Full Circle Magazine FR

The first time I got around to trying Linux was after I bought a book, Suse Linux 6, and it had a CD included. I tinkered away at it and learned a lot. The X server turned out to be a bit problematic, and, after a while, the project was forgotten. After a few years, I regained my interest and looked at Suse Linux again, and started an experiment. Could I use it for everyday tasks? By then I was a sysadmin, managing a citrix farm and a few terminal servers, and I set out to see if it could be done. And it worked, with some hiccups, but I strolled along happily, gaining insight and enjoying myself. Then I switched jobs. A new laptop, pre-installed with Windows XP, was issued to me, and since I had a lot to learn in this job, the projects at home stalled. After about half a year, the laptop crashed on me for the third time. The software I had to use seemed to digest the sane part of Windows every other month, and by then I had had it. I invested all evenings for an entire week, and my new work environment was ready: a shiny and stable Hackintosh (OSX from Apple on an Intel based device.) XP was confined to VirtualBox, with snapshots, so my reinstalling days were over. Hurray! This setup worked for more than an entire year. But, being a Hackintosh, support wasn't available and updates became more and more problematic. I loved the tweakability, though. Conky on the desktop warned me about traffic jams on my route home, for example. All was well in my tech kingdom—until the machine just couldn't keep up any more. The demands rose and the laptop did not.

La première fois que j'ai trouvé le temps d'essayer Linux, je venais d'acheter un livre, Suse Linux 6, qui venait avec un CD. Je bricolais avec et j'ai beaucoup appris. Le serveur X s'est avéré quelque peu problématique et, après un certain temps, le projet est tombé aux oubliettes. Quelques années ayant passé et de nouveau intéressé, j'ai regardé Suse Linux une nouvelle fois et j'ai commencé une expérience. Pourrait-on l'utiliser pour le tâches de routine ? J'étais alors administrateur de système, responsable d'une ferme de serveurs Citrix et de quelque serveurs en ligne de commande ; j'étais décidé - j'allais voir si c'était faisable. Et cela fonctionnait, avec quelques incidents, mais je flânais dedans avec plaisir, acquérant des connaissances et m'amusant bien.

Puis j'ai changé d'emploi. On m'a donné un nouvel ordinateur portable avec Windows XP pré-installé et, puisque j'avais beaucoup à apprendre au travail, les projets à la maison étaient au point mort. Après six mois, environ, le portable s'est planté pour la troisième fois. Le logiciel que je devais utiliser semblait engloutir la partie saine de Windows tous les deux mois et, à ce moment-là, j'en avais assez. Après m'être investi toutes les soirées pendant une semaine entière, mon nouvel environnement de travail fut prêt : un Hackintosh (OS X d'Apple sur un appareil basé sur Intel) étincelant et stable. XP fut confiné à VirtualBox, avec captures d'écran ; le temps des réinstallations était donc révolu. Youpie ! Ce système a fonctionné pendant plus d'une année complète. Mais, puisqu'il s'agissait d'un Hackintosh, il n'y avait aucune prise en charge et les mises à jour devenaient de plus en plus problématiques. Cependant, j'aimais vraiment ses possibilités de personnalisation. Par exemple, Conky, que j'avais mis sur le bureau, me prévenait des bouchons sur le chemin de la maison. Tout se passait très bien dans mon royaume technologique - jusqu'à ce que la machine n'arrivait plus à suivre. Les exigences augmentaient, mais le portable, non.

The Acer TravelMate was replaced with an HP Probook for everyday use and work, and the old Acer was kind of obsolete. So, what to do with this technically functional machine? A home server? With Windows? Well, no, too much overhead, too risky, and, frankly, too expensive. OSX again? By now my dislike of their frenzy of vendor lock-in made me look further. Linux maybe? Well, that would be a nice project, I thought. Something to sink my teeth into. I set out and visited different fora and decided on Ubuntu. It seemed to be a nice distro, and had a large community, so support shouldn't be a problem. I downloaded the ISO, burned it on a CD, and booted the machine. After thirty minutes the project was done. I had reckoned it would take a few evenings, switching back and forth between laptops to get it all working. But it was up and running and staring at me. A few hours later, it was a file server, a print server, connected to usenet and happily working for me. A few days later, ssh was enabled, a wordpress blog was hosted, and later on it would become an Owncloud server as well. This made me look at my newer and faster laptop running Windows 7. Did you know that if you have got a Windows 7 Home Edition, that you are not allowed to change the routing tables? So if you have an ethernet connection and a wifi connection, it's not up to you how to send data to some specific addresses through a specific connection? This, I found rather irritating. I glanced over at my old friend in the corner and thought, 'well if I really need Windows, there is always VirtualBox'. Thirty minutes later the pleasant Ubuntu startup sound echoed through my study. I installed some of the software I had gotten used to on my home server, and installed some more interesting stuff. I downloaded VirtualBox, and, in the next few days, prepared a virtual windows machine. I still have it, it's on an external drive by now, in my drawer at work. I think.

**A full year has passed now. I have tried SolusOs, which now fuels my asus EEEPC 701, and some other distros. But I use Ubuntu 12.10 as my main machine, at work and at home, and I am loving it. Unity is fine for me, Cairo Dock compliments it very well. PlayOnLinux made my virtual Windows completely obsolete, and none of all my previous computers have been so trustworthy.

It just gets things done, like it is supposed to.