Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[John J. Boyer]

My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does 
anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?

Thanks,
John

-- 
John J. Boyer; President,
AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with 
         disabilities which are available at no cost.

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[Mark Peveto]

Hi John,
I don't think you'd need a linux shop specifically, just a good computer store that can get you the kind of drive and such.  Check with best buy if you've got one close...they can probably get
you headed in the right direction.
Have a good one.

Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13


On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, John J. Boyer wrote:

> My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
> anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
>
> Thanks,
> John
>
> --
> John J. Boyer; President,
> AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
>          disabilities which are available at no cost.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, John:

I agree with your preference for taking your machine to a Linux shop.

However, it's probably not really necessary. Unless you're also asking
them to install software, any competent shop that builds machines to
customer requirements should be able to explore and help with upgrading
your machine with things like more RAM and faster/bigger hard drives.

PS: You should keep in the back of your mind that it might be cheaper to
simply replace, though I would still go with figuring out your
components iteratively and not just buy of the shelf.

For example, I'd want to investigate upgrading to an ePCI hard drive.
They're getting down to the affordable range, at least for the OS
itself.


Good luck, and stay in touch about this. I think a lot of us will be
interested.

Janina

John J. Boyer writes:
> My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does 
> anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
> 
> Thanks,
> John
> 
> -- 
> John J. Boyer; President,
> AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with 
>          disabilities which are available at no cost.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[John G Heim]

I am guessing John's problem would be with 2 things. First, he'd want 
linux with braille installed on the new hard drive. Second, he'd want 
his files copied from the old hard drive. Both of those things would 
take some knowledge of linux. Maybe not a lot, but some.



On 06/29/2016 09:37 AM, Mark Peveto wrote:
> Hi John,
> I don't think you'd need a linux shop specifically, just a good computer store that can get you the kind of drive and such.  Check with best buy if you've got one close...they can probably get
> you headed in the right direction.
> Have a good one.
>
> Mark Peveto
> Registered Linux user number 600552
> Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13
>
>
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, John J. Boyer wrote:
>
>> My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
>> anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John
>>
>> --
>> John J. Boyer; President,
>> AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
>> Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
>> Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
>> Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
>> Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
>> Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
>>           disabilities which are available at no cost.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blinux-list mailing list
>> Blinux-list@redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 
--
John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[John G Heim]

I happen to be in Madison and I've already offered to upgrade John's 
machine for him. But there is a really, really good computer repair shop 
in Madison that does linux. It's called Madison Computer Works. I've 
been doing business with them since the mid-90s even before I knew 
anything about linux myself.



On 06/29/2016 10:00 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, John:
>
> I agree with your preference for taking your machine to a Linux shop.
>
> However, it's probably not really necessary. Unless you're also asking
> them to install software, any competent shop that builds machines to
> customer requirements should be able to explore and help with upgrading
> your machine with things like more RAM and faster/bigger hard drives.
>
> PS: You should keep in the back of your mind that it might be cheaper to
> simply replace, though I would still go with figuring out your
> components iteratively and not just buy of the shelf.
>
> For example, I'd want to investigate upgrading to an ePCI hard drive.
> They're getting down to the affordable range, at least for the OS
> itself.
>
>
> Good luck, and stay in touch about this. I think a lot of us will be
> interested.
>
> Janina
>
> John J. Boyer writes:
>> My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
>> anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John
>>
>> -- 
>> John J. Boyer; President,
>> AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
>> Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
>> Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
>> Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
>> Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
>> Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
>>           disabilities which are available at no cost.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blinux-list mailing list
>> Blinux-list@redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 
--
John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[Janina Sajka]

I agree. If he needs this level of support, you want actually a fair
amount of Linux knowledge, enough to correctly setup brltty to come up
by default.

However, the machine hardware design/implementation and the Linux
specific assistance could be two shops. Or, heck, the Linux job could be
just an independent person who comes to his location and does the
installation of a morning. He still doesn't need a shop.

However, there is one aspect worth discussing here ...

I would want a Linux friendly UEFI (bios). I bring this up because I
settled for a main board that doesn't support peeking and poking from
the running kernel. This is really too bad, and I'm not making the same
mistake again, next time my refurb includes a new mb.

I forget which efi setting needs to be enabled to support Linux kernel
access, but there is one.

Janina


John G Heim writes:
> I am guessing John's problem would be with 2 things. First, he'd want linux
> with braille installed on the new hard drive. Second, he'd want his files
> copied from the old hard drive. Both of those things would take some
> knowledge of linux. Maybe not a lot, but some.
> 
> 
> 
> On 06/29/2016 09:37 AM, Mark Peveto wrote:
> > Hi John,
> > I don't think you'd need a linux shop specifically, just a good computer store that can get you the kind of drive and such.  Check with best buy if you've got one close...they can probably get
> > you headed in the right direction.
> > Have a good one.
> > 
> > Mark Peveto
> > Registered Linux user number 600552
> > Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, John J. Boyer wrote:
> > 
> > > My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
> > > anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > John
> > > 
> > > --
> > > John J. Boyer; President,
> > > AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> > > Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> > > Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> > > Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> > > Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> > > Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
> > >           disabilities which are available at no cost.
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Blinux-list mailing list
> > > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> > > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Blinux-list mailing list
> > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 
> -- 
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[Janina Sajka]

Awesome, I think Mr. Boyer is a very lucky guy!


John G Heim writes:
> I happen to be in Madison and I've already offered to upgrade John's machine
> for him. But there is a really, really good computer repair shop in Madison
> that does linux. It's called Madison Computer Works. I've been doing
> business with them since the mid-90s even before I knew anything about linux
> myself.
> 
> 
> 
> On 06/29/2016 10:00 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Hi, John:
> > 
> > I agree with your preference for taking your machine to a Linux shop.
> > 
> > However, it's probably not really necessary. Unless you're also asking
> > them to install software, any competent shop that builds machines to
> > customer requirements should be able to explore and help with upgrading
> > your machine with things like more RAM and faster/bigger hard drives.
> > 
> > PS: You should keep in the back of your mind that it might be cheaper to
> > simply replace, though I would still go with figuring out your
> > components iteratively and not just buy of the shelf.
> > 
> > For example, I'd want to investigate upgrading to an ePCI hard drive.
> > They're getting down to the affordable range, at least for the OS
> > itself.
> > 
> > 
> > Good luck, and stay in touch about this. I think a lot of us will be
> > interested.
> > 
> > Janina
> > 
> > John J. Boyer writes:
> > > My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
> > > anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > John
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > John J. Boyer; President,
> > > AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> > > Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> > > Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> > > Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> > > Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> > > Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
> > >           disabilities which are available at no cost.
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Blinux-list mailing list
> > > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 
> -- 
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[Mark Peveto]

Not all that far from you as places go.  In Iowa.

Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13


On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, John G Heim wrote:

> I happen to be in Madison and I've already offered to upgrade John's machine
> for him. But there is a really, really good computer repair shop in Madison
> that does linux. It's called Madison Computer Works. I've been doing business
> with them since the mid-90s even before I knew anything about linux myself.
>
>
>
> On 06/29/2016 10:00 AM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > Hi, John:
> >
> > I agree with your preference for taking your machine to a Linux shop.
> >
> > However, it's probably not really necessary. Unless you're also asking
> > them to install software, any competent shop that builds machines to
> > customer requirements should be able to explore and help with upgrading
> > your machine with things like more RAM and faster/bigger hard drives.
> >
> > PS: You should keep in the back of your mind that it might be cheaper to
> > simply replace, though I would still go with figuring out your
> > components iteratively and not just buy of the shelf.
> >
> > For example, I'd want to investigate upgrading to an ePCI hard drive.
> > They're getting down to the affordable range, at least for the OS
> > itself.
> >
> >
> > Good luck, and stay in touch about this. I think a lot of us will be
> > interested.
> >
> > Janina
> >
> > John J. Boyer writes:
> > > My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
> > > anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > John
> > >
> > > --
> > > John J. Boyer; President,
> > > AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> > > Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> > > Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> > > Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> > > Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> > > Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
> > >           disabilities which are available at no cost.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Blinux-list mailing list
> > > Blinux-list@redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>
> --
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

Re: Looking for a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin

[John J. Boyer]

Hi John,

Your guesses are correct. It would be nice if the new drive could have 
an image of the old one, so it would work immediately. i don't know if 
the errors are due to defects in the disk platters or to problems with 
the controller. The machine is behaving normally now, but every few days 
it starts giving messages about sector errors.

John

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 10:27:17AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
> I am guessing John's problem would be with 2 things. First, he'd want linux
> with braille installed on the new hard drive. Second, he'd want his files
> copied from the old hard drive. Both of those things would take some
> knowledge of linux. Maybe not a lot, but some.
> 
> 
> 
> On 06/29/2016 09:37 AM, Mark Peveto wrote:
> >Hi John,
> >I don't think you'd need a linux shop specifically, just a good computer store that can get you the kind of drive and such.  Check with best buy if you've got one close...they can probably get
> >you headed in the right direction.
> >Have a good one.
> >
> >Mark Peveto
> >Registered Linux user number 600552
> >Sent from sonar using alpine 2.20.13
> >
> >
> >On Wed, 29 Jun 2016, John J. Boyer wrote:
> >
> >>My Linux machine needs a new disk drive and a general overhaul. Does
> >>anyone know of a good Linux shop in Madison, Wisconsin?
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>John
> >>
> >>--
> >>John J. Boyer; President,
> >>AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> >>Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
> >>Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> >>Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> >>Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> >>Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with
> >>          disabilities which are available at no cost.
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Blinux-list mailing list
> >>Blinux-list@redhat.com
> >>https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >Blinux-list mailing list
> >Blinux-list@redhat.com
> >https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 
> -- 
> --
> John G. Heim; jheim@math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 
John J. Boyer; President,
AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
Email: john.boyer@abilitiessoft.org
Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with 
         disabilities which are available at no cost.