Me and Linux

I've played with Linux over the years and have generally found that once it is installed there is not much to be done with it that Windows (hawk-spit) can't do better. Why is the thing I detest the most so good at being good at most things.

However, I have recently tried again to install Linux (openSuse 10.3) and get it to do stuff that might be useful.

Boy oh boy have things come along in the few years since I last looked at Linux! Lots of toys to be played with - but could I get it work on my PC - no chance. GRUB doesn't like the size of my disks, so drew a blank several times. Also, having downloaded the installation media and having checked it (even during the installation), the install program kept telling me I have errors in the media at random places. Never the less, I finally got a clean install only to find it won't boot due to GRUB error 18. Oh well, my PC is 4 years-ish old.

So I installed it, finally, straight off onto my laptop. First time, no issues. Then was faced with the fact that although SUSE thought it supported my wireless card, it actually didn't seem to. After an evening of searching I found that Linux needs to load some firmware (gosh!) to make the WiFI card work - but how? Finally found some page that told me how to. There was a program to download the firmware and install it. Suddenly I was connected. Next problem was what to do next?

Do an update. Unfortunately the update program told me I was upto date. Odd. The install media could not be completely upto date. Eventually I stumbled on the fact that I had to configure an update server for the update program to find the updates.. Oh well, only two things so far to get in the way of a smooth install. However, for a Unix freak, it is fun.

Next was to see if I could connect to a remote site using VPN. The remote site uses a CISCO VPM concentrator of some sort. So I downloaded the CISCO program, for the correct Linux kernel, and tried to install. It was very hard. Error after error. Even though it was supposedly for my version of Linux, it obviously wasn't. I then stumbled on vpnc. Good grief. So easy to install (already supplied on the install media), then with a bit of playing (some better help would have speeded things up, but the joy (?) of Linux is there are so many people willing to help, and hence so many web pages with that help if you can find it) I was connected.

Using standard tools supplied I could then access the servers on the remote site, and let me say that the X support provided by GNOME is so much faster than what I've got under Windows. Remote X support is now totally usable. What a difference it makes to using Linux to access remote Unix rather than Windows.

Then I discovered VirtualBox. To cut it short - I now have openSuse 10.3 running in a VM on my Vista PC. I can even use the VM to access the remote site and manage all those lovely Unix servers whilst still having windows (well what can I say to excuse myself) running doing other stuff. The performance is not bad.

Well loads more to play with, so I'm off.