Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Trying more, enjoying less.....

Hi gang, been doing all sorts of stuff. The art gallery had a whiz-bang Black History Month reception with drummers, dancers, singers, portrayals and artwork.

I got the itch again to explore some desktop options. These things always make me rethink how I handle my PC setup. I did some research on Krita, the drawing, painting program. I am looking for tutorials so I can see what "work flows" suit me. You just can't jump in and start, mess'n around. Well, you can but, some friendly help gets you further down the road.

As you know I am using Mint 13 (Maya) on my laptop. It is a work horse and I like it a lot. The version I am using has the Cinnamon desktop, much like most desktops. I got the urge to try KDE (K Desktop Environment) again. It has improved and caught my attention once more. Installing it I made the mistake of not having a separate hard drive partition for my "Home" directory. So I can't reformat to install a new OS without destroying everything. Let that be a warning to all you "gotta change it" folks. Partition with change in view, have a good backup plan, a big flash drive and maybe an external USB drive. I wanted to install the new Mint 14 KDE version. The live CD causes my laptop screen to go dim. I had to settle for installing KDE from the repositories on to Mint 13. If I really want this Mint 14, I will have to backup all my stuff, darn. But why the dim screen? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

I did put Anti-X Linux on my other laptop. I like it and I don't. It is not a good choice because it doesn't allow CD booting without mess'n wid stuff. I will install a friendlier linux on it. Here is one thing I never liked about Linux. On a Microsoft system, you can set it up so that PC's can see each other on a network, to share files. It is pretty easy. It is not so easy to do the same on a Linux network. To say it better, it is not explained so the average sort of-kind of tech savvy person can do it. Linux loses me in the explaining department. I may get it someday but not today. In the meantime, Krita looks promising.

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