Slashdot Mirror
Joy of Linux
The Scoop It's 2001. Do you love your operating system?
That's a silly question for the average user -- a computer's made to do stuff. The operating system hides in the background, usually dormant, sometimes hostile. Besides Solitaire at lunch, the best thing about a computer is turning it off and going home for the day. Of course, to an unrepentant Amiga, Mac, OS/2, *BSD, BeOS, or Linux fan, the question makes perfect sense. An OS has personality and history. They collect followers who put up with quirks and kinks, defending their platform even past the point of practical death.
The Joy of Linux explores this phenomenon as it relates to Linux and Open Source. It's written in a friendly, easy-reading manner, punctuated with Joy of Tech style cartoons (from Nitrozac and Snaggy). There's just enough information to teach your mother something and just enough sly innuendo to keep your brother reading. Aimed at potential and new users, die-hard penguinistas will find chuckles but few surprises.
What's to Like? Joy begins with detailed but readable looks at the allure of Linux, the history of Unix, and the growing popularity and commercial rollercoasters of Open Source in recent years. Next, the text explores the question, "What do I do now?", distilling hard experience into suggestions for finding help. More than a list of newsgroups and websites, chapter two explains the concept of sweat equity and promotes self-reliance. Chapter three talks about FUD -- both pro and contra Linux. It's fair and reasonable, with potshots reserved for the shrill faddish fanboys who spend more time complaining than contributing.Tackling delicate topics, the next two chapters shy away from few controversies. First come three perpetual flamewars: vi versus Emacs, GNOME versus KDE, and the distribution wars. The honest assessments will disappoint everyone hovering over carefully crafted flames, ready to e-mail the authors. (That's probably a good thing, for the rest of us.) Chapter five explores the seeming juxtaposition of women and technology, with three case studies (Linux Chix, WITT, and Helix Code).
The book's second half pushes the innuendos further. Several serious discussions lie couched in metaphors and double entendres. These chapters cover system security, dual booting, migrating from Windows to Linux, hardware support, embedded devices, gaming, and multimedia. Aimed slightly above a novice level, this should be accessible to anyone capable of installing Linux.
The authors pepper their prose with personal anecdotes, some related to Linux and computers, others as analogies. They both write with a single voice, so it's difficult to tell where Hall breaks off and Proffitt starts. It makes for a mostly seamless narrative. The text is also readable, written with genial humor and occasional subtle winks.
What's to Consider? This is a book for Linux newcomers. If you can compile a kernel without having to look up directions, you may enjoy this book, but it's not aimed at you. Instead, it would serve well as a companion piece to something more technical. If 'Running Linux' is your manual, this is the cultural and philosophical guide.Some of the cartoons require a little more insider knowledge than the rest of the book. For example, if you don't recognize aliens dressed up as maddog, ESR, Larry Wall, and Linus, you won't understand the comic on page 34. Consider that incentive to read conference speaker lists, if you dare.
The Summary Clever, but not too clever, The Joy of Linux answers two questions: "What is this Linux thing?" and "Why do you like it?" Written for home users more interested in getting things done than salivating over new hardware, it's a good introduction to a confusing, vibrant culture. If you're in the mood for a light read to amuses and inform, this book will meet that need. Table of Contents- Do You Know Who Your Millions of Partners Are?
- The Penguin on Top
- Are You Experienced?
- I Don't Do Windows
- Kissing Cousins, Lovers' Quarrels
- Chix Who Don't Fake It
- Doin' It
- I'm Clean! I Swear!
- Switch Hitters
- The Joy of Toys
- You Want to Put That Where?
- Messing around: The Penguin Plays Games
- Loud and Graphic
- Breaking up Is Hard to Do
- The Linux Sutra: Resources
- GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
There are some of us who have devoted their lives to their work. I'm a 28 year old male geek and I've never had sex and I don't want any.
I've seen enough promising careers ruined by a guy "just experimenting with sex", getting hooked on it, "going out" with a girl and eventually getting married to satisfy his addiction to sex (that's what he thinks, anyway).
No more 70 hour weeks after that. Suddenly the "pay isn't that good" anymore either. Why? Because the young missus wants her jewellery, clothes and her own apartment in the "better" part of the city.
Believe me. Linux is far better than women.
But us linux geeks already know where to get our info... maybe the "starting with linux" books are for us to give to non-believers... This sounds like the kind of book I should give my dad.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Even if you missed the Joy of Sex reference in the title, the chapter titles are a dead giveaway:
1. Do You Know Who Your Millions of Partners Are?
1. The Penguin on Top
And so on. It's all over once you get to:
8. The Linux Sutra: Resources
I mean, it's not even meaningful outside of the context of the unusual title of the book. I think most of the people on here pointing out the joke need to give the average Slashdot reader a bit more credit.
I read the internet for the articles.
And let me point out (as one of the authors) that these two were one of the the highlights of the project for me: when the publisher told me they'd do the book, I rejoiced. They're a big part of the book.
---
Michael Hall
Michael Hall
mph.puddingbowl.org
.. then I'll buy it.
The Joy of X is a superb book - a little old but a great book about the hows and (more importantly) the why's of X, and had a better pun in the title (92, before computer books had much of a sense of humour).
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
I'm sorry, but I dont want to do anything with this leatherman and some cat-5...
You know those articles where your eyes glaze over and you don't understand or care about what's being talked about? Those are the articles for the real geeks here. Sure, /. is read by plenty of wannabes, script kiddies, and interested bystanders. And sure, when you see books about Linux here, many of them are gonna be "Linux for average /. users or their friends". There aren't a lot of books with titles like "Linux for geek gods", other than con-jobs by exploitative publishers. The reason is that the really interesting stuff can't all be put into one book. You have to integrate what you learn from multiple sources, and apply your own filters. If you're reading /. waiting for discussions that'll make it all click for you, you've missed the point. If you're ever going to understand it, you have a few years of assimilation to go, at least, and you have to do homework outside of /. You'll get out as much as you bring to the table, and it doesn't sound as though you're bringing much right now.
Finally, the /. humor can be peerless, although again, you have to understand it to get it (tautological, I know).
All your sociological pretensions are belong to you.
hmm.
cpeterso
those of us in the midwest are living with near 100 degree heat and 98 percent humidity. maybe you're just getting all the AC from all those buildings leaking out :)
those of us in the real world with that green growing stuff around us are dying from the heat. even those of us 500 miles north of you.
EOM
in Minnesota it's just trees :P
EOM
> ...because, for the average IT guy, the "joy of sex" consists of a few self-administered minutes of looking at the SI swimsuit issue in their parents' bathroom.
Nah, for the average IT guy the "joy of sex" is a new computer. Or if he's done without for a few days, he'll settle for for a point-release kernel upgrade.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Dude, 25 celsius is NOT hot! It's pretty damn good. Try living with 35 and high humidity...
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
"onnellinen onnellinen ilo ilo" is a (poor) translation of "happy happy joy joy" into the Finnish language. For a Finn it sounds way too clumsy and idiotic compared to the original, which has an excellent rythm. The Ren&Stimpy show translators here in Finland had a better sounding translation, but I can't remember it (I think it was something like "hupi hupi kiva kiva").
--
HoppQ
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
Well, if you've been here long enough, you've certainly noticed that this place is probably not the place to go for intelligent discussion with depth. That's what k5 and various mailing lists and/or newsgroups are for. The rapid turnover rate of articles here doesn't encourage the long debates that are possible on other forums. The absence of killfiles and the presence of idiots posting irrelevant crap as ACs can also make it difficult to carry on a real debate.
So: The people who are actually using Linux or have any interest in it often don't trumpet their OS choice to the world at large. They're busy coding, documenting, working, or screwing around, and they're mature enough to realize that there are other OSes out there, and sometimes these are better tools for some users. Anyone who's constantly shouting "Linux R00LZ! W1ND0Z3 DR00L5!" is either 14 years old or a moron and can be safely ignored. "Cooler than thou?" Come on, you are not the OS you run. A Linux-using luser is still a luser, and a Windows-using BOFH is still a BOFH.
If you want to see "discussion without the filtering of marketroids", then you might want to subscribe to a LUG mailing list. Many LUGs have these, and discussion varies quite a bit. "This is why we should boycott Adobe!", "Mac OS X is cool, here's 5 reasons why", "What modules should you put in your Apache?", "Converting from well-defined HTML to XML", and "Call for presentations: Local Chamber of Commerce needs several speakers to talk about Open/Free Software" have all come up in the last week on my local LUG's list.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
"out of date"?
Have I been without lovin' so long that you've gone and changed sex on me?
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
What is "onnellinen-onnellinen-ilo-ilo" ?
...because, for the average IT guy, the "joy of sex" consists of a few self-administered minutes of looking at the SI swimsuit issue in their parents' bathroom.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
I find it quite weird that people can think that using Linux makes you "cool". My work has always involved one UNIX or another, so I've always used Linux at home. For me, being a Linux user meant having to buy whatever hardware is currently supported and not always what you would want to have, spending extra time to learn about the OS and how to make it more secure and tune it to my preferences, learning C so that I could debug and enhance the programs that I use routinely, learning how to make do with documentation not written by professionals and sometimes no documentation at all, getting weird looks for not knowing how to operate a Windows PC (whaddaya mean, you've never used Windows?!) and a lot of other stuff that would be hugely inconvenient for most people.
I'm OK with it, I wanted to learn all this stuff anyway and Linux kinda grew on me, so now I wouldn't trade it for anything else. But I can't see how any of this would qualify as "cool". Maybe my definition of "cool" is seriously outdated...
It is plainly obvious that the title and chapter titles of the book are referenced to sex and the book "Joy of Sex". The last part, Part III "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" is espeically sneaky about its sexual references. ;-)
yeah, tell me about it. methinks it should be posted as funny. wait a tick..i posted that!
E.
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
is this like the Joy of Sex book for geeks?
E.
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
What is that green growing stuff? And is it legal?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Are you kidding me? NYC has been freezing this summer! It's an hour before noon on the last day in July and its only 71.1 F!!! So much for Global Warming, we are suffering from Global Mildness this year.
Also I was very disappointed when I learned that the "Joy of Linux" didn't have any sexual positions for my AlphaStation to get it on with my PPC box under RedHat. I even tried this command:
grep;touch:finger:finger:strip:unzip:mount -t wet dev/girl:fsck:fsckfsck:yes:yes:yes umount /dev/girl: zip:sleep
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
for the average IT guy, the "joy of sex" consists of a few self-administered minutes of looking at the SI swimsuit issue in their parents' bathroom.
Surely this tired old stereotype is dead now? I know lots of IT guys - most of them are married + kids, etc. Anyway, if I was a teenage IT geek who still lived with my parents I'd be taking the laptop into the bathroom, not the SI swimsuit issue !
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Moderator's essentials
but what can you do when the heat's killing you...
Go sit in the server room......mmmmmmmmmmm.....cooooool breeeeeeze
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Moderator's essentials
Slashdot hereby further encourages the Linux fetish without any depth or discussion ...
... on IE or AOL.") would take it upon yourself to criticize any aspect of interpersonal interaction within a "culture" you are "observing". Not only odd, but downright unscientific conduct for a self-styled " ... amateur sociologist ... ". May I have the e-mail address of the professor who teaches your class ... I'd like to send him a link to your post so he can properly grade the quality of your research.
/. with an open and objective mind for any length of time, I am all but positive that you have reached a conclusion that there is no such thing as a "typical geek". I say I am all but positive because from my observation and participation in the community (and my admittedly prejudiced point of view) it is the only scientifically valid conclusion you can reach. The only three characteristics I can think of that all geeks seem to have in common are 1) overwhelming curiosity about *SOMETHING* (not necessarily limited to computers), 2) great flaming passion about their opinions on matters of which they may or may not have a significant degree of knowledge, and 3) they tend to be somewhat more literate and well-read than the average populace. In this lack of uniform, easily classified characteristics and tastes they are not significantly different from high school football players, cheerleaders, MDs, college professors, professional athletes, housewives and other "cultures" within our society.
... I've even met a few geeks who still think disco rulez. It's been my observation that quite a few geeks like classical music in the workplace, but maybe that's just a compromise solution). They dress in everything from t-shirts and jeans that need to be burned instead of laundered to three-piece suits costing more than a month's salary for some people. Linux "gurus" I'm personally acquainted with range in age from 14 to 56 ... I am 51. In terms of geekdom, I'd say I fall in the late teens-early adult age range because I didn't get HEAVILY involved with computers until the early 80's.
Odd that you, a self-proclaimed "outsider" (I bet most people on this site are like me-
If you have been observing
Geeks like sci-fi, poetry, adventure stories, horror fiction, non-fiction and autobiography. They like every single type of music that exists from country & western to grunge rock, techno-dance and heavy metal (Yep, all of them
I use linux, administer linux, Solaris and Tru64 for a living, and could give a rat's posterior whether it's cool or not.
Now, go the fuck away before I REALLY get pissed.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
utter rubbish
Guess I'll need to reinforce my bookshelf a little bit more. I need to find something better looking then the pieces of old teliphone polls I'm using now anyway.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
uh, I understand that some of my geek brethren fon't get out as much as they should (not passing judgment) but there are some of us that are quite geeky that get some often and not always the same girl and we still maintain our geekiness. and by the way what geek still uses paper to find inspiration? for the cost of a subscription to a magazine I can get a years worth of usually not so bad pr0n from cyberage. and i don't have to worry about the missus (whoever she might be) finding it cause she usually knows nothing about computers (certainly nothing about linux). just trying to take the edge off the sterotype. some folks seem to have forgotten that geek is chic these days.
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Anyone ever see the old "Joy of Sex" book from the '70s? *shudder* The hairy heroin addict-looking-hippies they had in the illustrations... Could you imagine if that same book were done all with geeks? The pale skin... the "gallons of Coke and take out food" physique. And I'd hate to think of what they'd choose to do with a Leatherman and some cat5....
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
LOL! I can always ask her. :-)
Don't forget folks, you can also pick up the Joy of Linux from our humble webstore.
.... ya, sure it's a bit more expensive than from the big guys, but you can get it signed and personalized by Nitrozac and I, a neat-o Joy of Linux button (a secret bonus), as well as that Internet-famous Nitrozac ribbon and tissue wrapping.
I now return you to your regular programming.
oh joy! i nut-flex. oh, joy left unix. the july fox ion. -km
Katsuyo Mori
i will unrepentantly say that open source turns me on way more than awkward rhetoric on the gastrointestinal dangers of anal and poorly rendered watercolors of some washed-up boy model's flaccid genitals.
Katsuyo Mori
while i certainly see your point, i also think that by that rationale you could ask why we need more pornography.
Katsuyo Mori
Please excuse me while I vomit into my hat.
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why not grandfathers and cousins?
it's a suggestion, get over it...
crap like this is exactly why women don't always get taken seriously... (and when it's crap like this, quite rightly so)
if any of the male technobabes I know did currently have girlfriends, this would certainly be on their christmas list from me...
don't be so damn literal...
cos I just don't have the patience...
this is a book for the masses, metaphorically following The Joy of Sex, which was also for the masses...
If you want Linux to be a serious player in the OS market, it's got to be used by more than the geek population... and that means getting information to the masses
a large number of the WinNation have never even heard of Linux, let alone know anything about it...
this is the sort of book to give to those people you know, who don't understand it...
that means girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, parents, siblings, cousins, bosses, co-workers, janitors... just about anyone you know who uses Windows...
if they don't know anything about it, they'll never switch to it...
It's alright to love your operating system. Replacement keyboards are very inexpensive.
--
"Linux is a cancer" -- Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
# vi ./my_superduper_driver.c ./my_superduper_driver.o ./my_superduper_driver.c ./my_superduper_driver.o
# cc -O2 -Wall -I/usr/src/linux/include -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -DLINUX -DEXPORT_DYMTAB -o
# insmod
invalid operand: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c01d3b95>]
EFLAGS: 00010206
eax: dffedf5c ebx: c190ef40 ecx: 0000000f edx: 8005003b
esi: c190c000 edi: 00000001 ebp: 00000000 esp: dffedf54
ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process swapper ( pid:1, stackpage=dffed000)
Stack: 00000000 000004a3 00000001 c027b244 c02cd383 c0116fe7 00000493 000004a2
00000005 00000c42 00000282 00000001 c02cd383 00000020 c01d4d82 c0266ece
c0266ec7 00000493 c01d4d12 00000f40 c190e000 c190ef40 c190c000 c190ef40
Call Trace: [<c0116fe7>] [<c01d4d82>] [<c01d4d12>] [<c01d4e0b7>] [<c01070e9>] [<c01074bc>]
Code: 0f 11 00 0f 11 48 10 0f 11 50 20 0f 11 58 30 0f 18 4e 00 0f
Aiee, killing interrupt handler
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill the idle task!
Ah DAMN !!! [reboot]
done
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
As I sit here, waiting for my DSL provider's tech support to pick up my call, I'm reading this article and thinking: why do we need another book on how great Linux is?
Before you start writing my off as a half-wit, flame-baiting troll, let me explain myself. Books on how great Linux is have been around for, what, 6 years? I don't think that anybody that's an active part of the Linux community needs to reread yet another tome on the advantages of Linux. In the same vein, no non-Linux user considering a switch to Linux needs to read more than one or two articles (much less books) on the advantages of Linux to understand where the advantages lie in switching.
Instead of seeing talents and efforts "wasted" on writing new books, I believe these individuals could be working towards a greater goal of writing a more intuitive UI for Linux. Or perhaps they would rather be teaching the masses how to use the OS. There are so many better uses for their technical prowess that I'm just left wondering, "Why?"
Der Klempner
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UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
Yet another book for the outsiders. But is it really for the outsiders, are are most of the slashdotters actually outsiders?
I bet most people on this site are like me- an amateur sociologist on IE or AOL.
Slashdot hereby further encourages the Linux fetish without any depth or discussion..and I am concluding that slashdot is not for Linux users at all but is meant to humanize them to the outside world.
Here's why..there is too much cultural stuff on this website for it to be anything other than a love letter to the Windows users of the world. I originally started reading it for discussion among linux users that wasn't quite so audience conscious, i.e. discussion without the filtering of marketroids. I was working on a sociology paper that involved "geeks" as it were, and I wanted to read something nonmediated to get a sense of their culture. But I have seen, over the year or so that I have been reading this site, many introductory books about Linux and very few discussions beyond that level.
This is good for many people like the teenagers who are just getting into technology, etc. and yes, I know that this isn't the kernel-developemnt mailing list or anything. But perhaps we should abandon our pretensions and seriously discuss how many of us actually are using linux or have any interest in using linux, and how many of us are just trying to be cooler than thou.
Goat sex free since 2001
I'm one of those Mac lovers!
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
The older book is probably more useful to most of you anyway, since I'm sure you eat more frequently than you fsck.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Total troll-sh*t, but here I go, anyway...
GNU/Linux was never intended to pull revenue from any market. The fact that it pulls any revenue for anyone is amazing.
You just don't get it, do you. You cannot measure the success of any FSF or Open Source "product" like you would a for-fee product or service.
GNU/Linux is successful in spite of the deterioration of its for-profit advocates. In fact measuring it's *real* success is absolutely impossible -- yet.
My organization runs dozens of 24/7 servers with GNU/Linux. In the office we run almost a dozen workstations with GNU/Linux. The source of the OS for most of these is a couple of burned CD-Rs that someone brought from home!
Thanks for trying to FUD us, but we simply know better. Shut up! already.
It's 2001. Do you love your operating system?
Well, not yet, but I hear they're going to put out an RPM for that in 7.2...
PS. This is my first post on slashdot :-)
Yeah... actually, i'm a little SICK of the stereotype. I'm a good-looking guy, or so my beautiful girlfriend claims, and I've rarely been single since the age of 14 - yet i'm as big a geek as most here, bigger, in fact, now that /. has degraded (the same way RHPS's culture degraded). I think back in teh day the stereotype was largely correct - look at John Draper and his buddies, they're all socially inept ugly malfunctional individuals - thus having time to get into the deep deep deep stuff. but these days the deep and hard work has been done, mostly, the wheel has been invented - and we simply read a few books and then go do the things people have already figured out - so those of us with a life to live can still become 'gurus' and 'geeks'.
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
Ok. Peep my sexiness here and hers here. then take into account the fact that i just got hired last night as senior network architect for a new ISP. then tell me geeks don't have good-looks, hot girls, lives, etc :D
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
LOL she's tall, thin, flat sexy stomach, NICE rack and backside...
she's also a turkish muslim (obviously westernized to an extent) so i doubt most guys would even get a 'hi' (although i don't know why a white american atheist such as myself is so lucky) let alone a 20-dolla-sucky-sucky
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
sure. i'm in charge of designing building and running the entire thing. the idea is to provide dialup access to office workers who wish to work from home - let their companies buy per-seat licenses to our network which has encrypted internet-carried connections to the office network. not geekish? you bet... or something. kthx. pics from wallet? har. :D you're just jealous n stuff k bye
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
uh no i haven't decided HOW to handle it yet but MS will not be part of the answer unless there is no other way :D
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
i sure do.. and i enjoy it. sense-of-self is critical to life - and the purpose and meaning of life is to find happiness for oneself. self-confidence, self-valuation, self-preservation - see a common theme? 'self'. yup, i'm a rational egoist, aka a whole man. having a big ego != arrogance. arrogance is undeserved egotism, and is usually coupled with a belief that you are inherently better than others - whereas rational egoism, also known as 'rational self-interest' is simply a belief that you are better than most others because of the choices you make and the way you manage your life - which, when you think about it, is entirely rational. we pass judgement on murderers, thugs, thieves, and other lower forms of life - why not on intellectual criminals, those people who willfully ignore the facts of reality (also described as 'refusing to think') :)
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think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
why girlfriends? What about boyfriends? This suggests that geeks are all males (or possibly lesbians?). I know this is nit-picky, but problems like this will never go away if people don't realize thier omnipresence.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
The above post should have been prefaced with:
Dear Penthouse Forum: I never thought something like this would happen to me, but dreams do come true...
"Upgrade your grey matter, 'cause one day it may matter." --Deltron Zero
It took me a while, but the "from the X dept" line on this means Happy Happy Joy Joy.
(Had to find a Finnish dictionary)
"How you doing' wit yo fine self?" gawk; talk; date; wine; grep; touch; unzip; touch; gasp; finger; gasp; mount; fsck; more; yes; gasp; umount; make clean; make mrproper; sleep