What makes you happy ?

Ubuntu is REALLY pissing me off today, so I’m going to tell you why.

On Windows ? Make about 16 pages your home pages, make sure 8 of them have a TON of flash, empty your cache, close FF then reopen. That’s how slow it is here.

Good FTP editors on Windows let you make intelligent choices (“Are you sure you want to store this ftp password ?”) and then re-using the program makes things easier. Ubuntu ? No damn way. Every single bloody time I want to connect it asks for my damn password. More secure ? No – it makes me want to change all my password to “cat”.

Liferea. Best there is ? Good grief. FeedDemon on Windows beats it anyday.

Why is Linux touted as being better ? It’s not. it’s just different. And slower.

Honestly, this FTP editor is, right now, a fantastic reason to stick the XP disc back in the drive. I use it daily for several sites. It is essential – and right now I’m left with stupid mess that takes much much longer to get working and is more unstable. I’d have thought that the kingdom of beards and sandals would have come up with a better solution. Maybe they ask their wives for ID whenever they want to come back in the house – can’t be too careful with all these strangers around eh ?

Right now, Linux looks like it is being difficult purely for the sake of it.

Krusader – has crashed THREE times today. Deleted it.
gFTP installed – I marked it before for complete removal, yet it recalls ALL the information I put in. That’s nice. And here was Windows always being slagged off for leaving stuff behind. gFTP cannot edit files on the server despite giving that impression. get rid of it (though why I bother seeing as info is now hidden somewhere ..)
Konqueror reinstalled. It TOO has info which should have been deleted when i marked it for complete removal. Unable to edit files despite being touted as ‘all things file’. Crashes.

I have had more crashed since I installed Ubuntu than in the last TWO YEARS with Windows. Ubuntu. Stable. And my ass is green.

So far, I cannot find an ftp client which will let me edit a file directly on the server.
I also cannot find an ftp client which does not crash.

Is Ubuntu the equivalent of The Sun ? Just look at the pretty pictures ?????

Edit:
nano for editing files where I have shell
midnight commander for everything else.
This stuff goes from wonderful to damn annoying so fast!

Next tasks:
Find how to clear the “local cache” that files seem to be put into before install.
Find where the hidden stuff above is stored and kill that off.
Make the terminal window prettier :)
Oh – and get rid of all tha blue in mc.

Things still to install:
MAME. Anyone know how ?
Krusader is what I’m after – dual pane ftp / ftp editor / file manager. It works, but I get errors at times which I don’t understand (http://www.tamba2.org.uk/krusader-error.txt) and errors aren’t great are they ? Esp when I really am clueless. I’ll do a list of what I’m running tomorrow. And I know I’m asking some questions but I’ve done more reading in the last two days about code than for AGES before.

On the plus side I found all the user/program directories so I can play there, gnomad2 talks to my Zen Micro which was a ‘must do’ and I found some more passwords.

Another thing I’m noticing – with XP, the machine would be quiet then the fan would kick in. Now it seems like the fan is on constantly but at a lower speed. I’m not bothered and I’m sure that there will exist some strange code which will tell me the rpm of the fan… but I’m just mentioning it.

I took the dog a walk earlier. There is a field near us which has now been populated with ponies. Small ponies. I swear Winston is taller than one of them. Honestly !

NDS MK. P (who is 12) hammers me at it. She has all the missions, all the ghosts, all the cups … she is GOOD. As she is beating me so much I can only really say one thing: I taught her well :)

With XP – on this same machine – I always kept an eye on system resource usage. I wasn’t obsessive but I liked to know ball-park figures for processes.

The clock is taking 22meg to work. 22 megabytes just to tell me the time.
Look at Firefox. That’s 2 tabs open. Just two.
Look at Liferea. 52meg just to sit running
And Thunderbird. Nearly 200 megabytes to run. 200 MEG !
I’m not complaining – because I have not yet stopped playing with this new toy called Ubuntu, but look at those resources! And for the record, gFTP has locked on me twice, Liferea once and I still say everything is slower than the “buggy and bloated Windows”. I suppose that it IS quicker for some if your Windows machine was full of junk, the registry was fragmented with many useless keys and your startup menu was the length of your average till-receipt. But mine wasn’t. Mine was quick and I made and kept it that way.
Don’t believe all the hype people :)

BUT… having said all that – I needed to get it off my chest so to speak – I’m loving it. Xampp is installed and runs just fine, I have used ‘secpanel’ to backup one site and just need to see how to make that do incrementals, music still works, I’m adding to the panel (though I can’t get Krusader to be an icon so i can add it to the panel which is mildly annoying as that type of ftp editor I use a lot.), I’ve been playing with the GIMP and it’s not made me swear yet and there’s still lots to discover.
It’s great fun :)

Do I hell. The password manager I did use … I exported everything and have it locked in a wiki and also in a backpack list/page/whatever. It’s got around 70 passwords at least. Not because I have a lot of places but because the same password is never used twice. And of course I knew what did what. Until today. I must have 20+ passwords that I have NO clue what they attach so – I have a dozen just for this site. I should learn that I don’t remember things so well, but that’s why I write them down ….. oh well.

So, ubuntu. Far too soon to say too much. It’s all set up though, I have not sworn even once through frustration though a couple of times I have sworn out of surprise (the keyboard repeat rate is much higher than on XP. On XP it was at it’s fastest, but this keeeeeeeeeeeeeeps running away :) ). Music is sorted, realplayer is sorted, all the programs that I listed a few entries below are sorted (though I need to check the binary grabber. It was refusing to see the contents of newsgroups earlier…). Top panel moved to the bottom. Desktop image now replaced. … it’s all fairly intuitive though it’s still slower than XP was. Having said that, the world of spybotS&D, Ad-aware, AV, registry clearing and suchlike is not here which is a bonus.
Things to learn: defragging. using these workspace things (which I know I will now). the idiosyncrasies of each new program. where a lot of passwords belong.

And it wasn’t the installing that has taken me long – that was definitely quicker than XP – it’s the fiddling and tweaking which always took ages on Windows and given that this is a brand new OS to me, it’s actually gone much much better than I thought.

And I want to thank skippy for very very kindly sending over the wireless card from Columbus, Ohio so that I could get to try Linux. It is very much appreciated. He’s a top bloke :)

RSS reader – fine. liferea
FTP – fine I think …..gftp installed.
Password manager installed – not yet use. fpm
CD – can play
MP3 / Radio – no way at all yet (about an hour of trying so far)
Binary news grabber – yes. klibido

It does not seem as quick as XP by quite some way.
The little work areas ? What are they for ?
The system bar at the top. Don’t like it but I guess I’ll have to get used to it.
My mouse wheel is dying (not that I blame ubuntu for that) (yet)

Right… back to trying to get an MP3 played !

10 minutes later – I have little clue how, but it works :) Now I see why Windows was invented :p

This linux thing IS real and it DOES work !
Wow.
1. Backup last few bits
2. Fully install Ubuntu
3. Remember something not backed up
4. Explore this world of Brown :)

I loaded the latest Live CD earlier so have a poke around, and tried to play some music. mp3 music. The media manager said No, and the Rhythmbox said No. Is Linux a music free zone ? Why supply two programs that cannot even play an mp3 ? Is mp3 a dirty word ? Oh well, no doubt someone will tell me.

Remind me … apart from avoiding the evilness of the Redmond Gang, why exactly am I contemplating the move to linux ? Feel free to assist my thinking here …

Anyway, here’s the plan:
Get Orinoco card from Skippy.
Plug it in.
Fire up the (already burned) Ubuntu Live CD
Try to get online
If not successful, return to XP
If successful, remove Live CD, insert the (already burned) Install CD and bring the whole thing in. No dual boot, a full install.
Once that’s done, head into #wordpress and bug people to help me find and install the programs I need. I’ve started a small list of immediate essentials below.

I’ll give this unbuntu thing a fair crack – promise – though you may have to put up with some rants here when things don’t work. Is Linux intuitive for a Windows convert ? I shall let you know… although The Gimp …… do I have to ? Is it better on it’s native platform ?

Aside from a browser and email (and xchat which I assume comes with Ubuntu), programs needed are:

• RSS reader
• Password Manager
• IM (Gaim ?)
• Search program that will search for text inside files
• Editor for changing files directly on a server
• FTP
• Music
• CD Burner
• GBA emulator
• Binary File grabber
• Shell program (like putty)(but nicer)
• Zip/Unzip
• Shell and not shell programs to backup incrementally from server to machine
• LAMP setup (is this included ?)
• Do I need AV / spyware stuff ? at all ?
• Anything cool I should get ?

And if all these have nice gui’s that would be really cool. I’ll go hunting around then ……. …. hint hint