Number 69

The last couple of months I came to the conclusion that my Windows XP installation was getting real messed up. Something had to be done. So yesterday I decided that it was time to ditch Windows altogether and installed Ubuntu 9.10. That's a big fat check-mark next to number 69 on my list of 100 things.

(Disclaimer: my laptop runs on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix for over a year, and I love it.)

So far, I'm mildly positive. And that's despite the two failed attempts to get things running: the raid-controller (at least, I think it is) that controls my third hard drive was being a pain in the ass. Unplugging the drive seemed to be the solution.

Next problem I had to tackle was my Terratec EWX 24/96 sound card. It was being recognized, but the channels were messed up, so I got no sound. After some searching I found the answer to my problem. Adding two lines to a config file and a reboot later I had sound.

There's still a few things I need to work out. The most important amongst those is getting my computer to recognize me as it's lord and master over the files on my hard drive. At the moment I can play my music just fine (which is good), but if I want to change the tags, it says I don't have permission to do that (which is bad). There must be some way to recursively change the permissions on all files. Or maybe I'll just have to add myself to another usergroup. Tips and advice go in the comments.

Another thing that might take some time is to find out what programs to use. Sure, I know the usual suspects: Firefox for surfing the web, Thunderbird for mail, Gimp for image manipulation, Audacity for audio manipulation, etc. But I don't have a clue what media/audio-player to use. (I'm trying out Quod Libet now.) What's the best CD-ripper? How the hell do I convert a wave file (or whatever the Linux equivalent is) to a Ogg Vorbis file (which I've been using for, ehm, quite a few years now)? Again, comments in the comments.

While I'm not a total n00b, there's still a lot I need to find out. Is there way to get rid of the annoying Default Keyring Password prompt? Is there a simple screensaver which shows just the time, plain and simple? Can I get rid of the icons for my external hard drive on my desktop? Will developing my totally leet Linux skills improve my popularities with the ladies? If I double click a file, shouldn't it open in the associated program or is that just my Windows habbit kicking in? Why can't I just use alt-codes for umlauts and accents—and let's not forget the em-dashes—instead of something called a compose key? Questions, questions, questions.

If you got tips and you're on the right page, imagine me looking down and pointing at the comment box below. When you're not, imagine me doing a fancy pantomime indicating that you should go to the appropriate page and add some useful insights, tips and tricks in the comment box there.