Ahh sorry ... it wansn't meant to be sound traumatic at all. Just an addition to the falling of the cliff.

-----Original Message----- From: CK [mailto:x@meta.lo-res.org]

WOW, it's sad to hear stories like that over and over again, and I'm really impressed by the fact that you're still giving debian (or free sw in general a go).

Actually I love doing this stuff and figuring it out. I could most likely avoid these problems by not being so curious about things. But if that was the case I suppose I wouldn't be using PD.

• find someone experienced who's willing to lend you a hand in the beginning (ideally this is someone from your school, neighborhood but if no one's available check out irc and mailing lists a lot of people in the linux community tend to be extremely helpful and geeky enough to have amazing response times)

:). Being in the overworked, new dad 30+ crowd I don't have much time to devote to tromping through IRC looking for help. One thing I would add to this is GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND. Its like finding a Linux geek who mostly knows what you need. Searchable mailing list archives have saved me a couple of times.

• be prepared for a steep learning curve, hey this is the literate user department, and no os is transparent to the blind, you will run into trouble (just like with any other complex piece of tech) when trying unusual things, and after you fixed a couple of major fsck ups you'll be glad you did, they happen less often once you get the hang of it, and you'll find it much easier to fix minor nuisances.

Once again why I'm going the 'more difficult' route. I installed RH 9.0 and it was pretty easy to get things up and running smoothly (which is why I keep pointing people to the CCRMA guys). There were a number of things I knew linux could do (and I really wanted to try out), but I needed to get my hands dirty in order for it to happen. My partitioning and disk setup kung fu is now pretty strong.

• learn to program/script a little at first and try to put it to use and see how lots of tedious tasks can be made very easy by simply changing a few lines in some readily available script/program, watch yourself becoming better at it.

Actually I've been a PERL freak for 7 years and have been using python now for 3. Scripting is not an issue. I'm still getting comfortable with shell scripting and usually just write a quick perl script for stuff, but I would like to move over to mostly shell based scripts as soon as I can. However most of my problems have not been automating mundane tasks they have been:

• figure out the package management system of your distribution (if applicable), become familiar with the GNU build system and start making your own (packages not management system that is)

BAM! Apt-* is awesome and easy to use, and of course easy to break a bunch of stuff with if you don't read the docs and just jump in head first. So this week has been earmarked as 'Learn all you can about Apt-' week.

Also like a brave sole I tried the brand spankin new Sarge installer after I killed the machine on Friday with the dist-upgrade. It didn't really work so well for me :)

• start talking in tongues, use more acronyms than actual words, patch your kernel on a regular basis and feel the cool breeze.

Does snake handling count?

m.