Ubuntu+R
Ubuntu wins by resignation… I give up. Finally, after a few years as an Ubuntu fanboy, I resign. Having convinced my girlfriend and a few foes to try Ubuntu, I’m now realising the benefits of another operative system: Windows. Though this may struck some of you, my devoteness to Ubuntu isn’t enough as to sacrifice more hours trying to adapt it. For some reason, it seems like Ubuntu is designed for two types of users:
-computer-gurus: users who know exactly how to do whatever they want. Modifying the code is as easy as pie for these users, they can customize everything to match exactly their high-demanding needs. A go-equivalent for these users would be like high dan players.
-basic user: they only need some basic software like the office suite, internet browser, music player and some instant messaging applications. These would be low double-digit kyu players.
Inbetween you’ll find a huge amount of users who, just like me, try to modify the system to suit their needs. As a sample we could talk about Compiz, a basic user won’t go any further from the “none-basic-extra” menu while a computer-guru may actually modify the code of the program or write code directly embedded into the compiz-manager. The intermediate user will try to use the compiz-manager without writing code… with success rate varying from one attempt to the next one until it’s satisfactory – a couple of hours later. If we keep on with the go-equivalents, these users would represent single-digit kyu players facing tsumegos of increasing level of difficulty.
During the last month, I’ve realised there are some thing that just didn’t fit my needs. Openoffice is way worse than Microsoft Office, the same happens with Gimp and Photoshop and some other applications. In the end, windows had to be virtualized inside ubuntu so that I could get some stuff done.
This week, I received a new monitor. Trying to get two monitors working at the same time was a mess. Options:
-Twinview: cloning output, only available in nvidia, shows the same image on both monitors… with different resolutions. Useless
-Xinerama: extends the desktop to both monitors… Weird and useless with different resolutions.
-One monitor, one workspace: requires a new Xserver to be launched at the same time and would be troublesome, since I only have one keyboard and mouse.
Meanwhile, I decided to install Windows on a partition. Though I had already fiddled with grub in order to create a Ubuntu+Windows dual boot, I wasn’t aware of the terrible world of shadows I was about to enter… Ubuntu developers had “upgraded” grub to grub2. Oh my god!!!! If microsoft updating Windows Xp to Vista was bad, updating Grub to Grub2 was even worse. It makes everything much more complicated and hardly impossible to deal with if you don’t know how to write code and, moreover, understand it. A 4 pages long thread in a forum with computer gurus couldn’t solve it either. Is this tsumego solvable??
Hours went by, so many I can’t count them with my fingers and toes, trying to make Grub2 work with Windows 7 modification of Master Boot Record, till Proximo came into my mind saying: ”I use Windows just because everything works right from the beginning”. I resign, you win.
No related posts.
Posted by pel, September 1st, 2010 at 7:29 pm 
Posted by 
Posted by alejo, September 1st, 2010 at 8:53 pm 
Posted by nik, September 2nd, 2010 at 8:12 pm 
Posted by MarcoRosso, September 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 pm 
Posted by Guillaume, September 5th, 2010 at 2:40 pm 
Posted by 
Posted by Max, September 11th, 2010 at 12:15 am 
Posted by alejo, September 13th, 2010 at 11:43 pm 