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Migration Reflections and Ramblings© Copyright Darrell Anderson. Although I still work exclusively within my NT4 environment, I am adjusting to the Linux way of thinking, and I believe I can and will adjust to the Linux desktop. I still consider my time with Linux as experimental, including the possibility that I might delete everything and install afresh once I am ready to become productive within Linux. Yet, I have concerns with my migration to Linux. Although I am not a computer-aholic or junkie. I do nonetheless use certain software tools that fit my way of thinking and working. So when I started my migration I created a check list to help me track my efforts. For example, I have used MS Word for about a dozen years or so. From a Windows perspective I still use Word 97 and have no desire to change. No, Word is not a perfect product, and has its own set of quirks, but familiarity breeds contempt for change. (And don’t ever forget that Bill Gates understands this principle.) One reason for not wanting to leave Word is I like the MDI (multiple document interface). I like opening only one instance of a program and within that one area housing all of my working documents. (After my initial exploration of Lycoris, I noticed several programs use an SDI approach. I am not going to like that.) Additionally, after years of creating my own templates and macros, I do not want to forsake those efforts. I still remember the conversion work when I moved from Word 6 to Word 97. Frankly, I don’t know if I am ever going to do that again. Way too much work. Undoubtedly migrating away from Word 97 will be one of the last things I do on my migration list. Another example of the MDI is I am now accustomed to the cantankerous Opera web browser (version 6.11 as of this writing). To my knowledge Opera was the first browser to use the MDI (now often called tabbed browsing), and although the browser is far from ideal (there are some quirks that bother me and the company does not care to fix; and that attitude is a huge reason why I am growing to dislike proprietary software), I like Opera’s general design and interface. I don’t want to change. Yes, there is an Opera version for Linux, but there are some subtle differences that I will have to adjust to. For example, I cannot get my Opera menu bar buttons in the same order as I have them in Windows. The only thing consistent in this world is that nothing is consistent! There is a template and macro that comes with Adobe Acrobat that wonderfully helps convert Word 97 documents into PDF files. Along with Word 97, this tool is a biggie for me. I don’t want to learn the awkward Ghostscript. Ptooie on geeky tools. (Note: I’m watching the Linux market and more and more seems that printing directly to PDF format is becoming popular—good!) And boy, unless I run WINE or Codeweavers CrossOver Office, I will greatly miss Proxomitron, the universal web filter. I notice many web browsers are now starting to provide some features first made popular with Proxomitron. Also, I need to keep my eye on Privoxy. Maybe in the end I will not miss Proxomitron. Other areas of concern are firewalls, web filtering, general utilities, etc. I have learned that the Linux file system does not really need defragmentation, so that is a good thing. Viruses are still a concern, but the way Linux is designed should almost always minimize any damage to just the user’s files and not the entire computer. Plus, most viruses are designed to run only on Windows, although I expect that to change as Linux becomes more popular on the desktop. Then again, maybe not because Linux is an open source community, and does not represent the twistified machinations of statism through illusionary statutes that protect corporations and artificial monopolies. I can only hope, although I expect the script kiddies always will be bored. *** Some people argue that there is nothing I do on Windows that I can’t do on Linux. I am cautious about such claims. For example, although I have yet to fully test OpenOffice (OO), I wonder if OO can import some of my more complicated Word projects, such as books where I use lots of styles, footnotes, etc. I also have no idea what the macro language is like. We shall see. Yet, even if OO could import such documents with no corruption at all, my bigger concern is my learning curve. I think OpenOffice uses a frames approach whereas Word uses a page approach. I know of people who still use WordPerfect for DOS. Why? Because they remain efficient workers using a tool they learned many years ago. They see no need to change. I’m not so sure I want to change either, despite my dislike for the M$ business model. I remember my own proficiency with WordPerfect and the associated macro language and how I struggled with my migration to Word. I am aware of tools that will allow me to run some M$ products on Linux, such as WINE and CrossOver Office. I will take a look at those tools. *** I’ve spent hours and hours browsing through on-line tutorials trying to familiarize myself to the Linux world of thinking. I have not worried about learning Linux shell commands, except maybe two or three. My focus has been general philosophy and structure. I noticed that the Linux file structure seemed rather fixed, and I wanted to learn more how or why certain files are installed where. I found several tutorial web sites that I think I will revisit often. During my initial travails I also hoped to learn more about the Linux boot sequence. When Linux boots, the Linux kernel serves as an informative portal window to watch the boot sequence. Not valuable to the newbie, but I noticed that with Lycoris every time the sound card was initialized, Linux set the output level to maximum. Background noise is audible at maximum, and I hoped to find a setting in one of the initialization files that would not set the sound level so high. For now, I have to live with waiting until logging in and then having my personal KMix setting take over to automatically reduce the volume. Irritating. In my tutorial search I wanted to find an approach that compared how to do things in Windows to Linux. In other words, “this is how you did A in Windows and this is how you do A in Linux.” Thus far all I have found are comparisons to various shell commands. I suspect part of the problem is that each distro does things just a little different. I’ve noticed that Linux consumes RAM at a very fast clip. I’m unsure why. Maybe Linux uses some kind of caching algorithm. I have not gotten back to check this, but part of the problem might have been Opera. I toggled off the Opera RAM cache for now. I’ll have to watch this for a while. *** Opera for Linux frustrates me. The fonts are butt-ugly. I cannot get my menu bar buttons positioned the way I want and I had to manually edit the bookmarks file to get my personal bar buttons to appear in the same order as with Windows. Why? I should have been able to copy my bookmarks file and never again thought about the issue; but Opera is too busy pushing their version 7, so I suppose 6.x users are without paddles. That is another reason I dislike the proprietary software model. While in Linux I tried opening some HTML files with my Linux Opera. The files were located in my Windows partitions. The files refused to open. I finally figured out that either Linux or Opera pukes on file names with spaces. I renamed the files without the spaces and the files loaded fine. But the Opera fonts are still butt ugly. I also ended up hand editing the Linux Opera INI file to look as close as I possibly dared to my Windows version. That helped some, but I still cannot get the menu bar button order problem fixed. I found a blurb somewhere on some news group that this seems to be a Linux issue only. Looks like work-around time. Maybe I should look at Mozilla. Mozilla is getting lots of good reviews. If Mozilla does tabbed browsing like Opera does the MDI, maybe I’ll get serious about Mozilla. But Mozilla tries to be an all-in-one tool. I hate all-in-one tools. All I want is a browser. I do not want all the bloat, which is one reason I was originally attracted to Opera. I’ve been playing with Phoenix for Windows. Lots of potential, but I tire easily within the role of unpaid beta tester. Same with Mozilla. So for now I keep rotating between Mozilla, Phoenix, and Opera 7 and 6.05. Why can’t anybody make a good browser? *** RAM disks. I use a small 16MB RAM disk on my NT4 side to act as my browser cache. I like shutting down and the cache is truly erased. So how to install a Linux RAM disk? And do I want to do this when Linux seems to suck so much RAM so fast? Another migration hurdle. *** While experimenting with Lycoris I tried migrating my NT4 True Type fonts to Linux. I found a tutorial on the Lycoris forum. I installed the font installer utility and then could not find the utility listed anywhere on the start menu. I later learned that the only place I’ll find the utility is in the Control Center. Okay. Sigh. Everything seemed to work, but no fonts appeared after I rebooted. I suspect the problem is both the casing of the file name (many of the file names are in upper case, which Unix/Linux does not like), and where the fonts got installed from and to. I deleted the font cache file too. I don’t think the utility works right when I installed directly from my Windows partition. I had to spend time looking for a simple utility to convert the file names to lower case. I’ll try again. Sigh. Lycoris is not ready for prime time or newbies. I think Lycoris will work if there is a good Linux system administrator who irons out all the kinks before migrating his company over. All of these little “gotchas” are frustrating me. I’m making progress, but sometimes this seems painful. *** I got the font utility to work, but I had to rewrite the on-line tutorial. *** Within Lycoris I wanted to change the Trashcan desktop icon. Every time I tried the icon remained the same. Why? I don’t know. Then several reboots later I happen to notice the icon had changed. Sigh. Actually, despite my bellyaching, my migration is going better than I had expected. Still the learning curve is steep, and thus far I have really only focused on the Lycoris GUI, and other than Opera, little else. I think part of my problem has been that I expected too much too fast, after having read so much that Linux was ready for prime time. Now that I’ve settled down and throttled my expectations, I seem to be moving along okay. *** I want to learn how to copy/duplicate user accounts. I don’t know why, there is only me on this computer. Yet, there must be a quick way to do this; eventually I’ll get around to that. Actually, Linux is ideal for a home computer, where several people might use a single computer. Unlike Windows, Linux is designed from the ground up to handle multiple users. I saw an article where one guy actually connected two keyboards, mice, and monitors to one computer so he and his girlfriend could both work from a single computer. Slick. *** I’m confused that sometimes I cannot copy and paste across applications. For example, I copied a path name from Konqueror and tried pasting into Opera and nothing happened. The last time I saw that was in the early days of Windows. I notice a lot of Windows users complaining about this. *** I notice that Linux is configured to always perform a scan for new hardware. I want to stop that. There is no new hardware. At this stage I know nothing about the Linux boot sequence and init files, so I have no idea where to look. Since I am still in the exploration stages, I have no issue with trying to edit those files, even if I lock up thereafter. I got to get around to trying to connect on line and testing the default firewall settings. The KPPP tool could not find my modem. A short trip back to Windows and the web revealed that I had to specify my modem as /dev/ttys1 (COM2). Just like that I was on line. The firewall seemed to work at one test site. The firewall is nice, but nicer still is how Linux works with directory permissions. In theory, the worst that could happen from an attack is destroying user files only. but I feel better with a firewall installed. *** I figured out how to stop the boot loader from scanning for new hardware. I commented out the lines in etc/rc.d/init.d/hwscan. A guy gets lucky once in while. I am still heavily perturbed with how slow the KDE desktop is. The Lycoris web site recommends a 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM system. I have a 400 MHz, 256 MB RAM system. But further study reveals the problem is not going to go away. Some people recommend using a different window manager. So I’ve been trying to get up to speed. I left a constructive criticism message on the Lycoris forum. Some people responded that the current beta build 66 is much faster than the stable build 46. I hope so. *** I really want to use Linux as my main OS and then use VMWare or Codeweavers CrossOver Office to migrate away from Windows. Then again, VMWare is $300, and I could buy a decent used PC for that much, and then just network what I have. One problem is that I have 12 years of work invested in MS Word, and I can’t see giving that up so easily. Sure, I can use any word processor for simple text and formatting, but for book projects I don’t have the time to develop new templates. Of course, one of these days I’ll eventually get around to looking into OpenOffice. However, OO uses the SDI and I greatly like the MDI in Word. One nice thing about my older Windows system is that none of the software is programmed to self-destruct or stop working if it can’t phone home. Nonetheless, M$’s track record is clear where they want to go so eventually one day I’ll also have to migrate away from Word. Subscription software? What’s next, subscription shovels? Yeah, right! *** I want to repartition my hard drive so I can install different distros, and not have to worry about losing configuration data. So more studying and questions. Unless Lycoris soon releases a faster and stable release, I think I will try Mandrake 9.0. Mandrake provides everything but the kitchen sink and that might initially overwhelm me, but then again, I think I am catching on to the Linux model. Furthermore, at least I can then experiment more fully because Mandrake is packaged with several other window managers. Lycoris is a good distro, but the target market is people who simply want to point and click. I want to be productive too, but I like knowing more about what’s under the hood. *** Seems my biggest challenge with migrating to Linux is not knowing where to do the same tasks as in Windows. Learning directory structures is nice but not terribly important right away. I know what I want to do, I just don’t know where or how to perform the same task in Linux. Surfing the web seems to indicate this is the biggest stumbling block for people who want to migrate. I think some better instruction books are needed. Then again, maybe such info exists and because I am new to Linux I just have not yet stumbled across them all. I also figured out that the Lycoris Control Center is actually a funky web page. Thus, I changed the link to “Classic Control Center” to “Classic KDE Control Center.” I don’t like this kind of a control center. I don’t like this idea of integrating the web browser into everything I do. I like simple tools, not multi-functional tools. Finis. |
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