What the heck? Technology? You HATE technology!!!
Yes. I do. And yet, I’m drawn to it… it’s pulsating technological goodness… making me feel dirty… but advantaged…
Anyway, this part is more for my own benefit than anyone else’s. Don’t read this stuff. You’ll just get it all over yourself. I’m going to filter these technology entries into their own little section so no one has to see them, but I need to figure that one out, and I’m too sleepy now.
Moving to Linux and New Gear
I would really like to get off of Windows. I don’t like the way it works. It’s not a religious thing, and I don’t generally refer to it as Micro$oft Windoze when I’m hacking the mainframe with my l33t crew in the matrix.
Still, it’s a klunky, abstruse mess of an OS. Whatever, I am apparently not a PC.
Apple? As far as capitalist pigdogginess, they’re certainly as bad or worse than Microsoft. Their crap works great, though. And it looks fabulous, especially if you’re wearing a dark turtleneck and expensive glasses when you use it. But… it’s expensive… and… I mentioned they’re just as bad as Microsoft, right? I don’t like using an OS that tells me what I can do/watch/listen to, when, and where. It’s annoying.
No, my heart belongs to Unix, but, to date, we’ve never gotten even close to an equivalently usable system, if only because configuration has been so propeller-headed. Still, it’s remarkably stable, efficient, and flexible. I have business systems that have been running for months without a problem– the hardware usually breaks first. Throw in that it costs… uh, nothing. Upgrades? Free. More apps? Free. How about a enterprise-class web server, mail server, uh… paravirtualized, cloud computing cluster with distributed compilation and hot migration capability? Whatever that is? FREE!!!
So, I decided to give it a try again. Ubuntu’s what the hip kids are installing now. It’s well-supported (comparatively speaking, by sheer numbers of users), and it’s got thousands of apps, from word processing to god-knows-what-all scientific doodad. Most are quite respectable in comparison to Windows/Mac equivalents. Some, such as the UI itself, really are far more flexible. Many, though, look like a high school project written by a stoner with a Commodore 64. I’ll be needing to run Windows at least enough to get my Adobe Lightroom working.
I had high hopes for Ubuntu’s most recent release, as of this writing, called Jaunty Jackelope (9.04). My Windows Vista installation was clearly not making optimal use of my hardware and was starting to accumulate the inevitable little updaters and other opportunistic pieces of crap that install themselves on a Windows box and slowly eat away at your resources. The always-problematic and mysterious registry is all clogged up with junk, the disks more irrevocably fragmented, and more and more stuff has just started running on it with no hint as to what, or whose, purpose it serves.
It was time to make the jump. Besides, it meant nearly a whole day that I couldn’t write. I am pathological.
While the install was relatively easy and painless, configuration still required all kinds of googling for hints on how to turn on the 3d desktop, how to install the proper video driver for my video card, or why the whole thing just seizes up every now and then.
Yeah… that’s… not good.
That’s a deal breaker. My system began to just lock up every half hour or so after installation. Why? The Priests of the Brotherhood blamed on it nvidia most often (though, I don’t use an nvidia graphics card), sometimes on loose connectors (though, they’re tight), and once on one of those little panels that you take out when you stick a new card in your computer. Though, uh, no.
So, it’s anti-climactic, but unless you’re a masochist with a LOT of free time, I don’t recommend it. Merely asking the question of one of the L337 is likely to get you a good noob-calling. You might even get an “RTFM, lamer” or “Hey! This took me 15 seconds to Google!” even though you had NO idea what you were supposed to be looking for. Uh… lessee… Google… um, how about… “computer yesterday windows worked now linux paperweight”… no, wait… “me computer broken linux seize up dammit wasting time why do I do”
On the other hand, it seems that some people slap it on their machines, and it works like a champ.
I wish that on you.
Peace.
[Pre-publish, next day EDIT]
I am *significantly* less bitter today as I have moved off of the Gnome desktop environment and shut off all the hokey 3D junk. I’m currently running the desktop environment called KDE– which is characterized as being a bit more niggling than Gnome, but more flexible. My favorite feature is that it doesn’t crash. And, now tuned up a bit, it also looks great and is ultra snappy and useful– particularly with my new motherboard (a dual-core AMD Phenom with 4GB RAM).
I over-clocked my new rig to 4GHz without much ado. That is amazing. “Geek,” you’re saying, “that is not amazing. That is, in fact, the opposite of amazing.”
Au contraire. Consider that that thing’s probably capable of 50,000 MIPS (million instructions per second), which, by itself, is not that telling… but… considering that the original Pentium, a monster in its day, a decade or so ago, could swing about 500 MIPS, and the VAX 11/780 (I remember it well) did .5-1 MIPS. .5-1 MIP? You could pick one of those up for about $150K in 1978 (that’s about $500K, to you and me, here in the future), whereas mine cost about $300. And they were the size of an elephant. Well… a zebra, maybe. They were big. Mine? I dunno, like… an armadillo.
Anyway, I change my vote to “you might want to go with this OS if you have a die-hard sysadmin type in the family to set it up for you.”
Next, techno-post has GOT to be about virtualization. What’s that, you say? Stay tuned…
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Blech. I know you told me not to, but I touched it and now my hand’s all sticky.
All that non-mainstream stuff you mention above, well, that’s just not an option for people who don’t breathe that kinda nerdiness day in and day out. Sadly, for the normal person (sigh, yes…ok…me), the dream of having a computer/laptop that is speedy, functional, doesn’t corrupt documents, give weird errors or seize up randomly just isn’t in the cards for someone who isn’t immediately willing to trust something called “jaunty jackelope”.
p.s. I HATE DESTEST ABHOR WANT TO VOMIT ON stupid Vista. I will be jumping off that sinking ship as quickly as I can, but sadly it will only be to jump onto the next Windows release. Some people never learn, do they?
I know I was warned too, not to reach your techno-post, but I did it anyway. Odd thing is, I understood most of it. That’s kinda scary, I guess. I even remember (and used) the VAX 11/780 that you mention. (it’s been a very long time since someone has mentioned it to me. Ha!)Ever heard of Harris, Elexsi or EAI? Ahh, from my former geeky/engineer life. Gladly just memories now…
I am still running with XP Pro on my ancient (5 years old) PC. I am not a system/admin person, so am constantly annoyed by whatever OS I am using at the time. I am sure that I have lots of little self installed pieces of software running around like naughty gremlins all over my PC.
I also have a PC laptop (not my best purchase) and a large boat-anchor eMac sitting here in my office. I got the used eMac just so I could run some Mac specific software and familiarize myself a bit more with Macs. I figured it was useful to be at least “bi-lingual”.
Typo in the first line of my previous comment. I meant “not to READ your post” not “reach”. Sorry. Not enough caffeine yet today.
Hiya Jen,
Well, I *did* warn you. Yeah, I genuinely find my relationship with technology to be… conflicted. I think it’s fair to say that I’m an IT “expert” (having stored my original programs on cards and paper tapes and stayed current with it for these… uh… gad… 30 years?), and yet, the stuff makes me crazy– both in that it wastes my irretrievable LifeMinutes(tm) and that I can’t stop messing with it. Yet, I find the economics of it (or the Gates-Jobs-Torvalds drama) completely uninteresting. Not insignificant; just boring.
Really, I think your case is exactly what I meant to write about… I deleted an awful lot of that post. I really like the idealistic idea of an open source software movement– people from all over the world, working together, to produce something that genuinely serves the end user (person) without the always-corrupting profit motive. Unfortunately, the existing ragtag band of kids could never coordinate their efforts under a unified vision of “usability,” and that’s what would really help “the People”. Instead, they fall back on technical advances. That’s easy for your average ADD-affected coder type. It’s objective. Make this card show that effect. Make that virtual guest OS perform X on this benchmark. See this rock? Move it over there.
No need for empathy. No need to talk to other humans or take a shower.
What’s really necessary is for the whole seething crowd to get behind someone saying “this has to be drop-dead easy to install, configure, and use.” That’s infinitely harder than just spec’ing out “speeds and feeds.” Clearly, They have the time. Today, I can write with fire (yes, actual computer-rendered pretend fire) on my new interface. I can make it snow, too. I can even flip a little animated cube with my live desktops displayed on it. No one needs that stuff in the slightest, but They found the time to make it happen. On the other hand, configuring two monitors (a pretty common task, these days) is like brain surgery. Setting up your average mainstream printer? Forget it. G-d forbid you have a wireless print server or pen tablet. Reading the “troubleshooting” forums is an unpleasant exposure to humans with a complete inability to interact civilly with their fellow being.
It’s OK that the complicated stuff (e.g., virtualization, setting up a mail server, super-special hardware) takes a degree in Computer Science. It’s great that you can do it at all. Really. Most of it is seriously inferior on the commercial platforms. But the 95% of what anyone does– setting up printers, basic networks, video cards in likely scenarios, nice looking desktops, sound, etc.– should be hammered on until it just works. Imagine if the only complaints people had were that they couldn’t set up a IPSec VPN with NAT pass-through easy enough. Think of all the jobs those kids would get then!
The fact of the matter is that the people involved, generally speaking, are volunteers, and so they’re going to work on whatever they feel like working on– see earlier comment on empathy. Larger visions of genuinely holding out a hand to Jane Q. Public are not on the agenda, nor were they originally. Linus Torvalds famously said: “This is a program for hackers by a hacker.”
That says nothing whatsoever about helping the masses held for ransom under the oppressive thumb of oligarchical software vendors. Today, I’d rework his statement as “This is a program for corporations by unpaid software engineers.” Makes sense. At the most basic level, the developers are mostly young people looking for work. The whole open-source movement has been co-opted into a distributed commercial support organization; it’s the software capitalist’s wet dream, and they all think they’re pulling one over on The Man.
That rant is a good example of why… while I think everyone can and should grow their own vegetables… I need to hide my cognitively dissonant technology posts where only the truly skin-flakes-in-the-ears, mochacchino-stained-tshirt-wearing, nose-picking dorks will look for them. You were collateral damage. I’m sorry.