On getting old

After getting my little EeePC updated safely to the infamous -18 kernel for Hardy, I decided to perform a similar upgrade on my main system. Unfortunately, Ubuntu ate a Frisbee.

It segfaulted on every boot: even when booting the previously working kernel in recovery mode.

I was seconds from switching to Debian.

Now, I did not actually act on the impulse and switch to Debian. Ubuntu puts together a lot of nifty front ends which are not there by default in Debian, and most of these little front ends come from cryptically-named packages. In the end, this scared me away.

It was no big deal when I was 15 years old to throw RedHat 6.2 — the on with the shit-tastic fvwm95 and RedHat icon for a start button — on a system. I did not really care if my computer worked every day. I did not have a real job, and did not require the machine for work.

Today, this is much scarier.

I have been through days when the computer just bombed on a production day, and I now keep a backup hard disk pre-installed so I can swap in and keep going. When deadline hits and you are faced with a stack of stories in desperate need of a beating, fiddling with your system is simply not an option — unless of course you have separate machines for fun and work.

As I scanned through the Debian documentation, it occurred to me that I am getting really old.

What is the draw of Ubuntu? The desktop experience? Well, to some degree, yes. However, its greater draw is that it updates frequently, at least when compared to Debian main. Running Debian sid on a work desktop — assuming you are not a Debian sid developer — is insanity. Updates are pushed out in the hundreds, and it has all the panic of the final days of an Ubuntu beta line. But in the other branches, especially Debian stable, the operating system has a reputation of being rock solid.

You just have to commit yourself to not seeing a new piece of software for half a decade.

And you know what? That’s starting to look fine.

Firefox opens every Web page I could want to look at. Pidgin connects to all my messaging clients. Claws is a safe bet for POP3, but if it ever exploded I am sure I could go back to Web mail. Audacious and Audacity play and handle anything I could want to edit or listen to. Abiword does everything I could want a document editor to do — except for edit non-Latin-alphabet documents. That’s pretty important.

Basically, I already have all the software I need, and I really see little reason to update it.

Have I hit an age where one’s curiosity plummets? I read often and enjoy new things, so that does not seem to be the case.

No, it probably comes down to security and stability: the feeling that each time I power down my machine, it will not be the last time I see my desktop.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “On getting old,” an entry on CinnamonPirate.com

Published:: Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

Author:: Derrick Sobodash

Category:: Random

Previous:: FOIAs? In my China?

Talbain

June 14th, 2008
16:31 EDT

I’d actually say it’s not about curiosity, but comfort. You’ve become comfortable with what Ubuntu does, and that works. Just as I’ve become comfortable with XP. I’ve trie a few other OSes, and I always come back to XP. Why I’m not really sure, but I do know that it does what I want it to do and it’s stable enough. But that’s just my view of why we don’t change more often. We hit that comfortable place and well, we relax there (or attempt to, I know more than a few people that can never seem to relax).

Stahn

June 24th, 2008
10:15 EDT

I’m stuck with XP even if I have a machine capable of running 2 Vistas, made my nLited version an all. This year, after 2 years making nLited versions of SP1, SP2, and now SP3, I made the “final” version, it runs just like I want.

I won’t ever use Windows Update, and, though it feels strange, I’m using the Windows Firewall.

So, for me, stable things all the way. I miss DirectX 10 but, what the hell. Recently I also stopped using latest Opera weeklies, the road to 9.5 was hell for me.

Muxec

June 30th, 2008
4:29 EDT

I installed Xubuntu and Firefox3 crashed out of the box. Nvidia drivers from official repos were defective… I said WTF and installed SuSE 11.0. All hardware works (even, after some effort, atheros network card). Installing 32-bit propietaries on 64bit OS is simple. Flash and mp3 are pre-installed.. It is KDE SuSE and there are two things I hate: KDE main menu loves to crash and KDE keyboard switcher is bugged. And the sad thing is that if I switch to Xfce something else will be bugged.

I do little serious work on this PC and I love tinkering stuff but I feel time will come and I will value stability more than everything else.

Derrick Sobodash

June 30th, 2008
13:29 EDT

That kind of sucks about Ubuntu. Never seen that happen before and I’ve used it on 4 machines — granted they were all 32-bit. From what byuu has told me, no matter what anyone says, 64-bit stuff is still in its infancy and is incredibly prone to breaking, especially when you play mix-and-match with 32-bit binaries.

I don’t really see myself ever buying a 64-bit Intel-compatible chip, but yeah, I have no idea what I would do for an OS choice if I did. I’m pretty happy with my old hardware as is.