it and are afraid of “spoiling” the system (generally Windows) currently installed.

In fact Linux installation is much easier than the majority of users may think it to be; it can hardly be considered more complex than the one of Windows. The only thing users should remember is that they need to install it on a different disk because in most cases Linux distributions are installed as a second operating system; but we will talk about it in detail a little bit later…

As regards the system requirements they are pretty the same as the ones for Windows XP, so there is no need to have a high-end computer in order to try Linux. Moreover, the installation program automatically detects your computer’s hardware and you don’t usually need to supply it with any specific details about your system; though you should make sure that your hardware meets the minimum requirements of the distribution you’ve chosen.

In addition to that it should be emphasized that generally all distributions support graphical and text-based installations. Only systems with more that 192MB of RAM or that boot from the installation DVD or Live Media can use the graphical installer. For the text-based installation you should have at least 64MB of RAM.

Before we start it should be mentioned that in this certain case we will review the installation of Fedora 11. However if you decide to install different Linux distribution (please read this post to check the most popular ones), you won’t encounter any problems, because in general the installation process is very similar. Moreover it will be much better if you choose a Live version, because you will have the opportunity to check the way system works.

The Installation Process

First of all make sure that you have a separate partition prepared for the installation of the distribution (you can use Acronis Disk Director Suite, Paragon Partition Manager and etc); however this step is not an obligatory one. Burn a CD or DVD from the distribution image. Check if the system boots from CD- or DVD-ROM. If you using a Live version of a distribution, it’s a great idea to test the system.

Live system

As soon as you boot from CD or DVD with the Linux distribution the system will be loaded, though it doesn’t mean that it’s already installed on your PC or laptop. I would strongly recommend you to spend some time checking system in action, just to make sure that you’ve made a right decision as far as the distribution is concerned. Here is the way Fedora Live version works:

a) The screen you see while the system is loading to start

b) Choosing the language of the system and keyboard

c) The desktop of the system that has just started

d) Checking the functionality and the software available without the need to be installed

Finally when you’re done with the checking and are ready to start, just double-click “Install to Hard Drive” icon in order to initialize the installation process.

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that at the moment every single Internet user has at least one instant messaging client installed. It’s really hard to imagine that there is someone who does not use IM clients to communicate with other people; moreover the variety of IM clients is so great that everyone is able to choose the one he/she needs. That’s why the ability to use IM clients while switching from Windows to Linux OS has to be taken into consideration as well.

Though some Windows users may think that on Linux there are not so many IM clients to choose from, in reality the amount of counterparts is very significant. In the given review we are going to discuss the major Linux alternatives to Windows IM clients in order to demonstrate that there is no need to worry about the possibility of losing functionality of the IM client you prefer.

IM Protocols and Clients

ICQ

ICQ is a popular instant messaging service, the first version of which was released in November 1996. Since that time ICQ became one of the most popular instant messaging clients (at the moment it’s used by over 38 million users worldwide). The name ICQ is a homophone for the phrase “I seek you”. ICQ uses OSCAR (stands for Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime) protocol that is a flagship instant messaging protocol of America Online (AOL). OSCAR protocol is used in AIM as well; as a result ICQ and AIM users are able to add each other to their contact list without the need for any external clients.

The latest version of ICQ (ICQ6) launched in April 2007 has the following most important features: sending text messages, offline support, multi-users chats, free SMS from ICQ to mobile, multiplayer games, animated icons, greeting cards, voice and video communication.

ICQ users are identified by numbers called UIN (meaning either Universal Internet Number or Unified Identification Number) which represent names assigned to each ICQ user. Moreover since ICQ6 appeared users have the opportunity to log in using their email addresses.

Although ICQ is very popular among the users there are some really important issues for which it has been heavily criticized. Here are the most important ones:

Spam – many users have to install antispam-bots, because ICQ is often used for distribution of spam and unwanted advertisement

Message delivery – proper message delivery is not guaranteed

Aggressive policy regarding alternative clients – American Online implements a lot of different changes to stop unauthorized ICQ clients working

Privacy and copyright – the acceptance of ICQ Terms of Service means that ICQ may publish or distribute any messages which were sent through the system that could be meant to be private

As far as the programs for Linux are concerned I would like to emphasize that the great majority of them support the most popular protocols giving users the opportunity to communicate everyone they want. Here are the most popular ICQ clients which run on Linux OS:

• Kopete supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, Google Talk, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger and others, for Unix-like;
• Licq supports ICQ, AIM and MSN, for Unix-like;
• Pidgin (formerly Gaim) supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, Gtalk, MSN, IRC, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Meanwhile (IBM Lotus Sametime) and others;
• qutIM Qt-based, cross-platform;
• Sim-IM supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, XMPP, for Windows and Unix-like and others.