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View Full Version : Linux, Life, and Hell Week



Ich
03-11-2004, 06:19 PM
Well, as I type this, I'm on an old Pentium 2 running Red Hat Linux (http://www.bash.org/?37390). It's pretty nice, but I haven't really done anything with it. It's slower than Windows 2000 was, although it's currently acting as a server for a bulletin board Texdex set up that we use at school, and we're also hosting the forum for [url=http://www.llamagames.com]this comic for our friend. The characters are based on teachers, so that's why the fetus jokes aren't as funny. It's also slower (233 vs. 400 with lots of extra RAM) than the computer I used Windows 2000 on. Anyway, I've been busy, and plan to convert my other computer to Linux once I get it back. It was kind of confiscated because of my vehement refusal to clean my room--in part because of your tiredness and lack of free time, and in part as a result of laziness--and is sitting on the floor with no cables coming out of it. Well, if and when I build a new one, I'm going to put Linux on it.

Let's see, that was Linux... Life. I've been fighting with my parents for a while, about the stupidest thing (hair length). They insist I cut it, but not too short. So, I've made a decision to shave my head down to about a quarter inch or so, once the musical ends. I saw Phantom of the Opera yesterday on Broadway. Field trip. w00t. I'm single now (drifting apart and a minor conflict of interests), and play a sexist pig in the Musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." (Mr. Gatch, if you were wondering.)

Hell week... Hell week is the week before the final production of the show. Our first performance is on the 19th, and hell week sets in. The musical becomes your life. You sleep, breathe, drink and eat the musical, because you are a part of it, and it is a cruel mistress. You don't have free time, and on the occasion that you do, you spend it sleeping or doing homework that you should have done a long time ago, but you see, you have the musical, and it takes up lots of time. Lots and lots of time. Hmm, what else? Oh, right, I'm really busy, and I've given up working on weekends, and I'm still sleep deprived, although I've weaned myself off caffeine pills after my Junior research paper was completed at 4:30 AM.

So, to bring this ramling update to somthing of a close and to make an attempt at allowing for meaningful responses, have you ever been in a musical or play, or had some other extracurricular take up all of your free time and more? Are you sleep deprived? Do you frequently find yourself surfing the internet during your lunch break because you have no computer or computer time at home? Do you frequently find yourself making semi-coherent posts on AGN filled with runon sentences? I'd think up some more questions but I'm tired and need to go to practice.

vegeta1215
03-11-2004, 10:00 PM
Plays are tough. My brother is in a production of Sweeny Todd at Salisbury, and all I hear from him is how much work he's been doing and the lack of free time and sleep. Thankfully his last show is sunday, and he will be able to take it easy afterwards. (btw, his play is cool, it's about a crazy barber who kills his customers and sends their bodies down to the shop underneath to be cut up and made into meat pies :))

btw, what window manager or desktop environment are you using with that old Linux machine? KDE and GNOME have hefty CPU requirements, and I wouldn't recommend them for slower machines. If you'd like to try some light weight window managers, IceWM and Window Maker are great. Also, my friend just showed me XFce 4, and it is really slick (and also light weight).

Ich
03-11-2004, 11:08 PM
Sweeny Todd is a great show. We could never do it in high school though.

I'm using KDE right now. It's kind of slow, but I'm not impatient. Texdex did all the configuration stuff.

Flash Man
03-12-2004, 12:44 AM
Everything I have run KDE on seemed to be somewhat slow. I like KDE a lot better than Gnome, although with my server ( PIII 866MHz , 512MB PC133 ) Gnome seems to be much faster than KDE. I would suggest running under Gnome, also getting rid of any extra services you do not need. I found a couple that were running on my box that I did not need and killed them. It did not seem faster, although in the end it would help.

vegeta1215
03-12-2004, 02:09 AM
I'm running a Pentium III 450 with 640 megs of RAM. KDE runs great for me, but its probably due to all the RAM I have.

If you have access to a faster computer with a fast internet connection (and flash), check out the flash demos of the XFce desktop environment in action at the bottom of this page: http://xfce.org/index.php?page=screenshots&lang=en It's nice: very easy to use, highly customizable, pretty looking, and very speedy. I first used it when I tried Morphix lite, and I was very impressed. I think it is comparable to KDE or GNOME (Morphix is a Live Linux cd based off of Knoppix, but Morphix puts out many different kinds of Live cds - heavy GUI, lite GUI, games, etc)

Octium
03-12-2004, 02:35 AM
I know what you mean. I recently removed Windows XP from all three of my computers, and replaced them with Redhat 9.0, all customized to their hardware.

Had some serious network issues at home this week (not exactly hell week), but I took care of it (cable provider decided to change the way I connect). Basically if one computer would lose it's Net connection, and it would end up taking the whole network down, lol.

Anyway, I got three machines as I mentioned, and the one with the lowest specs is running Fluxbox as it's window manager. It's a very simple GUI, and runs a bit slower than XP, but speed is not nearly as valuble as stability.

SixTen
03-12-2004, 06:25 PM
It has been said that Linux is like a pair of boxers without the tag cut out. So free, yet so annoying.

DON'T CUT YOUR HAIR ICH!!! I know your parents, they are Nazis about certain things. Don't let them cut it!!