Ubuntu 11.10

Herumph, hoist with my own petard or something like that : random scribblings about Ubuntu 1.10 have disappeared irrecoverably from http://warriet.blogspot.com/ with no effort whatsoever on my part so now following my own advice and writing first locally to be coped and pasted later to http://warriet.blogspot.com/. If I remember I'll save this one in Google Docs on the grounds that Google's servers are probably more reliable than any of my local confusers.. Where was I? Blogging about Ubuntu 11.10 and my experiences so far. I like Linux in all its varieties and the co-operative mindset (as opposed to the top down approach used by Microsoft and Apple) for the development of the OS. The numbering of the name shows that 1 is the year and 10 the month of the intended release. Whereas the other models effectively beta test in the version sold to the users, aggregating the solution of problems into urgent releases culminating in essential Service Packs resolve known problems. I pity the sysadmins (see also http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sysadmin) responsible for maintenance of wide corporate networks. Subject to a robust and fast corporate network, I would reinstall every client PC with the defined corporate standard of software every day. What people do with their home PCs is entirely up to them but there is little that is more aggravating than users who reconfigure the corporate PCs to their own whims regardless of corporate security and other policies. Oh and disable or remove CD/DVD drives and USB ports and Bluetooth so that software comes solely from the corporate servers.

Back to the plot, running Linux means being involved, albeit in a very modest way, in the development process. (http://linux.com/ is currently unavailable due to an as yet unresolved security breach: rather draconian but as security is the main selling point of Linux, it is reassuring that an event is investigated )

Each bug I find is auto-reported to the development team who will investigate and produce a fix usually already known but I have reported one previously unknown bug. Worth noting that the (real)world in which we live runs on some kind of ***x. Even Microsoft dominated businesses don't rely on what is essentially a hobbyist OS for their must-not-fail applications. It is of course highly ironic that I need to use Windows or Apple to maintain devices such as my iPhone or my satnav both of which are based some form of ***x. One very useful piece of software for Windows (yes, I do use it sometimes) from http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/features works very smoothly to create a bootable USB stick although working out how to boot from USB rather than disk or CD/DVD can be something of a performance as each PC requires different CMOS settings and each PC requires a that a different key be held down during boot to access the CMOS, some more user-friendly than others. Also, booting from USB saves the time and resource spent creating an endless supply of not very usefulcoasters CDs/DVDs: this place is littered with used discs that I am loathe to bin because I remember when this was an expensive medium, Somerset Waste Partnership provides no guidance on disposal: I wonder what toxins I will be adding to landfill? (memo to self – always have a spare pair of batteries on charge for mouse and keyboard – for a moment I thought I had a Windoze type hang, probably a good cue for saving this in Google Docs which worked, keeping the format and links I see here.) After a day of this and that, I am happy to declare Ubuntu to be stable and efficient!