I will have to grindle Linux
Grandad October 24th, 2007
I died today.
A bit ironic in view of yesterday’s title!
But they managed to revive me, you’ll be sorry to hear, and that is why I’m a bit later than usual in writing. However the story of my death can wait for another time.
-oOo-
Since I installed Linux the other day, I have been regretting it.
I have a habit of switching on the PC and then going off and making a mug of tea. Now when I come back, the f*cking thing is running Linux, and I want it to run Windows. So I have to reboot every time and wait for a menu to pop up. I then have about .0035 of a second to scroll down and select Windows.
That p*sses me off.
So I did a bit of research. Apparently there is a thing called Lilo. We used to have one of those for lying on on the beach. There is a file called etc/lilo.conf which I have to change. So I went looking for it. No sign of it!
I did more research.
The Linux I installed is called Ubuntu and it uses a thing called Grub.
Where the f*ck do they get these names? Are the people who write Linux high on acid or something? They have the most obscure names for everything. You don’t ’search’ or ‘find’ - you ‘grep’. And the desktop is called ‘Gnome’ or ‘KDE’.
I found the grub file and it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It had been laid somewhere else. I opened it in Kate [I rest my case!] and found a block of lines that mentioned Windows. They were at the bottom, so I moved them to the top.
I went to save the file, and it wouldn’t let me. It said I didn’t have permission!
My computer that I bought with my money has the neck to tell me I don’t have permissions!
I have reared a child. I know about authority. So I told it in no uncertain terms, that if it didn’t let me write the file, it was going to be grounded for a month, and that I’d stick burnt matches in its USB ports and use the CD tray as a pipe rack.
It relented.
It let me write the file, and it now starts up properly.
I should think so too.
F*cking little upstart!
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Coming from South Africa ubuntu jumped out at me so I decided to send you an explanation….
Ubuntu, pronounced /úbúntù/, is an ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other. The word has its origin in the Bantu languages of Southern Africa. Ubuntu is seen as a traditional African concept.[Wikipedia]
At least that explains one of the words in Linux…not sure they are doing the word any justice…? Glad i have been warned, will be staying far away from it….I would not know how to do all the “things” you have had to do to get rid of it…I am U-S-E-L-E-S-S with technology….a course would do me some good.
And Happy Birthday for the other day! Celebrated in the pub!!!
You had me worried.
BTW, did you meet God?
Natalie - Thanks for that. I will treat it with a little more respect as it seems to be a reasonable and respectable philosophy.
On second thoughts, Ubuntu, the Linux, obviously doesn’t follow Ubuntu, the philosophy, so it shall remain fair game.
Neighbour - Not half as worried as I was. All shall be revealed. In due course. When the nerves have settled.
Phew! Great to see you back, Grandad but sorry to hear you’ve had a ‘difficult’ day.
Nothing a pint of Guinness can’t fix - I hope?
You do realise it’s a criminal offence to reveal all
Steph - Thanks! But it’s more of a whiskey day.
“You do realise it’s a criminal offence to reveal all”
Sh*t! Does that mean I have to stop wearing the raincoat down to the primary school?
I wish a speedy recovery for you from your ‘death’ …
And Steph, if you look at the calendar, you’ll see that he hasn’t even been gone twenty-four full hours.
You should market that strange, near-pheromonal scent that keeps your readers so relentlessly enthralled … ‘Eau d’Ageés‘, perhaps.
Daz, I’m not sure I’d call it a “scent”…..coming from Grandad it might better be described as something else….perhaps that explains the rumors of his untimely demise.
Grandad,
Why don’t you leave the technical stuff until Ron comes back from Thailand, or wherever it was he went on his trip?
Otherwise you’ll end up having to take the laptop down the pub so Dick can try to fix it and you’ll end up having an argument with him, resulting in the Garda Siochana being called and the pair of you being slung out (again!)
Wikipedia is wrong.
Grandad is right.
Unbuntu means Fucking Little Upstart
You should see what your laptop has been saying about you on IT’S blog.. not pretty. Do you REALLY spill coffee on it just to be mean? and it would appreciate it if you’d clip your fingernails once in a while.
Grandad:
At your stage in life you should probably start running this!
mmmm I shall have to take your discipline suggestions to my neighbour who is having a hell of a time with Windows Vista….in fact right now she is burning Bill Gates in effigy in her backyard as we speak…
I’ve grindled a few things in my time but most of them were inanimate.
Linux does taste nice with a little maple syrup.
Niall - I would not have believed that unless I had seen it. Fruitcake Linux
JT - I had a shower last month.
Ian - Still no word from Ron, and I haven’t seen Dick in ages. Something strange is going on.
Rhodester - I didn’t know the little sh*t had a blog. Do you have it’s address?
[...] so many new Linux users before him, Grandad has asked the question that sets you on the road to beard, sandals, and hats with built-in [...]
carrying on from Natalie’s explanation of Ubuntu. It is considered good Ubuntu to share your beer/grub with neighbours
It is currently the ‘buzz’ word in South Africa and we are continuously encouraged to have ‘Ubuntu’ towards our fellow citizens. You on the otherhand Grandad, would be seen to have the opposite of Ubuntu - towards the tourists and for that matter Linux.
Ashley - I am full of good Ubuntu. It’s my computer that isn’t.
Don’t they teach history in today’s computer classes grandad?
GRUB = “Grand Unified Bootloader”
grep is another abbreviation but of a different sort. It comes from old vi where to search you would use g//p where RegularExpression is what you are looking for.
As far as finding things, actually you do use find and locate to find files. If someone told you to grep for the location of your grub file, well you need to smack that person. Between locate from teh command line, and the GUI tools “Find Files” in your menu, the rant seems a tad on the disengenuous side.
TheBaldGuy - When I went to school, there was no such thing as computing. In fact there was no such thing as a portable electronic device at all. Everything [and we are talking wireless and TV] was valve driven.
I take it you are a Linux aficionado, in which case it will come to you naturally. To someone who is familiar with slide-rules and Windows [at a pinch] then it is a little confusing. To put it mildly..
Oh, all the best people are in Hell, anyway…
I’d add the near-obligatory ‘get a Mac’ comment, but I might get shot/set fire to.
By the way, if you want to see truly archaic frightening old UNIX (or Lisp Machine, really) weirdness, try Emacs. Great once you get used to it; the downside is it takes a decade or so to do so.
Robert: Get a Mac for the ultimate Windows Experience
Thanks, Lads. I definitely think I’ll stick with Windows for the moment.
I’m a South African of Black Irish descent. How about a school boy game? South Africa is better than Ireland. We run over and shoot tourists (and locals) for real - no satire, no joking. Ubuntu is a myth propagated by politicians and is only “believed” by businessmen who wish to lick government’s arse and make a lot of money before they emigrate to Ireland!
ubuntu rocks, for the simple reason that it’s an *easier* way for people to linux..
it’s all a royal pain in the arse when you start off, but it won’t be easy. try and compare it to using Windows 3.1 (or 3.11 in my case) for the first time..
if you’re going to linux at all, you have to do it the hard way, ie;
login as root, if you haven’t done this before, see;
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
it doesn’t mention there how to “normalise” the root account, ie, set the root password, and use the root account when necassary..
sudo passwd
this will prompt for YOUR password (created during install for your normal user) and THEN the NEW UNIX password, pop a new pass in twice, and you’re done.
locate grub.conf
vim /the/path/where/grub.conf/exists!
make a change to the “timeout=5″ and change it to 30 seconds instead? change the default too, so that XP boots instead of Ubuntu
Vista is proving itself (as being crap, and only getting worse) which is why Ubuntu, Fedora, random other distos, and of course Mac OS are going to take the lead. Just decide, will you Linux it or Mac it?