Author: Ed That Goes Ping

Hatin’ on Ubuntu

Via Alterslash/slashdot, apparently the elder lords of Debian (including the Ian in Deb-Ian, but not the Deb apparently) are annoyed by Ubuntu because Ubuntu’s software, based on Debian’s unstable version, isn’t very compatible with Debian’s almost-stable-but-not-quite-there-still version.

I use Ubuntu now on my linux box. I used to use Debian exclusively (after having gone through a “try every distribution under the sun” phase where I’d always end up back with Debian cause it was the best thing I could find). But I stopped recommending Debian to friends about a year or so ago when I tried to help two friends install Debian’s stable version on a desktop and server machine of theirs and realized how bad it had become, at least for people like me and my friends.

The then-current stable version of Debian, Woody — which by coincidence is also the now-current stable version of Debian — had crappy-ass hardware detection, worse than any other linux distribution, I kid you not. X11 configuration was a total nightmare for the friend who wanted a desktop OS, and we had a dead rotten time trying to find drivers for the network card for the friend who wanted a server os. After those two installs I just couldn’t honestly say “hey, you should try Linux” to a friend anymore. Maybe to an enemy.

When I stopped recommending Debian it wasn’t because I’d discovered Ubuntu and liked it, it was because I stopped liking Debian and no longer had any Linux distribution I could confidently recommend. As far as I could tell, there were distros that installed well and had recent software but were hell to maintain and upgrade (anything but Debian), and one distro which was hell to install and had nasty old software but was pleasant to maintain and upgrade (Debian). I couldn’t happily recommend either of those. My linux advocacy took a dive. I drowned my sorrows in the beautiful Aqua interface of OS X and tried not to think about the proprietary software.

A few months ago I decided to give Ubuntu a shot, having heard some of the good buzz about it. As far as I’m concerned it’s everything that Debian hasn’t been for years and should have been. Yes, it’s dependent on Debian, and it is able to be so good because of the work Debian volunteers put into things. But why isn’t *Debian* able to be so good because of the work Debian volunteers put into things? Well, it’s probably because they support about 50 architectures and won’t go forward with a release till they can get an archaic version of GNOME to compile on Debian-SomeStupidProcessorIveNeverHeardOfAndOnlySixPeopleUse-64 (DEC). And real Debian guru types don’t give a crap about people less geeky and technically competent than themselves, because that takes time away from flaming each other in political wars on the dev lists. Not that I’m bitter. But if you want to see everything that’s loathsome about Linux people, try asking a question in a debian IRC channel. I only did it once. It was enough.

OK, so whatever, that’s fine, Debian has its goals and producing an operating system that I can recommend to friends and hope to keep them as friends is not one of them. That’s all good. But if somebody’s going to come around and actually produce such an OS (and Ubuntu is such an OS, usability bugs notwithstanding), then do the Debian developers have to come out hatin’ on it?

Yeah, of course they do.

I love Debian. And that’s why I hate Debian.

Psychology Today: Happy Hour

Psychology Today: Happy Hour (via MetaFilter).

Interesting stuff about what makes us happy and unhappy, and why we are very bad at predicting what will make us happy and unhappy. Interesting tidbits:

  • We seem to have an internal “happiness setpoint” that means that we tend to stay just about as happy in the face of external circumstances which one would imagine would make us much happier or sadder — winning the lottery or losing the use of your legs, say, have a remarkably small effect on your overall happiness in the long term. However…
  • We tend to get happier as we get older. On the whole, the elderly are much happier than the young, maybe partly because they’re less worried about the future cause they’ve got less of it to worry about — so they can focus on the present. Speaking of which…
  • Focusing on the present moment, being engaged with it and mindful of it, is a big key to happines. A lot of other things that make us happy or unhappy do so by making us engaged or disengaged from the present moment.

A Wave of Hatred

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you… I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

— Randall Terry, prominent anti-abortion activist, with whom the Republican Party ended up staunchly allied over the Terry Schiavo case.

Want some more?

“The greatest crisis we face is not child killing, it’s not the sodomites, it’s not land tax, it’s not the intrusion of the federal government into our lives, our families, as they crush our liberties. The greatest crisis we face tonight is a crisis of leadership. We are facing a crisis of righteous, courageous, physically oriented, male leadership. Male leadership!

“God established patriarchy when he established the world. God established a patriarchal world. If we’re going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testosterone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of the contempt of their contemporaries. They are not here to get along. They are not even here to take issue. They are here to take over!”

From Orcinus via Puddingbowl blogmarks.

With that first quote, I expected it to continue, “strike me down with your weapon, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.”

Impending Nonviolence In Mexico

Exciting story. Vincente Fox and company have jailed the shoo-in leftist candidate Manuel Obrador for a trivial matter (building an access road to a hospital despite a court order not to) — a transparently political move to knock him out of impending elections.

That’s basic slimeball politics, not news. However, the cool part is that Obrador seems to be preparing to lead a campaign of Martin Luther King Jr-style nonviolent civil disobedience in response.

That’s exciting. This could be a big deal. It also guarantees that this will be almost completely off the U.S. media’s radar, unfortunately. (Michael Nagler‘s The Search for a Non-Violent Future gives many examples of significant and effective nonviolent action which made no impression on the consciousness of America, including the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, which was almost entirely the result of coordinated, well-planned nonviolent protests.)

Nonviolence has never been tried in Mexico before. I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
Via Puddingbowl blogmarks.

This is the first good political news in about five years…