Linux love AND Linux lust

The way that can be spoken of
is not the constant way.
- Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching

A couple of weeks ago I experienced a hardware 'meltdown' ... my primary system decided to commit seppuku, slit its own CPU and was delivered to the void. With its good digital karmic standing I sincerely hope that it is reincarnated as a cardiac monitor.

Meanwhile as I posted last I received a hulking beast of a system. In that post I attempted to shed light on the 64-bit dilemma - which OS is best suited to the hardware in today's computational environment. I still cannot bring myself to shell out the Microsoft money for Vista so that leaves me scouring the Open Source community for a viable alternative. As detailed in my last I first looked at my first love, Slackware, and its derivatives. No warm and fuzzies to be found.

Then I decided to give the new kids a try. Ubuntu v.7 "Fiesty" - but not without some trepidation. My previous experiences with the "U" was less than satisfactory, inevitably being compared to the established Slack. But all things change - so says the Tao.

As I mentioned in the previous post I stumbled over the "Root" issue initially. Old habits, even bad ones, die hard. Now with that behind me I began to get a feel for the overall U experience. I am allowed to do the things, as a regular user, without any encumbrances - no nagging dialogs about 'do you really want to change the color of your desktop?' Those system administration chores that do require 'authorization' are appropriately challenged. I am not exactly sure but it feels as though the authorization is 'held' so that testing or repeated chores (sometimes) do not require re-authenticating. (Sorry, that was really wordy.)

Now, on to the regular-day-to-day user experience. In a word, "Great!" The true merit of a distro is not the sheer number of applications that are provided but the integration of the programs. How do the programs interact or interrelate? I feel like a kid in a candy store. Where previously I had to go through and 'associate' apps Ubuntu has done a good bit of it already. A handy example is the fact that Evolution already knows to call FireFox for embedded URLs. While this is a simple thing it is a great 'joe-average-user-linux-is-really-friendly' sort of thing.

Bottom line: Ubuntu has broken the "PC Computing = Microsoft" paradigm once and for all.

Exciting developments

Palm w/ USB synchronization - for the first time I have been able to sync my Palm T|X with a linux implementation. I just filled out the setting in the Evolution's Edit|Synchronization Options, connected the USB cable and pushed the button. BINGO! Evolution is populated with my Palm stuff - Ooooooh yeah!

nsplugin-wrapper - Kliz script handled the immediate desire for Macromedia Flash ...AND... even more importantly VMware-server-console (This is HUGE!!!) Being able to display Macromedia Flash in my browser is cool but VMware Server Console is essential to my work. Having to support 2 flavors of Windows (2K and XP-Pro) means that having running instances available on my VMware Server is imperative. Being able to load and run VMware as a third party 32-bit app means that I 'should' be able to load and run other 32-bit apps as well. This is the really HUGE aspect of the nsplugin-wrapper AND the Kliz Script (Thank you!)

BONUS: Extra value hint: sudo bash - but don't tell anyone you heard it from me.