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- 16 04 2003 - 16:52 - katatonik

Operating system migration process report (OSMPR), version 0.1, alpha

What do you know: first Xfree86 doesn’t like the graphic card or the monitor resolution or something other related to visual representation of information on a PC, and a few days later it suddenly does.

This is now the first time I installed a variety of Linux on a PC where (a) I can access the internet via a DSL-connection and (b) I can see and use some windows (capitalization, or the lack thereof, is important in this case). This is now SuSE 8.2.

As this migration process may be of interest to operating system anthropology (OSA, version 0.0.2., beta), an academic discipline in its infancy which aims to investigate the effects of long-term exposure to crappy computer operating systems on people’s capability to see the good, the better and the perfect around them and which is in this way of extreme social relevance (after all, it remains a mystery how, or even if, people who have experienced a lot of junk can still see The Light of Happiness when it should shine forth from their socks) – ah, well, for scientific purposes I shall now record this migration process on Camp Catatonia, so that all may have a good laugh.

What happened so far:

My first Linux installation was a Debian, on a beautifulll Compaq Concerto, which by now can be justifiedly called the honorable ancestor of today’s tablet PCs. I managed to install Debian, but I had no idea about what I actually installed. And then I had no idea what to do with it. Back then I was very experimental about operating systems. When the assistant at the university department in Japan where I happened to be at the time went off to Canada for a semester, I installed OS 2 on his Windows PC. Well, I was polite enough to reinstall Windows before he came back.

I myself had in the meantime acquired a Sharp notebook. It came with Japanese Windows 95 preinstalled. I just kept using it. Everyone around me except for said assistant hacked away on a Mac, while I exchanged Microsoft Word documents with the rest of the world.

The second Linux installation was a Mandrake, on an Acer TravelMate 331, side by side with Windows 2000. All went a href=”http://campcatatonia.org/index.php?id=186”very well/a until I installed some TrueType fonts, which XFree didn’t like. It froze, never to melt into its fluid visual elegance again. Mandrake was removed. I kept exchanging Word documents with the rest of the world.

The third one was a more recent version of Mandrake, on this very PC (a Fujitsu-Siemens desktop), a few months ago. All went very well except I couldn’t get the DSL connection going. It just timed out, all the time. Mandrake was removed.

The fourth one is the present.

I have only a very vague idea about Linux, most of which comes from telnetting to Unix servers in order to configure Websites.

I google for pebbles of information, I wade into the sea of acronyms and version numbers, I try, I fail, I try again. The last three times this routine always ended with failures. Not being able to devote a lot of time to this stuff, I always ended up going back to Microsoft Windows just because it was already there, installed, somehow working, and because the kind of things I needed to do simply couldn’t be done with Linux.

Hopefully this time it will be different. Cheers.

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