Warming up for the main event
My company recently made another acquisition - cue much frantic tearing around on my part as we connect the two infrastructures together with sticky tape to last us long enough to get our breath back.
But one thing I wasn't expecting was that the new company is, amongst other things, a Mac shop. So I have to learn Mac. So I have to get a Mac.
And just in time for Leopard too. So, a 15" Macbook Pro is being ordered on Monday, and this time next week I'll be a proper Mac user for the first time since University.
So, in the mean time, and with time to kill, I thought one last try at Linux, not just for old times sake but in case the Mac doesn't work out. Because I'm not going to Vista. Tried it and didn't like anything except UAC, which is perverse but true. UAC is incredibly annoying, but it lets you run in a non-elevated mode, which is enough for me.
I wasted most of today trying to get some kind of Ubuntu onto my old D505, with no success, until eventually I said stuff this and dug into the spare machine pile at work. The best thing they had was a D400 in pretty good nick. That's the tiny portable Latitude, by the way. Feisty went on easy as pie, and then I upgraded to Gutsy, and now I have a tiny little Linux machine.
Some thoughts:
- All the hardware works; it even allows me to download some non-free stuff to make the modem work.
- A tiny machine is not something I've ever used, but it suggests all sorts of interesting possibilities. A small machine to carry about the house with Internet and a text editor could be useful.
- However 1024x768 is small (and to think I remember when I had a 640x480 screen!), in particular Google Reader under FireFox needs to be F11ed to hide all the toolbars to make it useable.
- All the eye candy works even though this machine has a crappy old Intel on board graphics card. I have cube (although using it with only 2 desktops for a sort of flip instead), wobbly windows, all the toys.
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