Category: GNU/Linux

The Windows-to-Linux roadmap: Series Overview has a lot of good information for the technically interested. It includes articles on logging, file system setup and networking.

k3b rocks (almost). This morning, I managed to burn my first CD under Linux. I used an application called k3b, which allows burning CDs and DVDs in a variety of formats. Unfortunately, I was slowed down by k3b being set up to use the KDE desktop environment, so I had to use KDE to run the k3bsetup utility. However, it all seems to be working now under my normal Gnome environment.

I’ve been using grip to transfer some of my CDs to my fixed disk so I can them replay them with “xmms”:http://www.xmms.org/. Although I like to listen to music when I am working at my computer, I find it tedious to continually have to switch cds in the cup holder. Right now, I have over 400 songs by thirty artists and groups. Grip, as indicated by its name, grabs a stranglehold on the computer resources, but hidden in the configuration tabs is a place where you can tell it to play “nice”:http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/nice.1.html so you can use your computer for other activities at the same time.

After two months of using Linux in a dual boot system with Windows 98, I decided I was ready for a 100% Linux box. Friday night, Jack and I went to a local store front that assembles generic machines, picked a machine, and waited while they installed the upgrades that I wanted. The guy slapped components in so quickly I wondered if the system would work when I got it home. However, the next morning, I quickly installed Redhat 9 Linux, which is what I had been using on my dual-boot machine. Getting it customized the way I like is taking much longer, of course.
Continue reading Linux Redux

Using this article on Icewm, I installed Icewm on my Linux box as the windows manager. I had previously been using the Gnome desktop article. As it says in the article, installing Icewm instead of Gnome was llike doing a hardware upgrade. Gnome had a lot more bells and whistles, but I didn’t use most of them, so I am quite content with the speed of Icewm instead.

My Linux desktop looks much like any other Graphical User Interface. Actually, my monitor rarely looks like this, because the window manager has four presentation spaces, and I usually dedicate a different function to each space so I don’t have this sort of visual clutter.

It has been about a month since I started using Linux (in the form of Red Hat 9) as my everyday operating system.

I had been a reasonably happy Windows user for years, ever since Windows 3.1. However, I have long been concerned with the direction that Microsoft is taking with both licensing and digital rights management in their software. As a result, I have been reluctant to upgrade from Windows 98, or purchase a machine with a modern Microsoft operating system installed. For several years now, I have been following the progress made by GNU/Linux on the desktop, wondering if it would ever provide the functionality I want in my primary computer.
Continue reading Linux Update

The Linux Learner’s Guide has some excellent starter information, including how to compile your kernel. “Distrowatch”:http://www.distrowatch.com/ announces information about the various Linux distributions, and includes an article about good distributions for beginners. We weren’t too rigorous in our approach about which distribution to install: we just picked the one in the back of the Dummies book.

The Linux Productivity Magazine from “Troubleshooters”:http://www.troubleshooters.com/troubleshooters.htm is an online magazine devoted to using Linux applications. The back issues include an excellent tutorial on the editor vim.

Via “Mashby”:http://www.mashby.com/archives/000220.html, I found BloGTK, a Linux desktop client that will allow posts to Movable Type weblogs. Since I have a fairly high speed, persistant Internet connection, it is easy to post to my weblog using the web browser, but it is still nice to find an offline client, just in case.