Linux

If you like to read, you could do a lot worse than to set up up a library using the Calibre ecosystem. Recently, that's just what I did, and I'd be pretty proud of myself if it wasn't for the fact that it was so darned easy. Well, mostly.

A few weeks ago, I stated that it wouldn't be fair to pass judgement on Ubuntu 10.04 just yet. But that was before I took the plunge, fully installed it as a dual boot, and actually used it in my day-to-day activities. At this point, I think it’s safe to go there.

This is not a review. I haven't spent enough time on this to be fair. Based on my findings so far, I probably won't.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my key annoyances with Ubuntu was its lack of an easy way to slip into Super User mode to perform administrative tasks. And, no, I don't consider opening up a terminal and typing "sudo whatever" easy. I recall, for instance, that during my most recent usage of a distro in the Red Hat family, there used to be a way to launch the file manager in SU mode directly, no CLI. Another distro had had a right-click menu option in the normal file manager to open a folder in SU mode. Either way, from there, I could right click launch a file in my editor of choice, also in SU mode, and do what needed doing. But Debian and all it's progeny decided that end users should be protected from the dangers of root account usage by making it a pain to get to. Of course, the best intentions of security architects are hardly a match for a determined yet ultimately lazy end-user.

Something I often see mentioned, but rarely explained, is the concept of Wine (which is not an emulator) bottles. Once I was able to understand the concept, it became much easier to run (certain) Windows applications in Linux. Let me share a little.