OT-Re: A Mac User's Guide to Linux

[mascarasnake]

Excellent Idea, Dr. Clint,
As I recall, you and I started near the same time with Linux, late last 
summer/early fall. You might want to google the archives for "Clinton 
MacDonald". - kinda give you a perspective on your own trek through the 
Amber Waves Of Linux. I did "mascarasnake" a while back and was very 
amused (and humbled).

Here are my raw and unorganized ramblings.

Migration from the OS X is not quite so painful as from Classic OSs and 
you might be able to get away with a simple link (at least for OSXers) 
to here:
	<http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/>
or at least use it as a bouncing point for your endeavor.
Although the site is Unix/OS X - centric, I've read through the 
tutorials and they hold up pretty well for both *nixes -  the 
similarities between Linux and Unix being what they are.

As far as migration from Classic OSs, that's a whole different ball 
game. That's the field I came from - OS9 on a 7500. Most Classic Mac 
folks haven't even opened a telnet session to their modem, let alone 
entered a command that affects the computer. The migration for me was I 
_wanted_ more. My horse was dying, but I still wanted to run the 
steeples.

<anecdote>
New Lease on Life for my Aging Dinosaur
When I started looking into Linux, I was starting to get ticked that 
all the cool and powerful stuff was for OSX and OS 9 was getting 
neglected. To top it all off, Microslut was going to make it impossible 
to talk to my friends in faraway places. My Mac wasn't dying, it wasn't 
dead; it was being put out to pasture and I hadn't even had to change 
the battery in it yet!
Secretly, ( I would never have admitted it) I was lusting after Jaguar, 
but couldn't afford a new machine. I was just about to buy a Sonnet 
upgrade card - forcing me to replace my RAM with sticks with a faster 
refresh rate, when I discovered Linux. Holy Mother of God, my 7500 was 
running an OSX like environment, I had Command Line control, I didn't 
_have_ to pay a penny for it, AND I could look at the source code and 
compile things.
	Wa-*******-hoo!
</anecdote>

Although I've never been a big fan of proprietary folks and monopolies, 
The reason I chose Apple was because they were at least honest about 
it. They said, from the beginning, " This is Our Software. It's only 
going to run on our hardware. But it's going to be the best damned 
software and hardware you'll ever get." - by gumption.

While a full Linux convert (I preach the Linux creed to all - 
particularly windows users), I still love Apple to this day and I say 
this not from fear that Big Brother Jobs may be watching this (you are 
getting all this, aren't you, Steve?) I bought Panther _after_ I 
converted to linux, and to be honest, it rocks. It ain't Linux, but 
Linux ain't Panther either. I still run OS 9 on my 7500, although it's 
mostly booted into YDL. I even have my original 1.2 GB SCSI drive with 
OS 7.5.5 on it - kinda fun to boot that every once in a while.

Dang, that felt good. Therapy? We don't need no stingin' therapy.

bossa nova, daddy - os
----------

	It's what you make it man
	Takes time
	A little bit
	A little bit more

			-The Minutemen

dontdrill@earthlink.net
mascarasnake@mac.com
On Jun 2, 2004, at 4:04 PM, Clinton MacDonald wrote: