The Usual Stupid Nattering about Computers

There is some vague possibility some folks might find this useful…

The other day I hauled out my Win7 laptop to complete formatting before submitting my book to the publisher. It had a copy of Word 2003, the last version I can tolerate, and Word format is pretty much required by the publisher (it’s pretty common among publishers) but mine isn’t too picky about the version. I had WINE running on the laptop with Word 97, but that’s too old for the publisher’s scripted conversion process.

This required a very long and convoluted process of updating everything on the Win7 laptop. At least one update persistently failed, and nothing I could find would resolve this. It’s typical of MS products, as you may know, that the least bit of individualizing of your system breaks everything because the Borg of Redmond is hostile to human uniqueness. You have to understand that Windows development tends to be highly compartmentalized, while the system is not. So the developers of one part are not only clueless about what the folks in the other parts are doing, but might actually be in some kind of perverted passive-aggressive competition to break each others stuff. This, in the guise of insisting they are doing it right and the other teams need to get on board. At any rate, it was the usual tears and agony for the end user in my case.

Granted, this is a relatively low-spec laptop, so the hardware is already a tad cranky, but it’s the best I could do. Win7 was the least painful of the MS solutions that run on this device. But this was aggravated by the pervasive “screw-the-user” attitude of all the essential supporting service companies: anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. All of them have adopted the MS attitude of simply forcing the system to do certain things without giving the user a clue what or why. The only time they bother to inform you is when they can profit from exaggerating or outright lying about what’s going on. The exact same companies never treat Linux users this way when they make products for Linux.

I decided it was time to research afresh the various options I can tolerate in Linux and see if I could ditch Windows on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15-3542). First, backup the Win7 installation completely so it can be restored (I did the same with the original Win8.1). The RedHat clones had already failed, much as I like them. The stable Ubuntu and friends were a mess, so I tried OpenSUSE 13.2. No consistent sound and it simply locked up when I tried to log out. Before giving up, I tried the latest weekly update of Debian 8 pre-release (AMD64 version).

Worked perfectly out of the box. So I’m writing this on said Debian laptop right now. Yes, the hardware is still a little wonky (especially the cheap touchpad) but it was worse under Windows. I decided to use the “non-free firmware” version of the net install CD, because I knew the networking stuff was not fully Open Source yet (RealTek 8101 ethernet and Atheros 9565 wifi) and only needed one other non-free package for the Bluetooth (an ar3k module).

That meant I would need to add a VM to run WinXP with Office XP (still got good CDs for those). Since Virtual Box was already in the standard Debian repo, that was the shortest path. However, it’s been broken into lots of little packages, so I had to figure it all out and install most of them:

• virtualbox
• virtualbox-dkms
• virtualbox-guest-additions-iso
• virtualbox-guest-dkms
• virtualbox-guest-utils
• virtualbox-guest-x11
• virtualbox-qt

But this allows you to install from the CD you put into the host-machine tray, instead of forcing you to extract the ISO from the CD and mount it as a virtual drive, as is the normal practice with Virtual Box. So I was able to process the book that way and it’s all good.

The only other issue remaining is that I am still trying to parse the various options in synclient to tame this cranky touchpad.

Otherwise, Debian 8 AMD64 runs very on Dell’s Inspirion 15-3542.

Addenda: Joking comment about how much the US Army needs to re-hire me as a civilian cyber security guy and train military folks to use Linux so they can stop getting serious viral infections just about guaranteed due to obstreperous bureaucratic habits. I’m ready to go to work yesterday, but I tend to think it would require some pretty heavy pressure from way up the chain of command before anyone would take seriously such a suggestion. Windows-based habits are burned into the very concrete on which military computer offices stand.