owlectomy

A small victory

2011-07-10T12:02:21Z

Someday I will succeed in installing something that isn't Ubuntu-derived on my netbook. For now, I've switched over to Peppermint OS in the hopes that it would be kinder to my little processor than the latest Ubuntu, which runs pretty hot and may have a power consumption bug. Seems fast, but that could just be an artifact of wiping clean a very small hard drive and starting from scratch. (Yes I made a backup.) At any rate, I have YouTube back!

The scroll bars are extremely ugly. That ought to be changeable.

Why am I sick? UGH. I think in the last year I have only been sick when I had something to look forward to that required not being sick.

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owlectomy @ 2011-06-09T22:02:00

2011-06-10T02:31:54Z

Oh, operating systems!

For a long time I have defaulted to Windows merely because it can do Netflix and Steam. But tonight it finally was stymied by trying to install the Scrivener beta -- which Ubuntu managed just fine. Productivity, or watching TV while knitting lace? Productivity, or watching TV while knitting lace? (Yeah, it only takes a minute to reboot, but I like having nine billion tabs open!)

There are advantages to both, obviously, but the experience reminded me just how much I prefer Ubuntu's user interface.

Ah -- apparently Netflix is going to switch to something a little more Linux-friendly than Silverlight? That would make me a happy person indeed.

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AWESOME.

2010-07-12T00:53:35Z

And now I'm dual booting.

I think I've earned a level up in Linux. Not so much for the super-easy installation, but for (a) figuring out what I'd done to erase Windows, and (b) figuring out how to partition and reformat my hard drive to reinstall Windows.

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Dual Boot Quest

2010-07-10T12:36:19Z

( Cut for those who don't speak Linux )

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Bug fix

2010-07-02T10:59:41Z

This is a problem that kept recurring on my computer: I would boot into Windows, and the next time I turned the computer on there wasn't anything there. I had to reinstall Linux on a separate partition just to get back the screen that would allow me to switch between operating systems. So, the second time this happened I tried posting for help on UbuntuForums.

Turns out, Dell computers now ship with a proprietary program called DataSafe, which is supposed to keep your data safe in the event of, say, a catastrophic hard drive failure, but which also messes around with how the computer boots, in such a way that it cannot coexist on a dual boot system (unless you do a whole new install and put GRUB in a different directory, which I didn't really feel like doing, and I've got different backup options anyway).

Even though uninstalling DataSafe (and installing sbackup -- yes, I've got it set for automatic daily backups now!) was pretty simple, I'm a bit disappointed in Dell for this. They support Ubuntu -- they offer it as an OS option on some of their computers -- but their proprietary, automatically installed software can't cope with me having two operating systems installed?

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Technology bits

2010-06-29T21:22:32Z

I was all set to endorse Last Year's Model until I realize that, cheap and featureless as my phone is, it's not only new, but the third phone I bought within a twelve month period.

(In Oct. 2008 I dropped my phone on the floor at the hospital and cracked it, in May 2009 I left my phone in a taxi after WisCon, and in July 2009 I left my phone in a taxi after surgery. I'll give myself a pass on the first one because it was a terrible old phone and I had a fracture. I'll give myself a pass on the last one because general anesthesia can do a number on a person).

I feel like Windows/Linux may be the best of both worlds. It's cheaper than buying a Mac, I get iTunes, I get games, I can do all the stuff that gets ported late to Mac like Netflix streaming, and I still get to have an OS I like and feel at home in for everything else. Plus, if I can't find a application to do something, or can't figure out how to do something, I can always try with the other OS.

Except Windows did *something* to GRUB (the thing that lets you choose which operating system to boot into) and I had to reinstall Linux to get *any* OS back. And therefore I now have Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Edition, and Windows all installed in separate partitions on my computer. Hopefully this will not be a continuing issue.

At any rate, I am very happy right now with the New! and Shiny! and probably need to go back to writing.

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Wiktory!

2010-06-29T04:17:36Z

Have successfully installed Linux (dual-booting with Windows) on my new computer. Strangely enough I didn't realize that the version I was downloading was 9.10 instead of 10.04, but this'll do. I'll make a system recovery disc and THEN I'll update.

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The excruciating details

2010-06-17T14:51:45Z

I think I should include some background information because in that context what I did kind of sort of makes sense.

For a while, I've had a weird text input bug on Firefox, and an entirely different weird text input bug on Chrome. I suspect that it may be a problem related to insufficient memory, but I can't say for sure.

So, I thought, "If I'm going to be using my netbook as my main computer, I really need to do something about that text input bug, because it's really annoying."

So I decided to upgrade my version of Ubuntu.

My last upgrade went so smoothly that I didn't stop to think, "Do I have a bootable USB drive I can use if something goes wrong?" -- and though things had gone wrong before, I'd always had a backup computer to rely on.

At some point during the installation (I was asleep) something went wrong. I couldn't get it to boot up again, and I couldn't get it to boot up again in recovery mode.

I decided to do laundry.

I put 45 minutes of time on the dryer and went away. I came back and realized that my clothes weren't actually dry.

I tried another dryer, which also turned out not to be producing any heat.

I tried a third dryer, which finally started drying my clothes.

I went to a reception for a young writers contest at BPL. I dropped my plate on the floor while talking to a big-name writer.

I went to my sister's house. She put on home improvement shows while I worked on making a bootable USB drive.

Eventually everything turned out okay.

I think.

(I'm not sure whether I've managed to fix the problem with the wireless firmware. Right now I'm fairly tired and don't really care.)

I wonder whether I still have that text input bug.

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