use linux

I really do love the whole KDE desktop environment everything is so tightly integrated to work with itself. I really like the major applications in the package: Kontact (which is the Personal Information Manager), Konqueror – the designated web/file browser and FTP client, and Kopete which is the Instant Messenger client for all my numerous accounts, however nothing really has my amorous interest like Digikam.

Digikam is a photo organizer application. I can create albums of photographs from my digital camera, then I can tag individual photos with a descriptive word that can later show me all the photographs which I filed with that word. I love it! Multiple organizational systems!!

My favorite features by far have to be the photo editing plugins and the gallery exporting function. This means I can touch up any photos that were “bad” and then upload albums into a webhosting environment on my website. Once Steve and I finish setting up that software on the server then I will be able to provide a new photo browsing experience for my entire user base (all three of you! Hi Mom!)

This is the start of a new series of posts that will be related to what I can do with Linux on my computer and why I love it.

Dude, you know you are a geek when you are excited about partitioning your hard drive but here I am so totally set. It took me the last two days to get it right, but now my powerbook has a hard drive that is partitioned into a Linux section, an OS X section and a third section which I am calling “Superfluidity” which is a synonym for overlap. I can mount Superfluidity from either OS and am going to use it to store MP3s so that I can play the same music no matter how I am running the computer!

Man, I feel so nerdy telling you all of this, but it does excite me.

I wanted to start using Linux on my laptop so that I could gain a greater understanding of how computers work. Well, that is slowly coming true. I am not certain that any of this is happening because I am using Linux, but a month ago, the CD/DVD drive on the machine conked out. And then there were a couple of mishaps with the power cable that resulted in the laptop not working correctly.

Then in the last two days, in preparation for our big trip to Curacao, I have been poring through the code that boots up the linux partition. Not that I am sure of what I have done, but now things seem to be working. Amazing! So, tentatively, I am once again working with my laptop, using Linux to go to school at a University that insists that you must use Microsoft.

I have got it worked out now. My TiPowerbook now has a new hard drive installed in it that is three times it’s original size. It has more memory than before and now, it has two operating systems on it. In fact, I run both at the same time! Using an emulator called mac on linux, I can run OSX on another desktop. This is great! I get to use the fancy flash stuff whenever I encounter it and I also get to work in an environment which I really enjoy, plus I get bonus geek points for having a keystroke that switches the computer from one format to the other, too cool!!!

Oh yes, my Linux distribution? Kubuntu Dapper Drake Flight 7, sweet ride!

So I have completely replaced the hard drive in my laptop. Thanks to some divine intervention, I was able to get a really nice sized HD and a memory upgrade in the form of spare parts from someooneelse’s busted up TiPowerbook. Since the new HD was triple the size of the old one, I thought to myself, “Self, you should just go ahead and dual boot this one!” So that’s what I did.

First I installed OS X and partioned the hard drive so that there is a 15G Linux section and everythingelse is Apple. I did this because I figure that I will mostly use OS X as there are two Apples in the house. Plus, I can always mount the OS X partition from Linux and play my MP3s!!

Then I installed Kubuntu on the Linux Partition and left it at that, I do have schoolwork to do you know!

So, last night I was up till 4AM playing with the Linux side of my computer. I got the wireless connection to work and then update the software and made some modifications to the way things look and feel. Oh come on, why run Linux if you don’t get yourself a special configuration? That’s one of the greatest things about it, you can make it do whatever you want to do!

Well, now, I’m happy with it and will enjoy playing with my two OS computer!

that’s how long it took me to actually get Damn Small Linux installed on the old clunker. It’s under 50MB and is a snappy little system. I think it is way too much for a toddler’s computing needs but, she’ll grow into it. Soon she’s be making graffics, web sites, databases, spreadsheets, and presentations all from teh safety of her very own laptop. Although right now she prefers to sit on it rather than the other way around.

I have been tryong to set up this old clunker of a laptop with Linux for like eons now. I actually had Ubuntu running on it, but it was much too large of a distribution to actually be able to use it practically. Now the reasons, I want to use this computer, well it is there and it has way too much retro cool to it to not use, the other thing is I need a decoy.

We do not sit on chairs or couchs or other furniture around here. We have gotten rid of that stuff. So while I am using the Big Mama monitor on the mac mini to do any computing, Squeaky crawls all over me and tries to use the mouse or the keyboard, so my plan is to get this unbreakable laptop working and let her bang away at it whenever she wants to come around and play computer with Daddy.

NAturally, I expect that she will foil my plans , but at least she’ll be using Linux!

After a boldly stupid move on my part, I have reverted my Powerbook back to it’s original operating system. Hello OS X. If only I could have been happy with the Stable branch of Linux, I might still be using it. However, I wanted to have the newest version of Amarok because it was skipping when it played so I tried jumping over to the development trunk and then nothing at all worked. I had to get my school work done on something so I popped the OS X disc that came with the newest addition to the house (Mac Mini) and booted up a Tiger. Soon, I’ll be able to get things aligned where I can reinsert myself into the land of Linux.

...and if I worked for Microsoft, it would be a chair!
I had to go to a website for an assignment at school. This is a school where the requirement is Microsoft, and I don’t have it, at all. And the web page was a Flash video about how to take quizzes on another web page. As Macromedia has not released a Flash player for Linux on PowerPC, I was sort of screwed. Only sort of, as I have a second Linux Box that is x86 architecture, I was able to use it to view the stupid Flash video. GAWD! Flash is so dang annoying, and even more annoying when I am Forced to use it. Makes me want to be like Ballmer. ;-)

I have tried and tried to not like it. I started out with Ubuntu on an couple of really old machines that were very, very slow. So lots of experimenting with the standard issue GNOME left me seeking Enlightenment. E17 is a nifty Desktop Shell, but still I was running it on an old slow machine. Then just a couple of nights ago, I managed to crash my Ti Powerbook that I got second hand. I needed to use it and did not have a backup system disk for OS X, or for any of the proprietary software that I lost. I did have a copy of Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10. So I loaded it up.
Then instead of dealing with the ugly brown and tacky feel of the GNOME experience, I installed KDE. EVERYTHING KDE that was in the repositories. I had been trying to link everything into emacs on my Enlightened Ubuntu machine, but was having difficulty writing my ~/.emacs to do what I wanted to do. Then when I made the Powerbook run Kubuntu, everything got really bright and clear.
I love how Konqueror is a web browser/file system navigator/pdf reader/ftp drop and dragger application. I love how Kontact lets me link email/Todo items and journal entries to documents in my files or to URLs. I like having the crisp, juicy freshness of everything all working together. It is what I have been seeking!