with some of the stuff this dude so nicely writes: enjoy
A Disaster: Ubuntu 11.04. - A touching story
I want to share a rather touching story with you guys. As a disclaimer I want to say that I really appreciate the hard work and dedication of the Ubuntu Developers. I sincerely appreciate your efforts, and therefore I find it a bit hard to criticise your work. But I will do it anyway.
[For those of you that are in an efficient mood, you will get the sense of the story by reading the text in bold.]
It was a sunny day and the birds where singing outside my work-desk. I could not enjoy this, however, since I had a really important deadline to make. I needed to finish a web development project, and I needed to do it fast.
While booting up my lappy I got great news: Ubuntu 11.04 is released! Yay! *Update*.
Booting in again. However eager to work, I decided that I wanted to explore my new neat distro. And what an adventurous experience that was. I will present here some of my findings.
My docky dock has been replaced by a new one. That's fine, it's cool. Until I found out that I can not move the dock. I like to have the taskbar at the bottom. However I can't reposition the taskbar either. In fact, I can't even right click on the taskbar. And right clicking on the dock gives only two useless alternatives. Are you kidding me? While trying to figure out a way to move the dock, I found that I need to search for 'System Settings' in order to view the Control Center . What a nuisance. Where did the nifty menu with Settings, Administration and Appearance go? It didn't take long until I realized that the size of the Control Center window was larger than my screen size. Further more, it was impossible to move the window around. Not only that, it was impossible to resize the window. Hence, the bottom icons in the Control Center where out of reach for me.
By this time, my girlfriend could sense my agony, so she (unknowingly) poured some gasoline on the fire and suggested that I could use her XP-loaded laptop instead. Hell'no!
Through intense concentration and with an IQ a couple of standard deviations above the rest of the population, I found out that I could resize by pressing alt + 3rd mouse wheel, and move the window by dragging and alt+clicking. Sweet. I felt a bit like Marco Polo when he was able to communicate with the tribes of Asia for the first time.
In the meantime I had opened up an instance of Chrome, which itself was not an easy task since the icon was hidden amoung multiple libre office icons. I was amazed of the fact that the dock has no kind of hierarchy, so that you can't group things for example. The dock is a mess. However, next I realize that Alt+Tab doesn't work. The keyboard shortcut I use the most is malfunctioning! Really?!
My girlfriend then asked me again if I was sure that I did not want to borrow her archaic computer. No I said! I put on some comforting music instead, to ease my mind and relax a bit. But no. I ended up almost getting an epileptic seizure from that dang visualization effect which can't be turned off!
Breathe. Relax. OK. Let's work the old fashioned way instead: up with the terminal! It's Vim-time! A sense of nostalgia spread out to my limbs.
DANG! What is it now? I can only have one instance of the terminal open at the same time?! No matter how many times I clicked at the icon in the dock, one terminal was the maximum. After a period of problem solving and intellectual affairs, I finally managed to find a fix: create a keyboard shortcut to open the terminal.
Ok, Ok. It's all good now. Let's work! I was mildly unbalanced in my mind at this stage, due to the fact that I had wasted such a substantial amount of precious time; a whole day in fact. I connected a dual monitor like I always do with my precious lappy.
BAM! *BLACK*
What happened?? The screens went black after connecting the dual monitor! No response.. Unplug the VGA cable: No response.
BAM! *BLACK*
What happened?? It was my temper this time. I got so angry that I slammed my fist into my desk at full force. It was a dramatic scenery: I actually missed the desk and hit my wireless mouse instead.
Despite me having the muscles of a true academic, I must have hit hard: The scroll-wheel ricocheted off from the mouse by the impact and bounced into a glass of water standing next to my dear lappy.
Nooo! The world started to move in slow motion: The glass started to fall over. The latency in my neurons wasn't low enough! I didn't manage.. to save.. my... lappy.. *Sigh*. Water was all over the place.
Am I dreaming? Is this a nightmare? I hope so. It must be! It isn't.
After all the fuzz, my girlfriend approached me again, somewhat terrified and cautious. She left her computer at the chair next to me. She didn't say a word. I didn't say a word. I started to work.
Retreat! Saved in Action, by Windows XP SP1 and IE6.
Anyone tried Ubuntu 11.04 yet? I need help..
Anyone tried Ubuntu 11.04 yet? I need help..
"You gotta love Gorlom!!"
