Since I'm asking about Windows software, I might as well ask a bit more. I know there are some programs that can vastly improve the experience of using Windows, such as using Foxit in place of Acrobat, and Opera (or FireFox, or.. pretty much anything) in place of IE. What others are there? Any programs that are on the "The Windows install isn't done until I download *this* to make it tolerable" list? Free preferred. Cross-platform is a bonus.

I hope to download these at home (where there is DSL) and burn a CD for my next visit to sistaur. Even with drive time, it'll likely be faster than downloading on the dialup connection.

Current Mood: curious

Last weekend I got sistaur's computer into a reasonably useful state, but in doing so removed an (outdated) anti-virus program or two. Since it is Windows (XP), I suppose there ought to be some sort of anti-malware program. The problem is, I have no idea about that. I haven't had to deal with keeping Windows secure for some time.

So I am looking for recommendations. The anti-{adware,spyware,virus,whatever} should not drag system performance down noticeably, and would ideally be free. Any recommendations?

Current Mood: curious

Wine has at long last reached version 1.0. It started as a means of running Window 3.1 applications on Linux, and changed through time. It was a bit of a joke if it would ever reach version 1.0 ("Someday I'll run Duke Nukem Forever on Wine 1.0 on GNU/Hurd...") but here it is. The jokes about Duke Nukem Forever and GNU/Hurd* remain accurate.

And if you want to run Linux but have a need to run a Windows program and it can run with Wine (not a sure thing, even with the first stable release) then it's a good thing. I used to think about the odd program from Windows that I missed, but not anymore. I can't recall any Windows programs I feel any need to run.

Abiword and Opera (and Open Office and FireFox) are cross-platform. There are ports of some of the Linux programs I use back to Windows (such as X-chat). Others have replacements, such as TextPad on Windows being replaced for me by NEdit on Linux. And gaim, er, pidgin just blows away AOL's own AIM client, and hey, there is a Windows version.

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike Wine. I just see it as a tool that I do not need.

Current Mood: calm

I spent the weekend at sistaur's as she said a storm or something had taken out her modem, and it would be good to do some general cleanup on her computer. I brought an external modem I haven't used since getting DSL, figuring the modem she had was toast. She had done the proper phone diagnostics and found that if the computer's phone line was plugged in, no other phones worked. Before she left for work I'd said that I'd try the original modem and when that didn't work, I'd see about removing it and getting the new one set up.

To my surprise, and later to hers, I plugged it in and it worked. I wasn't arguing, especially since I'd forgotten to pack a toolkit. Neither was she. But it took for-freaking-ever to boot that machine up, and shutting it down was an exercise in patience as well if one watched and waited through the process. sistaur's former housemate had installed a bunch of stuff and I'm not sure what all was from the original setup where unneeded junk is too often included in the default setup by the vendor. One or two wanted to update themselves and had no patience about it, popping up boxes whining about not having a net connection to exploit. But things were going to change.

By cleaning up the Startup menu, which had a number of things that didn't need to be there, cleaning up the desktop, I got the boot time to about four minutes. Not great, but approaching sane. After asking her about a couple of things I hadn't removed and eventually even hearing a suggestion from the former housemate, a bunch of really crufty stuff was removed (I took immense pleasure in removing RealPlayer and the like, but ditching the ancient Norton/Symantec stuff probably made the biggest difference.) and the boot time had dropped to about 90 seconds. Shutdown took about 30 seconds. It's like it's a new computer.

I got a bit annoyed with IE and Acrobat and whatever the default image viewer was, as well as having to hunt for putty (an ssh client so I can check on things at home) so I downloaded Opera, Foxit, and IrfanView, and even an IRC client so I could talk to someone. And after installing and configuring those, I made an Internet menu with the right shortcuts so they'd be out of the way but easy to find.

Later when we were both home, Sistaur guided me through some additional cleanup as many games and old files were things she didn't use or didn't need and this was a time for cleaning things up. I had planned to do some backups to CDR, but simply didn't get around to that. I did leave a stack of blank CDRs so they are available. One more download and I had a bit more control over things that wanted to startup all the time. A few things lived in the system that didn't need to and didn't have a more polite way of being told to go away.

It's been a long time since I used Opera on Windows. It was familiar, of course, but it does look a little different. Or maybe it's that it's the very latest version. Foxit blows Acrobat away. I used to hate PDFs as viewing them took far too long. It wasn't the PDFs, it was Acrobat sucking and advertising for a ridiculous amount of time while pretending to startup - and Acrobat was also one of the things clogging up the Startup. Foxit is nearly instant - like the PDF viewers for OS X and Linux. While I doubt Sistaur will ever use it, IceChat looks like a nice, easy IRC client. I'm not fond of the default layout and color choices, but there is an included color scheme that only needed minor tweaking. The layout was easily tweaked and the alias editor made getting the commands I prefer fairly easy. TinyApps is as useful as I remembered.

That wasn't the whole weekend by any means, but it was the main point of this visit. It was great to see Sistaur so happy. "I have a computer again!"

Current Mood: good

On Sunday I had some power supply problems with belgian and even after the supply was going again I didn't quite trust it, and the fan was still noisy enough to be an irritant. Monday there was a trip to Computer Renaissance in Mankato and a replacement power supply purchased. Today I made the swap.

The machine is a few years old and was a Wal-Mart mail-order item that I added the RAM and HDD to as the Wal-Mart prices were out of line. One thing they skimped on was the power supply. I'm a bit surprised it lasted this long as if I am reading it right, it's a mere 180 Watt unit. I expected to replace it with a 230 or 250 or 300 Watt device. The cheapest new supply (used weren't much if any cheaper) was the one I bought, and it's 480 Watts. I like efficiency, but I also like power circuitry to "loaf along" rather than be at all strained.

It was a true hardware project. I managed to cut myself getting the ATX connector from the old supply disconnected from the motherboard. But the new supply is in and running fine, and quietly. The thing has two fans, but is still rather quiet. While I had thing apart, I also adjust the speed of the CPU fan down a bit so that it is quieter too. It's not silent, but it is much quieter than before.

Current Mood: good

This morning one of belgian's fans got rather loud. It was the power supply fan. It eventually quieted down some, but I could still hear the sounds of the bearings as a low-volume pitch changed back and forth, like a European siren. Eventually I shut things down to get a look at things, decided there wasn't much I could do for a while, so powered belgian back up. Almost.

The lights light up. The fans spin. The CD drive drawer activates. I think the HDD spins up. But there is no video. And there is no *beep*. Crap. I hope it's just the power supply and nothing more. I'm using percheron for now. Not as fast, but Wolvix is with XFCE is lighter than PCLinuxOS with KDE. Fewer (and newer?) fans, too, so it's also quieter. The fonts aren't as nice, alas.

It looks like I get to make a trip to Mankato and Computer Renaissance for a power supply. Hopefully it'll just be one trip and the power supply will be all I need. I know it's been around five years of nearly constant service, so it should be expected, but it's still annoying when it happens.

ADDENDUM: After removing power and working the input voltage setting switch, I tried it again. And belgian came right up. I did discover one of the upgrades "improved" KDE in a manner I had to fix [Control Center | Desktop - Panels - Menus - Start menu style: KDE (instead of the irritating 'KICKOFF' style)]. I don't quite trust the power supply, but I don't need to make the trip to Mankato today now.

Current Mood: annoyed

One thing Apple got right about Mac OS X is the Software Update. It alerts the user to updates when they are available and lets them be installed on the user's schedule without too much fuss. Except for QuickTime.

I have updated QuickTime at least three times now (in a surprisingly short time, I wonder how many holes are in the thing). Software Update alerts me and offers to take of it. I have yet to see it do that with QuickTime. I don't know what's special (in the short bus sense) about QuickTime and Software Update but they earn on F on "getting along." The alert shows up, the offer is made, my password is asked for (and supplied) and almost immediately up pops a message that there was an error and the bad package trashed. I acknowledge the message... and software update suggests I do what just failed. If I do, the loop goes on and on.

I can update QuickTime, to Software Update's satisfaction, by downloading it with a browser and dealing with it manually. So I've done that. But it's really annoying to see a tool consistently fail on a situation that is common. perhaps Software Update needs an update? Right now I'd like at least one of two things regarding this: (1) Software Update to work as intended even with QuickTime. (2) QuickTime to be good enough to be version-stable for several months.

Both would be ideal. Just item 1 would be less hassle. I could settle for just item 2, if I only had to deal with once or maybe twice a year. I'm not sure if this is the third or fourth time this year QuickTime has needed updating. Is it in permanent beta?

Current Mood: annoyed

I had a few related experiences, or one repeated experience, recently that showed that Jay and the Hercules project have been an influence. I've heard of the IBM 360 and OS/360 and 370 and 390 and other IBM mainframe things. I am also not a gamer, and that is also significant.

In last couple weeks I've seen a few people say they have a 360 or are using a 360. And for a bit I was wondering about these people using old IBM mainframes or such. Until a little more context made it plain they weren't talking about a real 360, nor even emulated one, nor OS/360, just an xbox. Had they said xbox, there would not have been any confusion.

( Preserved comment(s) )

Current Mood: calm

I was ready to answer that with an emphatic NO! yesterday. It was getting physically painful to use the laptop's trackpad and though that's hardly an OS X issue, being hardware, the solution of using an external pointer was at first almost as bad. The default mouse acceleration curve is messed up so that the pointer either moves at warp speed and is barely if at all controllable, or it is stuck in molasses slow. That slow might be great for getting to exact pixel in an image editor, but it's lousy for everything else. Fortunately the Logitech tool bypassed that acceleration curve issue.

The color thing was (and still is) an irritant. Today I finally managed to find and (mostly) successfully modify a skin for Opera to get my soothing gray backgrounds back. Alas, the address/URL field is still white and I'm not sure I can change that. I've posted a question regarding that on the Opera forum. It seems a strange omission. It's not an issue on KDE, but then KDE lets me set the system colors to my liking.

Opera now works about how I expect, though it did take the different trackball and I'll need to use what to me are unusual button presses (I am that used to third button emulation in X now) and changing both (Mac) Opera and OS X so that F5 and F12 do what I expect them to do.

For IM I now have Adium at least partly set up. I have the AIM part going. I haven't tried to get the Yahoo, Google, or LJ messaging going yet. I have a tolerable color scheme, though I can see further changes ahead. Shading and highlights might be "in" but I'd love to kick those out and have nice, crisp flat colors. ADDENDUM: I also would like to have some of the events not have any notification. No sounds, no bounce, no pop-up, just quietly do nothing. Amazingly, there seems to be no such option.

For IRC, Colloquy seems pretty good. The colors have been made sane, and Jay found how to solve the deal-breaker issue: If I have to use "/me" instead of "/a" (I know, nonstandard, but it's how I do it, so there) it's not an IRC client I'll use very long. It would be nice to lose the weird "justification" and use a full line and keep <nicks> in angle brackets. It would also be nice to have actions (where /a came from) be in a different color than "spoken" text. Nits? Perhaps, but I know what I really want. ADDENDUM: The in-program use of "chat room" instead of "channel" is another nit, and one that makes me wish x-chat aqua was a real option. I understand the developer's reasoning, but I vehemently disagree with it. It's IRC. It's a channel, dammit.

iTerm, at least, seems to be right as it is. The only issue I've had with it wasn't iTerm's fault. It was just how OS X (and MacOS before it) does things. It's going to be some time before I'm used to having the program controls away from the program and up at the top edge of the screen. I understand the consistency thing, but oy, that makes for an awful lot of (time consuming) "mousing around" to do simple things.

Smultron (text editor) is also pretty good once the colors are made sane. Again the only real issues I had it were not the editor itself but OS X.

yakko mentioned Xee for an image viewer and it seems pretty good. I still haven't settled on an image editor. I might to have to wait for a new version of GIMP and/or for Apple to fix its X11 implementation. I did see that the absolute latest version of GIMP was available - for a price. Typical Macintosh. ADDENDUM: With the X11 fix, GIMP no longer crashes as soon as I try to make it actually do something.

Granted, this is a new (to me) OS, so new programs and all the time spent whacking things into (rough) shape the first time is probably to be expected. I haven't had to do that in some time. For the last few years, I simply copied config files and was done. That's very easy to get used to. I now have a system I consider usable. Not ideal, but usable.

So, is OS X ready for the desktop? I am not sure if I can answer that with "Almost, it just needs a system color configuration tool that really is one and not something that only changes the trim between two nearly identical choices." or "Yes, but you need to use third-party applications wherever you can and whack things into shape." I cannot answer with an unreserved and emphatic "yes" as I spent far too much time getting things tolerable and no time really getting anything done. And getting out of the way and letting people get things done is supposedly OS X's claim to fame.

I used to wonder why anyone would take recent Apple hardware and put Linux or BSD on it. Now I know why: to have control and familiarity.

( Preserved comment(s) )

Current Mood: blah

Turn off the annoying bouncy crap:
Go to System Preferences and under "Personal" choose "Dock" and de-select: [_] Animate opening applications. Now instead of the annoying bouncing, the glowing dot beneath an icon will wink slowly - indicating a startup without being obnoxious about it.

How to get a black background:
Make a 128x128 solid black .png image.
Put it in
/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/
And then the "Solid Color" choices will have it, just like it should have all along.

iMouseFix almost, but not quite, fixes the rotten pointer acceleration. The default acceleration is great for the (RSI inducing - not an exaggeration: I already can feel the pre-pain signal that says "If you keep that up, you WILL be wearing a brace.") trackpad. Unfortunately it's lousy for a proper two-button trackball. The result is that the pointer moves way, way too slow when moving slow. Setting the pointer speed is not the fix, the acceleration curve is harfy.

Installed the Logitech configuration tool and found a four(!) button trackball. This solved the dopey default acceleration curve and lets me define the "extra" buttons as button 3. IT's not quite natural, but at least now I can open links in background tabs without playing silly menu games.

This entry will be appended.

To do:
1. Opera
- Upgrade to version 9.25 Done.
- Get an Opera skin that is the same as the default, except has a proper gray background for the Speed Dial page. The skin based on the unreleased Opera version 1 was a good start. Modified to use grays instead of white or "Window" and it's about what I want. I've named the modified version sanity.
- Get the ?style=mine button Got it.
- See if OS X can interpret right&left click together as middle click so opening a background tab is trackball-only. It can't. The Logitech configuration tool provides a work-around, with sufficeint hardware.
- Set Opera to view source in a text editor Done.

2. IRC client.
- Find one, get the colors sane, hopefully have python for scripting.

3. IM client
- Find one, get the colors sane

4. Smultron - text editor
(Swedish for "wild strawberry")
- Get the colors sane
- Get proper file tabs

5. Set up Time Machine with the external drive

6. Find a (free) image editor that actually works. I would have no issue using GIMP if it actually ran. Crashing it is as easy as opening a new image and trying to draw on it. That's it.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

The laptop I've been using is a Compaq Armada 7800 which is a 266 MHz Pentium II. Sounds a bit dated, doesn't it? It is.

I first ran Ultima Linux on it, and had the problem of wireless being cantankerous. When Ultima's website went *poof* I looked around and switched to Wolvix, which was an improvement. Then Wolvix had a new release, so I upgraded. That was a good idea, almost. Something in the new version chews up CPU. If I stop udevd the CPU usage drops from 100% to a more reasonable 7% or so. But even then there is an annoying seizing of the pointer that happens often enough that the machine is hardly usable. And the Wolvix site has been unreachable for me today. That's not encouraging.

I tried Xubuntu 7.10 (again) and it wouldn't boot the LiveCD fully, even in the "safe" mode. Same thing for TinyMe (a light version of PCLinuxOS that I'd love to be able to run). Anti-X, which is a light version of MEPIS and not a command line only thing despite the name, did the same. All those boot on a much faster desktop machine.

I tried Feather Linux, which actually booted and ran on the laptop. I might try it again and see if I can get wireless working. Or I might try another distribution, such as Absolute Linux.

In all the searching for answers to the boot problems I happened across a review of the laptop. It was dated 1998. This machine is nearly ten years old now. New machines run a few versions of CPU newer and clock a full order of magnitude faster. No wonder I'm having trouble finding something that it will run and run well.

I expect that if I keep looking and keep at things long enough I could get a workable system again. But now I am wondering if it would even be worth the effort. Also, the PCMCIA card doesn't handle WPA. Or rather it can be made to handle it, but only under Windows.

The only three real options right now are:

1. Compaq Armada 7800 (P-II 266 MHz)
...with all the problems above, including the lack of WPA.

2. A newer Dell (P-III 700 MHz ?)
This would have the lack of WPA problem, and I had similar boot problems with it when I was suspicious of the Compaq a few months ago, and it also suffers from being a Dell.

3. PowerBook G4 (G4 867 Mhz)
This one has OS X (yes, the newest version, whatever cat it is this time) so it is unixy underneath, and WPA does work. Unfortunately the surface isn't quite as unixy as it ought to be and I'd be stuck with the color scheme I'd scrap in an instant if only I could. Really, if I could fix that easily, I'd probably already be using this machine. It *is* unix underneath, right? Shouldn't there be a simple .config style file to edit to fix the colors?

So I have a choice of two machines that don't work and one that works but I'd have to stare into a light bulb to use it. Yuck. Though only when using Apple-supplied stuff. If I treated OS X like I treat(ed) Windows -- running programs from third parties whenever possible -- it might just be rendered tolerable. That's what I'm leaning toward right now.

That does bring up another issue: what programs will I need to find replacements for? Right now I suspect I'd need to replace Nedit (tabbed text editor that I can set the colors on), X-chat (x-chat aqua evidently isn't really ready, dagnabbit), Pidgin (formerly gaim). And I'd need these programs to all let me set their colors and not just use the OS non-choice(s).

At least I wouldn't be stuck using Safari (which has the same locked-in color idiocy as OS X itself) since Opera is available for OS X. Though evidently I'd need to tell OS X to get out of the way and let the keys do the things I expect them to so. F12 means "open the Opera quick menu" and not whatever goofy (and as I recall, utterly useless) thing OS X does with it, to me.

I suppose the choice should be whichever one involves the least amount of cussing. No, Mr. Jobs, that does not make #3 automatic. If only Woz had been around to make sure the configuration tools that ought to be there were included...

It is quite frustrating. The MacBook looks seems like a great thing, but only almost.

Current Mood: frustrated

I was having random crashes with belgian for a little while, usually when I wasn't around to see or hear what was going on. As they got more frequent I wound up experiencing a couple directly and hearing something go wrong. A couple nights ago I ran the machine with the cover off and waited for trouble to start. Meanwhile I was doing some backup just in case it was the hard drive failing. Fortunately it was not the hard drive, but the CPU fan had clearly seen better days. Most of yesterday belgian was off.

Last night jmaynard and I drove up to Mankato and I got a new fan at Computer Renaissance.[1] It was installed last night and set up in the simplest way, always on at full speed. It's certainly effective, but it is also rather loud. As this is a fancy fan setup, it can be used in adjustable speed manner, which I plan to do tonight. Since belgian doesn't have the fastest, hottest CPU and I don't really push it that hard, things can be a lot quieter without problem.

[1] The store is quieter than Best Buy, the people seem more helpful, and they don't do that annoying we-think-you're-a-crook inspection at the door. Even if it costs me a couple more bucks, which I doubt, it's worth it.

Current Mood: relieved

I've seen discussions, or rather arguments, about whether MixedCaseVariableNames are better or if underscore_linked_variable_names are better. I have dealt with both. From my Forth background, I rather prefer the MixedCaseVariableNames as one of the Forth tools I have results in printouts with underlines, which make underscores indistinguishable from spaces - this is a Bad Thing when trying to debug. Of course, in Forth I can use ~Variable-Names-With*Unusual-Characters-in-Them! if I am so inclined.

Now that my bias has been revealed, I'll address one of the notions of some of the underscore users. The idea is that say, this_is_a_test won't have the missing capital problem that ThisIsATest might if someone flubs and uses ThisIsaTest instead. This error could be found with a system that demands all variables be explicitly created. But not all systems are like that. Many are, or can be, quite lax and let the first instance of something substitute for an explicit declaration.

But the problem is not even that. The problem is that of case sensitivity. In an ideal system, case would be preserved, but not distinguished between. That is, if I make a variable named CustomerID the system editor won't go changing it on me to be customerid or CUSTOMERID but will leave it alone as CustomerID. But it will also accept CUSTOMERID and customerid and customerID and they will all point to the same information as CustomerID. Not that the programmer should go around not caring about case. Ideally each instance of the variable would look like all the other instances of the variable - but that's something the search-and-replace function of an editor can handle if need be.

"But that means you can't use each separately!" That's right. Which means I'd have to think up names that won't overlap in mental name-space and be confusing. It would require that I not obfuscate my code, at least not by abusing case.

Now, MiXedcAsevaARiabLeNAMe is something that does deserve to be editted out of any respectable program. Unlike MixedCaseVariableName, nothing is gained in readability by random capitalization. Rather, it just makes the programmer look like an idiot.

( Preserved comment(s) )

I've had a Slashdot user ID for a few years. Okkay, more than a few years. I'm actually using a second ID, I think, as I forgot about an earlier one. No big deal. I don't need a low ID number to show off. Since I registered, I marked myself as 'Willing to moderate' not so much to actually moderate, but because that way I can meta-moderate (for anyone wondering, it's a rating of other's moderations, intended to limit abusive moderation). For a while it was no big deal. Every great once in a while I had have the usual 5 moderation points available and could use them or let them lapse.

It's no longer every once in a while. It's gotten downright silly. I seemed to be getting mod points weekly for a while. Sometime I'd let them lapse, sometimes I'd find some article interesting enough to read the comments of, but interesting enough to post comments to and burn through the points. Today it got Very Silly Indeed. I got tired of the "You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!" message, found an article of interest, and burned through the points. And also did the meta-moderation so there was no message leading the page content. I just looked at Slashdot again. What do I see? "You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!" How bad does Slashdot need moderators if I can burn through 10 mod points in one day? I haven't done that - yet. But I could. I'm almost tempted to try and see if get another 5 mod points later tonight, but I'm just not bored enough for that to be an interesting exercise.

Current Mood: cynical

Someone suggested writing a program to be readily transportable across various Windows platforms, from desktop stuff to CE. Someone else quipped, "Write once, crash anywhere."

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Blue Screens (to the tune of Blue Skies)

The bad news is that the CDRW of FreeSBIE wouldn't boot from the CD drive. But I did get it going. And an attempt at a hard drive install failed. Evidently I may need to adjust partition sizes. I tried using it as a LiveCD but it seems to find and ignore serial pointers too, dagnabbit.

The good news is that a boot managing floppy does its job quite well. I think _dakko pointed it out to me a while ago. This does exactly what it claims to do. I made a floppy from the downloaded image and use it to get to the CD that wasn't booting. So the night wasn't a complete waste. At least I have a boot floppy that will let me start from devices that aren't fully cooperating.

( Preserved comment(s) )

Current Mood: tired

I tried another Linux distribution on icelandic today. This one actually boots, at least.

( Feather Linux )

( Linux from a DeadCD )

Current Mood: impressed, well mostly

I tried to install Peanut Linux on icelandic and had some trouble. The latest version, 9.6, needs 140MB RAM to install, rather than the 64MB as claimed on the Peanut web site. Further, 9.6 is beta, according to a few forum entries. So I went and got the not so well mirrored 9.5 and that could install. But every time it had a chance to impress me, it ticked me off instead. It wants to be small and light, but can't because it's too busy being coolkewl. So I decided after trying to whack it into shape that it wasn't worth the effort.

I tried BeatrIX which is meant to be a super simple LiveCD with a graphic interface so friendly Aunt Flo could use it and never know she wasn't running Windows. It's a wonderful idea - for faster hardware and a faster CD drive. But it could be installed to hard drive, which would bypass the slow CD drive and let me create a proper user account. This was slow going as it was several seconds from key-press to response due to the slow CD drive I have. But I did get it installed, eventually.

BeatrIX is a Debian/Ubuntu derivative with pretty much everything not needed for the graphic desktop stripped out. A couple things bugged me. First, the wonderful autodetection found my serial trackball and lit up the LED in it.. for a moment, and then decided that the pointing device was an unused (and disabled in the BIOS) PS/2 port. Second, the window manager was gnome - and even on the hard drive it was slow. Fine, I'm willing to blame my ancient hardware there - but it shouldn't slow down the console response in another virtual terminal, at least not so as I notice it.

After the HDD install, the network had to be brought up manually. And I wanted to edit something. Console editor, what's a console editor? The thing, so help me, didn't even have vi ! I'm no fan of vi but its one redeeming feature is that it's always there - until BeatrIX, evidently. I tried other editor possibilities and had just as little luck. After more struggling to tell it about the network and the outside world, apt-get was finally working. And then I tried to look something up with man and it wasn't there. It's not that the man page I sought wasn't there, man itself was missing! Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. No console editor and no man ? What else does it not have? I've decided I don't care. I'm not wasting any more time fiddling with a deplorably incomplete distribution.

Addendum: Excluding vi isn't a problem by itself. Not having an editor is a problem. It would be really nice if trying to invoke vi (which is the nearly universal fallback editor) would run a simple script to tell the operator what the installed editor is. It shouldn't start the other editor, just tell a person about it.

Current Mood: shocked

( More computery stuff )

Current Mood: calm, really