Mandrakelinux 10.1 Has Arrived!

Yesterday afternoon Mr. UPS Man pulled up out front in his van and delivered a package. Yes, my Mandrakelinux 10.1 PowerPack is here at last!

I'm not going to have time to do more than glance at it for the rest of the week, as today I launch into yet another busy work week. Maybe next Monday— Monday being my day off. I expect installing MDK 10.1 on my computer, in place of my present MDK 9.1, is going to be an all-day task.

First I'll have to back up my data onto zip disks— basically, back up my entire /home directory. Then note down necessary settings to configure for use with NTP servers out there; to set up an alternate config file for running the Tor Proxy with Privoxy; to set the "ShadowStatus" option in case XOrg has the same "scrolling hang" problem with my video card as XFree86; and all those other geeklike things beloved by anyone who likes running Linux.

The new Mandrakelinux 10.1 PowerPack comes with six CDs and two manuals. One of the manuals is on the order of "Why is Mozilla so great? And what is a spreadsheet?": sorry, I didn't need that last time around, and I don't need it now. But the second manual, which wasn't included with Mandrake 9.1, is a more technical reference manual on command-line utilities, managing mount points, installing a new kernel, etc. I doubt much of it will be news to me now, a year and some months after I first switched to Linux; but something like it would've smoothed my path back a year ago in September. It will probably be handy for quick reference.

I expect once I finally sit down to this project— next Monday or so— installing MDK 10.1 will take well under an hour. I'm going to repartition my hard drive, get rid of that rump 1.1 gig Win98 partition I never use: no more dual boot for me! Then restore my data, tinker with appropriate config files, install True Type fonts, and download security updates. That last step will probably take some hours over my dialup connection: I hope the UW-Madison computer science department FTP mirror is ready to go with 10.1, they didn't have everything in place yet when I checked yesterday afternoon.

I'd also like to install XOrg 6.8.1, so as to have true transparency on my transparent Aterm windows (that is, you'll be able to see one window behind another). And try out some of the transparent themes for Fluxbox, and so forth!

Ah yes, for one more-or-less computer geek out here in the Iowa countryside, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...