GoneWacko’s Blog

Something new

Well, I’ve never done this before, but there’s a first time for everything.
I originally wrote this as a comment on Simon’s blog about the “Ubuntu for Novices” article.
However the comment got a little bit large plus it absolutely sucks writing text on his blog due to the problem I talked about earlier (CSS which is completely relying on the default fontcolor of the users to be black) and for some reason I decided to make it into a blog entry of my own.

I think you have to decide if it’s morally acceptable to force Ubuntu on someone who (apparently) doesn’t know much about PCs just because you personally dislike Windows. It would be an interesting experiment to see what happens if someone completely skips Windows (I remember being annoyed that I wasn’t good with linux simply because I grew up with Windows) and starts off with Linux, but I don’t know if it’s a good thing

As much as Ubuntu may be trying, I think they’re still not as user friendly / easy to master as Windows. Not to mention the fact that less things work out of the box (in the sense that you tend to need a lot more tweaking of configuration files to get stuff to work, in many cases).

Lately I’ve grown to dislike Ubuntu and GNOME. The fact that they want to be so user friendly makes Ubuntu very annoying to work with if you’re not a complete newbie with Linux any more. The same counts for GNOME, I think.
Where Ubuntu Hoary and Breezy were perfect for me because the CD contained most of the software I needed and did not contain the software I absolutely did not need, 6.06 seems like a step backwards. The graphical installer allows for a lot less of customizing (yes I know of the alternate CD, but it’s still annoying), and not even the screensavers are as customizable (by default) as they used to be, just because of the new frontend.

So for the past few months I’ve been working with Arch linux and XFCE. Arch linux has taught me a lot of new things about Linux because many things come in a less pre-configured state, so I’ve learned a lot more about the workings of Linux.
It also means no predefined settings get shoved down your throat as with Ubuntu, which is great.
I’ve tried KDE again after a long time (the last time I used KDE was back when I first used Linux (SuSE 7)) and I did like it for a week or two, but then I grew tired of it and tried a few things. Fluxbox, Openbox… Pretty much every type of box in existance. But I ended up going back to XFCE which I had worked with for a short while in the past. I quite like it. It’s like a less bloated GNOME.

Arch also has a kick ass lightweight package manager which makes compiling packages yourself without messing up dependencies and such easy as pie!

The bits about Arch I added when writing this blog entry. I love plugging Arch.
Arch, Arch, Arch!

Wooo! Autumn Holidays!

A whole week of slacking.
Not that I don’t slack when I’m NOT having holidays.

We started the holiday with a small 4 or 5 hour LAN party in school :). Played some Unreal Tournament 2004 and some Flatout 2. Great fun!

Yes, this is just a short entry, but I felt like saying something. Which I did!