KDE Slimbook 2 Review

The kind folks at Slimbook recently sent me the latest generation of their ultrabook-style laptop line for review, the KDE Slimbook 2. You can hear my thoughts on the latest episode of the Ubuntu Podcast, released on June 7th 2018.

Slimbook are a small laptop vendor based in Spain. All the laptops ship with KDE Neon as the default operating system. In addition to their hardware, they also contribute to and facilitate local Free Software events in their area. I was sent the laptop only for review purposes. There’s no other incentive provided, and Slimbook didn’t see this blog post before I published it.

Dell XPS 13 9360 Review

On the ‘Tasty Different Cow’ (don’t ask) episode of the Ubuntu Podcast - we reviewed the latest Dell XPS 13 9360 Laptop shipping with Ubuntu.

Dell kindly sent us the review unit for a couple of weeks, and while we talked all about it on the podcast, I thought I’d jot some notes down here in case I missed anything or it’s not clear in the audio version.

A little while ago I bought a Zoostorm PC from Ebuyer. It’s a farily basic (but powerful) i7 based system with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk. This is to replace my older (but still fully working) Mesh PC. The newer one is more power efficient, quieter, a lot faster, and all Intel inside - the previous desktop was nVidia based.

I wanted to migrate from the install on my old Mesh PC to a new clean install on the Zoostorm. I could have just yanked the disk out of the Mesh and put it in the Zoostorm, but I did it slightly differently. I’m typing it up here for my own notes but also to find out how other people do it, and to get any tips.

I recently took delivery of a new HP ProLiant MicroServer which I wanted to use for various small/home office server type tasks. It’s a cracking little server, ideal for small offices and home users who want a small, low-power server. With only one fan in the case it’s fairly quiet with most noise coming from the hard disk supplied, and any more you put in it.

The reason I got it was because HP are currently giving £100 cash-back (until end of January 2011) on the ProLiant MicroServer. Given how cheap it already is the cash-back makes it even more attractive! It’s not super powerful and certainly not “pro server grade” kit, but perfect for my needs.

This is a long post which started life as a letter to my Dad explaining what I had done to fix his broken computer. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to paste it in here.

My Dad dropped off his PC to me. It’s an ASUS motherboard based generic PC with a 1GHz CPU, 256MiB RAM, 30GB and 40GB disks, and a CD burner. It has a Matrox 450 video card, a Pinnacle DV500 ieee1394 capture card, a sound card, some USB ports and a PCI modem. It runs Microsoft Windows 2000, but as it has only been on a dialup connection in its life, it had virtually no updates installed.

As regular readers of my blog may recall, I recently gave my brother a PC running Ubuntu Linux. He uses it for surfing the web, getting email and chatting online. He also has an HP PSC 1610 printer/scanner/copier which works under Linux pretty well. He has a Dlink WAP/Modem/Router providing his ADSL connection via wired ethernet.

I had a phone call from him a week or so ago telling me the PC was broken. To cut a long story short he had difficulty getting a disc removed from the CDROM drive and eventually resorted to pulling the power cable out. This resulted in filesystem errors when he rebooted. I’ve not had many of these types of problems so don’t have a huge amount of experience in the area. So I talked him through removing the hard disk (which was easy because the PC he has is very modular) and he sent it to me.