catching up

Welcome back the Linuxville château is being renovated again. I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and desktop. It is the LTS version which is like saying this is the base line for the next series to follow.  Well..........since loading it and using it I have been greeted with internal error reports every chance it gets. That alone does a lot to erode your confidence in the software. The 'damn what now' phrase is starting to become center in my vocab. I went looking for answers, sort of but instead went over to the DistroWatch web site. The numbers did the talking as Ubuntu is no longer the top dog by a large margin. Mint OS is king by curosity , try it you will like it and jump ship. I have used Mint in the past, but rose colored Ubuntu loyalty was altering my gaze. I have installed Mint 13, the Mate/Cinnamon version and so far my complaints are about the Ubuntu I left behind. Well so what I don't have a desktop that rivals a heads up display in the movies. I need to get some work done.

Been real busy doing a mural project with local kids and real paint. I turned a spare PC into a fancy DVD player for my TV. Built a PC for a friend. Been playing with ideas pertaining to the shanty town as a form of honest architecture. We are talking quonset huts and silos and cargo containers, with various results. GIMP, will you please make a Debian package of version 2.8, it is a drag being stuck with 2.6 in the repositories. I still use Inkscape a lot and it is still wonderful.

In the Lorain Arts Council Gallery and Art Center I run into many rough patches. Everybody uses MS Office suite and Photoshop, etc. When I do stuff in Linux platform products there is not always a smooth cross over. When we are looking over each other's shoulders it is harder to help, give tips, rescue advice, etc. You really have to think about what's being used and I don't have much fresh experience on the Microsoft platform. Even when I use XP, it is simple use, not savvy use at all. I prefer Linux because it is free and it's inner workings are not a company secret. I don't have to be a trained personnel to comprehend it. But having said all that I use Linux simply also. If I could fix it I'd be making money doing that and would have no time to do art. You have limit the kind of knowledge you know or folks will steal your time helping them (usually for free!). Most never heard of Open Source, hey that's what I use and it works...........for me!

I have been using Google's Sketchup the free version. It is the most wonderful 3d program. On the Linux platform you need WINE to run it. It works OK but on my laptop in Ubuntu it has been touchy. It can't find the graphics drivers, then the GL extensions, then..............I am not going to reinstall it just to use it, would rather dual boot with XP and not be bothered. We will see how Mint handles all this.