Partitioning woes, Ubuntu 8.10

Sorry for my brief sabbatical, if you will.  Last weekend, if you were following me on Twitter, you would know I was working on a rather difficult computer problem involving having a separate partition for the “Documents and Settings” folder on Windows XP.  Everything I tried didn’t work (the way I wanted it to, at least).  The Registry hacks I used made it feel unclean, and I tried using some installer tricks, but it was all for naught.  So, I gave up and used TweakUI to put the data on the data partition, and leave the application data on the OS partition.  I was glad it was over.

I was thinking to myself the entire time, “This is a two-click operation in Ubuntu [or any Linux distro for that matter].  How I wish my dad wasn’t so tied to Windows the way he is.”  That’s really why I am slowly (even with my love of Vista) moving away from Windows.  I don’t own, per se, my own computer (c’mon, I’m thirteen years old.  I’ve had other things to spend my money on my entire life).  So, running Ubuntu natively (not under a Virtual Machine, as I have been doing) is not an option.  However, I came across the idea to buy an USB external hard drive to run Ubuntu from.  So, that’s my next capital investment.

Just today, I downloaded the alpha version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, the next installation of arguably the most popular modern Linux distro.  I made a virtual machine for it, and I installed it (there’s currently no live CD version, wait until alpha 2).  Although I haven’t played with it a whole lot, it’s looking very good.  I really like the new interface, but since I use Hardy almost daily, it’s a little getting used to.  It’s certainly nice to see they understand we don’t really want the same interface for nine versions (I think) in a row.  I haven’t taken a look at the various software upgrades they’ve made, but I definitely noticed improved speed (for one).  On a virtual machine with 512MB of RAM, I noticed a significant increase in login speed from a Hardy virtual machine with 1GB of RAM.  Pretty impressive, eh?  My only regret is that they didn’t change the interface in Hardy (as I believe they planned to do), as that would have made Hardy a much better upgrade (looks generally make it feel new).  There was a lot of behind-the-scenes change in Hardy, with some noticeable change to the average Joe.  I know it’s only an alpha, but if the release of Intrepid is like the alpha, then it’s not really going to be seen as the major upgrade Hardy was.  As written in Ars Technica, Ubuntu wants the Intrepid release to bring Ubuntu into the ultra-portable and mobile device market.  While I support that wish, I think that if that’s going to be the purpose of Intrepid, Ubuntu needs to remember the hand who feeds it–we desktop users.  Overall, as an alpha, Ubuntu 8.10 is looking solid, and I hope that it’ll turn out to be another great release.

Before I sign off, I just wanted to make a quick note: I will not and cannot use any KDE-based distro.  It’s bulky and just unusable to me.  It’s jumbled and bloated, I think.  GNOME is much simpler and it just works and it’s much more pleasing to the eye.

Had to throw that out.