third world county

Well, I decided that before my Evolution inbox became too full to fit on one DVD, I’d like to try another Linux (Ubuntu based, still) distro: OZOS. So, saved my inbox mail and most of the rest of my Home folder (all the documents, music, etc. that I’d generated and downloaded, etc.) to a DVD, downloaded and burned the OZOS iso and formatted/partitioned my hard drive on this computer for the third time in three weeks.

Pretty soon it’ll take more than one DVD to do that and I’ll have to think a little longer/harder before soing such a thing. (Or maybe not. I have scads of terabytes of storage available with my hosting service, after all… *heh*)

So far, a few observations about the OZOS distro.

All the standard Ubuntu stuff one might expect is there, except for OpenOffice, which was strangely AWOL.

No messing with arcane procedures for getting my nVidia chipset working properly! YIPEE!!

OTOH, the default colors/desktop background, etc., were all so dark, and the screen resolution set so high that I could scarcely see a thing. 1024 X 768 is about max for this 19″ CRT–at least for the font size to be large enough to read from further away than 10″-12″… And with the wallpaper and system colors so very dark, it was like falling into an unlit cave with a few fireflies caught, flickering and dying.

Not to worry. Was a snap to take care of (especially as compared to the torturous issues with the normal Ubuntu 8.04 screen rez/monitor corrections)… after I figured out the menuing process. (No system tray, panel bar, etc. CLICK on one of the desktops–there are six virtual desktops by default, each individually customizable.) Well, acually, I am still figuring out how to access things the OZOS way. Uses Enlightenment (e17) as the desktop management system. Slick. Loads and loads of eye candy stuff.

I used e16 on a PCBSD system last year for a while, but the processes didn’t stick with me very well, and some few things seem to have changed between e16 and e17 (and then there’re the differences between PCBSD and Ubuntu Linux… ).

Still, I think I may like this distro. Liked the last three Ubuntu distros I tried out on this machine pretty well (I installed Linux Mint, which is based on an Ubuntu dstro, in a virtual machine and liked it well enough).

We’ll see how this one works for me.

Off to import my mail back into this installation of Evolution.

Done, sorta. *sigh* (Really only mostly–some were missing, but I imported it all into an Opera mailbox, exported from there and finally got ‘em. Whadda mess… *heh*) Why, oh why, don’t email clients communicate well with themselves, let alone with their various different “cousins” in the email world?

Oh, the nice stuff about OZOS being much easier to tweak visually may just be in compensation for the fact that it’s completely crappy where sound is concerned. Looks like anything from several minutes to several hours beforeI can have sound fully functional on this installation. Weird, since it uses all the Ubuntu repositories.

Oh, and what’s with WINE installation packages being “broken” now? No WINE until the

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
wine: PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.14.12ubuntu3) but 1.14.5ubuntu16 is to be installed
E: Broken packages

…problem can meet its match in stubborn third world county pigheadedness… or stubborn third world county pigheadedness is finally overcome by repositories with unrepairable broken packages. *sigh*

Oh. Joy.

UPDATE: Well, too many issues actually getting anything done in OZOS using the Enlightenment window/desktop managment. Lovely eye candy, but I actually want to do things, not just look at “Gee whiz!” graphics. Besides, what’s with all the problems installing WINE in OZOS?!? Deal breaker.

So, scrubbed that. Installed Linux Mint. Again, purty. Lousy time getting to things and getting things done. And. Nope. WINE a no-go here, too. (Dumb, really dumb.)

So, back to regular old plain vanilla Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit. Hmmm… strange. Was able to set screen rez right away after installing from the same CD I’d installed from several weeks ago that gave me fits. Knew enough to be glad was easier getting around in it and just immediately downloaded the REAL nVidia drivers (not the one Ubuntu offered to install!) and ran the display config utility (must run from command line cos Ubuntu’s not smart enough to install a GUI link to it by default, anywhere).

Nice. Now all I have to do is get the Alsa mixer to use the SBLive! Platinum card…

Piece of cake.

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