Home

Remember the World Wide Web in 1996?  When major world corporations had absolutely no idea what they were doing?  Take an awesome trip down memory lane:

http://www.msu.edu/~karjalae/internet96.htm 

Thought some of my friends who failed might be interested in this ad from Craigslist.  Credit to Rob for bringing it to my attention.

PCLOS has improved in my eyes but my opinionated opinions are still here.

I've been using Ubuntu (or a derivative) for two years now. I was amazed at how polished and user-friendly it is. It doesn't come out of the box with a lot of the software I want, but it's super easy to install whatever I want. I've installed it on other people's computers (Paul & Yelena) and they're happy with it too (at least when compared with Windows). It even passed the Mother Test - my mother used my Kubuntu laptop for a month while her desktop was broken, and she was fine with it.

After a few months I upgraded from Ubuntu to Kubuntu because I prefer KDE. Kubuntu is often characterized as "the most popular desktop manager running on the most popular linux distro." But according to Distrowatch.com, Kubuntu is not the most popular KDE distro. OpenSUSE has been super popular for a long time. A lot of awesome software originated within SUSE's walls, such as KNetworkManager and Compiz. But I've been really happy with the Ubuntu community so I stuck with Kubuntu through Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, and Gutsy Gibbon. Kubuntu isn't the most popular distro, but Ubuntu is and it's nice being part of the popular crowd.

But then I noticed the new cool kid: PCLinuxOS. PCLOS (as it's called) is the new #1 distro on Distrowatch.com. It naturally runs KDE, as opposed to being a derivative like Kubuntu. And, it comes with all the software I use and like. In addition, it has a few extra enhancements, like a better start menu and the latest version of Compiz Fusion (Kubuntu's Compiz Fusion package is a couple months old now). It also has a newer version of Unison, the fantastic backup software, which is embarrassing for Kubuntu because the newer version of Unison has been out for years.
But then I started to notice PCLOS falls short in some areas where Kubuntu shines. It uses NetApplet which is a poor substitute for KNetworkManager. This means it's much harder for me to connect to the wireless internet at work because NetApplet doesn't support commercial wireless security. Although PCLOS is supposed to have better multimedia support, I can't get sound on my desktop.

So how does it all break down?

Turns out guestbooks aren't hot any more.  I had my guestbook up since I started hosting my own website, and 99% of what I got was spam.  I even put up spam protection and it worked for a while, but somehow the spammers got through anyway.  Thanks to my friends who actually signed my guestbook.  Boo to the spammers for ruining everything.  I could just reset my guestbook and add more spam protection, but it's really not worth it considering no one will sign anyway.