PCLinuxos 2011 and Flash Crash

A while ago I upgraded Jane's machine to the latest version of PCLinux and then updated all of the software.  When she was surfing sites with Flash it would crash and nothing would work to enable flash.  I did the update to the latest version and it still didn't work.  I eventually found out that Firefox was pointing to the older version within the add-ons manager section (Tools, ad-ons, and then go to the plugin section).  After I disabled the older version of flash and restarted Firefox the Flash pages started to work.

PCLINUXOS 2011

They finally released the new version of PCLinuxOS.  I downloaded the latest version and put in on the memory stick as a live USB.  When it launched it didn't like my video card, but, I was able to get it to run using VESA.  This isn't a surprise as a number of distros for some reason won't boot with the card in my HP laptop (Pavilion dv6).  It launched cleanly and the desktop itself is nice and for me well organized.  The only program I had a problem was the software update.  It seems to have crashed to the launch in and then looped showing a message so fast I couldn't read it and the logon prompt.  I may try it on other machines to see if this is a problem with the distro or my laptop.

On another note my daughter created a profile picture for me so I now have that for my overall picture rather than the old shot of me having a beer in the pool a few years ago.

Update:

I tried it on my Acer Netbook and everything I tried worked.  Firefox, not a problem.  Software updates worked without a hiccup.  The only thing is that it is a netbook so it was running a bit slow.  At least I now know that it is the HP laptop that had a problem and not the distro itself.  It would appear that I may have to try again and then see what causes the problems and if there are workarounds.  I would like to make every machine in our house use one distro.

Linux on a USB stick

For the last couple of months I have been playing with a variety of Linux distros, but, they are running on a USB memory stick.  I found a nice program UNETBOOTIN that allows me to download and then install on the memory stick a number of Linux distros. You have the option of having the progam download the ISO itself or you can point it to the ISO image on your machine.  The program does everything else for you and at the end you have a bootable Linux.

I find this tool to be extremely useful as I can quickly test out a new distro and not waste CDs if the distro does not meet my needs.  I have two sticks right now with Linux.  The first stick for now is SABAYON and the 2nd will be for a security and recovery distro.  I need the second stick as friends and neighbors have problems with viruses, trojans and spyware getting on their machines and I figure a secure Linux distro that can help me clean this up will be very useful.