Persevering for the Pastries
I’m starting to appreciate why Windows is so successful and so many people are attached to it by the hip. Trying to whip Linux into a semi-usable state was a pain, and trying to get it to work perfectly is seeming impossible. I felt overjoyed when I finally got X Window to work in 8bit 800×600 color mode; I can’t even describe how incredibly good it felt to see Linux printing on my machine. But all of that shouldn’t be: Linux just plain sucks when it comes to installation and configuration, not to mention hardware support. Yeah I know: Linux is one of the most customizable systems, and it offers support for a range of hardware unequalled by other OSes; I agree whole-heartedly. Problem is that Linux seems to lack support for a lot of ‘regular people’, neither high or low end hardware- take for example WinModems- if you aren’t careful that you’re buying hardware Linux will support, you probably will find Linux won’t support it. Almost a tautology, but compare that to Windows where nearly everything, legacy or not, is supported.
I wouldn’t be complaining nearly as much if Linux supported 16-32bit color and 1024×768 on my chip set and could use my printer’s color capabilities correctly, but it can’t. And I can’t even send email in the ubiquitous manner that so attracted me to Linux- I’m constrained to using Opera (which, thank God, runs here under!) to send mail because sendmail isn’t configured correctly. I’ve been reduced to being for help on comp.os.linux.setup by the unapproachable complexity of the task of configuring sendmail.
On the other hand, fetchmail works, and I’m enjoying CLI mail access. And obviously, the Inet connection works, so I can do everything on the net better than I did from under Windows (except see true color images). I’m enjoying BitchX and Lynx- which seems to be a good yardstick to measure HTML rendering by, actually. I’ve noticed that when I look at my sites and some others’ under Lynx, they look comparitively better than Netscape’s crappy rendering, if only because Lynx doesn’t attempt what it can’t handle. I still haven’t settled down to do any serious programming, since I’m still working on the initial system setup, but I’ve dabbled with gdb and c a little, and am looking forward to indulging in the pleasures of programming as it can only be under Linux sometime soon.
Did I mention I’m using a system with only 63Mb of hd space left? Yep, that’s right- I installed a dual boot on my dad’s computer because it’s the only one connected to the Inet. But to avoid repartitioning (he would have had a stroke), I used a tiny 1Gb partition, and all the space was eaten up by the end of the initial install process. I’m not complaining though, I view this as a small experiment: I finally got to sample Mandrake, only to find it’s not that hot, install Octave, and learn valuable lessons in system configuration that it’ll do me good to know next time around. So whenever I either move back into the dorms where I can use my computer’s Ethernet cord, or buy a modem for it, I’ll have formulated my plan for optimizing the Linux installation. And I’ll keep persevering, looking ahead to all the wonderful pastries I’ll be making with Linux when the brutal harvest is over and the chaff has been separated from the grain.
… Ok bad metaphor. But I had to try 
Possibly relevant posts:
- I have been blessed… (1/22/2007)
- Progress in wavelet land. (8/13/2005)
- A note on running mathematica remotely using Xming (7/30/2007)