More installing, devel & design

First before I jump into my goals, let me just amaze you with what all I've done since my last post. Actually, last night after posting, I decided to go ahead and try to install/upgrade/update/whatever! some more applications.

I had already downloaded the latest Thunderbird version so I decided to tackle it next. I just followed a similar scheme to my grand experiences installing Firefox. I approached this install with more confidence and also did a little experimenting in the process. All in all, it ended up working out just the same.

Then, I installed my first package. I wanted to update Gaim because it seemed that there were issues with the version that came pre-installed. So I hoped that the latest version would help. For Gaim, the downloads were either source (bleck!) or RPM type packages. I thought I'd go the package route, thus I downloaded and let KPackage do it's thing.

At first, I wasn't even sure if it did anything. I launched Gaim and discovered that it still worked -- although I really figured it was still the old version. But once it was up and running, the version info told me that this was indeed what I had just installed. And it works better too. Rah!

This brings us to today -- a day I chose to keep Windows XP on, quite honestly. If I left Linux up I would tinker all day (I did enough of that as it was) and I really have a lot of other things in life going on right now so I needed to lessen the temptation. I must admit, I did login to Slackware once today. And guess what I did in that time? (Besides playing Spider....) I downloaded and installed Apache HTTP server. Whoo! :)

With that said, now I will talk about more goals!

One of the reasons I decided to get back into Linux is having a stable and responsive system to do nearly any kind of design or development stuff that I want. I have a number of outstanding and/or upcoming projects that I need a better, more friendly environment to work within.

So I'm all happy about being able to attempt website design (no matter the size or intent) all in a single system. I can use one of the awesome development tools available via Open Source or stick to a simple text editor. I can have a server or two running, utilise different languages, have as many databases I need, and see how it all looks and works without having to upload anything. Can this be done in Windows? Yes I think so, to an extent. But Windows is so messed up right now, and so sluggish and, yah, I'd rather develop in Linux. So I'm going to.

Also, I'm looking forward to getting thicker into visual design work, using nifty tools like The Gimp and whatever else I can find -- without having them crash and burn in Windows every so many minutes.

And, I don't know, somehow, it just makes me feel just a little bit smarter again. Silly to some, but quite nice right now. Even if I am just a noob.