John is back on IM, which makes me happy (I like having people just a window away, it helps justify my own addiction to the screen…incidentally, anyone out there who hasn’t read Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen should so. Now.) So we had a discussion about the direction he wants MoF to go in & asked that I blog what kept me up last night and kept me IMing people I’d not IMed in, possibly, years: My Efforts To Install Linux Onto An Old Vaio.

You have been warned.

Back when I lived with my roommate (who I still call “my roommate” because it’s more indicative, in my mind, of our relationship than simply, “my friend”), she acquired, from a mutual friend, a fantastic little baby laptop. It was the first Sony Vaio I’d ever seen & I fell in like. Both she & I agreed that verily, if one could not have a Mac for some reason, or life simply necessitated a non-Mac (they’re all the same), this, this was the computer to have. Of course, I thought this computer was indicative of all Vaios (my experience with Apples is that one is indicative of another in the sense that they’re all related), but that is not the case. This Vaio, which I have not yet named, is smaller than a piece of paper and 3/4 of an inch thick. It is light. It is the perfect thing to carry, in a snazzy-looking purse, into class, whip open, and take notes on. And I told my roommate that if she ever didn’t want it any more, I did.

She doesn’t, I still do, and so it’s currently sitting in the office, awaiting my pleasure. I’m the third owner, at least, of this tiny laptop, and it is very old. In computer years, it’s past ready for retirement, but I’m convinced that it can have a part-time job to supplement its pension. I’m convinced, in fact, that its part-time job is to make me even more geeky than I am. I’m convinced that my little laptop can run Linux. Luckily, I’m not the only one. Although I’m having issues. Issues I shall share with you.

One (I don’t know how long this number system will last, since it’s bound to get out of hand soon, but it seems a fun way to start.) My roommate told me that I ought to check to make sure it works before I get ahead of myself in terms of installing things. So I dutifully plugged it in the other day and discovered that, if you accidentally hit the plug, nothing happens. But if you look at it wrong or think about it in a way it doesn’t like, it shuts down. I also learned that this plug is so iffy that it no longer charges the battery, sort of negating its usefulness as a portable device.

Two It came with a WLAN card, so I had hoped to do some experimental surfing (my surfing on this computer is very structured since I have bookmarks of all my favorite sites and so it’s refreshing to use a computer I don’t usually). But it wasn’t being recognized by the system. No problem, I thought, I shall uninstall & reinstall the drivers (thinking, in the very superior way that only Apple Users can accomplish, “stupid PC needs drivers“). The uninstall went very smoothly: there was not a trace of the original driver left on the computer! The reinstall was a little more bumpy and by the end I had successfully convinced the little vaio that the WLAN card was not a WLAN card at all. This got me no closer to the internet, however. Trying to figure out how to get things on this computer, I remembered a recent gift. I grabbed the driver disc for it, dl’d the WLAN drivers to it, and was back in business! Until I realized that I’d so thoroughly convinced the little vaio that the WLAN card was not a WLAN card that I now have no way of installing the correct drivers. A saner person might see this all as a sign that she should not be allowed to have more options to screw up her computer, something that booting Linux most certainly would give her. But not me, oh no!

Three After discussing it with People Who Might Know What They’re Talking About, I decided on Ubuntu (which, I’ve discovered, is pronounced “oo-boon-too” but which I refuse to say any way other than “oo-bun-too”) over Fedora. I decided this because (and this is where it gets really technical, so pay attention), ubuntu is an African word that means “Humanity to others”, or “I am what I am because of who we all are” and this is much cooler than “fedora”, which is simply funny & clever (you know, because of Red Hat…oh, never mind), and not deep & philosophical. And if there’s a better way of choosing an operating system then I don’t know what it is.

So! I dl’d the OS, mounted it to burn to a disc, and set the little vaio’s BIOS to boot from CD. I then discovered that I am not the only person to have the problem that I now have. In fact, someone else has the exact same problem, which should be creepy, but is really just comforting. Even though they haven’t solved it, either. The little vaio is so small that it doesn’t have much more than a harddrive, keyboard, and screen. The floppy drive is an ingeniously designed USB drive (with a spot to wrap the cord around & then fit the plug into the side when you’re not using it). The CD drive is a much less elegant PCMCIA deal that is clearly not designed to be booted from. Not finding a suitable solution for getting the boot information onto floppies (and not having a floppy drive for my Mac anyway, although I could prolly use the USB drive) nor having any actual floppies, I resolved to convince the little vaio to boot from the aforementioned wonderful, wonderful pink drive (how I love thee, let me count the ways!). This was unsuccessful as well.

Four After giving up dealing with the software, I turned my hand to the hardware. This little vaio, I decided, was in need of a good clean. I whipped out the Apple Polish and, saying a quiet apology to the Apple Gods for profaning it, quickly discovered that the little vaio’s feet had begun to melt. This required clean up of all the surfaces it had graced since entering my home and I know I haven’t gotten them all, but what really annoys me is that I managed to get it on my shirt!

Luckily, as I am quickly discovering with this whole Linux thing, this is not the first time this has happened to someone. So I stole that solution and hope to have solved #4 of my list of issues.

In hopes of dealing with issue #1, my husband & I spent most of the morning and about a hundred dollars buying a charger and batteries for the little vaio.

I have no hopes of solving issue #2, which is why I decided, perhaps precipitously, to install Ubuntu.

My hopes of solving issue #3 are to acquire a USB CD drive. Failing that, I shall have to remove the HD, put it in a tower for installation, and then put it back in. This may not be a bad idea, since it will give me a chance to upgrade the memory.

So there it is. The first chapter (oh yes, there will be more) in my decision to become a Linux user.