A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

begins with a single Linux installation. I had some free time from classes (actually, I was trying to find a way to procrastinate) so I decided to install Linux on an old desktop computer. It's something I've been meaning to do for some time since it's one of the requirements of being a geek, and geeks are awesome. But in reality, I already have been calling myself a geek ever since I bought a Zaurus, but that's probably cheating. Installing on a desktop is the real thing.

So the question was... which distro? There seemed to be so many of them, and to tell you the truth, I still wasn't to sure what they all meant. So I just stuck to what I knew: Fedora. I used it at my summer internship and it seemed pretty cool. So off I went to download the three-disks worth of data (yes, I know, I should also download the fourth "recovery" disk but I like to live life on the wild side). It was already pretty late, so I decided to just let it download while I slept.

It felt like Christmas morning when I woke up. I was finally going to begin my journey. But then the Grinch came by and stole it all away: I had accidentally downloaded the 64-bit version. No one ever said the road to geekdom would be an easy one. So my Linux installation would have to wait until afternoon.

It took hours to get it to work. I had to run around everywhere to find drivers. I pulled parts out of the computer and had to switch it with newer parts. And I finally gave up when it asked me to find Bin Laden. Okay, honestly, I did the whole thing while watching a football game. It was a piece of cake! I had heard all these horror stories about installing Linux, but Fedora Core is just so awesome. It was as easy if not easier than installing Windows.

After the install, I spent the rest of the day playing with it. It's pretty awesome how good of a personal desktop Linux can be. It has all the desktop applications you would want, and they're all free! So I asked myself "Hey, Anthony, why don't you use this as your primary computer?" and after some thought I answered to myself "Internet." After being annoyed at the short answer I gave to myself, I had to ask myself "What the hell do you mean by that?" But now I think I know what I meant. The vast majority of the internet nowadays is targeted toward Internet Explorer. Most of the sites work for Firefox and (my favorite) Opera as well, but not all. And the sites that don't work for them are sometimes the really cool ones, like Launch.

So for now, I'll just stick to the original reason I installed Linux: to run my own webserver.