Tinkering with Linux and the XP Beast

Michael Perry — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:05:59 +0000

I recently decided to stress test my Microsoft Technet+ subscription a bit and download a few things to toss at my newest system. I had started with another rather ordinary install of Ubuntu 7.10 AMD64 on it and now I know how to get everything I want to work without installing 32bit stuff. Its a easy transition actually and the things I want to work like watching movie trailers on Yahoo or Apple just works. So I did a XP 64 install and found out that Technet had given me XP 64bit 2003 version. Somehow this is slightly different and a few things would not install. An interesting lack was I could not see the network card or sound card until I figured out how to install the Nvidia enumerator which is part of a unknown PCI device in the Hardware Mangler in XP. Once having done that, I could move on to actually making the build network and do sound. Silly me. Now why would i want a system that I play on to do those things? On Linux, it all just works and there is not much wonking around. On XP it does not. On Vista 64bit these systems product elegant and wonderful blue screens when the ASUS Optical drive is plugged in. Unplug it and it all works. Great. Thanks! Give me a system from which I cannot install any of my CD based Windows stuff until I get yet another package installed. This led me to a rather interesting set of virtual CD tools like Daemon Tools which is pretty cool at one level and kinda frustrating at another. The coolness level is virtualizing a CD drive and being able to make an ISO image look like one. I’m curious though. It seems if I just mounted a ISO image on Linux in loop back mode and shared that directory using samba it would be the same or almost? Anyways, any innovation that seems to make Windows greater has probably been around in other OS’es for some bit of time. No proof of this; but I always wonder why even the most primitive of consoles in Linux has the ability to do virtual TTYs and Windows in all its GUI-ability requires an additional tool. Another one is one we bemoan at work on occasion. We can simply SSH to Linux boxes, do things, make changes. On Windows, we’re forced to rDesktop. Seems kinda overkill to me.

Anyways, I managed to get it all working but then I looked at the work and hated it. There is something ugly about having that desktop running all the time and not being able to run “apt-get” to make it do something more :). So I pulled the disk drive and put back in my Ubuntu drive. Hell, I can run VMware server full-screen in one pager window at all times if I want or need my XP experience.

I’m sure there must be other tools that are the same. One that comes to mind is screen. I showed this to a Windows friend and his only reply was “so?”. Well, I guess its a difference in uses and the habilis mentality. I am habilis and I use but I also want some mastery. I don’t want the experience to be all one way and that one way points north to Washington state. Give me a tapestry of many colors from which to paint my needs and desires. Happiness swells in my head and heart then.

Tinkering with XP is hard. It just does not really want to be tinkered with. Things like:

changing a theme or skin.
adding a package using a tool that is not directly web-based (i.e., browser)
figuring out how to make XP do virtual desktops
making icons and fonts change sizes without rebooting

These are all tinkering type things and are very easy in Linux. We all really want to take over after we install a OS and own it; make it do things or look a certain way. Way back when, I felt really locked down with Windows 2000. It seemed I had this one look and that was it. Then I saw Linux on Art’s old GAP system. Man! It was like a blinding burst of illuminating light and… choice.

I’ll take real choice everytime to fulfill the habilis in me.

Mikes Thoughts » 2008 » February » 03

Tinkering with Linux and the XP Beast