In which I go into all manner of random geekery

There’s a couple of things that you should know about me.

1. I’m cheap
2. I don’t believe in the English language.

Well maybe the second thing probably has nothing to do whatsoever with the subject at hand, but I still think it has to be said. You see, I am a firm believer that the English language is simply a contrivance given to us by our Alien Overlords during ancient times because it entertains them to no end to hear us say words like “organize,” or “marmalade,” and “Reginald.” Don’t get me started on what passes for Alien humor.

Either that or they were simply growing tired of seeing us sew various numbers of chickens on our clothes (Which is how mankind used to communicate in those days. Or so I’m told. By me).

So anyway, I got myself a new laptop. Well that may not be the entire truth. I didn’t so much “buy” as “waited for my mother to get tired of her beat up old laptop and give it to the one person she knows who would actually want it.”

At 1.5Ghz with a mere 512MB RAM, old Lappy is no spring chicken. Which actually goes without saying. Because no laptop, no matter how new or snazzy it is, can remotely resemble poultry.

So anyway, the laptop was known to process at the breakneck speed of continental drift. And while I’m not one to complain about things that have been handed down to me (clothes, rooms, food), I really wasn’t too keen on having WinXP crash on me whenever I want to drag a certain window slightly to the left.

So I decided to try this Ubuntu thing another try. My previous experience with Ubuntu did not end so well. I tried installing it in my old laptop (Feisty Fawn release), but I had to go back to Windows because it didn’t have proper support for my wifi adapter. So I decided then that once I had a laptop with a built in wifi receiver, I shall once again dick around with this sexy, and free (I told you I was cheap) OS.

And dick around with it I did. I had quite a few false starts with Ubuntu, and its leaner sister Xubuntu on liveCD before I decided to quit with the foreplay and go to bed with Ubuntu for some hot steamy command line action. I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as Kubuntu then, but had I known about it, I would have probably committed to that instead, because among the three, it looked the sexiest.

An UBUNTU desktop. Oh hey! A Spring Chicken!

The UBUNTU experience

So how was the installation? To say that I was content with it would be like saying that I think Oxygen is swell. The installation only took a fraction of the time it takes to install WinXp. I should know, I’ve reformatted each and every PC in our office at least twice each.

And once Ubuntu was settled in my hard drive, it was already asking me what I wanted it to do. Unlike WinXP which refuses to go to work until it had time to shop for clothes, a car, and maybe some shoes. Most of the time, it’s me who does the shopping while WinXP stays at home watching TV.

Apart from wifi receiver, whose driver only took a breeze to download and install, everything started working from the get go. Even the built in card reader, whose WinXP installation usually consisted of using several search engines, expletives, and prayer, worked right off the bat with Ubuntu.

All the applications you need come pre installed. And if you need more, all you have to do is to fire up the App Manager or the Package Manager, choose what you want and wait for the download and installation to finish.

And whenever I’d hit a wall (which is something I do, you know, for exercise. Sometimes I let the wall win), I’d just bug the two biggest Linux whores I know: Ade (seriously Ade’s Asus EEE Blog) & Marcus. And their patience in answering all my queries have earned them the right to be put in my category of “People I Probably Won’t Punch.”

While it needed a bit of tinkering to access files hosted on Windows machines over the network, it was nothing that a little algorithm I call “Bug The Linux Whores” can’t handle. In no time at all, I was watching videos over the Windows network (porn).

Going back to Windoze

Unfortunately, my brief tryst with Ubuntu was destined to be, well, a brief one. Because I use Lappy in the office, it’s imperative that it be able to network with Windows machines seamlessly. The office windows machines, being the bully that they are, refused to allow my little Ubuntu Lappy to print on their printers, and sometimes Lappy would run crying to me saying that the Windows machines won’t share their files with her.

And if they did share their files with her (after a strongly worded reboot from me), Lappy’s OpenOffice apps would get confused with MSOffice’s formatting and would invariably show me lots of pretty colors on the documents instead of words.

That’s when I decided that much as I was geekgasming on Ubuntu, it wasn’t ready for the primetime yet. Yeah, I could use WINE to run some Windows apps, but the no printing thing was starting to be a pain. So once again, I uninstalled Ubuntu, and spent the next day reinstalling WinXP.

And yes, I said “Day.” Which is another word which drives our Alien Overlords into uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Tags: geeky, linux, ubuntu

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.