Linux Adventure - Day 1

Things are not going quite as planned on this first step in my Linux Adventure. I didn't have a lot of time before the end of the quarter, so I ended up not having time to research and implement the Samba stuff in order to make Windows and Linux like each other. This is kind of a problem for me honestly, as I like to use my files, and they are all on the Windows machine.*sigh* Anyway, due to the fact that I wanted to listen to music tonight, I fiddled with settings in Win and Lin for a couple minutes, gave up and decided that using a bootable USB drive might be a better option as it should allow me to access the files on the main system, so I have it chugging away on that project while I write on the dedicated Linux machine.

To be honest, if I thought it would actually work with Orca, would allow me to boot from a pen, and used deb packages instead of rpm, I would just install Mandriva. That is by far the prettiest, and easiest Linux distro I have ever come across. Unfortunately I know that last time I played with it, Orca would not work, and it does rely on rpm, so I don't think it is likely to be for me. If I get desperate, I may try Fedora again. It does some pretty neat things all things considered, just once again, I love apt. It seems so much simpler than other package managers that I have come across.

Another reason that the first day of the Linux Adventure went nowhere fast is that honestly I did not want to see another computer screen, (or my own for that matter) after finishing my final project for Web Fundamentals. I underestimated the amount of work that would be involved, and really didn't start on it until about 10 the night before it was due. I finished about 9 AM on Wednesday, and wasn't really feeling particularly well when it was finished. I wanted nothing to do with computers, so I refused to do anything with my machine until about 7 this evening. I have been good, and other than trying to get file sharing going, everything I have done has been done on Linux, but I can't say that I am very happy about the lack of file sharing. Of course, this is invariably my problem, and not necessarily the fault of Linux, or even Windows, but it does make me just a bit cranky.

I do have a few other comments I want to make about the Linux Adventure though, and several of them are really quite positive. First, I absolutely adore a little program called Gnome-Do It allows me to open programs and files by hitting modifier(start) button and space, then typing the names of the program or file I want to open. I haven't actually tried that with Orca yet, but that can be easily mended. I will be right back. * grin*. Well, nuts, it doesn't work with Orca, but in my case that really is a fairly incidental issue. I don't need it unless I am editing a long document, or reading a long document or web page.

Orca isn't bad, but I may have to see if I can scrape up the cash to get the Linux implementations of the IBM ViaVoice voices, as these voices drive me nuts to be quite honest.

Open Office Writer works well enough for my purposes especially since it is free, and very full featured. Mostly I just wanted a spell checker for my journal before I posted it anyway. I will have to go back to the old copy and paste routine, but that is bearable enough.

Well, my dedicated Linux system seems to have a bit of a flaw in it. I don't seem to have enough memory to run magnification on the system. Everything bogs down to something slightly slower than a crawl. I'll see how it works on the pen drive in just a few minutes.

Also, I must say that I am thankful that OO writer has been kind enough to restore documents after system crashes as well as Microsoft does, or I would have lost this entire journal entry. I might have cried if that had happened. As you can see, I am quite a way into the journal, and I would be just a bit cranky if it refused to return. Oh well, I think I am going to go try to boot the pen, and call this a night.