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THG Linux Migration, Part Two
LqqkOut writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has posted part 2 of their Windows->Linux migration article. This time around, we're presented with some nifty divx screen caps that make life look oh, so easy. The Tom's crew packed a lot into this article, but did they sacrifice some essentials like 'RTFM' and other sage advice? This follows up their first article where users were shown how to choose and download a distro, back up some important data, and check for HW compatibility."
About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement. A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.
He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."
So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.
On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition that already existed. After pondering this for several minutes I though, 'what the hell, I can always reinstall it!' So I let it fly.
After what seemed like 45 minutes of swapping cd's in-and-out of the drive, the man-drake (isn't that some sort of bird?) installer ask me what I wanted to use this linux machine for. So many choices! games, office, mail server, web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!
So after this decision was made I waited. And waited. And waited. During this I started to wonder. My Windows XP Home intallation on my other Peecee didn't ask me thse kind of questions, and it easily has the all the abilities that man-drake advertised to have. After all, I paid for WinXP Home. Sigh, I guess this it the price one pays
for being part of the linux elite.
Approximately 50 mintues later I get another prompt from the man-drake installer asking me what kind of GUI I wanted to use, KDE or GNOME. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! I selected both and let it fly.
After only about 20 mintues this time it appeared the install was completed. The mandrake installer told me it was going to reboot and then I would revel in Linux goodness. I waited with baited breath while the reboot churned away, eagerly waiting the opportuntity to use the KDE/GNOME interface. Page after page of command line
stuff flew by my screen, seeming to get faster and faster as the time of my linux deliverance approached. Then, the screen flashed black (kinda like those scenes from the movie Wargames). I gasped and was presented with something like this:
bsh: blah/blah/blah/ ____
What the hell was this? Wasn't this man-drake linux supposed to be user friendly? Instead of the friendly confines of a WinXP like GUI instead I was given an ugly DOS like prompt, which looked supiciously like the TRS-80 system I first learned BASIC on in high school. Is this all the farther the great open-source movement has progressed?
After serveral minutes of sobbing and knashing of teeth, I came to a decision. All the linux fags out there were not going to defeat me! They were not going to cry "Bend over WinXP boy, you're going to take linux OUR WAY and like it!".
I quickly found my old musty copy of 'Unix in a Nutshell' from my college days and got to work. In a few hours I found out how to start the KDE GUI. This made life so much easier. After several days I was able to get the machine's 14.4 internal modem working with man-drake and connected to the internet, using a browser called Mozilla. Where oh where were the glorious pop-ups that appeared as I was surfing porn sites? Those bastards!
After several more days I was starting to feel somewhat comfortable. Using something called Gimp to manipulate my growing collection of adult images was becoming a habit. And because I was ashamed to let my friends and neighbors know I was using a gasp! free operating system like mandrake, I kept the pee-cee in the basement. Now my girlfriend things the sounds emanating from below are me just woodworking or lifting weights. I guess linux has freed me after all!
If you agree with any of this, feel free to repost it in the future.
* If "Linux" just refers to the kernel and not the operating system, how can "FreeBSD" refer to the operating system (userland tools, standard libraries, etc.) and not just the kernel? Face it, "GNU/Linux" looks and sounds ridiculous.
* If you expect companies to follow the copyright of the GPL, you should support the RIAA going after infringers of its copyright. If not, you're a hypocrite.
* There is absolutely nothing wrong with a company being upset that its product is being pirated freely over online networks. Try getting a real job sometime and see what it feels like when your work is everywhere, and you start worrying that your days are numbered. Does John Carmack want you to "sample" his new game via the "free advertising" happening on eMule?
* OSDN-owned Slashdot thinks its niche opinion represents the majority of the world. This is a result of people visiting every day and buying into the groupthink. Nobody outside of Slashdot knows or cares about "Linux," "RIAA", "M$," or anything else Slashdotters think is such a huge issue in today's society. Go to a mall or coffee shop sometime and see what people actually talk about.
* Speaking of OSDN--it's a Linux company...that owns a "tech news" site...that posts news stories negative toward competitors like Microsoft. If a Windows company or even Microsoft itself owned a "tech news" site and posted anti-Linux articles all the time, everyone would be up in arms. But with OSDN, it's a-okay.
* Slashbots think people don't like the music coming out these days, which is the cause of the piracy. Never mind that if people didn't like the music they wouldn't be pirating it, most Slashbots--again, this goes back to the niche opinion thing--don't realize that most people these days love the music coming out and want to hear all of it. Probing around, you discover that Slashdot is made up of nerds and fogies who listen to things like The Who and Blind Guardian and techno--not what mainstream society enjoys.
* Any company ending in "AA" is evil. Especially if it doesn't want you distributing its works without paying for it. Somehow, this mindset is supposed to make sense.
* The inevitable result of all this is a world in which nothing can be profitable because people simply pirate free copies. Is that really what Slashbots want? OSS and free-ness in general reminds me of the hippie era of the 60s--idealistic socialism that only exists because of the surrounding capitalism around it that provides the environment for it to exist. We all know what happened to that idea.
* Slashdot editors are abusive. We all remember The Post. It's amusing the editors never mention the issue. The worst editor is michael, who will mod you down, insult you for your post count, and post unprofessional color commentary along with the article. This is the same bizarre person who cybersquatted Censorware for years--even as Slashdot posted articles negative toward cybersquatting! Michael played it off like he was some sort of stalking victim, which made it all the more bizarre.
* The moderation system is broken. If you mod someone as "Overrated," you can't be metamodded. People abuse this all the time to gang up and knock you down into oblivion.
* Somehow, user-ran executables are always a "New Microsoft Hole" (actual article headline). Meanwhile, LinuxSecurity posts weekly security advisories for all the Linux distributions. You never, ever, EVER see any of these mentioned on Slashdot--bizarre things like arbitrary code execution via MPlayer.
* Microsoft is supposed to be some sort of non-innovative rip-off artist. Meanwhile, the same people posting those comments do it through KDE with taskbars, sidepanels, start menus, similar print dialogs, and an integrated web/filesystem browser. Effectively ripping people off then criticizing those who came up with the ideas
Here is a comment that should be written ..
Although you have successfully switched over to Linux, the lesser evil of the Two (MS, Linux) You should note that your friends are still using Microsoft, and all documents will have to Neutrel when sending your files. Oh, BTW most of your Peer to Peer Networks won't run.. Good Luck!