Linux.com: Linux Unplugged

"I got a new machine this week, and I couldn't wait to install Debian GNU/Linux on it. Debian's my favorite distribution, because I love dpkg, the Debian package maintenance program. If you're on a high-speed network like I am, Debian is definitely a good way to go if you're focused on a workstation."

"Guess what? I suddenly realized I didn't have a Debian CD. How does that happen? I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Linux.com, and I don't have a CD? It's like Steve Jobs having to call Woz for a copy of MacOS 9. I poked around and I found a copy of Corel Linux that had been sent to me by the PR people at Corel. It was a beta, it didn't work, I called on my friend Chris, who informed me he had Debian proper on CD. Chris, crazy Linux zealot that he is, ran home from work to lend me the Debian CD's. I tried to install it and it had a weird issue where it couldn't recognize the CD-ROM that I was installing it from. Much sadness...."

"My network. It just wouldn't get on the network. I spent the next several hours working with my routing table, linuxconf, and several other different ways of setting up networking under Linux. I'm no slouch at this; I was a sysadmin before I was a writer. Playing with routes, trying everything in the world to get this thing to work."

Complete Story

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