Laptop goes quietly

 Hey everyone, I blogging today from the penthouse and the view would be great if it weren't for the tree. It's just starting to get the autumn tinge. As usual it waits till all the raking is done and the first sloopy rain/snow mix, then it looses everything. The chateau was renovated with the updated Xubuntu and then the hard drive would not boot. It a classic Gateway 4026gz with original equipment. Kind of beat up it was but comfortable to use. I will probably buy a used 2.5" drive for a few bucks and resurrect it. Yeah, I'm that good! LOL!

This economy sucks and I've been stuck with low budget hardware far too long. The good thing is that you appreciate what you can do with what you have. Limitations can be OK, but not always good. Open source has been a staple because availability and hardware requirements have not hindered me thus far. I lost my XP disc long ago. I think that was a good thing, trusting everything to Linux was a slow and exciting process. And yes I would have used Open Source had I still had XP.

Mind ya now, I am no code on the command line geekaholic as many think Linux users are. Though I've used MSDOS, I never gotten used to it. Linux has always had a windowed desktop in my experience. I am a mouse masher to the hilt. I do use the command line when there is no other way to do it. Mostly I am taking instruction from others who've written what to type. I just follow along in hope of repeatable results. Yeah man, computers do that well!

Speaking of desktops, Ubuntu's Unity desktop is in heavy use, it is not as efficient as the old drop down menus. You just have to embrace the way it does things. A step or two more to get to the icon you click to do stuff. People talk about improvements but the swiftest thing yet was the DOS shell on a 286 computer back in 1980's. Doesn't that sound a long time ago? That was before MS Win 3.0. What slows things down is graphics. There's a thousand words of code behind each picture or icon, you can't get around it in data. You have to process the picture AND the thousand words of code behind it. Now everybody wants fancy effects on screen, eye-candy, takes even more power. Not a problem, technology is keeping up, look at what you can do on iPads type devices, that's impressive.

The penthouse is kind of isolated, I miss the chateau in the hub of activity.