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Friday, 05 July 2002 08:25 A journal of my quest to learn and use Linux as a desktop OS replacement for Windows |
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wpoison
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This page is about my quest to learn and use Linux as a desktop operating system replacement for Windows. It all started here. Well, not really started, per se. My annoyance with Microsoft has been festering for a long time now. But eventually it reached critical mass, and there were enough neutrons flying around in my brain to sustain a chain reaction. So I finally decided to do something about it. That something is to explore how to use Linux to replace Microsoft Windows as my desktop OS. This won't be an overnight changeover if only because I need to get work done, and for now that means I have to use Microsoft software. Also, I write computer books, and that means I have to use Microsoft software for those as well. And even if I get to the point where I can do 99% of my regular daily work on a Linux box, I'll still have a couple Microsoft boxes around Lysander Spooner, the great 19th century anarchist and Constitutional lawyer, once observed that "Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice". I'll have to watch out for that. For now, that means, first, that my Linux system will be on my desk, rather than on the credenza behind me. That sounds a small difference, but it's more important than it sounds. I sit at this desk for sometimes 14 hours a day, and systems on the desk itself tend to get used more than ones on the credenza. Second, I have a KVM box sharing a 17" monitor among three systems--my dual-boot (Win98/2K) secondary system; meepmeep (the Roadrunner box); and this new Linux box. I'll leave the KVM switch set to "A", which is the new Linux box. Once again, a small but significant difference. I'll always have a Linux desktop visible in my main work area. Sunday, 13 August 2000 After some back-and-forth emails with Tom and Brian, I finally decided to install Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop. Getting it downloaded was more of a struggle than it should have been. I first tried downloading it to kiwi, my main desktop system. To make a long story short, the fact that kiwi is behind a firewall caused some problems. Eventually, I decided to go over and try the download on meepmeep, my Roadrunner box. Once I started the download there, it worked fine if a bit slowly. After nearly an hour, the IE5 status bar was showing only 37 KB/s, which is between half and a quarter the normal rate. Part of that, no doubt, was due to the severe problems on the Internet itself, and part due to the fact that it's Sunday evening and kids are sucking down MP3s. I have a box sitting here ready to receive Caldera OpenLinux. It's my old main system, which runs an Intel SE440BX "Seattle" motherboard with a Pentium II/300, 128 MB of RAM, a Seagate 4.3 GB IDE hard disk, and a Toshiba IDE CD-ROM drive. That should be an adequate system for exploring eDesktop. Monday, 14 August 2000 The download of Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop completed overnight. The ISO image is 641 MB and required 5:49 to download with my cable modem, which averaged only 31.3 KB/s. Having the ISO image available, the next step was to figure out how to get it burned to a CD. Nero made that harder than it should have been. I spent half an hour or so trying to figure out how to get the job done with Nero. The problem is that Nero creates image files with the extension .nrg, and nowhere in Nero Help could I find any reference as to how to burn an image file with a .iso extension. I finally went out on the Internet and found instructions. Those instructions were apparently for an earlier version of Nero than I have, but I took my best guesses and started the burn process. A few minutes later, I had my OpenLinux CD complete and ready to use. Frankly, I wasn't entirely sure that I'd made an actual OpenLinux CD from the image file. I thought there was a 50/50 chance that I'd look at a directory of the CD and find that I had one big file with an ISO extension. But when the burn process completed, I inserted the disc into the drive on the target system and the OpenLinux splash screen appeared. I created a set of boot floppies from the installer menu and restarted the system with the boot floppy in the drive. The text mode installer fired up, and was soon replaced by the GUI installer screen. Very pretty. I completed the installation without incident, choosing the "Home System" option. When the system booted into Linux, everything seemed normal except for a "fail" on CS4232, whatever that is. At any rate, it booted and presented a login dialog. I entered my account name and password, and the KDE desktop appeared. Enough for today. I have real work to get done. Tuesday, 15 August 2000 I didn't have time to work much with Linux yesterday. I did spend half an hour or so refamiliarizing myself with ls, cat, grep, and all that other good stuff. Rather than spending more time floundering, I'm going to get a copy of O'Reilly's Running Linux and perhaps a couple of other good Linux books and spend some time reading up on Linux. Wednesday, 16 August 2000 No time yesterday for playing with Linux, alas. I spent most of my time painting the house, getting SETI@home installed and a Daynotes Gang SETI group set up, taking the dog to the vet, and doing other miscellany.
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