Less Ride-y, More Compute-y

This past weekend, I had planned on going over to Green Mountain for Wheat Ridge Cyclery's SRAM 2x10 drivetrain demos. I'd also planned on finishing out that Saturday afternoon on the Matthews-Winters Park/Green Mountain trail loop, since the weather was just about perfect.

Neither one happened.

Sometimes I can force myself to get on my bike and get going, knowing that I'll end up getting into the ride after a little while. In fact, this happens all the time and it's just a matter of getting myself out the front door. But sometimes I just know that I'll half-ass the whole ride no matter what I do, or tell myself. Basically, I just didn't feel like it, despite the near-perfect weather and the chance to try out some new 2011 mountain bikes. But in all honesty, it wasn't a huge deal to me (the demo, at least); the whole idea of 2x10 is growing on me a little bit, but the real questions I have about the setup can't be answered with a demo. I like the mechanical idea of 2x10 (wider gear range, nicer shifting). It's the durability of the chain and how well everything works when it's dirty that I'm really curious about, and those are the type of things that take time to get a feel for. I'm sure that, as more and more riders switch over to 2x10 gearing in the next six months or so, there will be more anecdotal reports and magazine articles regarding how the drivetrains are holding up. Honestly, aside from wasting a decent afternoon weather-wise, I don't really feel like I missed anything.

What I did do last Saturday was upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu, 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat"). I've been using Linux off and on for the past ten years (usually with a lot of hair-pulling and frustration involved). But about a year ago, I decided to give Ubuntu a shot. I've always liked Debian-based Linux derivatives--me and RedHat never got along for some reason--and Ubuntu has really been making headway with getting Linux to be very usable and visible to the general public. Besides, since it could be installed within Windows without the need for repartitioning, I reasoned that I could just uninstall it if I got frustrated...which never happened. In fact, after using it for a couple of weeks as a "Windows install" I realized that I liked and used it so much, that I performed an actual repartition/install on my system and set it up as a dual-boot. I've been using Ubuntu as my primary OS for over nine months now, and I hardly ever boot into Windows anymore. Frankly, if it weren't for my audio software (Cubase, VST plugins, etc), I'd get rid of Windows completely. 99% of everything I use my computer for, I can do in Linux. For free.

This past Saturday was the latest upgrade (not coincidentally, version 10.10), so I spent the evening upgrading. The speed of upgrading, installing and running is one of my most favorite things about Linux and within an hour I had the update downloaded, installed and up and running.

One of the the most noticeable changes was to the Software Center (show above). The new layout is much more intuitive, and one of my favorite new features is the repository list in the left panel. It lists all repositories currently installed on your system, and when you click on one, it shows a list of all of the available packages from that repository. The Software Center also added "Featured" and "What's New" boxes in the main panel, and there is now a repository link for non-free software vendors to place their programs for sale. Another welcome change: all .DEB files are now opened by the Software Center, so installing downloaded packages is more streamlined than it was before.

Another updated feature in Ubuntu 10.10 is the photo manager (show above). Previous versions included F-Spot, which honestly just kinda sucked for a lot of reasons. They've since replaced it with Shotwell, which works much better and has a clean, simple layout. I particularly like the thumbnail size slider in the lower right hand corner.

 As usual, there are a few personal changes that I make to my desktop. I've got a bunch of the Bigisi Project themes installed, and I'm running the "Eco" theme, with the icons from the "Airlines" theme and the window borders from the updated Ubuntu "Ambiance" theme. I do like the new Ubuntu font, but not for system stuff, so I'm using Droid Sans for pretty much everything.

Overall I think 10.10 was a nice upgrade, even if most of the fixes and updates were behind the scenes. I think Linux really is finally ready for most people to use, especially with distributions like Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE and, of course, Ubuntu. The fact that you can now install Linux within Windows to try out (and take full advantage of hardware drivers, unlike a lot of LiveCD's), makes it a worthy option to Windows or MacOS. The fact that the OS, and most of the software you're ever likely to use, is completely free and ready to download makes it even better.

I think my next project will be an attempt at installing Windows within "virtual box" software in Ubuntu, and then installing the few Windows programs I still use. Maybe I'll finally be able to just get rid of my Windows partition completely! That might have to wait though, since this weekend is supposed to be nice and I need to take advantage of the weather before the snow comes around.

On a quick parting note, I've been using an awesome program quite a bit lately, called Minitube. It allows you to search and watch YouTube videos without having to open your browser, and gives you an easy one-click way to download said videos (saved in .mp4 format.) While you can't view an individual user's account, you can search by user name and it'll pull up all the videos that user has uploaded. Another really cool option is to specify the maximum video resolution you want to allow (either 360p, 720p, or 1080p.) Obviously you'll only see the highest quality video that has been uploaded, but setting this will automatically look for the highest quality that you want (and that you feel like waiting to download.)