Lookit me, ever’body! I’m blogging from my NEW (to me) LAPTOP!

The Novell Linux Desktop seriously rocks. It even had a dvorak keyboard driver waiting for me in the setup phase. And it even USED that driver when the time came to start entering configuration data.

It’s the little things that make me happy.

Getting The Internets into this wee box was a trick, but that’s because I had to
a) dig around in my basement for a hub
b) locate a 7.5 volt 600ma power supply for the hub
c) locate two ethernet cables
d) Test all components BEFORE banging my head against the wall when I couldn’t make Linux talk to The Internets
e) wait for frickin’ Comcast to come back online.

The actual configuration of the network was a snap. I’m anticipating a similar “snap” experience when I get my hands on a wireless card.

The only problem I’ve had thus far was the Suspend to RAM feature. That hung hard. Suspend to Disk works like a charm, though.

Oh, and then there was the fact that the BIOS was set for Network Service Boot. Scrubbing the drive of the old OS (Win98… ah, where was I 7 years ago?) did NOT solve this problem obviously. And NOT obviously, the keystroke for getting into the BIOS is “F10.” That took 15 minutes of Googling, giving up on Google, and another 10 minutes of searching the online manuals found at hp.com. But I FOUND it.

So… it works. I’m sure there are things that DON’T work that I have yet to stumble across (I haven’t tried to play a DVD yet… I hold out little hope of THAT working out-of-the-box) but the machine does what I need it to do.

–Howard

Re my laptop (which as yet remains nameless — we don’t have a naming scheme for ‘puters at my house) and Linux flavors… I’ll be starting with SuSE and KDE, thanks to a contact at Novell who will provide some eval CDs of the latest-and-greatest stuff (9.3 Pro, 2.6.11 kernel, KDE 3.4), and we’ll just see how that works, we will.

Re: The Linux thread I inadvertently kicked off — it’s obvious that many of you don’t want Linux to ever be consumer software. The automobile analogy is a good one. I can go buy ANY automobile, select the vehicle based on the features I want (SUV? commuter vehicle? Touring Sedan? Leather fixation? Sun roof?), and never ONCE have to worry about things like “do my turn signals comply with safety standards” or “will I be able to drive at night with these headlights?” Some of you seem to think that the only way to get variety in your automotive choices is to build the car yourself.

Well, fine. Do that. But it’s not a consumer vehicle. It’s a hobby-car.

Standardization is GOOD, people. So is variety, but WITHIN REASON. Hackers will always have their hobby operating systems, and because of the nature of Open Source, Linux will always give rise to hobby OSes. But for consumers, the OS is irrelevant. They want standardization, within a certain sensible range of values, for everything. The Open Source community is not good at providing this, which means that Linux for consumers will almost certainly come from a corporate manufacturer.

I’m not knocking Open Source — it’s a powerful market force, and it CAN be a force for good. Just how MUCH good, and how much that good is mitigated by inadvertent blunders that do HARM remains to be seen.

–Howard

The laptop I purchased a week or so ago arrived today. It’s in good condition, with the exception of the completely unusable battery (I knew that) and a damaged-but-workable door that covers the docking port (I didn’t expect that).

It’s a PIII 200, with the 1024×768 screen, and the DVD drive works. W00t

It has Windows 98 on it, complete with somebody else’s screwy settings (funky cursor, QWERTY keyboard layout). This is fine, because it can be used right now to do stuff, but in short order I’ll be putting Linux on it.

Now… which flavor. Bear in mind that I need to obtain a wireless network card for the machine, and whatever Linux flavor I run needs to support the card in the machine. But since I get to pick the flavor AND the card, finding a match should be pretty easy, right?

–Howard

EDIT: I should make it clear — this is my convention-going machine. 99% of what I need to do with it is BLOG. If I can offload my camera into it via USB, that’s a plus, but it’s not a showstopper if I can’t.

Now… I WANT to also be able to web-surf, get email, and FTP places if necessary.

Link!

Upshot (pardon the pun): Author Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes will be fired from a cannon, per his last wishes.

My take: These two sentences appeared back-to-back…

“”It’s expensive, but worth every penny,” Anita Thompson said. “I’d like to have several explosions. He loved explosions.”

“Thompson, 67, shot himself in the head on February 20…”

Loved explosions indeed.

I told you it was tasteless. Blame CNN.

–Howard