laptop is dead / she’s a frog!

Oh man… Mr. Grub can’t start my laptop anymore. Error 1.5 and a newbie like me hasn’t got a clue what to do now of course… So, since I only have internet for one computer it meant resetting the cable modem, redoing the settings with the provider… Not a lot of work, but is sure gave a shock typing from my desktop again. Especially since my princess and me will start our 1-year sabbatical in 3 weeks time, so we’ll only have our laptop with us then…

This is what happened:

I took the advice to reformat my 2 Ubuntu partitions again with GParted and then re-instal Ubuntu with the LiveCD. The first part went smooth enough. The second didn’t. The initialization process stopped after a lot of lines saying Ubuntu “could not allocate” a lot of things and that he had been “respawning too fast”. This reference to fish and frog life unexpectedly gave me confirmation that Ubuntu also came out of the ocean! The wonders of evolution!

Anyway, up to this point I still thought “No Problemo!”, just reboot in Windy and ask my forum friends for advice before starting to freak out… But pffffffff… Now GRUB can’t load itself (error 15). And if GRUB can’t load a newbie like me hasn’t got a clue how to proceed from there…

I’m sure it’s exactly surprises like this that can put off people from using GNU+Linux. But I’m determined as hell to get this party started!

Note that I wrote GNU+Linux. I’ll also change the subtitle of my blog. That is because I have been reading on the website of the free software foundation NGO. And then moved on to do some more research on the web on the history of this movement. All very interesting and nutritious for my idealistic soul. I read a great bio of Richard Stallman on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

What I found particularly interesting was that he already opposed copyrighted software at the end of the seventies. Quote:

In the 1980s, the hacker culture began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors’ computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. When Brian Reid in 1979 placed “time bombs” in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed that “the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity.”

It inspired him to found the Free Software Foundation which came up with the GNU General Public License (GPL), effectively copyrighting the idea of copyleft.

I read somewhere else on the Wikipedia that a poll amongst Sourceforge-users revealed that about 60% of the software they used was free (not as in freeware, but meaning being released under the GPL). Ok, sourceforge users are probably not the average computer users… But hey, it makes me optimistic about the future. Especially since apparently, and I quote again from a Wikipedia article:

In November of 2006, the Microsoft and Novell software corporations announced a controversial partnership to improve interoperability between Microsoft Windows and SUSE Linux.

I guess development of our “Third world” but be much helped if 97% of the world uses free operating systems (97% of the world’s PC’s run on Windows now) and free software on their computers. Imagine that!

Alright, have to get ready to take my fiancé and her cute little niece to the promised amusement park for the afternoon. Let’s spend some money