Slashdot Mirror
Road To Linux -- Made It!
My PPP daemon keeps cutting out, and I'm puzzling over swap partitions, random seeds and generators bin/appfinders, so I'll keep this brief. In the next few weeks, I'll write more about my personal, somewhat hellish road to Linux. It was a hummer, accompanied every step away by the jeers and cheers of geeks and nerds on and off of Slashdot.
The big lesson was that I approached Linux in the wrong way, from every conceivable perspective. It needn't be that hard.
Rather than wading into manuals and books and programming (if you do it, believe me, O'Reilly is the best), I finally figured out that there are people like Joe Volodarsky out there, and companies like Amnet, people who live and breathe computers and Linux and who actually pick up the phone and help Every-Single-Time-You Call! The truth is, I never did figure this out. Somebody figured it out for me, but I finally got it. If you're not a geek, that's the big news.
And I am not a computer geek, and don't aspire to be one. I'm a writer, and happy with that title. Posting a column on a Linux laptop somebody else designed and preloaded for me hardly makes me any sort of nerd or techno-whiz. This is, in fact, the level of the classic breathless newbie, a mantle I expect to take to the grave.
Disagreement and criticism is a healthy, integral part of Web-writing, but the minor yet persistent controversy surrounding my writing for Slashdot has always surprised me. Some are passionately into defining who belongs or doesn't, an unfortunately common and increasingly difficult impulse in electric (and off-line) communities.
The term "geek" is broadening and evolving daily, and is coming to mean different, complex and increasingly positive things to people.
The real geeks and hackers, it seems to me, aren't into chest-thumping about who deserves the title. Like Joe, their real kick comes from getting people where they want to go. They're almost invariably welcoming and helpful. They're pretty secure about themselves, and their techno-manhood. From the first, they've been trying to help move me along, to the best degree of my limited ability. But if I recognize my limitations in writing on a Linux Box, I'm still pretty happy about it.
Real programmers are different from mortals, certainly from writers. They are a separate species. Programmers are precise, confident and look ahead. They have no doubt they can make technology come out right for them. Writers are imprecise, uncertain and backwards-looking. Their relationship with technology is uncertain, a means, never an end.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
Linux is fun. Knowledge is, in fact, empowering, and learning and seeing how a computer actually works, especially in the context of a powerful idea like Open Source, is worth the grief and trouble. And for non-geeks heading for Linux, there will be plenty of both.
Joe Volodarsky was savvy in puttng together this computer for me, to a degree I wouldn't have thought possible. He used KDE and set up folders for Netscape, WordPerfect, documents,the printer, Templates, News, Updates, the Gimp, CD-ROM and floppy disks. I can't stay off of the KAPP Finder, which scrolls through an exotic list of programs and apps I'm reading about one by one, using my O'Reilly and other Linux guides. My laptop was designed with me in mind, even down to a Mac OS logo on the start-up menu. I've spent a dozen happy but nerve wracking hours puzzling over random seeds and bizarre commands, but I've learned more about computing in the last few weeks than in the decade I've been online.
For somebody who loves to write about technology, this is definitely a humbling gift and an opportunity. Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas I've come across in media, even as I'm just beginning to grasp how complicated an idea it is. Linux is a huge part of it. I'd like to go as far as I can get, taking small steps, one day at a time.
Playing around with my new laptop, I'm fascinated by how accessible the workings of this system are, (and how hidden the processes of my other computers have been) and have even moved a few things around, killed a few programs, and relished checking the Term windows to see my computing life and history passing before my eyes. I was up till 2 a.m., and had more fun than at any point in my life aside from walking into Joe DiMaggio on a New York City street when I was a kid.
Since this is the third time I've tried to post this message, I'm not going to prolong it.
Thanks to Joe of Amnet, which makes Linux boxes, laptops and servers. For getting me up and running, he deserves a place in the Geek Hall of Fame. Rare in our world, he is both technologically skilled and empathetic. He only lost it with me two or three times, and then briefly ("Katz, you don't have to Re-Boot. Don't turn it off!"). Thanks also to VA Linux Systems for hooking up the Slashdot crowd with Sony Vaios.
For those of you who sneered and jeered, thanks. You gave me the iron will to persevere. It was the Penguin or Death. And nuts to you, too.
For those of you who supported me in a hundred ways - especially Rob, Jeff, Robin, Jesse, Joe, Karl, Tom, Sandy, and scores of others who offered help every single day for nearly a year - thanks even more.
I might never be a Linux Geek. But I am my own particular kind of geek now.
Seems to me that's the idea.
It seems to me that the best way to learn something is to learn two of its type. I found a good growth of my knowledge of computers when I learned my second OS, but not my third. The same with programming languages.
You start to learn what is fundamental to the process, and what is just extra stuff added by the designer.
As I look down the list of all the things I am good at such as music, I see that the Two Of Everything rule applies there as well.
Good job to Katz, and anyone else who attempts a second of anything as daunting as an operating system, so that they may understand what's fundamental, and what's fluff.
I am glad for Jon that he finally paid someone to install Linux on a laptop for him. What a triumph. He is truly a geek now. He is the master of his technological domain. You are one of us Jon :)
But seriously, it is good to see that he has realized his limits, and that he would never be able to install it on his own. He is in fact a writer, and I am sure he has better things to do than wile away the hours tracking misbehaving daemons and tweaking vsync frequencies.
But here's what the fight about me being on Slashdot has always really been about: You don't need to be - and shouldn't have to be - a programmer to use and appreciate Linux, which is, to my amazement, every bit as easy and logical as my beloved Macs, once you get past the installation.
No, the fight has been over the fact that Jon is first of all a relatively poor writer. Suffering through some of his muddle-mind and meandering posts has truly be a harrowing experience at times. It is often difficult to get to the root of what exactly Jon is trying to say.
Secondarily when he writes about technology he exposes a level of ignorance that is generally not well respected by the highly technical slashdot crowd. It is not a matter of 'belonging'. As a writer it is about kwowing the limits of your knowledge and sticking to what you know.
I don't write authoritative papers on nuclear physics, because I only know a tiny bit about the subject. Similarly, Jon should not be writing posts on installing or using Linux, and attempt to make his self appear as an authority on the subject. This is what has rubbed slashdotters the wrong way.
-josh
You may hate the guy, but re-read this once or twice. This is the customer of the future. A man so driven to actually understand instead of just install his own software.
Jon seems to speak for a secret sect of our new installed base. Hurrah. Jon has left the establishment of MacOS for the disestablishment of the FreeOS. Think about the changes in thought process that that requires.
No coder inside him -- just someone who wants to extend the tool of the OS to its pinnacle -- in the way that he can best understand. We should be embracing him and those like him, and then extending them into the potential of their aptitude.
He is our future. Kudos Jon Katz. #30 TLS
The story we all like to hear.
:-)*
First off, I'm glad to see an end to those ultra-annoying question mark comments.
Interestingly enough, my KDE setup happens to have that Mac look as well. I find it quite funny when people end up maximising windows they intended to close.
With KDE (and GNOME), many, many people are getting into Linux. The cable modem installer came by a while back and grabbed my mouse to setup the IP settings. I told him that I should probably do that. He was dumbfounded when I told him that it was a Linux box. I guess he thought I had a dock on the right side of my screen a la Norton Utilities. It was, in fact my KDE bar.
Hey, my mom can use it, and prefers it...
Oh yeah, since you're on KDE, Jon, I'll have to make a couple of app recommendations:
- KNotes, quite useful
- KDeskView, which lets you get to those desktop icons covered by open windows really quickly. I use it constantly
- Geheimnis, an easy to use crypto app. The docking one encrypts/decrypts from the clipboard.
- If you ever learn C/C++, KDevelop is excellent
- KLyX, sort of a TeX frontend. What You See Is What You *Mean*
- KPackage gives you all sorts of nifty information about installed packages
and if you really want to impress people, get the XScreensaver distrib from www.jwz.org and put it in your autostart with the '-root' option. I have 'xmatrix -root' in there. It freaks people out. Maybe I should write a shell script to run a random one in there.
Sorry to hear about your network troubles, though. I'm sure someone here has some good suggestions, I haven't used PPP in years, and back then I used dip...
Katz's comments seem to be in-line with what quite a few people are saying about Linux -- once it's running, it's really cool. But the installation is hell.
Linux certainly isn't alone in the confusing installation arena. I forget the article, and I'm too lazy to go find it, but a certain columnist just recently expressed how even as skilled as he was, he spent quite a bit of time installing Linux yet quite a lot more time installing Win2k.
It seems to me that in order to get the most desktop share, you really have to get preinstallation deals, plain and simple. OS installation is going to remain just plain difficult as long as we keep the unchangeable pieces of the computer as simple as possible. This is a good thing -- because the less that's unchangeable in the machine, the more can be innovated in software.
My wife is an extremely competent Mac user, but she doesn't do installs. I do it since I'm the one with the half a degree and voluminous experience (mind you, I didn't say I'm smart -- I've just been exposed to quite a bit) :-).
Indeed, that was a fine homework you did. Perhaps you don't realise it, but you learned more about geeks through the whole process than you care to admit. We're not chest-thumpers, we're a community. There's some kind of secret handshake that actually takes the form of some technospeak, and then we're happily geekin' out.
You shouldn't feel as if having to resort to help meant you weren't being a geek. That's exactly the point! the fundation of the Open Source and Linux movement is one of help and mutual support! By exploiting these resources, you took true steps into the geek world. How does it look like from the inside?
See, I don't agree with you here. Not at all. We're not miracle workers; few of us have a methodology. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to the middle of a program, and wondered if I could pull it off.
As a programmer and a writer, I can tell you this: writing and programming is actually quite similar. You begin with a vague outline, with a goal in mind. You research your bases. You enter the subject head-on, and hope you won't stray from the objective too much. And then, something marvelous happens: as you progress, your work takes a life of its own, and you don't feel as if you're directing it, but rather that it's directing you. There's an inherent structure that emerges, and in the end, it can just take you a step further than you imagined when you began the project.
Coders have the same relationship with words than writers have with technology. It doesn't mean they work their craft differently.
Again, congratulations on making the jump to Linux. And keep this fresh attitude about the geek culture. You'll see we're not wizards or a different species; we're not that hard to figure out.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."