Here comes Linux, part 1<\/p>\n
by Richard White<\/p>\n
2009-11-29<\/p>\n
“Are you kidding me???<\/i>” Dee shouted in disbelief.<\/p>\n
I’d just told her that I–a faithful Mac user for the last twenty years–had ordered a Dell Mini 10v.<\/p>\n
“Are you KIDDING ME???<\/i> she shouted again, thinking perhaps that I hadn’t heard her the first time.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I know…” I went on to explain that I’m not giving up the MacbookPro. And I’m definitely<\/i> not using Windows (no offense). I’ve been looking for a decent portable on which to install Linux Mint<\/a>, and after passing on the idea of a Lenovo ThinkPad (high quality, but a little higher-priced especially for a second machine), I fell for the “$100 off, free shipping” email that I’d gotten for the Dell.<\/p>\n This is more than just Black Friday extravagance. I’ve been intrigued by the idea of working with Linux on a laptop for a number of years now, ever since Mark Pilgrim famously made his own switch<\/a> from the Mac three years ago. His reasons included Apple’s proprietary file-formatting and Digital Rights Management (DRM) lockdowns that make playing by their rules occasionally difficult. The hardware, although of high-quality, is known for being expensive, placing it out-of-reach for many students, and a number of teachers. The question became, is it reasonable for me, as an educational technologist to run most, if not all, of my digital life using Free \/ Open Source Software?<\/p>\n In addition to other topics being discussed here, I’ll be covering the journey here once the new machine arrives in a couple of weeks. For now, though, I’m anticipating using the following software:<\/p>\n