Its all about fear

Fear is playing a big role in my life right now. I am confronting fear on a number of different levels, and I am finding that it is sapping my energy. On the macro level, I have all the big fears, both legitimate and manufactured, that are confronting all of us; Global Warming, general environmental decay, overpopulation, the world economy, the national economy and the upcoming election. The manufactured fears created by the Bush administration which revolve around terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be addressed even though they are totally the product of our current occupant of the White House. On a more personal level, I am dealing with my fear of change in my personal life (I really, really have to move on from my current job in retail). And then there is my fear of fucking up my new computer when I install Linux.

Ah, Linux. On the one hand it is so far superior to Windoze as an operating system that the choice of intalling it should be a no brainer. On the other hand, there is that damned command line interface, and the need to be able to communicate with your computer on a more basic level than the GUI. All of that, plus the fact that I am about to do this installation on a laptop, which is the most difficult environment to install Linux into, leads me to approach this with trepidation. In other words, I am very worried that I am going to do something that will fuck up this machine irrevocably. (Well, irrevocably enough to require me to flat out reformat the HD and then reinstall the hated Vista.)

OK, I've already reapportioned the HD so there is a partition on it that is totally empty and ready to be reformated and loaded with Linux. What I really want to do is create a dual-boot machine so that I have a fall back available should something go south with the Linux installation. So, maybe I should read a little more just to be on the safe side...(dither, dither). Eh, there will be more to come on this. However, Redmond should be very afraid also because if this old man can dump Windows and move on to Linux, then a majority of the Windows users out there could do the same thing. And that should make the Evil Empire quake in its boots.