Xubuntu

So technically, yesterday was the official start of spring break, though honestly, I was still working at school projects yesterday, and am most likely to be working on that on and off for the next few days. That's not as bad as it sounds though, because this break, I'm not going to be doing things alone, so it is not an issue, I guess. She's around, and that makes me happy.

On to more interesting matters. So, I finally managed to get my Xubuntu up and running and customised it accordingly. The set-up time didn't take too long, and it was a rather pleasant experience to watch Xubuntu detect (and make use of) my wireless connection to connect to the Internet. This sure beats the coaxing that I need to take to get my Slackware to cooperate with my wireless (they didn't cooperate at all, in the end).

So yeah. It's not that I'm not being l337 here; it's just that there comes a point in time where the tinkering has to stop and the thing has to work. I love messing around with slackware — nothing beats that fulfillment that one has when one gets something up and running — but at this stage, I realise that I don't really have the time to really tinker that much anymore. I just want a system that works, that can fulfill what I need to do. It is really important these days, considering the fact that down time from a system is really a big no-no in times like this, particularly when we are moving forwards at a higher and higher rate.

I have this little theory about things, that as we get older and older, the opportunity costs associated with the actions that we might want to take will generally increase, due to the increased capacity in which we can do things. So, if I were to try to pick up a new language now, for instance, I need to sacrifice much more than if I were to take up a new language when I was a little child, for instance. And we know that this is true, to a large degree; as we get older, our abilities start to get more and more versatile, and our earning power increases accordingly too, which means that if we want to do other stuff, the cost that we need to sacrifice in order to obtain the other task will increase accordingly too.

Which brings me back to my original point. I like messing with Slackware, but as time goes on, I can no longer keep up with the tinkering to ensure that my system will work correctly/perfectly. That's why a system like Xubuntu or even Microsoft Windows can help a lot; there's lots of tinkering that can be done, yet it is also possible to just fix things through the use of the automated tools, without having to manually inspect what is needed to fix the installations to make them run, let alone running better.

With that mentality then, is what I have when I made that switch from Slackware to Xubuntu.