Coming Home

By Ed Hurst | Nov 10, 2003 at 16:56:57

It will always be about freedom. I have long contended that the ordinary desktop user cannot afford to become a partisan for any operating system or software. I don’t begrudge partisans their love; we all need a place to call home. What I can never appreciate is the degree to which a vocal minority have so identified themselves with their favorite OS/distro that anything less than worship is taken as a personal insult. My sense is that, thankfully, most Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) users are not there.

For me, and it seems many others, my computer is a tool, albeit my best tool for the work I do. When the use of That Monopoly OS became a threat to my work, I was forced to investigate alternatives. The search was made pleasant by my natural delight in conquering challenges. But I conquer them for a reason: they make my work easier in the long run. My love for tinkering and tweaking is tempered by my even greater love for what I do with my life.

Linux was the right solution at the right time. Good old RedHat, soon to pass from the scene, was just within my grasp and worked well with the hardware I cobbled together. As the bits and pieces of that first machine were replaced now and then, there were times when my frustration with imperfect implementations of Linux tempted me back to the Borg. Each time, I was quickly left with the same helpless feeling that nothing could save me from the BSOD. I left it for good a couple of years ago, and haven't looked back.

In large measure, that resolve was based on what I felt was the coming of age of the Linux desktop. Sure, the debate rages even now over whether Linux is ready for the average home user. No two of us will agree. Frankly, it could not possibly be a matter of crossing some well-defined line of departure. For a host of reasons not worth recounting here, I believe FOSS has arrived. Specifically for me, there is nothing I want to do on a computer that can't be done with FOSS. In most cases, FOSS does it better nowadays.

Several distros of Linux have gotten so easy to install that it handily beats that OEM OS. Trouble is, in the process of getting there, where the defaults are carefully chosen to satisfy the greatest number possible of likely consumers, we are forced to accept some bloat. What's easiest is seldom what's best, and what's best is often too hard. Still, we can't afford to make it too easy, lest we lose all our advantages.

Indeed, there's a certain class of users we could easily do without. Those folks show up in every endeavor of human life, and they are particularly bad in the world of computers. Anything worth having will cost you something. If you can't pay cash to have it done for you, then you'll have to invest your time and learn to do it yourself. If you can't afford fancy new hardware, you have to be more selective what you run and how you run it. Such is life, and we shouldn't expect to change that by much, so we can afford to exclude some.

Being no connoisseur, I am not the sort to sample everything willy-nilly. I've only tested things I felt would work for me. I want the fanciest stuff I can get and still get the work done. Eye-candy should work, too. This leaves me out of ever being a reviewer of anything, except in the narrowest sense for like-minded computer users. I'm quite willing to describe my experiences, but such is merely indicative, not definitive.

For just more than two years, I had the same basic computer system. In an ongoing effort to get the most from it, I kept an eye out for genuine improvements in FOSS, particularly Linux. Too often, I was tempted to grab the next incremental upgrade of this or that, and wasted some time that way. In the process, I sampled a handful of distros. One or two broke my heart, but most were just okay at the time, and a few I found quite good. I won't try to convince you my choice was the best of all possible worlds, but I ended up a fan of SuSE. It was as close as any to what I felt I wanted. It felt like home to me, and was comfortable fit on my machine.

That is, until recently. For the first time, the jump from 8.1 to 8.2 brought a perceptible loss of performance across the board. My research with other distros indicated similar results for similar hardware. It seemed to me that a line had been crossed, and my system was now in the "obsolete" class. Rather than chase all manner of lighter Linux distros, I decided to indulge my curiosity with FreeBSD. My reading up to that point indicated it had some advantage on older hardware like mine.

So I hammered away at the installation and setup process, and was surprised to find the finished product was indeed quite what I had hoped. No, I didn't really like how complicated the setup was for me. Tinkering isn't that much fun, but it was the grand result of that struggle that made me feel I had chosen well. I noted my delight in previous articles, as well as my sorrows. I was prepared to adapt and make myself at home, because it seemed the best choice. It worked well enough to discourage me from looking any further.

The strongest leg of my resolve was that aging hardware. My choice was largely pragmatic. That BSDs are more secure, more stable, and so forth, was just icing on the cake. In those areas, Linux had always been good enough. Then the most unexpected thing happened: I was offered a new machine at a price I couldn't reject. In exchange for some menial labor, and a promise to make small payments in the future, my new machine was vastly superior to the old.

As usual, I googled long and hard to see what sort of issues this collection of hardware might offer. It looked promising, and I was sure the next stable release of FreeBSD would install nicely. As the shipping of the disks was delayed, I realized Linux would install even more easily. Better, it had the horsepower to run my favored SuSE as easily as I could want. Best of all, I wouldn't have to wait -- I still had my copy of SuSE 8.2 at hand.

So I spent a half day installing it. Why so long? Because I am as clumsy in computing as I am in "meat-space". I made a bad choice and the installer hung, with no escape. So at the very end of the process, I had to go back and start over. I am fully capable of messing up even one of the simplest installations available. Still, it was relatively painless compared to my previous experiences.

For now, I am resolved to avoid the upgrade merry-go-round. Without solid evidence that an upgrade is actually going to make things faster, I'm staying here for awhile. Some will surely tell me I need the next new version in order to get the most from my hardware. I've come to the conclusion having too much machine, with some wasted resources, will help to insure longevity and stability. As I grow older myself, those things become more valuable. I'm comfortable with a reserve of untapped power. It's not likely I'll get another deal like this anytime soon:

MicroStar K7 Master S (v. 1.1) motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.1 GHz, 512MB DDR RAM
Maxtor 40GB IDE harddrive
LG CED-8083B CD-RW
Toshiba SDM1502 DVD-ROM
nVidia GeForce3 w/64MB VRAM
KDS VS-190 19" monitor (1280x1024/16bpp, 3D disabled)
Audigy2 Soundcard, w/ Creative SBS20 speakers
Original asking price was $350 (US)

It feels like coming home. No, I haven't abandoned FreeBSD for good. I still heartily recommend it as a desktop OS for older hardware, never mind it's intended design as a pure server OS. I've kept the best of my previous Linux distros, older releases. I also have a stock of newer ones donated by generous friends. I even keep a copy of DR-DOS for those truly ancient machines. You might be surprised how many are out there still working, still used by someone with no better options. I feel that anyone willing to try, willing to learn at least a little, deserves my help in finding excellence in computing. People should have choices.

It's always about freedom.

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Ed Hurst is Associate Editor of Open for Business. Ed is also the Music Director for Grace Baptist Church of Kickapoo Creek, Texas. He loves computers, runs GNU/Linux and reads all sorts of things. You can reach Ed at ehurst@ofb.biz.