I'm Official

See, its true.

Victory!!!

Well after buying a new hard drive and working WAYYY to long I finaly have Slack installed with the nvidia drivers and I got twinview set up..

check out the extreme beauty of it:




now I just have to tackle the the weirdness of kioslave and drive mounting permissions...

but at least im this far

^_^

Scratch That

Well... I went to put in my new HDD and.. the power connector is defective. *sigh*

It looks like now install today. On the other hand, It seems like the old drive might be psuedo-behaving so its not good enough to keep using, but I may be able to pull off some data.

wish me luck

Quick Update

Ok, I lied, I updated and I haven't installed it yet. On the other hand I finished HLW and the entirty of slackbook.org . I'm planning on installing tommorow (well today given that its 1:15).

Night

Distro Choice - part duex

Well I downloaded the Slack ISOs. After I get them installed I'll update again

Distro Choice

Well not alot to report.. I've read a ton of How Linux Works I'm up to chapter 10 (the Kernel).

I also subscribed (online) to TUX Magazine and Free Software Magazine

Well, after reading Ravi's opinion on distros I've decided that what I want is a good learning experience and a nice system so I think I'm looking at (B)LFS or Gentoo as my ultimate system. Both, however, require some sort of Host distro for the build process. I think the front runners for that are Fedora, Ubuntu, or Slack. I'm not really sure which of these to go with, but I'm kinda leaning towards Fedora that said, however, my decision isn't really final so any convincing comment could change my mind.

Well thats it for tonight/this morning, I'm goin to bed,
~Donald Guy

Status : 1 - Planning

Well what news is there? First off my new HDD arrived. Unfourtunatly, I dont have the time do deal with it right now... probably not until this weekend. I've left inspiration phase and entered as the sf.net-esque title suggests the planning phase.

I finished reading Just for Fun (which is excellent, by the way, I would highly reccomend it to anyone with a remote interest in linux, computing, revolutions, Finland, or reading for that matter) and I've started reading How Linux Works (by Brian Ward, original author of the Linux Kernel HOWTO, and possibly more telling published by No Starch Press) It is an interesting read and though I knew a lot of what I've read so far, there are quite a few tricks I've picked up and it is getting in to increasingly advanced topics.

So now I guess the next step is... picking a distro. I've gotten a few reccomendations for PCLinuxOS and while I appreciate the thought I'm not sure wether its right for me or not. Everything I've seen on it bills it as a "perfect system for beginners" and though I've had a few commitment issues 'bout it, I'm not sure I'd catogerize myself as a beginner (If you have a rebutal to this dismissal, I welcome further reasons why I should consider it). What I really want is a good, complete, not to simple system. I've tried Red Hat, Mandrake (and Mandriva), and SuSE before. Of these, I got bored of Mandr{ake,iva} and SuSE but I only uninstalled Red Hat because of logistical concerns (though the reason I didnt get tired of it may be simply that I didn't have as much time with it) so I'm thinking of giving Fedora a try. I also value customization so Gentoo or LFS might be a good fit (I started making an LFS system once but I accidently deleted that partition). I have Ubuntu cd's sitting around somewhere that I never got around to installing so that may see day too (though for some reason it gives me bad vibes, mabye brown just isn't my color). Another concern is that I want to get a good education of the system and config tools arent really my thing so I'm thinking Slackware might get a try. I plan on reading Ravi's "Best Distro of All" conversation once I get a chance and mabye that will provide some guidance. Want are your opinions on the subject?

I'll update once I've made some decisions

~Donald

Why am I doing this?

So ... why am I doing this? Well, first off... because I can and I should. Why else? Hoping that the major industries will not come after me (and I don't think they'd bother) I have an admission to make: a lot of the software on my old computer could have been qualified as warez (for those who aren't that technical, a) why are you reading this? b) warez = pirated software ). I don't consider this to be a good thing and as such I'm getting away from that and moving towards that which is better on every level.. Free Software.

I recently started reading the autobiography of our beloved Linus Torvalds (entitled Just for Fun) and it has inspired me. I've realized I've grown up on Windows for far too long, being ignorant of the truth of computers, the innards, the very soul. I discovered Linux back when I attended Cybercamps (it was several years ago, I don't remember the date) and the very nice head counselor, who I recall only as "Lizard" (short for Elizabeth) and her husband introduced me to it and the Open Source Movment in general. They gave me some CD's of Mandrake 8.2 which I installed as soon as I got home.. As a second OS. I loved Linux but I didn't use it as much as I wanted to, and ultimately it ended up just sitting on the drive until I finally deleted the partition. I have re-installed it (and other distros) several times, but I've never really used it as my primary OS.

Well on the morning of Dec 24th I awoke and went to check my e-mail. All of a sudden, my mouse froze in the middle of my screen. My mouse is wirless so I assumed it to be a battery failure. To make a long story short the ultimate result was: Hard Drive Failure (the whole ordeal is layed out on the TechSpot Forums in this thread). As I note in the thread, all my data is shot, I have no back-up, and I've had to get a new HDD. At the time of this writing it is in the middle of Louisville, KY (if you want to follow it, which no one will: the tracking page is here ) and this a golden oppourtunity to g ofor the complete switch.

Hello

Hi, I am Donald Guy and I have created this blog to track my progress as I switch from my windows set-up to a pure linux system. I will post a more informative introduction later, This post is primarly a test post.