The Path to GNU/Linux
Seriously, it was mostly curiosity, as well as my desire at the time (in late 1997 and early 1998) for a good Perl development environment, since WinPerl left something to be desired. I do not believe ActivePerl was available at the time; if it had been, I may not have ventured into the exciting territory of the penguins.
At any rate, I had read in early-1998 in Byte Magazine about GNU/Linux becoming friendlier with the new "GNU Network Object Model Environment" (that'd be GNOME), and I thought that sounded really interesting. GNOME stayed in the back of my mind, but for a number of months I didn't look into it anymore.
It was about this time I noticed that Best Buy had several different distributions — SuSE, Red Hat and Caldera. I knew my previous web host had used Red Hat (at the time I was using a FreeBSD powered web host; these days I'm back to an RH-powered hosting provider) and I'd heard good things about it, so I decided to give it a try.
Red Hat still had a deal with MacMillan Software at the time, and BestBuy carried this special version rather than the "official" boxed set. For some reason (I can't remember what), I decided to do a big search for an "official" pack (I was told this was the best way to get started), and found an Official Red Hat Linux 5.1 boxed set for $40 at a small computer shop. I didn't know anything about LILO, etc., so I also went and bought System Commander Deluxe for handling switching between Windows and GNU/Linux.
At any rate, after three attempts I finally got Red Hat installed onto my 500 meg hard disk and tried to figure out what to do with it. My modem wasn't configured, my printer wouldn't print and the pre-installed FVWM95 desktop wasn't anything like the "friendly" system I had read about.
So I rebooted into Windows, wondering if I'd just tossed a hundred bucks out the window (heh), and started reading. I got some tips on modems, although it took me awhile to get that going, but I also located some GNOME rpm's on the second CD of the Red Hat distribution. Red Hat didn't install GNOME at the time because it was at something like version 0.16 (alpha quality).
I fought with GNOME for hours, but couldn't get the silly thing to install. Worse, and here is where I should have "read the fine manual," I couldn't figure out why "del" wouldn't delete files and why "move" wouldn't move them (I was pretty good at getting around MS-DOS, so I was comfortable at the GNU/Linux prompt, but…). All of this made me wonder exactly what I was even hoping to accomplish.
At about this time, two things happen that set me on a collision course with using GNU/Linux seriously. First, while looking for documentation, I ran across the Free Software Foundation and thought this "GPL" thingy sounded kinda neat. So I fired off an e-mail to ask about using the license on my own code. Just a short time later Richard M. Stallman wrote back, which got my attention, since I had read enough of the GNU.org site to realize that he had founded it. I didn't appreciate just how important the Free Software Foundation was, nor all that Stallman had done, but it was still kind of neat.
The second key, ironically, since it was non-free at the time, was that I ran into the KDE Project. I had found a site with all kinds of window managers, and had tried some, but none of them worked that well. Then I stopped by KDE's site. They had just hit 1.0 a few days before and they had this really nice looking desktop. So, I downloaded some src.rpm's (since there weren't any pre-compiled rpm's for Red Hat 5.1), and then went into GNU/Linux and copied them onto my Linux partition from Windows' partition.
The next week or two, I almost went crazy. I had never compiled anything more complex than a Visual Basic application before, and so this whole "./configure; make; make install;" process mystified me somewhat. The real problem, however, was dependencies. Configure couldn't find qt-devel and so I went and searched for that. But then that wouldn't install due to some x11 "header" files missing. I said to myself, "Self, what is that?" Unfortunately, I couldn't answer myself, even after many hours.
Well, I finally gave up and asked, and once someone explained what I needed to get off my Red Hat CD, I finally started the long, arduous process of compiling KDE on a Pentium 100. Finally, it got done, and… it didn't work. It turned out I needed to set the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH for /opt/kde.
Finally, the KDE wallpaper appeared, then the desktop icons, and then the kpanel (the thing that kicker replaced in KDE 2.0). It was something to behold. Perhaps not so much because of how wonderful KDE 1.0 was, but after hours and hours of fighting with it, it felt like I'd accomplished something pretty good.
However, I quickly ended up leaving the GNU/Linux community. It was about this time that I bought a new system — a Dell Dimension XPS 450. At the time the Pentium II 450 had just come out and so I was pretty nervous about fooling with the system too much. The Dell techs really didn't know much about Linux but noted that repartitioning my hard disk for it would erase the restore partition. So I just gave up on Linux; I didn't want to mess up my restore partition, and it still wasn't working that well for me.
Then, in November of 1998, Windows 98 died. You know how Windows is, it was just hopelessly messed up. So I fired up the restore utility, only to find the restore partition missing. Sigh. That was bad news, but after I thought about it for a bit, it was also good news — I finally felt free to repartition and get GNU/Linux back on.
Over the next few years I'd go into GNU/Linux and play around, but I still wasn't happy with it. Netscape 4.7 was horrible, KMail wasn't very good compared to Outlook at the time (not considering worm vulnerability, of course), etc. I tried SuSE Linux 6.1 in May of 1999, and liked it, but it was still buggy and it was really hard to get X11 working. I did help beta test KDE 2.0 over the summer of 2000, but things still weren't quite right. Over the early spring of 1999, I also spent endless hours fighting with xfstt to get TrueType fonts to work (finally did, then lost how I did it and had to relearn it two or three months later).
I bought SuSE 6.4 and it had a nice new GUI installer, but KDE 1.2.1 still didn't meet my needs and I still didn't get this whole "freedom" concept. So I got it all working but barely ever used it.
Finally, in early 2001, I bought SuSE 7.1 Professional. It was great. KDE 2.0.1 was still kinda clunky, but KDE 2.1 had just come out and it was, in my opinion, the release that made the GNU/Linux desktop a serious reality. It was stunning. Konqueror's web browser worked well. KMail was multithreaded. Everything worked beautifully. I knew I should switch and get away from the bug-infested Windows operating system. But, inertia is a powerful force, and everything was still working alright in my new Windows 2000 install, so I just stuck to the status quo.
Then it hit. Outlook died for the second time in three months at about 9:00 p.m. one Tuesday after Bible Study Fellowship and I knew a complete reinstall of Windows was the only way I was going to get it fixed easily. I was tired. I was cranky. I just wanted to check my e-mail.
So I did the most logical thing: I exported my Outlook mail to Outlook Express, rebooted the computer into GNU/Linux and imported everything into KMail. That was that, I had made the first major step toward actually jumping over to the GNU/Linux desktop.
Since then, I've learned to stop calling GNU/Linux just "Linux." I also learned to say Linux correctly and not just the Americanized way — it's properly pronounced Lynn-ucks not Lie-nicks (the confusion enters in that the American pronunciation of Linus is different than the Scandinavian pronunciation that Linus Torvalds uses). But, that's another story.
Later in November of 2001 I got tired of SuSE's non-free installer/configurator and some bugginess in it and made the jump to Mandrake Linux 8.1. After a brief jump to Debian 3.0 "Woody" in February 2002, I went back to Mandrake Linux for 8.2, then 9.0, 9.1, and I'm getting ready to switch to 9.2 (which is great, but I haven't had time to move my main stuff to it yet). After using Debian, I was able to appreciate not only apt-get but also the power of Mandrake's apt-get clone, urpmi, and now I can't imagine how anyone lives without powerful dependency resolution and software upgrade tools like these.
It was on October 5, 2001 that I launched Open for Business (www.ofb.biz), and since then I've had the opportunity to try pretty much every major distribution.
In all, I've used:
Red Hat 5.1*, 8.0, 9.0
SuSE 6.1*, 6.4*, 7.1*, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2
Caldera Linux Technology Preview (2001)
Lycoris Desktop/LX Amethyst
LindowsOS 3.0
Debian GNU/Linux "Woody" (pre* and post release)
KNOPPIX 3.0 (and KNOPPIX KDE 3.1 Edition)
Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8
Xandros Linux 1.0
Mandrake Linux 8.1 (DL)*, 8.2 Betas, 8.2 (DL* and PowerPack), 9.0 Betas, 9.0 (DL)*, 9.1 Betas, 9.1 (DL* and ProSuite), 9.2 Betas, 9.2(Discovery Edition).
FVWM95*
KDE 1.0*, 1.1*, 1.2.1*, 1.9x*, 2.0*, 2.0.1*, 2.1.x*, 2.2.x*, 3.0*, 3.1.x*.
GNOME 0.16, 0.90, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0, 2.2
And numerous others, though not as seriously
[A * denotes a distribution or desktop I used as my default in GNU/Linux for a period of time.]
iTunes for Windows: Slick.
While the Aqua-like look within iTunes for Windows doesn't look quite as good as it does in Mac OS X (IMO, but I guess you hope it wouldn't, otherwise all of Apple's work on Quartz would have been for naught), it looks very nice. Most everything works the same, save some adjustments to make it act like a Windows app (like a different configuration window that is less iconic).
The really amazing part was getting my iTunes Music Store music onto the system. It was absolutely painless. I went into my Mac's iTunes preferences, enabled music sharing (shares the music within your subnet), and presto all of the purchases appeared in a folder named “Timothy Butler's Music” on iTunes for Windows. After that, it was just a matter of typing in my Apple Account's username and password to authorize the computer and the music started playing! Impressive!
(And, as if you wouldn't have guessed, the music sounds much better on the PC with its SB Live! driving a 5.1 Logitech speaker system than the iMac's two little built in speakers.
)
What Technology Do You Really Want?
I'm just curious, dear readers, what piece of technology would you get right now if you had, say, $4,000, and could spend it on just one item? That's a tough question, isn't it?
Well, I think I know what I'd go for. It'd run this and this very nicely. It'd also complement my Dell Dimension 4550 running Mandrake Linux quite nicely (silver and black always look nice together — as the Logitech MX700 mouse demonstrates
).
So, how 'bout you?
Here's hoping...
Well, it has been awhile since I mentioned the great Mac experiment here. Right now I'm sitting at my Mac waiting for Roxio Toast 5 to install (Great Mac experiment part 3 or something like that). I bought Roxio Toast back in August when CompUSA had it on sale but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. I'm hoping it will solve the problem of both external burners that I've tried on the Mac not being supported.
I got my current burner (and Iomega Predator) to work on the Mac with a shareware program, so I hope Toast works too! We'll see in a moment or two…
Troubling Times Ahead
Due to legal documents XYZ Company has received via certified US mail that indicate XYZ Company and its customers may be liable for damages or licensing of intellectual property contained in the linux kernel, effective September 9, 2003, XYZ Company is no longer supporting any GNU operating system that uses the linux kernel. The linux@xyzcompany discussion mailing list is also permanently
discontinued.
I'm not sure if “XYZ Company” is looking for publicity about this, so I chose to change their name, however, the text is verbatim. This is just speculation, but my guess is that SCO has sent them notice as they expand their circle of litigation and they didn't feel like gambling on whether SCO was bluffing or not.
If that indeed turns out to be the case, this would signal a troubling new stage in SCO's campaign against GNU/Linux. It would show that SCO is moving down from top tier resellers to smaller, regional ones.
To be clear, after thorough analysis of SCO's case, most of those familiar with it agree that the case is really no case at all. The snippets they have released as a showcase of the code “illegally placed in Linux” turned out to be code SCO itself had authorized for reuse in virtually any way imaginable — including inclusion in Linux.
The question isn't who is right, but whether anyone can afford to stand up to the wrath of SCO, and their lawyer, David Boies (yes, that's the same Boies that represented Al Gore in the 2000 post-election fiasco).
Why I Don't Use "Linux"
Buzzing by Buzzing Bye, I found this post that was denouncing Richard Stallman's position that “Linux” should be known as “GNU/Linux.” This hit a nerve, perhaps because I've seen so many likeminded posts, and it inspired me to write an editorial at OfB.biz that argues for the name GNU/Linux and also takes a side journey into why the GNU GPL is better in some ways than the BSD license.
Whether this sounds like gobble-de-gook or you already understand this issue, you might enjoy the opinion piece, which you can find here.
Thank-you HM!
This is a departure from my normal content here, but I wanted to take a moment to thank the wonderful folks at HostingMatters web hosting. Looking at my file modification dates, it seems that I officially migrated to HM two years ago today. I haven't regretted it one bit.
I've gone through a lot of web hosts. I've used seven (five commercial), and over the last two or three searches I also created a 20-something point questionnaire that each host was inspected by — and I inspected a lot, something to the tune of probably 800-1,000 companies in 1999 and 2001. Very few hosts met my criteria, even fewer earned my trust to actually deal with them.
I've had ups and downs in commercial web hosting. I first moved away from free web hosting to DataRealm. They were fine, although there plans were just too expensive for what they offered. After spending most of 1997 with them, I moved on in April 1998. I then moved to SmartHosting.com. They started out great, but my site was down a lot, their control panel wasn't very good, and it was often impossible to get a response — after one issue in early 2000, I finally had to phone them long distance after having my site down for a week. Things got worse and the whole deal ended with a $90 overcharge in July of 2000 (I hadn't been really using them since October 1999).
I had known things were going down hill for awhile so I had already started migrating in the fall of 1999 to BurstNET. They were fairly big then and are now much bigger — they have their own datacenter, etc. But in July 2001, things went from sort of unreliable to bad. They were constantly breaking Perl modules with oddball upgrades. They'd deny problems that I clearly demonstrated, etc. Nice people, but they wouldn't fix things. Finally, everything just died during the week of August 13, 2001. They got the web sites back up a day later, but after four days they were still denying the fact that e-mail was down. I needed a new host.
I tried one, which I'll not name because there was nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't for me, but they turned out to be a reseller for HostingMatters still at Alabanza (I noticed HM's domain in the e-mail headers of the welcome message). I jumped over to HostingMatters and everything looked like exactly what I wanted and more. So I signed up.
And what a great decision that was. Annette set me up with exactly the plan I wanted with reseller features (rather than having to get the normal reseller plan), answered all those questions I had, and got me started. The rest of the staff (or sock monkeys as they called themselves at the time) was great too. And as an added bonus the HM client community on the HM forums was delightful too!
Since part of my time with SmartHosting I had already migrated away but was still paying because I wanted to keep the subdomain I had been renting, I was really with them less than two years. Likewise I've never made it with any other host two years… except for HostingMatters. There's a reason too — they really genuinely seem to care. They are great people (I now consider one of the HM employees a friend, but that's another story), fast to respond, and their servers are ultra reliable and at a discount hosting price.
Oh, and did I mention that OfB.biz, a site of mine that is “Slashdotted” (hit by thousands of users from Slashdot.org all at once) a few times a year, is hosted there and fairs fine under the pressure? It's so good, we awared HM an award last year and at least one other large GNU/Linux site now uses HostingMatters.
If you need a host, check them out.
LinuxWorld: What a Show!
Ah, I wish I was there. Where? LinuxWorld San Fransisco! For those of you not familiar with it, LinuxWorld is the twice a year show during which all the biggest names in the GNU/Linux world (and computer world for that matter) come together to promote their wares. Best of all, dozens of exciting announcements come out of the show.
Consider this week's headlines over at OfB.biz. So far, I've written or linked to stories about IBM Suing SCO, Real Networks announcing a new GNU/Linux media player project, Red Hat Suing SCO (see a theme here?), Oracle becoming completely Linux-ized, Disney switching over to GNU/Linux desktops in some cases, Apple getting a more Free Software friendly license for the poorly named Darwin, and Novell purchasing GNU/Linux desktop supporter Ximian. Interested in these stories? Take a look.
But beyond that there is the experience. All the big names promote new products and let you see the latest — AMD, Intel, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, even Microsoft (yeah, that sounds strange, but it is true). Then there is the .Org pavilion where the great developers and projects of the community show up: KDE, Gnome, Debian, and more. Linus Torvalds, Jon “Maddog” Hall, and Richard Stallman have all been spotted at LinuxWorld.
Maybe I'll make it next year.
Linux Showdown: Take Two
Well, it's been four months since I wrapped up the 2002 comparison series in which I talked about the good and bad features of all the major GNU/Linux distributions. Today, I've started it back up as we hurdle to the end of July and the Open Choice 2003 awards. In the next week and a few days change, I'll be considering a lot of distros, starting with SuSE 8.2 today.
If you use GNU/Linux or want to know how you can try it, read along and learn which distribution is right for you.
...or maybe not.
Well, before installing Jaguar I wanted to get my PC's monitor hooked up to the iMac so that I could insure that Jaguar didn't drive the screen at the wrong frequency (the thing that kills iMacs, or more correctly, kills their displays). Well, it seems that the VGA port for some (idiotic) reason is placed behind a small grate that must be removed by plying it with a screwdriver. Okay, I don't like prying on things, but I can do that. Oh, but wait, I also need a new grate (according to Help) that has a hole in it so that I can connect the VGA cable. I don't think I need that grate, but just to be safe, I figure I should go get that grate first. There was suppose to be one in the iMac accessory kit, but one of the casualties of a used system is that these kind of things aren't included. Oh well, off to the “macstore”…
