Our environment is in deep trouble. Do you want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem? To avoid being part of the problem don’t toss that supposedly outdated computer onto a landfill. Your discarded computer carcass will take decades to biodegrade and leach scads of poisonous chemicals into the environment during the process.
Several years ago the Utah Department of Environmental Quality estimated that by 2004 more than 300 million computers would be considered obsolete, generating well over 1 billion pounds of lead, 2 million pounds of cadmium, 1 million pounds of chromium, and 400,000 pounds of mercury. Municipal incineration is the largest point source of dioxins into the US and Canadian environments and among the largest sources of heavy metal contamination of the atmosphere. Of course the year 2004 is long gone, and these horrible numbers have undoubtedly been far surpassed in spite of efforts such as corporate trade-in programs.
Why do people toss their computers? That’s simple; given the computer industry’s unending performance advances there is a widespread perception that you can no longer DO anything worthwhile with your old computers. This dangerous assumption is simply not true.
Do you really think that you need Giga-everythings to get your work done and have your fun? Microsoft seems to think so. I remember when 128 Megabytes was a lot of memory. I also remember when “Why would anyone ever need more than 640 Kilobytes of memory?” was the official party line expressed by none other than William Gates III himself.
I’m told that Damn Small Linux requires only 50 Megabytes of disk space, a 486 processor (do you remember what that is?) and 8 Megabytes of RAM. If you want to browse the Internet, you’ll have to move up to 16 Megabytes of RAM and use the Dillo browser. The popular Firefox browser will require additional memory. Frankly, I wouldn’t use such an underpowered computer for moderate or heavy Internet usage. But you can run Linux commands and learn how operating systems work on such computers. And you can play a multitude of games.
For every individual trying to resuscitate a 486 computer there are dozens trying to know what to do with an old Pentium such as my Pentium III 450 Megahertz computers with 128 Megabytes of memory purchased in 1999 or more powerful computers purchased several years later. Without extensive upgrades many of these computers won’t run Windows Vista and may not run Windows XP. But they will run Damn Small Linux or other Linux versions alongside a full range of today’s applications. Let’s put them to work, learn Linux, and do our bit saving the environment.
We next see how Linux lets you control the computer, whether it is “obsolete” or not.
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www.infernodevelopment.com C C++ Programming Tutorial using Dev-Cpp for beginners. We create a C++ GUESSING GAME! (Music: Megadeth – A Tout Le Monde) Using the rand function in C++ we can seed it with the time function. Then using cout and cin we can print and input information from the user. This C++ Programming Tutorial is brought to you by Inferno Development. It is useful for anyone interested in: Computer Science Computer Engineering C++ programming language C programming language…
Help answer the question about linux for beginner
Linux Beginner?I am completing new to Linux. I have acquired a computer with Qandros OS.
I have downloaded a couple of games to get my 6 y/o started, and copied them to the harddrive. They have .tar file names. At this point I am stuck.
I have bought some utilities on a CD Rom but they haven't arrived yet, but sofar as I can see it, my problem is that I am so used to Windows OS that I haven't a clue how to install this software. I have tried looking at Linux forums but they seem to be focussed on developers and technical people and not simple users like me. Please help.
About Author
Over the years Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet. As you can tell from his wine websites including www.theitalianwineconnection.com he is quite a fan of fine wine, but always in moderation. He teaches various and sundry computer courses including Linux and Windows operating systems at an Ontario French-language community college. Visit his new website http://www.linux4windows.com teaching you how to download and run Damn Small Linux even on that outdated Windows computer which has been gathering dust in the basement.
I use Fedora 10 (http://www.fedoraproject.org).
The tools you use for development depends on what you want to do with your efforts when you're done.
If you're doing basic applications development, stick with what you know and get a hold of one of the Express editions of Visual Studio. It's simply the best IDE for development; it's the only product by Microsoft that I actually praise (most of the time).
( http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/ )
I've heard good things about Ubuntu for Windows Users transitioning to Linux OSes. I never had problems (I learned UNIX on Solaris 2 SunSparc ) with Linux, and I've never used Ubuntu, so you can't quote me on that.
Look around at http://www.kde.org/ and
http://www.gnome.org/ as well as those are typically the packaged GUIs that are available and and for which you can easily find support. I personally prefer Gnome.
As for learning Linux, I'm less knowledgable on what sites are good for that. A quick google search reveals: http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/ and
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/
Hope those help.
Good luck and come join us in the free world.
Using various sources on the internet you can find references.