X doesn’t like me

I guess X hates me. Yesterday I started my computer, and my resolution was changed. I tried to fix it, but I did not work, somebody in the IRC channel advised to reconfigure my xorg, and so it happened. Hopla, there was the X message. Exactly the same as the day before (see ‘In the middle of the night’). ProfoX told me what he did then, so I did the same, and it still didn’t worked. Even stranger. We’ve been working on it for a couple of hours, and eventually profoX fixed it, again. Thanks a lot mate, what would I do without you :P. My xorg really insures problems, I guess I’ll have to report it as a bug. But I first need to figure out where.

Using Linux for the first time

You should have figured it out by now, I use Linux. I have been using Ubuntu for 5 days, though my first touch was 10 days ago.

 

I decided to make the step. You may be wondering why. First, Windows was driving me nuts, I get errors I couldn’t figure out, programs that weren’t working, MS did things I didn’t want to. I wanted more power, more control over my computer. I’m also very interested in computers, and not just what you see, but what’s behind the GUI. Linux is a great way to experience it. It’s far more powerful than windows, and it is virus free.

 

Another great thing in Linux is the community around it. In the IRC channels you have like 1000 people, who can help you, or with who you can relax. The huge wiki-database is also a big help, just like the forums. Being helped on Linux has his advantages and disadvantages. They can give you the commands, you just have to re-type them in your computer. It is not like in Windows you have to say something like ‘Do you see the button in the right corner? No, the other one. Disappeared ? Sorry, can’t help you. ‘ Yet there are some disadvantages about asking help, you need to have patient. Just like you should have in real live. People don’t know everything, and are mostly very busy. After all, they are just volunteers, and you get the software for free. It’s not like you can demand technical help, like you could do when you paid for the software.

 

There is another thing that can go wrong, it is not their fault, nor yours. Most of the time, you have multiple solutions for one problem. If person A tells you to do A, what is perfectly correct, it can occur that it doesn’t work perfectly. Now, if person B helps you some moments later with method B, and person C with his own C-method, it can become a bit messy. But hey, eventually, there will be someone who can help you.

 

So, that’s basically why i switched, and there are probably even more things I haven’t even found out yet. I have had some problems with installing myself. A week ago were the things I find now ‘oh that simple to solve’ really annoying. I have ubuntu installed twice from the live CD, then downloaded & burned the alternate CD, and after that I had some GRUB problems. If you look it the bright way, that is how you learn it, with trial and error.

 

After the weekend, when I was finally on Ubuntu, my wireless Internet didn’t work. Yet, I was a victim to the ‘multiple-solutions-mess’. Someone let me use ndiswrapper, another one let me use a driver, but it had to be another driver. Had some difficulties with setting it up, although it really isn’t that hard, but now my Internet always works fine, what can’t be said about the other windows-machines here.

 

I haven’t even used Ubuntu for a week by now, and I don’t want anything else anymore.

Linux and Viruses don’t match

Viruses need to spread themselves in order to survive. There certainly are Linux-viruses, but they are very uncommon, and it has been a while since there was a worm plague.

It is just much harder for a virus to spread itself in Linux. Simply because every Linux system is different. You can change every file like you want to, it is not like in Windows you just have to put the virus in that file, in that folder.

It is open-source. There are far more chances a virus would be detected, cause everyone is looking into the code. And that isn’t the only good thing about open-source. People can rely on each others work, why reinventing the wheel, right ? Besides it takes much time, there are other disadvantages about it, but that is for later.

Now, before a virus can do his ‘job’, it has to run, it has to be executed. This goes really simple in Windows, you run as an administrator. Due to this, the virus can even infect system files, or load itself by a simple click of the user (mostly with a phishing-trick). I heard they have changed it in vista, and now you always have to check the ‘I am really sure’ box, kinda annoying I believe. Vista users out there, let me know ;). Now, in Linux, if you want to execute something you would have to give it permission, and then run the executable itself. Far more uncommen ;)

In the middle of the night

It is in the middle of the night. It all started around like 6 o’clock pm, when Math^ told me something about beryl. I looked it up, and it really is cool. Math^ suggested to install it, he’d help me out (I’m a huge beginner, more about it in a later post).

So we started, we installed the driver pretty fast. After this, the error came. We searched at google, tried a lot of things, but we couldn’t find it. But i didn’t give up. Couple hours later, profox decided to help me. Glx worked, but i still got the error. He wrote something i had to copy to xorg.conf, and restart.

Then it came, the screen with the strange symbols (&#&) all over the place, claiming X probably wasn’t configured right. Yeah, great. Stupid F#!@: error. Profox tried to fix beryl, in the meantime i was on another computer, re-typing all the commands. After a while, we kinda gave up, and I’d just have to reconfigure the xserver-xorg, and we would fix beryl tomorrow.

Well, yeah, in a perfect world it probably would, but now, it didn’t worked. I tried it over and over, profox and other people in IRC claiming it couldn’t be, but yet, it was. Followed several howto’s, it just didn’t worked. It was so strange.

Then profox came up with a good idea, he set up an FTP, so i could give him some files. He found it, at last. He shouted something about how stupid it was, and that the software should be improved, well, it will be improved, in like 6 months or so. I didn’t and still don’t know about what he was talking about, but i’m glad i’m back on my Ubuntu, with GNOME.