A year later...

I'm making a third attempt to upgrade to 10.10 with Ubuntu. The first two passes at this resulted in a nearly-bricked laptop, but fortunately with GRUB I was able to reboot into the older installations, and I had to go back more than three of these, to get a working -but not stable- Ubuntu just so I could undo the damage. In the end, I couldn't completely fix how badly the upgrade process had screwed up the system and had to burn a CD to do an ALL NEW 10.04 install. This is why I keep /home on a separate partition!

If I have even the slightest trouble with 10.10 I will switch to Arch Linux for this laptop. After all, if I'm going to struggle with settings and making things work, mightn't I be better off with a more powerful system? Why struggle just to hold the status quo if I can struggle LESS, and get a better system? That's my question today. Ubuntu better not fuck it up AGAIN.

And, for the curious, I'm not talking about the wireless drivers or touchpad driver, and other more proprietary difficulties. Those I'm used to. I'm talking about Ubuntu base system not upgrading correctly and having serious ability with even being able to start a VGA screen in X11. This is a no-brainer, as it's already working now, so only a kludged upgrade script could kill it - and it did the previous two attempts at some three months apart. I thought they'd have fixed it by then.

No, Ubuntu Forums is well populated with unanswered threads, followed closely by threads answered only with rude sniping comments rather than actual assistance, then by threads which are closed without being correctly answered, with the smallest threads losing the chase as containing useful information.

I love the idea of Ubuntu, and it's just too bad that Canonical sucks so badly at actual delivery of the promises. That's one linux based company that I refuse to send money to. I've paid for Red Hat in the past, and SuSE, among others. So far, there's no way I'm paying for Ubuntu. I pay for things I want to support, not half-formed betaware.

Speaking of minecraft, I've paid for that, so my sons can play it, and I regret it. What a piece of shite. I'm glad for the opencraft and other actual free versions that are better. Java? Really? I bet that's scalable. LTNS, 8 bit graphics. Howya been? Shit, that's how.

If I'm going to play a BETA game of an 8-bit throwback to days of yore, and you ask me to pay for it, it better be worth it. Minecraft blows goats. I like the idea, but the blocks should be smaller, fuck sakes, at least 16 bit! Who in hades doesn't have a 32 bit computer these days?

In the meantime, the actually GOOD looking freecraft server demanded an update to Ubuntu... which is why I'm trying 10.10 again. Ubuntu ain't going to stand between me and a game, that's certain. There will be no fourth chance.