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Starting from the top:

• I use Rocket Dock to get keep some frequently used apps handy. I’m using the built in WhiteCristal theme with opacity set to 50%. The icons are based on the Serenity Icon package. I had to rustle up some of my own icons. My files are here with PSD template included. Just copy and paste the layer styles.
• CD Art Display (formerly Winamp CD Case) is a free desktop program that shows the current song cover in a skinnable display. It has support for AlbumPlayer, Helium Music Manager, iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, MediaMonkey and partially supports qmp, MP3Toys, musikCube and foobar2000 (Winamp API Emulator plugin). The skin I’m using is something I whipped up with some inspiration from the Heaven o.o desktop and the Pure Adium skin. You can get that here
• The clock, calendar and todo list are all done using Rainmeter. The todo list uses a font called Hand of Sean. Very nice. The stacks on the left are done using a combination of Rainmeter and StandAlone Stacks. My skin files are here
• I’m using the Windows 7 style by giannisgx89 and StartKiller to hide my start button. You might have to patch your system to allow you to use custom themes, though. I used VistaGlazz for that; make sure you read the instructions and are clear about what steps to take!
• Last but not least, is Launchy; very useful, especially for a keyboard junkie like me.
• Wallpaper from here

That’s it for this episode. My quest to find the Ultimate desktop continues next week on Linux. Also cominig soon: Shortcut Sorcery with AutoHotKey.

The built in meters include disk usage, cpu usage, network traffic, memory usage, uptime, system temperatures, battery levels, POP/IMAP mailboxes….it’s quite a comprehensive list). You can also monitor other computers over a network or publish your stats using the included server. You can even write your own scripts to power these meters if you need some specific information. The built-configuration editor allows you to really get finetune your settings and looks although it can be a bit intimidating for first time users with all the options that are available.
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All in all, Samurize is a great utility, offering comprehensive information and in-depth customization of how that information is presented. I recommend it to anyone who wants to monitor system information or anything else, for that matter.

So what do you do when you need to reinstall Windows and the computer your’re working is a tiny laptop with no floppy, no cdrom and a serious malware overdose? Since the computer supported booting from USB, all I had to do was figure out a way to get the Windows 98 bootdisk on a USB key. I tried several utilities but none worked for me.This is where Qemu and dd come in. Basically, what you do is :

• Download a Windows 98 Boot Image.
• Create a Qemu RAW disk image (big enough to hold the bootdisk files and any other files you might need. Mine was about 700MB)
• Boot up a Qemu virtual machine with the boot image for your floppy device and the disk image as your primary hard drive
• Use fdisk and format to partition and format the disk image
• Transfer boot & command system to disk image with sys.
• Use dd to strip off the first 63 512-byte blocks on the disk image
• Use dd to copy the disk image to USB Key.

Now for more detailed instructions:

Open a terminal (xterm, konsole, gnome-terminal; whatever you’re comfortable with)

Create a folder to contain all your files
ray@zangetsu:~$ mkdir win98boot
ray@zangetsu:~$ cd win98boot


Download the Windows 98 boot image from here
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ wget http://


Create a 256MB Qemu RAW disk image (or whatever size you need)
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ qemu-img create -f raw drive_c.dsk 256M

Next, we load a virtual machine that boots from the floppy image
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ qemu -fda win98se.img -hda drive_c.dsk -boot a -m 32

Once the VM boots up, you should see something similar to the following:

What we need to do is partition our virtual drive, so
A:\fdisk C:


Enter 1 at the first screen to select the first option (Create a DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive)

Enter 1 at the next screen to Create a Primary DOS partition

Answer yes if fdisk asks you if you want make maximum use of your disk

After fdisk finishes, you will need to restart the VM before you can format your drive.

Just close it and run the following again:
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ qemu -fda win98se.img -hda drive_c.dsk -boot a -m 32

Now you can format:
A:\format C:

Answer yes when asked if you want to proceed with format. After formating is done, you will be prompted to enter a volume label. This is optional.

Next, we transfer system to c:
A:\sys C:


Once that’s done. Close your VM and boot it up once more but without the floppy image this time.
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ qemu -hda drive_c.dsk -m 32

If you did everything right, the windows 98 splash screen should flash briefly and you should get something like this:

Before we can copy the image to our usb drive, we need to modify it a little. This strips off the first 63 blocks of the image( Found this useful piece of info thanks to

http://colinux.wikia.com/wiki/Converting_Distributions)

ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ dd if=drive_c.dsk of=boot.img bs=512 skip=63

We can now copy the image to the drive. In this case, my drive happens to be /dev/sdb. You can use dmesg to find out what it is on your machine.
ray@zangetsu:~/win98boot$ dd if=boot.img of=/dev/sdb bs=512
524288+0 records in
524288+0 records out
268435456 bytes (256 MB) copied, 108.920273 seconds, 18.5 MB/s

Voila, you have a working Win98 bootable USB drive. You can now mount the drive and copy whatever else you need onto it. Your results may vary depending on the options you choose but they should be similar to the above.