In our last episode, I explained how a savvy combination of The Wisdom of Crowds (AKA a cheesy popularity contest) and sheer laziness led me to Ubuntu as my first choice distro during my inaugural wacky Linux adventure. Today, TR staffer RexWorld delivered free CDs of both Ubuntu 5.1 Live and Ubuntu 5.1 Install, so the adventures are about to begin.

Right now, however, I’m trapped in memory test hell. Now, I know Ubuntu

says it will run as live with only 128MB of RAM, and I know that my Compaq Armada M300 has 320 MB of RAM,

but I am such a total n00b that there’s a least a 43% chance (margin of

error +/- 57%) that I’ll inadvertantly find a way to foul this project

up, right from the get-go. Thus, I’m 42 minutes into a test that may or

may not finish by the end of the Unix billenium, hoping that my RAM checks out.

In the meantime, I’d best begin learning how to…whatcha callit…use Linux! I’m starting with [Warning: Plug!] TR’s own wiki-tized Linux 101: How to set up Linux on a personal computer and [Warning: Equal-time competitor’s plug] Linux Online’s Getting Started with Linux beginner level


course. If these two can’t get me through a Live CD dry run, I may as well tattoo a Windows Vista logo to my forehead and shackle myself to the Gatesware anchor for the rest of time.

Help me open source software, you’re my only hope!

PS–Don’t go playing the Macintosh card. Avoiding high-priced software

and forced hardware upgrade cycles is the biggest reason why I want to

leave Microsoft, and Apple is equally bad on those fronts.

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Keep up with the Trivia Geek’s ongoing Wacky Linux Adventures with the wackylinux tag. If it doesn’t say wackylinux, it’s not really a wacky Linux adventure.