After fours years of infatuation and no satisfactory experience, today I finally managed to install and configure Linux to work perfectly. This time around I used VMWare Workstation 4.0 and Mandrake Linux 9.1. It took me a combined work-time of around 10 hours to get it up and running with everything running, including a net connection, my basic requirement to having Linux on my machine.

Before this try, my first adventure was WinLinux 2000 more than four years ago, the Windows based distro that you could install just like any other software on top of Windows and it would run in DOS-mode. That was a big thumbs-down, very obscure heardware support and a not so loaded GUI (KDE 1.X). But it was my first Linux experience. After that I tried to get Mandrake 7.2 on my PII back home but no luck... the damn thing wouldn't even load upto the installer. That was it, I got so pissed that I went to a Linux board, and wrote all sorts of shit about Linux and how Windoze rules (it still does :P)

Then late last year the thirst of having a "Linux box" came back, and I had to try Mandrake 8.2 with VMWare. It installed but never booted up. Out you go, u dumb OS.

But two days ago, I decided that I have to pursue it further. I mean I can't just stop because it hasn't worked before with me. I can't give up on the biggest piece of geek software ever written... I can't. So I decided to download all three ISOs of Mandrake 9.1 distro, and install every piece of software that I found useful in the installer (I have to use my 200GB drive space somewhere).

It worked fine, and I booted straight upto Gnome (I don't like KDE). It felt so good, to be using something most other people cannot experience, either better or worst. I guess that's the same feeling Mac users get, but fuck the mac.

Within the first few minutes I noticed that VMWare Tools (the guest operating system portion of Workstation) was sort of required to fully use Linux like it's meant to be used. I tried installing it. My first piece of software to be installed from a terminal window. It wasn't that bad, but it can't beat Installshield for now. First I found out that I didn't have gcc (c compiler) installed and then it was located the lspci binaries. Those two were fairly easy. But then it came to finding the kernel-source to rebuilt VMWare Tools for the current kernel. Damn, just that step took me 5 hours and three reinstalls from scratch. In the end (this afternoon) I had everything running except for VMWare's virtual network adapter. And that the thing I need to... errmmm... exploi... nothing. Shut up. After looking thru Google Groups and MandrakeClub, I finally got the message that I had to look at VMWare's site. There it was, a simple one line solution to my damn problem. What's more? now they tell me Workstation 4.0 doesn't support LM 9.1. Fools.

Anyway, when it's all working just fine. Everything. I even downloaded and installed my first piece of "downloaded software" on Linux, the Mozilla! Firebird browser. And I can't say enough for VMWare, it's a wonderful piece of software. Now I'm looking forward to using Wine to install PC software in Gnome, that's the best thing to me. I just love my new WinXP-Mandrake box. Life is all good.