Here's why I used to hate computers

[sasquatch]

First of all I grew up on a farm and the farm culture hates technology for some reason. Then one day I was at my grandpa's house and I saw this Microsoft commercial that was playing Jimi Hendrix "are you experienced?". I saw that and was loyally pissed off that they would chop up and rape one of the song's that shook my soul when I heard it. You have to understand I was 15 years old and loved that whole album. I would listen to it everytime I went to bed and would have spiritual experiences in my dreams and helped me escape the bad things I was experiencing then. I now (obviously)don't hate computers I consider the internet the new frontier like the wild west. Replacing the brothels are now porn sites, replacing the outlaws are now the hackers and replacing the sheriff is now the tech support guy on the 1-800 number.

[Maple]

1. The farm culture hates technology?

Jeepers I know farmers with air conditioned, computer and GPS equipped tractors etc. They seemed to be into it long before anyone else!

[sasquatch]

2. well some of them do

It takes some convincing for some of them. I have the German Baptist where I live and they don't have tv's or radio's. I don't know how it is where you live.

[Maple]

4. Well a lot of Dutch Reform

Some Mennonites, and then just general formerly European (generations ago) type farmers.

I'm in Canada btw.

[Syrinx]

3. That's no reason to hate computers

That's a reason to hate Microsoft. Switch to Linux. It's getting better everyday!

:linuxrules:

[sasquatch]

5. Good point

next question is how do you switch to Linux:shrug:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Either...

Buy a distro online, or download the cdrom images from a distributions website or FTP site. If you do that, you must burn the images to a cdrom disk big enough to hold the files.

(Geek Note: You can mount the images as drives under Linux, but you need Linux, so...)

Distros usually come with two different bootloaders you can choose, LILO and GRUB. These will allow you to choose either Windows or Linux at bootup. I use LILO and I like it. Bootloaders load themselves into the bootblock of the boot hard drive and then display themselves at bootup.

If you decide to go with Linux and only have one hard drive, I suggest you get another hard drive, but not for the reasons that you may be expecting:

At install time, you must partition the drives for both Windows and Linux. Now, you can do this with one drive, but you take a performance and slight data security hit if you do. What I suggest is that during loading Linux, you partition the first drive with these partitions: /(Top partition), /usr, and /var. On the second drive, partition with /swap and /home. Leave a good bit of room on the second drive for WinderZ stuff. Later, you can move your Windows swap and system files(hive files) over to the second drive and give yourself some extra Windows room. By doing this, both Linux and Windows will run fast and be just that little safer in their daily activities.

[Syrinx]

7. Maybe this will help

I'm not really familiar with this site, but it looks like it can probably help. If you really want to give it a try, I'll be glad to try to help you via pm or email.

http://www.linux.ie/newusers/beginners-linux-guide/

[sujan]

8. just try this

http://www.knoppix.org

[PennyLane]

9. Hey SasQ

Hey! I'm looking for notes from the DU get-together Saturday.
Is anything posted yet? You did a great job putting that together, by the way! :toast: