Defenestrated! {My new desktop}

I've finally done it! Made a rather large and semi-permanent lifestyle change. Something which many people who may have known me in the past would be outraged with, insofar as to the fact that I could be so hypocritical to have done it. However, it is done, and I am happy. Much happier than I thought I'd be. The fact is, I'm typing this from within Linux. Linux, which isn't Windows. Which is now completely installed on my machine.

Linux!

The grande open-source Microsoft-challenging beacon of nerdy goodness. I owe a lot of my early knowledge of this system to a guy called Ben, who was my on-and-off mortal enemy back in high school. He was, shall we say, a big Linux advocate. I, shall we say, was not. But, if there was one thing that did break up the constant arguing over whether the ball was in or out and whether the thing-with-a-thing was a rule or a trick*, it was the tales he would tell of the faroff land called "Linux."

*"It's not a rule, it's a trick!"
- Ben, that guy

For the uninformed, Linux (or GNU/Linux as it is correctly called) is a complete free open-source alternative to Microsoft. Not only is it a full UNIX-based operating system, but a free replacement for just about everything else, including Microsoft Office and just about any other application you could want. (Unfortunately for me: there's no .NET framework; Visual Studio .NET is about the last Microsoft product I truly need. Oh, and DirectX for games.)

Let's just say that after all these years of wondering, I've finally been inspired by the Software Engineering subject 252, which taught us all about UNIX shell scripts and makefiles and the like. It really is a cool platform to work with, especially for programming. (Which is kinda ironically unfortunate since I suspect I'll be doing most of my private-use programming with Visual Studio, in Windows!)

Unfortunately, it's known for being fiendishly difficult to set up, particularly if you wish to keep your existing Windows installation. So, with the help of Tim, Adric and Matthew "Tuxxee", I got onto what looks to be one of the best distributions, Kubuntu, (a derivative of Ubuntu which in turn is a derivative of Debian) and played with its LiveCD for a week. Then, after my last exam Wednesday, I came home and spent two days partitioning and formatting my hard drive, and installing it!

And I'm glad to say I've emerged unscathed. The only negative thing is that of course my Windows system is missing a 10GB hard drive (and for some reason Windows 98 also thinks my Linux swap drive is an actual drive and shows it in My Computer but doesn't let me open it - stupid Windows). But I'm having way more fun in Linux, and I've spent the rest of these few days configuring all that can be configured, making shell scripts and aliases, downloading new software using the mostly-brilliant package manager Synaptic, and making nice icons for things with the GIMP. I'm in nerd paradise ;)

Here's my new KDE desktop:


So, it really is quite cool. Thanks to all the aforementioned people for your help. Woo freedom!

"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had." (source)
- Linus Torvalds

* By the way, I've titled this post "defenestrated" on the advice of a few guys who, while they acknowledge that it actually means "to have been thrown out of a window", choose to take its literal translation as "de-Windowed". ;)