Frustration #3: You want USB? No install for you!

At last the installation begins, and what's the very first thing I see? Why, it's something so thrilling I can't help but giggle with glee. You see, one of the first and foremost things I was prepared to struggle with Ubuntu over was getting it to recognize and use my wireless internet adapter (I have one of those USB adapters for my desktop). I was prepared for war, you understand. I had read all my Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, and watched the end of The Two Towers for seasoning.

But Ubuntu recognized the adapter immediately. As in, before Ubuntu had even been installed. And I said, and I quote, wow. That's awesome. And as advertised, all I had to do was tell it my cryptic network password, and lo, a connection to the net was had and Ubuntu was ready to get to work:



Sure, I'll download updates while installing. And sure, I'll install some third party software. I've gotten by with Windows all these years; I trust you. The one nice thing I can say about Ubuntu is that, yes, it might drag me kicking and screaming into a steel cage match, but it won't bend me over the nearest chair and vigorously violate me. Which is more than you can say for Windows and its maker. So I checked both those boxes. Install anything you want, Ubuntu, as long as my computer works when you're done.



Apparently Ubuntu claims to be clever enough to be able to make itself a couple partitions and install itself without provoking Windows to throw a hissy fit and nuke your machine. I'm skeptical about that, but I have no intent to find out. I happily authorized Ubuntu to throw Windows down the memory hole. Hopefully forever.



Ubuntu was kind enough to allow me to set up my basic stuff like time zone, keyboard orientation, etc. while it was installing. It's not really a big deal, it takes like 20 seconds anyway, but hey. That's nice.



ZethMkI is the newer machine, which will retain Windows. For now. I hope to the Seventeen Gods it won't be for long. We continue through standard stuff here while Ubuntu prepares to install. And then it commences installing. And thenWHOOPS!



Frustration #3 has raised its ugly head. What the holy hell is this all about?

Beats me. Looks like this attempt at installing at a flash drive turned out even worse than the last one. At least the last one didn't tease me, like the cheerleaders in high school used to. I always told myself they were dirty sluts anyway and I wouldn't touch them even if I could have them, but I was lying to myself.

Thanks for digging up the memories, Ubuntu!

After trying it again without letting it download updates and third party software (hey, you never know; this is the way years of working on Windows have trained me to think) and meeting with the same fate, I unhappily conceded that installing off a USB drive was not meant to be. The root cause is probably UBD (User Brain Dead) but in any case, I'm just going to have to install off a CD.

Which reminds me. I only had about ten blank CDs still sitting around in my closet, unused for at least three years. You're not going to believe this, but they don't work.

So I'll have to grab some new ones on my next Walmart run, which is probably Wednesday. I'll probably then figure out some other way to UBD the install and be unable to find the foggiest clue how or why.

This One Was All My Fault. I Assume.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality in this and subsequent posts. I can't exactly take screenshots during the install process, so I snapped these shots of my monitor with my phone.)

So after I played around some more I got the computer to boot from the flash drive. Cool. Ubuntu's load screen comes up, but it looks... primitive. Don't get me wrong, simple is good, especially when opposed to the candy coating over Windows' rank tomb full of rotting flesh.

Ubuntu's installation starts with this unassuming screen:



And I wait... and I wait... and I wait. I grow an eight inch beard. My wife gives up on me and has two children with the guy that fixed our window last year. Two presidential administrations come and go. (OK, it might have been only about twenty minutes. But still. You try spending twenty minutes staring at that screen and see how long it feels like.)

What the hell is going on?

Pressing a key--the down arrow key, specifically, in this case, although it turns out most of the keys on the keyboard will do, changes the screen to this:



Uh-oh. I'm no wizard but I'm willing to bet a fair sum that this is--and here I am going to use a technical term, so look it up if you have to--bad.

Actually this screen is fascinating in its own macabre way, as it continued on for an hour scrolling identical messages over and over and over, with a count on the left (you can't see it in the picture) steadily incrementing, one by one. At that point I said the hell with it and forced the computer off. Obviously, I thought, the install files are corrupt.

So I get another flash drive (I have enough of them lying around to build a one-sixteenth scale log cabin out of) and start over with creating the bootable Ubuntu install. They say insanity is trying the same thing again and expecting different results. But this was a totally different flash drive!

And you know what? For the greatest wonder since the fact Paul Mccartney is somehow still alive, it worked.

Frustration #1: It turns out you can't install from a flash drive after all.

I am going to wipe Windows off my old PC (I don't want to risk my new one on this venture) and have decided to take a shot at installing Ubuntu. Ubuntu seems to have the reputation of being the user-friendliest of the various Linux distributions, which among a large part of the Linux community is an insult. I have run many times into the attitude, among serious Linux users, that anyone unwilling or unable to learn how computers really work is unworthy of Linux's greatness. Ubuntu seems to have the development community least inclined to think this way, making the sincerest effort to appeal to... well, to me. I'm exactly representative of the kind of person Ubuntu should be able to attract... if I can figure out how to use it.

I downloaded the CD image (.iso) and followed step-by-step instructions to download and run a program that would burn the ubuntu .iso file onto a 2GB flash drive I have lying around. (I hate CD's. Anything so flimsy wasn't meant to last.) This part, at least, posed no problem; the instructions were thorough and the process simple enough that I would easily have figured it out without the instructions, if given the link to the program.

That leads us to Frustration #1: It doesn't work.

ubuntu.com's step-by-step guide is quite helpful explaining how to go into the BIOS and set the boot device order... except I already know how to do that, and in fact already have gone into the BIOS and told it to boot from the USB drive first.

But it doesn't. It boots straight into Windows and allows no opportunity to do otherwise. In Windows, the flash drive works perfectly, can be browsed, etc. My best guess is I did something wrong when I used that program to create what I thought would be a bootable flash drive.

The technically inclined among you are already laughing at my incompetence, but my point is: I can't even get the damn installation started before I run into problems. So now I have to burn a CD. That will take a few hours, so I might as well take a nap in the meantime.

Introduction: Why I'm Doing This.

It's been one security problem and one reformat too many. After years of starts-and-stops and flirting with the idea, I am going to make my best effort at leaving behind the Lovecraftian tentacled horror that is Windows.

No, really, for my purposes Windows isn't that bad. I'll discuss why I want to migrate to Linux, but first, so you'll understand better where I'm coming from, a minimal bit about me.

I am 29 years old. I got my first computer at 17, a Sam's Club special from a long-defunct fly-by-night called Pionex, and got addicted to the wonders of AOL and SimCity. Twelve years later, I still am essentially an internet and SimCity junkie.

I would call myself a moderate-casual computer user. I'm not a programmer. Years ago I could edit and even produce some rudimentary HTML and even learned a little PHP back when that was new, and was a staffer of some importance at a medium-large video game fansite. I took one semester of Introduction to C++ at Penn State--only because it meant I could avoid taking calculus for my liberal arts major--and got a B-. (Although I did get A's in high school dicking around with QBASIC and PASCAL.)

I know just enough about computers and programming to delude myself into thinking I know what I'm doing. That is to say, I have the technical knowledge of the typical newegg user that marks his technical knowledge as "high". That is to say, little, but more than zero. Unlike those newegg users, I have no illusions of being better with computers than I am. I know only enough about computers to get frustrated when they don't work right and after a day's effort I can't figure out why.

Which leads us to Windows. Not working right and requiring ridiculous effort to fix (or, just as often, discover you can't fix it and reformatting/reinstalling everything) is pretty much Windows' job. And that's coming from me. I write, and am a semi-professional editor and proofreader (using OpenOffice and Notepad++ where I can; sometimes Adobe Acrobat is required); I do various things on the internet; I play SimCity and Baseball Mogul. That is pretty much what I use computers for. Unfortunately, Windows is such a bagbiting atrocity of an operating system that clicking one stray link (a bad habit of mine and my wife's) will bring it to its knees and compromise your data (which is why I back up my data ritually). I do not enjoy this.

So that's the practical reason I would like to be through with Windows.

But, honestly, that's not enough to motivate migrating, because--and I'm going to bold-face this sentence for any Linux community members that might read this--I can't figure out how the hell to get Linux working. I have tried a few times and given up after a little while. I can install the thing just fine; I just can't get any of my hardware to work with it, much less figure out how to get software that does what I want and plays nice.

People who use Linux and have a technical clue all assure me it's not that hard if you put the effort into understanding how it works. I have no doubt that is true. The problem is, I don't have the time. I manage an inn; that keeps me busy 60 hours a week. I also write, edit and proofread; that keeps me busy 20 or 30 more. That leaves not a lot of time for the concurrent but antagonistic goals of (a) dicking around on my computer to unwind and (b) making sure my wife remembers who I am. (Not necessarily in that order.)

All things considered, trying to migrate to Linux, learn the minimum amount of knowledge of programming required to use it properly (there is no way around this necessity with Linux that I know of) and get it doing what I want to do... it's not worth it. Over my lifetime reinstalling Windows every couple months will consume less of my time and cause me fewer headaches.

I'm writing this blog partly because I can, but also partly because it might be helpful to Linux users, supporters and (especially) programmers. Linux dominates server space, and it is beginning to dominate smart phones. It continues to struggle, as it has for years, in desktop and laptop space (that is to say it continues to lose to Windows, despite the fact Windows is expensive and horribly bloated where Linux is free and pleasantly streamlined) and this is mostly because it is difficult for non-technical people to figure out how to install, configure and use. This very well may not matter, because desktops and laptops may vanish into obsolescence in a matter of a few years.

But, see, even for a desktop computer, Linux is much, much better than Windows.

If you're a programmer.

If you're not--and I think that most knowledgeable Linux users either don't grasp this concept, or grasp it but reject it, preferring to keep the good stuff to themselves--Windows is better because non-programmers want very different things out of their computers than programmers do. We want to turn it on, do stuff online, play games (admittedly Microsoft uses its monopoly lock to make this difficult, through no fault of Linux's), screw around with whatever programs we like, and turn it off. Windows, for all its lossiness, allows us to do this (until we click a stray link and a virus wrecks the system; then we drop it off at Best Buy and pick it up on Thursday). Linux demands a steep learning curve before we can get to the fun. We aren't interested.

But I remain interested. I would rather use Linux than Windows because I believe Microsoft is evil.

I should clarify. What I mean when I say that is, Microsoft is thoroughly, fundamentally, saturatedly anti-customer. Microsoft has become the wealthiest company in the world by doing everything it can get away with to enslave its customers. I may never get completely off Windows because several things my job requires of me demand Windows; trying to do it on Linux is either technically impossible or (because of the opportunity cost of investing the time to figure out how) practically impossible. This is exactly what Microsoft has worked hard to achieve: monopoly lock where I have no choice. Which of course amounts to I will pay Microsoft whatever Microsoft demands, or I will have no job. It's remarkable how similar to taxation the model is.

I find that deeply offensive--and you should too--and that is why I would rather not use Microsoft products. (Except my keyboard and mouse; Microsoft does make damn fine input hardware. The world would be a better place if they would stick to that.) Combine that with how losing Windows is--and combine that with how, with each advancing version of Windows, Microsoft creeps further and further in toward the goal of enslaving you--and it makes Linux very attractive.

If I can ever get it installed and working.

So here I will chronicle my efforts, as a moderate-casual computer user, to figure out how to migrate to Linux and actually make it work. I will explain as best I can the things that are easy, the things that are hard, and why. Consider it an object study in how Linux does and does not lend itself to use by moderate-casual computer junkies.