Fixed a typo

1 files changed, 66 insertions, 39 deletions

diff --git a/artima/general/resuscitating.txt b/artima/general/resuscitating.txt
index 4433287..d6a1064 100644
--- a/artima/general/resuscitating.txt
+++ b/artima/general/resuscitating.txt
@@ -1,18 +1,14 @@
-Resuscitating a seven year old laptop
----------------------------------------------
-
-Recently, I have spent a few hours trying to recover a very old Compaq 
+Recently, I have spent some time trying to recover a very old Compaq 
 laptop, which I have been neglecting for years (actually my wife was using
-it, by now she has her `new Eeepc`_ and the laptop has been sleeping for
-a couple of months).
+it, by now she has her `new Eeepc`_).
 
-The laptop is seven years old, and it shows in its technical specifications:
+The laptop is seven years old, and it shows:
 
-- there are only 256 M of RAM (240 M + 16 M for the video card);
-- the hard disk has 20 G, and it is pretty slow as compared to modern one;
-- the video card is pretty poor, you can forget of installing compiz on it.
+- there are only 256 M of RAM (actually 240 M + 16 M for the video card);
+- the hard disk has 20 G, and it is pretty slow as compared to modern ones;
+- the video card is pretty poor, you can forget about installing compiz on it.
 
-Moreover, the laptop was in a pretty bad shape:
+Moreover, the laptop is in a pretty bad shape:
 
 - the Athlon processor heats a lot and under heavy load the machine
   is likely to freeze;
@@ -20,47 +16,50 @@ Moreover, the laptop was in a pretty bad shape:
   lightning storm of 4 years ago;
 - the builtin CD Writer/DVD Reader stopped working 5 years ago;
 - the external DVD Writer I bought 3 years go does not work either;
-- the BIOS is unable to boot from the two USB ports which, BTW,
-  only support the prehistoric USB 1.1 protocol;
+- the BIOS is unable to boot from the two USB ports which
+  only support the prehistoric USB 1.1 protocol.
 
-It was clearly difficult to install some other operating
+It was clearly difficult to install some usable operating
 system on it, to replace Windows XP. I did not want to buy another external
 DVD Writer, since nowadays I have no need for it (I use an external USB
-disks for my backups, it is cheeper than buying DVDs).
-Luckily, by googling on the net, discovered the Smart Boot Manager
+drive for my backups, it is cheeper than buying DVDs).
+Luckily, by googling on the net, I discovered the Smart Boot Manager
 project: if you have a system which is unable to boot from an USB pen
-or an USB drive, but has a floppy reader, you can boot from the smart
-boot floppy and then dispatch to the real boot media to complete the
-booting. I made a smart boot floppy and I was able to install
+or an USB drive, but has a floppy reader, you can boot from the
+floppy and then dispatch to the real boot media. 
+I made a smart boot floppy and I was able to install
 Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop from a pen drive.
-Moreover, a few weeks ago I did buy a wireless USB kit, since it was
-really cheap (something like 14 Euros) and I used that to replace
+
+I have a wireless USB kit - bought a few weeks ago since it was
+really cheap, something like 14 Euros - and I used that to replace
 the wired connection. The wireless card was recognized out of the box
 by Ubuntu, without need of any external driver, whereas on XP I had
 to download the custom drivers from the producer site.
+That was a happy discovery, so I decided that resuscitating
+the laptop was a worthy project. 
 
-That was a happy discovery, so I decided that trying to resuscitating
-the laptop was worthy attempt. As I said, I installed the standard
-Ubuntu distribution, but the performances were not spectacular.
+As I said, I installed the standard
+Ubuntu distribution, but the performance was not spectacular.
 Actually, the system was quite slow, and with Firefox open my memory
 occupation was dangerously close to the top limit of 240 M.
 It was clear that I should give up Gnome if I wanted to get a
 snappier machine. So, I tried to install Xubuntu, which comes with
 the lightweight XFCE desktop environment. With that configuration
 the memory occupation was reduced and the machine was indeed faster,
-but still too slow for my taste. I decided then to try plan B, i.e.
+but still too slow for my taste. I decided then
 to go back to the good old Ice Window Manager (IceWM_) which I had
 used in the past with an even older machine with only 128M of
 memory. IceWM did the job: the memory occupation dropped down
-to 90 M or less, and the machine is much more responsive.
-Moreove I did install the `Roxio File Manager`_ instead of
+to 70 M (so says htop_) and the machine is much more responsive.
+
+I did install the `ROX File Manager`_ instead of
 Nautilus, and links_ instead of Firefox: with those little
-changes the laptop has become very much usable. I did discovered
+changes the laptop has become very much usable. I discovered
 in the process that now links features a very neat graphic mode:
 the trick is to install links2 (``apt-get install links2``)
 and to start it with the ``-g`` option (``links2 -g``).
-A minor glitch is that the NetworkManager applet is not enabled
-by default, so I put this line in .icewm/toolbar file::
+
+I put this line in the ``.icewm/toolbar`` file::
 
  prog XTerm xterm x-terminal-emulator
  prog links /usr/share/app-install/icons/wsjt.png links2 -g
@@ -69,7 +68,7 @@ by default, so I put this line in .icewm/toolbar file::
 The format of the configuration file is pretty simple: every line
 in it has the form ``prog alt icon app`` were ``app`` is the
 executable application, ``icon`` is a path to an icon that will
-appear on the toolbar and ``alt`` is the text which appears,
+appear on the toolbar and ``alt`` is the text which appears
 when you hover the mouse over the icon, or the text which replaces
 the images if the icon is missing.
 
@@ -77,17 +76,22 @@ With this trick a little icon for the Network Manager Applet appears
 on my toolbar and I can connect to the wireless simply by clicking on
 it. The applet is relatively resource hungry (around 10 Megabytes) and
 there are slimmer alternative out there, but for the moment I am
-keeping it.
+keeping it, since I am familiar with it and I can afford it.
 
 Generally speaking, IceWM seems to work well with Gnome applications:
 in particular all the Gnome applications I have tried with an applet
-in the task bar works as well under IceWM, and the applet appears
+in the task bar works under IceWM, and the applet appears
 in the system tray.
 
-Also, I removed the gnome-terminal, using the good old xterm instead.
+One advantage of Gnome is the automount mechanism, so that removable
+devices are automatically recognized and mounted. With a bit of googling,
+I found out a couple of programs to do the same job, ivman_ (to monitor
+the HAL daemon) and pmount_ (to mount the removable device).
+
+Moreover, I removed the gnome-terminal, using the good old xterm instead.
 An advantage of xterm with respect to gnome-terminal is that it
 does not intercept the function keys, so it play better with programs
-like htop or the Midnight Commander. Also, I have found out that
+like htop_ or the Midnight Commander. Also, I have found out that
 xterm used together with screen makes a good replacement for
 heavy applications like the gnome-terminal or the KDE Konsole.
 Plus, the scrolling is blazzing fast.
@@ -96,9 +100,32 @@ Since I always want to use a terminal with screen, it makes sense to
 open it at startup. So, I wrote the following .icewm/startup file::
 
  #!/bin/sh
+ ivman -s # volume manager daemon
  xterm -e screen &
 
-(notice that the startup file must be executable to be run).
-
-.. _new Eeepc:
-. _IceWM: http://www.icewm.org/
+(notice that the startup file must be executable to be run). The first
+line starts the volume manager daemon, thats mounts and unmounts 
+automatically the removable drives when I attach and detach them
+(apparently there is a bug in recent versions of the Linux kernel
+so I had to list the allowable drives in the file ``/etc/pmount.allow``
+to get ``pmount`` working). The second line open an xterm with screen.
+
+I have been using this configuration for a week or so, and so far it
+seems to work fine. The only issue I had is that I needed some time to
+adjust to links: it is definitely less convenient than Firefox.
+On the other hand, its memory occupation is order of magnitudes smaller, 
+and that makes it usable. I had to renounce to Firefox since it 
+was eating all of my memory and making all of my system sluggish.
+
+Now I plan to use the old laptop as my main box for a while - I have
+already installed subversion, postgresql, g++ and lots of other stuff -
+and I will keep you posted with my findings. If you want to share some
+good tips for people with an obsolete machine, please do so!
+
+.. _new Eeepc: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=240841
+.. _IceWM: http://www.icewm.org/
+.. _pmount: http://pmount.alioth.debian.org/
+.. _ivman: http://ivman.sourceforge.net/
+.. _links: http://links.twibright.com/
+.. _ROX File Manager: http://roscidus.com/desktop/
+.. _htop: http://sourceforge.net/projects/htop