just call me horchata

Sometimes I get restless and have to play with things.

All is well. Everything is running smoothly even though I tamper with it endlessly.

This post and this one chronicle my getting involved with Xubuntu over my 4-day holiday weekend. This is the first major desktop change I've made in about a decade since I came off of the Window Maker desktop and became a diehard KDE fan for what seems like forever.

I do love KDE. It is sweet, techno looking, snazzy, etc, but with release 4 and the plasma desktop, it was starting to drag along on my machine, and a lot of things just didn't work so well anymore.

There's a lot to be said for running things that have an emphasis on a light footprint even if your machine has enough power to run the heavy stuff. On that note, in marches Xubuntu with its Xfce desktop. I'm seriously impressed! My machine is back up to full speed again, and "everything just works". w00t! That phrase, "everything just works", always used to pertain to Slackware, which I ran forever, but now Xubuntu is there, too.

I couldn't be more freakin' pleased. This page even told me the easy way to purge all the old Ubuntu and Kubuntu stuff off of my machine and get it to an almost virginal Xubuntu install state. My main computer went from Slack to Ubuntu, then Kubuntu, and this weekend, to Xubuntu. There were a lot of remnants on my system, and I like things to be pretty pure. I was wanting to get it more default-ish Xubuntu, and by golly, it was a snap.

It's been a lot of fun, and it's like my computer has become mine again. Everything snaps right to attention, and the hard drive thrash is all gone. Functionality remains as high as ever.

BTW, Linux tweaking still goes best with beer. Xubuntu is on every computer in the house now, except for the Sylvania netbook, which needs to remain with Ubuntu Netbook Remix due to being a netbook!

A friend of mine had me work on this laptop last year because his niece hosed the Windows XP on it (porn? virus?). I rescued it using Puppy Linux, restored the Windows, and gave it back to him to give to her because I thought they were needy and she really needed the laptop for school. I worked hard on that thing to save the Windows and all her files, then she goes out and buys a nice new one, and my friend tried to sell the one I fixed, which kind of pissed me off a little because I felt I should have gotten first dibs on it, and a good price to boot for doing all that work for free.

Anyway, he shows up again today with the same laptop so I can give him a Windows/Internet lesson as he knows nothing about computers. About a minute after XP boots up, the hard drive goes "bam-klackety-klak" and the thing dies. I felt a little bad that it died while *my* hands were on the keyboard, but he kind of understood it wasn't my fault even though it's all foreign to him.

As he was leaving, he mentioned trying to sell it again, which brought back that old wound of mine about being used as a fixer just so he could sell something. I told him he might could get $20 for a several-year-old non-booting laptop if he was lucky (I just happened to have a 20 in my wallet, lol). At that moment, he said what I'd hoped for, "you worked so hard on it, just keep it and I'm going to buy a new one." Heck yeah! Hehehe.

I told him he could buy a new hard drive for it (about $70), and I'd put Linux on there for him, but he wants a new Windows one, so I felt I'd been honest and offered him all the options before saying "thanks" and making it mine!

It's a pretty little Toshiba Satellite M55-S135, and I'm sure Linux is going to run on it like a dream. I'm heading out to the store in a few minutes to get a hard drive for it, and already have a Linux iso coming in on the bittorrent. I selected Xubuntu for it as it's a little shy on the RAM and has a ghetto Celeron processor in it, so I want something that will run light. I thought about Debian, but Xubuntu will be more pre-configged.

I'll do another post later after I get the little bitch running again.

I new "used" laptop for me! woohoooo!