Linux Remote Desktop

"When you are a child you use a computer by looking at the pictures. When you grow up, you learn to read and write. Welcome to Computer Literacy 101. Now let's get to work."

I guess there is no way around the extremes of frustration and difficulty I've been experiencing in this course. I am definitely a "child" when it comes to my knowledge of the technological world ---it is one of my most glaring weaknesses in my current position as an information professional. So visual and non-technically inclined am I that every step can take me a very, very, long time to accomplish---I've been spending the first part of each of my limited study sessions (hours it seems) just trying to puzzle through what exactly it is we are doing, since I only seem to have the dimmest grasp at the outset, even generally after reading through the lectures, of the "big picture" of the task at hand. Last week we were downloading all those different software pieces; a bunch of things that begin with he letter "V" and I almost posted a a confused cry of despair that said "what the heck are all these things for anyway???" I am glad I managed to exercise a little bit of patience because this week I do have a better grasp (I think) of what each of them is for. But that hasn't made actually using them all that much easier.

For example, I could not make sense of the tutorial on you tube very easily because I could not figure out how to arrive at its starting point! Andrew's post in the activity discussion section was crucial....but I still could not find the VNC login window for a long, long time because I was expecting an icon on the desktop, and I was expecting it to look exactly like the one pictured in the you-tube tutorial....I couldn't figure out which piece of of the VNC software (found with a name search ) was supposed to be the login window... I know that this must seem absolutely inane to a more advanced computer user----but there it is. That is where I am at.

[I've realized of course that it probably would have helped to take something more basic first...(like maybe IRLS 570? ) but I couldn't quite figure out how to make that work with my schedule... and now what is done is done....]

As it is, I am committed to learning this stuff even though it is killing me---- requiring almost Herculean feats of time, focus and energy....I am only barely following the big picture of what we are doing....though after a week of attempting the tutorials and assignments I hope I can accurately paraphrase the main assignment this week---accessing the remote Linux desktop.

Here is my best attempt to piece together what I think is happening....we are using a UofA VPN or Virtual Private Network operated over the internet. This means that my machine "calls up" UofA and logs in to the UofA network and appears as a local machine to the network, allowing me to access a remote server (located somewhere in Tucson?) running the Linux Ubuntu operating system, with its command line BASH shell, so that I can use it as a learning tool to explore a command line operating system and its specific protocol. A command line operating system is kind of like the 'raw stuff' that operates beneath a GUI or graphic user interface; i.e., the menu bars and icons that I am so much more accustomed to looking at when I operate a computer....

Overall, I have much more to do because so far it has taken me sooo long just to accomplish the basics of logging in and looking around a bit, that I am struggling to complete the substantive work in the tutorials. But now I do feel more confident that I can get back in there and finish up the tutorials over the next few days.

I suppose I still am fuzzy on the relationship between VNC and VPN and to be honest I still have not attempted the Linux install on my own machine. I am finding that this course is far more than 15 hours a week for me personally, but that is neither here nor there...I am doing my best and learning a lot and that will have to do.

Personal to Global Paranoia?

Absolute Beginners forum is something of a misnomer isn't it? And not at all reassuring.... I only have this one modest working machine that is my connection to school, the world, my future----what was I thinking risking my trusty little tool by installing a whole bunch of software on it that I don't even understand???
I mean I've read the definitions that say virtual machine software is the safe way to to run a separate operating system and protect your home files etc... but that Ubuntu post about malicious code that can cause your computer to die is rather sobering isn't it?

This class might just tip me back into some sort of pre-grad school, pre-librarianship, luddite position ... As in; do we really need all this stuff? Is it going to make our lives better somehow---? Or does it just add stress, risk and the potential for loss? On a global level is the internet
"revolution" really going to link us to radical democratic participation and utopian information sharing, or is it just going to drain the last drops of petroleum and other non-renewable resources from the earth to feed an exponetially expanding desire for more ---more knowledge-more power---more entertainment---more answers---more SEARCH!!!

No time for books ?

This is actually my first ever post to a blog (and certainly my first attempt to create one)... yes, I suppose I shouldn't admit that in this class but it is true... I am one who has come late and skeptically to the "freedom" of the digital world and all of its 2.0 tools--- instead I tend to feel rather brow beaten into the need to learn this stuff at the expense of time to do other things...like read a really good book...