Why Linux?

(The post title here is kind of a double entendre, get it? I'm explaining why I chose the thing, while it took me a while to do so, and I'm asking it why it's doing this to me, like "Why, Linux?")

I've always had this 'thing', you see: whenever somebody pesters me about something, even if I know it's 'better', or at least want to try it out, I avoid doing so with all my might, until they stop pestering me.

And back until a short while ago, Linux used to be a thing that some people were so enthusiastic about, and they had just discovered this brave new world, that they kept going on and on and on about it, and comparing it to other OSs, and all that. Which, of course, got to me.

Now, enough time has passed that pretty much whoever was going to bother, even with Ubuntu - the 'easy', 'dumbed down' distro - out there for a few years, that everyone, pretty much, and their brother, has Linux.

So, here I come in. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu, back at the Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) stage, as a second-booting OS, along with Windows 7. And, you know, other than managing to install my printer and sound card drivers for some reason, I was using it, loving it, getting used to it enough that it was now my primary booting OS, with me using win7 only to print something that needed printing and to talk on Skype if I really, really wanted to, enough to reboot for it.

For some reason, I've been forced back to win7 now, though, because... one (otherwise) fine day, Ubuntu 10.04, which I'd now upgraded to and used for a few days (but there was no jackalope here, just a reportedly lucid lynx, and the bunny-with-horns was my friend by now!), decided not to be able to connect to my WiFi, just barely detecting that it's there, but having no viable reception of it to allow it to connect.

My problem here, you see, other than the fact that any Linux distro relies so desperately on Internet access (which I otherwise love it for, being the 'team' OS that it is), is that I've lost loads of the savvy people that I used to hang out with a lot as a student etc, and I have nobody at the tip of my palm to ask about things.

And, yes, I've used the Ubuntu forums, finding them more than helpful there, with loads of people immediately trying to help as best they can with my problem. The thing is, however, that they're not here, and although I tried to explain this as best I could there, that's nowhere the same as... well, having a geeky guy come over to your place and fidget with the thing enough to find out what's wrong - and fix it for you.

So, here I am now, posting from my... (wait for it, I'm becoming one of them now!) Win-blows, and having no idea what to do, all alone in this place that feels like a damp and empty place compared to the otherwise community-oriented and supported place that my Linux is...

(oh, it has more music in that world too, they even have a separate Last.fm app which you don't have to launch your browser for - and they're soon putting up a Linux version of Steam, I hear/read, so when gaming is no longer an issue, and since I've solved my Photoshop and Premiere issues with different apps there - I'm using GIMP now! - I was hoping to move there for good...)

Oh, and I recommend that you read this post listening to a song from my teenage years which I was singing to myself (well, the refrain, that talks about doing what they told me), because of the fact that  I did it, after all, but it sux that it took me so long.

Apple Mensa Puzzle

The iPad is to netbooks, what the iPod is to mp3 players. No, let me explain: They both existed beforehand, and other, non-Apple brands continue to make those similar products, often better than the Apple versions of them, but Apple is the one that made them popular, that made the world realize that they exist as technologies. Oh, and they're cutely designed, but shockingly overpriced compared to what you could still pay for something... better, in the same category.

Of course, that concerns those non-tech-savvy idiots, people whom I don't really care about, and my mom. If those people want to completely waste their money, just to buy themselves an iPod or, heck, an iPad, I don't give a rat's nether region. And, well, if it makes my mother happier, just to buy one of those things with the snazzy design and the friendly-to-everyone features, then, for the time being, it's her money to waste however she wants to - and, frankly, I don't want to lose her, so I hope that's a long, long time.

The thing is, I really don't see the reason why that would ever involve me. I had an mp3 player ever since... back then, when having an mp3 player pretty much involved having a Discman that played mp3 CDs as well - and I have an affection for Creative's related products ever since. And I had a netbook, thankyouverymuch - an MSI wind, to be precise - since almost two years before I ever heard, or anyone whose name is not Steve Jobs, for that matter, or doesn't work really close to someone whose it is, had ever heard, about iPads.

And, to be frank, I felt a warm feeling in... I won't tell you where, when I saw the video of the iPad being smashed by otherwise annoying American teens (I'd said ever since I first heard about the thing that, if I had loads of money, I would only spend some to buy one just to have the pleasure of violently destroying it), and then cooked in a microwave oven, just as I did when... well, that's a different Apple peeve of mine, but when I saw the video of that iPhone 3G running Android. Boo-yah.

Oh, and, just to mention cause I have to, one of the companies I've liked for many a year is Nintendo (in a way, they brought me up - no, it's not their fault that I turned out like this, I fathom), and they, very eloquently, characterized Apple as "the enemy of the future", and proceeded to 'declare war' on them. Boo-yagain.