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Chapter 1
There once was a boy named Jack Rear. He was very large and he looked really stupid. Jack loved computers and he did nothing but stay on them and program his little programs all day.
One day, Jack was sitting at his computer trying to compile one of his stupid little programs. Suddenly, his computer performed an Illegal Operation. “Curse Microsoft!!” said Jack. He pressed close, and his computer stopped responding. He pressed Ctrl + Alt + Delete repeatedly in frustration. “AHHH!!!” Then, the Blue Screen of Death appeared on his screen. He kept pressing the space bar, but his efforts to revive his computer were futile. Jack reached behind his computer to flip the switch.
“I am sick of Microsoft! I wish there were an operating system that was more stable!!”
While Jack was at his local bookstore, in the computer section, he saw a book entitled, Red Hat Linux 7.1 for Normal People like You. Jack had heard that Linux was a very stable OS, so he decided to give it a try, since it seemed like a good alternative to Windows.
When Jack arrived home, he pulled the book out of the bag, and turned to page one. So desperate and relieved that he would finally have a stable OS, he read every single word. He even read the copyright information. Having read the entire book in just a few hours, he proceeded to install Linux using the accompanying CD.
Several frustrating hours had passed while trying to install Linux and keeping Windows on his system. He then decided that he would completely wipe out his hard drive, since he thought he could just get everything he needed to run on his new Linux box.
After about four days, and countless hours of lost sleep and reformats of his hard drive, Jack lifted his arms in celebration and accomplishment. He finally had installed Linux.
He tried to get his Internet working, but it would never work. He looked in his Linux book for some advice. Since he could not find any advice, and he could not get on the internet to ask anyone, he began to bang his head on the desk in frustration. He finally remembered that it is almost impossible to get a Win modem to work with Linux.
So he grabbed some cash (about $100) and went out to his computer store to buy a hardware modem. After a few hours, he installed it and he had the internet on his computer.
Ring ring… ring ring… “Hello?” Jake answered.
“Hey Jake, this is Lenny. You wanna go see a movie?”
“Oh, I can’t. I gotta…. Ummm… Well, I don’t have any money. I spent it all.”
“What? I thought you had tons of money!”
“Well, I had to buy a new modem.”
“What was wrong with your old one?”
“Well, nothing. It just wouldn’t work in Linux.”
“Linux? Oh… isn’t that that free OS?”
“Yeah!! Man, it is the best thing in the world! It never crashes!!”
“And you had to buy a new modem to use it?”
“Well, that’s the price you gotta pay to have a stable OS.”
“Didn’t you just buy that new version of Windows that was supposed to be super stable?”
“Well, nothing ran on it. And it sometimes still crashes.”
“I heard that nothing runs on Linux either.”
“NO!! They make all sorts of software for it. I have this book that gives all these websites where you can download every kind of program you need!”
“Well, whatever. I guess that’s all.”
“Ok. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Click
After hanging up the phone, Jack went to work on downloading software for Linux. Since all he had was a 56k connection, it was going to take him a while. He began by downloading Star Office, a MS Office clone for Linux. It was about 100 MB. He decided to let it download overnight. He set it up, and went to bed.
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Note: Similarity of any of the characters in this story, dead or alive, is probably not coincidental.