DenisPetrov.com

The secret to formatting a diskette to 720K under Windows 2000/XP is simple: you have to convert an HD diskette to a DD diskette. To do this, cover the hole that specifies that the disk is HD with a piece of scotch tape:

Here’s the situation. I’ve installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my Fujitsu laptop, and it works well for the most part. The two buttons on the touchpad that serve as a scroll wheel do not work as expected – one is dead and the other works as the middle button. But that’s probably because the pointing device is recognized as a 3-button mouse without a scroll wheel.

Now, I plugged in an external mouse, and I expected for it to get recognized and start working seamlessly but alas! there seems to be no plug-n-play capability installed by default. Can anyone lend me a hand with this? What do I need to do in order to get functionality similar to Windows XP which automatically recognizes any hardware plugged in and if it does not already have a driver for it, at least I can go to the manufacturer’s web site to download the driver and then install it either through New Device wizard or through Device Manager. At least when it comes to simple devices like mice and keyboards I would expect the drivers to be present – it is not uncommon especially for laptop users to use either embedded pointing device or an external mouse depending on the circumstances.

The WPA-PSK issue I mentioned earlier got resolved once I installed the system onto the hard disk. But another problem that I’m now having is that it constantly tries to access the CDROM drive, every second.

Linux market share as measured by Net Applications has been growing fast this year. From 0.35% in January it increased to 0.42% in February (20% growth) and then jumped to 0.57% in March (35.7% growth) and 0.80% in April (22.8%). Unless it’s a fluke, it seems like Linux is finally starting to gain some momentum.

At the same time, Windows Vista has been gaining about 1% per month since February: 0.18% in January, 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March and 3.02% in April, or roughly 12% per year. Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001, and by the end of 2004 it commanded 65.07% of the market. Even assuming that the adoption was linear, that translates into over 20% per year. In reality, early adoption rates are probably higher, translating into possibly 30% market share for Windows XP by the end of 2002.

I do wish success to Microsoft’s competitors. If more people begin to use software that conforms to open standards and not Microsoft’s proprietary protocols and features, Microsoft-only standards will become marginalized and Microsoft will be forced to use open standards itself in order to inter-operate with others’ products. This will bring more competition and choice to the market, leading to improved quality of software, lower prices and real innovation such as BumpTop, for one small example.