Posted by Corvus on Aug 12th, 2006
Computer crash, that is.
In a long and confusing incident that I don’t quite understand myself, my Windows computer died this morning. I Frankensteined it together with the dead corpse of a previous Windows box which likewise died under mysterious circumstances, and managed to get something that would start up… and then refuse to load Windows.
So, after burning off four DVDs of stuff in Knoppix, I got really annoyed and installed Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger”.
Now, those of you who don’t know me have no idea how Windows-dependent I really am. My major problem with Linux has always been finding things — location and naming in Linux make my brain melt. Hell, I couldn’t even properly update Firefox. But then Jerry, bless his soul, got me to upgrade Ubuntu to 6.06 “Dapper Drake”. It took no effort on my part — I was busy reading a David Drake novel while it did its thing. Restart, bang, Firefox is almost up to date (apparently 1.5.0.6 has no .deb yet). I start to feel a bit less freaked.
I’d been considering a series of articles chronicling a shift from Windows to Linux by an uneducated n00b. I hadn’t planned for that n00b to be me. But here’s what I learned today:
* You can stack Gnome’s toolbars. They aren’t stuck top and bottom. This removes one reason that I prefered KDE in my brief previous experience with Linux. I’d still like more style control, but that will take Windowmaker, according to a friend.
* The /home directory is set up almost exactly the way I always organized my files and folders in Windows. I never believed in phantom My Whatever folders “above” the PC. Once I grasped this simple notion, I started reconstructing my setup under my ~.
* XMMS can use WinAmp skins. That really made me feel at home. Proto for the Win.
* The command line isn’t THAT scary. Just takes time to learn all the fiddly bits… a lot of time, and a lot of bits… I still don’t quite like it, even though I used to be just fine with DOS (and I don’t mean Denial Of Service, kids). But I’m learning.
So. End of Day One. My brain is melted, I feel exhausted, but at the end of it all, I feel a bit more comfortable. I mourn my lost Firefox bookmarks and I slagged some of my creative writing (thankfully my writing partner had most of it backed up!), and I seem to be having trouble transfering some of my data back onto the hard drive. But all is not lost. It could have been a lot worse. I’ll keep you all updated on my trials, errors and travails.
Tomorrow: moving more data back onto the HDD, and attempting to play a DVD.
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