Thursday, September 29, 2005
The kernel, Kubuntu & Dawson's Creek
Over coffee and munchies yesterday I had a great conversation with Aaron about fishing and our migrations took us all the way around to the linux kernel. I made the observation that the kernel itself has become less exciting in the last few years. Lets think our way back to the linux world in the late nineties. Paying attention to what was happening in the kernel was so important. Aaron and I questioned "how many people recently have ever compiled a kernel from source?". I used to always compile my own kernels. It was a must. You grabbed some kind of distribution to install _just_ to get a system running. Then you went to work and built your system as you needed it.
We thought back over all of the major features and issues with the kernel along the way. USB support (Aaron remembers even applying a patch to get it to work), pcmcia, IDE SCSI emulation, and the mess of drivers and driver support (remember when loadable modules came into play). I remember absolutely loathing a new installation because it was always a hit and miss whether or not your Internet would work. The days of trying to get pump to work, and eventually moving to dhclient and crossing my fingers allot are gone. With the new age of distributions everything just simply works. The cards are all detected, software is installed, and installing a linux system is quite the breeze. The days of just making your computer work and take whatever applications are available are gone. The community has come to expect a working system in short time, and the focus has shifted to the applications that we use on those systems.
I am excited and fully support the growth of linux, and appreciate the growing new user base. I do feel that linux users of the past 4 years or so have missed out on the history and growth linux. I am not saying that I am one of the oldest cowboys on the ranch by any means, but I can still install a kernel from source if I need to. Apparently Linus agrees that the kernel is boring right now, and that the excitement in linux is on the desktop for the future.
What prompted all of this thought was the fact I did my first Kubuntu installation this week. I did take me a couple of times to run through the partition manager (don't press the esc key from the main screen, all of you work just *poof* disappears). I also misunderstood the wording on one section and mistakenly set 1 active and one backup on a 2 disk RAID1 setup. So I can start it all over once again. Other than the partitioning (which I'm always slow at anyways), the install was a breeze. Synaptic is great, and the default KDE 3.4 is super quick and exactly as I expected. I went right into installing packages that I need, and diving into work.
The Kunbuntu system is similar to OSX where there is no root account (unless you set the password and then actually login to root). You are just added into the admin group, and use sudo all day long in the command line. I felt right at home in Kunbuntu. I have never been a Debian user, as I had a horrible time with installations (at a time when installing was a nightmare). I can't really think of any complaints at the moment. Give it a week, but the outlook is good.
On the lighter side of life, my sleep schedule is that of a normal (relatively) person these days. I am up early enough to watch Dawson's Creek on TBS for a couple of hours before my day really gets rolling. Today Pacey and Joey were having the "sex in the relationship .... are we ready" episode. It was mildly amusing. Jack and Jen made out when they were drunk though, which was mildly amusing. I guess it's time to turn the television off and get more seriously into the days activities. ¶ 9:45:00 AM
We thought back over all of the major features and issues with the kernel along the way. USB support (Aaron remembers even applying a patch to get it to work), pcmcia, IDE SCSI emulation, and the mess of drivers and driver support (remember when loadable modules came into play). I remember absolutely loathing a new installation because it was always a hit and miss whether or not your Internet would work. The days of trying to get pump to work, and eventually moving to dhclient and crossing my fingers allot are gone. With the new age of distributions everything just simply works. The cards are all detected, software is installed, and installing a linux system is quite the breeze. The days of just making your computer work and take whatever applications are available are gone. The community has come to expect a working system in short time, and the focus has shifted to the applications that we use on those systems.
I am excited and fully support the growth of linux, and appreciate the growing new user base. I do feel that linux users of the past 4 years or so have missed out on the history and growth linux. I am not saying that I am one of the oldest cowboys on the ranch by any means, but I can still install a kernel from source if I need to. Apparently Linus agrees that the kernel is boring right now, and that the excitement in linux is on the desktop for the future.
What prompted all of this thought was the fact I did my first Kubuntu installation this week. I did take me a couple of times to run through the partition manager (don't press the esc key from the main screen, all of you work just *poof* disappears). I also misunderstood the wording on one section and mistakenly set 1 active and one backup on a 2 disk RAID1 setup. So I can start it all over once again. Other than the partitioning (which I'm always slow at anyways), the install was a breeze. Synaptic is great, and the default KDE 3.4 is super quick and exactly as I expected. I went right into installing packages that I need, and diving into work.
The Kunbuntu system is similar to OSX where there is no root account (unless you set the password and then actually login to root). You are just added into the admin group, and use sudo all day long in the command line. I felt right at home in Kunbuntu. I have never been a Debian user, as I had a horrible time with installations (at a time when installing was a nightmare). I can't really think of any complaints at the moment. Give it a week, but the outlook is good.
On the lighter side of life, my sleep schedule is that of a normal (relatively) person these days. I am up early enough to watch Dawson's Creek on TBS for a couple of hours before my day really gets rolling. Today Pacey and Joey were having the "sex in the relationship .... are we ready" episode. It was mildly amusing. Jack and Jen made out when they were drunk though, which was mildly amusing. I guess it's time to turn the television off and get more seriously into the days activities. ¶ 9:45:00 AM
