The ByteBaker

I’m a barely average typer. I haven’t really timed myself very well, but I know that I’m much slower than a lot of people that I know. What’s more worrying is that my typing is very error-prone, I have to hit the backspace key once very two or three words, certainly not very encouraging. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and typing in general. Being a computer scientist and software developer in training, I’ll be doing a lot of typing over my lifetime and being a fast accurate typer is a must for me. All the more so, because I enjoy writing and blogging, but can’t really afford to spend a lot of time on them.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there really a number of complicated issues here: not just very important things like RSI and ergonomics, but a lot of smaller things that can become very important. In fact, I wonder if there should seriously be college-level typing courses. These courses would not just teach ways to avoid RSI and ergonomics, but would also teach techniques like touch-typing which can significantly speed up typing speed. A part of the course would also be devoted to letting students experiment with different types of keyboards from different manufacturers and brands. I think that one size fits all certainly doesn’t work when it comes to keyboards. Though computer scientists might be the ones that most benefit from such a course, almost every college student could benefit from becoming a better typer — writing papers might take just a little less time if a student was pumping out 100+ words a minutes instead of 30-50. In the old days before typing became standard, people laid great emphasis on having clear legible handwriting. In an age when standard fonts have made legibility a non-issue, I think we should start placing just as much emphasis on being a good typer.

So back to my problem, how do i improve my speed and efficiency? One of the reasons that my typing is slow and error prone might be that I switch between a number of different keyboards: my 15.4″ Toshiba laptop has a fine flat keyboard with nice large keys closely spaced and I really enjoy typing on it. My old G4 Mac uses one of the old white Mac keyboards, those are nice, but I’m not very fond of it. My college library recently updated one of their Mac labs to the new aluminum iMacs and their thin flat keyboards. I have mixed feelings about this one, I like the laptop-like keys (though sometimes I do wish they were a bit stiffer), but I’m not quite sure about the spacing. Occasionally I find myself having to use various Dell keyboards and I like each of them to a different extent. I’ve been wondering if using a single keyboard might help improve my typing. Hardcore gamers are known for carrying their keyboards and mice to LAN parties, why shouldn’t programmers do the same? Ok, so there really aren’t that many coding parties, but you never know when you might have to sit down and write some code to save the world.

On a more serious note, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that finding the right keyboard is an absolute necessity for anyone who does a fair amount of typing. Your muscles have a certain memory and the better you train that memory, the better your typing will be. Of course if you keep switching keyboards, your muscles will have a hard time keeping up and won’t be remembering much. I’ve written before about how a good keyboard is important, but I haven’t really been looking for a full time keyboard myself. But now that I am putting more and more time into typing related activities, I realize that it is important that I find a good keyboard for myself. So what is important to me? Firstly, much of my programming takes place on my laptop under Arch Linux. I actually do like my laptop keyboard a lot and I’m not sure if I want to use an external keyboard with that. Portability is important for me as well. I like working from different places around campus: different rooms in the library and different computer labs on campus. I would like to be able to carry my keyboard with me. I also have developed a dislike for the ’standard’ desktop keyboards, with thick heavy keys (once again probably due to heavy laptop use). Though I don’t really dislike them, they are not something I would like to buy and use all the time. It would be ideal if I could get a laptop-like keyboard, slightly larger, but light enough to carry around without much trouble.

There are a number of laptop-like desktop keyboards out on the market. The most popular seems to be the Kensington slim keyboard. It looks like a decent product, stylish and fully functional. There are also a number of foldable keyboards out there which I found rather interesting. There are some that are completely flexible and can be rolled up nice and tight. But I really don’t want something like that, because I think it’s too far from what I’m used to for me to feel comfortable. I looked at some types that are rigid, but divided and hinged so that they can be folded up. But they are mostly designed for PDAs and hence come with short USB cables and I didn’t really feel any that made me feel that I really wanted it. One keyboard that I was really interested in was the Matias folding keyboard. Unfortunately it seems to be out of supply and at almost $70 the price tag is a bit hefty. Considering that I’m not really all the go all the time, I don’t think the investment will be worth it.

So what can I get? I think I might have found a solution in the new Mac keyboards. They do take some getting used to, but the more time I spend it with one (currently almost an hour each day) I find myself getting better with them. The keyboards are also light, but sturdy, and the two USB ports on the side come in handy for plugging mice and USB drives in. The $50 price is a bit higher than I would have liked, but I think it’s acceptable. I’m not ready to commit yet, I’m going to spend another week or two trying them out before actually buying one, but I think it is the best option for me at the moment.

One of my Computer Science professors recently lent me the book Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Design Interface written by two pioneers in the field of computer hardware: David Patterson and John Hennessy. This book is an excellent book about how the computers machinery is actually designed and built written by the people who introduced to the world RISC and MIPS. The book is widely used in undergraduate courses on computer and quite rightly so. I’ve only made my way through the first two chapters, but I already feel that this book deserves a place alongside the classics of computer science.

The reason I’m reading the book is because I’m interested in the hardware aspect of computers just as much as the software side. With so many powerful high-level languages that keep the programmer many layers of abstraction away from the hardware, it’s easy to forget that the computer will only reveal its full power if you learn how it works and learn it well. While it is certainly important to have a strong understanding of how the mathematics of computing work, it is equally important to know how to take those mathematics and concepts (some of which are incredibly powerful) and translate them to patterns of ones and zero. MIT’s Structure and Implementation of Computer Programs is probably the best book ever to be written for the purpose of teaching the fundamentals of pure computer science, covering everything from simple abstractions to machine-code generation. It’s not really a book to read unless what you want is a deep understanding of how computers compute. Combine that with a book like Computer Organization and Design (perhaps its graduate level partner) and you have a combination that if well utilized gives you a very complete understanding of computer systems.

Bridging the Hardware Software Interface is a very special piece of software : the compiler. The compiler is what will take your high-level mathematically abstract program and translate it to the bare bytes and the computer with deal with. You can’t implement a half-decent compiler without understanding well both the computer’s hardware architecture as well as the range of abstractions that you want to implement on that architecture. Steve Yegge correctly argues that you haven’t fully understood computers unless you have understood compilers. Compilers tie together all the fundamental concepts of computer science: programming languages, algorithms, data structures and of course, the hardware software interface. Unfortunately compilers are often glossed over during a computer science education. There has been this break in computer technology education with computer science gradually moving towards a focus on pure software with the bare minimum of hardware and electrical engineering dealing with hardware with a minimum of software (mostly assembly and C). Personally, I think this is a grave mistake, one that leads to a gradual lowering in the quality of computer scientists.

What is the solution? The ideal would be a overhaul of the computer science curriculum, perhaps merging many aspects of computer science and electrical engineering, bridging the hardware-software interface by a proper emphasis on both. However this would also mean that students would have to study a lot more, the curriculum would become quite a good deal harder and there would have to be a move away from having so-called “industry standard” languages such as Java as the main teaching medium. Ideally all computer science courses would have both Computer Organization and Design and SICP as textbooks at some point during the course of the degree. As you can well imagine, this isn’t going to happen any time soon, probably never. I’m going to be studying both of them because I love computers and would never pass up a chance to learn more about them, but I am acutely aware that most of my classmates do not share my enthusiasm.

But what can I do, as a lone college freshman to gain a complete understanding of computer systems, the power they have to offer, the challenges they involve and the many interesting facets of the hardware-software interface? Luckily, I don’t have to bound by the college curriculum (and neither does anyone else). Both of the books I have talked about are written with students in mind (albeit dedicated and determined students) and should be easily available. In fact SICP can be downloaded as PDF or read online for free. The software tools that both of these books use are also freely available online. There are also a number of videos available online of courses conducted by the authors of SICP and I feel that they are an excellent companion to the book. And if that isn’t enough, there is always the World Wide Web, with a plethora of information sites and freely available tools as well many projects to which to contribute to put one’s knowledge to work. Learning should be a proactive activity with just as much enthusiasm shown by the student as the teacher. As the Zen saying goes: “When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear”. This could not be more true in the information age.

Happy Learning !!

My past record with blogging hasn’t been too good. I’ve never been able to sustaing contiued posting for more than a few weeks at a time, often less. One reason has been that I’ve never really had something focused to blog about, meaning that it has been rather easy to lose interest or to simply not know what to write about.

But now I have something more to write about. I’ve recently come into possession of a Gumstix single board computer for a college project. It’s something I’m very interested in as it represents a huge learning opportunity for me and it will be the first time that I will be able to put my programming and technology into a real tangible application. Along witht he project I have also started a blog which will be part record of my experiments and part scratchpad for any ideas I might have of what to do with Gumstix and systems programming in general. I’m calling it Gumstix Adventures. Yes it will be rather technical so if you’re not that interested in hard computer technology, you might not find it very interesting.

Since I will be devoting a lot of my free time to that project. I will no longer be updating this blog. It’s been fun and it actually gets a fair amount of traffic but I just don’t have the time or the inclination or continue it. Of course, it will still be online for anyone who is interested.

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

    For most people, the keyboard may be the cheapest part of a computer that they buy (with the possible exception of the mouse). However, the keyboard is for most people the most important interface that the have with the computer. Depending on how you use your computer, you might be spending many hours a day typing away. And whenever you spend so much time doing one particular task, it is important that you do it in a way that doesn’t place undue stress on your body (and mind).

For a good few months I have been using my laptop keyboard almost exclusively. I really like my laptop keyboard, the keys are of a good size, close together and they are absolutely flat.  The space around the trackpad provides a convenient location for me to rest my wrists. As a result, I’ve developed a way of typing which involves very little actual hand movement. I just rest my wrists and then sweep my fingers across the trackpad, rarely lifting them high, I don’t actually strike the keys anymore, I just press down on them until they give away (which happens with quite little force). I’m still not quite sure if all this is all well and good from a medical point of view, I have a feeling that resting my wrists all the time may not be so good. But I’m quite certain that it is more efficient. I’m typing faster and more accurately, I think the fact that I don’t have to hit the keys hard makes it somewhat easier.

At the moment though, I am typing at an old Mac keyboard, the white chunky ones. Although I know a good few people who swear by it, I find it intolerable. The height and thickness of the keyboard makes my hands rest at what feels like an awkward angle. The keys themselves are quite high and curved and the keys require more force than my laptop keyboard. All of these make it impossible for my fingers to glide across the keyboard like I do with my laptop. I’ve become so used to that feeling that doing anything else for a long time feels very uncomfortable. I haven’t managed to try out the new keyboards, but I feel that I may be more comfortable with them.

I have an old G4 mac which right now has a older keyboard. I find the Mac interface very soothing for (non-coding) writing projects but the keyboard puts me off. I have been looking for a good keyboard for it, and if I like the new ones, I might even get one. I also looked at the DiNovo Edge keyboard, but at a price tag of over $160 at Amazon, it is just a bit too much. And when it comes to something as important to me as a keyboard, I would like to try before I buy, which would not be an option in this case. I’ll post a follow-up as soon as I get my hands on a slim Mac keyboard.

When I was a good few years younger, I loved to play with Lego. My favorite activity was to mix together pieces from different sets to make something completely new. Part of the reason I’ve decided to become an electrical engineer and computer scientist is that I simply love putting things together. Lego has a number of advanced sets which involve electronics: Mindstorms come to mind. Today Linux Devices ran a story about a startup that was making something that can essentially be called electronic Lego. Bug Labs, as the company is called, is creating a set of electronic device modules that can easily be plugged together to build a wide range of more complex devices.

You start with a small, but fully operational computer built from an ARM1136JF-S CPU with 128MB of RAM and various connectors including USB, Ethernet and WiFi. To this base you can add various modules. Currently planned modules include a camera, a GPS locator and later a touchscreen and keyboard. Once you have your hardware fitted together, you can build your software using Java running on top of Linux. Running on top of Java is OSGi, which provides a service-centered runtime environment for your applications. While that may not sound as simple as fitting together Lego blocks, it shouldn’t be anything that a good programmer can’t handle.

Now that we know what we’re talking about, the question is: what’s the point? Besides the obvious appeal as an extremely cool geek toy, a BUG, as they’re called, could be a great way to build a prototype for a specialized electronics device. Put together a BUG with a handful of modules to get the functionality you want and then use that to iron out the kinks. Once you have a working prototype, you can think about combining everything tightly into a specialized. No need to build custom parts just to test a concept. Whether or not there will be enough to demand to make it a hit is something that only time will tell. The initial release is slated for later this year and then more modules early next year. There’s no information on pricing yet, and pricing will be an important factor, especially for hobbyists who will probably the early adopters. Using the modules to build a simple home media server is something I would personally be interested in.

If you think this is something that interests you, you should check out the Chumby, another example of open-source electronics. Though it’s more modest in its aims, the central idea is more or less the same: provide a simple, robust platform on which people can easily build their own applications.

Computer prices may have plummeted in recent years, but they are still quite expensive, especially for students. With some planning and looking around you can avoid a lot of unnecessary costs without compromising on quality. Some of the stuff I’ll talk about is free, while others just cost a little less. However they do require that you invest some amount of time and effort, so it’s up to you if the savings will justify the work you have to do.

1. Software

If you’re an average computer user, almost all the software you’ll need can be gotten for free. There are lots of free (and in many cases, open source) software that will take the  place of popular commercial software. You might have to sacrifice support services if you want things absolutely free stuff, but if you pay just a bit, you can buy a supported Linux Distro and get help with your problems. If you’re even a bit computer-savvy, you can easily get free help from online forums and mailing lists and take care of most problems yourself. This may well be the largest saving that you’ll be making.

2. Don’t get standard upgrades

Most computers that you buy nowadays let you upgrade things like RAM and hard disk space for an extra price. This is certainly convenient, but in many cases you could buy the parts for a fair deal less and install them yourself (or ask a tech-savvy friend to do it for you).  If you think you won’t need the upgrade immediately, it makes sense to wait until you do. Prices keep falling, so in 6 months time, chances are you’ll get a bit more for your buck.

3. Keyboard and Mice

These things don’t really cost much, but you can get them even less of Ebay and other auction sites. Unless you’re a hardcore gamer or you’re typing all day long you probably won’t recognize the difference between a new one and an old one. If you work in a large corporation or are in a college environment, chances are the IT department has a fair number of unused  keyboards and mice lying around. If you’re friendly with the IT guys, you could get yourself one for free.

4. Look around and wait a while

Computer stores and websites often have good deals going on things like printers, scanners and other peripherals as well as many seasonal discounts. Often you can get things for a good $100 or more less (often in the form of mail in rebates). If you don’t need a computer right now, try waiting a while, and if you do need one now, look around. In addition to looking at websites for the best deal, also visit physical stores near you, they might have special local offers going.

As for college students, if you have a student discount, remember to use it. Late summer is a particularly good time to buy thanks to lots of ‘back-to-school’ offers going around. Apple is currently giving rebates on iPods and Printers bought with a desktop or laptop.

A combination of all of the above could easily knock a few hundred dollars off your computer expenses. Of course, just buying a computer isn’t the end of it, there’s also a certain price associated with running a computer (upgrades, printer supplies and of course the monthly power bill). Tomorrow I take a look at the things you can do spend less money on running your machine.

I’m starting college this fall at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania and now that I have my visa and my ticket, it’s just a question of getting the details sorted (and packing). I know I’m going to need a computer, especially since I’m planning to major in computer engineering, but I’m not getting one here (here being India), because if anything goes wrong, support could be a pain in all the wrong places. I’ve already decided that I’m going to get a laptop, mostly for portability reasons (I’d like to bring it with me when I come home). And I’ve also decided to get an Apple. Why? Because I’ve always been fascinated by Apple, but never had the chance to handle one, and more importantly, Apple now uses Intel processors. This means that I can Windows (if I need to), but also that I can run Arch Linux without much of a hassle. I also get large student discounts of $100 to $200 depending on what I buy.

Apple has two lines of laptops: the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, each with 3 models. From the beginning the top MacBook Pro was out: it was simply too expensive. I seriously considered the middle MacBook, which would cost me $1199 and had good features. With a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM and a 120GB Hard Drive, it’s better than any computer I’ve ever used. And it looked great too. But there was a hitch: the screen was 13″. While that isn’t particularly small for a laptop, I wasn’t sure if it would be enough for me. Considering that this machine would be my primary (and possibly the only) computer for the next four years, I couldn’t buying something that I wouldn’t be able to use full time without regrets.

While I was considering this, Apple upgraded both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. I liked the bottom MacBook Pro a lot. Not only did it 15.4″ LED display and backlit keyboard, it sported 2GB RAM and a very attractive Nvidia 8600 GT video card. But was it worth $1799? The bigger screen was definitely a big advantage over the MacBook, and the better RAM and video card made it reasonably future-proof. In the end I decided to go with the MacBook Pro. It did cost a lot more, and buying it will probably mean no snacks for a long time, but since I’m making an investment for four years, I had better make a good one.

My plan was to manage my first semester with campus computers and buy around December or January. That would let me save some money from campus jobs so that it wouldn’t be completely out of my parents. It would also mean that I would get the new version of OS X: Leopard preinstalled (it’s due for release in October). But no sooner had I made up my mind, Apple came out with an offer I found very hard to resist: A free iPod Nano with every Mac bought with a student discount. Problem was, I had to buy before September 16. I really wasn’t looking to get an iPod, at least not now, but it’s hard to pass up free stuff. Unfortunately, if I wanted to get my Nano, not only would I have to pay almost as soon as I started college, I would also have to pay later to upgrade to Leopard, not something I wished to do.

It was time to do some serious thinking. I could stand to save $200 but if I was forced to upgrade later, it could cost me a lot more. So I search around the web and gather some data. First the free Nano wasn’t a free Nano at all, it was a rebate for $199, same price as a Nano. Secondly, for only $50 more I could get a full-fledged iPod, and still avail of the rebate. Third, the Leopard upgrade would probably cost $129, but with my student discount, it would only cost me $69. Fourth, there are some rumours that a new iPod might be announced soon and this offer is something like stock clearance. While a new iPod might be great news to some, it isn’t too much of a deal for me. I will be using it primarily for listening to music, keeping my contacts and calendar with me wherever I go, and occasionally for file storage. Since I won’t be watching videos or storing tons of pictures, I really don’t care for bigger screens or anything of the sort that might be introduced later. Ultimately it all came to a question of calculations:

If I took up the offer I would end up paying: $1799 +$249+ $69 - $199 = $1918, for a MacBook Pro, iPod and Leopard. If I waited a few months, and eventually got a Nano instead of a full iPod, I would still spend: $1799 +$199 = $1998. That’s a saving of $80 at the risk of a slightly outdated iPod and an early buy. Even if I have to pay the full $129 to upgrade to Leopard, I still save $30, and that sounds like a good deal to me.

If you’ve been wondering about similar deals, or about which Mac to get, I hope this has helped. I should mention that I’m still not sure whether I should get a 4GB Nano for $199 or a 30GB iPod for $249, but either way it’s a decent saving.

A lot of people (including both programmers and non-programmers) think that programming is the same as writing code. Not true. Programming is simply telling a computer what to do. Typed code stored in text files is just the way we go about it today. It wasn’t always the case, and may not be the case in the future.

The first computers were huge dinosaurs taking up entire hallways. It is debatable whether the first computers (such as the ENIAC) can be called programmable, because reprogramming them involved rewiring them and moving about hardware components. Software as we know it today didn’t really exist back then. But soon afterwards John von Neumann came up with a computer architecture where the computer’s operations weren’t an intrinsic property of it’s hardware configuration, but rather, you could store programs in the memory and changed without fiddling with the hardware. The invention of this stored program architecture can be taken to be the start of modern programming.

Of course, even though you could now store computer instructions in the memory, you needed a way to get those instructions into the memory in the first place. For quite some time the preferred way to do this was to put your program into bunches of punch cards which the computer could then read into memory. By the late 60s however, as computers became more powerful, the first computer terminals became available. In the beginning, these were teletypes wired up to computers. Teletypes were electro-mechanical typewriters which allowed you to send a message from one point to another (generally by a set of wires) and would print the reply onto paper like a typewriter. It was in the 1970s that visual electronic terminals first became widely available. By this time programming was very much similar to what we are familiar with today, except for a few superficial differences: terminals on their own had very little memory and were mostly used to connect to large mainframes. They couldn’t handle whole pages of text at a time, so for quite some time you had to edit your files one line at a time. But what if you didn’t have access to latest terminals and a mainframe to connect to?

At this the early Altair personal computers deserve a mention. While many computer manufacturers tried to give customers personal computers which were essentially terminals with processors incorporated, Altair was different. The Altair 8800 and later the IMSAI 8800 could be programmed by flipping switches up or down to represent binary numbers. These switches connected directly to the processor. But once you had loaded a bootstrap program by flipping switches you could use a punched tape reader to load other programs into memory. (One of these programs was a BASIC interpreter where you could type in programs the normal way.)

Even in the modern era of text programs, you can still program directly into hardware. Field Programmable Gate Arrays are semiconductor devices which contain a large number of logic components as well as programmable interconnections between them. A buyer can take a basic FPGA and using some specialized equipment, select which logic components are required and how they should be connected. Thus an FPGA can effectively be “programmed” into different hardware combinations which perform different operations.

The next step in computer programming is the elimination of the need to know a programming language, or enough to write any text. Graphical programming, in which a user can simply drag together various components and link them graphically to create a working program. A very good example is Yahoo! Pipes which makes creating feed filter systems almost as easy as playing with Lego. Applications like Zoho Creator are also going in the same general direction, although you still have to dabble with some code if you want a production standard application. MIT’s Scratch project is also extremely exciting and it will be interesting if it can be made into more than a learner’s tool. For the time being, the best example of the potential of graphical programming is probably the programming environment that is part of Lego Mindstorms, where you can actually program real-life robots by linking together programs blocks. But no matter how flashy programming gets in the future, it’s probably a good idea to keep in mind that it’s still just a question of getting data into the memory.

So, you’ve decided to turn your computer from an expensive paperweight and typewriter replacement to a Multibooting Machine. Now what do you do? Before you dive in and start throwing software around and generally messing up your hard drive, there are some things to consider:

1. You have a working computer, apart from the one you will multiboot on

This isn’t strictly essential, but it is strongly recommended. Multibooting on your main computer is certainly possible, but very risky. Remember that you will be reformating your hard disk and so you might lose all data. Also you won’t be able to use your computer while the operating systems are installing (see below) and if anything goes wrong during install, your computer could be unusable for long periods of time. That’s why you should have another computer at the ready (with all essential data on it) so that you won’t be stuck without a working computer if you need one in the middle of your multiboot mission It would be better if this other computer was connected to the Internet so that you could look up documentation and get help if you get stuck somewhere

2. All your hardware should be working perfectly.

This is top priority. If you have any hardware that has been acting up lately, get it fixed or replaced immediately. Installing operating systems is rather resource intensive and many things could go wrong if your hardware is malfunctioning. Especially important is your hard drive and your optical (CD/DVD) drive. One tell-tale sign of a bad optical drive is having problems reading and writing CD-RWs. If that’s your case, change it. While we’re talking about hardware I would also recommended having a DVD drive as many of the larger operating systems ship on DVD. Yes, it’s true that most also have multi-CD edition, but one DVD is much easier to handle then 6 or 7 CDs.

3. All your data should be backed up

Make sure that the hard disk you plan to use for multi-booting has been cleared of all important data. Ideally I would recommend having 3 backup locations: a CD or DVD, another hard disk and an online location. For the last one, a personal secure server would be ideal, but there are a number of web services offering online storage for free or at minimal cost.

4. You have some time to kill

Installing an operating system can take between 20 minutes to over an hour depending on numerous factors (most importantly, the size of the operating system and your hardware specs). Plus there is the additional factor of how long it will take to download the operating systems over the internet (if they’re available that way) or to buy them. And talking about buying…

5. You’ve got some cash to spare.

Now, don’t start worrying, making a multibooting machine isn’t going to burn a hole into your pocket. There are a plethora of operating systems available free of charge so you won’t have to pay a penny that way (unless there’s one or more that you’re dying to get and isn’t available freely). However, there will be some minor costs, like the price of buying a few blank CDs or DVDs. More importantly there’s the cost of bandwidth, which might be a problem if you don’t have a cheap broadband connection.

Now that the mundane considerations are taken care of, it’s time to move on to more interesting things. You can now proceed to search the internet for operating systems of your choice and download them (or buy them). Generally they will be distributed as CD or DVD images and you should be able to burn them to the appropriate media with any standard CD/DVD burning program (like Nero for Windows and K3B or Gnomebaker or xcdroast) for Unix. Just one word of advice: it’s better to burn to good quality CD-Rs rather than CD-RWs. Rewritables can be troublesome and I have personally experienced problems with them. I don’t have any experience with DVDs, so you’ll have to check that one yourself. Tomorrow I’ll take you through a more sophisticated checklist of things you’ll need to multi-boot as well as a few special tools to make your Multibooting experience a bit smoother.

When I got my own computer some months ago, I had intended to turn it into a Massively Multi-Booting Machine. Unfortunately that dream was derailed as the hard disk was rather badly damaged. But I’ve finally managed to get a new disk installed and have successfully turned it into a Multibooting Machine, (though not quite massive yet). My current list of operating systems are:

1. Ubuntu
2. PCLinuxOS
3. Dream
4. Arch

That’s the order I installed them in, but at the moment I’ve been using Arch exclusively for the past week. I had planned to install Symphony OS and Minix3 and was looking at the BSD’s, but my CD drive appears to have bitten the dust. But while I wait to get that replaced, I’m going to enthrall you all with my tales of how to go about creating your own Multi-booting machine. This one is going to be a long-ish series with quite a bit of detail (and maybe a bunch of screenshots) so make sure you have all your turkey and pudding out of the way. So check back tomorrow.