Now that I have all of your attention with that awful, awful title. . .
I am now Windows free at home!
There's a lot to this story. While I'm not sure why I went Windows-free at home, I do know how I went from using Windows to not using Windows. Went through a few Linux distros getting there, too ;)
I used to have a Linux box to play with at home, and when I started this project, I moved it to FreeBSD 5.2.1. Been using FreeBSD on my servers at work for about a year or so now, and frankly I'm loving it. The former Linux box was a perfect candidate for a server: decent memory, processor, and storage capacity, kinda sucky video and sound. The install went over without a hitch - thank you ports system!
Next was kicking the main Windows XP box to the curb. Well, the OS at least! Inspired by my success with FreeBSD ports, I gave Gentoo a shot. There were some things I really liked about Gentoo, but I ended up experiencing some build problems with a rather vanilla install. After a lot of fighting and hair pulling, I went back to good ole' Slackware. And in all these years, it's never let me down. I was very impressed by the quality of Slackware 10.0. It was the fastest, most painless Linux install I've ever done. In fact I was so happy with it I dug out my old Thinkpad, wiped out the drive and installed Slack on it too!
Once you go Slack, you never go back! ;)
The only snag I encountered was setting up the onboard NIC with my primary computer. Gentoo detected the card as eth1, and Slack picked it up as eth0. Blew an hour or so figuring out why the hell the interface wouldn't come up. Oh, well. Live and learn, live and learn. . .
My final setup includes KDE on the desktop, Kate for programming, postgresql for the RDBMS, and Apache 1.3.31 with mod_perl 1.29. Alternating between Firefox and Konqueror for the browser because I can't make up my mind which I like better. The Kontact suite (Kmail, etc.) is pretty sweet (I really like using Kmail). xmms has been a fine subsitute for Winamp. . . And for entertainment, Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament 2004 (both play natively and VERY nicely under Linux).
And fonts are really nice under X. Much more cleanly rendered than under XP.
So what have I been doing with all this? Right now, learning the ins and outs of CVS. I've never had to work with it before, and I really want to reap the benefits that CVS can provide a project. KDE comes with Cervisia, but I'm staying away from the GUI for now as I feel it will gimp my ability to learn CVS (and, to paraphrase something Petdance told me, the command line is the way God intended it to be!). From there, I'm off to pick up mod_perl, Basset, and a few other things.
If I could only figure out how to make the scroll wheel on my Logitech mouse work, I'd be a really, really happy boy. I tried messing with imwheel, but 1) it doesn't seem to support my hardware, and 2) it seems old. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? I'd really, really like my scroll wheel back.
Re:Mouse wheel (possible) solution
Timbo on 2004-07-14T22:17:38
Oops. Forgot to preview. Try this:
Section "InputDevice"<br>
Driver "mouse"<br>
Identifier "Mouse[1]"<br>
Option "ButtonNumber" "5"<br>
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"<br>
Option "Name" "Autodetection"<br>
Option "Protocol" "imps/2"<br>
Option "Vendor" "Sysp"<br>
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"<br>
EndSection<br>Re:Mouse wheel (possible) solution
CromeDome on 2004-07-15T17:40:06
Will give that a shot when I get home tonight:) Thank you :)
Re:Mouse wheel (possible) solution
CromeDome on 2004-07-17T00:36:17
If you ever find yourself in Chicago, I owe you a beer. Or if I ever find myself out your way, I owe you the same.
THANK YOU!!!:) Works like a charm! Re:Mouse wheel (possible) solution
Timbo on 2004-07-19T17:58:21
And I'll buy one for you for buying one for me. We'll have a endless (or until we can't handle any more) loop of inebriation!:-) Re:Mouse wheel (possible) solution
CromeDome on 2004-07-19T20:08:07
++inebriation; #:)
