Linux Addict
Hello my name is Airlynx and I am a linux addict. Linux is like a plague, afflicting useful geeks and turning them into Open Source advocates. I have tried approximately nine different distributions of Linux and I still have not settled.
I started with it all under a year ago, telling my parents they needed a new computer. My wife and I had one that got very little use and it was newer than the one they had, so we traded with them. I reformatted it with Windows ME and installed all of their commonly used software on it. In return I recieved their old Windows 98 machine which needed reformatting badly. I spent a whole day downloading the latest version of Debian on my laptop and burned the CD's the next day. Not knowing anything about Linux or partitioning or anything really, Debian was a poor choice for a first distribution. The monitor was so badly burned out that I could hardly read what was on screen, so I took the computer to work so that some of the other Linux geeks there could help me. One of them suggested Fedora Core 3, which he had the CD's for, so I put that on the computer.
I took it back home and in the lack of having a computer desk to sit the thing on, I stuck it next to my digital piano and put the monitor, keyboard, and mouse up on top. Ideas started to formulate about using the machine for a recording station. Someone else at work had donated a monitor so that I could actually see what I was doing and they also donated a couple old soundcards because Fedora could not read the onboard sound card that was on the machine. I started researching Linux audio apps and found Planet CCRMA. I managed to clunk my way through setting that up on the machine and a whole new set of headaches arrived. I also had the idea that I wanted the machine to serve as an FTP server, and I managed to get that running with few problems. The FTP server was running just fine but I couldn't get MIDI working with the keyboard, so I downloaded and installed Agnula/DeMuDi. That of course wiped out the FTP server and all the work I had done previously, but I didn't care, this machine was more or less an experiment. After messing around with Agnula, I realized that I didn't like it, so I tried a LiveCD version of Dynebolic. Again, no luck with MIDI. At that point I was taking a class in Webmastering and the teacher was showing us all the different sorts of server software, so just to show him up I went back home installed Fedora Core 3 again and turned on Apache. I futzed around with that for a week and went back to school and loaded up my own website hosted on my own server. It was worth impressing him, I think.
Just a month ago (or so), someone dropped off another junker at work. It was a little bit better and a little bit worse than the computer I had, so I grabbed it and put Agnula on it. I still couldn't get MIDI working, so I had the bright idea to try Gentoo. I knew a little bit more about Linux at this point and spent about 3 days installing Gentoo only to get to a point where I could not install Gnome (the GUI). I'm no good without a GUI, so I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 4 (which isn't all that different from Fedora Core 3). I turned on Apache and SSH and a few other things and that's where it stands for now. I have never done anything productive with Linux and I just keep installing stuff to see what it does. If anyone wants to give me some ideas of useful stuff to do with this computer I would be happy to hear them, because up until now I have spent more time installing and fixing issues than I have actually using the computer. I still want to use it for a recording station. If you want to donate money to me (because I am always very broke) you can send it to my wife's PayPal account. Contact me for more information about that.
I started with it all under a year ago, telling my parents they needed a new computer. My wife and I had one that got very little use and it was newer than the one they had, so we traded with them. I reformatted it with Windows ME and installed all of their commonly used software on it. In return I recieved their old Windows 98 machine which needed reformatting badly. I spent a whole day downloading the latest version of Debian on my laptop and burned the CD's the next day. Not knowing anything about Linux or partitioning or anything really, Debian was a poor choice for a first distribution. The monitor was so badly burned out that I could hardly read what was on screen, so I took the computer to work so that some of the other Linux geeks there could help me. One of them suggested Fedora Core 3, which he had the CD's for, so I put that on the computer.
I took it back home and in the lack of having a computer desk to sit the thing on, I stuck it next to my digital piano and put the monitor, keyboard, and mouse up on top. Ideas started to formulate about using the machine for a recording station. Someone else at work had donated a monitor so that I could actually see what I was doing and they also donated a couple old soundcards because Fedora could not read the onboard sound card that was on the machine. I started researching Linux audio apps and found Planet CCRMA. I managed to clunk my way through setting that up on the machine and a whole new set of headaches arrived. I also had the idea that I wanted the machine to serve as an FTP server, and I managed to get that running with few problems. The FTP server was running just fine but I couldn't get MIDI working with the keyboard, so I downloaded and installed Agnula/DeMuDi. That of course wiped out the FTP server and all the work I had done previously, but I didn't care, this machine was more or less an experiment. After messing around with Agnula, I realized that I didn't like it, so I tried a LiveCD version of Dynebolic. Again, no luck with MIDI. At that point I was taking a class in Webmastering and the teacher was showing us all the different sorts of server software, so just to show him up I went back home installed Fedora Core 3 again and turned on Apache. I futzed around with that for a week and went back to school and loaded up my own website hosted on my own server. It was worth impressing him, I think.
Just a month ago (or so), someone dropped off another junker at work. It was a little bit better and a little bit worse than the computer I had, so I grabbed it and put Agnula on it. I still couldn't get MIDI working, so I had the bright idea to try Gentoo. I knew a little bit more about Linux at this point and spent about 3 days installing Gentoo only to get to a point where I could not install Gnome (the GUI). I'm no good without a GUI, so I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 4 (which isn't all that different from Fedora Core 3). I turned on Apache and SSH and a few other things and that's where it stands for now. I have never done anything productive with Linux and I just keep installing stuff to see what it does. If anyone wants to give me some ideas of useful stuff to do with this computer I would be happy to hear them, because up until now I have spent more time installing and fixing issues than I have actually using the computer. I still want to use it for a recording station. If you want to donate money to me (because I am always very broke) you can send it to my wife's PayPal account. Contact me for more information about that.
posted by airlynx at 16:18
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