Tinkering with Puppy on a UEFI laptop

Well, last night was definitely NOT fun, though it certainly was interesting. I spent almost 6 hours trying to resurrect my computer. The kind of Linux I use is Puppy Linux, which has a number of aspects that I like over other kinds of Linux. One being that it can be run from external media (CD, USB, etc.), or can be installed on the internal hard drive in the more common way. When booting from CD the user can choose to save their settings and work in a savefile or a special directory (called a frugal install).

When I bought this very cheap laptop I disabled the UEFI booting system and deleted MSWindows from the machine, then booted it from CD, intending to do a full install at some time in the future. I had come to feel there must be a way to do a frugal install that boots entirely from the hard drive. Last night I decided to bite the bullet and work out a way to do it.

After a lot of reading on the topic I gave it a shot... and lost my system. I could still boot from the CD, and I could see all my files were there, I just couldn't persuade my computer to boot up with all my settings and software. [sigh]

As I say, it took me many hours, but I finally have my system back, however I'm still booting from CD. I'll do more reading soon, probably tonight, and try again. I'll likely keep trying until I succeed. It is a bit scary though. :)

Voting for lunatics and crooks

Today I helped Mum and Dad make their postal vote in the QLD election. I was horrified that of the 6 candidates, 3 are anti-science morons and one is a right-wing liar who is probably also anti-science. And the way Labor have been acting lately I'm a little suspicious of the Labor candidate. This is what we get when absolutely no qualifications are needed to become a politician.

We really need entrance exams for any person entering politics. They should have a broad and deep understanding of the sciences, and excellent comprehension of technology and history. Also, people in positions of power and influence should have worse repercussions for lying and misleading the Australian people, and criminal behavior because of the immense damage they can wreak. Clive Palmer should be in prison for at least the next 20 years, most of the LNP should be stripped of their positions and government pensions and their ill-gotten fortunes, and many in Labor should too. The One Nation idiots and all the other anti-science parties and independents should be unceremoniously dumped from politics. Only those who recognise reality should be allowed to have any power at all. Delusional nutjobs should not even get to square one.

One thing I found deeply disturbing about the voting was that we have to vote for people we definitely DON'T want anywhere near power. We have to number every one of the 6 boxes. That means if my first 2 choices fail to get enough votes to be elected, I'm forced to vote for scumbags or idiots! [sigh] At least it's better than USA's nightmarish first-past-the-post system.