Wow. For some reason, updating this blog seems a lot less easy after I’ve kindled my love affair with Twitter. Who would have known that 140 characters would be so addictive?
The other day, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 x86 final on my desktop PC (a Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz, 2GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 7600 256MB) finally making it a tri-boot system between Windows Vista Ultimate, Mac OS X 10.5.1 (yeah, you read that right), and Ubuntu 8.04. Many of you are probably well aware of my stance with Linux, which I still believe is largely justified. I’m not quite sure why I’ve given it another chance. I guess it’s because it’s been such a while since I’ve tried it out, or maybe I just felt the impulse to be just a little bit geeky? What I’ve found isn’t surprising - it’s still extraordinarily confusing, relies largely or almost completely on buggy community driven applications (which just don’t work as well as more established ones), and frankely isn’t enjoyable to use. I feel like if you need to say “well, here goes half of my day” when you’re preparing to install an application, something just isn’t right. I spent about three hours figuring out how to setup my dual monitors, how to get Adobe AIR installed (which I’ll say more about in a bit), finding substantial applications for daily, average things, updating Firefox 3.0 to the latest RC1 version, and installing Adobe Flash. Fun.
The shining star in this whole process is Adobe AIR - a runtime that I never quite took seriously or as necessary before today. It works. And it works well. While looking for some application alternatives on Linux (specifically a working Twitter client), I found that it’s more than easy to install Adobe AIR applications, which is seriously a breath of fresh air, and that they, well… just work. I’ll definitely be looking more into AIR in the future, and I advise anybody, especially people new to Linux, to give it a try. It’s currently in beta form for Linux and can be found at http://labs.adobe.com, although your ability to actually get it installed may vary.
Back on the home front a bit, I’ve continued my slow, slow work on Servo-Macs 4B. It’s going along fine, and I aim on having it done before the end of August. Progress will most definitely speed up once June begins, and I’m out of school.
