Been in love with gadgets for as far back as I can remember. Whatever had a screen and buttons at home soon attracted the attention of my fingers. Sometimes, I'd get lucky and 'fix' a gadget that had been discarded. I lost this 'love' sometime ago.
I work for a software company as a technical support staff( your PC's doctors ) and at the beginning of this year, management decided to switch our systems to Linux. Luckily, I had some experience already using Linux and wasn't really affected by this decision as much as a few of my other colleagues.
Well, as should be expected when switching systems, we ran into a few bugs and issues that required combing man pages and linux support pages for solutions. After this, I decided to install a Linux-OS on my personal system, and it's been such a wonderful experience so far.
The laptop I installed it on previously had Windows 7 installed on. It ran slower than Buhari's administration. Programs lagged, windows crashed, porn took hours loading. With Linux (Ubuntu Distro), it runs faster than Ahmed Musa on crack. The system has been given new life and I've found Linux quite a capable system.

In the past months, this has rekindled my interest in technology and gadgets in general. I've done online courses on computer Networks, learnt C and Python, and learnt to setup websites and servers. I can also design simple android applications and my general understanding of how computers function has grown wider.

Unfortunately, there are very few online sites where one can meet other Nigerians who engage in this 'tech-speak'. If you've read up to this point without a frown on your face, you're probably one.
This thread is opened in honour to you, fellow Naija tech lovers. Let's discuss gadgets in general, specifications, share reviews etc.

A happy November to you.

following

I dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubunty Trusty. I run Kali Linux within a VM on VirtualBox. I can post a guide here if anyone is interested. Also, anyone who is interested in learning Programming(C, Java, Python) can indicate.

pls how can I do it on my win7 pc

I'd love to learn those languages. Already started with c though

sonOfLucifer:
I dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubunty Trusty. I run Kali Linux within a VM on VirtualBox. I can post a guide here if anyone is interested. Also, anyone who is interested in learning Programming(C, Java, Python) can indicate.

crisdaz:
pls how can I do it on my win7 pc

Hi. How much do you know about partitions, bootloaders, hard disks etc? Can you partition a hard disk?

If you can't, try to make a backup of your PC before we proceed.

tunamania:
I'd love to learn those languages. Already started with c though

C is a good place to start in my opinion. It's the one of the toughest languages to master though but learning C would teach you about the rudimentary of computer programming. What materials are you studying with?

sonOfLucifer:

Hi. How much do you know about partitions, bootloaders, hard disks etc? Can you partition a hard disk?

If you can't, try to make a backup of your PC before we proceed.

I know about partitions and stuff...I installed different versions of Windows on my hard disk....but I am wondering if I can run my windows executable (exe) files on Linux......

crisdaz:

I know about partitions and stuff...I installed different versions of Windows on my hard disk....but I am wondering if I can run my windows executable (exe) files on Linux......

Oh cool. You can run some windows applications and games on your Linux distro, no guarantees though that they will run correctly. Install playonlinux and wine. If you need help, let me know.

sonOfLucifer:

Oh cool. You can run some windows applications and games on your Linux distro, no guarantees though that they will run correctly. Install playonlinux and wine. If you need help, let me know.

OK....I'll pm you...can we chat on whatsapp

crisdaz:

OK....I'll pm you...can we chat on whatsapp

Send a pm to this mail.
buharifan@gmail.com

i almost bricked my pc while trying to dual boot ubuntu. although i still like d os

i almost bricked my pc while trying to dual boot ubuntu. although i still like d os. And am learning c

dabigjoe6:
i almost bricked my pc while trying to dual boot ubuntu. although i still like d os. And am learning c

Cool. What materials do you study with?

There are some common mistakes made when dual-booting ubuntu with Windows. Usually, it's advisable to install Windows as the first OS. Window's bootloader(program that loads the OS on boot) usually takes up the first parition/MBR on the hard disk. Hope this isn't too technical.

sonOfLucifer:

Cool. What materials do you study with?

There are some common mistakes made when dual-booting ubuntu with Windows. Usually, it's advisable to install Windows as the first OS. Window's bootloader(program that loads the OS on boot) usually takes up the first parition/MBR on the hard disk. Hope this isn't too technical.

Yea i knw abt dat. i mainly use pdf nd mayb videos. my best book is c for dummies

Have you ever triple-booted a system with Windows, Linux, and any other OS? I'm trying to do that at the moment.

Also, ever heard of Qubes OS? I was trying to triple boot it with WIn7 and Ubuntu 14.xx LTS. I wasn't able to do so, so I ended up deleting the Ubuntu partition.

The Win7 partition is important because I play a game on it (Driver San Francisco) on it and I doubt if WINE on Ubuntu will be able to handle the game.

I installed Ubuntu once. It wouldn't even play mp3s. Needed to search for codecs/players, so connected my mtn modem to it. It told me to connect to the internet in order to download drivers to connect to the internet. Deleted partition (iirc, modem worked on mac sef, and they are supposedly similar infrastructure )

I'm jelly that you probably know about os design than I do though, due to fiddling with it

Do you do any development on it?

spacyzuma:
Have you ever triple-booted a system with Windows, Linux, and any other OS? I'm trying to do that at the moment.

Yeah, I was able to triple boot with CentOS.

spacyzuma:

Also, ever heard of Qubes OS? I was trying to triple boot it with WIn7 and Ubuntu 14.xx LTS. I wasn't able to do so, so I ended up deleting the Ubuntu partition. The Win7 partition is important because I play a game on it (Driver San Francisco) on it and I doubt if WINE on Ubuntu will be able to handle the game.

Na, I haven't heard of Qubes OS.

@bold
That's odd. Try installing Ubuntu last. GRUB(default bootloader on Linux) works pretty well detecting other operating systems.

wiegraf:
I installed Ubuntu once. It wouldn't even play mp3s. Needed to search for codecs/players, so connected my mtn modem to it. It told me to connect to the internet in order to download drivers to connect to the internet. Deleted partition (iirc, modem worked on mac sef, and they are supposedly similar infrastructure )

Oh yeah. Took me a lot of time to setup my Ubuntu 14 but it was really worth it. I suggest you give Ubuntu a try. It offers one of the best experience, imo, on the Linux platform.
The inbuilt videos application works pretty well. I only had issues playing mkv files but was able to sort that out by downloading the codecs. VLC (my default since Windows XP) also works pretty well too.
For music, my vote goes to Banshee Music player. I always used iTunes on Windows, despite not owning any i-Device. I find it a worthy media manager if you are able to configure it properly. Banshee on Linux offers most of those features and handles most music files comfortably. Of course, once you download the codecs.
Libre Office is a good alternative to Microsoft Office(also has options for saving as doc, docx files etc) but you might come across the occasional formatting issues especially when opening doc/docx files. I setup a Windows XP VM specifically to use Microsoft Office.

wiegraf:

I'm jelly that you probably know about os design than I do though, due to fiddling with it
Do you do any development on it?

Nothing serious so far. Began learning android application development a few weeks ago. Using Linux (android studio). Eclipse has always been difficult for me to configure properly.

For learning C and Python, I used SublimeText 3. If configured properly, it's a really really awesome text editor. Learning either Emacs or VI is just too much stress.

dabigjoe6:
Yea i knw abt dat. i mainly use pdf nd mayb videos. my best book is c for dummies

I recommend C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide, 3rd Edition by Greg Perry and Dean Miller.

Also, The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.

I used both books when learning C. The second is more advanced and I'd only recommend if you have previous programming experience.

sonOfLucifer:

I recommend C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide, 3rd Edition by Greg Perry and Dean Miller.

Also, The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.

I used both books when learning C. The second is more advanced and I'd only recommend if you have previous programming experience.

yea thanks a lot its just that am preparing for an exam so don't have much time for programming for now

dabigjoe6:
yea thanks a lot its just that am preparing for an exam so don't have much time for programming for now

That's cool.

Multi-boot setup

Primary partition -PP

Extended partition - EP

Logical drive - LD

250GB HDD

PP (NTFS) 30GB - Windows

PP (EXT3) 1MB Grub


PP (NTFS) - 160GB - Data

EP LD1 (EXT3) - 30GB Main Distro

EP LD2 (EXT3) - 30GB - (testing other distros)