AUTHOR: Scott G DATE: 2:32:00 AM ----- BODY:

Houston, we have a problem..

Yeah.. it's about that time again. This time it was part my fault, and another part not. I was home today (story in itself) and I was supposed to do two "chores". One was to do the laundry and the other being pay the electric bill. I did neither and there lies the fault. The electric company is closed on the weekends, and I was visiting with my uncle while I should've been doing the wash. Can't change that, but there seemed to be more than that involved. After picking her up at 10 pm I told her I was going over to my Mom's to visit some more with my Uncle and just sit and talk. She says "I want something to eat" in a snotty manner I thought and I got her Subway and dropped her off. Now I'm really not tired but I'll be up in the morning anyway. She's on the couch with one of the digital music cable channels on, sleeping to the music. She seems to like the couch lately. I woke up this morning to find her on the couch. She said it was cooler in there and she was too hot. I'll buy that. Aside from my minor marriage squabbles I've been messing around with Linux way too much. My main goal is not to become some geeked-out super Linux guru, but to use it in the place of Windows for everyday tasks. For IMs, browsing, irc, e-mail, and maybe even web page creating. From a fresh install, I've found that a some Linux distributions just won't do what you want them to. First I tried Mandrake 8.2, a very "newbie friendly" choice. I thought that maybe I could find the same functionality but less annoying little flaws in another distribution, but it didn't work out that way. The first alternative was Debian Linux. This distro comes with over 3950 programs standard, great. I download, burn, and begin to install it. At some point the install went wrong and it got rid of my ability to boot into Mandrake while also not working. I gave up quickly with that and moved onto Red Hat 7.3. This one was very powerful, and user friendly.. I thought. I get it installed and it's very nice and new, but there were the same little usability flaws in it that I'd fixed in Mandrake in the beginning. The difference was that I couldn't fix these. The mouse wheel wouldn't work and there was no quick fix or way to change the mouse in the settings. Something that small, not like I was "compiling" something. Then when you turn the comp on it gives you the Windows/Linux choice and that's it. You get a command prompt to log in, after that you get another command prompt. At this one you type "startx" to load the default desktop (Gnome) and you have no choice then and there. I believe you could change the default desktop, but it just wasn't the same as Mandrake. In Mandrake I start the comp up, if I want to use Windows I choose it, if not it'll auto-boot into Linux. Full auto-boot takes me to a login screen where, at once, I choose from desktop choices and pick which user I am. I log in and fix all my little tweaks. Install Netscape 6.22, install the new Gaim, change mouse speed, wallpaper, theme, and whatever else I need to do. Right now I'm happy with the original. Just goes to show you should stick with your gut decision. Until next time... --------