The Road to Linux: The Descent (Part One)

Having survived mysterious apostrophes and commas in my columns, weeks of flame wars and assaults from hostile geek warriors, large and expensive Linux handbooks, and useful, enlightening and conflicting suggestions from friendly Slashdotters, a Linux Box was delivered this week to my house this week. Technology being what it is, that's only the beginning of the story, which quickly came to involve CompUSA (the literal incarnation of computer Hell) my yellow lab, a geek hero and a computer savagely assaulted by an overnight delivery service. And I haven't even gotten to Linux yet. Johnny Depp, are you reading this?

So the Road to Linux, it turns out, isn't exactly an Interstate. There's all sorts of potholes, construction delays and unmarked turns. I can't say I wasn't warned, only that I was too dense to quite get it.

First, I had to survive nearly getting roasted alive for weeks, after I posted the first mysterious question-mark and apostrophe-filled columns from my Power Mac 7100/80 using Microsoft Word 8. After years of writing online, my technology as well as my opinions had suddenly become controversial. People were not simply disagreeing with me, but challenging my techno-identity and geekhood, in some cases demanding that I go away, urging Slashdot to make me go away. One thread actually took up the question of how to stop publication of my next book, which is about geeks.

I also got several thousand pieces of advice, much of it conflicting, from friendly, generous, sometimes impassioned Linux advocates suggesting programs, approaches, systems and techniques I didn't understand and had never heard of.

Jeff wrote that I should do what he did, get a clone. "A K6-300 mhz machine with 32 megs of memory, a 4GHD, etc., $479 at a computer show. I used an old svga monitor," he wrote. He urged me to undertake four tasks. One: Install Linux. Two:Get the Xwindows (GUI) working. Three: Get it on my home network. Four Get it on the Net. Others wrote of their own Linux experiences, nightmares and triumphs and urged me to hang in there: "I know it's hard," wrote Sam - in a message I've since posted above my monitor, "but believe me, it's worth it. It's about knowledge, freedom and getting to the next place. Be patient. Ask for help. Take it."

Okay. My house is now crammed with fat, ugly Linux guides that my wife and kid stare at in mistrust and confusion. On the floor is "Linux for Dummies," which, despite its name, is even more incomprehensible than the two-pound "Secrets of Linux" I keep around, largely unread, as a potential weapon against intruders.

At my elbow is "Linux in 24 Hours," ("when you only have time for the answers: 24 proven one-hour lessons"). Despite its alluring title, and the promise of answers, I, like Gertrude Stein, am still trying to figure out the questions. I got in trouble in Hour Two: "If you already have Linux on your system, an install using partitions will overwrite all the data currently there." I surrendered by Hour 18: "Scheduling Personal Reminders and Tasks with the "at" Command. It was the "car pool" example that finished me off:
# at 16:15
X message - display: 0.0 "The car pool is leaving in 15 minutes."
EOT
Job 4 will be executed using /bin/sh

I put this book aside. I wondered if this wasn't merely a ruse to lure hapless newbies onto Linux sites, where the secret agenda was to sufficiently discourage them, preserving Linux as yet another big but exclusive club. The idea is brilliant, really: You create something new and collaborative and demand that everybody use it; when they try, they find it impossible and run away, or are chased off for being dumb.

But fortunately for me, I am as willful as I am technologically-impaired. I needed to use Linux. And, after nearly a decade on the Net and the Web, no ill-mannered geeks were chasing me anywhere. I went to O'Reilly's much praised "Linux In A Nutshell" by Jessica Perry Hekman.

It's not only written in something I more or less recognize as English, but it alone mentions some of the many powerful reasons for taking Linux on: "Linux revises the grand creativity and the community of sharing that UNIX was long known for. The unprecedented flexibility and openness of UNIX - which newcomers usually found confusing and frustrating, but which they eventually found they couldn't live without - continually inspired extensions, new tools like Perl, and experiments in computer science that sometimes ended up in mainstream commercial systems."

Such analysis is critical in books like this. It gives people some context, some rationale for why they should endure what they're about to endure.

"Linux In A Nutshell" is exceptionally well-organized and designed --- logical, coherent, even patient. I learned a lot from it, including the broad outlines of how an operating system like Linux works - something I never got even the slightest sense of after nearly 10 years as a Mac loyalist. In an odd sort of way, that was the appeal of Macs for people like me: you never have to really learn much about the computer. I was slow to consider the implications of that. The toughest thing to grasp is what you don't know.

In fact, I didn't know how much of my computer I'd never seen or how much of it I could control, personalize or change if I were willing to take the time. That I was buying so much junk I didn't want, was completely at the mercy of greedy corporations, using so much memory and speed on things I didn't need, was a shocker. If I were willing to take the trouble, learn the language, computing would become an utterly different experience.

Unfortunately, even this cogent book was too much too fast. And I'd skipped over the caution in the prologue: "If you haven't obtained Linux yet, or have it but don't know exactly how to get started using it, buy the O'Reilly &Associates book ?Running Linux,? by Matt Welsh and Lar Kaufman. This will give you everything you need in order to install your Linux system, configure it, and start becoming productive. The book you're looking at will now prove useful."

So back to Amazon. "Running Linux" is now at the top of the pile.

Meanwhile, most of my helpful e-mail advisors came to the conclusion that I should get a pre-configured Linux Box. A gentle way of telling me I was a long shot to make it through installing Linux myself. Geeks can figure this out in about two e-mails. That message was disappointing, but it was also true.

The processing of installing Linux was likely to discourage, not empower me. As a professional writer, the technics were less important than the result, and less important to me than the politics and symbolism. I couldn't really afford - either in time or money - the long and often bruising process that installing Linux from scratch can be. (Although not always: Davin Hills messaged that a friend handed him a CD and he installed Linux in about an hour.)

So, a Linux box. I went to a Virginia company called International Information Services (www.iisworld.com), which five or six /. regulars had recommended highly.

The people at IIS had been reading Slashdot, it turned out, and recognized my name when I called. They knew the spot I was in. Matthew Shields was calm and patient. I told him I had to get up and running early, or I'd bog down. My hard drive is filled with aborted programs and games I've never mastered and quickly abandoned.

Matthew said he would build me my own machine, assembling the parts from different places. He suggested a Pentium I, or to be more precise, an Intel Pentium 233 MMX, with 32 MB Ram, a 1.2 GB HB, a Floppy and CD-Rom drive, a 2MB PCI video card, and a 56kbs modem, with a refurbished 15" Sony Trinotron tube.

This would cost, he figured, somewhere in the range of $600, by half the least amount of money I'd ever spent on a computer. The box would include Redhat, a word processing program, and IIS would even configure my ISP for me if I gave them the numbers. I should be able to plug the box in, turn it on, and start running Linux, with a desktop that would be familiar and coherent to a Macman. Then, I could move along at my own pace, learning as I went.

I admit to fantasizing a bit about posting my first column using Linux. Even though my box was assembled by somebody else, it would still be an achievement, a landmark. I'd please all the people who supported this trip, and who obviously care deeply about the Net, the Web and OSS, and I could give a delicious digital finger to all the arrogant creeps who had been jeering along the way. I would be practicing what I preach, earning spurs, controlling my technology, breaking free of corporate marketmeisters.

Matthew was out sick, which delayed things a bit. Then there were various snowstorms. My current ISP doesn't handle Linux, so I had to get another one. The holidays intervened, then some traveling for work. Finally, last Saturday, the two boxes arrived on my front porch.

[ CT : Tomorrow, Part 2, where Jon's Linux box is savagely beaten, eaten, and maybe even repaired ]