1)Killing or injuring other living organisms (not including plants, micro-organisms and parasites).

2)Theft or robbery (which includes all forms of illegal possessions)

3)Sex outside of marriage (also includes masturbation, pornography or sexual depictions in media.)  Laboratory reports may talk about benefits of masturbation and sex, but real life experiences prove the contrary.

4)Lies

5)Substance abuses (the original saying is alcoholic beverages, but this extends to substance abuses.

Than there came a time I came into contact with Buddhism (not the Original Buddhism now I work on), and I realized how games glorify the five activities prohibited by Buddhism: Murders or killings of living organisms (typically leveling in RPG games, and victory in strategy games), theft or robbery, sex outside of marriage (or sexualization of women and girls), lies, and substance abuses.  From this time on, I threw away all game software and did not download any games.

For a while, I tried to master Chess and Chinese Chess by playing against the computer, but my skill never improved, and I quit that, too.  As I have said before, we can only be really good at a few things.

To end mediocrity, we need to focus on something and give up most other interests.

They are normally assumed to be regular human (or animal) functions, but unless we can transcend, we cannot break free of the reincarnation cycle.

There are four elements: Earth (Firmness), Water (Moisture), Fire (Warmth), Wind (Motion); our physical bodies are made of them, but it would be pointless to attempt to “eliminate” the very elements that make up our bodies; the whole point is to end the cycle of “inter elements” (which is very much the process of our mind.)  In fact, self-injury is very much against Original Buddhism.

Let’s talk about the “Internal elements” of “Materials” First:

Earth (Firmness) is the belief that ego and materials (and their possesses) last; the fact is that they are ephemeral and changing; to eliminate such belief, there must be clear understanding that ego and all material possesses are ephemerons.

Water (Moisture) is the attachment between the senses (the six senses: Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and thinking) with the sensual experiences, and they result in the Five Cores; to eliminate such phenomenon, we need to understand the pollution of “water”, and learn to stop “the senses” from going after the experiences and observe how the four elements create sufferings.  Be aware of how the “Moisture” arises and eliminates it accordingly.

Fire (Warmth) is the love and hatred relationship; it originates from the earth “Firm” belief of the ego and the false belief of “long-term possession”, and it generates love and hatred.  This results in greed and hatred.  (Fire) warmth extends the activities of the other elements.  The elimination of fire (warmth) starts with discarding the false belief of “long-term possession”, and eliminates such element.  When a disciple understands that “long-term possession” is an illusion, and abstains from indulgence in sensual experiences.

Wind (Motion) is the emotional upheavals caused by sensual experiences and the resulting thinking, feelings, actions, and distinction (of worldly matters.)  The very attachments between ephemeral sensual experiences create the illusion that blocks the truth of Original Buddhism.  The wind motivates the action of water and fire, and the four elements combine to form suffering.  Such wind consists of the feeling, thinking, actions, and distinction (of worldly matters), and the concerns of worldly issues; the elimination of reincarnation involves elimination of such wind.

The internal four elements are linked with the external ones, and they generate in the five cores of reincarnations.  Those external four elements of the physical bodies are ephemeral and filthy, so are the internal ones.  A disciple must realize the truth behind these elements to overcome superstition and blind faith, and thus end the suffering of reincarnation.

There is no ego behind the four elements, and it is essential to observe and build up Enlightenment with observation ability from “Breath observations”; such realization will end the cycle of reincarnation.

These lines move the browser cache directory to another partition, and limit the cache size; due to uncontrolled growth of Ice Weasel memory use up to 200MB+ Ram, I designed to trim it.  Although it still consumes quite a bit of resources (like 113MB), I would call it “under control” at least.  (Perhaps I may try a little more aggressive on the other old computer.)

Under /etc/rc2.d, you will find a variety of start-up programs:

Here is the minimalist approach; you just find unnecessary start-up programs and uninstall them using Synpatic Package Manager, you can tremendously reduce memory use.

To make sure conky reflect the correct case of memory use, use a text editor to edit the three files in /usr/local/share/mkdistro/conky, under where it says no_buffers no, change it to no_buffers yes (on all three files.)

The lower prices of computers may lead to more consistent upgrading (or changing) of personal computers; than there are a few issues: costs, placement, and environmental concerns.

People may keep their personal computer in uses as long as they can, but there’s a vague line in defining what’s realistic and what’s not; for example, due to the memory requirement of modern Internet browsers (which is anything from 50MB to 200MB of RAM), it doesn’t sound too realistic to keep a computer with less than 512MB of RAM going.  The Pentium 1.6GHz, with 40GB Harddrive and 256MB of RAM, is just barely alive, even all it runs are Firefox and Windows XP.  Can anyone imagine using a 486 with 8MB RAM and a 200MB harddrive?  I remembered learning typing and some basic world processing on Apple II computers, but may be these are only good for training basic computer skills.

Switching to Linux may have extended the life and performance of my laptop considerably.  It was a Windows XP system back than; I was disappointed with performance and file system issues, so I made the switch to Linux probably in 2007.  I observed quite a few developments: The development of the LXDE and XFCE Windows manager, the appearance of Ibus, Libreoffice replacing Open Office, etc.)  The minor glitches, such as not using the Wireless and a few keys on the keyboard (the € and $ button, which can be typed using the usual keyboard), are considered too minor to concern.

One thing perhaps only applies to me: Giving up on games and multimedia has lowered my need for advanced features on personal computers.  For so many people, games and multimedia are essential parts of their lives.

If you are a gamer, I would recommend a Windows PC.  Most of the popular games are written for the Microsoft file system.  You can get them to run on the Mac OS and Linux with 3rd party software, but performance might be a little on the slow side.  I have tried this software out first hand.  It can be a little buggy, and confusing to use, but it does work.

If you are a casual computer user, I would recommend a PC.  Browsing the web every now and then, checking email, and playing around on Facebook would fall into casual use.  There is no reason to spend a lot of money on a Mac when you can get a cheaper PC to do all these things well enough.  If you consider yourself casual, I strongly suggest not buying a Mac.

If you are concerned about security, I would recommend a Mac.  95% of viruses are designed to attack Microsoft Windows.  But do not think that the Mac OS is immune to viruses.  This is not true.  They are a little better off, but not immune.  A PC with good virus protection is also just fine.  Just keep it up to date.

I am not hating on Mac, or Apple, or any platform for that matter.  There is nothing wrong with owning a Mac.  I have worked on a few in the past, and they are very nice machines.  I just believe there are many people who go buy them just to be separate from the PC world.  They think that owning a Mac somehow makes them smarter and cooler than a PC user.  This makes me rotfl.  PC stands for personal computer.  A Mac is a type of personal computer, therefore, a Mac is a PC.

It basically boils down to this:  Find what works best for you and use that.  Don’t just jump on the band wagon, and waste lots of money just to put an Apple sticker on the back of your car.

(The same applies to Linux; as a non-gamer with almost no needs for multimedia on the computer, I can very well handle Linux; my needs are expressed previously.)

Than again, some older computers do not support USB boot-up, and many commercial computer software comes in the form of CD/DVD roms.  Back in the old Windows day, I used to purchase an external DVD RW just to use the Photoshop software; anyway, I had even less experience in Photoshop than in GIMP.

For the safe side, I keep my files on an USB drive and install latest distros with DVD roms.

Deep knowledge and skills require much time and dedication, which often mean taking off time for other things, such as games or other pursues of knowledge and skills.

The ongoing debate is between being specialists or generalists: possibly the choice is to be a balanced specialist, with one outstanding area and other required knowledge and skills for daily living.

“Be a Renaissance man” may sound appealing for many people, but even if we learn everything about the world and the universe, we still face death and reincarnation; therefore, the one mastery we need is the mean to end reincarnation altogether.

The installation is quite usual; since I almost always manually partition the hard drive, my advice for Zenwalk partition is: Always remember to put a boot partition label on; otherwise it will not install Lilo (the booter) to boot properly.

Most people probably know /, /tmp, /usr, /home, and linux swap already.

There are a few glitches during the installation process, but these are fairly minor, and the installation is way faster than any of the Ubuntu family.

After the installation, we go through the user and root user registration; a root user login is fairly convenient if you enjoy tweaking around.

There are a few cool themes and wallpapers for sure, but the software is pretty dated, and Netpkg, the package manager, can only install one package at a time (in the graphic mode at least; Netpkg has way more functions in the terminal mode).  One thing that turns me off is: Updating often ends up with certain degrees of malfunction.

Although 1024*768 is standard for most desktop, the absence of 1280*800 mode may turn away some laptop users.

Adding printer also takes some work, and it does not guarantee success.

Yes, it is way faster than other distros I have tried before, but these weaknesses made it a provisional OS at best; I tried to use it longer, but I found I was wasting too much time on this.  Here is one of the wallpapers from Zenwalk.