RichRock : Running Free

While I wait for the backups to complete, I find myself drifting around on the internet. In my open-source meanderings (on Firefox obviously), I find this. A spiffy collection of cool tech-orientated cartoons, with one of my favourite Dilbert strips at the top.

Plus I want this. As I’ve been doing a lot of MySQL stuff recently, it only seems appropriate.

Don’t get me wrong. I like watching movie trailers from www.apple.com/trailers. But this metrics.apple.com just makes it hang. I can leave a page loading for about 10 minutes and still it’s ‘waiting for metrics.apple.com’ If anyone’s got any idea why, or if I can bypass it, please let me know. My system is Ubuntu 7.10, the browser is Firefox 2.0.0.12.

I’ll admit, I am a fan of Linux, most notably Ubuntu. I started my Linux fascination when I saw the magazine, Linux Format in a newsagents. I picked it up, it had two CD-ROMs, one of which had KDE 2rc, and the other contained Storm Linux. I installed it on my shiny new £1,500 pc, an old Pentium 75 with 16mb ram. It was a strange experience, and although not lasting long, created a lasting impression on me about Linux.

Fast forward a few years, I have a Pentium 4, 1.8ghz with 512mb ram, and I spy the Linux Format magazine again, with an article on the desktop experience. Now I know that Linux has tried to evangelize a ‘desktop experience’ and that Linux as an OS is ready for the desktop. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 5.10 (aka Breezy Badger), and ran it happily alongside my Windows 2000 install for some time. I lasted long enough to survive an upgrade to Dapper Drake. Then it fell apart again.

After this flirtation with the freedom (as in beer) that Open Source software provides, I went back to Windows XP Pro for a while. My job changed, now I am a web dev, but at home I reverted back to Ubuntu on my desktop. Granted, I still run XP Pro as a separate option for gaming, but it’s used less and less. If Halo worked on Ubuntu via wine, I would be happy. UT2003 and UT2004 work natively in Linux, why can’t other games be dev’d for it?

Ubuntu’s great. I’ve got my email, web, I can view PDF’s, watch DVD’s, check out my mp3 collection (huge!) edit my Nikon D40 pics (all my photos on the Photography page are edited with GIMP, even my Palm T|X pda syncs with Evolution…

What more do I need?

Well, access to my Minidisc player, Printer and mobile phone. But my Ipod syncs. And if I stick with Linux, I’ll probably never get another reminder to upgrade Itunes again.

And don’t talk to me about iPlayer on the BBC….

Well, I’ve tried. To dual-boot my PC. Grub is a fantastic boot management program, and can certainly display a lot of potential in managing multi-boot systems. However, my Grub install won’t boot windows. I’ll be looking into this.
Oh and I’m ill. Mahoosive stomach probs.

Well, finally, the weekend is here. I’m sitting here in front of my PC, listening to some mixes by Jonah and Gabriel, you can check em out at http://stickybeatz.com/wordpress/ for the awesome funky/tech/house mixes they post online. My favourite at the moment is Stickybeatz Volume four, about 37 minutes in. There’s an awesome tune that still gives me goosepimples!
Anyway, the babe came over tonight, we watched some Simpsons, had dinner together, and just talked about a few things I’m not going to type here. That was cool, great even. Got to go and photograph some hedgehogs tomorrow afternoon, but before that, my favourite weekend activity (church excepted) - Mountain Biking!! There should be a group of us, so that will be good. It’ll be good for me if this blooming headache goes away!
The nervous thing is that I’m meeting the girlfriend’s parents this weekend. That could be interesting, and we’ll see what happens. My parents seem to have taken to my babe, and they ask after her, how she’s doing. They’ll probably get her something for her birthday no doubt. It’s something of an occasion for me to have a girlfriend, so I’m sure they’ll do something. No worries if they don’t, but that’s my personal hunch. If my parents are reading this, don’t stress about that last part!!
Today in work was cool, just trying to figure out some custom code to do dynamic dropdown searches on specific table entries in MySQL. What do you mean that’s easy? Try that with someone who’s had to do a ‘Teach Yourself PHP in 24Hours!” in order to figure this out. One day I’m sure I’ll be figured out for a sham. I’m not a trained Web Developer, but I’ve self-taught myself what I needed to know. It’ll be interesting meeting one of our clients soon - he’s a Linux user! Hurrah! My first real contact with another human who uses Linux. Although he was surprised that I use it for a desktop environment - he asked me if I did everything on the command line!! I said I do a fair bit there, but also a fair proportion graphically. That’s the beauty of Linux, especially Ubuntu - you can choose to do things the graphical way, or dive into the machine and command line it all the way.
Anyway, my beer’s finished, and I’m going to bed.

Here’s a question for you geeks out there. Why doesn’t Microsoft has a rolling development on Windows? In Linux, the OS is constantly upgraded. Even after installation, you can upgrade the OS without having to use a new disk, re-format, etc. Just chance the sources.list and hey presto! Upgrade the OS. Incremental updates and major updates all in one package, no loss to your data (95% of the time

Windows - new OS - new install. Migrate your data? Pah! Don’t make me laugh. I’ve now spent two days trying to migrate data on 2 pc’s. I’m still doing it.

Windows will never have an easy upgrade policy because it’s a bad business model. The upgrade options of Linux doesn’t make anyone money, so Microsoft will never allow such an easy, user-friendly OS upgrade path. Plus, Microsoft has to restructure the filesystems each time because they’re flawed. They don’t separate the root and /home partitions, something Linux and Unix have done since the dawn of decent computing.

Sorry, just a little annoyed at Microsoft. Please don’t send the cyborgs to kill me, Mr Gates.