CDs are dangerous

Public Service Announcement Shaming:

Reading how to reset the root password on a Mac led to this little tidbit:

"IMPORTANT: Because a user with the Mac OS X install disc can gain unrestricted access to your computer, you should keep the disc in a safe place."

What's that, Apple? Did you just say that if any idiot with a blank CD has physical access to my CD drive, they can root my machine?

I bet the Math Emporium people would find that interesting...

Eee!

So I got, for an early (because they will probably be hard to get) Christmas present, an Eee PC.

It's a teensy laptop, weighs under two pounds, costs under $500, will literally fit in the pocket of my gray sweater, and (because anything else would double the price) runs Linux. It will also run XP, but why bother?

The hardware is sort of quirky. There's no optical drive at all, instead you get an SD slot. There's no hard drive, instead there are four gigs of flash (which is more than enough, really). The screen is sorta small, which isn't a big deal, but it's the odd resolution of 800x480, which is sort of irritating. But, at what it was designed for, it's basically perfect, except for the sort-of-disappointing 3-4 hour battery life.

The specific flavor of Linux is Xandros, a Debian derivative. It has apt-get, but if you give it Debian repositories you run the risk of breaking things. On top of that, Asus has their own versions of some things, so installing software is somewhat problematic. Just like I remember Linux being! I've gotten KDE on there though, and DOSBox, and DrScheme, and Emacs. What I haven't gotten to build is Guile and its libraries, and a couple KDE themes.

So there are some minor problems. Closing the lid sleeps it, but doesn't hiernate (save to disk) it, so you're burning precious battery charge if you don't turn it off. On the other hand, it takes under thirty seconds to boot, and under ten to load KDE after that, so it's not a huge deal to turn it off. The keyboard is tiny and hard to use, but three USB ports mean you can plug in a Touchstream or whatever.

If you're looking for a little tiny portable Linux, this is probably what you want. The thing weighs little enough that I would actually carry it on a vacation, or as a second laptop on a business trip (since I hate only having a work computer; I don't like having my code on their machines). Or for taking notes with in class, although I wouldn't try programming on such a teensy keyboard.