First post....Thought it might help

I thought I might blog about my experiences with Slackware, wine, and World of Warcraft...

First off, what is Linux? To me, freedom from being 'stuck' with an operating sytem that is primarily designed by a committee that decides what I want, and how I want to not only use it, but how I MUST use it. If you need more in-depth answers than that, please feel free to search the web.

What is Slackware? It is the "oldest" Linux distro out there still being maintained/developed. It is STABLE (As is rock-solid), and leaves you with the choice of what to do with it. After you install it, it doesn't even assume you want a GUI. It actually (GASP!) dumps you into the CLI! (CLI=Command Line Interface...Windows users: Think DOS). After that, it's up to you. Do you want a GUI? Then configure X for your hardware. Do you want a Webserver? Then configure the conf file, and start it. After getting the basics down, it won't take you long until you're zipping along at breakneck speed, and breaking the OS every 5 min. But, since YOU setup the OS, YOU can also fix it. To me, this = FUN!

What is wine?

If you are not a Linux user, then the term "wine" may mean either:

• An alcoholic drink, usually accompanied by cheese and terribly old music
• The sound of someone complaining with a nasally voice (If this is your thought, then you should learn how to spell "whine")

In a nutshell, wine is a Linux program to allow you to run many Windows programs in Linux without an emulator ("Wine Is Not an Emulator"). It provides many of the necessary 'hooks' for programs to run natively in Linux, but were written for Windows. Thus, it actually uses your hardware, instead of a "virtual machine", so allowing much faster speeds. (More on this later)

In future posts, I'll add the topics of:

• Slackware: Getting it, installing it.
• wine: Where is it? Compiling, and installing
• Methods of installing World of Warcraft

For now, I've got to go....Tuesday afternoon, you know, and the servers will be back up soon.....