It’s been a quiet few days. I spent the time upgrading my laptop to stronger network diagnostic and recovery tools, starting with installing CentOS 7. It’s currently all 64-bit, with none of the typical 32-bit support for now. This is a first among the Red Hat clones. The CentOS team is working on the 32-bit stuff, but some of the packages are tricky. They’ll announce the release of the 32-bit version (“i686”) as soon as it works.
Debian is still the very best way to learn Linux. However, some folks need the shortest path to something that works with lots of hand-holding, and that would be Kubuntu. I still like OpenSUSE, but it’s a little tougher. For serious work among Westerners, I recommend CentOS. You can use my introductory book on CentOS 6, the previous release. I don’t think I’ll be writing a new guide to cover 7, but will post a few notes here.
If you haven’t chosen an AV client for your Windows computer, I am now favoring BitDefender Free. For a malware cleaner, I’ve been experiencing trouble with Malwarebytes lately, and I’ve found that Super Anti-Spyware catches things the others missed.
Finally, Revo Uninstaller is a great tool for total removal of anything the spyware removers miss. What happens is most of this crap gets bundled and when you remove the critical gatekeeper package, the other junk won’t uninstall cleanly, if at all. Revo can wipe it all away and remove every trace of it, including Registry entries.
Remember, if it has “toolbar” in the name, you don’t want it.
