My First Taste of Linux

I got a really cool surprise yesterday!  My partner was playing around with a Linux disk, and asked me if I wanted to try it!  I pounced on the opportunity, since a couple of my friends had been encouraging me to at least look at an alternate operating system.  The first disk I tried was an Ubuntu, and it wouldn't work on my machine, since I'm running 32-bit and the disk required 64.  But...all was not lost.  He also had a PC Linux that did work.  He cautioned me not to install it to the hard drive, which I hadn't planned to do anyway.  After all, I had no idea what I was about to get into, and didn't want to do anything that required massive effort to undo!

Anyway....I popped in the disk and got my first look at something besides "Winders".  I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, really.  I mean, I knew I wouldn't have any of the programs I was so familiar with, at least not with the same names, but I was still rather taken aback.  I soon got over that though, and figured out it wasn't quite as foreign as I'd thought. 

One of the first things I set up was the IM client, Kopete, which I'd never heard of, even though I'd been introduced to some LInux applications before.  It worked well enough, but I never got the sounds working, which was a minor annoyance.

I did, however, get streaming media to work, so I could listen to online radio if I wanted.  That's a big thing for me, since I love music so much. 

I tried the Konquorer browser, but didn't really care for it, being used to Firefox, so I found FF and used that from then on.  This was an earlier version than I was used to, and the theme wasn't great, but I was ok with it, considering everyting was contained on the disk.  I really missed  having my bookmarks handy, but at least I could access them through My Bookmarks , a handy little site that a friend of mine told me about a long time ago.  It lets you get to your bookmarks from any computer, because they're stored online.  The only caveat is, you need to remember to update them frequently on the site, so that if you have to use them exclusively, you'll have your most recent urls.

Another thing I really missed was my rss feeds but, after going back to Windows late in the evening, I took care of that in short order, by using Google Reader.  I now have all my feeds set up there, so I can rss happily without Outlook.  I could have set up Thunderbird for email, but decided not to, until I can get my partner to let me put Linux on a partition of my hard drive (at least, I think that's how you'd do this).  For now, I'll just use Gmail off the web browser when I'm in Linux.

I also decided it might be a good idea, since I won't be able to access the server while in LInux, to upload some documents and spreadsheets to Google Documents and Spreadsheets.  It's awesome!  That way, I can get into my "Company Y" records if the boss needs me to, among other things.  I also considered that the server here might kick the bucket, then I'd be up the creek, so that was added incentive.

I'd also like to round up all the photos I have scattered on the server and in other various places, and put them all in ONE place.  Sounds like it's time to investigate PhotoBucket.  Yahoo has unlimited storage for photos, but their server is sometimes hard to access.  I'd like something a bit more dependable.  I could put everything on a dvd of course, but I don't have a dvd drive on my machine, so I'm not real crazy about that option. 

I'm sure there are other workarounds I need to come up with, but for now, I feel pretty good about my first venture into the Land of the Penguins :)