The PC hosting linnaeus.zoology.gla.ac.uk and darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk has died, and this spells the end of my interest in (a) using generic PC hardware and (b) running Linux. The former keeps breaking down, the later is just harder than it needs to be (much as I like the idea). From now on, it's Macs only. No more geeky knapsacks for me.
Because of this crash a lot of my experimental web sites are offline. I'm slowly putting some back up, driven mainly by what my current interests are, what people have asked for, or things linked to by my various blogs. So far, these pages are back online:
A lot of the other stuff will have to wait.
I hate computers...
Why is Linux harder than it needs to be? Is it a UI issue? I have great success with Ubuntu (with/without a UI) & rebuilding in the event of a crash is a snap. What I really like is the ability to use things like Webmin. How are Macs easier to manage or rebuild in the event of a crash?
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm in a bad mood because over the last few years I've gone through successive Linux installs, fixing machines that have been hacked, or have just plain died. Macs basically "just work", have a UI that beats anything else, plus have the command line for the hard core stuff.
ReplyDeleteActually I quite like Fedora (which I've been using), it's just that there are enough ghastly little "gotchas" that I've come across. Life is too short for me to deal with stupid things like running ldconfig after installing a library, inconsistent menus, hidden administration tools, etc.
Sorry to hear about the loss - always frustrating. I'd second David's comment about Ubuntu - their goal is to do away with all the hassles and nuances that the other flavours have, and I think they're pretty much there. Plus if something's broke they always have the live CD to fall back on.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pain. There should be a Hallmark condolence card for this sort of event by now--consider this one.
ReplyDeleteI went Mac last fall after my PC motherboard fried. I'm a happy camper ever since!
ReplyDeleteIf you feel life too short to mess around with computers, go Mac.
On another note. After getting the page charges back for a species description i want to publish, I've been thinking alot about open access. I remember some discussion on this topic in the Taxacom thread a while back. Besides Zootaxa, is there any other open access option for descriptions, revisions etc.?