This is part two of my three-part “Discovering Linux” story. Like the last post, this was written up at some point last year.
Who-buntu?
I don’t recall exactly where I first found out about Ubuntu, the rising new star in Linux distros at the time, or what it was that inspired me to download the LiveCD. Actually, now that I think about it, I think it may have been the unknowing “fault” of a poster at a forum I frequented at the time. She would post up her Ubuntu in those “Post Your Desktop” threads, and I was… jealous, to say the least. That should be me, I thought. I was the one who did the research on Open Source and oldschool hackers… why couldn’t I have Linux too?
I do remember downloading the Ubuntu LiveCD, putting it in my computer, and being extremely disappointed to find out that try as I might, I couldn’t get it to play nice with my wireless internet.
Why I also had the Kubuntu LiveCD (Kubuntu being, well, Ubuntu with a different desktop environment), I honestly can’t remember, and why I tried it out after Ubuntu I can’t remember either. I do know, though, that wireless internet worked flawlessly and out of the box on Kubuntu, and that I fell deeply in love with this beautiful operating system that was pleasing to the eyes and that was so very deliciously “open source”… all the ideals I’d found myself falling in love with.
But then I went back to Windows. Because the Linux LiveCD was just a LiveCD in my eyes; I’d never get to actually install it. I didn’t think I was that talented. Besideswhich, I figured I’d need to use Windows for video games. (Never mind the fact that I only very rarely played PC games at that point).
I soon got to a point where I was using the Kubuntu LiveCD anytime I had the excuse, though. Mostly on my laptop; I would cozy down on my bed with the lights dim except for maybe a candle, and do my stuff on Linux. It felt so… right. Does that make me a giant dork? Probably. But hey.
I moved on to the next step in my little obsession, which was the determination to get Linux installed on something. I chose my old computer which I no longer used. One day I pulled it out, popped the LiveCD in, and… failed to get it to boot the LiveCD. Doublechecking the BIOS and trying out Smart Boot Manager literally got me nowhere. So, after several hours… I gave up.
Temporarily.
Happy New Year
I gave it another shot a few months later. Why I thought I could succeed that time when I hadn’t before, I don’t know, but I spent hours trying to get it working. It was something I wanted so badly, I could taste it.
And so it was that about a week later I pulled out my laptop, surrounded myself with penguin plushies for luck (dork, remember?) put in the Kubuntu LiveCD… and clicked “install”.
I partitioned the drive so I would be able to dual-boot Windows and Linux. Afterward I leaned back and took a look at the finished job: Linux, running much more quickly and smootly than it had with the LiveCD. And Windows still booting fine as well. Success?
Perhaps not.
Somehow I had messed up my install, and given myself a gigantic Linux partition and a teeny tiny Windows one. This was the opposite of what I initially wanted. Now at this point, I was still a giant nub and had no idea about partition editors like GParted so I assumed that my only option would be to wipe everything, reinstall Windows, and start from scratch.
I had a copy of Windows XP laying around, so in the disc went into my laptop and after a bit I was good to go. Or so I thought. I had no internet and no sound. See, these were drivers that came pre-installed with the laptop’s Windows XP and they didn’t give them to you separately. I went on a massive search for said drivers, with no luck. Before long, night had arrived, and I went to bed with tears in my eyes, convinced I had ruined my laptop and rendered it completely unusable. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to mess with Linux. I knew I would mess something up. I knew it was out of my league.
I woke up the next morning hoping that it had all been a bad dream. But no, I still had a laptop running a gimped version of Windows XP. I glanced over at the Kubuntu CD. I glanced back at my laptop. I thought for a while.
And then Kubuntu went into my laptop and I wiped XP and installed Linux onto 100% of my hard drive. No more of this dual-booting crap with an OS that I couldn’t get working if it didn’t happen to be installed by default.
And then it was done; I booted up my computer and up came Linux.
The sound worked by default.
The internet worked by default.
It was January of 2007, and that year, I was free.
This, of course, was only the beginning– my desktop computer, which was the one that I used most, still ran Windows XP. That would soon change.
To Be Concluded!
Ever since the first time I saw kde it made me wanna throw up.
As an old school guiless user (dos/linux/etc) big bloated looking guis scared me.
I was in heaven with blackbox and/or xfce.
My first real linux distro was slack, then redhat, long before fedora. It was nice but not quite what I wanted, eventually got into kernel hacking and ended up rolling my own. After a while I gave up on that and fell face first into archlinux which has been my distro of choice since.
Buuuut, new htpc is going xubuntu only because I want it to just work, and do not want to screw with console from my couch
@ morkuma – I like KDE3.5. It’s so customizable that you can make it as much or as little in your way as you want. KDE4 is… starting to lean towards the bloated side for me though. And is buggy.
I really want to like XFCE but it has a few weird glitches and issues that I don’t like so now I’m a… somewhat reluctant Gnome user until either KDE or XFCE gets fixed, whichever comes first.
As for distros… I’d love to mess around with some others. Probably start with Debian (cause I’m familiar with Debian-like distros already) and then work from there.
My two biggest questions now are:
A. where do I get my hands on a good version to start tinkering with.
B. once I start trying to make this no setup disk having, burned out hardrive sportin, laptop I inherited work open source can I bug you with questions?
Use ubuntu or mint first, good starter distros.
@pike let me get xfce up and running this weekend and we can see if I cant help squash some bugs you are having
I started on SUSE (9 I think?). I dabbled with others like Gentoo and Fedora before coming to a rest on Kubuntu, and then Ubuntu. That’s now what I recommend for everyone I come across who is interested in trying Linux, as it is very user friendly. Each distro has its own unique flavor and its own problems.
I originally loved KDE but grew tired of having to fix the rather bloated looking default UI every time I reinstalled (which was very frequently). I haven’t tried it in awhile though. I know the Gnome vs KDE vs XFCE debate is almost like a debate about religions.
I started with Linux back in high school. The only real distro to go with was Slackware and you had to choose whether your boot floppy used color or black and white video in text mode. Lots of compiling at 486 speed post install. Lots of trial and error with getting things to work like X11. But it gave that epic-accomplishment feeling once you actually had a working system.
If you’re a KDE fan you might want to check out openSUSE; KDE is its primary desktop environment instead of secondary as with (Most?) other major distros.
Well, your experience trumps mine big time. I’ve had horrible luck with Linux on my first and only attempt.
Few years back I went to a local tech conference and came home with a bagful of freebies, among them a Kubuntu LiveCD. I was told that it requires no installation and booted off the CD, so I decided to give it a try on my laptop, which ran Vista at the time.
As many people would predict, my Kubuntu didn’t play nice with my wireless adapter, so I figured I’d boot into Windows first and look for some Linux compatible drivers.
… and Windows failed to boot.
My first reaction was, “Kubuntu killed my Windows!”
And my best friend, cynical as ever, “What do you expect? That’s how they kill off their competition.”
And to this date, I avoid Linux like the plague.
@Lupius – Almost *every* OS is going to “assume command” of a PC when it’s installed. Windows is just as aggressive in taking over boot control of the PC (and it’s the least friendly about sharing as well) as Linux is, as *BSD is, etc, etc.
In general, setup Windows on the PC first, then when going through the install of Linux, double check that it’s not setting itself up as a solo OS for the PC. There are of course a great number of HowTo and other data sources available for setting up Multiboot options.
Push comes to shove, if you’re geeky enough, have 2 separate HDs. Most PCs will now let you select which HD is the Primary Boot Device. Install Windows on one, go into BIOS and change to the other HD being Primary Boot, then install Linux. You can swap back and forth between them by just changing which HD is the Primary Boot Device. 🙂
Oh, and as a pun on the title for the post…
Pike.. did you ever try Enlightenment as a window manager? 😉