Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
New Guy Le petit nouveau
My high school had a computer club that competed in the annual Computer Olympiad. It was a lot like the Olympics – only without the medals, interviews, lucrative endorsement deals, doping allegations or fans. Actually, it wasn’t anything like the Olympics. Except for the insane amount of sweating. On the designated day, teams of brainy teenagers huddled in a hot cafeteria and worked against a time limit to carry out a given programming task. Completed programs were then judged on relevance, brevity and elegance (no, dressing up your TRS-80 in top hat and tails will NOT get you extra points – I tried). Our team usually did well. Not because we were smarter than the other teams but because we had something no other team had. Me. That’s right, I was clearly the most important bull in the nerd herd. Why? I was the typist.
À mon lycée, il y avait un Club informatique qui participait à l'Olympiade informatique annuelle. Ça ressemblait beaucoup aux Jeux olympiques, mais sans les médailles, les entretiens, les contrats de promotion lucratifs, les allégations de dopage ou les spectateurs. En fait, ça n'avait rien à voir avec les JO. Sauf pour ce qui concerne la quantité monstrueuse de transpiration.
Le Jour J, des équipes d'ados intellos s'entassaient dans une cantine chaude et travaillaient contre la montre pour accomplir une tâche précise de programmation. On jugeait alors les programmes finis sur les critères de pertinence, brièveté et élégance (non, parant votre TRS-80 d'un haut-de-forme et d'une queue-de-pie ne vous apportera PAS de points supplémentaires - je l'ai essayé).
Généralement, notre équipe fut bien placée. Non pas parce que nous étions plus intélligente que les autres équipes, mais parce que nous avions quelque chose qu'aucune autre équipe avait.
Moi.
Oui, vous avez bien lu, il était évident que j'étais le taureau le plus important dans le troupeau des intellos. Et pourquoi ?
J'étais le dactylo.
Someone had to enter the string of geek-speak being spouted by my teammates and I happened to have mad typing skills (which totally killed it with the ladies, by the way). Intellectually, on the other hand, I was in over my head. I could get my name to scroll diagonally across the screen (again, catnip for the ladies), but, compared to my buddies, I was a pre-op Charlie from Flowers for Algernon. I don’t tell you this story to bore you. Although if it did, hey, Mission Accomplished! No, I bring it up to illustrate a pattern that has been with me since grade school and informs my experience with Linux.
Quelqu'un devrait entrer les chaînes de jargon geek que mes co-équipiers annonçaient et il se trouvaient que j'avais de formidables compétences en dactylographie ( ce qui, au demeurant, ne me laissait aucune chance avec la gente féminine).
Par ailleurs, côté intellectuel, j'étais complètement dépassé. Je savais faire défiler mon nom en diagonale sur l'écran (ce qui, à nouveau, rebutait les filles), mais, comparé à mes potes, j'étais Charlie avant l'intervention dans Des fleurs pour Algernon [Ndt : excellent livre culte de Daniel Keyes].
Je ne vous ai pas raconté cette histoire pour vous ennuyer. Bien que, si ce soit le cas, alors Mission accomplie ! Non, je l'ai mentionné pour illustrer ce qui m'arrive sans cesse depuis l'école primaire et qui influence mon expérience avec Linux.
See, I have always enjoyed the trappings of tech-geekery without the underlying comprehension. I know, I know, I’m every enthusiast’s worst nightmare. I’m the guy who blithely clicks CONTINUE at the bottom of every screen during an OS install and then runs around the forums cross-posting in all-caps: “LINUTS JUST ATE MY FILES WHERE IS TEH WINDOWS NOW?!!!?! GET IT BACK, YOU GUYS!!1@!!! LINUTZ SUKZZZZZZ!!! But just as I played a crucial role in the Computer Olympiad, and much as a canary was once considered a key component in the coal mining process, I feel I have been placed on this earth to play a very special role with regards to Linux. I’d like you to think of me, not as the fashion-challenged “before” image in a weight-loss advertisement, but as an augur for Linux’s arrival.
Vous voyez, j'ai toujours pu bénéficier des signes extérieurs de la geekerie technologique sans comprendre ce qui la sous-tende. Je sais, je sais, je suis le pire cauchemar de tout enthousiaste. Je suis le mec qui, sans réfléchir, clique joyeusement sur SUIVANT en bas de tous les écrans pendant l'installation d'un système d'exploitation et qui, ensuite, parcourt les forums en y consignant des messages tout en majuscules : « LINUX LE FOU VIENT DE MANGER MES FICHIERS OU EST PASSÉ WINDOWS !!!?! RÉCUPÉREZ-LE, LES MECS !!1@!!! LINUXXX NE VAUT STRICTEMENT RIENNNNNNNN !!!»
Mais, tout comme je jouais un rôle crucial dans l'Olympiade informatique et, de la même façon qu'un canari était perçu autrefois comme un composant clé dans le processus de l'extraction du charbon, j'ai le sentiment d'avoir été amené sur cette terre pour jouer un rôle très spécial en ce qui concerne Linux.
J'aimerais que vous pensiez de moi comme le héraut de l'arrivée de Linux, non pas comme l'image « avant » - peu élégant - dans une pub pour un programme de perte de poids.
Let me explain. The first non-Microsoft, non-Apple operating system I ever tried was a sexy little number named OS/2. Yes, I know this was initially developed by Microsoft but I didn’t hear about it until the Warp era, by which time it was wholly owned by IBM so GET OFF MY BACK! OS/2 Warp was pretty advanced for the time and competitive with Windows 95 (arguably much better). Later versions included Java, speech recognition, 32-bit windowing, Internet-compatible networking and *yaaaawn* look at the time, it’s getting late. No, the real genius of OS/2 Warp was that it treated operating systems the way Atari treats dragons. When Atari released Adventure for the Atari 2600, they had this graphic on the box:
Permettez-moi d'expliquer.
Le premier système d'exploitation qui n'était ni de Microsoft, ni d'Apple que j'ai jamais essayé fut un petit truc sexy appelé OS/2. Oui, je sais qu'il fut développé à l'origine par Microsoft, mais je n'en ai pas entendu parler avant l'ère Warp et, à ce moment, le propriétaire en était IBM alors LÂCHEZ-MOI UN PEU !
OS/2 Warp était très avancée pour l'époque et un concurrent de Windows 95 (vraisemblablement bien mieux). Des versions ultérieures comprenaient Java, la reconnaissance vocale, le fenêtrage en 32-bit, la mise en réseau compatible avec internet et *j'ai sommeil* regardez l'heure : il se fait tard.
Non, la vraie génie de OS/2 Warp c'était qu'il traitait les systèmes d'opération comme Atari traite les dragons. Quand Atari a publié Adventure pour l'Atari 2600, il y avait cette image sur l'emballage :
But when you popped that baby into the cartridge slot, this is how the dragon rendered:
In marketing, you sell the sizzle, not the steak. Atari did it with Adventure and IBM did with OS/2 Warp.
OS/2 promised: • BREAKNECK BOOT UPS! • MULTITASKING MADNESS! • NUTTY NETWORKING!
With such breathy promises of operating system sexiness, it’s no wonder that OS/2 Warp cornered the enthusiasts with few practical computing skills but a fondness for being mislead by marketing copy market. Which was, like, me and three other people.
So I tried OS/2 Warp on a laptop and promptly borked the damn thing so badly I actually had to RMA the machine. I also returned the OS/2 Warp package and promptly invested the proceeds in AOL.
And that should have been the end of it.
But then, about twelve years ago, I started reading about Linux and the wonders of open source (seriously, no one has ever noted how much that sounds like “open sores?”). There was something familiar about the breathy promises and cult-like devotion, something I couldn’t quite place. Whatever, I bought a copy of Xandros on eBay and loaded it. Yeah, I bought it. Erm, let’s just say I hadn’t read all of the open source manifestos that carefully.
Much like my last date with my first girlfriend, things started well enough. And then my mouse started acting hinky (a technical term referring to an inanimate object that becomes possessed by the ghost of a paint mixer). I got dizzy chasing my cursor around the screen, trying desperately to guess where I should click on one side of the screen in order to select something on the other side. I would have tried to fix the problem but there’s only so much effort I’m willing to put into this sort of thing. So, after about eight minutes, my experiment in alternate operating systems was over. Again.
I demanded my money back from XandrosBoob98 and promptly invested it in Enron.
And that should have been the end of it.
But I could still hear the siren call and, over the next few years, I started playing with other Linux flavors. I became an open source slut, willing to have a go with any flirty distro that made eyes at me. I invited them all over to make out on the couch: Suse, Debian, Red Hat, Mint, Damn Small, and even a totally nasty one called #! that wanted to do stuff I had never even heard of.
Each one had its own quirks, its own way of not working, and I remained unwilling to make a lasting commitment to any of them. I uninstalled each before they started leaving their stuff overnight and cluttering up my home (folder).
I finally realized I had a problem when a friend caught me downloading a BSD .iso. I had gone too far. And I needed help.
That’s when I discovered Ubuntu.
At first, the breathiness turned me off. This distro would change things forever! It could be loaded on a toaster, ran on air and made you irresistible to the opposite sex.
It was the sizzle again, and I was wary of buying the steak. But I had hit rock bottom and the next step was to sit around waiting for Hurd. I just couldn’t do it.
I downloaded the Ubuntu .iso and ran it as a LiveCD. And the most amazing thing happened. It just worked!
I don’t mean it ran my mouse but wouldn’t print from PDFs. I don’t mean it saw my video card but wouldn’t run Skype. I don’t mean it connected to the network but wouldn’t scan documents.
It. Just. Worked!
It was the equivalent of popping in the Adventure cartridge and having my eyebrows singed off by the dragon’s fiery breath!
This is how I know Linux has arrived. If a guy like me, who wants all the flash of a pretty new operating system but can’t be bothered to learn what ‘ls’ at the prompt does, can find happiness, then so will most people, most of whom aren’t nearly as criminally lazy as I am.
Fast forward to today. I’ve finally settled down with Ubuntu and we’ve had several laptops and one desktop together. It’s a happy home and I love my life partner even though the state of Virginia doesn’t see our union as legal.
And now I think it’s time to give back to the community. I owe it to Ubuntu after everything it’s given me. Here’s my plan: I’m going to figure out some things, learn why some people swear by the command line, explore some of the available options and tools like virtualization, automation and personalization. I’ll look at these things from the perspective of a user who knows what’s cool about Linux but doesn’t always understand why.
Think of me as the jerk down the road with a brand new Ferarri who doesn’t even know how to drive a stick shift. It’s time to look under the hood.
Am I alone? Anyone else out there know how to summon the command line but fear its voodoo? Or maybe you get tired of answering the same questions over and over for new users. If so, contact me at copil.yanez@gmail.com. I’ll try to answer simple questions or point out helpful beginner advice from the perspective of someone who loves Linux and Ubuntu but doesn’t speak source code.