The stinkpad managed to survive grad school on it's original windows installation. Somewere in 2007 it began to get a little cranky, and by 2009, the hard drive was full to the gills and it had developed the characteristic unresponsiveness that plagues a well used windows boot disk. Then, 2 weeks before my defence, it caught a rootkit. While I was able to extract part of the virus, it also became somewhat less stable... the wireless won't connect reliably and there a few blue screens to deal with.
Did I mention I wrote a dissertation on it? Yea, the keys are pretty polished too.
One of the hangovers from graduate school is that my dissertation and resulting papers are written under Word and Endnote. In fact, my entire reference library is in Endnote. I hope to write my new work in LaTex, but it is not expedient at all to convert old things.
So, simply pulling the drive and replacing it with a new one is still out of the question while I get my papers submitted (Endnote is on loan from my former research group, they'll want it back).
In the mean time, i've been trying to install Ubuntu on the expansion bay hard drive. You'd think that getting this working would be easy! Just run the Ubuntu install disc and go! Right?
Wrong.
Something about the Thinkpad causes Ubuntu to hang randomly, without leaving a trace in any log file. I thought there might be an error on the drive or the install disc. Trying a new install disk made things worse, because the newest ubuntu installer does not control where it writes grub well (POOR IMPULSE CONTROL), and ended up nuking the windows MBR on the main drive.
That wasn't inconvenient at all!
When it is not randomly hanging, I like it Xubuntu alot. It boots fast, it's clean and tiny, and it's unix. These things are goey happy joy to me. But then it randomly hangs and requires a reboot.
*sigh*
This is why I still have the mac...
I'm not sure about the use of this metaphor. I tried to fit it onto the stinkpad but it did not fit well. I wrapped it around ubuntu and there it seemed to fit better. So I suppose that was your intent.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when linux was a gearhead's choice and it was just assumed that there were a host of tweeks that were required to be made to get/keep it running. I think its come a long way. I installed openSUSE a week ago on a dell server. There were some issues with the server configuration that had to be sorted out. But now it seems to be working fine. There were no issues with SUSE.
I have ubuntu running on the $5 dell in the basement. It just works.
I have Fedora core 9 running on the hybrid box. Its old enough that it no longer gets updates. And, while for a period it was rock solid, I found that from time to time it got flaky after an upgrade only to settle down again after the next upgrade. That pattern occurred several times. I ditched the scsi drives in favor of a pair of 80g SATA drives and a new SATA controller. I was surprised it booted. Its not a newish ATX backplane. But it has a lot of slots. Used to need them. Newer mobo's have so much on board - true all in one. But while the new disks and controller are super sweet,now every now and then it all quietly stops. The clock stops and the disply does not update and nothing else happens. Its like it needs a digital pacemaker. Like, every now and then it just stops breathing. Who'd know?
Its the ebb and flow of life. The one horse shay. Software rots right out from under you like your favorite hammock. On the plus side it does not stink like components passing the smoke test.
Maybe its just the double edged sword?
The metaphor was for Ubuntu.
ReplyDeleteThe deal with linux has become more complex. Linux for gearheads is still out there, but you have got to be a hell of a lot more gearhead to scratch the surface than ten years ago. Now security is the name of the game on one end and ease of use the mantra of the other. The hardware ecosystem is amazingly complex. What gets stuck in the middle is code, and there's a hell of a lot of it, and it is not well put together or documented. There is just too much.
So, I really want to ditch Windows on that box. At somepoint, possibly very soon, I will remove the original drive and put in a replacement. I need to keep the data so I can publish papers from my research at UNH. However, I would really like to use linux full time, at least on that machine. It runs much better than windows ever did. It's easy to back up. It is easier to monkey with (hickups that leave nothing in /var/log are evil!).
It is frustrating that this small faux pax ruins an otherwise worth cause.