go bold

I love my laptop. It’s my baby, really, and running Ubuntu has introduced a new level of… customizability and number of tweaking opportunities. But sometimes — just sometimes — I miss the Windows install.

Ironically, Ubuntu’s tagline implies that it DOES just work… it does just allow people to get their things done on Linux, and not require special abilities. But when I’m trying to get MIT Kerberos to play nicely with my system and lprng, so I can print to the networked printers again, or every time I have to re-link xorg.conf to the dual screen config file instead of the standard single screen, it’s one more step that makes me shake my fist at the world.

Favorite things so far for sure, though: conky, the omnipresent terminal, workspaces (now I see the light… no matter where I end up now, seriously, I will need separate workspaces), the ridiculous numbers of free software out there, the fast boot time/speed of XFCE… enough to keep me happy.

Really, though, the next time I have to open up Network Manager and try to make it play nicely with WifiRadar, or wrangle with the sub-par music players (I miss iTunes), these thoughts will flash through my head once more.

It’s ok… I suppose I’m just biding my time ’til I can get a MacBook Pro. =)

After spending solidly over 3 hours tonight uninstalling Apache 2.0, downloading, compiling, making, and installing Apache 2.2, trying to figure out why Apache 2.2 had no PHP support, trying to install PHP5, discovering all of PHP5′s dependencies and individually apt-getting those… I think I’m done messing with the server. For now.

Edit: two hours later, 5:58AM… Nope. Nope. Apache 2.2.3 and mod_auth_mysql… Thank you for making my life fifteen times more complicated.