Ubuntucat

As far as I can tell, jackalopes aren’t even real animals. I still remember the first time I got a jackalope postcard over ten years ago. Well, the Ubuntu folks have decided to name the next Ubuntu Linux release Jaunty Jackalope. I’ve used every single Ubuntu release since its second one (Hoary Hedgehog). That would be 5.04, 5.10, 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10. Eight releases. And I can honestly say that Ubuntu 9.04 is the smoothest, most polished release I have ever seen from Ubuntu.

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 beta (yes, it is beta, so it not guaranteed to be bug-free) on my Eee PC 701 (which, only a year after I’ve purchased it, already feels like a netbook dinosaur), and I have only one complaint (which I’ve filed a bug report on).

At first glance, it looks pretty much like any of the recent releases, but some nice little touches are in there:

• Boot up time and general responsiveness are significantly increased, even with still the Ext3 filesystem (I don’t want to risk Ext4 at this point).
• When the package manager is interrupted, you’re told to use the command sudo dpkg –configure -a to fix it (instead of the incorrect previously given command dpkg –configure -a
• Hotkeys, sound, touchpad tapping, and wireless all work out of the box with the Eee PC. No tweaking or special kernels necessary.
• Time zone selection during installation actually is by time zone and not by city.
• More themes are included.

I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head, but it just feels good. I wanted to file as many bugs as I could before final release. I could find only one bug to file so far, though.

Good job, Ubuntu folks!

Not many people I know would want to call themselves conformists. Yet even the self-proclaimed non-conformists I know conform in certain ways.

How do you pick those ways? Why is one person who doesn’t want to date or get caught up on interpersonal drama still decide to get a 9-to-5 job? Why does another person who will eat only food she has killed or grown herself still celebrate Mother’s Day and all the other Hallmark card holidays?

I’ve been called odd, weird, nonconformist, interesting, and different. Most people who know me think I’m not like other people they’ve met. But in many ways I’m not really that different at all. I attend social functions. I pay my taxes. I’m in a heterosexual marital relationship. I watch popular TV shows.

I do find it fascinating to see how people pick and choose what they want to be “individual” about. Everyone conforms in some ways and decides to be “different” in other ways. How do you make up your mind about what falls where?

I think part of it has to do with how much you can get away with. I wore flip-flops through four New England winters (all year round, actually, but people didn’t think it was odd when I wore flip-flops during the summer), and people thought that a little odd. I got asked “Aren’t your feet cold?” more times than I can count. Ultimately—atypical though my behavior was—it didn’t hurt anyone. And I still wore proper shoes for formal occasions.

If, however, I’d decided to be different by yelling back “Fuck you!” to anyone who said a friendly “Hello,” well… that may not have gone over quite so nicely. Instead of weirdo, people would have called me asshole. For some people who are misanthropes, that’s okay, though. They want to be different in that way. They don’t want to be different in ways that are just odd and personally idiosyncratic. They want to be oddly offensive. They want to jar people, have a definite lasting effect on others and not necessarily in a positive way.

And sometimes the dice just fall where they do. A lot of the time, I bet people others label as “different” or “marching to the beat of their own drums” really are just being themselves, and that doesn’t jive with how they were brought up to be. In fact, that’s pretty much why I am as “normal” as I am. I didn’t really go looking for ways to be weird. I just followed my whims for the most part and conformed in ways that were convenient to conform to.

You don’t have to follow me. You don’t have to follow anybody. You’ve got to learn to think for yourselves. Otherwise…

Kind of an odd question for a married person to ask, I know. But I do have single friends.

My gut tells me “No.” It says “You can’t help whom you’re attracted to. Attraction is chemical. It’s coincidence or fate or something magical. It’s not like going to a store and picking something off the shelf or sifting through products online based on reviews.”

I’m not so sure if it’s quite that simple, though. I know quite a number of couples (both fictional and real) who were not attracted to one another at first but who developed an attraction later (for a fictional example, watch When Harry Met Sally…). I’ve also heard of some arranged marriages in which love (actual romantic attraction, not some kind of duty or obligation) developed over time.

And what do we mean when we say “Oh, just give him a chance” or “Wait till you get to know her better” to friends?

I think one of the reasons people tend to be skeptical of the idea of love at first sight is the knowledge most of us have that you develop love as you get to know someone. And it isn’t just getting to know facts about them. It’s the experiences you share together—the memories of the good times and bad times, the things you’ve taught each other, and the things you’ve fought about.

Surely we can’t just be successfully romantically involved with just anybody, but there is a little bit of choice or willpower involved. Just ask any het woman who has said something like “Oh, I used to go out with jerks because I thought they were exciting, and then I realized they were just jerks, and the drama wasn’t worth it.” If attraction were immutable, you would have to say “I’m attracted to jerks, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Even simple physical attraction can change over time, as your tastes change or as you get to know a person better. There are times when you initially see someone attractive (because of a confident presence or good bone structure) and get to know her or him and later consider that person ugly… yes, even physically. And vice versa: there are people who don’t have the best facial structure, but their smile and warm personality come through in their faces and seem to be the most physically attractive people you know.

Whether it comes naturally at first or develops over time, I think everyone wants to feel attractive to her or his mate.

Someone linked to Good Linux Users Don’t Talk About Microsoft on the Ubuntu Forums. I started to type up a reply, and then it got so long that I figured it was more of a blog entry than a forum post. Besides, who wants to hear about our broken toilet flush, anyway?

Okay, let’s see. So “good Linux” users can’t bash Microsoft, but “bad Linux users” can be bashed as morons? Okay. I don’t really see how that works.

I do agree that if Linux users want others to use Linux (and not all Linux users say they do) they should focus more on what Linux can do than on what Windows can’t do. It’s the same for anything in life, really. You have more respect for a political candidate who says “I’m going to do this, this, and that good things” instead of “My opponent has done this, this, and that bad things.”

But it’s only natural for people to compare two competing alternatives, especially if most of the users of one alternative used to use (or still use) the dominant product. If almost every Toyota owner used to own a Honda, then you bet you’d hear a lot of Honda-bashing from Toyota owners.

I see this a lot with Mac users, too. There are some very vocal anti-Microsoft and anti-Windows Linux users online, but in person all the Linux users I know are pretty level-headed about things (use what works for you, I prefer Linux), and the most vocal anti-Microsoft and anti-Windows sentiment I hear in real (in-person) life is from Mac users who were former Windows users.

It’s the same trick that the bully from elementary school used to use. You put others down to make yourself feel better. Well, if you’re not 100% sure you like your new choice, you may feel tempted to put down your former choice to reassure yourself you made the right new choice. It’s like when people start reminiscing about their exes and then a friend says “Oh, he was such a jerk anyway. You’re so much better without him.” He may, in fact, have been a jerk, but why do you need such assurance that you’re doing better now? It’s because there’s a little part of you that wonders whether you should still be with him. And for every Linux or Mac user who does spend the bulk of her energy putting down Windows, I often wonder if that’s where it’s coming from.

I kind of see both sides of it. On the one hand, there are many deplorable things Microsoft does, and there are many things I don’t like about Windows. It doesn’t make sense to ignore corporate bullying practices, vendor lock-in, or bad default security practices. On the other hand, focusing your energy solely on what “the competition” is doing wrong isn’t a good “sell” for your own “product.” You should spend most of your energy talking about what Linux is good for.

This goes to a larger sociological issue when it comes to operating systems. You see a lot of dumb back-and-forth arguments about “Which is better, Mac or [understood to be Windows] PC?” or “Is Linux ready for the desktop?” Well, obviously no one’s going to come to a unanimous conclusion, because there is none. No one operating system can be everybody’s preference or suit everyone’s needs. And no one operating system needs to.

My wife can love her Mac OS X and that doesn’t bother me. I can love my Ubuntu and not bother others with it. And our friends can use Windows to their heart’s content, and I won’t bother them. As a matter of fact, even though I prefer Ubuntu, I use Windows at work every day, and I divide my home time almost equally between my wife’s Macbook Pro (with Mac OS X) and my own Eee PC (with Ubuntu). So I’m familiar with all three operating systems and can appreciate their respective pros and cons.

If someone says “Do you think Linux is ready for the desktop?” I would probably respond “I don’t think there’s a definite answer to that. It’s better to tell me what your computer habits and budget are, and then I can tell you whether a Mac, a Windows PC, or a Linux PC is best for you.”

The key is really being able to talk intelligently about what works for whom instead of trying to pit operating systems in a battle out of which only one winner can emerge.

This past weekend, our apartment’s toilet broke. It just stopped flushing. We’d push the flush handle and it would just make a pathetic hissing sound. And it’s not one of those toilets that have a floating buoy in a tank. It’s an industrial flush—the kind you find in shopping malls and restaurants.

So until the plumber could come in to fix it, we were filling up a huge pot with water and then dumping it in the toilet to “flush” manually. It’s not a terribly convenient thing to have to do, but it did make us aware of just how much water we use every time we flush the toilet.

A nice reminder. But now it’s great to finally have an automatic flush back. Ah, the pleasures of modern living.