Feanor

These years in Italy there have been big problems with football teams supporters. Every sunday there are clashes in and outside the stadiums and from time to time people get hurt and some also killed. A kind of arm race started when they sent the police, now the supporters fight each other and they all fight the police. As result, the authorities decided to firbid the supporters from some clubs to follow their team when it plays in another town. This is the first step towards the complete TV football only. Most of the money is already coming from TV rights, sold everywhere in the world. Football is one of the main industries in Italy. The whole thing is nonsense. I mean, people paying money for this show, no need to say about those who kill and get killed for it.

After some playing with Ubuntu Linux I think everybody with good will and some work done can use it instead of Windows. There are still 2 main drawbacks you can't work around, not all the hardware is supported completely and there is less good software available for the average desktop user. On the other side with Linux you get a completely free computer where you are in control of everything instead of being told by big corporations. Unfortunately I don't have enough hard disk capacity on my old PC to run both Linux and Windows effectively so at the end I decided to remove Linux. The precedure is rather simple:
1. boot from Windows, go on the admin tool for handling disks (from "my computer" icon or from the control panel), delete Linux partitions, create a new Windows extended partition, create a logical disk (es.D: ), format it.
2. boot from Windows install CD, go on the recovery consolle with "R - C" options, use "fixboot" and "fixmbr" commands at prompt to restore the boot sector and partition table that had been changed by Grub.

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Dopo avere giocato un po' con Ubuntu Linux penso che chiunque dotato di buona volontà e con un po' di lavoro potrebbe usarlo al posto di Windows. Ci sono ancora due inconvenienti che non si possono aggirare, non tutto l'hardware è supportato ed esiste meno software di buon livello per il comune utente desktop. D'altra parte con Linux puoi avere un computer completamente "gratis" e/o "libero" (in inglese "free" ha entrambi i significati) dove hai il controllo di qualsiasi aspetto del sistema, invece essere vincolato alle decisioni delle corporation. Sfortunatamente il mio vecchio PC non ha abbastanza spazio su disco per usare sia Windows che Linux afficacemente quindi ho deciso di rimuovere Linux. La procedura è semplice:
1. avviare da Windows, andare nel tool per gestire i dischi (da "risorse del computer - gestisci" sul desktop oppure dal pannello di controllo) cancellare le partizioni Linux, creare una partizione Windows estesa, creare un disco logico (es. D: ) e formattarlo.
2. Avviare dal CD di installazione di Windows e entrare nella consolle di ripristino con le opzioni "R - C", usare i comandi "fixboot" e "fixmbr" dal prompt per ripristinare il boot sector e la tabella delle partizioni modificati da Grub.

I played with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu lately.
For those who don't know about it, they are different flavors of Linux, the free and open source operating system, on top of which you run several layers of free and open source different software.
Linux is named after its inventor, Linus Torvalds and it is composed by a "core", called Kernel plus a software, the X Window System, that manages the graphics on top of which you can chose different desktop environments.

There are many many different flavors of Linux, called "distros" or distributions. In short they are packages that allow you to install kernel+X window system+desktop environment+applications so at the end you can have a more or less complete computer system that works like Windows or Mac.
Years ago installing, setting and working with Linux was difficult because you needed a lot of work and computing knowledge. Today the "distros" have evolved so things got much easier and you don't need to be an expert.

So why everybody is not using Linux? Mostly because there are still difficulties to make all the hardware devices work and because the software you get on Linux, besides networking and maybe software developing, is fewer and not as good as it is on Windows or Mac. Using Linux you get the freedom of doing pretty much what ever you want but the price of it is Linux being a collection of things from sparse sources that contribute to Linux with their own reasons, goals, schedule and rules.

My experience with Linux is a mix of pros and cons. So far the main feeling is you can make Linux work like the other systems but it takes a much bigger effort. I guess the average guy considers the money you have to spend to buy Windows or Mac plus the software that runs on top of those against the time you have to spend trying to learn how to make Linux work, plus the inevitable frustration when things go wrong and the possibility that some issues can't be fixed anyway. And of course some things do look and work better on Windows and Mac than Linux, for example the software for multimedia tasks. Right now I am trying to learn how to use Gimp and the feeling is something like "OMG the most difficult and illogical software ever" . Hints, help, suggestions, comments are welcome.

Among the three distros I named above, Ubuntu is the one that works better "out of the box", while the other two, even if they share a common "base", need more work to get all the things ready. Besides that, it is mainly a matter of tastes about the desktop environment.

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I am too lazy, italian readers please go on my "real" blog here: http://eldalie.blogspot.com, thanks.

People from a little town in the southwestern China.
Gli abitanti di un paesino della Cina sudoccidentale.

I did not want to post this but then I thought it could be useful.
In the beginning I got the problem with the two files I uploaded and now I can't delete. I reported the problem in the forum but I did not get any feedback from any MyOpera admin or dev. I messaged Nicomen (from the devs blog, last entry I can see there dates 30 August)...
http://my.opera.com/devblog/blog/
... and he answred they would have taken a look at it. So far nothing changed.
Then Dimitris told me he could not access his files, he reported the problem in the forum and got this feedback:

FYI, I've located the problem, and it only applies to usernames starting with 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : < = A Q ^ _ { | ~

That problem (please note what kind of problem it was) seems to be fixed.
Then these last days there was a maintenance outage, I could not do anything with the file archive. After that, I got a "500 server error" whenever I tried to upload a file.
Reported on the forum, no feedback so far.

I am getting pretty disappointed.
MyOpera doens't owe me anything of course, besides I am the "user" and the service is either offline or gives me an error.

Edit: it seems the "500 server error" occurs with mp3 files. I've tried with a jpg file and it seems to work instead. I esitate to make more testing with other files extesions because I don't want to end with more files stuck there.

Edit: I've found several thread in the forum that report the "500 server error", it seems the problem occurrs with any file above some size.