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Just recently, I came to a realisation. I'm never going to be a proper geek. This flash of self knowledge came to me when, after spending an evening trying to find out about how to get my wireless card working under Linux, I just gave up in despair. Every website I came to engendered a fresh set of Google queries as I tried to find out exactly how you could perform each of the steps. I had to get Archie to install Linux on the laptop in the first place because I couldn't get the display to work. He set up the network card and if I physically plug in I can use it for email and so on but I never physically plug in any more and a computer is practically useless if it's not connected.
In the end, I don't have the time or the patience to struggle up from being a new user to being a power user again, particularly as even to get into the user position I need my wireless card to work, which means that I need to be a power user and be able to install it. In the end, Debian is too difficult for me. I'm sure that Windows is a much inferior operating system, but I've been using it for years and I quite like it these days. Most problems that come up in Windows (except that of getting my home computers to talk to each other) I can solve or find a livable workaround. To proper geeks, I probably sound like a prisoner who's forgotton what it feels like to be free and so doesn't miss it but there you are. Sure there are things about it that bug me, but that's par for the course with computers - there are no systems which don't have their irritating quirks. They're all designed by people, that's what you get.
I still consider the idea of buying a Mac one of these days, but I'm shy of that too. What if I find MacOS as difficult to come to grips with? It would have the advantage I suppose of being widely supported at the non-geek level, which Debian, in my opinion, isn't but still. What I really want is to be able to have a trial period on a Mac to see if I could get used to it but I don't think that's exactly feasible. I like the idea of moving but only if I don't have to re-learn. I just don't have time.
Yikes! That gave me a shock! I just ran Windows update and got a new display driver. Which reset my screen res to 800 * 600 from 1600 * 1200. Still, once switched back, all seems fine.
In the end, I don't have the time or the patience to struggle up from being a new user to being a power user again, particularly as even to get into the user position I need my wireless card to work, which means that I need to be a power user and be able to install it. In the end, Debian is too difficult for me. I'm sure that Windows is a much inferior operating system, but I've been using it for years and I quite like it these days. Most problems that come up in Windows (except that of getting my home computers to talk to each other) I can solve or find a livable workaround. To proper geeks, I probably sound like a prisoner who's forgotton what it feels like to be free and so doesn't miss it but there you are. Sure there are things about it that bug me, but that's par for the course with computers - there are no systems which don't have their irritating quirks. They're all designed by people, that's what you get.
I still consider the idea of buying a Mac one of these days, but I'm shy of that too. What if I find MacOS as difficult to come to grips with? It would have the advantage I suppose of being widely supported at the non-geek level, which Debian, in my opinion, isn't but still. What I really want is to be able to have a trial period on a Mac to see if I could get used to it but I don't think that's exactly feasible. I like the idea of moving but only if I don't have to re-learn. I just don't have time.
Yikes! That gave me a shock! I just ran Windows update and got a new display driver. Which reset my screen res to 800 * 600 from 1600 * 1200. Still, once switched back, all seems fine.
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Date: July 30th, 2004 05:12 pm (UTC)From:> a proper geek.
I think you might be being a little hard on yourself. Geekyness springs from many things, and I don't think that giving up on one thing because it isn't working out disqualifies anyone from being a Proper Geek. If we all slogged fruitlessly away at traditionally geeky things we didn't enjoy that would a) be kind of foolish, and b) leave far less time for the geeky things we do find enjoyable.
Bear in mind that I switched to Debian after my long and disappointing struggle with Red Hat, which actually left my confidence kind of knocked.
I suppose the most important factor is what would actually motivate you to move from an operating system you're already comfortable with. I was happy with Windows (and even now I don't think it's too bad), but Linux's major appeal for me was the command-line interface (CLI). That took me all the way back to childhood and all the non-GUI computers I tinkered with for days on end. Of course, it took a reading of Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" to convince me that it could still be a good thing. That naturally led me on to the whole UNIX philosophy, the elegance of stringing small and simple tools together to create more complex tools, and I saw that this could be done all the more easily using a GNU environment.
Most of the time you spend getting a Linux system to work involves failure. It can be quite depressing if you're new to it, but speaking as someone who's been at this for a few years now, I can assure you that the bulk of my knowledge was accrued from failed attempts to get something working. Not just factual knowledge, but a logistical knowledge of how best to track down problems and seek out solutions on the web. You end up picking up a lot of little facts that you really don't care about or want to know at the time, but it's surprising how a few months, or even years, later it can pop out of your head to save you when you're in a bit of a pickle.
So yes, one certainly learns through failure, but one is unlikely to notice through the haze of disappointment. :)
It just occurred to me, you could actually stick with Windows but install Cygwin. You'd have the advanced command line interface of GNU/Linux, plus most of the other packages available in Linux distributions. Cygwin is surprisingly non-invasive as well. It sits in a single directory and doesn't stray outside of that directory. It doesn't even register itself in the Windows registry.
I'd also be quite happy to come round at some point, hang out with you and Alex for an evening and see if I can get it to behave.
> I still consider the idea of buying a Mac one of these days,
> but I'm shy of that too. What if I find MacOS as difficult to come
> to grips with?
I got to use Mac OS X exclusively for 6 weeks while I was in Seattle. I liked it. It was pretty with a well-designed and consistent interface, and it all made perfect sense after a while. It was even quite GNU/Linuxy once I'd found the CLI. After returning, I had a bit of trouble re-adjusting to my "normal" 3-buttoned mouse.