Linux, yea!
Posted on December 30, 2003 @ 01:01 in Software
OMG! I just installed Linux. Heh... It took a little doing, but I just installed Mandrake 9.2 on a spare partition and I'm typing this from Mozilla running on the KDE desktop. This feels like a "hello world" post: announcing I'm alive to another part of the universe.
It took me about two and half hours to get things up and running and that includes one failed install and one succesful install, so here's a quick telling of the story. I couldn't have done it without Randy Newman playing the piano and singing on iTunes on the other computer — I love Baltimore, what a great song.
So, Linux, installing, and such... I got a second computer a while ago and it fairly quickly became my primary workstation. After transferring many files, that meant I had a spare computer sitting under my desk, with a Windows 2000 install and a now empty partition. I checked out Linuxiso.org to see which distributions I could download in easily burnable ISO format. At first I downloaded Gentoo, because their website seemed most accessible and they promise an easy update system for their distribution. Having downloaded and burned the CDs, I couldn't find any information about setting up a dualboot system with Gentoo. I'm not about to nuke the Windows 2000 install on the old computer, because that's the box that holds the cd-burner, and that's a quite useful piece of technology around here. So I put Gentoo aside and browsed the other distributions' websites again. Mandrake seemed pretty well documented and the 9.2 build is from November, so that's pretty recent, so why not give it a try. At least the documentation talked about the installer, DrakX, that offered the possibility of creating a dualboot system.
I downloaded the 3 ISO files, burned the CDs, and rebooted. At first the installation seemed to proceed smoothly, but after a while I got an error message. There was an error installing "util-linux-2.11z-7mdk.i586." Right, what kind of error? It didn't say, but I could proceed the install regardless, so I did that. Unfortunately, some more rather terse error messages cropped up, telling me there were problems with various Vim files, some fonts, and XFree86. Hmm, well, continue anyway. I must give Mandrake credit for not having these errors muck up my Windows installation, because when the installation was done, it had installed the Lilo bootmanager correctly and I could boot into Windows. Linux was another thing though. Actually, I could boot into Linux, only I ended up with only a prompt. But that's not enough for a wet-behind-the-ears first-time Linux user. Not even for one who has dabbled a little at the Unix prompt, knows how to call up the man(ual) pages, and traverse the file system.
What could have gone wrong? Had I selected too many, possibly incompatible packages? I rather doubted that. It could have been a bad cd-rom though, I figured. Okay, boot back into Windows, double check the md5sums. Nothing wrong there, so burn that first disc again. Reboot, click my way through the installer again, omit Gnome and the other windowsmanagers this time, and click start. Wait for the first error message to pop up. Wait some more. Cross my fingers. Cheer and finish the installation. Just a bad cd-rom then. Bless Randy Newman, quick playlists, and the repeat function.
Then I watched my computer boot up and launch the KDE desktop. Rifle through the "start button" menus and hmm... no Mozilla? Just Konqueror? Oh well, let's use that then. Ugh... my website looks really ugly in Konqueror and doesn't even display correctly. Fiddle with Configuration > Packaging application and have it install Mozilla 1.4, since that's on the discs. Installation goes smoothly, Mozilla shows up in the "start menu" immediately, and works as it should. Fonts don't look anywhere as good as they do on Windows, especially XP with ClearType enabled on a LCD screen, but that's secondary for the moment. The important point is that everything works. Yea!
Okay, next step is figuring out if that Packaging installation tool thingy will also download and install newer versions of programs off of the Net, or if I have to read more documentation and do that kind of stuff myself. If you feel like leaving a helpful comment, please, don't hesitate! It's time for bed now, but tomorrow there's more time to fiddle.
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