For the last couple of months I've been somewhat smitten, or at least lightly bitten, by the Linux bug.
Back in '06 or so I put a few distros onto my first XP box in a multi-boot setup. I don't even remember which ones, but I'm pretty sure they included Knoppix, Fedora, Mandrake, and possibly SuSe. I lost interest about a year later, so I removed the Linux distros and restored the space for use by XP.
I've dabbled with a "live" CD from time to time, but without the ability to make persistent changes, I felt no strong compulsion to pursue things further. But when I learned about the possibility running Linux off a USB flash drive with perstistence, my interest level jumped. Thanks to PloP, I learned I could boot off a USB using my circa 2005 computers. I started by burning a few live DVDs and CDs, and started experimenting. I tried more than 20 different distributions, but narrowed my focus to distros that supported both the Dvorak keyboard layout, and connecting to my wireless network. Along the way I discovered a number of tools for creating bootable USB drives from disk ISOs.
I have since learned that distros built from Ubuntu feature a very simple persistence feature, so I have mostly worked with Linux Mint, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu. I tried out Ubuntu proper, but it fell short when compared to the derivatives already mentioned. During my brief experimentation I found the Unity desktop manager to be tedious and non-intuitive.
I have really enjoyed learning more about Gnu/Linux. I like the community culture around Linux--where I feel like more of an "insider" than I generally do with Windows. In fact, due to some annoying quirks that Microsoft employs to "protect" itself from piracy, my fully licensed copy of Windows XP no longer functions on my desktop, which has pushed me over to Linux by necessity. I've been wanting to blog about these experiments for some time, as I believe encouraging more folks to try out Linux would be a really good thing. Same story where the Dvorak alternate keyboard layout is concerned. I have also encountered a number of cool programs and program types, many with Mac and Windows versions, along the way.
I am composing this blog entry with the ScribeFire plugin for Chrome/Chromium, via Lubuntu running off an 8 GB usb drive.
