As a prelude to University of South Florida's move to the Big East, they planned a homecoming game against Army.

The USF Bulls learned firsthand the definition of demoralizing humiliation. It's a good thing the professional teams in the Tampa Bay area are impressive, otherwise we'd never have the opportunity for a good celebratory revelry.

Best of luck in the Big East, Bulls. You're going to need it.

Some photo documentation of the humiliation follows.

Let's hope for better days next weekend.

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Last Wednesday, I was the guest presenter again at the USF MIS Society's meeting. I was covering the basics of Linux system administration and what to expect from your first encounter with Linux. They billed me as a Linux guru.

I was introduced to Linux incrementally, installing it first on a test server and development machine, playing around to get the swing of it, and then upgrading to my laptop, and finally moving to an entirely Linux computer with my desktop.

This is a good way to get started using Linux, especially if you have a spare computer lying around. If not, it could be a bit harder. What I usually ask people who ask me how to go about setting up their first Linux system is what they actually use their computer for. The majority of people that I talk to will answer, "Well, I play a few games, I watch the occasional movie, I communicate, browse the Internet, do a little shopping, and other than that it's basically just a productivity tool."

With the exception of high-end multimedia, digital remastering, and desktop publishing, most applications have an open source alternative that will get the job done rather quickly and relatively easily.

If you're interested in moving to Linux on your desktop, first make a list of the items you use on your computer that you use regularly or couldn't live without. For me, these items were as follows:

• A C compiler
• A Java compiler
• A DVD Player
• A ripper and MP3/OGG/FLAC player
• Collaboration Groupware
• A good HTML/CSS editor
• A good Integrated Development Environment
• Some desktop eye-candy, so I can work without getting bored
• An AIM clone
• At least two major games, to kill time

You tend to find more as you get started, and as you find out more about the available open source software, you'll find uses for your computer you never realized before. At times I configure my desktop to run exclusively as a scratching/spinning/mixing station with digital music. I've even considered attaching part of an old mouse to a turntable and making a USB turntable to do some digital mixing.

In any case, start with something easy, like Knoppix or Morphix, that you can play around with without sacrificing your hard drive. From there, Mepis, Xandros, or Linspire are good options to get your feet wet. If you're really in the mood to jump in, try a Red Hat based distribution; Fedora Core or Tao Linux are good options. And if you've already used something along those lines for a while, take a deep breath and move to something even more involved, like LFS, Gentoo, or Slackware. I recommend Gentoo.

For those interested, I'm putting the slides up here

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