Working with the computers....

It was overcast and barely 50 again today... By about noon it began to rain heavily and we wondered if it would stop...  The weather service was warning about flooding....

But it did stop and get a tad cooler..  Right against the dew point of 48.........  Fog!!!

So I busied myself all afternoon on the Linux computer....  Seems I had some configuration issues as Adobe has stopped supporting flash player as a plugin for Chrome....   Uh, wonder who has the burr under their saddle.....  All of this is because Linux is a free distribution.  They don't want to be part of something that is totally free....

So while they have drivers that will work, which ones do you need to replace and with what..?  So you read and read forums to learn what others have done...  And there goes your time...

I got to the point where I thought I understood what needed to happen and went for the install.  I got lucky as it worked well right after I changed the version to the newer one....

So as boring as that is, the flash player works right away now in Linux Chrome and doesn't pop up a bunch of error messages....

Oh, and I was having trouble with the optical mouse jitter bugging all over the screen...  I cleaned it and looked it over....  The led seemed bright enough, but then again after reading a bunch of forums, they told me to change out the batteries.....  Boom! Fixed.......

So if you are using a wireless mouse with optical red leds rather than the older ball, the batteries have to be almost brand new....  I thought it was the fault of linux, but after installing the mouse on the windows 7 machine and having it act just the same, I knew it was the mouse itself...

I like the challenge of messing around with the linux machine, as it has various desktop distribution programs that overlay the actual operating system...  You get so you have used several of them, and know how they all work and what is different between them... Then you can choose a favorite and run with it...  I am using Linux Mint with the Mate desktop...

I downloaded a different desktop today xFce..  It is cast as a much simpler system...  And it was when I tried it....  It reminded me of a cross between windows 5.1 and XP..  And that is all these newer versions of windows are....  redone desktops over the same old programs....  Make it look more colorful and flashy with heavier integrations  of complicated menus...  Add lots of parameter dialog boxes to change options...  And sell the same programs all over again because they don't look the same on the screen....

One of the most simple linux distributions is designed to run in very old computers that have really old processors...  Or for people that can't run much of a system.. and kids....  Its called Puppy!!

But with that said, I loaded Windows 8 on the laptop that Loyce uses, last winter...  And I'm about ready to replace my W7 laptop as well...  You can mess around with Linux all you want when you have a nice fully functional production machine setting by your side...  Doesn't matter how many versions of the programs you play with when you can always fall back to your computer you don't screw around with....

Sorry if this is boring because it is too technical....  Its just where I end up on rainy days......

Retired Rod