Animatronic Radical Skepticals Part 1
The summer has been quite a bouncy affair. After classes went out last April, I knew this free chunk of time would be worth something. Indeed it's that time to catch up on cleaning out that stuffed closet, reading those shelves of unread books, or updating my Livejournal frequently.
Thankfully, I did not start any of those.
I did, however, indulge in the delights of mucking about a non-Windows operating system. I was sick of Windows XP constantly freezing for no apparent reason. It would freeze whenever it felt like it. No blue screen of death, but it certainly was a pain having to reset the goddamn laptop. I backed up all my data on a DVD-R (using my new space-age DVD-burning muffler).
So I gave Linux a go. I had tried Red Hat GNU/Linux 7.2 once, but it was a piece o' crap on my laptop. If I only knew then that it was a terribly buggy release. The penguin whores over at Linux ISO kept recommending Mandrake as a good beginner distribution. 4 hours of FTP action later I had three freshly-made CDRs ready for installation. The installer was polished and graphical; creepily Red Hat-like in every way. All ran well including the USB wireless adapter with an atmel chipset. It can be a bitch to get working. Thank custom-patched kernels. It was all smooth sailing until I tried updating Gaim. The RPM packages wouldn't let me. Eh, I tried forcing the installation, but it kept giving me errors. It's just a small problem -- I'll solve it later. The wonderment lasted, oh, three days until all the icons on my KDE desktop disappeared. Heh. 3 CDRs went promptly down the trash. Then J. R. "Bob" Dobbs materialized two CDRs and threw them at me. His smug grin (or psycho smile) told me this was the one. Slackware GNU/Linux 9.1! I've been happy since, though I did have to keep Windows XP for a few un-WINE-able programs (Video editing and DVD ripping mostly).
Oh yes, there's more to type, but my fingers have cupped over from my non-existent Viking genes.
More tonight, har har!
Thankfully, I did not start any of those.
I did, however, indulge in the delights of mucking about a non-Windows operating system. I was sick of Windows XP constantly freezing for no apparent reason. It would freeze whenever it felt like it. No blue screen of death, but it certainly was a pain having to reset the goddamn laptop. I backed up all my data on a DVD-R (using my new space-age DVD-burning muffler).
So I gave Linux a go. I had tried Red Hat GNU/Linux 7.2 once, but it was a piece o' crap on my laptop. If I only knew then that it was a terribly buggy release. The penguin whores over at Linux ISO kept recommending Mandrake as a good beginner distribution. 4 hours of FTP action later I had three freshly-made CDRs ready for installation. The installer was polished and graphical; creepily Red Hat-like in every way. All ran well including the USB wireless adapter with an atmel chipset. It can be a bitch to get working. Thank custom-patched kernels. It was all smooth sailing until I tried updating Gaim. The RPM packages wouldn't let me. Eh, I tried forcing the installation, but it kept giving me errors. It's just a small problem -- I'll solve it later. The wonderment lasted, oh, three days until all the icons on my KDE desktop disappeared. Heh. 3 CDRs went promptly down the trash. Then J. R. "Bob" Dobbs materialized two CDRs and threw them at me. His smug grin (or psycho smile) told me this was the one. Slackware GNU/Linux 9.1! I've been happy since, though I did have to keep Windows XP for a few un-WINE-able programs (Video editing and DVD ripping mostly).
Oh yes, there's more to type, but my fingers have cupped over from my non-existent Viking genes.
More tonight, har har!