[Westwales] Linux with XP

[Pax]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:52:14 +0100
"Llywelyn Owen" <linux at spamtracker.co.uk> wrote:

> I've been avidly following this thread - it's been a great read. Now
> that you have a solution,  I'm sure I'm not the only one who would
> love to hear how your students are progressing with linux and their
> feelings towards it. Have many of them used or ever heard of it out of
> school? Any chance that you could drop us a posting every now and then
> (or even a blog/journal) with anecdotes and a progress report?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Llywelyn Owen
> Anglesey
> 

Oshitoshitoshitoshitoshitoshit!

Having successfully (am I telling this to the world? am I insane? do I have copyright?)
partitioned the hard drive the day before, I gathered the students and explained that we 
were now going to install linux to this Windows machine in front of us. Excitedly they
formed a semi-circle around the designated machine. I chose my trustiest student, a Chinese guy with a passion for computers, a natural geek, and nominated him for the hotseat. I put my old Debian install disk in the drive, and off we went. My student performed like an old hand, followed instructions, understood principles, knew when not to press keys without a tap on the shoulder. Then everything hung. Tried again, still hung, ctrl,alt,F3, corrupted disk.

	Now I have a problem, I've got the audience in the palm of my hand, I have promised
them wonders and have produced a raspberry, they are hot to trot and I am desperate. Soooooo,
looking in my bag of goodies I produce a RED HAT 6 disk and put it in the drive, why? because
this disk has never failed me on any machine, thats why! and its the only bastard I've got that will boot and isn't one of these "try it from CD, no compilers, no saving, we're not breaking the GPL, yatta, yatta, yatta". We boot up and we go; thinking this might be a bit tricky, I take over the Pilot's seat. I explain that this will not have a GUI, or be able to connect to the Lan, because of "drivers and stuff like that". At some point I press the wrong button, which button? I cannot recall, it was not the
'where do you want to install Lilo', I stuck that on a bootdisk, but there was a wrong button press.
Never mind, we abort and come back in on the floppy, I show them mc, I show them Emacs, I show them
how the Unix file system works, they give me ooohs and aaaahs of amazed respect.

	OK, that's it folks, show's over, I whip the boot floppy from the drive and reboot
to display......................A system message saying that XP is fucked! Did I mention that
this is a language school? Did I mention that amongst my eager audience were two students with
degrees in Computer Science? To-day's was a single lesson. They have a double lesson to-morrow. 

Ooooooooshitoshitoshitoshitoshitoshitoshit!


Bernard