Nerdy Lifestyle Changes: Linux
As I mentioned last time, I’ve recently been looking into what people in the real software engineering industry are doing, since I’m going to be interning at NextJump this summer. As a result, I’ve been making some major lifestyle changes, and I just wanted to give a summary of what I’ve been up to. This is the second in a series of posts about these changes.I finally gave in an installed linux. I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that linux was pointless, and to be honest, I really liked Windows 7. I mean, if you head over to antimovement, you’ll notice my linux poster.
That being said, I wanted to give linux a shot. So I went out and downloaded a copy of Ubuntu (which seemed to be the smoothest transition for newbies.)
Initially, I only installed it on my laptop, since I had Windows Vista on that, which really blew chunks. I had some issues getting my wireless to work, but overall the whole process was relatively simple. I spent a lot of time visiting how-to’s, which led me to the conclusion linux might have been invented by how-to enthusiasts, because there are way too many linux how-to’s out there.
I liked where that was going and also noticed I had an extra 250 gb hard drive floating around, so I installed Ubuntu on my desktop in dual-boot with Windows 7. The desktop transition was more difficult for me, because support for dual monitors is not entirely strong on linux (really, unexpected) but quickly recognized the configurational power of xRandR. Still can’t get my third monitor to work, but I’m hopeful for the future (not that I know where I’d put it).
I spent probably a total of about 5 hours distributed over a couple of days getting my colors just right. I eventually settled on a heavily modified version of the built-in theme called “The Darkness.”
This last point represents a general trend in spending time to modify appearance to my liking. You may recall I spent several hours messing with eclipse appearance. The general idea is that I want to see dark backgrounds, with bright text. I’m spending a lot of time on the computer, and it just feels better on my eyes. Or it might just be that I like my computer to look different from everyone else’s. Who knows?
Here’s a screenshot of what my extended desktop looks like:
You’ll notice a black rectangle in the bottom-left corner. This is because my right monitor has a bigger vertical resolution than my left monitor. This is actually kind of frustrating because it introduces the possibility that if I move my mouse from the right monitor the left one, the mouse might disappear. If anyone knows a workaround to this, that would be really ideal!
Also, since linux users are all about terminal, I’ve been discovering the power of that whole game. I’m still a hardcore newbie, but I’m learning and I’m definitely getting the hang of it. I really dig the ‘apt-get‘ functionality!
I’ve had a lot of difficulty transferring music to my iPod, so I’m still booting to Windows anytime I want to do that. Putting music on my Droid is as easy as dragging files into a folder, so that’s no problem though.
Realistically, I’m not sure why I’m even bothering using linux, but it seems like a cool thing to do, and it really does feel neat. I think a lot of C.S. people use linux, and though I’ve never really fit in with the C.S. crowd, I am choosing it as a career, so I should make an effort.
I haven’t really got into any open-source linux development yet, but I do feel the strange urge to, so who knows, maybe I’ll be contributing to the linux kernel by this time next year?
What flavor of iPod? gtkpod is probably the simplest interface, though it takes a bit of getting used to. You can treat your iPod as a “playlist”, move files to it, and then click “save” and you’re done.