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OK, we have established that Windows are not reliable. On the other hand there are thousands of people all over the world who swear on their Linux manual instead of the Bible (or the Koran or whatever). Shouldn't I have a personal experience on the subject?
I went to the bookstore and got myself a copy of a Linux book which came with RedHat Linux 5.0. So what if I had to pay $20 for the book? That's nothing compared to what I got in return, right?
Wrong again! I'm starting to believe that you are as dumb as I am <joke>! To the cost of the book/CD you must add the cost of trying to make the system work!
Admittedly it did install without much effort. Of course it didn't recognise my soundcard (SoundBlaster original) or my network card (NE2000/ Realtek compatible) but it did recognise everything else. To be honest I had to declare my Video Card, monitor, mouse and keyboard but in most cases (mouse, keyboard) the installer suggested the hardware that I used (did I mention that I use a standard PS/2 mouse and standard US keyboard?). And when I say declare it not like Windows where you select your hardware from a list! For example the monitor: What is the highest mode it can display? What's the horizontal frequency rate? The vertical frequency rate? Or the video card: What's the chipset it uses? The clock frequency? Does it have RAMDAC? How much video memory does it have?
Anyway, I finished the installation, restarted the PC, logged in as 'root' and got to the not unfamiliar (from the DOS age) text prompt. From my experience in deploying Web pages on UNIX servers I knew a couple of UNIX commands (cd, ls, rm etc.) and started exploring the environment.
Not without problems if I may add. It took me a while to understand that cd.. is not the same as cd .. (you don't know??? There is a space between cd and ..). However I still don't understand WHY. Or WHY I can't use capital letters for the commands. I understand the purpose of a password "AAA" being different than "aaa" but when there is no "mydir" different from "MYDIR" , why can't the directory change to "mydir" with cd MYDIR?
"Not essential" you might say and you will be correct. But then I tried to access my CD to check if there are any Linux utilities in it. And how do I do that? I tried everything from D: (and d:, D :, d :), cdrom: (and all alternatives). I checked throughout my directories and came across a directory /mnt/cdrom/. Once again I almost run out yelling "I got it, I got it". However, I'm not a rookie anymore, I know better. I typed ls only to discover that my cdrom was empty. How can that be? I do have the CD in the drive!!!
The next morning I loaded my X-Windows and tried to access my cdrom from the GUI (Graphical User Interface). I did find my /mnt/cdrom directory and another one called /dev/cdrom. So, which one is it? Both didn't work! I tried the "extensive" help system (help cdrom, man cdrom, help cd, man cd etc., etc.)- Nothing.
I started to despair and decided to read my book thoroughly. In page 87 and after learning all the switches for the ls command (more than a dozen), I discovered another command: mount.
In order to access my CD (oops, sorry- my cd) I should type mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom.
Why didn't I figure that one out myself? (rhetorical- don't answer!)
I explored my CD, found that there were no utilities and then changed the CD to another one from a PC magazine. Being in the /mnt/cdrom directory I typed ls. I know, very dumb of me... Why did I presume that the contents of /mnt/cdrom would change just because I wanted to? Linux corrected me with an error message (can't remember it but was not very informative). So what am I to do?
I went back to my book and found another command umount. To change the cd you have to unmount the CD-ROM, change the CD and then mount it again.
anyone else having a problem with this?
The same applies to the floppy and all other devices (except the hard disks).
Later I discovered that X-Windows is not a full-blown GUI. Is is just the basis where other GUIs can be built. Try to think of it as a graphical DOS upon which Windows are loaded.
So, I got hold of KDE, which is what I wanted, by downloading it from the Internet together with the update libraries. It took me a whole day on an ISDN connection. I also had to put a lot of work on it because it doesn't come as a single file (for example a zip, tar or whatever compressed file). There are more than 100 separate files/directories. Of course you can tell Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator to save it to disk. I tried that only to discover that at 5% I was disconnected from the server. Another program I use (GetRight) can't download whole directories so I used CuteFTP. It may be Cute but it also stops communicating with the server every now and then. Yes, it can resume the downloads but you have to check it, to make sure it is still working. If it is stuck you tell it to reconnect and then to skip ALL the previous files it has downloaded. That's something to keep you busy.
Anyway, as I said, I managed to download it. I burned it on a CD and returned home to install it. I started reading the manuals I also downloaded and discovered that to accomplish my goal I first had to install the QT libraries (don't ask, I don't have a clue!). But to install the QT libraries I have to upgrade the gcc compiler to egcc (I said: Don't ask). And if you believe that this process is like running a Setup.exe file, forget it!!! Linux has a thing called packages (rpm files). To install them you have to write the command rpm -Uvh <packagename>-<version>.<major>.<minor>_<dateofrelease>-<maiden name of developer>.<useless garbage>_<more useless garbage>.
If you make a single error for example <useless garbage>-<more useless garbage>. You get an error message.
To cut a long story short the installer found missing links on my installed packages and told me that I should look into it using some weird rpm switches. I did, to no avail... I found a missing something but had NO clue as to what I should do to correct it.
"enough is enough" I shouted! I took the CD out and reinstalled another Linux release called OpenLinux.
That was easy. a graphical installer, no strange parameters to declare. Plus it DID recognise my network card. Hurray!!!! I did it.
I started working with KDE, which was installed at the same time and found that it was easy. No more mount/umount commands. I even found a way to add my SoundBlaster sound card after only a couple of hours!!!
Being at peace with myself I restarted to computer and discover (in horror) that it didn't load (the system hanged at LI before it could even say LILO. Mind you, I have no strange DOS partitions or whatever. I only have one swap partition and the main hda one (this is for the Linux/UNIX gurus).
I reinstalled OpenLinux, formating my partitions. This time my system crashed on the first boot.
Third try: I deleted the partitions, created new ones and reformated them. OpenLinux restarted twice and then stopped!
I got FED UP and tried a third relase... Linux Mandrake. Did I, finally, managed to make my system work? NO, it couldn't even install! It stopped even before it started to install the packages!
Back to the bookstore for me. This time I spend $80 but got RedHat Linux 6 plus KDE, plus GNOME (another GUI like KDE).
More endless hours reading the book... This time it only crashed once during the install. When I deleted and recreated the partitions, it worked like magic. It even recognised my network card! Of course I still had to spend even more time configuring the display (monitor/video card) using xfconfig because the default utility Xconfigurator (mind you, that's a capital X- do not try 'xconfigurator' or 'XConfigurator') gave me a flickering display.
Now I have RedHat Linux 6 with KDE and GNOME. It works fine! What am I going to do with them? I really don't have a clue!!!! (well that's not 100% correct but I'm saving it as a suprise. I'll be back with more info on Linux and the Apache Server).
Is this all?
Of course not... Since the last article I've used Windows ME, mastered Windows 2000 Active Directory, and struggled to customise my WindowsXP to look like Windows 2000 (old habits are difficult to abandon)... Oh and I have also admitted to the stability and improved GUI of the new Linux releases...
But we'll talk about all that very soon...