JDPFu.com 2025

A few weeks ago, I described what I was going to do to solve this virus problem.. That list of things became a guide while I worked. Partitioning, Lubuntu install, email migration, flash, backups, Quicken install, and remote administration, done. Printing and Investors Toolkit need work.

When I finished with the installs, I setup a toolbar on the left with those programs on it for really easy access. What’s important is how the users are enjoying it. A few comments:

• sure running nice and fast!!!
• This is easier than Windows.
• Which antivirus do you use?

One of the users said they’d break it since she was unafraid to click everywhere. I told her to go ahead and try. Anything you do with the mouse and keyboard cannot harm the PC unless you physically use the keyboard to beat some other part. Even if she deleted everything that she could, I had a backup and could restore it. Back-In-Time was used to create hourly snapshots to a different partition and intelligently retain just a few over the next year.

Just before I was leaving, another guest asked about a Live CD that I’d mentioned previously. It turned out to be a good thing. Seems her PC at home was also completely virus infected and wouldn’t boot. I only had 1 CD with Lubuntu and the internet connection there is the slowest DSL available. Making a copy of the existing CD was needed.

Create a Duplicate Lubuntu ISO

Create an exact copy of the Lubuntu 10.04 CD with

cat /dev/cdrom > lubuntu.10.04.iso

Then I used K3b to burn the ISO to a spare CDROM. K3b is like Nero on Linux. It just works and is point-n-click easy.

Live CD Impressions from a New Linux User

We placed the newly made CD into the broken PC and rebooted. I pointed out the countdown timer before the Live CD booted, but she didn’t want to touch anything. We waited 30 seconds for the boot to begin. There was an error displayed about a missing user account – I explained that was a standard error and laughed. After the system GUI booted, I asked her to check her email without giving any other instructions. She found the Chromium web browser on her own, visited Yahoo Mail and logged in. She liked how the search-as-she-typed worked, a bunch. All the web sites that she visited worked. She is taking that CD home, another willing convert to Linux.

The less technical that a user is, the more likely they are to enjoy Linux. MS-Windows makes computers hard. Linux makes them easy.

Getting the Printer to Work

So, the printer was a Canon iP1700. That printer is not supported by Linux. After a few hours of google research, it seems the only solution is a $40 printer driver. I won’t pay that price for a $40 printer to work. I did load the demo version of the printer driver and test it. It worked but is on a 30 day trial. I expect to spend $50 on a replacement laser printer that is 100% supported by Linux out of the box – no proprietary drivers needed, no expensive ink that dries out.

A Failure – Investor’s Toolkit

After getting Quicken 2011 working, I was confident that Investor’s Toolkit wouldn’t be too difficult. I was wrong. Thankfully, I made a backup of the entire ~/.wine/ directory before starting. The first install attempt into the already working Quicken worked, but running the program locked up and had to be killed. The next run of the program, I forced all the WINE logs into a text file and installed WineTricks-based fixes after reviewing the output. After trying 15 of the solutions and failing, I gave up. Virtualization of WinXP was going to be necessary, but I was unable to locate the matching WinXP Pro license key for the media Mom had (which was WinXP Home). Further, since her machine only has 1GB of RAM total, running a virtual WinXP inside Linux may be technically possible, but I doubt the performance will be acceptable on the Pentium4. A few years ago, I swapped the HDD between this current system and an older Celeron-based system. Both where made by the same manufacturer, so reinstalling Windows wasn’t needed. I probably have the license key information on the case for the Celeron at home, but won’t be able to verify it until the next trip back.