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Techradar |
- Explained: How your operating system works
- Review: Rega Saturn and Mira 3
- Tutorial: How to clean your PC of dust and dirt
- Review: Exposure 2010S2
- Best Linux distros for netbooks
| Explained: How your operating system works Posted: 20 Mar 2011 05:00 AM PDT  When we use a PC, we're usually only concerned with the program we're currently using, whether it's a browser, a word processor or our preferred social networking app. We don't often think about the rather extensive program underlying everything that happens on the PC: its operating system. We can fire off the name of our chosen OS at the drop of a hat (Windows 7, Chromium or Ubuntu, for example), but could we say just what it is and what it does? When we think of an operating system at all, it's usually to help define what our PC is - 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Windows 7, for example. It's almost like a physical peripheral; something we could swap for a similar substitute in the future. And until now, the operating system defined a PC just like the hardware. We've grown up with large, all-encompassing operating systems that provided a wealth of services, but that might be on the cusp of changing. Let's start by considering what a PC is. It's a collection of hardware: the motherboard, CPU, memory chips, video adaptor, hard disk (or SSD), optical drive, keyboard, mouse, screen and so on. Each of those pieces of hardware is, in essence, interchangeable with others that perform the same functionality, but perhaps faster, more efficiently or more compactly. With a desktop machine, you can pretty much replace the whole PC a bit at a time by upgrading each component. The modular nature of PCs sometimes seems almost miraculous (it's certainly not the case for cars - I can't just decide to pop a Ford engine into my Audi, for example) and it's only possible because the operating system smooths over any differences between components and hides them from us, usually through the use of specially written drivers. In the beginning Let's approach what an operating system does by considering what happens when you boot your PC. Pressing the power switch starts up a small program that's stored in read-only memory - a chip on the PC's motherboard. This program, known as the BIOS (basic input/output system) on PCs and EFI (extensible firmware interface) on Macs, runs a set of routines intended to identify peripherals and system devices, and initialise their firmware. This is known as the POST (power-on self test) and, as its name suggests, is needed to check the proper functioning of the hardware. POST routines, if the option is set, can also perform intensive checks like testing all installed memory, but the level of checking is usually curtailed for the sake of speed. Both the BIOS and EFI are written for the particular motherboards they're found on. They have knowledge of the chipsets that are embedded in the motherboard and require changes in order to run on other systems. They're encoded on EEPROMs soldered onto the motherboard so they can be updated. The BIOS is archaic - the archetypal legacy system, first implemented in the days of DOS PCs. Back then, you could access the BIOS directly from your applications using a well-known standard API (applications programming interface), circumventing DOS completely. You could almost view it as part of the operating system. These days, despite the increased capability of modern PCs compared to their DOS forebears, the BIOS is still a 16-bit program running in 1MB of memory (the start point of the program is at address 0xFFFF0, 16 bytes below the 1MB mark). EFI was designed as the successor to BIOS. It has better support for larger disks and the ability to boot from them, a much faster boot time (since it doesn't use backwards-compatible code to access chipsets and disks), 32-bit or 64-bit code, installable drivers and so on. Unfortunately for PC users, the BIOS maintains its stranglehold on our machines. One of the final stages of the POST process is to identify and initialise the drives in the system. The BIOS has a table that defines the boot order for disks, and it starts looking through this table for a disk that contains an operating system. To do this, it looks for the bootstrap loader on each disk in sequence. The BIOS doesn't know about filesystems (the filesystem is only loaded as part of the operating system). Instead, it only knows about sectors, heads and cylinders. To find the bootstrap loader, the drive must be formatted in a peculiar way. In particular, the first 512-byte sector of the drive (found at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1) has to be formatted as a master boot record (MBR). Although small, the MBR has enough code to continue the loading of the installed operating system (each operating system has its own code), and also has a small table of partitions that the drive has been split into. This table contains information about all the partitions on the drive. Since the MBR only contains enough room for the information on four partitions, that's what we're limited to for PC systems. On the run Once the BIOS finds an MBR, it loads it into memory and starts executing it. The MBR code identifies the primary active partition by looking at the partition table, reads the partition's boot loader (known as the volume boot record) from the disk into memory (the partition table stores where the VBR can be found), and starts executing it. This second boot loader is the one that will load yet more sectors into memory, have more knowledge of the filesystem and continue the loading of the operating system. It will load the actual operating system boot loader (known as 'ntdlr' prior to Windows Vista and 'winload.exe' after that), and this boot loader will switch the CPU to 32-bit mode or, increasingly, to 64-bit mode. At this point the BIOS is no longer used because Windows uses boot-level drivers in order to access the hardware. For EFI, the process is largely similar, the difference being that EFI has knowledge of the filesystem and can load the boot loader directly. This is called BootX on a Mac. Once the operating system starts to boot, it initialises the various systems it moderates. These include the CPU, memory, on-board devices, persistence mechanisms, and app and user interfaces.
FIGURE 1: Major components in an operating system For the CPU, the operating system not only switches it into 32-bit or 64-bit operation, but also virtualises the CPU for security and protection. The OS and its kernel drivers execute at the highest privilege at Ring 0, whereas normal user applications (such as the browser or a word processor) run at the lowest privilege in Ring 3 (there are four privilege or protection rings in modern Intel architecture, of which Windows uses only two). The main reason for this is security; by ensuring that non-privileged programs can't corrupt the OS, either maliciously or accidentally, the system as a whole is made more stable. By providing this level of protection, the OS can also abstract away certain physical limitations of the PC (say, the amount of memory) from user applications and then provide services like program swapping and multitasking, making the application easier to write and the overall system more efficient. Time management The operating system also manages how much CPU time each running application has to ensure that it gets work done. Most modern PCs have multiple CPUs, but let's imagine we only have one. Only one application or process can use that CPU at any one time. To create the illusion of many applications running simultaneously, the OS will switch rapidly back and forth between the current set of programs, giving each one a small timeslice in which to get some work done. Once the current application has run for a certain amount of time (the time slice), or has been suspended waiting for a resource or some form of user input, the OS will save its current state (register values, memory, current execution point), load the saved state for the next application in line, and start executing it. After it's completed its timeslice or has suspended, the next process gets a turn using the CPU to get work done. This round-robin scheduling continues as long as the OS is running. Sometimes an interrupt will occur needing immediate attention, in which case the current process is interrupted, its state is saved and the interrupt is serviced. Modern 32-bit and 64-bit operating system provide services that manage memory for user applications, including the virtualisation of memory. In essence, the memory layout for a user application looks exactly the same to each one. To ensure that different programs don't interfere with each other's memory structures, the OS doesn't provide access to physical memory directly. Instead, it maps user-mode memory through mapping tables called descriptor tables to either real memory or to the swap file on disk. This provides a great deal of flexibility for the operating system: it can move memory blocks around to accommodate other programs' memory requirements without the original program knowing; it can swap out memory blocks to disk if the program isn't being used and it can defer assigning (or committing) memory requests until the memory is written to. This mapping of memory through descriptor tables also means the OS gives every user application the convenient fiction that it's the only application running on the system. No applications will clash by trying to use the same memory, and an application can't cause another to crash by writing to its memory space.
FIGURE 2: Mapping virtual memory to physical memory and the swap file with a descriptor table Figure 2 shows two programs, A and B, both with the same view of their memory space. Program A has one block of memory allocated at a particular position in its memory space; in reality it's found somewhere else in physical memory via the descriptor table. Program B has two blocks allocated, one of which is found in the swap file for the system. Files and folders Another important virtualised service provided by the OS is the filesystem. Disk hardware works on logical block addresses (LBAs), which are essentially numbers that define the sector number from the beginning of the drive volume. The disk controller hardware converts the LBA into physical parameters (such as head, track and platter) to find the actual sector. For SSD drives, the disk controller simply converts the LBA into a memory address (although the controllers on SSDs will move data blocks around to even out access to the flash memory unbeknownst to the OS). The operating system hides these raw LBAs from user programs by imposing a hierarchical filesystem over the disk. The filesystem organises the physical disk sectors (each one usually being 512 bytes in size, although the market is starting to move towards 4kB sectors since most filesystems use that block size as a minimum allocation and granular size for a file) into files and directories. The filesystem is responsible for maintaining the mapping between files and blocks, which blocks appear in which files (and in which order they appear), which directory a file is found in, and other similar services. The filesystem virtualisation also means that user programs only need to worry about high-level operations with files and folders: creating new ones, deleting existing ones, adding data to the end of a file, reading and writing to files and enumerating the folder contents. All the mapping between userfriendly names and LBAs is done by the operating system under the hood. To the user program, a file is just a contiguous set of bytes somewhere on the disk and it doesn't have to work out that the file consists of a block over here, followed by that one over there. APIs This filesystem abstraction points to another set of services provided by the operating system: the application programming interfaces (also know as APIs). These are plug-in points that let user programs like browsers and word processors to take advantage of various services exposed by the operating system. These include APIs for memory management, file and folder management, network management, user input (keyboard and mouse), the windowing user interface, multimedia (video and audio) and so on. In all cases, the API provides a standardised way for user applications to obtain and use resources from the PC, no matter what hardware was actually present. So, for example, a user program doesn't have to know anything about which video adaptor or screen the PC is using in order to display something on it. It merely makes calls to the standard API ('draw a window here of this size') and the adaptor and screen drivers translate those standard requests to calls to the hardware that provide the required result. That is perhaps the last part of the operating system story. It isn't a monolithic program, written to work with every single piece of hardware out there. It is instead a framework into which hardware-specific drivers are plugged. These drivers know how to access their particular hardware, can translate between standard function calls and the requirements of the device, and are written to use the operating system's APIs. 
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| Review: Rega Saturn and Mira 3 Posted: 20 Mar 2011 03:00 AM PDT  You'll notice that the Rega Saturn CD player is a good deal dearer than the Mira 3 amp and one of its more upmarket touches is an aluminium front panel, whereas the Mira amp has plastic. Despite that, they match very well visually and the control illuminations chime pleasantly together, too. Again, control layout is somewhat out of the ordinary, with the amp apparently lacking a knob; as with the Audio Analogue Crescendo, the volume knob also selects inputs. In this case, you press it to convert to selector mode, then rotate to select. You soon get used to pressing it a second time to go back to volume mode, which it otherwise does automatically after a few seconds. Once again, it's possible to see where costs have been cut, in the amp at least, but it's nothing we'd feel inclined to complain about. The mains transformer isn't the biggest ever, but it's more than good enough for the rated output and the main amplifying circuit is neatly executed with discrete transistors. There's a phono stage built-in and full record output and monitoring. Output connectors are nickel-plated rather than gold, but that's probably more due to Rega's noted disdain for tweakery than cost-saving!
The Saturn employs a top-loading transport, which is very quick and pleasant to use and commits to audio purity via a pair of latest-generation Wolfson DAC chips and discrete-transistor output circuits. Sound quality Our listeners were quick to point to a slight lack of bass from this combination, but it doesn't seem to have interfered very seriously with their enjoyment of the sound. Indeed, one pointed out in the very same sentence that this was one of the most foot-tapping presentations, which certainly serves well in any strongly rhythmic music. At the same time, there is a good degree of clarity in the sound, with detail always present, but not unduly spotlit. Interestingly, two comments on the same track specifically mention the lack of any harshness or 'nasties' – this kind of double-negative is uncommon in our experience and taken together with the general tone of the comments, we feel it may be because there wasn't much to say beyond 'it sounds right'. Intrigued by the bass character, we separated the units and listened to each with familiar references. It seems clear that the amp is responsible for this transgression and indeed the Saturn CD player is, if anything, quite strikingly full-voiced in the lower reaches. The two are well-matched in terms of detail, though it's also worth noting that the phono stage in the Mira restores some of the neutrality that's missing via line inputs. For serious vinyl lovers, we would recommend something a little fancier. Related Links
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| Tutorial: How to clean your PC of dust and dirt Posted: 20 Mar 2011 03:00 AM PDT  Tips for improving computer performance usually concentrate on streamlining and maintaining operating systems, boosting speed with new RAM, upgrading video and so on. However, you can give your machine a speed and reliability upgrade easily with the help of a vacuum cleaner and a soft brush. A build-up of dust on vents, components and fans ruins your machine's ability to keep its cool, and when a computer runs at a high temperature, it goes more slowly. In the worst-case scenario, your cards, power supply units and motherboards can fail entirely. On a more basic level, dirt and dust can gum up moving parts and affect performance. Here, we'll show you how to physically clean your PC, keyboard and monitor. As a bonus, we'll also tell you how to keep your computer grime-free once you've fettled it. You'll add years to the life of your hardware and improve its performance. Before you begin, remember that PC cleaning is a serious job that - depending on how far you want to take it - will require some technical skills. As a gauge, if you're comfortable with fitting new memory or upgrading a video card in your PC, you should be able to complete all the steps. Gear up, power down Start by assembling your tools. You'll need a small, soft brush - the kind you might use for painting a window or door frame. Make-up brushes are also ideal. Go for the best quality you can afford, because economy ones often tend to shed hairs. A can of compressed air, which should be available from most computer retailers and hardware shops, is also required. Make sure you have soft, general cleaning cloths for the exterior of your machine and the computer's cabling.
The final essential tool is a full-sized vacuum cleaner with a nozzle attachment, or a fully charged handheld device. Some other tools may be handy, but aren't necessities. For example, an anti-static wristband will prove useful once you've opened up the computer. You might also want to use a switch cleaner, which is a spray solvent that eats dust and can be used on ports and contacts. These aids can be bought cheaply from Maplin or larger computer retailers. Switch off your computer and unplug it from the mains. If you've been using it, you should leave it to stand for at least 30 minutes before you begin the cleaning routine. This will give internal components a chance to cool down, and also reduce the risk of electric shock from any stored charge that may potentially injure you or damage your computer. Carefully unplug all your peripherals and input devices, then set the cables to one side, because you'll be giving them special attention. Place your computer on a raised surface - an empty table or desk will do fine. Attempting to spring clean with the computer on the floor or in another awkward place will just make things more difficult. You're now ready to begin.
Start with the easy part - cleaning the computer's exterior. Using a vacuum cleaner hose or handheld vac, remove dust from vents and any visible USB, video and networking ports. Dust can get into infrequently used ports, increasing the risk of malfunction. Be careful when working near fans, because causing them to spin in the wrong direction can damage their operation. When the excess dust has been removed, carefully wipe down the exterior of the case. If there's any sticky grime on there you can use a very damp cloth or a little household surface cleaner to get rid of it. Take care not to go near any ports or vents with liquid. It's now time to open up your machine and begin the serious bit of the exercise. With most modern computers, you should be able to remove the side panel using a catch, but on older machines you may have to undo a couple of screws first. Your aim is to get inside the case so you can see the damage caused by months of dirt. Inside and out You've now reached your first decision point. If you're happy with the technical aspects of computer maintenance, proceed with caution. If you're less confident, we suggest skipping over this bit and simply vacuuming the interior.
If you're feeling brave, put on your anti-static wristband. If you don't have one, touch something metal like a radiator to discharge any static that's built up before you begin. To clean inside the case and around the motherboard as effectively as possible, it's best to remove any add-on cards. These can include ones for video and audio, networks and port extensions. You can also take out memory chips carefully, but only if you're happy about doing so. Place the removed components on a clean and clear surface. If you're a completist who's keen to have a spotless PC, you can also remove any internal connector cables. It's best to leave power supply cables - the yellow, red and black leads feeding into drives and other components - in place. IDE ribbon cables, SATA cables and audio connectors can be unplugged and set aside. Dust buster You may be amazed at the amount of dust that can accumulate inside a PC case. It's not unusual to find spiders' webs alongside the balls of fluff and general detritus. With the case open and exposed, you can vacuum most of what's built up straight out using the hose from your cleaner. Be careful when you get near fans, and avoid nudging or touching your PC's components with the nozzle. When you've removed all the dust that's easy to vacuum out, it's time to turn to the brush and can of compressed air. Starting from the top of the case, use the brush to gently swish any dust off the motherboard and slots.
Compressed air can then be used to dislodge more stubborn grime, but make sure you only use it in very short bursts and follow up with a sweep of the brush, moving the dust out of the case. These short attacks are highly important, because anything longer can introduce moisture to your system, possibly causing a short circuit. Now wipe down the bare areas of the case with a clean, dry cloth, being careful to avoid electrical parts. Always use the brush for this - you risk leaving behind conductive material otherwise. If there are any particularly stubborn areas of grime - more likely if you're a smoker - you have another choice. If the dirt is on the case interior, you can use a small amount of surgical spirit on a lint-free cloth to wipe at these spots carefully. If the ground-in dirt is on electrical components, though, you may do more harm than good trying to remove it. You'll just have to live with it. Side project As an advanced user, you may want to finish your spring clean with a bit of light repair, especially if you've noticed a noisy fan or two in your system recently. Case fans are usually closed systems, with internal lubrication that should last a lifetime. Occasionally, dirt can compromise that system, soaking up lubricating oil or enabling it to dry up. The result can be a noisier, hotter computer.
In this case, you can try a drop of sewing machine oil in the centre of the fan. You'll find the stuff on Amazon for about £3 a bottle. You'll need to remove the fan from the case before applying lubricant, but that's not a difficult job. Carefully detach the power cable from the motherboard first, then remove a screw from each corner of the fan. Pull the fan free of the case. In the centre of the fan, there should be a sticker. Peel that back carefully and put it somewhere safe. You should see a rubber or plastic plug underneath the sticker. Remove this and add one drop of oil to the spindle. That's all you should need to get things moving smoothly again. Replace the plug and sticker, then carefully reinstall the fan in your machine. Reassembly It's now time to return to the components you took out of the PC and left to one side. Clean them individually with the soft brush, wiping away any excess dust. Hold the parts by the edges, being careful not to touch any contacts. If you have a blower brush - a tool commonly used in camera cleaning - this will be an excellent tool for the task. When the kit has been cleaned, you can reassemble the PC.
Make sure the cards and memory chips are properly seated first, and if you removed any cables earlier, wipe them clean with a dry cloth and reconnect them. Have one final check to make sure they're connected firmly and correctly. Remove any cleaning materials or obstructions before closing up the case. Leave the system to sit for 30 minutes, just in case all that blowing and wiping introduced any moisture. Finally, connect the keyboard, mouse, monitor and power cable, with no other peripherals attached. Then switch on the machine to test that it's still working. If all has gone well, you should be able to enjoy a quieter, cooler and cleaner PC. 
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2011 02:30 AM PDT  Exposure has always been the epitome of fuss-free hi-fi. The equipment is typically well put together but not flashy, adequate but not excessive on the features front and generally quite low key in a comfortingly confident sort of way. As with the Audio Analogue Crescendo, they are built to a tough price, but the savings necessary to do this have been achieved thoughtfully. Take the case design, for instance: the complete case of both units is made of aluminium – believed by many to be preferable to steel because of its non-magnetic properties. It's more expensive than steel, but Exposure has taken advantage of it in other ways, notably in the amplifier where its good thermal conduction is utilised in making the entire base the heatsink, saving a sigificant cost. Sure, that won't allow full-power operation for long periods, but music doesn't work like that and we found no signs of distress in practice. These may be the latest versions of the long-standing 2010 range, but electronic construction of both units is distinctly old-school, with through-hole components everywhere apart from the DAC chip and a few control parts; the amplifier even uses a single-sided circuit board. Each unit has a decent-size mains transformer and the CD player uses multiple parallel power supply capacitors and several regulators for the various circuit stages. The disc transport is a dedicated audio one – in our review sample it was a bit noisy mechanically, producing a rather louder hiss than we'd ideally care to have around the listening room. The CD player's digital output is on a BNC, theoretically better than a phono though possibly a wasted effort given how often people end up with a BNC-phono adaptor in circuit.
Over at the amp, features include a preamp output and the option of converting one line input to phono with an inexpensive add-on circuit board. Sound quality The fuss-free approach certainly seemed to do it for our listening panel, who were, of course, unaware of which combination they were listening to at the time. From the outset, the 2010S2 units drew almost unqualified praise for their performance, covering both technical aspects and general musical qualities. Above all, the listeners agreed that this combo really got to the heart of the matter and simply played music that one really wants to listen to. They are energetic and full of sparkle and life, with good attack and body to the sound, too and the results are highly convincing across the full range of musical styles. Related Links
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| Best Linux distros for netbooks Posted: 20 Mar 2011 01:00 AM PDT  There are now some fantastic varieties of Linux that make ideal replacements for the operating system that's currently installed on your netbook. The latest version of Ubuntu UNR, for example, features brilliant hardware support alongside the expanding Unity interface, which Canonical is pinning its hopes on as a Gnome replacement for the next mainstream Ubuntu release. Moblin and Maemo have also combined to create a new netbook operating system, known as MeeGo, and version 1.1 is a great choice if you particularly enjoy social networking through a streamlined interface. Then there's Jolicloud to consider - a connected Linux-based operating system that blends local applications and storage seamlessly with those offered by the cloud. It's had some fantastic reviews and has been updated very recently. Any one of these would make a great replacement for an older netbook distribution, such as Xandros or Linpus, and can even make better sense than a Windows installation if you can do without the compatibility offered by Microsoft's OS. New Linux netbook distributions have the advantages of active community support and development, but the best thing about this list of distros is that they can all be installed on your machine at the same time. The only trick here is knowing how to do it. 1. Install USB stick
Most netbook Linux distributions use a custom utility that turns a downloaded ISO of the distribution into a USB-bootable installation. This is because most netbooks don't have an optical drive and will default to booting from a USB device if one is detected. You'll need to go through this process for every distribution you want to install, but start with UNR. Like Ubuntu, it first boots to a live desktop mode that you can then use to prepare your netbook's hard drive for as many distributions as you want to install on it. Before you get to that point, though, get hold of the UNR ISO and place the file on your desktop. From an Ubuntu desktop, open the Administration menu and click 'Startup Disk Creator'. In the utility that appears, select the 'Other' button and use the file requester to find the UNR ISO. Back in the main window, insert your USB stick and make sure it's detected in the 'Disk to use' list. You should also erase whatever files you may happen to have on the device before clicking the 'Make startup disk' button. A few minutes later, you should see the 'Installation complete' message. It's now time to move the USB stick to your netbook. 2. Partitioning
Your netbook should automatically boot from your USB stick if you start the system with the stick installed. Booting UNR should take a few moments more, and when the main desktop appears, you can choose between 'Try Ubuntu netbook' and 'Install Ubuntu netbook'. Because we want to use a graphical tool to repartition the internal drive first, you need to choose the first option. This will drop you onto a proper live desktop without stepping through the installation. The tool we now need to open is the partition manager, which can be accessed by clicking the 'Applications' icon in the left border toolbar, followed by 'GParted' in the list. This should be familiar if you've ever done some partition tinkering. Each partition is visualised within a block representing your drive, and you can click and drag on this to delete or resize your current configuration, or create a new one. You'll get the best possible results by removing all existing partitions and creating a new one for each operating system you want to install. Make sure you select 'ext4' as the filesystem for each, and that you add a 2GB swap partition to the end of the drive. You'll obviously lose all data currently on the drive, so make sure none of it is left behind. If you've already got Windows on the machine, it's also possible to resize its partition to make space for new ones, but you should still back up your Windows data. When you've finished making changes, click the 'Apply' icon. 3. Installing UNR
With the partitions created, click the 'Install Ubuntu Netbook' button in the top of the left panel toolbar. This will launch the same installer you might have seen when installing the desktop model of Ubuntu. The new version will even install updates in the background while you answer the simple questions asked by the installer. The only way in which it differs from a default installation is that you need to make sure you select 'Specify partitions manually' from the second step. This ensures UNR will use the partition you've already created for it, and that it doesn't try to create its own new partition table. From the 'Allocate drive space' window that appears, select the partition you want UNR to use, click 'Change', select 'ext4' from the Use As menu and give it a mount point of '/', which means the root partition. Now click 'Install now' to enable the installer to continue with its mission. When it comes to installing any other distribution you want alongside UNR, you'll need to make sure you use its equivalent to the manual partition mode so that you can choose a new partition and apply a mount point for the new distribution. If you don't, there's a good chance your distribution will try to use your entire hard drive.
However, the boot menu for each distribution should be modified automatically. When the UNR installer has finished, you should find that you can restart your machine, select 'Ubuntu' from the boot menu and use your new Linux desktop. You should now attempt to set up a second distribution. 4. Installing Jolicloud 1.1
The Jolicloud ISO needs to be installed into your USB stick using another utility specific to the distribution. There are versions for Linux, Windows and OS X, and these can be found at http://help.jolicloud.com. The Linux USB creator is a script, and after you've downloaded it you'll need to open a command line terminal, cd, to the directory where the script is located. Then type chmod +x followed by the script name to make it executable. You need to make sure you've got the 'python-qt4' package installed, since this is used by the script to provide a GUI. Then you can run the script by typing ./scriptname within the directory containing it. This will open the application. Then use the 'Browse' button to navigate to your Jolicloud ISO, found in your home directory, and to make sure your USB stick is correctly identified. Click 'Create' to start the process. Also ensure that the USB stick is unmounted (ejected) from the desktop. With the ISO safely on the USB stick, you can now restart your netbook with the USB device inserted. You should see the Jolicloud boot menu; from there, select the 'Install' option. Jolicloud is based on an older version of Ubuntu - 10.04 - and as a result, you should find the installer familiar. You'll need to choose the manual partitioning option and select another unused partition from those you created earlier, in exactly the same way you did for the UNR installation. When the process is complete, reboot your machine. Jolicloud should now be available as another option from the boot menu. 5. Installing MeeGo
MeeGo is the product of a collaboration between Nokia and Intel, and the netbook version is closely related to the Moblin operating system. As a result, its install process is slightly different to the usual Ubuntu way of doing things. You'll still need to boot the system from a live USB stick, but getting the installer onto that stick in the first place involves a little command line trickery. This is because MeeGo is supplied as an IMG file rather than an ISO file, so it just needs to be written, byte-for-byte, to the USB stick. The command for doing this is dd, but there are a couple of important considerations to bear in mind. Firstly, you'll need to know the device name of your USB stick. If you get this wrong and select something else by mistake, data will be lost. Secondly, your USB stick will also be wiped and repartitioned as part of the process. To restore it to its original capacity for future use, you'll need to use the same partition tool we used on the hard drive. After you've grabbed the IMG file, switch to the command line and insert your USB stick. Next, type dmesg. This will print the system's log to the screen, and you'll need to look for the last few lines of output. This is where the system will have detected the USB stick you've just inserted and reported which device node it's connected to.
The output should look something like 'sdb: sdb1'. You now need to unmount this device using the unmount command, before executing dd if=meego.img of=/dev/your_ device bs=1m. If you've hit the correct device, you should see the access LED on your stick flashing. This process may take as long as 50 minutes, depending on the speed of your USB port. After it's completed, you'll be able to remove the USB stick and switch it to your netbook for booting. Choose the 'Install only' option when you reach the USB boot menu. The partition settings are configured on the third step of the installer, and you need to select 'Create custom layout' from the dropdown menu to be able to specify the partitions you need manually. On the following page, select the partition you want and click 'Edit'. Now choose 'ext3' for the 'Format as' option, and '/' as the mount point. Click 'OK'. You'll also need to select the swap partition and format this as 'swap', but this should affect your other distributions. When you press the 'Forward' arrow to progress, you'll be warned about choosing 'ext3' over 'btrfs', but you can safely ignore this message. The next step involves the boot loader installer, which will replace the one we installed with UNR. As a result, you need to add entries for both UNR and Jolicloud, if they're both installed. Click 'Add', choose the partition that's hosting the operating system and give the menu option a label. Clicking the 'Forward' arrow will now install MeeGo. Twenty minutes later you should have a dual-or triple-booting netbook with the very latest operating systems Linux can offer. 
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