Monday, October 18, 2004
Trying out Linux
I've had computer troubles over the past week. My computer has been running under Windows XP for about a year now. Although it's not ideally suited to XP, I hadn't noticed any deterioration in performance. Until I installed the SP2 patch, that is. Everything started to slow down until last Friday when finally my computer ground to a halt. It wouldn't even boot.
I took it in for service and the computer is back up, but the man told me to re-install Windows 98 when I got home. After a bit of rumaging, I found the CD which I'd bought from a Hong Kong triad/pirate in the days before broadband. Decidedly, a step back into the 20th century. I figured Linux was the way to the future.
It seemed that Knoppix might be right for me. I can boot from a CD without installing anything. Nothing irrevocable about it. There is a bittorrent here. I was pulling it in at over 400k/s and finished the 700MB file in less than an hour.
You get three files. As a dedicated trial and error computist, I ignored the two small ones. They simply verify that the large file is correctly transferred. I had some trouble burning the CD. I mistakenly extracted the 700MB file and burned it. Windows didn't help matters by identifying this large file with a "rar archive" icon and supressing its "iso" file extension. What you should do is open Nero, then "file", then "burn image". Choose the 700MB file and burn it. My CD boots fine.
I'm connected to the net and using the Mozilla browser. Just like before, only now I'm under the Linux operating system. There's a lot to get used to but so far so good.
