checkyoulater's Journal: My Linux laptop...

The last few times I have gone to a cottage up north, I have brought my laptop along. Not to do any work whatsoever, but to have access to ~30GB of music. Much easier than every person lugging along 30-40 cd's each, and having them all mixed up at the end of the weekend. I bring the laptop, 2 decent speakers, and all the appropriate connectors. It all fits nicely into one of those laptop backpack cases.

I usually try and bring up an assortment of music that all people can like, ultimately giving myself veto power, of course. This has worked quite well, and I imagine it will continue to work well.

My laptop runs Gentoo. More specifically, it runs Gentoo without X. It can do anything I need it to, which is mainly play music, write, and occasionally send an email. The application I use to play music is mp3blaster. If you have ever seen it, you will understand how simple it is to use. It is an ncurses-based application, and every key is fully customizable. I would agree that it might be confusing for somebody who is used to usin Winamp + Windows Explorer to find files, but not so difficult that a child couldn't pick it up within minutes. Case in point: One guy at the cottage who said he knew nothing about computers took literally 2 minutes to understand how to add, remove and skip songs ina playlist. Plus, he was even navigating through the individual directories and adding songs that weren't on any of my playlists.

Another guy at first asked me if I was running DOS. I told him no, it's Linux. He stared blankly. Ever heard of Unix, I asked. Same thing. Why do you use that. Why don't you install Windows? I told him that I prefer not to use Microsoft products, especially on my own computers. I guess he took that to mean that I can't afford to purchase XP, because he offered me a pirated copy of XP, along with Office XP, and anything else I might want. This guy just didn't get it. I don't want that stuff. I have no need for it.

So the moral of the story? I don't think there is one. Perhaps it is never underestimate the simplicity of a well-designed console application? A laptop without XP confuses only people who know 'something' about computers? Or perhaps I'm an elitist because I bring my linux laptop to a cottage full of Windows people?