Archive: August, 2007

Kubuntu is my only OS, and I’m sort of fine with that

Almost a year ago, I was still dual-booting WinXP and Kubuntu. I wrote a post about how I didn’t have to switch back to Win except on rare occasion. I am happy to say that for probably 8 months or so I have not had Win on my machine. Websites display properly, email is great, Flash works, codecs are easily available, and I can say that keeping a separate /home partition makes upgrading or re-installing extremely simple.

To break all that down, I have no reason to use Win. Well, I didn’t have a reason until I enrolled in school. 99.9% of my coursework is done on Win machines at college. Don’t get me wrong, it is a decent operating system with a wide array of options for its use. The main point that saddens me is how an institution of higher learning can so blindly promote the Win monopoly. Yes, they are the most widely used OS, but at least touch on *nix a little bit.

Back to my point, over at least the past 8 months I have lived a Win-free life. Even Em and the kids are using Linux. The kids mostly play on PBS.org or watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. Em mostly uses the net and reads email. Very little has come up that the OS could not accomplish. Heck, I can’t think of anything it hasn’t done that I’ve needed. The only issues I have had are from adding eye-candy (pretty desktop effects) that are still not ready for production use. Those problems were my own fault, not Linux’s issue.

With those issues, it was very nice to have a /home partition that kept all of my settings, files, etc. separate from the operating system. On Win you would have to track down where all of your files are stored and hope you got them backed up on CD, DVD, external HDD, etc. With Linux all of those things are saved to your own personal directory called /home. When you re-install for whatever reason (upgrade, meltdown, etc.) you just mark that partition as /home during setup, don’t format it, and your settings are sitting there waiting when you boot. This has been a real life-saver for me.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why users go pay $500 minimum to go get a new PC with Vista or XP when they could just load Linux for free and keep money in their pocket. I guess it could be fear of a new environment, lack of knowledge, or some other odd reason.

I hope it gets figured out and a solution provided. As for me, I’ll put Win on a portable HDD as required for class and keep using my 2 Kubuntu computers with free upgrades while everyone else keeps paying M$ so that they will keep putting out barely-improved operating systems.

Back to School at Rend Lake

Well, the first week was a rush of madness. Getting the kids around, dropping them off, getting my supplies and to class on time. We did make it through somehow, and this week things are settling in to a nice routine.

My OS class seems to be simple enough. Mostly learning about the ins and outs of Windoze. I’m sure I’ll learn something in there. Intro to computers is pretty simplistic, but it is required for the degree. An easy A if nothing else, I think. Communication 101 (speech) is just another one of the required courses. Being a little older, it isn’t that big of a deal this time around.

Networking Fundamentals. Wow. I don’t know what to say about that class other than it is my hardest one I believe. In our first chapter we had a crash course in Base10/2/0x conversions. That was interesting. I believe it could definitely scare off someone who was iffy about the class. The conversions aren’t really hard, and once you get them you want to slap your head and say “Duh.”

Fortunately, I did understand the formulas and was even able to help a girl understand who just didn’t quite catch on immediately. For my first test I scored perfect. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m just relieved and encouraged. Yes, I was a dork and threw my arms up in triumph when the page popped up and told me my score. Yep, that excited.

I hope things keep going so well. Wish me luck! (please)

🙂

Dan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-08-27

  • Listening to CNN waiting for class. A chance to read I suppose. #

Dan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-08-23

  • Speech doesn’t seem too bad. #
  • Long first week of school. Now for the homework. #
  • Reading networking manuals and taking orientation tests. So mundane. #

Dan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-08-22

  • Very hot today, but the teacher is nice. #