[Cialug] Ubuntu 11.04

[Morris Dovey]

On 5/19/11 10:09 PM, Stuart Thiessen wrote:
> While I understand, appreciate, and support the desire and need for
> being able to mess with the internals when necessary, I also have
> found that sometimes it is nice just to have a system that works and
> doesn't require tweaking to get stuff done. For now, (unfortunately)
> that means a Mac for me. But I am always keeping my eye on this list
> and other Linux sites in hopes that we will hit a usability threshold
> that will allow me to move over to Linux for my work. I'm not an IT
> guy or a programmer by trade. My work only allows me to dabble, so I
> am not able to spend a lot of time tweaking. Some of the programs I
> need to use for work either work in Mac or work in Windows, but many
> do not work in Linux, yet.

<snip>

True for me as well. I've been a Linux user since the 90's, but couldn't 
find affordable/equivalent replacements for critical windows 
applications - and I don't have time to put on a system administrator 
hat whenever I want to do something new.

I'm not a dabbler (my work has ranged from real-time chip testing 
software to n-tier multicast networking drivers for a stock exchange 
trading cluster) and my time is best spent doing other than being a 
sysadmin, which is the role that I've been forced into all too 
frequently with my Linux systems.

About a month ago I threw in the towel and bought a Mac and a copy of 
VMware Fusion3 with the intent of loading XP and my essential Windows 
applications (PageMaker, DesignCAD Pro, PaintShop Pro, etc) into Mac 
"sandboxes".

Most of what I like having and using on my Linux systems is already on 
the Mac (most notably the gcc toolchain and the standard *nix 
utilities). I'm still going through the process of rebuilding my own 
utilities, libraries, and applications - but haven't run into any 
compatibility problems yet (knocking on wood). A few of my routines do 
depend on the /proc filesystem, so I may yet find a few headaches.

I wasted time for six months trying to get Linux running on a particular 
NSLU2 configuration and finally had to admit that the job required a 
better sysadmin than I had time to become - and my uncomfortable final 
conclusion was that I could have actually saved time by writing my own 
stand-alone resident supervisor and a set of drivers for the devices I 
wanted to attach.

I can't (daren't) speak for the grandmas, and it now occurs to me that 
the frustrations I experienced may have been nothing more than a natural 
consequence of being a great-grandfather - or (perhaps) my expectations 
have just been too high.

...Morris