How Not To Install Linux
How To Ruin A Software Installation In Ten Easy Lessons
We like Bill Gates as much as the next guy. But this columnist wanted a change from Windows. So he tried to install Linux instead. What happened next will send chills down your Start Menu.
Elsewhere in the Technology section of this Web site you'll find a report on "How To Install Linux," a.k.a. Caldera Systems' OpenLinux 2.2, an operating system that will take the place of Windows or whatever you've got on your computer as the user-friendly interface between you and the computer's functions.
Just for this week I'll abandon my customary role as Digital Daily's Nostradamus and fulfill my other role as the resident Tim Taylor (pictured). This week's column is:
How Not to Install the Linux Operating System, or Anything Else for that Matter
As you can probably tell, my installation didn't go well. In fact, it hasn't been completed yet. I can't blame the problems on software or documentation. The only suggestion I have is for a new label on the software -- "Warning: The most dangerous thing about this software is the idiot holding the box."
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, to the question of why I would turn my back on Windows and equip my computer with running the Linux operating system. Do the words "Blue Screen of Death" mean anything to you? I'm tired of continually rebooting my computer for no reason other than Windows 95 is flakier than a three-day-old croissant. Is it wrong to want to print a document from my browser screen without Microsoft's print spooler crashing?
Unlike a lot of Internet users, I don't consider Bill Gates to be the anti-Christ. (Click for an estimate of Bill Gates' net worth right now.) No one need toss him to the ground and shave his head to look for tattooed sixes on my account (although it'd probably be funnier than the pie mugging photos).
But I do see Bill as the Lucy Van Pelt of the software world -- and the rest of us get to be Charlie Brown. Every time Gates issues a new piece of software, I picture Lucy, holding a football, telling Charlie Brown to trust her. "C'mon Charlie. I know that last software was a little buggy, but I fixed every bug in this version, and it won't cost you that much more. Trust me." Aaauuuugghh!
So, with that as the background, about two months ago I ordered Caldera's version 2.2 of the Linux OS. It arrived in early September -- hayfever season.
Caldera's software wouldn't recognize a second partition I'd previously created on my hard drive. My solution? Erase the empty partition and start over using the Caldera-provided Partition Magic. Now, the stupid part. My system only recognizes drives of two gigabytes or smaller unless the drive has been formatted with a "drive overlay," a way of "tricking" the system to use a larger drive. When I erased the empty partition, I removed the means for my system to find the boot drive. I hadn't touched the critical data, yet I also couldn't get at it. The drive virtually disappeared.
Unfortunately, in early September, the pollen count in Minnesota rises faster than the national debt during the Reagan administration, and I'm firmly convinced that there is an inverse relationship between snot and IQ. In other words, the more of the former, the more likely you'll think like Homer Simpson.
Did I mention I started the install knowing I had to be somewhere else in an hour? There's nothing like a little pressure to make you screw up an install.
Well, I had backed up my hard drive...in May?of 1998.
You can tell where this is headed. Rushed for time, without making a backup for my hard drive and with my head feeling like I'd had a four martini lunch, I started a software install. And then things turned ugly.
I have two Micron computers, a desktop and a laptop, and thus, two incompatible copies of Windows 95.
To this day, I still haven't found the Windows 95/version OSR 2 disk for my desktop computer. I can only assume I threw it away with one of the numerous piles of paper that clutter the top of my real desk, something I would have been much less likely to do if I kept my disks in their cases and in a safe place.
At this point, two weeks had passed, my computer was still DOA, and I was working from my laptop. Time to call in Steve Morman of The Help! Menu. Having worked with Steve, I know he can be bribed with pilmeini and vodka. His diagnosis? Not only was my drive shot, (I already knew that) but my CD-ROM drive was also inoperative (It apparently died of old age). That's why I got no response when I tried to
re-install to a hard drive using a boot floppy and the Windows CD-ROM.
The first thing I checked with my newly operating computer was e-mail. At the top of the list was an advertisement from PowerQuest for DataKeeper, an automatic disk back-up utility.
My desktop machine is working now, although I still haven't had the heart to actually erase and reformat my original boot drive (I'm running on an older drive, the one that I'd used for a back-up over a year ago). I've installed a new DVD-ROM drive and hardware playback card for $250. Since I added the DVD I had to upgrade my audio board to the tune of $150.But there was one final expenditure.
But the expenditure that hurt the most was the final $100 spent. I'm now running Windows 98.
AAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!!!!
--Tom Egan has worked the information business from photography and journalism to video production and online editing. He writes about technology from his home in Saint Paul, Minn., within three blocks of four bars that serve Guinness on tap.
