Re: [OT] Who uses Linux? (was RE: [newbie] Mandrake...too many apps?)

[the Duchess of the Antipodes]

> But I'm just wondering because, without getting into a flame war, I'm
> surprised how bad the installation of Mandrake is.

i'm a 15 year old with no experience whatsoever with anything but
windows (unless you count the array of prehistoric apples i played with
at school as a child) , and i managed to install linux on my second try,
with only a cursory glance through the documentation... i have no doubt
that it would have been on my first try, had partitionmagic not read the
free space on one of my existing partitions as a separate partition...
that threw me into vast amounts of confusion for about half an hour, and
i dithered with diskdruid for another half hour, before trying fdisk and
finding it much easier.

i confess i impulse-bought mandrake a few weeks ago... the macmillan 6.5
distro; the only linux i've ever seen offered for sale in my little
corner of new zealand. i saw it and simply had to have it, being a
wannabe geek. since then i've realised just how out-dated it is, but i
suppose i'll have to make do until i figure out how to update it...
which will probably take quite some time, as i haven't gotten much
beyond setting up kppd (although not correctly; i messed up the dns
settings, or whatever they're called -- i never seem to know the right
terms for things). 

this lack of progress can generally be attributed to the fact that when
i was installing x-windows, it refused to accept settings other than
400x600 in 8-bit colour, and with a desktop like that, i can't even see
whole popup windows. i resolved to do something about it, but haven't
actually *done* that something yet, because the thought of exposing
myself to those settings again is enough to make me turn a pale shade of
green and flee the room... that and i've been busy writing a book, doing
early spring-cleaning, planning a trip to america and suffering from
influenza. but as soon as i have time, i *swear* i'm going to learn
linux. then, *maybe*, i'll upgrade myself from wannabe geek, to
geek-in-training...

the duchess.

p.s. i have the wardrobe, though! six t-shirts from thinkgeek.com! and i
have a stuffed penguin! and i devour slashdot upon a daily basis... oh,
god, *please* tell me i'm not a total failure and i have the makings of
a "real" linux user...!!