A few days ago my desktop computer at work spontaneously changed its screen resolution to 1440×900 and would not let me revert to 1280×1024. Grrrrrr. I spent a few hours online going through other Linux related resolution questions before I finally said, “Screw it.”
I know–how totally nerdy to use Ubuntu Linux as my desktop. Contrary to popular belief there isn’t anything much I can do with Windows I can’t do with Linux. As long as my bosses don’t object I’m happy–and always virus free!
That being said Linux isn’t quite as user friendly as Windows, though it’s gotten a lot better over time. Today’s install went very smoothly with sound working immediately and Internet access (which is non-standard to my desk) taking just a few minutes more.
There’s not much I store on this machine. In fact I was surprised to see this box is running with a 20 Gb hard drive! That’s a thousand times larger than the first hard drive I owned butt still around 1/10th the size of the smallest drive you can buy today.
Before I reformatted this machine I transferred all my configuration scripts to a memory stick which I promptly left home! Oops. With a little Internet magic Helaine plugged the memory stick into Stef’s laptop and I plucked the files.
All I had to do was install them into the correct directory and set up the “cron” (a program which fires off certain tasks at specific times). What could be easier?
The scripts, which worked perfectly in the old machine, were dying a gruesome death in the new one! It took a phone call to my friend Bob in Florida to get them running. Why his solution worked is totally beyond me! Scripts which were working yesterday should have worked today.
So, my resolution is fixed and I’m up and running with a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04. Clean installs always work better and have that new computer smell.
Ubuntu releases a brand new Linux distribution every six months. October, next month, is the next scheduled push. I’ll probably do all of this again.