Launching Sabayon

I finally got around to downloading the Sabayon LiveCD (only the miniEdition, since I'm too lazy to wait for the full thing) and couldn't wait to try it out. Problem is, I've been banned by my dear sister from trying out any more of my 'weird software projects' on her precious PC.

So, my friend decided that he would be more than happy to let me try it on his PC. After all, he was just as excited about Linux as I was, after I showed him what it was capable of. I chose this particular distro because of it's 'works-out-of-the-box' approach...

Why is Sabayon better than the leading Ubuntu LiveCD?

Ubuntu, after installing, cannot play mp3 audio, video files, and DVDs. You need to manually install codecs by connecting to the net (although this manual procedure has been made easier in the Feisty Fawn release of Ubuntu 7.04). Sabayon on the other hand, automatically comes preloaded with these codecs out-of-the-box.

Ubuntu also comes with Compiz; a range of 3D Desktop Effects. These are disabled by default but can easily be enabled after logging in. Sabayon on the other hand comes with the superior (albeit unstable) Beryl effects preloaded and automatically enabled. For those who have not yet seen Beryl in action, watch a video of it now. It makes Vista and OSX look pale in comparison. Sabayon is one of the very few distros that allow Beryl to work straight off the CD, meaning nothing is installed on to the hard disk.

Finally Sabayon (the full DVD edition) comes with a plethora of software - more than you'll ever need. Want to use a web browser? Pick between Firefox, Seamonkey, Epiphany and Dillo to name a few. And Sabayon looks stunning with its dark theme.

So there we were, burning the ISO to disk (which we had to do twice - crappy CD-RWs) and booting up from the drive. Bootup was slightly slow, but we did finally reach the login screen. Since this was the miniEdition, we had only KDE and Fluxbox to choose from; naturally we went with KDE. Rest assured, the DVD version comes with Gnome and probably Xfce on top. Beryl worked, to our delight, perfectly. The only problem was that it lagged a bit, but bear in mind that this was running from CD. I'm pretty sure that it would work fine once installed. Beryl is pretty and we spent almost an hour just playing with the settings manager to experiment.

Once we had finished, we went back to the car, where two more of my friends were waiting, bored shitless for the past hour and a half. They kindly informed us how they had entertained themselves by thinking up suggestions of what we were doing for so long in my friend's bedroom (it's OK, we responded by asking them why the car had been rocking).

Just when I finally decided that Sabayon deserved to be installed fully onto the PC, my friend decides that he wants to upgrade to Vista, so has asked me to postpone the installation. Asshole.

Damn Small Linux - The Embedded Version

Recently, I began hunting for linux distros, hoping to find, not a LiveCD, but something that was capable of running off a USB pen drive. And then I found this particular distro, a download under 50MB in total for those of you still using dial-up :)

The best thing about this linux distro is that you can either boot it up to view a complete linux environment (as in a LiveCD) or you can run it directly within Windows (or even Linux for that matter!)

This is great for running at my college since the computers there can be unbelievably slow! Now I can simply plug in my USB pen drive and load up a complete operating system, on any computer (even on older machines!).

Here's a breakdown of what I did to make myself a pen drive capable of running Damn Small Linux, and I'm going to keep it really simple:

1. Downloading the file

There are several mirrors available on this site. Choose one of the mirrors from the list and I'll assume you'll be wanting the current version. Now look for a zip file - it'll be called something like 'dsl-embedded.zip'.

N.B. Make sure you download the embedded version!

Wait for the download to finish. You won't be waiting for very long if you're on broadband; mine finished in under 6 minutes.

2. Extracting the files

The files can simply be extracted using Windows Explorer or using a program like Winzip. Firstly I made a folder called 'Damn Small Linux' on my USB pen drive and then extracted the files into here.

3. Run DSL!

Inside the 'Damn Small Linux' file, you simply need to run the file 'dsl-base'. That's it!

N.B. Before you do this, it would be a good idea to check out the readme file for more detailed instructions.

Yes, DSL does look a little boring, but you can change themes by right-clicking the desktop, selecting Desktop and then Styles.

The main thing I love about DSL is that its incredibly fast even on old machines - it's extremely light on resources. Have fun!

Media Center Crashes - ehrecvr.exe

Wow, is this annoying. Microsoft released an update for Windows XP recently. It, as had a previous update, conflicted with my TV Tuner. Now every 2, maybe 3 seconds, a service called ehrecvr.exe crashes and I'm faced with the option of sending an error report to Microsoft.

There are probably many people being faced with this problem. I'm sure that many sites will have suggested disabling these services. This can be used using the cmd.exe command. However, it's probably worth noting that this could stop Live TV from working at all.

I'd also like the opportunity to say here that you are using this solution at your own risk - I won't be held responsible for any damage to your computer.


Here are the steps to be taken:
(When typing in commands, do not type the speech marks)

1. Firstly make sure that Media Center is not open.

2. In the Start menu, click on run. Then type in the command "cmd.exe"

3. You should see a command line interface. Type in the command "regsvr32.exe atl.dll" and press Enter.

4. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehSched /unregServer" and press Enter.

5. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehSched /service" and press Enter.

6. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRecvr /unregServer" and press Enter.

7. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRecvr /service" and press Enter.

8. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRec.exe /unregServer" and press Enter.

9. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehRec.exe /regserver" and press Enter.

10. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehmsas.exe /unregServer" and press Enter.

11. Type in the command "C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehmsas.exe /regserver" and press Enter.

12. Open up Media Center again - hopefully it should now work. Not sure about Live TV though :(


However, I preferred to simply remove the last update and Turn Off Automatic Updates altogether. Yes, my PC is more vulnerable to future threats but at least I can watch TV now :P