Sellers and Buyers Should Do Their Homework

I read news that Vodafone is avoiding Linux netbooks because users get confused about it. Confused in their expectations of netbooks, that’s their issue. If they don’t want their customers to be confused about their expectations of netbooks, they should check how they are also marketing these netbooks. If people get confused about

My netbook connected via Synergy to another laptop.

Anyhow, I think that this boils down to people not doing their homework. For sellers, or those who bundle netbooks with their services (like telcos), they should research on their offerings before they do the marketing so that they will not make messages that could lead their customers to confusion. It matters what they say in their marketing copy before anything else. Sometimes catchphrases and slogans are culprits in giving customers the wrong impression. I hope that those who are selling netbooks will learn how to NOT give false expectations. Especially because Linux on netbooks is not what users know about all the time. If they don’t want high return rates, then they should do their homework first. If they know that they might have to add trained customer service representatives who will be called for help, then they should make a way. Just because it’s a netbook with Linux shouldn’t make their customers that it is an inferior product.

As for those who are enticed by offers of bundled netbooks with their telco or something, they should do their research first. I personally use a netbook for work. But that’s because I know that I can use Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it and be happy. And even before that I asked around. My co-workers who are more knowledgeable about these matters did agree that with what they know about my work, they knew that the specs of the netbook I chose will work for me. A netbook is a tool after all and it’s up to me to see if it’s something I could work with or not. And this is something I could do even before buying it. I also know people who’ve bought netbooks for the convenience of travelling with a lightweight machine and still have the means to check their email and surf the internet.

So think things over before buying a Linux-powered netbook or before you decide to sell them. It’s better that way.

Post from: New Linux User

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FSLint Helps You Clean Up Your Files

If you’ve had your Linux installation for the longest time, sometimes you don’t really know what’s in there any more. Some of the problems we have:

• Temporary files which never get cleaned up
• Duplicate files. Maybe those we’ve downloaded before. But never removed after using them or maybe we copied them in another directory aside from the download directory. (This happens to me too. Especially when I get careless.)
• Empty directories. We get lots of these when we move files around.

For us to manage our files, a tool such as FSLint would surely help.

This utility helps you search through your file system in order to find out if you’ve got duplicates, bad names, name clashes, temp files, bad symlinks, bad IDs, empty directories, non-stripped binaries, redundant whitespace. It also shows you what packages are installed.

One of the things I am guilty of is that I keep installing all these packages when I try them out but I forget to remove them and the other files related to it afterwards. No wonder I don’t have as much disk space as I think I should have. And lots of duplicates. Geh. I fail at cleaning up and I hope to change that with FSLint.

The nice thing about the user interface is that you could select which category it should be looking for. Once you have selected it, click the “Find” button and it will give you a list of the files it sees. Once you have a list you could select the files for deletion one by one or you could enter the wildcard for you to select multiple files in an instant.

Try it and see your directories cleaned up, hopefully giving you a whole lot of space left. Also, they have a blog that’s not just about FSLint, but Linux in general so maybe you’d like to add them to your list.

Post from: New Linux User

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