The Trek Continues

I am still at it. Not getting as piss off as a few days ago. I guess I am getting a hang of it, sort of. I finally got to play avi files (movies) on SuSE. I also installed picasa, a fine program from Google. I had it when I ran windows and was glad to find out I could get it for linux.

Last night I saw The DaVinci Code. It was not as dreadful as almost all the critics are making it to be. I think that the critics do not want to offend the religious fanatics out there who are so insecure in their believes, they don’t want anything out there that might temp them to leave the path to righteous. It’s entertainment, for goodness sakes!

Since the DaVinci Code came out, I decided to read Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco another time. Now this is a book that should be made in a movie. This books is a satire on all the Templars/Masons conspiracies. It isn’t an easy read but once it gets going it engulfs you and you can’t put it down until it lets go of you. Get it. Read It.

Now I have to get back at the book so let you go until next time.

Falling of the wagon

Good morning, or whatever time it is when you read this, to you all. Last Friday I fell off the wagon, I rebooted my computer with windows XP that I kept as a safety net, I did not change back to openSuSE until Sunday morning. Oh! How the mighty has fallen!

I am alright now I learned a few more tricks with a Linux operating system and to relieve my windows fixes I might get, I install Wine on computer. Wine is a program that allows Linux users to run windows programs. Amazing isn’t it? I thought so. Tomorrow is my day off so I’ll try a few new thing with Linux. I’ll keep you posted.

I already told you about my father’s condition, He cannot do any work for 3 months, so yesterday I went there to mow the lawn. I ended up doing a few more things for them. Today my back is killing me!

Gotta go

Baby Steps

This SuSE thing is fun, yet aggravating. I had a few issues with the programs that came with the SuSE package, like I couldn’t get kb3 the cd and dvd kreator to work, I fiddle wit it, now itworks like a charm. Everything that is installed does what it is designed to do and some do it perfectly while others are doing less than I want.

The area I am having most problems with are installations. Being used to windows, where everything is press a button and it works, it is supposed to anyway, with linux I have to make sure everything I need is already on the box before I install, this is a great inconvenience. Well I guess I’ll continue at it until I get better at it. You know what they say Rome wasn’t built in a day.

On a personal note, yesterday I bought a BBQ. Everybody says that it is a BBQ from star trek since it doesn’t look like a BBQ, I don’t care what they says, I needed a BBQ and I got a great deal, and I ate a delicious burger last evening :p

Gotta go get ready for work now, till next time keep on barbecuing.

Back At It

This is going to be a challenge. I am figuring out how to do things, with openSuSE, that I can do with an XP computer with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. I have my Firefox plugins installed. I tried to erase a DVD-RW could not do it, tried to burn DVD data disc, could not. I’ll have to this until I learn hoe to do whatever needs doing. My new moto Never Give Up.

This post will be short and sweet since I want to play around with SuSE some more I’ll say bye to you all.

New Ball Game

The eagle has landed and openSuSE has been installed. Hip! Hip! Hourah! One of the first thing I learned after installing linux was that linux is not a “whole new ball of wax”, it’s not a ball its a cube and it’s not made of wax it’s some kind of plastic. In other words it’s not the same thing as windows.

It took me 1 hour to connect to the internet, I have an external ADSL modem. Before I gave up for the day I was trying to install plug ins for Firefox and could not find where it was installed. The filling system in a linux base is totally different than XP. Right now it make no sense to me. I have alot of things to learn and to figure out.

On a personal note, my father was released from the hospital yesterday. He’s been operated for an aortic aneurism. An aorte is usually 33mm in diameter and they operate when it swells to 40mm, my fathers was at an amazing 100mm. The surgeon says that he was lucky that it didn’t rupture. My father has gout and because of the surgery, he could not take his indocide so his foot is killing him he says that it is worse that the operation. I am very glad that he is alright. I love you dad.

Enough of “Adventures in medicine”. I won’t be playing with my computer this weekend since I’ll be going to my parents for the long weekend.

That’s it for now, til next time, bye.

Installing Windows

As I write this Windows XP is being install on my computer. My copy of XP is almost as old as I, so I have to install a bunch of updates. So while I am at work this is being done.

I changed my mind on how I’ll partition my HD, 50 GB for XP, 32 GB shared (FAT32) and the rest (158 GB) for openSUSE.

I guess I’ll get back to work, don’t tell my boss I’m doing this at work.

I have to go since my co worker, Paul is making fun of me and I have to defend my honour.

Ready, Set, Go!

I’m almost ready to do the switch over. I only have about 12 GB left to back up before I re-partition my HD. I have 240 GB to partition, I have decided to have a 32 GB FAT shared partition and the other 208 GB divided in two, one for Windows and the other for SUSE.

I’ll do the windows install first since I know what I am doing. I’ll leave the Linux install for a later install. I don’t think that I can install both tonight because it is getting late. Tomorrow I am working for 12 hours so I won’t be doing it then either. I guess I’ll do it monday or tuesday since I’ll be out of town for the weekend.

I’ll be installing a legal copy of XP home edition, for the last year and a half I was using a pirated corporate edition. I am getting tired of trying, and succeeding, of beating the genuine windows validation tool. I want to concentrate on Linux from now on.

That’s it for today, I’ll keep you posted

A beginning

Welcome to the blog.

The main purpose of this exercise is to describe to you my experience of switching over from a Windows XP computer to a OpenSUSE computer. I’ll also throw in some stuff happening in my life or comment on the news and such. Maybe a few jokes, maybe not, I haven’t decided yet. This will be a work in progress. I hope to inform and hopefully entertain you.

Within the next few days, maybe weeks, I’ll install OpenSUSE 10.1 on my computer. I expect to have a dual boot computer, I need a safety blanket, so I am going to keep Windows XP on another partition, just in case!

I have about 110 gigs of my hard drives filled up with files. Tonight I’ll start backing up this data, when I’m done I’ll do the dual install.

At this point I still haven’t decided if I’ll go with KDE or Gnome. Apparently switching from Windows is easier with KDE and switching from Apple is easier with Gnome. I don’t know if I’ll take the “easy” way or the more complicated route.

Well I guess that’s it for the first post, I hope that you the reader will keep coming back and see the progress or the mishaps I am making.