Ubuntu on Roads Less Taken

Ubuntu Just Works

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine is having a less optimal experience with Linux, and I realized I could jot down my experience for the last few years.

I have been using Linux on my desktop for a long time now, about 10 years I think. Early I played “distro jumping” and used Lunar Linux for quite some time on my older Zepto laptop.

But at some point I just decided that, nah, source distros are huge time sinks. Not necessarily because they have issues, but because they are fun to tinker with. I also felt it was “smarter” to know a mainstream Linux well, so I decided to go for “least friction”, and moved to Ubuntu. When Unity hit I did contemplate using something else, at least an alternative shell, but decided to just “hang in there”, and now I tend to like it. Recently I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS , it was pretty eventless.

Going virtual from CLI

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Recently when I automated a development process I looked deeper at managing virtual environments and ended up using two really nice tools complementing VirtualBox in a slick way - Vagrant and Veewee . A lot of us use VirtualBox of course, but getting a new Ubuntu box up is still a bit of blablablabla… What if it could be done all from the command line and easily automated?

HyperDex on Ubuntu 12.10 from source

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So ok, I really like looking at new interesting NoSQL databases. Up until yesterday I felt Riak was the most interesting one (have also coauthored Phriak - a Riak binding for Pharo Smalltalk ) but after an evening of discussing choices of key/value backends for the Oak project I decided to “google a bit” and stumbled upon HyperDex .

Going Lenovo...

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:02:06 +0000

When I started my own company about a year ago I ended up buying an ASUS G73JW gaming laptop - I took a deliberate decision to focus on raw power for decent money and totally ignoring portability. Generally it has served me well, although it does tend to make a lot of fan noise, at least under Ubuntu. It might work smoother in Windows, but I seldom boot into Windows.

Needless to say though it is a real ton of bricks (8.8 lbs = 4 kg) and including the truly fat power supply it simply weared my back down during 2011. I have been carrying this beast in a backpack every day - and my body eventually said “enough dammit!”. :)