The Linux Extremist

As an insatiable blogger, I don’t just write in my blog, I read others as well. One of the more interesting threads I’ve been following lately has to do with the travails of a young lady who is just getting introduced to Linux. She’s been playing around with Live CDs in the hopes that one distribution is going to work perfectly with her wireless card. Unfortunately, the chipset she’s working with means this isn’t likely; it’s a Broadcom wireless card, and native Linux support is iffy at best: in fact, I’ve not heard of it working except with some hacking around. Most of the time, one has to use ndiswrapper. I’ve done it myself; all told, it took less than 10 minutes, and I was up and running.

What struck me about her plight is her apparent refusal to just install a distribution of Linux on her hard drive. What she wanted was to somehow slipstream these hacks into a Live CD, or alternatively onto a USB key, before daring to actually take the plunge.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but this simply isn’t going to work. Working with Linux does require having a sense of the value of play, and being willing to engage in it, even if that involves risk.

“Play” is an often underrated word. Strangely enough, I learned its true value from John Cleese. A very long time ago, when I was a trainee with the British computer company ICL, I saw a videotape of a speech he gave regarding the virtues of “play”. He was doing this in his capacity as the owner of a training videos company called Video Arts.

Mr. Cleese stated that a study of the most effective people in British organisations had in common their ability to play. By this, he meant play with ideas, notions, scenarios and yes, mechanisms. Much of the time, play is a process of experimentation as well as amusement.

This thought reoccured to me when I was learning about Linux; I’ve often had to engage in informed “play” in getting various device drivers to work. At the beginning, I made plenty of mistakes; I screwed up machines, wiped them clean and started again. But trying out new ideas showed me what worked and what didn’t. The feedback loops from these processes combined and eventually I knew what I was doing. This blog’s how to sections are an attempt to provide the results of further “play”, so as to assist others in their “play”.

My advice to anyone who is as nervous about moving from the Live CD state to an “installed” state is this; back up your critical files onto a USB key or writeable CD and go for it. Yes, there is an overhead if not all of your devices are instantly detected by Linux; to be perfectly honest, Linux is better at this than Windows. I have never been in a situation when I’ve installed Windows and not had to have a packet full of CDs with device drivers on them.

Get used to the idea, if you’re a newbie, that you may install the OS a few times before you fully get the hang of it. Be prepared for making a mess of things and experiment. Once you’ve gone through the learning curve, then share the knowledge you’ve gained with others. But above all, keep hold of the element of play; be prepared to try new ideas, even if they sit outside the how-tos on the web or in books.

In the final analysis, this is one of the strengths of Linux; engaging in this process means that the average Linux user has a lot greater idea about what is going on with their computer than the average Windows serf. From knowledge comes the ability to customise and control, and thus, better computing. Not bad for a virtue as underrated as play.

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