get your feet wet with Linux/Fedora easily: installation tutorial

Moved here and kept updated :

http://paulsdigitalworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/get-your-feet-wet-with-linuxfedora.html

Fedora 9 features list unveiled

Moved here and kept updated:

http://paulsdigitalworld.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-9-feature-list-leaked.html 

Fedora to be released in 3 days

I’ve been using fedora since fedora 5. I’m gonna keep an eye on this. Fedora According to my experience with fedora 7, they actually put the system a few days earlier than the releasing time. Although I don’t know if the links will be visible. And look at this ftp://ftp.cs.hacettepe.edu.tr/pub/mirrors/fedora/linux/releases/ and this ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/fedora/linux/releases/ You can see 8 already! But they won’t let you see the contents. But we have a peek ha!

And here are some screen shots from RC3. The interface should be the same.

http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.php?linux_distribution_sm=Fedora%208%20RC3

2 days now.

I received a letter from Fedora project asking me if I want to join them. I’ve loved fedora but it’s kind of at a halting state. Since it’s earlier versions, 6, 7, 8, you can see from the feature list that there aren’t many new things. Maybe the deeper changes are hidden from the surface discriptions but what do you guys think are there  that we can make fedora better. To me, fedora 7 only improved in one very exciting way: intel 2200 bg wireless works out of the box. Are we saying that linux is so mature that there’s only keeping up with the hardwares but no evolution?

Oh, btw, there’s a link in the comment that you can join fedora project through.  As a linux distribution, the community is very hospitable and everything. I haven’t been part of the project because I am a busy person myself But according to my experience, they are good. So even if you’re not a CS major, there are still marketing and all kinds of jobs to do and it’s great experience too using your own speciaties to help with some cutting edge computer technology.

What an operating system ought to be like

I feel lucky that I grew up side by side with computers. Whenever they introduce new things, you just catch up. It’s kind of sad for “computer learners” when they’re crammed with all those “computer knowledge”. Computer things are just things that happen around me everyday so you just know them.

Besides the ability to program, I am not a computer science guy so I am more of a computer user. So I’d like to say something from the user’s point of view. Whoever gets what follows, I hope you can be the new Bill Gates and rule the OS world.

Windows, Linux, Mac OS has all grown too “advanced” for daily users, not even to mention Solaris, FreeBSD those sort of heavenly things. What do you do on your computer every day? I can list my tasks on a napkin.

Whenever a friend asks you to “fix” his/her computer or something, they’ll say “I just want to do this and the computer won’t let me” (Or is not responding etc). So why don’t we have an operating that just does “this”.

My idea of an OS in the future is custermer-based. There are many tasks they can choose to do but the computers are designed just to do those. Microsoft offers a spoon that works as a remote to our TV. But why do we want a spoon that operates our TV? So that we can scoop and switch channels? But most of the time, we just want to get our food served, smoothly. So why don’t we have a computer that turns on and 4 choices shows up: check your email, surf the internet, use office or play some music.

It is not at all hard to hide all the configuration from the user with any already existant system, and the future of the business is to have personel remotely manage the software, system configurations, updates, installing of new functionalities on request from the customer, or at least the way I see it. The business could work like this: you go to a company to sign up for a computer like you do with a phone company. You give a description of what you need to do on your computer and the company will offer you something that turns on and does your work. (OpenOffice is probaby gonna get more popular.) If you need something else or something new, then you simply email the company and the engineers come up with a solution and they install the software remotely on your computor and you can work with it the next day.

I wonder my idea will get expensive, but considering the engineer’s ability to manage thousands of these actions on a computer per day, it should not at all be. The time should largely be spent on understanging the customers’ peculiar requests that says: I want the computer to pick up a call for me at 4 and order grocery at 4:30. But those are not at all undoable. You just install a software, again, customized, to let them schedule their weekly shopping at Wal-Mart by filling in a time and a shoppint list.And above all, the thing got to be simple. No configurability at all at the user’s end.

Microsoft stopped Microsoft Bob which may be a not bad choice because the thing with Microsoft Bob is, as always, we don’t want something fancy and complicated, we want things simple and efficient.

This resembles what I have in mind in a way, only less specialized and with no real user support:

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/turn-your-old-pc-into-a-webapp-monster-with-gos-318346.php   

advice for computer dummies, beginers

If you just go buy a computer and use it without “making it work your way”, you definitely fall into this category. So here are some advice for you. But you’re already reading my blog, so you’ll soon be fine using your computer.

1. Learn or ask the engineer to partition your hard drive for you. (Exploit the service now that he’s already there to help you. Don’t wait till later to learn the truth the hard way.) This simply works when your computer has a problem that you have to re-install the system or something. If you have more than one partitions, you can save your data on the non-system partition  and you won’t lose all your data.

2. Don’t upgrade your system. I know sometimes you need some new functionalities and stuff. But don’t easily upgrade your system. Your hardware capacity is consistent with your pre-installed system. Upgrading could be disastrous speed, usage experience. If you really need something new on your older systems, there should always be replacement softwares that are also free. Try to look for those. One thing good about IT world is that CS students have to have some homeowork problems and some people just enjoy the process of problem solving, so there are a lot of wonderful free softwares out there. If you can’t find them, just let me see what you need in a comment.

3. When the system is very slow, try to find some one/way to re-install your system instead of doing defragment. Disk defragment helps in some way, but when your system is barely responding, it doesn’t get you very far. And systems eventually become corrupted. So it comes back to the 1st advice, try to use partitions and it won’t be a problem if you need to re-install.

4. If something different happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean something went wrong. Don’t freak out. (Just a general moral.)