Back to Ubuntu? Arrrgh.....!!
Posted: Fri 31 May 2019, 14:23
Afternoon, all.
I've just had one of the most frustrating experiences I've had for years.
I started out in Linux with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 'Trusty Tahr', a little over 5 years back. At the time, it was quite an adventure, one which I lapped up, and relished the challenge of doing something different after decades over on the 'dark side'. I soon gave up on it after a few months, and moved to Puppy, which was far kinder to the elderly hardware.
I don't what put the idea into my head, but I d/l'ed the 2nd 'point release' of 'Bionic Beaver', 18.04.2 LTS, last night, burnt it to DVD, and took it for a test run. It looked all very slick & polished - I definitely prefer the GNOME desktop to Unity, with its horrendous 3D hardware acceleration demands; everything seemed to work fine (even Cheese, which I've been trying to get to work in Puppy on & off this last couple of years).....so I decided to install it properly, and have a play with it.
I will confess, I think Puppy's spoiled me this last few years. (And to think I complain about having to run the odd app as 'spot'..!)
I'd forgotten how frickin' awkward mainstream Linux distros can be to work with. In Puppy, you can do exactly what you want.....the responsibility for anything going wrong is squarely on your own shoulders. So you learn to be careful as you have fun with her.
I couldn't even import bookmarks to Firefox. Despite copying them across from Pup's 'my-documents' folder, and chowning permissions to 'mike:mike', Firefox wasn't having it. They'd import OK.....but steadfastly refused to show up. Anywhere.
Even Fred's 'portable-Firefox' won't run. I confess, I was fairly certain it would, but....no. Ubuntu won't execute Bash text-files, even if marked to do so, and encouraged to start via 'sudo'. It just opens them in a text editor....
Huh????
Canonical are so determined to insulate the user from any possible consequence of their own actions, it's ridiculous. 'Sudo this...' 'Sudo that...' 'Not allowed to do this.....' 'Can't do that...' 'You don't have permissions....'
Ah, to hell with all that!
I don't care if I make a hash of my Pups. It takes 5 minutes to back-up even my sizeable save-files (regularly performed once a month on average), so what does it matter? Personal data is, of course, all on external media.....the internal drives are all OS stuff.
It also took over half-an-hour to register for an Ubuntu Single Sign On a/c to get permission for a new feature Canonical are calling 'live-patch'.....certain kernel-mod 'upgrades' that don't require a re-boot. Every attempt I made to register (and I must have tried over 30 variations on a user-name) was met with a point-blank refusal, and a repetition of the same old refrain; something about the number of letters and numbers, upper- and lower-case not being 'recognisable'. Whaaat???
It amazes me that Ubuntu is still so popular, when they put obstacles like that in the user's way.....
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Oh, no doubt I could sort the problems out given time (and the inclination!), but this old dog's getting to the stage where I'm happy with what I know, and don't need all that hassle. I'm content with the Puppy community, good friends and all.
My 'Ubuntu experiment' lasted all of about 90 minutes. Including the 25 minutes install time (used to be 20, but it's almost double the size it used to be. Was once around a gig, now almost 2...)
If I ever make any tentative noises about trying this sort of thing again, I'd appreciate it if y'all would give me a good smack round the head....
Nightmare!!! Never again.
PUPPY ROOLZ, YEAH!!!!!
Mike.
I've just had one of the most frustrating experiences I've had for years.
I started out in Linux with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 'Trusty Tahr', a little over 5 years back. At the time, it was quite an adventure, one which I lapped up, and relished the challenge of doing something different after decades over on the 'dark side'. I soon gave up on it after a few months, and moved to Puppy, which was far kinder to the elderly hardware.
I don't what put the idea into my head, but I d/l'ed the 2nd 'point release' of 'Bionic Beaver', 18.04.2 LTS, last night, burnt it to DVD, and took it for a test run. It looked all very slick & polished - I definitely prefer the GNOME desktop to Unity, with its horrendous 3D hardware acceleration demands; everything seemed to work fine (even Cheese, which I've been trying to get to work in Puppy on & off this last couple of years).....so I decided to install it properly, and have a play with it.
I will confess, I think Puppy's spoiled me this last few years. (And to think I complain about having to run the odd app as 'spot'..!)
I'd forgotten how frickin' awkward mainstream Linux distros can be to work with. In Puppy, you can do exactly what you want.....the responsibility for anything going wrong is squarely on your own shoulders. So you learn to be careful as you have fun with her.
I couldn't even import bookmarks to Firefox. Despite copying them across from Pup's 'my-documents' folder, and chowning permissions to 'mike:mike', Firefox wasn't having it. They'd import OK.....but steadfastly refused to show up. Anywhere.
Even Fred's 'portable-Firefox' won't run. I confess, I was fairly certain it would, but....no. Ubuntu won't execute Bash text-files, even if marked to do so, and encouraged to start via 'sudo'. It just opens them in a text editor....
Huh????
Canonical are so determined to insulate the user from any possible consequence of their own actions, it's ridiculous. 'Sudo this...' 'Sudo that...' 'Not allowed to do this.....' 'Can't do that...' 'You don't have permissions....'
Ah, to hell with all that!
I don't care if I make a hash of my Pups. It takes 5 minutes to back-up even my sizeable save-files (regularly performed once a month on average), so what does it matter? Personal data is, of course, all on external media.....the internal drives are all OS stuff.
It also took over half-an-hour to register for an Ubuntu Single Sign On a/c to get permission for a new feature Canonical are calling 'live-patch'.....certain kernel-mod 'upgrades' that don't require a re-boot. Every attempt I made to register (and I must have tried over 30 variations on a user-name) was met with a point-blank refusal, and a repetition of the same old refrain; something about the number of letters and numbers, upper- and lower-case not being 'recognisable'. Whaaat???
It amazes me that Ubuntu is still so popular, when they put obstacles like that in the user's way.....
-----------------------------------------
Oh, no doubt I could sort the problems out given time (and the inclination!), but this old dog's getting to the stage where I'm happy with what I know, and don't need all that hassle. I'm content with the Puppy community, good friends and all.
My 'Ubuntu experiment' lasted all of about 90 minutes. Including the 25 minutes install time (used to be 20, but it's almost double the size it used to be. Was once around a gig, now almost 2...)
If I ever make any tentative noises about trying this sort of thing again, I'd appreciate it if y'all would give me a good smack round the head....
Nightmare!!! Never again.
PUPPY ROOLZ, YEAH!!!!!
Mike.