Friday, September 14, 2007

Foreboding sense of Linux

I don't want Linux to be desktop friendly.

There, I said it.

I believe that all of the efforts to make Linux friendly for Joe Sixpack have had a very destructive effect. In order to accommodate the mainstream user Linux is being cheapened. Soon it will be as distant from the user as Windows are now. To make Linux acceptable it will be encapsulated, buffered and then sugar coated. All for what? Why should Joe Sixpack swallow the blue Linux pill when they already have a belly full of the red-mond pill?

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Shogun by James Clavell

I just finished the luxuriously long and sensual read, Shogun by James Clavell. This was the umpteenth time I have read it. I manage to wind my way through it about every other year. It is a comfort read for me. I can celebrate the story and the characters. Like any really accessible work of fiction I can see myself in it. I can slip into its second skin and for a few minutes drift in another time and place.

Born under a bad sign...

You know we are all in lot of trouble, Linux-wise, when we need explicit instructions ...

Howto Boot debian in text mode instead of graphical mode (GUI)

I just got a bit harrumphish when I realized that Linux is old enough so that the young'ins don't remember a time before the GUI. The same argument that shied folks away from early Linux is being raised in the face of the latest distros.

I cannot use a PC unless it has pictures and a mouse pointer. That is why I am sticking with Windows er, uh, Gnome or KDE.

- Papa, Slackware: what was old is GNU, again

Curious Clock

...tells unsettling time.

Calculating your "Life-Time": the current time when your life is scaled down to 1 day


LifeTime – What time are you?

My LifeTime

5:24pm

Slackware: Don't take my word for it...

Slackware: There's something totally sane about it

Slackware hard? You set up networking by typing netconfig at a prompt and filling in the blanks. What could be easier? Installing software with pkgtool? Except for the dependency problems, which at least make you more aware of what your system is all about, it's easy and intuitive.
...more aware... (emphasis not mine) IMHO this is the very heart of the matter. Pretty much any OS will let you use your computer but how many allow you to be in control?

. . .