¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

I’ve just switched from Arch to Ubuntu. OMG, what the hell with me? To make matters interesting, I’m using Unity (not other (non-)fancy DE/WM) inan underlying btrfs filesystem. First point: this change is temporary; it will probably last just for a couple of months. In the best scenario possible, this post would begin with a “I’ve just installed Ubuntu”. However, there is the “I wiped my Arch installation” thing, just because the size of the SSDof my ultrabook: only 32 GB. I’ve done something similar in the past: however, in the last time, I’ve installed Gentoo – to try it – in my HDD. It was cool and I learned several concepts of how a source based distro works, but I haven’t used Gentoo during much time, precisely because I’ve installed it to my HDD. You see the difference? First notable thing: it seems like I’m always having problems with Arch. Tell me: otherwise, why would I delete it from time to time? Well, let’s clarify these things. The problem is exactly the opposite: I don’thave any problems with Arch (not today). And this is precisely the problem!. It feels so perfect that I feel I’m missing the point of other distros. Now, you already know I’m an advocate of Arch, but I should tell you the following: a priori I don’t claim it to be perfect for purposes other than a personal Desktop. In other words, I’m not a priori an advocate of Arch for servers, or for kids, or for your fancy friends, or for use in corporal environments, or anything else you might come with. Arch is perfect for a personal desktop because you are the person who knows everything about it, and you feel (and you have) 100% control of your system, and you (later on) claim to be an expert on this Linux thing. And all of this just because of an amazing community and good philosophy principles and practices (and a little of work from your part). Right? OK, so let’s forget Arch for a while – you should notice I refer to it as “Arch Linux” just a few times –> it is not the Linuxthing that is great here, but the Arch thing itself, instead! <– –. Now, let’s go back to Ubuntu and some motivations behind this change. The thing is: I would try Fedora or open SUSE at first. And I actually installed Fedora. However, I wiped it just a few hours later; it kept freezing. This wasn’t the only reason for this wiping, however: I find fedora is really annnoying in some points… Well, so I’ve ended up on Ubuntu. Linux Mint would be an option, however I felt I should get out of my comfort zone, so Ubuntu would be better in that sense.

Now, to the Ubuntu thing #

I like and I dislike Canonical at the same time. However, I like it more than I dislike it. So, I find Ubuntu a pretty decent piece of software (system) for the Desktop, it is nice. While nowadays I’m not a super fan of it (hm, I’m not even a common/normal fan…), I don’t hate it. There are a couple of reasons why an advanced user is not usually (however, please notice this is not the rule; there are exceptions!) passionated about Ubuntu – or other linux distros for novices. I won’t talk about these reasons in this post – maybe in another one. However, there are some goals that I want to address/complete until I get back to Arch:

Crazy goals #

• [ ] play with the btrfs filesystem
• [ ] play with Launchpad and PPAs (bzr, etc). In particular, create some .deb packages for Ubuntu.
• [ ] play with a virtualized Arch Linux – because there is a community out there I want to keep up with, right? Examples include but are not limited to: ssh to a VPS, gnome-boxes, VirtualBox, docker/containers.
• [ ] apt-get, apt-file and aptitude (moderably advanced) insights
• [ ] get to know vim! (Why god, why? Emacs is so nice for now…) [wq!]
• [ ] insights about the Unity shell. Customization, etc. Yeah, I’m using Unity. No cinnamon, no i3wm.
• [ ] more Ubuntu specific things I’ll discover in this process…

During the next days I’ll probably talk about my experience with these goals. See ya.