Peanuts, Castle Wolfenstein, and Me

Accessing the remote desktop and playing with commands in the terminal brought back some memories for me. I can still recall Computer Basic class, my freshman year, writing little programs that calculated compound interest and that repeated my name infinitely. Also, playing Castle Wolfenstein if we finished early. We were on little Apples with dark brown screens and amber text (weeeee, not the usual green, we thought we were cool, but we so, so weren't). So typing in commands, yeah, I can remember that.

Of course, what I'm doing now is a bit more complicated than

10 HOME

20 PRINT "Valerie Kittell";

30 GOTO 20

Or whatever Basic was, I can't really remember any more. I got a C in that class and am still pretty bitter about it because I really, really tried and my teacher just sat there at the front of the room reading paperbacks.

Anyway, command lines. My usual technique when starting something new is kind of a cross between Linus and Lucy. By that I mean, like Linus, I start by trying to learn more about what I'm doing. But I temper that with a bit of Lucy, and try to jump into the action a bit sooner than Linus would.

So, I went through the Arthur Griffith tutorials and took notes as I listened. That took forever, I gotta say, but it always does if you try to take notes during reading/video watching. But since it usually helps me learn better by writing down (I have to know what I'm writing), I kept at it. The Learning the Shell articles I printed, as Bruce suggested, and that's where Lucy came in! I opened the remote desktop and  worked through the Learning the Shell sections as I read, referring back to my Arthur Griffith notes (and using Arthur Griffith's voice to "speak" the text in my mind). And Linus popped back up as I added more notes to a new Command Line page, which may or may not end up being useful as there are no doubt better lists already online.

I was just grateful Charlie Brown didn't ever show up. That's when you give good faith, honest efforts but the world conspires against you. I did have one incident regarding the mv command, trying to move a file from one directory to the other. I figured it out (Linus-style, by researching on the Internet) before I resorted to Lucy's solution (drop kicking the computer). Overall, I was fairly pleased with my rudimentary understanding and performance.

40 END

Gnome Power!

Ever since I started library school, I've been struck by the heaps of acronyms used in the discipline. I truly thought that education had the corner on that market, but nothing doing: AACRII, ALA, DDC, DOI, FRBR, LCC, LCSH, LISA, LISTA, MARC, MARC21, MeSH, OAI, OCLC, OPAC, XML, and Z39.50-- just to name a few! While my list might sound like a robot roll call, the acronyms are practical and logical.

Not so the terminology at Ubuntu forums, which I'm assigned to read as part of my Introduction to Applied Technology course. My first venture into the Absolute Beginner Talk forum introduced such words as Gnome Power, Grub Rescue, Lucid, and Gwibber. I wonder how long it takes for a person to say those words out loud without any discomfort? Personally, I think they're cool, albeit über-geeky. It also leads me to wonder how intuitive, if at all, these terms are? So I set out on a journey, accompanied by my side-kicks Shibboleth and Worldcat, and explored some of the Ubuntu and Ubuntu-related terminology.

First, of course, must be Ubuntu itself. My hunch that it stems from an African language is correct; Wikipedia explains that it derives from Bantu and is a classical South African philosophy. They quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu as defining Ubuntu thus:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

The Ubuntu operating system, then, is so named because the motivation for Open Source,  

       sharing and helping one another, is a reflection of the greater philosophy.

Next, my eye was caught by Plymouth because I own a Plymouth Duster, similar to the one in the picture, though mine was white until I smashed it and its new panels are blue. I'm sad to think of it sitting in my carport awaiting overhaul, so I'll let that go and explain what I discovered about the Plymouth bootsplash. It's a graphic representation of what happens when your computer boots up and it supports animation. In the Ubuntu forums, many of the threads about Plymouth were about wanting to customize the graphics, which you apparently can, unless you can't, which is what some people are complaining about.

I couldn't wait to see what Gnome Power! was all about. Well, I was sad to see that when I looked more closely, there is no Gnome Power! It was a thread about a Gnome Power Manager failure. Actually, Gnome is an acronym- GNU Network Object Model Environment. According to Wikipedia, Gnome "is a desktop environment—a graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system—composed entirely of free and open source software" and not the little creatures carrying out tasks in your computer. Which is a shame. About a third of the threads on Ubuntu regarding Gnome were questions about customizing, and the other two-thirds were users experiencing problems. One user's thread title told the tale of terminal border thickness in Gnome. Poor Gnome.

Grubs. Pesky and gross. Many threads indicated the users had Grub Problems. Welcome to the club. In Ubuntu, grubs are what allows a user to have more than one operating system on their computer. It's an acronym, too- GNU Grand Unified Bootloader, which according to Wikipedia is a play on the grand unified theory (physics). Hence the picture, which is not of a disgusting grub. Personally, I feel that the grossness of a grub outweighs the ha-ha of the pun. I would have gone a different route, perhaps When EnErgizing Vehicle, I eLect this operating system (WEEVIL) or COmputeR Name when BOoting up Right hERe and now (Corn Borer). The user needing a Grub Rescue had, when updating Ubuntu, been prompted to check boxes regarding Grub, and, since he didn't know what Grub was, he did what any of us would do. He checked all the boxes. Ever since, he's been in Grub Rescue Mode. The striking thing about this thread (which I find on so many forums) is the helpfulness of other users.

This is one thing I really love about the Internet.

P.S. Grubs are gross.

Lucid. Lucid Lynx is version 10.04 LTS of Ubuntu. Imagine my surprise (and delight) to see that each Ubuntu release has a cool, alliterative name, such as Dapper Drake, Jaunty Jackalope, Karmic Koala, and Maverick Meerkat, the latest (as of the Wikipedia article's last update). Which makes sense, because as I scroll through the thread titles, I see all of these terms. It's actually a bit more comforting to know that since these are all  

                versions of Ubuntu,

these terms that are listed in the forums aren't all different words to learn-- they're all versions of the same thing.

Lastly, in my journey, the Gwibber. What is the Gwibber, you ask? Good question, my friend. The answer is not as exciting as I would have hoped. It sounds like the language of Gnomes, doesn't it? Well, actually, it's a microblogging client that supports the most common social computing platforms, such as Facebook, Googlereader, Digg, and, of course Twitter, from which it probably derived its name. Since it works in Gnome, I guess it is kind of a Gnome language, and I prefer to think of it that way. Almost all the threads I looked at regarding Gwibber were problems, mostly that it would not install, especially after the user had upgraded to the next version of Ubuntu. Some of the Gwibber problems are known issues with patches and fixes being worked on. Again, friendly people helping other people. Nice to see!

And so ends my first journey in the Ubuntu Forums. To summarize, the Meerkats were fed up with their grub problem and called upon Gnome Power for help. The Gnomes sped to the rescue in their Plymouth Duster and destroyed all the grubs with a resounding bootsplash and a hurrah in their native Gwibber.  

And there was much rejoicing.