l33tminion | The New Box

My new laptop arrived yesterday from System 76 (a souped-up Pangolin Performance), and it's pretty much the stuff of my dreams. Running the latest Ubuntu, hardware works out of the box, look is clean, runs fast, keyboard is good, trackpad is okay (the fingerprint reader gets in the way, but maybe that will be worth it when/if I set it up so I can log in with that).

After much angst, I've finally solved my biggest problem, getting my iTunes music and metadata somehow backed up and my iPod working with Linux. All the Linux solutions for this (in the context of transitioning from iTunes) fail in one way or another: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, iTunes under Wine... Eventually, I found a winning combination of gPodder (for downloading and syncing podcasts) and gtkpod (for adding other files to my iPod and ensuring the whole thing is backed up to my hard drive). My first attempt with gtkpod was a dreadful failure, I made the mistake of choosing gtkpod-aac (since that can play Apple m4a files), but that version is horribly buggy.

Most of the configuration stuff is done, I finished cleaning out my old documents, transferred them to the new computer, did a little reorganization, and I'm running my initial backup now.

(Also, if you ever decide to turn own the download of ~~"recommended" and~~ "suggested" packages in apt-get for what seems like totally good reasons at the time, don't. It seems to follow those links all the way, and I'm not sure those packages even marked for autoremove if you remove the thing you originally intended to install.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

aptitude does handle autoremove properly for recommends; don't know about apt-get, but aptitude tends to do things better, in addition to having a dependency resolver that can solve sudoku. aptitude installs recommends by default, which is the recommended ("no pun intended") way of doing things these days, because Recommends: is often used for things like in-app help, codexes, and common plugins that aren't strictly necessary but can cause things to fail in mysterious ways if you don't have them, stuff that might be installed by default upstream. Suggests will get you all sorts of random junk, though, so don't do that.

I thought you had already gotten your new laptop. This isn't your third, right?

btw, I've got to Mac evangelize when you come home because last time I tried that I didn't know how to use it and it wasn't impressive at all.

Basically, yeah. I bought an HP laptop in the fall. I didn't like it for a few reasons, so I kept using my old one. Unfortunately, I'd bought it at a discount in such a way that I couldn't return it for a refund. Meanwhile, one of my housemates had their laptop break and started using my new one. My old laptop continued to get older, so I eventually did the proper research and found something satisfactory.

So I own three laptops. One in poor condition dual-booting XP and Ubuntu (in storage in my room), a fairly new one dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu (being used by someone else), and a very shiny one running Ubuntu (which I'm using right now).

Aaah… so I've got a while to teach you about the greatness of Macs: what's the advantage of Ubuntu over XP? btw

Compared to XP: Better command-line interface, faster, more secure, easy access to vast amounts of free software, more stable, less evil, did I mention it's free?

Main reasons I went for Ubuntu over a Mac: More used to it (that's a minor factor), like it better (okay, so maybe I'd come to like Macs better given more exposure, but the last thing I wanted to do was make another computer purchase I'd end up regretting), much cheaper (I could have had a worse screen, slower hard drive, and half the memory for $1000 more; alternately, for the price of a MacBook I got a bigger and better screen, faster hard drive, twice the hard drive capacity, and twice the memory).

(That last factor doesn't cover the option of making a Hackintosh (i.e. buying some other computer, installing OSX on it), but if I was that gung-ho about Macs, I'd probably be fanboyish enough to shell out the extra money.)

and u wudn't be that fanboyish about Macs as you haven't had the proper exposure (I forgive you ;) ) I'm not sure that the Hackintosh btw is fanboyish - because one of Apple's selling points is that the hardware and software were made for each other. Maybe if you put a sticker on it that said "I wish I had a real one but I'm poor" that would work but it wudnt _really_ cut it. Anyway, I don't want to get to rant-y about Macs without the proper demonstration (blogging's not quite as good but pretty good but I don't have the time for that until the summer - it's really busy now).

It's worth noting that I have used Macs in the past (although never as my home computer, and I've only used OSX a little). I even did some Hypercard programming back in the day.

I'll also note that most of the things I've taught you to do with Macs are things you can do as well or better on Linux.

yup— I know, but it's not those things which make me like Mac so much. I've learned lots of stuff independent of you telling me them you'll understand. Anyway, I'll explain when you get home.

The New Box

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