This is an even more specialized-audience post than my usual posts, which are themselves fairly rarefied.  When I bought this laptop [my first] I bought it with the hope that I could install Ubuntu and therefore do more with my meagre funds.  Open source software fascinates me, for the same reason that the internet fascinates me…I love the idea of a bunch of ponytailed dudes from MIT coding frantically For The Children, pushing their granny glasses up on the bridges of their nose as they dream of a world where you can easily find a PERL script for any purpose, no matter how arcane…

I don't even see the code. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead...

And I did have some success with Ubuntu, even marred with an [at the time] obligatory Vista dual-boot.  I had trouble installing the most recent version, so a friend hooked me up with an older version and it worked like a charm.  I went full-on geek, too, putting The Matrix on repeat, opening multiple terminals, sudo-apt-getting my face off, turning pasty and intense.  Gradually the fire diminished, and I was afraid to upgrade because of the aforementioned failed recent install, so I stuck with the increasingly arcane Ubuntu 7.04 for…hmmm…like a year and a half now I believe.  Meanwhile, the good folks at Ubuntu were tinkering away, turning that little Debian kernel this way and that, releasing increasingly elegant and sophisticated versions that yrs truly was too scared to try lest the whole laptop dissolve into a pile of steaming goo…

Okay, I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you regarding open source software.  You know why I REALLY wanted Ubuntu?  I

OMG ITS KUL

wanted a desktop cube that I could rotate in three virtual dimensions, toggle back and forth between the cube’s desktop faces, and geek out in such a spectacular way that my glasses would actually get thicker just while I was sitting there.  Most of my Matrixy code-jockeying was to that end, and I could never get it to work, and eventually used the lappy for so much actual work that playing around became less and less wise, and I gave up.

Finally I got so fed up with my outdated version that I decided to go for broke.  I figured the good folks at Ubuntu wouldn’t have left Dell out in the cold with their new builds, and I was so exasperated by stupid Windows Vista that I obliterated the drive partition, and swallowed hard and installed the fresh new Ubuntu 8.04*…

…and I’m typing to you now from my floating desktop cube, flipping around in laptop inner space, finding links and indulging my inner geek to her hearts’ content.

And my screen saver is the descending green characters from the Matrix.

*Which is not even the newest, I see.  But I am more bold now….

1 Comment »

April 28th, 2009 Brandi Says:

I am no longer satisfied with my two-dimensional life. who wants tabs laid flat?? Give me cuuuuuuuubes!

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