Just Don’t Bite

Three things. All having to do with April. I’ll try to keep them short.

1) Mario Kart Wii comes out later this month. Yes, I happen to love Mario Kart… Nintendo and it’s rehashes. Oh well. Only thing I’m NOT looking forward to is apparently it has the same DRE problem that Smash Brothers Brawl had. So there’s a good chance I will be sending my Wii off to get repaired at that time. Specially since I’m sick of dealing with it on Brawl.

2) Yes 4/20 is coming up. Undoubtedly I will be getting a flood of “virtual joints” from my pot head friends. Tell ya what, save your self the trouble. I don’t care. Also no one knows what the hell 4/20 has to do with pot anyhow. Let it go. Otherwise I’m going to remind you it’s also Hitlers birthday.

3) Introduction to Linux. You see one of my friends did something that I personally don’t consider all to bright. He lifted content. However it is easier to read than the source blog. Sorry I’m not a big fan of them stupid contextual ad things. I am however a fan of the Linux operating system. So please, hit the read more link and follow the rest of the post.

Linux - My intro

I’m going to do something that is recently looked at as wrong here. I’m going to use the Ubuntu Distro as my Linux example. Yes there are hundreds of other distros all with merit, but I’m picking that one. That said let us start.

Linux - It has a history. Do you need to know it? No not really. Just understand that a guy name Linus Torvalds wrote it and a guy named Richard Stallman developed the GPL. The GPL is the license that the GNU/Linux idea thrives on. The software that is released under the GPL is free us, free for us to use, and change. The only thing is we have to follow the GPL spirit. These GPL programmers retain the intellectual property rights in that way, they do not give those away, they’re just very generous with what they allow you to do.

When I first introduced my Dad to Linux he couldn’t understand how giving away a product could make money. I tried to explain to him that they sell a service. He still sold his stocks in Red Hat… and then they went up more and he kicks himself to this day over it. So with that in mind, if you’re a business user, yes you can pay for support and it will be better than that you get from Microsoft.

Some people will tell you that Linux is more reliable, that it is faster, that it is easier to use. Some of this is true, some of it may not be true for you. For me, on the desktop, it isn’t any more reliable. It crashes sometimes, it locks up, it annoys me. However this has more to do with the hardware that I run. This exact same hardware will work just fine under Windows and play videos and play music just fine. So when it comes to that aspect, it’s MUCH easier for me to get my system working for that under Windows. However, I can find a much larger amount of support for getting these working under Linux. There’s a strange concept for Windows users, FREE SUPPORT. When it comes to the server side, yes my servers run Linux. It’s solid and works great, no complaints.

Now you’ll notice that up at the top I mentioned I’d use Ubuntu as my example. Why? Because it’s what I use. Not the first one I’ve used… I’m pretty sure that honor goes to a very old version of Red Hat. I’ve also tried SuSe, Mandrake (now something else), Fedora Core, CentOS, Debian, and probably a few others. I won’t bore you with what I didn’t like with some of them, but keep in mind this has been over the last 10 years. It has matured and I’ve found a distro I like. Sad thing is it really came down to the package manager for applications.

You see in Linux, it is a breeze to install new applications. You can ‘apt-get install’ or you can use the add/remove applet to do so. No hunting, no digging, just a few clicks. It works GREAT. Hell when you go to update it’s just as easy. You click and go. Sometimes you might have to reboot, but not very often.

But really, the whole idea bores me. There is no real reason to use Windows on a lot of machines. My brother got a hand me down Dell, ran like ass with XP. I tossed Ubuntu on there and showed him a few things. Wouldn’t ya know it… works great for him. Plays his music, surfs his porn, checks his email. Best of all, I don’t get calls saying “I got a virus”. Another buddy had a old piece of crap, did the same thing. Even set him up to use his cell phone as his modem. It just works for them, and it saves me trouble later.

Now what does this have to do with my buddy and the Linux intro? Well he lifted the content from here and they got butt hurt. Yes I think what he did wasn’t to bright. But I also don’t think the article was really very good in the first place. However what REALLY sickens me is how they have responded to his “I don’t care” attitude. I’m sure it’s cute to post peoples numbers and all, but it is grossly immature. Specially when any one that can do a whois lookup can get it. Clearly we all agreed with the ICANN rules that say that info must be correct and agreed with the spirit of the law when we chose not to pay the extra to hide it.