Grumbling Geyser

In a spiteful, vengeful act of spring clearing my desk drawer, guess what I found? I had to stop scorching the earth to admire a relic from the good past. I found an old copy of Hoary Hedgehog! I've actually been around since Warty Warthog, but I don't have any CD's anymore. I must've given them away. I was always on a frenzy back then, ordering like mad, wanting to give away the CD's to leery friends who started avoiding me. Well, anyway, I'm glad I kept a copy around just for old times sake.

Ah, those were the days! Way before they started scheming to go by the alphabet for the order of the version nick names. Back when downloading anything close to the size of a full CD meant days on end on a dial-up connection. Frustrating was it to find your download interrupted by something as trivial as a call coming in. Back in dial-up age that meant starting over. So when a friend told me that there was this distro that was shipping CD's free-as-in-beer to anyone anywhere in the world, I was esctatic! Back in those days, I'd order a pair of discs the day they announce the release and eagerly await the three weeks it would take to get them in my sweaty palms.

It's wonderful to romanticize about the old days. Sad to say as the years pass I begin to be less enthused and more bemused. Everything goes by so fast these days. Probably because i have so much to do and only 24 hours every day. Along with that dilemna comes less time in front of the computer. Well, not really. I meant I spend more time on the computer now than 5 years ago, except these days it tipped over to work related things instead of tinker time.


With Natty Narwhal barely a few weeks old and Oneiric Ocelot peeking over the horizon, I tend to wonder if the whole scheme of releasing a new version every six months is still relevant. Probably because by the time I had  afforded myself enough use-time to get comfy with one release, here comes another. And there something to be said about really customizing a linux install to the tweaks that you want. I mean when you hit the sweet spot, it's just in time for the next release. Reminds me of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and how a lot of long-time linux users will find a version that is stable and feature-sufficient enough for them and stick with it until they really have to upgrade. I mean really need to.  Like probably when the repositories for that version already go offline kind of have-to.


So gleaming from that wisdom and after weighing the history I've had with Ubuntu, I've decided to just go with what works for me. I installed Natty, but then I couldn't get used to Unity. I will go back to Maverick and will probably stick with that until I really need to (have to) move on. Maverick was the last thing I got excited about and it worked great with the tweaks that I added. I'm starting to feel old already just admitting that I prefer the older stuff. I mean I'm starting to love older things all of a sudden. Someone send me an Ubuntu shirt with the old logo!!!