Aviatrixie
January 2nd, 2006, 04:44 AM
Hi Ya'll :)
Well... I've been putzing around the forums here for a couple weeks now and thought it's about time to say hi. I have popped into the IRC chat a couple of times to say hi and ask a few questions, but haven't felt the need to say hello here until now.
First off, I'd like to say that I'm really impressed with Ubuntu. It found literally everything in my system right off the bat. I spent a month doing the live CD shuffle and 5.10 was the only one that had zero problems with my totally non-stock mutt of a PC.
Last summer my son came to me with a totally messed up PC. Seems while he was away at college he was into a lot of :::ahem::: file sharing. In the process he picked up a particularly nasty CWS browser hijack (tooncomics, for those who are familiar with CWS) on his XP Pro install. As luck would have it I had just bought a retail box full install of XP Home to replace the 98SE on my own PC. As my son had infected my own personal PC with a less devastating CWS the previous summer I was familiar with how hard it is to clean up the mess. I learned all about registeries with that one, but tooncomics was a lot worse. Seems it has a hidden .exe that changes it's filename on each reboot, and at reboot tries to call home to reinstall itself. After a weekend of running CWShredder, Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, AVG antivirus, scowering the web for clues of how to fix his os, and posting to various forums on the matter, I finally relented and installed my brand new XP on his system. (Before you ask... his PC was one that my ex-husband put together and he used a corporate copy of xp pro that he got from work on it. I know... not really legal. But then, he put it on my PC too. I realized what was going on and put 98SE back on my PC later.)
So there I was... faced with having to spend another $200 on a copy of XP. And getting up the next day and making sure my virus and spyware definitions were up to date. And making sure the scans were done.
I was an early adaptor. My first PC was a TI-99 I bought in 1982. I loved it so much I wound up adding on a peripheral expansion box, a 32k memory expansion card, two 5 1/4" dsdd floppy drives, a 512k corcomp ramdisk, a modem, and a speech synth. I wound up as VP of the local users group.
Over the years I've owned and used TI's, old Xerox CPM machines, Commodores, Ataris, Macs, and assorted M$ machines, from dos machines with nothing more than 512k mem and a 360 floppy to what we use today. Pretty amazing, really.
Anyway... After I fixed my son's situation I decided I wanted an alternative to Windows. Linux was only something I was only vaguely aware of at that point (understand... I'm NOT a geek... only a user. Actually, I'm an airline pilot. Or... I was... I went out on medical retirement a few months ago. Guess I need something to keep my mind piqued... ergo this post. ;) A bunch of Googling got me interested in Linux enough to start doing a ton of downloading and doing the live-CD shuffle. Puppy (Firefox won't stay open), Damn Small Linux (cool!... but 50% of the time the boot hangs while scanning USB on boot), Mepis (hangs with black screen at end of boot), Beatrix (I really like this one, and it was my first attempt at a Linux install, but it won't install. I think it doesn't like the fact that my HD is slave on ide1), Slax Kill Bill (seems to work flawlessly, but asked more questions than I wanted to answer at the moment), Slax Popcorn (works flawlessly, but really looks like it wants to stay a live CD),
Linspire Five Oh (Crashes my video like Mepis)... You get the point.
My Ubuntu Live CD 5.10 worked flawlessly. It felt like a real operating system. (Albeit a bit slow.) After a couple of days I decided to take the plunge. After all of the horror stories I saw about MBR probs with grub I pulled my HD and stuck in a spare 20g hd I had laying around. Stuck in the ISO... gave the whole drive to Breezy. I answered a few questions (no rocket science) and sat back. When it was all done I was given a new install of Ubuntu to play with. Over the last 2 weeks I've managed to install all of the drivers, extentions, plug-ins, and programs to make it do 99% of the things I do daily on my PC. Kudos to the Ubuntu programmers!!! :)
Now... as a newbie, I'm allowed to ask questions. And I DO have some! LOL For now, I'm also a newbie to WIFI. I need to sort out WEP, WPA, WPA2, and how it all relates to Linux and my router. It's a Westell Versalink 327w (got it from Verizon... googling tells me it's kinda junk. I'm afraid I'm broadcasting my life to the world as I type!) But I think that belongs in another area of the forum. All I really want to do now is say hello.
Anyway... hi! :)
Trixie
Well... I've been putzing around the forums here for a couple weeks now and thought it's about time to say hi. I have popped into the IRC chat a couple of times to say hi and ask a few questions, but haven't felt the need to say hello here until now.
First off, I'd like to say that I'm really impressed with Ubuntu. It found literally everything in my system right off the bat. I spent a month doing the live CD shuffle and 5.10 was the only one that had zero problems with my totally non-stock mutt of a PC.
Last summer my son came to me with a totally messed up PC. Seems while he was away at college he was into a lot of :::ahem::: file sharing. In the process he picked up a particularly nasty CWS browser hijack (tooncomics, for those who are familiar with CWS) on his XP Pro install. As luck would have it I had just bought a retail box full install of XP Home to replace the 98SE on my own PC. As my son had infected my own personal PC with a less devastating CWS the previous summer I was familiar with how hard it is to clean up the mess. I learned all about registeries with that one, but tooncomics was a lot worse. Seems it has a hidden .exe that changes it's filename on each reboot, and at reboot tries to call home to reinstall itself. After a weekend of running CWShredder, Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, AVG antivirus, scowering the web for clues of how to fix his os, and posting to various forums on the matter, I finally relented and installed my brand new XP on his system. (Before you ask... his PC was one that my ex-husband put together and he used a corporate copy of xp pro that he got from work on it. I know... not really legal. But then, he put it on my PC too. I realized what was going on and put 98SE back on my PC later.)
So there I was... faced with having to spend another $200 on a copy of XP. And getting up the next day and making sure my virus and spyware definitions were up to date. And making sure the scans were done.
I was an early adaptor. My first PC was a TI-99 I bought in 1982. I loved it so much I wound up adding on a peripheral expansion box, a 32k memory expansion card, two 5 1/4" dsdd floppy drives, a 512k corcomp ramdisk, a modem, and a speech synth. I wound up as VP of the local users group.
Over the years I've owned and used TI's, old Xerox CPM machines, Commodores, Ataris, Macs, and assorted M$ machines, from dos machines with nothing more than 512k mem and a 360 floppy to what we use today. Pretty amazing, really.
Anyway... After I fixed my son's situation I decided I wanted an alternative to Windows. Linux was only something I was only vaguely aware of at that point (understand... I'm NOT a geek... only a user. Actually, I'm an airline pilot. Or... I was... I went out on medical retirement a few months ago. Guess I need something to keep my mind piqued... ergo this post. ;) A bunch of Googling got me interested in Linux enough to start doing a ton of downloading and doing the live-CD shuffle. Puppy (Firefox won't stay open), Damn Small Linux (cool!... but 50% of the time the boot hangs while scanning USB on boot), Mepis (hangs with black screen at end of boot), Beatrix (I really like this one, and it was my first attempt at a Linux install, but it won't install. I think it doesn't like the fact that my HD is slave on ide1), Slax Kill Bill (seems to work flawlessly, but asked more questions than I wanted to answer at the moment), Slax Popcorn (works flawlessly, but really looks like it wants to stay a live CD),
Linspire Five Oh (Crashes my video like Mepis)... You get the point.
My Ubuntu Live CD 5.10 worked flawlessly. It felt like a real operating system. (Albeit a bit slow.) After a couple of days I decided to take the plunge. After all of the horror stories I saw about MBR probs with grub I pulled my HD and stuck in a spare 20g hd I had laying around. Stuck in the ISO... gave the whole drive to Breezy. I answered a few questions (no rocket science) and sat back. When it was all done I was given a new install of Ubuntu to play with. Over the last 2 weeks I've managed to install all of the drivers, extentions, plug-ins, and programs to make it do 99% of the things I do daily on my PC. Kudos to the Ubuntu programmers!!! :)
Now... as a newbie, I'm allowed to ask questions. And I DO have some! LOL For now, I'm also a newbie to WIFI. I need to sort out WEP, WPA, WPA2, and how it all relates to Linux and my router. It's a Westell Versalink 327w (got it from Verizon... googling tells me it's kinda junk. I'm afraid I'm broadcasting my life to the world as I type!) But I think that belongs in another area of the forum. All I really want to do now is say hello.
Anyway... hi! :)
Trixie