By the way, as the title of this post says, I now have a Google+ account! If you have one, add me to your circles so you can get random updates on my life and interests, as well as blag updates (I’d personally prefer RSS for blag updates, though). If enough of the people I follow switch over to Google+, I might as well quit the Twitter/Facebook business, but I’d most likely keep Identi.ca because of the geek culture that surrounds it. See you next update!

I went on GameRankings, which averages game review scores into percentages (sort of like Metacritic). A game with an average of 4 out of 5 would get a score around 80%, for example. I went console-by-console and looked for how many games qualified as “great”. I limited the results to games with at least 5 reviews (to filter out the one or two reviews for some game for little girls), and these results do not take multiplatform releases, ports, re-releases/remakes, or expansions into account as that would take too much time. With that said, here’s the results I got:

Games 80% and higher:

• Wii: 104
• PS3: 277
• 360: 275
• DS: 110
• PSP: 90

75% and higher:

• Wii: 188
• PS3: 351
• 360: 454
• DS: 206
• PSP: 171

70% and higher:

• Wii: 291
• PS3: 456
• 360: 560
• DS: 355
• PSP: 276

I was rather unpleasantly surprised by the results. The Wii’s library of games 80% or higher was only a little over 1/3 the size of the PS3 and 360′s library. It caught up substantially to only be about half (or more) the size of the PS3′s library around the 75% and 70% marks, but the 360′s library trounced both of theirs. Handheld-wise, however, I noticed that the PSP was doing much better than I anticipated, though not quite as good as the ever-popular DS.

So, what do these results mean? It means that if you’re looking for a good game, you’ll have a wider variety of games to choose from. It does not, however, mean that the systems with more games have “better” games. Nor does it mean that there’s a wider variety of every kind of game for those platforms. It’s common knowledge that, for example, the PS3 and 360 have a bias towards mature games, while Nintendo systems usually have a bias towards family-friendly games. Actually using this as an argument, though, is rather immature. Complaining about the lack of mature titles is like complaining about a pizza box; it doesn’t change the quality of the pizza on the inside if the box looks different, right?

In my rather large Wii library, I have *no* M-rated games whatsoever, and I’m very happy. Last I checked, I had somewhere around 40 or 50 games for it, not including Gamecube games or downloaded titles. Obviously, mature games aren’t necessarily better or worse than more family-friendly titles like Mario or Zelda. I’m not afraid of mature games or anything; I love Metroid, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Portal/Half-Life, Doom, and other mature-ish titles (not necessarily rated M, as you don’t have to have an M rating to be considered “mature”).

I’m quite jealous of the libraries of the PS3 and 360, but lets face it: how many games do you buy per year? If you’re anything like most people I’ve seen, you’ve only got about 10 or 20 games total per system (unless you illegally acquire them…). Even though the Wii doesn’t have the largest library around, it still has quite a few great games. The lack of mature-rated titles isn’t something to complain about really, because you can make a good game without it being violent or sexed-up. Also, Nintendo’s first-party titles are considered some of the best games of all time (Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Galaxy, and Metroid Prime to name a few). You’d be missing out on those masterpieces if you used another system, though I have to admit that Shadow of the Colossus (a first-party PS2 title) is one of the best games I’ve ever played.

In conclusion, I hope this blog post is informative for many, and I hope that the arguments I pose here reduce anti-Nintendo trolling. Yes, it’s true that the Wii has a smaller selection of “good” games than the other systems, but in the long run, this means very little. The Wii still has many, many excellent games and more than enough variety for me. Here’s hoping that third-party support with Project Cafe is much better than the Wii, though! That can’t possibly be a bad thing !

PS: Please refrain from fanboy-ish trolling in the comments section.

Thanks everyone that browsed my blag! I love you all !

Princess and the Pony is a film about some Princess from some country nobody has ever heard of, who has been held inside of the palace walls for her entire life and is nearly kidnapped for ransom. She’s sent to live away with her relatively poor southern-accented aunt in America (who apparently doesn’t have royal status), with only a Tom Bergeron look-alike to guard her. The secret files that say who she is are kept by a single, incompetent sheriff of all people, and the girl ends up working for some carnival owner with a freakishly awesome mustache that not only has a bad British accent in America, but ends up being the person that ordered that she be captured in the first place! Needless to say, this movie is bad. Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. Not quite as bad as, say, the infamous Pod People, Cave Dwellers, Star Wars Holiday Special, or even The Last Airbender, but bad enough to make everyone besides a little girl feel like they wasted their time… Unless, of course, you heckle at the movie Mystery Science Theater 3000-style (henceforth referred to as MST3K), which is exactly what me and my friend Andy did.

MST3K, if you’re not familiar with it, is a cult comedy show where a man and his two robot pals heckle at a movie as it’s playing, most usually B Movies as that was all they could afford. They would make jokes about the movies as they went on and were funny enough to become a cult hit. Today, MST3K lives on as Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax, two projects that revive the MST3K spirit in a newer, modern format with some of the original writers and comedians in each. RiffTrax is most notable because, instead of selling movies with the commentaries included (as that would be illegal), they sell DRM-Free MP3 files that you can synchronize up to a film you already own (or rent). This lets them do lots of films like Inception, the Harry Potter films, and Twilight without needing to pay royalties or licensing fees. One of my favorites of theirs is their riff on High School Musical; here’s the trailer for it:

After heckling on Princess and the Pony, me, Andy, and my other friend Sam were thinking of actually trying to make one of those. RiffTrax has a store for “iRiffs”, or user-created riffs on anything we want. We can sell them on their store and rake in the cash (which is arguably much less than, say, a song on iTunes, but you get the idea)! We’re either going to do Princess and the Pony, My Neighbor Totoro, another one of The Asylum’s movies, or something else. I’ll be sure to post more details on the project as soon as it takes off the ground!

First thing’s first, horses have been around for ages and ages. We haven’t been riding them this long because that’s all we had; we’ve been riding them because it works! You can talk to nearly any man off the street and they’ll know how to ride a horse, or at least how to ride in a carriage pulled by one. With automobiles, you have to re-learn every single thing you know about getting around, and for what? So you can look fancy in your shiny metal deathtrap? These automobile designers think that by dumbing down the flexibility of getting around they’re “innovating”, but it’s all just change for the sake of it, I say!

Horses don’t need to be wound-up and re-fueled nearly as much as those automobiles. When I need to rush off to work in the morning, I don’t have to spend a minute turning the car on, locking all of the doors, making sure that I’m safe and secure, only to go off and realize that I took so long that I’m late for work already. I can just jump on my horse and go! Horses are much more customizable than automobiles as well. I can get horses of all different sizes, shapes, colors and strengths. I can put whatever horseshoe or saddle that I want on it. You can’t do those with an automobile, and they don’t even have those things! What’s the big idea, taking away the features and functions of having a horse that we’ve all been so used to throughout the years?

Those automobile designers must think we’re all idiots that don’t know how to ride a horse; their shiny chrome and their gigantic size are only there to appeal to the “younger generation” that can’t possibly appreciate anything unless it’s shiny, new and large. Well let me tell you this: those danged automobiles won’t get any popular because nobody’s going to use them! Horses will be around forever and will always be popular. Automobiles are just a fad, so pointlessly reinventing the wheel (quite literally)… Stick with what you know and with what works right now, as I see no good reason whatsoever to switch over to these “innovations” any time now or in the future. It’s all a waste of time and bad design.

…*cough*…

How do I use the old GNOME 2 UI?

Before I tell you how to enable the old UI, let me just say that the GNOME 2 UI is deprecated for various reasons and WILL NOT RECEIVE FUTURE UPDATES. The old UI is considered a “Fallback Mode” for users who cannot use the current UI and is not intended to be used any longer if your system is powerful enough to use the new GNOME 3 UI. I would highly recommend that you give the new GNOME 3 UI a chance for a week and wrap your head around the new concepts, shortcuts and features. If, after all of that, you still want to use the old GNOME 2 UI, you can enable the intentionally hidden “Fallback Mode” by doing the following:

1. Open “System Settings” in the Status menu at the top-right of the screen.
2. Click “System Info” in the System Settings window.
3. Click the “Graphics” tab on the side.
4. Flip the switch for “Forced Fallback Mode”.

In addition to this, there are some extensions that enable a more GNOME 2-like experience. Scroll down to read about them.

GNOME Tweak Tool

An easy, GUI method to configuring GNOME 3 is present in the form of the (semi-official) tool, GNOME Tweak Tool. Download and install it with these commands:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gnome-tweak-tool
cd gnome-tweak-tool
./autogen.sh && make && sudo make install

After it’s installed, run it with the “gnome-tweak-tool” command and customize GNOME in any of the following ways (lifted from the website):

• Install and switch gnome-shell themes
• Switch gtk themes
• Switch icon themes
• Change
  • The user-interface and titlebar fonts
  • Icons in menus and buttons
  • Behavior on laptop lid close
  • Shell font size
  • File manager desktop icons
  • Titlebar click action
  • Shell clock to show date
  • Font hinting and antialiasing

GNOME 3 does not officially support theming at the moment for the default UI, so you need the user-theme extension installed, which I mention below. As for GTK themes, there aren’t any other GTK3 themes available yet, so as soon as more are available theme support will be implemented.

How do I use my old window border themes?

GNOME 3, as of right now, does not let you change the default theme using a GUI option because they want a standard visual identity for GNOME 3, sort of how everybody knows a Windows or Mac desktop just by looking at it because of their strong visual identities. In addition to that, the designers and developers figured that it’s better to care about getting the fundamentals done right first, and allowing for more superficial concerns such as theming later. A method to change the window border theme is present though, but it is hidden. To change it, follow these steps:

1. Copy the theme to ~/.themes (that’s /home/you/.themes)
2. Open “gconf-editor”
3. Browse to desktop -> gnome -> shell -> windows on the tree on the left side of the window.
4. On the right, there’s an option for “theme”. Change it to the name of the window border theme you want to use and restart GNOME (Alt+F2, type “r”, hit enter)

GNOME Shell Extensions

GNOME Shell (the default desktop UI) has support for extensions (also called “Add-ons”), though support for them isn’t quite finalized yet. In order to use extensions now, you need to install the latest extensions from git. Here’s a list of all of the current extensions included in the repository (list taken from the README in the repository):

alternate-tab:
Lets you use classic Alt+Tab (window-based instead of app-based) in GNOME Shell.

alternative-status-menu:
For those who want a power off item visible at all the time, replaces GNOME Shell
status menu with one featuring separate Suspend and Power Off. Adds the ability to
hibernate as well.

auto-move-windows:
Lets you manage your workspaces more easily, assigning a specific workspace to
each application as soon as it creates a window, in a manner configurable with a
GSettings key.

dock:
Shows a dock-style task switcher on the right side of the screen.

drive-menu:
Shows a status menu for rapid unmount and power off of external storage devices (i.e. pendrives)

example:
A minimal example illustrating how to write extensions.

gajim:
Integration with Gajim, a Jabber/XMPP instant messaging client.

native-window-placement:
An alternative algorithm for displaying the thumbnails in the overview that more closely reflects the actual positions and sizes.

places-menu:
Shows a status indicator for navigating to places.

systemMonitor:
A message tray indicator showing CPU and memory loads.

user-theme:
Loads a shell theme from ~/.themes/<name>/gnome-shell.

windowsNavigator:
Allow keyboard selection of windows and workspaces in overlay mode.

xrandr-indicator:
Replace the GTK+ based indicator from gnome-settings-daemon with
a native one. Lets the user rotate the laptop monitor and open
display preferences quickly.

To install, I would look for packages in your distribution’s repositories first (I know that Arch Linux has them). If not, use the following commands:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gnome-shell-extensions
cd gnome-shell-extensions
./autogen.sh --prefix=$HOME/.local --enable-extensions="enter the extensions you want to enable here, space separated"
make install

There are some other extensions as well that aren’t in the git repository as of yet that I find to be very nice, though I don’t actually use any of them. Four of these are currently distributed in a pack, while another must be downloaded from git. The pack of extensions contains these:

Applications Menu:
Turns clicking on the “Activities” button into a menu for Applications similar to GNOME 3. The overview still works with the hot-corner and Windows key.

Break Dynamic Workspaces:
Lets you set a fixed number of workspaces. Helpful for users who find dynamic workspaces annoying.

Move Clock:
Moves the clock between the status menu and the system indicators, like in GNOME 2 and Ubuntu Unity. I personally lik the clock in the middle, but I guess this frees the middle for extensions to use, like the next extension…

Panel Favorites:
Puts a copy of your favorites list on the panel, between the Activities button and the AppMenu. This is similar to launchers from GNOME 2 and other desktops.

To install these extensions, do the following (credit goes to WebUpd8):

cd && wget http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/gnome-shell-frippery-0.0.4.tgz
tar -xvf gnome-shell-frippery-0.0.4.tgz

The extensions will now appear in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions along with the others I mentioned. You can remove them individually if there are ones you do not with to use. Another extension that WebUpd8 pointed out is a “Workspace Indicator” extension which lets you switch workspaces using the mouse without opening the Overview. To install it, you need to clone from a git repository. First, make sure you have git installed, and do the following:

git clone https://github.com/erick2red/shell-extensions.git
cd shell-extensions
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions #just in case
mv workspace-indicator@erick.red.gmail.com/ ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/

After installing any of these, restart GNOME Shell (Alt+F2, type “r”, hit enter). You should now have your extensions installed and functional.

If you were looking for more “hardcore” customization such as editing the GNOME Shell CSS files to customize it’s appearance, read this blog post (not mine). Some of the things that he does with GNOME 3 are really incredible and it shows how customizable GNOME 3 really is. In fact, some of these extensions come from his blog posts if I’m not mistaken. Enjoy, and I hope that these various tips helped you improve your GNOME 3 experience !

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’.” -Henry Ford

As you most likely know, Henry Ford’s company popularized the automobile. Naturally, automobiles are very different from horses and if you get too used to how a horse works, you might find it awkward to adjust to using an automobile. Automobiles, obviously, are much better than horses, but they no doubt caused complaints from horse riders who were too used to how things worked as they were and have worked for years. GNOME 3, being released tomorrow (Wednesday April 6), is having a similar problem: how do you innovate without annoying long-time users who are used to the way things are done now? The short answer is: you can’t. Changes must be made that might seem awkward or even stupid at first to some, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Fortunately for GNOME, their latest version of their popular desktop environment manages to break very few eggs, if any, and still magically makes omelets regardless of that. GNOME 3 designers and developers have had a lot of time to think and plan about the design of the latest desktop and it shows very clearly in several areas. Some refinement and improvement could come in future releases (and that is actually being worked on right now), but for now I am loving the GNOME 3 desktop as it stands today just fine. Why? I’ll give you 10 reasons:

1. It’s distraction-free

Most “modern” desktops today bombard you with icons, colors, buttons, notifications that cover the work you’re doing, and other annoying “features”. GNOME 3 rethinks this entirely. The top bar is uncluttered and simple, bringing an air of minimalism while still providing the features you need at your fingertips. Unlike other desktops where the clock is shoved in the corner, often between or right next to a bunch of other buttons and icons, the clock is moved right to the middle of the panel where it’s easy to see. GNOME 3 also hides the window list and “message tray” (for notifications) by default; no blinking “click me” or “attention” lights anywhere!

2. It has a new visual style

Many desktops either focus on being shiny or basic; never both. GNOME 3 somehow manages to be both, giving it a refreshing style that says “I’m new” yet “I’m mature” at the same time. The top panel is very small and exclusively black and white in color. This is not only good for accessibility purposes, but it makes the desktop look less distracting as I said above. It also includes a new default application (GTK) theme, “Adwaita”, which is easy to look at and stylish as well. It also uses nice and simple visual effects that don’t go too overboard on the “eye-candy” scale.

3. It puts me in the driver’s seat

When I use other desktop environments, it seems almost like they try to control how I work or what I do, such as offering “suggestions” when I know what I’m doing (Clippy, anyone?) or asking “if I’m sure I want to do this”. GNOME 3 assumes automatically that I know what I’m doing and only helps me when I specifically ask it to. If I want to switch windows, I ask for the window switcher. If I want to search, I ask for the search function. If I want to upgrade software, I ask to do so. It doesn’t bug me over and over to “do this” or “do that”, but lets me decide what I do and when, and that feels very empowering. If I ever do something that I didn’t want to do, instead of asking if I’m sure, it gives me the option to undo immediately but it doesn’t shove the option in my face. The new message tray in the bottom right corner also is blocked from showing notifications when I switch my status from “Available” to “Busy”. Instead of constantly bugging me about a notification that pops up, it stores it in the message tray for me to read at my leisure. No other desktop that I know of does this as effectively as GNOME 3.

4. All new, integrated settings manager

GNOME now provides a “Control Panel”-like settings menu like in Windows or Mac, but much simpler and easier to use. Clicking any option quickly brings up a simple settings dialog with a button to go back to the main settings menu. GNOME 2 had something similar, but it wasn’t nearly as integrated and straightforward as the current implementation.

5. Starting fresh

Many components of GNOME 2 have been deprecated or hard to maintain, and GNOME 3 does away with these entirely. Most notably removed is the old GNOME panel, replaced by the new GNOME Shell, the default desktop UI I’ve been referencing. Many libraries and programs were also upgraded to new versions such as GTK+, Empathy Instant Messenger, Nautilus File Browser and more.

6. Extensibility

GNOME 3 provides an extension mechanism similar to modern web browsers. Simply install an extension in the proper directory and restart your desktop (Alt+F2 and type “r”, or simply log out and log back in). git.gnome.org has a wonderful repository of extensions that some people may find useful, including a different Status Menu, different Alt+Tab behavior for switching windows, a persistent dock on the right side of the screen and many others. You can easily write your own in JavaScript if you feel like it as well. I’ve found, though, that I don’t need any of the many extensions available so far. GNOME 3′s default settings are very reasonable and needed very little tweaking to be the way I wanted them to be.

7. Smart window and workspace management

There are a multitude of ways to work with your windows and applications in GNOME 3. Most notable is the “Activities” overlay which can be toggled with a click, a hot-corner (moving your mouse into the corner the button is located), or a button press (the “Windows” key, also known as Super/Meta). The Activities overlay shows all of your windows spatially organized in the center, with a more traditional “dock”-like window list at the left. On the right is a “workspace” selector for window organizing. Each one, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of workspaces, can hold different windows into groups as to keep your desktop uncluttered and allow you to focus on the task at hand. GNOME 3 lets you drag and drop windows to multiple workspaces and it automatically makes new ones as soon as you need them. This makes it easier to find the window you want to switch to and keeps your desktop nice and organized. GNOME 3 also has a Windows 7-like gesture feature where you can drag windows past the top of the screen to maximize them and to the sides of the screen for side-by-side viewing. I use this a lot when watching a video and browsing another web page at the same time, and it’s very useful.

8. Minimalism

As I’ve stated earlier GNOME 3 is very minimal in several respects. There is no “configuration overload” like in KDE, where there are many useless options that don’t need to be present whatsoever and only make using the software more confusing. Another minimalistic change present that I didn’t mention earlier was the removal of the “minimize” and “maximize” buttons, leaving only one button (for now) on every window. The functionality is still there, but they decided that it would be simpler to not include a button. Maximizing can already be done with a simple double-click or a gesture as mentioned earlier, so there’s no need for a button and makes window management seem simpler (and gives you a much wider target area for maximizing). Minimization, however, makes little sense in the context of GNOME 3. There are no desktop icons because you shouldn’t have to move a window around to see what’s behind it on your desktop, as well as how cluttered and ugly desktops can become over time. Because there’s little reason to minimize a window, the functionality was hidden, though still present if you absolutely must use it (though I can’t fathom a reason why). It also uses very little screen space, even less than most “Netbook” UIs available now.

9. Easy yet powerful

GNOME 3 is incredibly straightforward to use and simple for new users to get used to. Even though it’s so simple, power users will find a lot of love present. GNOME 3 includes a myriad of keyboard shortcuts to make using your desktop quicker than ever, such as Alt+F2 to run any command, Alt+Tab to switch between windows in a group (and Alt+` to move between windows in the same application), Ctrl+Alt+Tab for keyboard navigation of the panel and Activities overlay, pressing the “Windows” key to use the Activities overlay, and many more. You can see them all and customize them to what you want in the new settings manager. GNOME 3 also has an extremely handy search function as well; just open the Activities overview and start typing and you’ll get instant results from your applications, files and places. The search function and Alt+Tab alone, even without the other features, are more than enough to suit my needs.

10. A wealth of great applications

GNOME is known for it’s very easy to use applications, and GNOME 3 is no different. The Empathy Instant Messenger is one of my favorites, which is surprising to me even still because for years I was a die-hard Pidgin fan (another instant messenger). I made the switch recently and it actually does a very good job, actually feeling much simpler and smoother than the other instant messengers I’ve used over the years. Rhythmbox, the default GNOME music player, does almost everything I ask of it and is very extensible with plugins in addition to being easy to use. Brasero, while not the most feature-filled disc burning application out there, is very simple to use and integrates with Rhythmbox for playlist burning. I’ve also grown to liking the default text editor, Gedit, as well as the default File Manager, Nautilus; both of which are very simple, powerful and extensible. GNOME 3 also integrates with these programs very nicely, such as letting me reply to messages in Empathy right from the notification itself or by letting me control Rhythmbox from the message tray. There are a ton of other great applications of GNOME’s, such as the AbiWord word processor or the surprisingly usable Epiphany web browser. If you ever try GNOME, check them all out and see how they work!

Unlike more expensive, less-open, and less-usable desktops, GNOME is completely free in both senses of the word. To see up-to-date screenshots, videos, and even try GNOME 3 for yourself, visit gnome3.org or the GNOME 3 release page (as well as the release notes page). If it seems rather odd or even bad to you at first, try it for a week with an open mind. Try to adjust your workflow to how GNOME Shell works and see how much it improves! Trust me, it really does work wonders !

I noticed a couple flaws with the Deep Freeze model that I actually tried to improve on with LinFreeze, however. For example, Deep Freeze only “froze” the entire system, not specific folders or user directories, thereby requiring a reboot into “un-frozen mode” to install software or make changes. I changed how that worked for LinFreeze by only allowing individual folders to be “frozen” in time, including user home directories. That way administrators can install software without needing to reboot, and all that would be needed to secure that would be to restrict installing software to administration accounts (or the root user), a relatively simple thing to do.

When I first wrote LinFreeze it was very basic and simple, but late last year I decided to work on the project again and put it up for public testing and contribution. So far it hasn’t exactly gotten the audience it deserves, so I decided to write this article about it. LinFreeze is written entirely in Bash and modifies the /etc/fstab file to work, so it’s inherently a very risky program to use, though I believe I’ve ironed out many of the potential bugs over the past six months.

You can download it at its GitHub page and read the README file for information on how to install and use the program. After installing, you can read it’s man page by typing “man linfreeze”. Enjoy, and any contributions (especially translations) would be greatly appreciated!

I have a great friend named Ava who loves computers almost as much as I do, but she doesn’t live anywhere near me. She’s installed Ubuntu Linux (before it was a bloated mess) using the Wubi installation method (installs it inside of Windows on a virtual partition), but now she doesn’t have it because she had to reformat Windows a few times. She had spring break this week, so I decided I’d help her install a GNU/Linux OS. My favorite, and the one I’m using right now, is Arch Linux, a “rolling release” distribution that doesn’t need to be re-installed every 6 months or so like the more popular distributions. Setting up any other distribution at this time of year would be a waste of time because new versions of each are expected next month, so she would have to re-install twice. If she installed Arch, she wouldn’t have to upgrade so often and, in the long run, support would be much smoother, so we decided to install Arch. The problem though is that Arch is rather complicated to set-up.

Because Ava isn’t familiar with command line/terminal interfaces nearly as much as I am, I decided to SSH into her desktop from my house and do the installation myself. Her desktop was behind a firewall, so I decided to use a reverse SSH tunnel to connect. If you’re unfamiliar with that, think of it sort of like throwing a grappling hook onto a ledge so whoever is on the other side can climb across. Unfortunately, on the day we decided to install Arch, I couldn’t figure out the port forwarding settings on my router so she could connect to my desktop in the first place, so she gave up because she had other things to do. As soon as she gave up, though, I figured out the problem and made sure that it worked. That was yesterday though, so let’s fast-forward to today:

Today, I had her connect and I set up Arch Linux for her almost perfectly. I had her reboot and the GRUB bootloader showed for her just fine, but it said that it couldn’t find the kernel to load. I had her load up the install disc again, connect again, and let me edit the file. That failed because she forgot the passwd command so I could login with SSH. I had her reboot a third time, and then it gave an error that she couldn’t listen to any ports on my desktop for reverse tunneling. I rebooted and then it worked, but she also had to reboot for a fourth time because her “Ctrl” keys on her keyboard were dead and she couldn’t cancel her failed SSH tunnel or switch to another tty. Finally, it worked and I corrected the error in her grub config file; it pointed to the wrong boot partition, which was easily fixed.

Unfortunately, we were worse off than before; nothing booted. After GRUB loaded up, it gave “Error 18” when she tried to launch any OS, even her old Windows partition. This, obviously, was incredibly bad. Basically her BIOS sucked and refused to read the boot partition because of where it was on the hard drive, which was completely unforeseeable. I had her launch the install disc up yet again and gave her a command to remove her Master Boot Record, which I thought would fix the problem. It made her worse off though because it didn’t even detect Windows! Needless to say she was freaked out and we were in a pretty deep hole.

I gave her the ISO to BG-Rescue Linux, an incredibly small busybox-using rescue disc with the ms-sys utility, which can be used to install Windows MBRs to a hard drive. After I helped her boot it, I told her the command to install her bootloader and it worked! She rebooted and Windows loaded fine. Unfortunately, if she ever wants Arch Linux installed we’d need to move her Windows partition over by about a GB or so, which would take a lot of time, so we might not ever do that.

Oh yeah, and it didn’t help that through all that my cousin was here and wanted to play video games. What a day, what a day…