Routine computer maintenance

[Tom Dunlap]

I wrote about what's going on with my computer in another thread.

Instead of bloating that thread I decided to find out what routine maintenance you folks do?

What anti-virus, spyware and bug proofing programs do you run and how often?

I'm using Netscape on a PC.

 

[glens]

Except for rotating log files, nothing. Nothing at all. Linux on a PeeCee. (Check out this section of an article to read about how the native filesystem keeps itself intelligently defragmented with normal use!)

With modern Linux distributions, you get more software installed (an hour or less to install from scratch) than you'll get in probably a week of making a fresh installation of XP actually usable Ask the fine folks at ubuntu for a free CD freely shipped to you (the fifth link down on the upper right of the page) and let me know how you like it!

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Glen,

You and others have been singing the praises of Linux. I trust that it's a good system. But...my frustration comes from having to learn a whole new set of commands and ways of working on the computer.

Case in point. I bought a Mac laptop last summer. The machine works just fine but I'm struggling to learn the commands and how to move around in Mac since I've been in the PC world my whole life. I sure don't want to get into the Mac/PC debate. This is much different than Stihl/Husky, metric/standard, etc.

Since I have a bit of an understanding of NS, MS and other programs that I've used for so long, how am I going to see the difference on my screen and in daily use?

 

[Colin]

I run Ewido Security Suite and AdAware at least once a week. Zonealarm is my firewall, and I use AVG's free version for viruses. Panicware is my pop-up blocker.

 

[glens]

Tom,

Granted, some things will be different, but when you get right down to it, pretty much all windowing systems and/or graphical programs behave similarly in the grand scheme of things. Sadly, much of current Linux (and other free unix-like systems) graphical interface is becoming more and more MSWindows-like. You really should not have as much of a problem learning "Linux" for day-to-day stuff as you would have learning the Mac way of doing things. And if/when you choose to venture beyond the graphical confines to the very powerful underpinnings, you'll have a much easier time with Linux than either Windows (which doesn't come with any decent utilities to speak of) or Mac (which, it would seem, tends to discourage such work as well, but does include most of the good stuff out of the box).

Order the free CD from Ubuntu. The package comes with two discs: one for installing a system "natively" and one for running a live-off-the-CD system. Knoppix is also quite good for that and can be freely downloaded (bootable CD-ROM image) through many places found at http://www.knoppix.org/

Knoppix is KDE (K Desktop Environment) based and Ubuntu is GNOME based (there is a KDE version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu, but is only downloadable and not freely shipped).

I don't use the GNOME environment as a whole (but do use several of the programs individually) but understand it is the more MSWindows-like of the two.

Get a bootable live Linux CD and try it. No harm done to the computer whatsoever; it merely runs a tad slower than it would if installed natively (which is quite a bit faster than MSWindows on the same hardware, BTW).

 

[jimmyq]

zonealarm, router, adaware, norton, come get some.

 

[Treelimbjim]

Just in case you do stuff and Macs help you:

Mac OS X. The occasional reboot necessary for the updates will force the file system to be checked.

Otherwise I run the Disk Utility's permissions check after installing each new piece of software and first aid on the occasion.

Cocktail is wonderful. It takes care of most of the maintenance and can be automated to run at quiet hours.

I haven't had anything worse (knock on oak) beyond what the above utilities could fix and what DiskWarrior could do. A regular backup helps.

Consider a membership in .Mac since what it costs is about as much as keeping up with the annual pimping fees of buying other utilities.

Although not a utility, for browsers I switch between Safari (OS X's stock offering) and Firefox. I recommend Firefox for multiplatform users since has good consistient cross-platform performance and usability.

 

[glens]

Jim,

Safari is based on KHTML, the rendering engine from KDE. I favor the (mostly comparable) Linux version: Konqueror.