| jeff on Fri, 4 Oct 2002 21:40:04 -0400 |
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What do you do when you don't even understand Dummies books? Try Jeff's brand new Idiot Savant series. It's for the person who barely understands linux but is otherwise computer literate. If you know what you're doing, skip this message - it won't be of any use.
Hardware: AMD K6-III 400 288m RAM 3Com 3C905C-TX NIC 2 hd's - 3M for linux, 1 for W98 Why upgrade? Because it was THERE. What's wrong with having the latest version of an OS that I can barely use to begin with? This is an upgrade to the already-installed RH7.3, which was working fine in spite of the fact that I installed it. RH8 downloads onto five cd's (bloat worthy of Redmond?). The system booted right from the cd and I selected Upgrade. It allowed me the option of checking the media, which I did for fun. Trust me when I tell you it ran slowly and was not interruptible. Don't try this at home, kids, unless you have serious doubts about the media or enjoy watching large disks defrag. It found the original 7.3 install and went to work. It is very user-friendly as well as idiot-friendly. I chose to decide which packages to install, which was another waste of time (although I saved 100M of space by not installing things like chat clients). After that it was automatic. This is the point where you get to either watch the progress indicator, impregnate your (or someone else's) wife, or do that puzzle where all the pieces are grey. You have been reduced to a cd changer for your OS. I like to watch the progress indicator until I'm hypnotized, but perhaps that's just me. It's not what I'd refer to as a snappy install but that's ok. It also helps to have a Windows system that you can use as an MP3 player while linux installs. Ok, it's about two hours later; hopefully no one's been impregnated. I made a boot disk and the system rebooted. It's starting something called sm-client. I usually don't go in for that sort of thing but I'll leave myself open to a new experience. It takes considerably longer to boot into X. Hmm.... KDE Crash Handler for Konqueror. Double hmm.... Control Panel gives me this spiffy little icon while it's loading then it simply doesn't load. Ok, maybe I should be fair and try a new install. See you in a few hours. -------- Red Hat Linux 8 CLEAN INSTALL Whew... that went much faster. About an hour and 2 cd's (upgrade needed 3). Neato - I'm connected to a time server (it's the little things). Definitely don't like the default screen... looks like XP or something. Hmmm.... booted into Gnome. Guess I missed that option. Ooh, what a pretty animation when I double-click. Gee, is this Windows? Excellent surfing speed. Why do browsers enable cookies and form fill by default? Evolution set up in no time and I can make it do most of what I'm used to. Ok, let's go get Opera, choose .RPM, do the install. Hey, nice.... it checked for dependencies, found something it needed, asked for a disc, and installed. I like this.... It's snappier than 7.3 by quite a bit. --------- For fun I took it to work and installed it on an ancient Compaq tower. All went smoothly until it booted into the GUI, at which point I was presented with a choice of two buttons. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but I don't read Swahili. Guess I had better reconfig the GUI, eh? Better left for Monday. --------- I installed all the Python packages but have yet to see one can of spam (although my wife did offer to have an argument with me). If this works, I'm going to sneak into work this weekend and replace all the Windows boxes with linux. As I mentioned to the CIO, think of the return on investment! It's not like my coworkers will have to be retrained - they already can't operate Windows. They will install Whine by themselves. _________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
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