Upgrade Of The Linux Computer

After building and running this computer a few months I decided it was time to upgrade it a bit. I obtained this motherboard from one of the liquidators for $20 last summer. It is an older socket 775 ATX board running a Celeron 3.33 processor with 4 GB of DDR ram.
Having developed a love for SSD/Flash drives, I installed a Compact Flash to Sata adapter board with an 8 GB Compact Flash card as the primary drive running Ubuntu version 9.04. There is a 100 GB hard drive installed for file storage.
I was totally impressed with the improvement in performance the compact Flash drive made. I have used Ubuntu on a number of computers but never realized the speed and response I have on this computer. This was an upgrade well worth doing considering the $6 cost of the Compact Flash adapter (bought on Ebay) and the $22 cost of the 8 GB compact Flash Card (bought at the local Microcenter).
Future plans for this computer are up in the air right now. It is a keeper. However it's full size tower case doesn't fit into the scheme of things in my home office/workshop. I've managed to have all the other computers built in small form factor cases or my computer cabinet. At some point I can see it taking up residence in the cabinet.

Google Chrome OS

Google's announcement of their developing the Chrome browser based, fast and lite weight operating system sounded interesting to me. Initially it will be designed to run on netbooks. The program is being developed open source, so future applications and add on software should be extensive. Regretfully Chrome OS won't be available for about a year.
While Chrome is being developed, the chromium open source project is busy developing similar projects. Thanks to the folks at gdgt.com I was able to get a copy of the Chromium OS for the Asus netbooks. I'm sure over the next few weeks there will be versions out for other netbooks.
It is my understanding that the OS will only run on a solid state drive. At this point in time most users are booting it from a usb flash drive. After following the instructions from the gdgt site I could not get chromium to copy to either of my 4 gb flash drives. The only thing I can see that might have been wrong is my 4 gb flash drives were actually a bit smaller than 4 gb. Not one to give up easily, I tried setting up an SD card to run it. Absolutely no problems setting it up. I rebooted into the sd drive and chromium loaded without incident.
While chromium is in the very early development stages, it is a reliable workable operating system. My company utilizes cloud storage of documents in conjunction with Google Docs so the OS works great in that environment. I'm looking forward to seeing Chromium grow. As time goes on, added plug in applications will make it more versatile. As it is now, if you are comfortable working in the Chrome browser you will be right at home with the operating system.
I currently have Chromium installed on SD cards in both my Asus 1005HA and my Asus 900HA and it is working great. When I boot the netbooks up, I hit the Escape key and it gives me the option to boot into windows 7 off of the hard drive or Chromium off of the SD card. I consider that the best of both worlds.
If you want to run Chromium on your Asus netbooks, click here for 3 easy steps to chromium os on an Asus netbook .
It may also work on similar netbooks. It would take minimal effort to find out.

Operating Sytems - The Windows Syndrome

I've been around long enough to experience just about every computer operating system that has come along. Many experiences with various operating systems were short lived. I attributed their short life to my not liking change. After pondering on it for some time I now realize change wasn't the reason. There are two factors that actually discouraged me from giving an operating system a good chance to prove itself.
The first and probably the most important factor was it required thought and learning to effectively use it. In many cases I didn't learn my way around an operating system well enough to realize and appreciate it's potential.
My second reason is one I think the majority of computer users have. I call it the Windows Syndrome. I started out computing using DOS. When Windows came along I jumped on the windows train and stayed on it all the way from Windows 3.1 to Windows 7. For the most part it was a successful experience. My problems came when I would try another Operating System. I would expect it to look and feel like Windows. I've conditioned myself to operate in a Windows environment and I found anything else uncomfortable. Some of the current Linux distributions are very Windows like, but they still require certain tasks to be done differently. They aren't necessarily any harder to use than Windows. But they are different enough that it takes a certain amount of learning for a user to use them with comfort. I'm quite sure that if a new computer users first experience was using a Linux application such as Ubuntu they would have uncomfortable feelings when trying Windows for the first time.
Fortunately my love for Netbooks and portable internet devices has opened me up to learning new operating systems and the way I use them.

About Frankenzilla

Putting Frankenzilla together was a fun project. It also resulted in a computer that is useful for day to day web surfing.
As I previously blogged the UBTX motherboard was an interesting but doable challenge. I ended up putting a Pentium four 2.8 Ghz CPU with 3 GB of Ram in it. The performance is every bit of what you would expect of this configuration.
There is a good reason why I mounted the computers in the cabinet as I did. Initially I was going to mount the motherboards in the same way they would be mounted in a conventional case with the i/o ports having access from the rear panel. However the computer cabinet is my computer playground. All motherboards, power supplies and other components are mounted using sticky back velcro. Using this methods allows me to change and move components at will.
For project computers such as this, I don't install CD/DVD drives. If one is needed, I plug in either a USB or Sata drive.
There's still a lot of room in the computer cabinet. Stay tuned to see what will take up residence next. Just know it will be something put together cheap.

Frankenzilla Is Home

Frankenzilla is up and running sharing space in the computer cabinet with the Magic Jack phone computer that resides on the top shelf.