Gnaw

I was going through a few distros (to keep up with how they are doing/what they are doing) when it dawned on me exactly how boring and mundane (and accessible) Linux has become.  Not a one of the distros I have tried in the last five years has required me to manually configure X with any of the following information (this is not to say that some of them weren’t just a wee bit off):

• Video timing chip type and speed (or, for some chips, just the speed and a wild guess about the general chip type)
• Horizontal sync range
• Vertical sync range
• Color depth versus resolution
• Video chip/card (including video RAM)

I find all of this to be highly annoying…  I mean, anybody can just come along and install Linux now, and they don’t have to know a thing about these very important settings and where to enter them.

So, the next time someone tells you how much you have to learn about command lines just to install (much less to actually use) Linux, ask them when they last entered all this info into a text file…  That was the whole point, wasn’t it?  To make Linux accessible to the masses?  It is now accessible, and anyone who says otherwise is not just under-informed, they are willfully so.

Added much, much later…

I’m specifically talking about that info (sync ranges, etc.) for my old, VGA (9-pin video) multisync monitor (Emerson) set for page-white at 640 X 480.  FWIW and all. 

I decided to give the 2.3 release of Gallery2 a go and update my photo album.  The Gallery2 crew have released a solid product with a well-polished Web configuration routine/interface.  My chosen theme has some CSS “issues” on a couple administration screens, and there are 980+ files I need to delete, but those are my own fault.

My hearty congratulations and thanks to the Gallery2 developers for a job nicely done!

I have never understood how the government spending only as much money as it gets in taxes is a bad thing.  Neocon Republican newspeak would have everyone believing that “Tax and Spend” is BAD.

Then, in the very same breath, the Neocons (Gingrich, Cheney, the lot of them) spend 8-years running this country’s financial system into the ground with their BORROW AND SPEND policies (coupled with the laughable “concept” of Trickle-Down Economic).  Go figure?

So, taxing the people and spending the money is BAD…

But, spending the money of future generations (money that doesn’t yet exist) is a totally acceptable way to run things? I’m sorry, but when was the last time that ANY of us real people could get away with running our finances that way?

Tax-and-spend is the way it works.  Tax-and-spend is not some cuss-word, but the way things work best (if they are going to work at all).

Borrow-and-spend is the quickest way to destroy it all (as we are currently seeing in graphic, technicolored reality).

Do these Neocons (all of whom are market liberals (AKA: NeoLiberals)) really think that they can so readily define our reality?  Well, they do, and they have, and I am sickened to have to tell you that a significant number of US citizens really believe this “tax-and-spend” is bad, crapola.  So, I put it to everyone to try it for yourselves…

Yes, try spending money that you don’t have yet, and see if you don’t have to pay it right back (WITH interest)…  How long can you maintain a functioning and sustainable household by only borrowing money to live, not actually just living within the “confines” of a known amount of money that you will get?  What, ten years?  Can you live for ten years totally on BORROWED MONEY?  I’d love to see you try it!

No, the BORROW AND SPEND Republicans would have you believe (and have made over 30% of Americans actually believe it (my mom in Montana, for instance)) that TAX AND SPEND is bad, but BORROW AND SPEND is totally Ok…  This is some sick, sick, sick-headed-and-wrong shit…  People believe it, though…and that is the sickest thing of all.

So, before anyone gets their panties totally wadded-up…  I am NOT the person who believes that Democrats are actually any better — nope — because they are all POLITICIANS, and they are (nearly all of them) NeoLiberals.

Bill Clinton?  NeoLiberal (market liberal)  NAFTA, anyone?

Al Gore?  NeoLiberal.

Nancy Pelosi?  NeoLiberal.

Barbara Boxer?  NeoLiberal.

Newt Gingrich?  NeoLiberal.

Richard M. Nixon?  NeoLiberal (opened up China for TRADE)

George H.W. Bush?  NeoLiberal.

Ronald Reagan?  NeoLiberal.

George W. Bush?  NeoLiberal.

Are you getting all this?  I don’t see any “good guys” in all of this.  I don’t side with the “Democrats” or the “Republicans” in this.  Our country’s economic policies are so heinous (especially since Nixon took away any pretense of even a sniff of gold standing behind the US dollar) that we have become the financial black hole that is dragging down the entire world with the current collapse of our currency.

Fix the US dollar and the “world economy” can right itself (eventually).  Don’t fix the US dollar and every action will merely be another finger in the leaking dike of reality.  It is that simple…our economy isn’t dying, our currency died and is taking the economy (and the world) with it.

The next, big thing will be inflation, because the US dollar isn’t fixed, so all the band-aids (and green ink for printing more dollars) in the world can’t make it buy MORE stuff and still pay the interest for all the BORROWING we’ve already done.

Every US dollar is LOANED into existence WITH INTEREST…how long could such a currency last before it collapses on itself?  We are finding out right now, and I am both angry and sad that our leaders aren’t fixing the REAL problem:  US currency.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I hate Gnome.  I have always hated Gnome.  I shall always hate Gnome.  But, I will grudgingly use Gnome.  Yes, yes, flame me all you like…I’m just being honest upfront.

Oh, and I’m on pain-killers and both of my tonsils have been flame-throwered from my throat, so this will meander, I reckon…

I also hate MacOsX for most of the same reasons I hate Gnome…  However, the **buntus were worthy of my absolute loathing (K or U, didn’t matter).  I hated them in ways that I can never hate Windows, because they were traitors (and any other hyperbolic, emotion-riddled term you want to apply to a new kid on the block phenomena in the computer world).  So, it isn’t that I “hate” or “dislike” Windows — I don’t even care about Windows — it is that the **buntus are a bunch of clones on my home turf, and I detest them (but I like Shuttleworth and his mission).  Anyway, just a few vestigial emotions to shed like so many useless limbs in my journey out of the OS sea.  It is not all as serious (searious) as that, but I would never, ever use hyperbole, so there it is.

Oh, I RESPECT the two, but they are the systems I would get for someone else, a newbie, my mom, you get it.  I got my sister and her family a Mac some time ago, and it turned out to be the best purchase I’ve ever made for someone.  My real motive was to purchase them a computer that they could sit down and use without the kids destroying it instantly (system.ini anyone?), and that I also wouldn’t have to support over the phone.  My sister lives “back home” in Montana, and I live in West Seattle (Washington State), and through several jobs (as well as personal experiences) I have come to loathe phone support (giving, or receiving).

So, the last time I really, really used Gnome was around the 1.0 release when I was checking out the newest offerings (at the same time) from Caldera’s Open Linux.  I’d just banished the core dump spewing monster that was Redhat to /dev/null, and I wasn’t in a good mood to begin with (I guess?).  Gnome sucked, and it was like some color scheme conceived by depressed goth kids, and they wouldn’t let me configure anything!  It was infuriating, and I swore-off Gnome, and swore at Gnome.  I went back to fvwm on MINIX and the joys of tcsh…on my Atari TT030 desktop computer.

So, when I did try out KDE it seemed to be the cat’s meow for quite a while, and I was (mostly) pleased.  It wasn’t very elegant, and it took a bit of tweaking here and there, but some parts (konqueror, kterm, kate) were truly inspired.  Still, it was a bit heavy with some resources at times, and I was wasting quite a bit of time after every testing session putting things back “just so.”  I had perfected my backup and restore routine when I finally decided upon a standard file/folder heirarchy, so everything else was just drivers, settings, and window dressings.  But, in reality, I was totally happy with KDE 3.5.8 (except that kmail was no longer sufficient, and another list of gripes).

Then we took a trip south for a short vacation, and I had a conversation with one of those Linux users who just happens to also be a kernel deity.  He was explaining how he just goes with the stock-standard install and theme and settings, and he doesn’t have time for all the fluff.  He lives in a few terminal windows, and just wants the window manager to do what it does without getting in the way.  As usual, after our friendly banter and my jeep mechanic mentality came out, I was off to see the sights (and the sites, and one or two cites), but I still had to think about what he said.  At every opportunity to get some packages installed on my laptop, the first thing I did was DIVE into the preferences minutiae, and I started NOTICING it at every turn.  My productivity was suffering, time was being wasted, and it was really getting silly.

A few months later finds me having a shoutbox discussion with a fellow last.fm person, and I am (again) reminded about simplicity.  TWO times this discussion has found me, so I performed a backup, wiped all my drives and I installed (that very night)…  Not Mepis.  Not Debian (except for a server).  I installed Ubuntu Intrepid Illiac Crest 8.10.  I was going to live with it for six months and then see how things were going.  Well, a week later I find myself having some free time, so here I am.  I hate Gnome because everything I tried to do had an easier answer in Gnome.  Wireless?  The bastards went and made it easy.  I already thought my way was the easy way…I was wrong.  nVidia drivers?  Easier in Gnomebuntu.  Samba and NFS?  Easier in Gnomautilusbuntu.  The list is tedious already, at only a week.

I just finished importing my large (more than 20k of files) music collection in Banshee 1.2.1 (yeah, I just updated to 1.4.?) from my 500Gb NAS (using NFS) while I was simultaneously setting the preferences for Banshee plugins, downloading and installing 135 packages (in that silly add/removebuntu jobber), and running a VNC connection to another computer.  All with no big slow-downs or boggish moments, and to top it off, after I selected “Download cover art” Banshee was importing music and downloading cover art at the same time.  Oh, and I had it playing during all of that.  Not very subjective, but something I could not have done on KDE with Amarok (Amarok uses the tediously-slow sqlite database engine).

So, yeah, I’m totally angry with Ubuntu and Gnome, but only for having shown me up.  Cripes, what if I just USED my computer?  I’ve been doing this since 1978, and I’m hardly an OS zealot (but I like to play one on TV and the Intertubes if it riles the self-righteous).

I don’t mind that the path of Gnome is controlled by alleged “interface Nazis.”  Apple has made a killing being worse (software and hardware), and I really, really don’t want a Mac.  By having a narrowly-focused path and a very clear definition of their visual language protocols (yes, an OS is a visual “language”) the Gnome developers are well on their way to creating an excellent desktop that lives comfortably between MacOSX and Linux/Xwindows/KDE.  Frequently, KDE is a window manager in search of itself, and it seems that there are no hard-and-fast GUI rules that can’t be broken (Konqueror to Dolphin, of all the sillybackwardassedtimewarped steps back).  I can see the reason why so many people swear by Gnome (and swear at KDE).  I still like KDE, but managing all of that flash isn’t something I intended to sign up for (somehow, I strayed from the true path in search of settings and preferences and fluff!).  Hopefully, everyone else will find something like this in their own computer journeys…this was a great move toward simplicity in computing, and I’m glad to have met that Andre guy.

My system is:  Ubuntu 8.10, Gnome 2.24.1, Kernel 2.6.27-9-generic, P4 2.66GHz, 512Mb RAM, 200ish MB HDD, and some nVidia GeForce4 MX440 with AGP 8x.

P.S. What this all means is that I pretty much like Ubuntu 8.10 pretty much.