My Slice of Reality,

So Ubuntu’s newest version, Edgy Eft or however you spell it launches officially tomorrow and I decided to get an early jump on it by upgrading. Primarly, I wanted to see if the speed advantages are worth it and also its a complete waste to try within a few days after the release do to the slam from everyone else upgrading. So, I do my usual editing of the sources list to change Dapper to Edgy and apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade to start the thing. It reports it’ll take about 40mins to download all 1200mb of updates. Not a problem, I got work.

Ten hours later I come home, flick the mouse to unblack the sleeping monitor and find out…it hasn’t even started the install!Apparently, for the past nine hours, it sat there at a screen waiting for me to hit “ok” as to whether I wanted it to install the ‘new’ flash plugin. Umm, hello? I already HAD flash installed. Wouldn’t logic follow that I want it installed again, the new, updated version? Where’s the user friendliness in that? Isn’t that what Ubuntu is supposed to be working towards? Humanity?

Another thing, I’m sitting here and I have to sheperad the install along because it keeps asking whether I want to install the package maintainers .conf file or my own. Personally, I couldn’t give a rats ass. I don’t go in and make custom changes to the .conf file, nor do I even make custom changes to the make files. I just wanted the application installed. Its idiotic to ask a user that type of a question. Automatically backup our original file ifs different, and then, when we launch the upgraded application for the first time ask us. That makes far more sense than to stop an install after its already sat for…nine hours.

Basically, what should have been a two hour upgrade has now taken almost 11hrs. Pathetic. Thats if this works that is. The last upgrade (to dapper drake) completely borked three times, whether upgrading from Beta, RC2, or the final release. Thankfully, all my personal data is actually archived and backed up to CD and HD this time. Hell, I feel like Im running Windows again

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Color me impressed. AOL is developing a “lite” version of AIM which gets rid of all the fluff. No ads, no annoying themes, Plaxio, VoIP or streaming video. Just your basic, standard messaging. Hell, it even supports tabs.

I really like the direction AOL is attemping to move into as well, or atleast, what they “talk” of moving into.

“this is really the future of AOL: light, fast, free products that compliment our bigger, more feature-rich products.”

If this actually pans out then it’s only taken them something like 10 years to identify a core audience that they were ignoring. Now granted, the “a-listers” or gatekeepers are typically the ones who would avoid AOL products like the plague, for obvious reasons.

I actually just finished installing this on my windows virtual machine and it appears to only be using about 5Mb of RAM at the moment with one of my alternate buddy lists. Not bad at all. Far lighter than the crap that is Triton (AOL’s new AIM). The only thing I dont like about it at the moment is the interface. It doesnt use standard windows widgets like the 5.x branch but more the somewhat obnoxious and hard to use WinAMP type widgets. Ah well, cant have everything.

Here’s a direct link to download it if you want to test it: AIM ET

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