Pun or song lyric
Sat Oct 20, 2007 21:41 (UTC -5)Version 7.10 of Ubuntu, my operating system of choice, came out on Thursday, so guess who upgraded right away. That’s right: me. It’s free of charge, so all I had to do was let the upgrade process work its magic. Sometimes magic takes a while, especially when web servers are bogged down with traffic and Internet connections are inexplicably slow. (20 KB/s? What the heck?) But I’d say it was worth it.
Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions, has repositories of software packages for easy downloading and installation of programs and other tools. Upgrading the operating system usually means upgrading your programs too. So I’m enjoying new versions of Thunderbird (e-mail), Pidgin (instant messaging), the GIMP (image editing), OpenOffice.org (office suite), and more. Plus, there’s a more stable version of Compiz (one that doesn’t seem to make my computer crash*) with all the Compiz Fusion extras. (I only hate eye candy when I can’t have any. Check out this video to see what Compiz is all about.)
Besides adjusting to new versions of programs, the only real issue I had was with fonts in Firefox. The same fonts were showing up, but they looked very different. I don’t know much about fontography, but I found out that it had to do with the hinting of the fonts. So I changed Ubuntu’s font hinting settings, and everything is good again.
I’ve been pretty lazy this weekend, but time has been going by fast. Today I watched the Gators beat Kentucky. (I enjoy football, okay, guys?) Tomorrow I’ll be doing research in the library with my America in the Fifties professor and most of the class. It should be fun. Since the class only has about 12 people, we’re pretty good buds. At least, I like to think so. I don’t know many of their names, but since when did that matter? One guy (who looks like a John or a Chuck but isn’t) has said that he uses Ubuntu, and that’s cool. He said he switched to Linux because he hated Windows Vista. I have him beat; I switched because I hated Windows XP. (Though my friend Luke switched because he hated Windows 98 — granted, it circa 2003 at the time.)
Incidentally, I used Windows from version 3.1 right up to the beginning of this year. In this space I would reminisce if I felt like it. Instead, I’ll just do it mentally. You can too! Fill the rest of this space with your own memories of your old computers.
Ah, the memories. Done? Good. Me too. Oh, I was just thinking… remember that idea for a World of Stuff store? I have a pretty lame idea for a shirt, but I know that hardcore WoS fans would buy it. And I’m sure that if I came up with some funny things to put on shirts, people would maybe buy them. Of course, I’d be using something like CafePress, and all of my earnings would go toward running the site.
Wikipedia has an article on deliberately fictitious entries in encyclopedias and other reference works.
Saturday, December 8 is Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day!
* Although, while I was gone from my computer today, it rebooted. I can’t pin this down on any specific program because the system logs reveal nothing about it.
4 comments
#1 by Todd: Sun Oct 21, 2007 02:28 (UTC -5)
Good luck on that store…I’d be one to buy a WoS coaster.
#2 by Luke: Sun Oct 21, 2007 18:22 (UTC -5)
I switched because I was fascinated by software freedom, not because I was upset with Windows. In 2003, I was going through my (second) DOS fascination.
In fact, at the time, I was convinced that Windows 98 was superior to subsequent versions of Windows. (I still stand by that with the following catches: if you patched the holes in 98 and included a couple more drivers its small size could not be beat. However, DOS/Windows systems in general are fairly useless.)
#3 by Daniel: Mon Oct 22, 2007 23:35 (UTC -5)
I switched because I didn’t want to grow up to be a Windows guy–I wanted to grow up to be a computer guy.
Do I count as a hardcore TWoS fan?
#4 by Jordon: Tue Oct 23, 2007 08:40 (UTC -5)
I’d say you are.