Monday, May 07, 2007

So fresh and so clean!

Or at least it feels that way. I usually take my showers at night, but I got another one on my way to work. It's rained so much this weekend that there's minimal road grime. I didn't bother with any rain gear because it's 66 degrees Fahrenheit right now. It feels really good outside, rain included. I am completely and totally soaked, but I feel good and clean! I wiped my legs down after I got on the bus and didn't get much of anything off of them aside from water.

Too bad our atmosphere is plagued with all kinds of toxins that are soaking into my scalp as I type this...

No, really, it was a surprisingly pleasant ride this morning. The Sorrento feels easier to ride than I last recall, too.

This evening, I'm meeting my dad at (you guessed it) the Daily Dose. He brought up a bunch of computer problems he's been having lately (spyware and instability despite only visiting reputable sites and having anti-virus/spyware/whatever installed) and I reminded him that issues like his are among the reasons I abandoned Windows for OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris at home many years ago.

While I don't like how the whole "Linux" thing is turning out, I suggested Ubuntu to my dad. What's my beef with Linux? Well, for example, one would have to familiarize themselves with no less than a dozen packaged Linux 'flavors' to say they really "know Linux well". Also, the small and lightweight days of Linux are gone. The user interfaces are adopting the "It's not user friendly if it doesn't look sleek and have lots of pretty animations" philosophy, and as a result, most Linux distributions are bloated mash-ups of hundreds or even thousands of separate products, chewed up and regurgitated into a download-able CD or DVD image for the masses.

Back on topic, though. He got it up and running but he's having trouble getting Wireless to work, so I'm going to help him out this evening. By the way, despite my denunciation of Linux, I actually do know it quite well, all the way down to the internals. I don't know Ubuntu specifically all that well, but I'm sure I can help.

Ugh. I'm such a nerd. A wet, crazy nerd.

3 comments:

Sirrus Rider said...

Another issue with Linux is even with the most developed distributions it feels like a work in progress. I don't really have an issue with WinXP on the right hardware (that doesn't have any defects) it runs like a champ. Vista on the othehand looks cool, but is hopelessly bloated.

Frogman said...

WiFi on Linux in general is a questionable prospect. For several certain chipsets it works great. Of course,I run one of those cards on my Linux laptop, a Dell TrueMobile 1150 which is an OEM of the Lucent ORiNoCo card. Even the tiny LiveCD distros like DSL find it and config it right off. It also seems that Intel WiFi and others have decent support.

Apertome said...

I feel the same way about riding in the rain. You are pretty much guaranteed to get wet, and you can do it from the inside (with your own sweat) or get rained on. I prefer the latter, for the most part.

Interesting comments on Linux, I haven't used it as much lately as I normally do, but I like it. I agree with your comments somewhat, but the small and lightweight days are definitely not gone. KDE and Gnome have both grown a lot, but there are still plenty of lightweight window managers out there, blackbox/fluxbox/etc, for instance.

In the end, it depends what you want to use it for. I still don't think I could recommend Linux to my mom, or my sister. But for some of the geeky stuff I do, it can be great.

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