It’s 8:30pm so I’m back on the Linux machine. Just messing around. And crashing.

Thanks to advice from vthe comment board, I found out that I should be using Samba to enable linux to open files on the XP machines on my network. I got the Samba file easily enough. Unlike in XP, double-clicking on a downloaded file in Opera doesn’t launch the app you need to open it, at least not with compressed files. But doing so in the Gnome equivalent of Windows Explorer does. So, the files unzipped nicely. (I’m creating directories in my tree as if I knew what I were doing; I don’t know what the expectations are for where you put downloaded executables.) But when I doubleclicked on one of the files, I got a segmentation fault from Gnome for nautilus-text-view. At least it didn’t bring down the entire system, but XP handles crashes pretty well, too (in my naive experience).

Now I’m trying to read the pdf doc for samba, but the pdf reader (ghost viewer) is unable to open it. Sigh. But xpdf does fine. Oy veh, it’s an 85 page manual that first wants me to run ./configure in my source directory, but I don’t know how to get to a command line. Aha! Found the terminal. Navigate to the directory. Tab completion works! I’m feeling like a regulah unix hacker here. Run ./configure…and it fails because “no acceptable cc found in $PATH.” I have no idea where a cc is except in an email msg and I somehow doubt that that’s what it’s looking for. So, I’m hosed. No samba for me. Wait, maybe it’s already compiled. There’s a RedHat directory. It doesn’t open with the “text viewer” app on te popup menu, but it does with gedit. The readme says that I can produce the RPMS just by typing “sh makerpms.sh.” I have no idea what an RPMS is, but apparently I want one, so back to ther terminal. And…it can’t find the right directories and it doesn’t like the parameters. Thus ends my Samba adventure for tonight.

My system is running slow for a 1.7mh machine. There’s lag even when typing. I think something isn’t right, but I don’t know where to turn…all part of the discomfort and fun of traveling to lands where you don’t speak the language.

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According to an article by John Schwartz in The NY Times: Richard Smith, the guy who tracked down the Melissa virus and who exposed unwanted snooping by some big companies, has discovered a particularly pernicious scam by which pornographers hijack computers and use them to serve up their goods. The hijackees don’t even know they’ve been hijacked.

(Fun Fact: Richard is the father of one of my daughter’s very best friends.)

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Those of you with a legalistic bent may enjoy an article by John Michener, et al., of BBX, called “Snake-Oil Security Claims: The Systematic Misrepresentation of Product Security in the E-Commerce Arena.” From the abstract:

The authors provide an overview of important issues concerning security-relevant functionality, including critical functionality for security product merchantability. The authors also review certain critical issues concerning vendor development and management processes that are necessary for a vendor to have any understanding of the security properties of his product. Unless a vendor takes appropriate actions concerning these and related issues, the vendor has little, if any, basis for claiming secure products. Thus, there is a high likelihood that representations concerning security and the basic merchantability of security-dependent functionality are misleading, at best…

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My linux experimentation is being hampered by the fact that I only have one monitor. I bought a Linxcel VGA switch so I can switch my monitor between the two machines but it causes ghosting even with just one computer plugged in. That can’t be inevitable, can it? Does anyone have a brand/model of VGA switch that she recommends?

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[The series of entries on installing linux begins here.]

Linux sees the other computers – all XP – on the network. But when I try to open an html file on my laptop, it tells me:

“htmlview can’t open “index.html” because thmlview can’t access files at “smb” locations. Would you like to choose another application?

Foolishly thinking that this error message is telling me that htmlview just isn’t up to the task, I click on the box that lets me associate html files with something other than htmlview. Now all I have to do is figure out which directory Opera installed itself into. It’s been a long time since I’ve poked around a unix directory. But, what the heck. And sure enough, there it is, in usr/something/something. I’d be more specific, but the file browser has frozen so I can’t get past usr. I also can’t close the windows. Sure wish I knew how tro list and kill processes in linux. Looks like I’m headed for another forced re-start.

Nope. It was a hidden dialog box that needed attention. Windows obscuring their own child dialog boxes? What does linux think it is, Windows??

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…or with Linux, or on top of Linux, or under Linux. I’m not sure, but here I am with my gnome desktop on top of RedHat 9. I’ve got everything to learn. Unfortunately, I have to start at the most superficial and least interesting aspect of Linux: the desktop UI. I’m assuming that I’m going to find ways to peer under the desktop at Linux itself. Learning how to find a tool on the desktop that will tell me how much space I have left on my drive isn’t very rewarding. But that’s where I have to start. For example, I just figured out where Gnome hides the connection to my home network; this tells me nothing about Linux but a little about Gnome.

By the way, now that Linux and I are on a first name basis, I’m going to lowercase it.

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[Continued from here.] I’ve gotten to the desktop (GNOME). And things are moving slowly. Very slowly. So slowly that 5-10 seconds pass between the time I click into a field in Mozilla and when the text cursor appears in that field. It’s painting graphics slowly, too. I’ve tried telling it that I have a slightly different graphics card than it thinks I do, but that hasn’t helped. As a rank newbie, I don’t know where to look for diagnostic tools that could help me. I’ll keep poking around.

Meanwhile, I’m trying top open OpenOffice, the free word processor that isn’t MS Word, but it seems to have hung on the splash screen. Am I headed for my first Linux crash and reboot? I think so, but only because I don’t know how to kill a process in Linux on or off the desktop.

The OpenOffice splash screen is still up although clearly nothing’s going on with it. Somehow my random clicking seems to have opened up a view onto my home network. All the computers are visible, although it’s hanging as it tries to see the directories on my main NTFS machine.

Before I reboot, I thought I’d change the desktop image. Might as well focus on the important stuff first. The mouse is laggy, though, and the OpenOffice splash screen insists on being the topmost window, making it a little tough. Logging out…

I put in my old video card (Creative Annihilator – what a terrible product name!) instead of using the on-board video. Starting up again. It’s noticed the hardware change and is installing the drivers. Cool. But now it’s going through the same initial setup steps, asking me to test the sound card, etc. Worrisome. And it just gave me an error while installing the RedHat documentation off the CD; the second time, it works fine.

The system seems more responsive this time. Just for fun, I’m going to download Opera, which I use as my browser on Windows. Unfortunately, the Opera for Linux download screen wants to know which type of Linux I have: deb, rpm or tar.gz. But wait a sec, a tar file is a compressed file, not a type of Linux. I’m confused about my confusion. I’m guessing at the one that says RedHat8.1. Anyway, I seem to have guessed right because it’s installed just fine.

OpenOffice launches this time. Nice. But the system fonts are really and truly ugly. ClearType is a nice thing on XP. The big test for me will be whether it does a better job with tables than Word does. It’s hard to believe how badly Word tables suck given how long tables have been in the project. I frequently have to save my Word document as HTML just so I can regain control of a table. Word tables separate across pages for no known reason, and pity the fool who forgets to leave some empty paragraphs after a table for they can’t be inserted if you forget. The only thing worse than tables in Word are embedded graphics. I’ve been using the product for about 15 years, I count as a power user, and I still can’t figure the little f*ckers out.

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It’s 8:30pm, which means I’m allowed to do hobby things, right? So, I’m going to try again to install Linux (RedHat 9) on a spare computer. Last time, I wasted several hours trying to install it. It turns out that, despite what the Linux boosters say, you can’t install it on any old computer you have lying around. For example, the computer has to have a functioning motherboard. Take that, Linux heads!

I spent the past hour putting in a new motherboard, cpu and power supply. The thing actually works. It’s a 1.7mh Celeron with 128M of RAM. The motherboard has sound, video and networking built in, not like when I was a lad and the only way to hook up a monitor was to attach 256 filaments to a breadboard using a shoulder-mounted soldering iron.

In the time it’s taken me to write the above two paragraphs, RedHat has seemingly partitioned my hard drive and is installing the default set of packages for a desktop configuration. Cool. The UI is a little techier than I’d give my mother (well, Mom’s dead, but you get my drift), but if you just keep hitting the “Next” button, it seems to work. At least so far.

RedHat says I have 12 minutes and change before the OS is installed. I’m excited. Really.

12:15am: I’m up and running, although still a few screens short of a desktop. It would have happened a couple of hours sooner but we went to see Searching for the Friedmans or whatever the name of that documentary is. Excellent. I came back a minute ago and immediately checked the progress of the install. Basically done. RedHat is asking me a couple of questions, has had me register (I like their privacy statement) and now is checking to see if any of the packages I installed need updating. Still some needlessly obtuse moments: I don’t know what RPMs are, but I trust that it doesn’t mean Rape and Pillage Machines so I’m just clicking Yes whenever I can.

It seems to have done a good job figuring out what hardware I have, but so does XP at this point. And it’s put me on the network with no fuss, but so does XP. I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I can see whether Linux will see the other machines on my home network, all of which run XP.

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Declan runs an email conversation between Freenet’s Ian Clarke and the RIAA’s senior vice president of business and legal affairs. I only wish there’d been more back and forth on Declan’s excxellent questions. (Thanks to Jeff Chapman for the link.)

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Chris Lydon, who shows some raw talent as an interviewer :), talks with Dave Winer. You can get the mp3 file here. Really interesting conversation.

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