So I’ve decided to switch to Linux. Episode 1: Introduction
February 13th, 2005
This is an introduction to a series of posts I intend to write.
In this series I will journal my attempt to move from being a Windows XP user to a Linux user.
I've started my dealings with computers with the Commodore 64, when I was 9 years old (Around 1986).
I've used it for a couple of years, exclusively for games. First with the good old audio tapes, and eventually even upgraded myself to 5.25" floppy diskettes. Again, the C64 served me basically as a gaming console.
My parents, at some point, gave in to the modern era of the IBM compatible PCs. I wish I could remember what year that was - An educated guess would be around 1989, because I think I was 12 years old at the time.. But I could be off..
So I believe my first PC was a 286 AT machine, with a whopping 40MB HD..
Yet again, I've used it almost exclusively for gaming.
As time went by, the PC was upgraded here and there - 386, 486, Pentium etc.. And also with time, my PC administration skills have grown steadily.
Nothing like programming or anything, but everything that REVOLVES around playing games.
For example - At the time DOS was the ruling king, You had to know your way around CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT in order to use the little RAM
you had wisely, so games would be able to load. You had to jiggle with High memory, Upper memory, virtual memory managers etc..
That was back in the DOS days. I guess I knew that OS pretty well. I've even used 4DOS a lot in order to achieve even cooler tricks, batch files and administration.
Combine that with my discovery of Modems and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) - And all of a sudden gaming, while still very import, was not the ONLY reason computers exist.
So I had an IBM-compatible PC (486), a Dynamode 14,400 baud modem - And I simply explored the world of applications, scripting, fine-tuning and getting things done.
Now - Yes I also had Windows 3.1 (And 3.11 etc) but I've never actually used it. I couldn't see the reason for having it.
It didn't offer me anything I wanted to use - It just used up much of the little memory I had, and prevented games from loading.
Then came Windows 95 - And changed everything. This was a complete replacement for DOS, or what I've thought in the time.
Windows 95 has replaced DOS as my OS.
And I've used Windows ever since - 98, 98SE and XP.
I truly and honestly believe Windows XP is, by far, the best OS I've ever used. It is rock-solid, plays everything, has everything and simply works.
BUT - I've always missed the days when I knew EACH and every file that existed on my HD.
I missed the days where scripting and fine-tuning can do wonders.
I missed the days of being surprised of the things you could do with your PC.
I felt like there was so much more to learn, so much more you could do with your PC - And Windows XP kind of hides all that from you.
That is why Linux always intrigued me -
1. It had all the modern OS advantages and technologies.
2. However, it still offered you TONS of things to learn.
3. You could customize and fine-tune it to death.
4. IT IS FREE.
You know what? I simply can't put it in words, and order it to short, concise item list - Linux simply always looked COOL to me.
So I've played around with a bit, for a few years now.
The first Linux OS I've installed on my PC was Red-Hat 5.2 - Which I've actually mail-ordered and payed for.
I have tried a few other distributions as well - Mandrake, Debian and a couple of others.
However, I have never actually USED Linux as my main PC OS. Not like I've used Windows.
I know how to work with Bash, as a computer operator. I know some basic scripting.
I know about file systems, I know about piping and redirection.
And that's about it - Nothing even remotely close to the "intimate relationship" I have with Windows.
With Windows I feel at home - I know what everything does, how to accomplish anything I need etc.
With Linux - That's not the case.
I know the theories, I've played around with Linux, I've even worked with HP-UNIX and Sun Solaris UNIX.
I know how to achieve the basic stuff - But I've never felt at ease with Linux.
I guess it's because I've never used it as my own main desktop PC.
I'm still amazed at people suggesting to compile the kernel - I've never done it before in my life.
I've never truly managed to completely grasp the way X works - How there's an X server, and displays and GNOME and KDE etc etc etc…
I know A LOT about computers - Because I love them. 
I know how to program with Pascal, C, C++ and Java. I know my way around databases, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, PHP.
I know about hardware - IRQs, PCI, AGP, Overclocking, Modding, MP3s, DiVX, games, browsers, IRC, ICQ, Apache, IIS etc etc etc…
But I've never managed to be TRULY comfortable with Linux.
I have now decided to change that.
I have decided to backup all the stuff I have on my trusty Windows XP machine - And simply install Linux on my PC.
Not on a PARTITION on my PC, and not on my second, older PC, and not something to just play around with when I'm bored.
I've decided to actually install Linux on my own PC, as my main OS - and to learn Linux the right, and tough, way - By truly using it.
In this series of posts I will describe the problems that I'll face, and the things I have learned.
Hopefully - This will be an enriching learning experience. And posting all the information may encourage others to take the same step, and maybe to learn for the experience of others.
July 22nd, 2005 at 21:49
Get ready to be underwhelmed
July 23rd, 2005 at 4:58
I will be glued to your updates..good luck. Linux is sooo completely different. Kiss your games goodbye though…
I’m trying to learn Linux too. I have a partition set up so I can escape those config files when I need to. Say for instance after struggling for 6 hours straight to get all of my mouse buttons to work. Sometimes I need to run to momma…to ease back into sheep mode of Windows for a while… You would think an operating system as powerful as linux could run a mouse without question..it will if you tell it to, and with a third party open source app or 2…but anyway… looking forward to your experiences.
July 23rd, 2005 at 5:20
I tried this method with my wife and it worked. I converted her off of outlook & internet explorer onto the Mozilla Thunderbird/Firefox software and got her used to it. The same with word, excel etc switching to OpenOffice. Other apps were moved to open source versions. Once she got used to all of it the OS was secondary. When I switched her to linux she didn’t miss a beat.
The moral is switch to open source cross platforms first, then change OS’s (Linux, Mac, Solaris etc)
July 23rd, 2005 at 5:49
Linux rocks, but ease of gaming keeps me enslaved to my overlord Gates!
July 23rd, 2005 at 6:47
Wow… Windows XP… rock-solid. Dumbass.
July 23rd, 2005 at 7:16
Dude, everything you wrote basically described myself exactly, same age and everything, I’m 28 now and used to play defenders of the crown and pirates on commodore 128.. I went all out and took up IT as a career, essentially specializing on MS. However, what I read today about Longhorn/Vista really pissed me off, BIG time, all that crap about DRM and how if you don’t have a certain monitor you can’t play video files in full high resolution, I totally disagree that an operating system should be in cohoots with the MPAA, an OS should be an OS, none of these lame, bogus copywrite / DRM restrictions etc.. so brother, I’m very proud of you and I think you just inspired me to follow in your footsteps and do the same thing. Actually I’ve been thinking about doing that for a while, however I still have my main PC at work that has to stay on XP because I administrate an all Windows XP enterprise network.. and my laptop has to stay XP for similar reasons, but I have my “main” home desktop that I think I’ll install Linux on a partition.. I can’t blow away Windows totally because of the games!! But there are a lot of other things to do with a PC, I suppose, like surfing the web I guess, using gimp instead of photoshop, burning CD’s, ripping and making backup copies of DVD’s, video editing, etc… I really look forward to reading your posts here. Good luck to you! Nick
July 23rd, 2005 at 7:34
Like the write up… I read a lot of this in me… I recently with in the 3 months installed fedora core 3 and recently upgraded to core 4… athough, have dual boot because no matter what there are more programs for windows then linux that I have found so far..
Although, I comend you for the brave steps it took to get rid of windows
I have great things to say about winxp and linux… Although right now things sway towards windows instead of linux for the hardware side.
July 23rd, 2005 at 7:47
I have the same opinion of Windows as you do. It works, I like it, but it’s boring. I’ve ran Linux as my main desktop OS off and on for a total of a year. It is frustrating as a Windows replacement but an absolute BLAST if you want to actually use your operating system. Windows its self does not let you do much except run other programs. Linux is like a set of Legos, letting you easily hook utilities together to accomplish any task.
For example, if I want to do the simple task of shutting down my computer in an hour automatically I only have to pipe these two commands together like this: sleep 1h | shutdown
In Windows I would have to download a separate program. That’s only of a billion tasks that Linux can do out of the box.
Ia^??m not really sure where Ia^??m going with this comment. I just felt like talking about linux. Good luck with your experiment.
July 23rd, 2005 at 10:42
Refer to it as GNU/Linux, please. LINUX is the kernel. GNU is the OS.
July 23rd, 2005 at 11:06
this would be more informative if it was written in 1997
July 23rd, 2005 at 14:24
I’ve done this and I wish you luck. For gaming look into Cedega. It worked for me pretty well. The rest of it…not so much. May whatever diety you believe in have mercy on your soul.
July 23rd, 2005 at 14:46
Oh my god… I was downloading Fedora for the first time when I read that… This is going to be VERY helpful!
July 24th, 2005 at 2:28
Your story reads like mine in the early years. Though I discovered Linux many many years ago.
To make a long story short, I had a lot of problems getting Limux to play nice on my laptop. It didn’t work with the sound card or wireless card, so I sold that laptop and got a Powerbook. My home PC dual boots between XP and Fedora.
I also have a PSP, PS/2 and XBox to satisfy my gaming needs….all of which, btw, were presents giving to me by my wife
July 24th, 2005 at 4:34
A friend of mine recently used WINE and with some handywork, managed to get Counterstrike working just fine on Linux. So games aren’t kissed goodbye at all.
July 24th, 2005 at 9:33
dude, try gentoo.. it rocks..
I’ll only make a complete switch when I could get ALL my games to run on linux (wc3,quake,HL2 etc). Till then ill dual boot
September 25th, 2005 at 18:03
[...] Anyhow a^?? The plus side is that I have the awesome Ubuntu Linux installed on my Linux server so ita^??s a great desktop substitute for the time being. Ita^??s been a few months since Ia^??ve used Ubuntu Linux as my desktop OS, and ita^??s kinda cool to be doing this againa^?? First thing Ia^??ve noticed for the 2 days Ia^??ve been running Ubuntu a^?? The version of aMule in the latest Ubuntu release kicks butt! Ita^??s really stable and runs fast. [...]
October 8th, 2005 at 1:27
[...] I had great success (Success in my book that is) with my first post on Digg, publishing my So Ia^??ve decided to switch to Linux journal. This post caused a major peek in my little site’s visitor counter. Until posting on digg I had a few hundred hits per day. The digg post almost immediately brought 5000 unique visitors to my site. This digg story generated 371 diggs and 49 digg comments! (See it HERE) [...]
November 30th, 2005 at 5:23
[...] NOTE - A lot of you guys reach this, final, episode without reading the first ones. Please start HERE –> Episode 1: Introduction. [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 7:36
i need some help
i just installed fedora core-4 ltsp in my desktop. it has windows xp pro installed
my problem is that i am not able to boot with windows a i do not know how to change over to windows xp
kindlsy send some help
August 29th, 2006 at 14:10
[...] My journaled attempt at ditching Windows and using Linux as my main desktop OS.read more | digg story [...]