Seems like yesterday
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| kenholmz Jul 19, 2010 11:31 PM EDT |
I was sitting at the bar in P. F. Chang's (bar as in diner; I lament the passing of the original IHOP's and now there is a Denny's nearby that has no bar, no window into the kitchen), sipping hot tea and reading the latest issue of Linux Format. This young fellow who works there notices my magazine. He tells me with enthusiasm about his recent initiation into the world of Linux, a distro called Ubuntu. I have used Linux since I got Red Hat 5.2 installed, and that with no GUI, but I was thrilled when I was able to do an update of the system over the Internet. I used Red Hat through v8.0 then switched to SuSE 8.2 until Open Suse 10. This week I updated to Open Suse 11.3. It took me a bit longer to get Xine the way I want it (I tried doing the one click at packman but was informed that it didn't know how to do that for the version I was using; it was like old times :)) I never became an expert but I have enjoyed it. These two have always felt "right". Along the way I installed Mandrake, Caldera and even FreeBSD when I could. In more recent time I have installed many more (including Fedora) thanks to more powerful machines and virtualization, but these days I keep running Opensuse as my primary system. I have usually installed both KDE and Gnome, but this time I decided to install KDE, Xfce and Lxde, grabbing any gnome apps I just can't live without. Seems to be working quite well so far. Back to Ubuntu. I installed it soon after learning of it. Until v10.4 I haven't been able to comprehend the phenomenon. I never begrudged anyone their choice, but there has to be more than technical issues at hand, something for social psychologists or cultural anthropologists to sort out. I installed it periodically since that first effort. I am not looking to change my personal system but I must say I have found v10.4 to be quite useable. I installed it in the lab on a Dell desktop and an HP laptop (both running WinXP) using Wabi. I have been impressed. It has handled the the hardware, including the wifi on the labtop quite well. I realize it might falter with some other hardware, but it was always a pain before. The processes for updating or for installing new software from the repositories have been a breeze, with Canonical offering a way to get the unsupported stuff easily (I still set up VLC and packman repositories for Opensuse. I still end up using other RPM services on occasion, mostly for libs I can't seem to locate otherwise). Ubuntu can't make use of the specific Canon scanner attached to the desktop, but a little inSane research indicates there is zero support available for Linux. There is a diatribatic fellow using the handle hairyfeet that blames Linux and Linux developers and users for this. Dang, I was feeling almost civilized for a while. It looks like Lexmark is making an effort now. I'll have to look at Fedora 13 soon. I don't write much, but I do enjoy reading the words of the intelligent and (normally) civilized people who drop by lxer regularly. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jul 20, 2010 6:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:..but I do enjoy reading the words of the intelligent and (normally) civilized people who drop by lxer.. Thank You for the kind words. And I for one think you should write more often. ;-) Scott |
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