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I have a dual boot Windows Vista / Linux Laptop and recently I needed to access the Linux partitions from within Windows to copy data between the operating systems.

So I did a bit of searching on the net and had trouble finding a tool/page describing how to do it with an LVM (Logical Volume Manager) partition, all tools seemed to just work with plain old ext2 or ext3 file systems with no mention of others.

This is a problem with at least CentOS 5.1 (Red Hat Enterprise) and probably all modern Linux distributions as there seems to be a move towards the LVM methodology for all operating systems - understandably so when you read what it's all about from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_volume_management

But then I noticed that Explore2FS from chrysocome.net actually also supports LVM2 as well as ext2 / ext3, and it works great!

All I had to do was download (at the time of writing) explore2fs 1.08beta9 extract it from the archive and run it - job done! I can get to my standard Linux files (and more actually) with ease from within windows through an explorer style interface. Just what I needed!

The guy(s) who developed Explore2FS are also working on another tool called Virtual Volumes but this really is a beta (at the time of writing) and I couldn't get this to work in a useful way what so ever BUT this should be a winner when it works too!

So now it just remains for me to setup ntfs support in CentOS 5.1 and I can go both ways - woohoo!

Popularity: 28% [?]

Recently I bought a new cheap Toshiba laptop which came preinstalled with windows vista home premium.

Being a cheap laptop the battery isn't great and only lasts for about an hour if it is left to run as setup by the pre-installer.

With some tweaking, turning off obvious unnecessary programmes, etc. I was able to extend the battery lift to 1hour 30 minutes max.

I was quite happy with that as it's just enough for me to use the laptop for work on the commute in and out of the office with a second charge while at work.

I'd like to use Linux as a replacement for windows if I can, and sometimes it's useful for testing server applications  so decided to make the laptop dual boot vista and ubuntu using the following tutorial:
http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first

This worked great and I now have a full ubuntu install as well as my tweaked vista.

While installing ubuntu I started to think of all the unnecessary garbage windows runs and how this may impact on the battery life, so I decided to do a little test which had a fairly shocking result.

I had expected some battery performance gain simply due to the nature of Linux as an OS BUT a full ubuntu install gave me 2 hours 40 minutes of battery life, compared to vista's initial hour.

Fantastic for me - on daily journey's I'll continue to use vista as it's more in tune with the office but for longer journeys I'll be using ubuntu!

 This start to make me think though...

Vista uses up the battery roughly twice as fast as Linux meaning that roughly it uses twice the power just to run.

Which means that any computer using vista and probably other versions of windows may be using at least twice as much power as they need to.

If this is the case and large organisations want to cut their energy expenditure they could potentially halve their bill for running PC's at least by switching to a Linux alternative.

Also half the energy used means half the carbon footprint of the running pc's which is better for the planet all round.

Nowadays desktop Linux is as usable as windows if not more so and as such I'd implore anybody who can to make the switch over as soon as they can.

Not only that, but there are Linux distributions out there styled to act like windows and therefore the switch would be even less painless.

And lastly, due to Linux being free, the exorbitant license fees paid to Microsoft simply disappear.

Popularity: 8% [?]