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Now that I’m fully operational on Linux – there are two or three applications for which I stil require Windows, but nothing vital – I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve chosen the right distro. I’m using Red Hat 8, primarily for the rather prosaic reason that one of my boys happened to have the CDs at the time I decided to take the plunge. Red Hat is up to version 9 now, but I’m a little loathe to bother upgrading since everything is working fine and having a slightly prettier interface is not at the top of my list of concerns right now.

It’s typical, of course, that one no sooner makes the leap to Linux than one begins to plunge headlong into the endless debate of which is the One True Distro. Fortunately, the general consensus appears to be that Red Hat is a reasonable choice for us non-hacker power-user sorts.

Of growing interest to me is Debian, which not only appeals to my libertarian ideals and comes with Neal Stephenson’s recommendation, but also makes what now, post-deflowering, appears to be an increasingly plausible case for fewer operational headaches down the road. The Red Hat Update Agent, while incomparably less intrusive than Microsoft’s odious automatic update system, is more than a little clunky, and the August timeout bug that I had to wrestle with today is exactly the sort of problem that corporations regularly create for themselves and their customers in the interest of preserving their competitive advantages. They have a long, long way to go before they can be accused of aping the nefarious ways of the evil empire, of course, but it’s annoying to encounter even a faint echo of the very sort of thing one is trying to escape in the first place.

I’m happy with Red Hat, though, which in combination with the Opera web browser and Evolution email, makes me feel almost giddy, as if I’m breathing in the fresh air of the country for the first time after spending years choking down the polluted smog of Redmond. So, I’m going to resist the urge to upgrade the kernel for now, and instead I’ll let the happy little penguin amuse itself downloading Debian via jigdo while I’m taking in the NFL action. Just in case… just in case. By the way, it’s worth considering a switch from IE to Opera even if you don’t have the skillz or the gutz to make the big OS switch. Opera is small, fast, and has a brilliant radio button for controlling pop-ups that’s incredibly easy to operate. It’s got some definite quirks, especially related to the fonts used on some web sites, but on the whole it is much better than the increasingly bloated space hog that is Internet Explorer.

From what I’ve seen so far, while Linux is by no means ready for mainstream prime time, it is now fully practical for the power-user who isn’t afraid to tinker. A few years ago, that was really not the case, as one needed to be a hacker with programming skills if one wished to use it. The conclusion: Don’t be afraid. Go for it. Drive the tank. Be the penguin.

I am he as you are we etc etc whatever…. HOLY CATS IT WORKED! I’m actually posting this from my dual-boot machine running Linux, accessing the Internet via my wireless network which is now also running happily as a hamster under Linux. I was so psyched I had to call my best friend, who is a bona fide stud programmer and approximately 500x more technical than I am, and he was just as fired up despite the fact that he was taking the call in a wet, naked and half-showered state. He’s been contemplating going Penguin himself, and now that I’ve achieved exit velocity, he has no choice but to follow suit if he wishes to preserve the tattered remnants of his techno-manhood.

It turns out that the trick was to ignore the linux-wlan-ng download that pops up on most Google searches and go with the preconfigured packages (RPMS) put together for the Red Hat distros by an RPM packager in Raleigh, Tim Miller, who I will soon be recommending to the Vatican for beatification.

Make sure you read the README, and keep in mind that as usual, the programmer/guru tells you everything you need to know, but not exactly what you need to do or what you should expect. I would add the following directions:

1. Figure out which version and kernel of Red Hat you’re running. Do this by firing up a terminal (System Tools / Terminal) and typing cat /proc/version.

2. Click on the appropriate Red Hat version (7.3, 8, or 9) found under Serve up the packages! Download the appropriate three packages, as indicated by your wireless card/adapter and kernel number.

3. Install each package separately. Do this by finding where you saved the RPM files, then right-clicking on the first file. Select Open With, then Install Packages. Click continue to complete the installation of the package. You’ll do this three times, once for each package.

4. Edit the file as directed in the README. It’s just the one change in the first file, followed by the renaming of the second file.

5. Stick your PCMCIA card in. Don’t reboot or anything, and don’t expect a happy little beep or a message telling you that new hardware has been found. Nothing happens.

6. Fire up Mozilla – Internet/Web Browser – then type in a web address. Watch in shock and delight as it actually appears.

7. Phone your friends. Post on your blog. Cackle madly and gesture rudely in the direction of Redmond.

8. Celebrate. You’re driving the tank!

I don’t know if it was the perfect synchronicity of yesterday’s good news out of Dallas, caffeine, Neal Stephenson and a random good mood, or what, but the computer gods elected to smile on my usually fruitless technical efforts this morning. I mounted my floppy! In Linux! Not only that, but this amazing feat of Eloian prestidigitation was followed up by an even more amazing stunt… I also managed to mount the hard drive partition that lets me access my Windows files! It’s actually pretty easy, of course, once you find a decent set of instructions on how to do it.

There’s still a lot to do before I can make the leap into full-blown Penguin mode. The hard drive mounts automatically now, but I’m still doing a lot of manual navigation due to my unfamiliarity with both Gnome and Nautilus, and I only have read access to the drive right now. This is functional, for the time being, but I’d originally set up three partitions to allow for safe(?) writing to the shared third partition from both Windows 2000 and Linux and I’d like to get that going too. The bigger challenge is getting the Penguin talking to my wireless network. Unfortunately, it turns out that my WUSB adapter is version 2.6, not the version 2.5 for which the Linux drivers are available, so I’ll have to strip a PCMCIA card from one of my other machines. I’m not too happy about that, but all will be cheerfully forgiven if I can just get the wireless up and running.

Unfortunately, the instructions that came with the linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre9 download are not exactly user-friendly. Hard to imagine, I know, with a filename like that.

So, does anyone else suddenly have the image of an out-of-control tank lurching wildly across the countryside, as farmers, sheep and chickens run for their lives? But so what? I’m driving the freaking tank! Yee-ha! Say, I wonder what this big trigger thing does….

Seriously. My mother was an old friend of Roger Staubach’s when he was at the Naval Academy, and then of course there was the indelible impression that The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders left on a young, impressionable boy, so I cheered for the Cowboys until that infamous unflagged pass interference no-call against Drew Pearson that killed Fran Tarkenton’s father and made me realize that there really wasn’t room for two teams in a Purple heart.

Anyhow, I’m delighted to announce that my syndicate, UPS, informed me today that my column will be appearing regularly in the Dallas Morning News, starting in November. This is pretty cool, I think, as it has the seventh-largest Sunday circulation and the ninth-largest daily circulation in the country.

Bill Bennett is a gambler and Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict. Isn’t it possible to find conservative leaders who practice what they preach? I know there will be many outraged Republicans who will argue that it is unfair to castigate these men for their relatively minor offenses – gambling is legal and drugs should be – when there are plenty of far more egregious offenses committed by the leadership of the left, but accountability on the level of Caesar’s wife is an integral part of the game if you are going to stand up for the good, the right and the true.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying this from a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou perspective. I assure you, I’ve quite likely done worse than either of these two good men, which is why I am so very grateful to my Lord Jesus Christ. He forgives, and so too we must forgive when forgiveness is requested.

Nevertheless, there is a public trust that one is expected to uphold as a conservative voice. Mr. Limbaugh, like Mr. Bennett before him, has betrayed that trust. Is the betrayal a fatal one? Should his fans abandon him over it? No, I don’t think so. There is a vital difference between cynical hypocrisy and a failure to meet one’s own high standards. But I do hope that this experience will encourage Mr. Limbaugh to rethink his position on the abominable and unconstitutional War on Drugs. By his own lights, Mr. Limbaugh may well consider himself to be a criminal of sorts; I do not.

In any event, I wish Mr. Limbaugh very well, and hope that he will return from this challenge stronger, more determined and more successful than before.

I like Linux. I am pro-Penguin. I am a Linux supporter, but I am not, as yet, a Linux user. Now, I am not a techno-neophyte and I have successfully installed Red Hat onto one of my machines, thus converting it into a dual-boot system. However, there are two things preventing me from becoming an actual Linux user.

1) I set up three drives. One for a) Windows 2000, one for b) Linux and one c) to be shared. Windows recognizes a) and c), but Linux recognizes only b). Anyone have any suggestions?

2) In order to access the Internet, I have to get my Linksys USB working. I’ve downloaded a few files which purport to be Linksys drivers, but the instructions are terse to the point of total incomprehensibility. I’ve read one-page, one-sided motherboard manuals in broken techno Koreanglish that were more informative.

But I’m not giving up. I just re-read Neal Stephenson’s unspeakably brilliant In The Beginning Was The Command Line, which has again inspired me to make another effort to escape the evil Gatesian empire. One way or another, I WILL be a tank driver!

Any information or suggestions with regards to either issue would be most appreciated.

Since I’m a writer, you’d think I’d be a great champion of intellectual property, but corporations such as Disney have bribed Congress into stretching the concept beyond all reasonable interpretation. I suppose we can expect to see more of this sort of thing as information continues to become simultaneously more valuable and easier to access.

No, the mailbox isn’t returning to WND, as I’m still not getting enough opposition mail to justify it. But this is as good a place as any to publicly spank those who wish to cross pens with me. En garde! Claire Sullivan won the right to appear here first, with her lengthy missive assaulting my old column on Gynomythology.

The fact that you are a member of Mensa and therefore supposedly an

intelligent man, I find your opinions as stated in this article utterly

offensive and quite ridiculous.

Mensa membership actually says very little about where one stands in the ranks of the cognitive elite, if the requisite one-in-fifty status is even enough to allow one to be classified there. But the reference provides a measure of warning to those surprised by opinons that unexpectedly contradict their cherished beliefs, a warning that should logically merit at least a cursory inspection of one’s previous assumptions before one dares to pop off in a derogatory manner. And yet to some, it seems red always means go….

Firstly you cannot use the words of one feminist to speak for all of the

feminist movement, let alone all of womankind. Ms de Beauvoir’s words were

not to imply that we shouldn’t allow women to look after their children at

all just that women should be further encouraged to join the workforce for

their own personal development.

If I can’t use the words of a feminist with iconic status to speak for the feminist movement, who would you recommend I use, Josef Stalin? This reminds me of the spoiled little brunette from That 70’s Show: “I can’t be held responsible for anything that comes out of my mouth.” Ms de Beauvoir’s words did not imply that women should not be allowed to look after their children, they stated it outright. “No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different.” Ms Sullivan establishes herself here as a profoundly dishonest historical revisionist. By the way, I have never stated, nor believed for a second, that feminists speak for all women.

Secondly the reason that women have accomplished very little of note

throughout history is primarily due to males having written most of the

history books.

Women have been literate for more than 2,000 years, but with the exception of Ariel Durant, they have largely chosen not to bother recording much history. I imagine this was probably for the same reason that they did not accomplish much of historical note during that time – they had other, more immediate concerns of higher priority, such as caring for their families and trying not to get pillaged by Vikings or the equivalent local barbarians. The above is a prodigiously silly and unfounded assumption, without any evidence to support it.

Thirdly women do not strive to be better than men, just to have an equal

platform….We will see in 20 years time whether equality does bring women

to the fore of many academic and scientific fields. until that day one cannot

sensibly pass judgement.

I’m very skeptical of this, based on the perversion of academic discipline by feminist pseudo-intellectuals over the last 30 years. There are already more women graduating from American universities than men, unfortunately, the Sisterhood has taught far too many of them to reject concepts such as science and logic as being masculine and therefore inappropriate for women. Talk about building your foundation on sand! But I’m content to wait and allow that the verdict may not be completely decisive as yet. Not that anything will change in another 20 years, of course, except to make the failure of women to achieve equal regard in the sciences and other fields more obvious and more embarassing to the feminist movement. Rejecting the Western intellectual canon is a valid choice, it’s just a bad one

And the greatest evidence that a woman has the right to control her own body

surely must be the legions of women that reject you and your repellant

misogyny.

There are a panoply of laws that say a woman has no right to control her own body. Just try to shoot some heroin into it, or sell a kidney, or walk into a prohibited area, and you’ll see just how much control over it you are allowed. As for the argument itself, well, let’s just say that if that is indeed a reasonable basis, the historical evidence tends to support the opposite conclusion.

Four strikes and you’re out, Ms Sullivan. Stick a fork in her, she’s done! So, who’s next?

In honor of Governor Schwarzenegger’s election – I didn’t and don’t support his political career, but I still like him as an example of what determination can do for an individual – I hit the triceps hard today. After my normal workout, I added a symbolic six reps with the 100-pound dumbell. I figure Arnold would appreciate that sort of homage instead of the usual toast or whatever. So, *grunt* here’s to the new governor!

And now to sacrifice whatever man points the above feat may have gained me… I was listening to Robbie Williams in the car on the way to the gym, (note – not my CD, it was already in there), and I had to admire the way he forthrightly addressed the public accusations of his supposed homosexuality. In my humble opinion, singing “Press be asking do I care for sodomy, I don’t know, yeh, probably,” while a not-very-clad Kylie Minogue is draped all over you amounts to a rather decisively sarcastic rebuttal.

Given that I am charged with an unhealthy and unnatural interest in men on pretty much a weekly basis, I see only one logical solution. It’s time for me to write a song and film a video with Kylie.

This is an interesting trend. Those who most loudly and proudly proclaim their allegiance to the will of the people appear to actually hate it whenever it counters their interests. In the recent California recall, the California Democratic party was more than willing to use three corrupt judges to attempt to overturn what has now proven to be the overwhelming will of the people of California. I’m not saying that I support Governor Schwarzenegger – I don’t, and I suspect it is possible that he may one day come to represent the continental divide of the national Republican Party – but it’s clear that the people of California want him to govern them. Sometimes people get the government they deserve.

Sometimes people don’t, however. The eurofascists of Europe Uber alles are now forcing their so-called constitution down the unwilling throats of people who don’t support it, have never seen it debated in their national parliaments and will not be allowed to vote on it. Of course, in those countries where the Franco-German Fourth Reich will permit a vote, they will simply force a second vote if the result of the first one is not to their liking. And a third, if necessary, and a fourth… until the people finally vote as directed. For an example of how this works, one only has to look to Ireland, which was the only nation of the fifteen signatories involved that allowed its citizens to vote on the Treaty of Nice. The EU is rather like the Hotel California. You can enter any time you like, but you can never leave – for as Romano Prodi has declared, “the Euro is forever”.

How Hitler would have envied these men! Politicans succeed where panzers failed.