Although saying I'm typing it "from" Argo seems a little silly, since I'm sitting in the same place, using the same keyboard, and looking at the same monitor as before. And I'm telneting into Dagobah, since I obviously don't have my web database stuff set up on Argo at all yet. But still, this is definitely going through Argo. :)

Sittin here with a bunch of eterms open just having a ball in this totally unfamiliar desktop setup. I must say this Mandrake does indeed have some pretty damn cool shit.

Aha! When I get a console beep, it comes out of Argo's speaker. Hahahahaha.

The install program was very slick. Just the sort of thing that the unwashed masses need in order to free themselves from the clutches of the evil empire. Very slick, very easy, very user friendly. Dumps you right into VGA mode almost immediately upon booting from the cd. The hardware detection worked seamlessly and correctly for me. The graphical partitioning program was actually very cool, even for somebody like me who likes absolute control over everything. Very handy.

And of course, being the freak that I am, I had to go through each of the individual package categories and look at what individual packeges it was installing, and change a few here and there, even though I'll probably be doing another wipe in a week or so. lol. I did notice a bug with it's drawing of the package tree. It didn't always refresh correctly when you expand/collapse a branch. Nothing bad enough to keep it from being usable, but slightly annoying anyway.

It figured out my video, monitor and network card without error or confusion. A far cry from the days when we would go through the XF86Config file and manually tune all the clock lines. I'm sure I'll still go back and do that at some point, both for fun, and because I think I could do a little bit better job at getting it to fill the whole of my monitor's viewable area with a little xvidtune work. Still, a very impressive display of auto detection technology.

I was also somewhat impressed with the security level selection feature. You can choose from 6 pre-created security settings; everything from "Cracker's paradise" to "Paranoid" and in between. As documented in the manual, this covers quite a range of settings, such as the default umask, whether the . directory should be in $PATH, the logging detail, various integrity checks to be performed, boot passwords, etc etc etc. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

And I still cannot get over how fscking FAST everything in here is. It's wild! Moving from 133 Mhz with a variety of random components thrown together from ages ago, to a 750Mhz, everything hand picked for optimum performance... it's quite a shock.

Except telneting back to Dagobah has been causing some strange behavior. (I know, I know, ssh is far superior. But this cd, which includes practically everything else under the sun, didn't include a copy. Silly U.S. government regs. Although in fairness to Mandrake, I would point out that as soon as networking was configured, it prompted for an automatic download of all secure components from an international server. A very cool thing to have. Of course, given my current situation, I was unable to take advantage of it. But I digress.)

So anyway, when I telnetted back to Dagobah, I was getting strange delays all over the place. On the initial login prompt, whenever I tried to open a copy of vim, and at other odd times. I'm almost inclined to believe that Dagobah might be developing a jealousy complex. Here I am, giving all this attention to the new arrival, and poor Dagobah might be fearing that it's on its way out the door.

There, there now, Dagobah. It's alright. You're still important too. [pat pat] Just because Argo is about a zillion times faster doesn't mean you're going to be abandoned in a dumpster anytime soon. See? Argo wants to be friends with you! Be nice, and remember, Argo is still an inexperienced youngin. You could teach her much from all the knowledge you've garnered over the years. Argo may be fast, but you've got the wisdom of age. Now, ping and shake hands. I knew you could do it. Don't you feel better now? Of course you do!

rotfl. You know it's late at night when you've resorted to consoling your computer by typing little encouragement pep talks into a vi window.

I think I'll play some more now. I could drop dead of tiredness at any moment, but... this is just too much fun to stop. Gotta love it.