New Year Resolutions 2007

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New Year Resolutions - 2007

By: Ringo Pebam *

You love music.
You love the rain.
You love shopping.
You love working late.
You love losing yourself.
You love missing the last bus home,
And walk with a Sony Ericsson mobile
phone in hand listening to ‘Hotel California’ :)

New Year is coming and you are wondering what resolution to take up…

To kick the cigarette butts away from 1st Jan,
To kiss away the beer bottles goodbye,
To jog and loose 15 Kg of over weight,
To pay off the credit card bills,
To get organised more,
To play the guitar,
To discover a new comet,
To laugh more,
To climb Koubru,
To ban the bandhs in Manipur,
To fight against child kidnapping and atrocities,
To sell off your CBZ and buy a computer,
To write a novel,
To patent your invention,
To write a device driver for your TV Tuner Card,
To go for Roger Waters’s concert in Mumbai in Feb ’07,
To Watch "Blue Diamond" and "Rocky Balboa"...

The list goes on…

Hey, hold on! I am hearing something…
Oh, Holy Smoke!!

To try out Linux!!
Is that one of your New Year resolutions? Do I hear a ‘YES’ ??

If you are tired of the blue screen called Windows, which you installed paying royalty fees to
Microsoft, or illegally (punishable under the law) from pirated CDs
from friends and underground shops...

If you have a computer and you are bored of watching movies in Windows Media Player and
listening to mp3s in Win Amps; and you are so _seriously_ wondering
how to play around with the hardware...

If you are - a geek, a hacker in the making.

If you heard about Linux, but don't know how to start with.

Come on you students and teachers, come on you aunties and grandfathers,
strangers and legends, painters and pipers...

Shine on with Linux.
Welcome to the machine !!

Snapshot of a Linux Desktop

Now, how to start with - You have a computer and you have Windows running - fine, no hassles, it’s simple, easy and adventurous. Worry not, you are not going to have your Windows gone for the sake of trying your hand in Linux; you can have a dual-boot system, where you will have both operating systems - you can boot to any OS of your choice.

Just get going:

Keep a back up of all your most important files from Windows - burn them to a CD, or move them to your friend’s hard disk.
If you have more then one partitions, save all the important files from say “D drive” (or any drive of your choice) for you are going to make it the Linux partition.
If you have only a C drive, then you gotta recreate a new partition table.
You may wonder about the sizes of the partitions, and how to install etc
Please follow this documentation here
So far you have seen and got to know the how to install, a clear picture must be there by now. The question that arises now is the Linux installation CDs.
- You can try downloading the ISO images from the web sites of various distributions; burn them to CDs using Nero or some software.
- For beginners Ubuntu is suggested as it’s very much user friendly:
  here
- If you don’t have internet connection, or don’t have CD writer to burn the ISO images to CDs, or you don’t have anybody from where you can borrow the Linux CDs - * you can take from us *
If you are scared of the adventure or if you face any problem installing Linux on your machines, you can contact us by mail or phone to guide you.

Practical enough?
You are _fortunate_ to have people ready to help and support you.

You have a machine - you run MS Word, Win amp, Media Player, Adobe Photoshop, NFS, Age of Empire, Internet Explorer etc etc…. The world of computer doesn’t go beyond that?

Agent Smiths, stay away! The Saints are here…

WAKE UP NEO, THE MATRIX HAS YOU, TRY OUT LINUX – for freedom, for ethics, for sharing, for excellence… The Free and Open Source Software communities the world over in general and we folks at Linux Manipur in particular are always there.

If you want Linux CDs(for FREE, as long as we have enough blank CDs to make copies and as long as we are not broke :) )
If you are shy or not comfortable mailing to our mailing list at [email protected]
If you have more queries and would like to speak on the phone and talk personally.

You can contact anyone of us:

IMPHAL	Angom Buboo ([email protected]) Beda Lairenjam ([email protected]) Thoudam Bindeswar ([email protected])
SOUTH INDIA	Ringo Pebam ([email protected]) Shangkar Mayanglambam ([email protected]) Surjit Manohermayum ([email protected] ) Tiken Moirangthem ([email protected])
NORTH INDIA	Bhalindra Waribam ([email protected]) Hidangmayum Rajesh Sharma ([email protected]) Sushil Mayengbam ([email protected] )
WEST INDIA	Vimol Kshetrimayum ([email protected])

(Note: We are _not_ afraid to give away our phone numbers, but it’s _not_ just proper to give phone number here in world wide web; just drop down a mail first, we will be there - leave alone the phone call replies, we can even come(if time permits) to your place and give a demo)

You are young, wild and free,
Get your enthusiasms runnin’,
Head out to the highway of unlimited freedom,
Look out for fun and adventure,
And go racin’ with the best hackers of the world.

And whatever comes your way,
Oh Boy, go make it happen,
Take the world in a love embrace,
Like a true nature’s child,
You can climb so high.

Now is the time to BLOOM.

Snapshot of using Open Office in Linux

Snapshot of playing movies in Linux

Related Articles:

http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/
Open Source / GNU / LINUX - E-pao.net

And dear elders, you need not loose heart; there are even grannies who love Linux
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/gran3.shtml

Ringo Pebam, a software Engineer in Bangalore and GNU/LINUX enthusiast, writes regularly to e-pao.net
He can be contacted at [email protected]
This article was webcasted on December 27, 2006.

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