Lubuntu v.15.04

My Lubuntu desktop (Wallpaper not included.)

Despite my best efforts not to permit the upgrade to 14.04.10, Ubuntu 14.04 finally shit the bed. Since I have previously had to reinstall the OS not once but twice before due to what I finally concluded was the Unity desktop incompatibility with my hardware, I decided to install a much lighter version also based on Debian.  But more on that in a sec.

I knew Ubuntu would eventually update itself and that it would bork my system. It was a foregone conclusion given the trail of tears that Ubuntu is fast becoming.  The darling of the Linux world becomes more like Windows with each update, unfortunately. In fact, version 15.04 has become an OS that only functions on brand, spanking new hardware -I'm afraid- which is what killed v.14.04 on my system in the first place.  Don't even think about installing Ubuntu without at least 4GB RAM regardless of what the developers try to sell you.  Further, Unity is not only an enormous resource hog, but it also does not play well with video display adapters older than two years, especially Nvidia brand controllers. All that being said, let's move on to Lubuntu.

Like its cousin Xubuntu, Lubuntu is meant for low-RAM hardware and older PCs like my ghetto laptop. The name is a portmanteau of the LXDE desktop GUI.  It is essentially the same great taste as Ubuntu but a lot less filling. (Actually, Ubuntu is ::BLOATED:: in my opinion.  Don't be surprised if it blows up to an obese piece of crap exactly like Windows in an attempt to appease the future shareholders Shuttleworth intends to woo.)

So far, Lubuntu 15.04 functions as promised.  Since it is considered light, it is a lot more efficient than Ubuntu ever was. The only application it does not seem to like is gedit, which doesn't make any sense since the app is just a plain vanilla text editor. But for whatever reason, it locks up the system. Additionally, the OS suffers from a legacy problem that carried over to the current version because of dependencies on other packages.  I would have thought it would have been addressed long before v.15.04 but apparently not. (Wait. Let me guess. All five people on the planet (four of them being developers and me, the only end user) using the current version of the distro haven't discovered the keyring problem because I didn't report it as a bug.)

Upon logging in, Lubuntu would then prompt for a password to keyring because another app wanted to use it. (In this instance, keyring needed a password to be able to access networking to be able to use the wifi.) I conducted a little research online, and, after digging around in my system for a bit, made the determination that keyring was evidently discontinued.  Yet NOWHERE on the Lubuntu distro pages is this fact mentioned, however.  Seahorse was supposed to have replaced keyring, except that Lubuntu never bothered to include it in v.15.04.  So I had to install it manually and then proceed to fight with Seahorse to stop keyring from the annoying prompts for a second password.  Eventually I got it to stop but only after hours of struggling because it seems the solution is different for different systems.  I like using Linux distros, but this particular aspect is what I find the most maddening.  Is it really that difficult for someone at the Lubuntu organization to resolve simplistic bugs like this one?

Anyone?

Buehler...

Buehler...

Attention Lubuntu Community and LXDE Foundation:

Don't trumpet from the rafters how amazing your latest version is and then not bother to address legacy problems like keyring.  This was also an issue on Ubuntu -however- it was fixed by the time v.14.04 came along.  If Shuttleworth's org can get it addressed in between soy lattes, chia muffins, and, firing employees who won't toss roses at his feet/kiss his ring, then what's your deal?

Another dumb issue that is not necessarily a bug, but may as well be - Linux is touted as a secure OS.  Why THE HELL then does Ubuntu and all of its namesakes come with a guest account enabled by default?

Have I missed the memo on why it's a good idea to leave a vulnerability such as a password-free account like guest enabled?

It can be argued that the guest account's privileges are limited, however, why leave it enabled by default? If someone wants to bork your system, and the guest account is the only "in" they have, rest assured, the douche will find a way around a limited account. Disable this retarded oversight immediately.

In conclusion, I won't reinvent the wheel by listing the installed software especially since you will find a list of those apps on the Wiki page, but I will say this much.  Abiword sucks ass.  If you are accustomed to the power/versatility of LibreOffice or OpenOffice Writer, then don't bother with it.  Remove it and install your favorite open source office writer, instead.  You'll be much happier if you do as Abiword is meant for less knowledgeable end users. Presumably.

Let's hope Lubuntu's next big planned update does not unnecessarily bloat the OS and otherwise bork the installations of it on older hardware like Ubuntu did.


UPDATE - 06-11-2015

LibreOffice v. 4.4.2 (and probably 4.4.3) Writer was not working correctly on Lubuntu 15.04 when I attempted to use it to design a brochure.  Images could be embedded in Draw, but not in Writer. All that was visible was the frame for it, but not the actual image.  Curious.

So I uninstalled the entire suite and installed my standby Apache OpenOffice. Meanwhile the LibreOffice fanbois will tell you that AOO was "abandoned" and to use LOO, instead.  But from what I've seen, LOO suffers from instability and half-assed updates that bork certain modules -particularly Writer- and the response from the community is a collective shrug.

Also, Scribus v.1.4.4 is a steaming pile of instability on Lubuntu 15.04.  Avoid.

The Garden of Survival

Algernon Blackwood (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) may not be a name you’re familiar with but when it comes to supernatural tales of horror, he is in good company with old-school writers Lovecraft and Machen, both considered great-granddaddies of the grotesque. 

Prior to The Garden of Survival, I had read half a dozen other stories written by Blackwood between 1907 - 1914 including:

• The Willows (1907)
• The Insanity of Jones (1907)
• The Glamour of the Snow (1912)
• The Man Whom the Trees Loved (1912)
• The Damned (1914)
• A Descent Into Egypt (1914)

Each tale had its very own peculiar but exquisite piquancy of horror --Blackwood is the count of creepiness, after all-- And although I have read the above referenced books over a period of the past four years or so, I am still haunted by the likes of Jones and, especially, both of the trees stories.  Blackwood had the ability to conjure in the reader’s imagination a perfectly tranquil, wooded place of verdant serenity and then mutate it into a panorama of psychosis. (Or is that just me?)

As a point of reference for the uninitiated of either the writer or the genre, understand that these books contain absolutely none of the worthlessness written by Stephen King who, incidentally, during his heyday in the eighties, had borrowed heavily from past horror writers whose stories had conveniently passed into the public domain thereby leaving King free to plunder ideas, add his own smattering of ephedrine-induced cheese, and, to otherwise pass off the ideas as his own with impunity.  (Yes, I’m letting you know how I really feel.)

The Garden of Survival, written in 1918, began in Blackwood’s usual polished and expressive style.  His protagonist, Richard, a former military man now making a living as a foreign diplomat in Africa, details in epistolary format his musings of life and love.  We are informed of his having been married for a very short time --his wife, a vision of beauty and possessing a special talent to bewitch admirers by playing her alluring harp for them is Je ne se quoi personified, it seems. And given the short duration of the marriage, as well as a few well-placed ominous descriptions of her penchant for attracting the opposite sex, the reader soon gets the idea that this woman is most definitely not what she seems.

In fact, even long after her death, Blackwood spends a good third of the book recounting for us the extent to which Richard truly believes his soul has been positively vanquished and seduced by his wife. Personally, I was expecting her to be revealed as a succubus put on earth for the sole purpose of ensnaring men and dragging them back to Hell with her.  But then again, is that not the same impression you would get from a writer who looked like this?

"Algernon Blackwood" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Algernon_Blackwood.jpg#/media/File:Algernon_Blackwood.jpg

But then Blackwood segues from idealizing Richard's dead wife to sentimentalizing his frail, elderly mother living alone on her estate in England with her memories of having raised her sons, and, then back to his angelically described twin brother again which we eventually determine is also dead.  The last third of the book seemed to me like I was reading a eulogy of sorts. 

Come to me instead—or, rather, stay, since you have never left—be with me still in the wonder of dawn and twilight, in the yearning desire of inarticulate black night, in the wind, the sunshine, and the rain. It is then that I am nearest to you and to your beneficent activity, for the same elemental rhythm of Beauty includes us both.

The story is both enticing and ethereal.  The description of Richard’s childhood garden is vaguely remniscent of the biblical Garden of Eden.  And while we don't really connect the title of this story to the plot, the tale beguiles the reader, nonetheless, to press on with the expectation that something Big and Sinister is about to transpire if we will just be patient.  And therein, I suppose, lies the rub.  Richard’s deceased wife does not actually turn out to be anything but a catalyst for a rather elegant epiphany which concludes that as much as we may imagine/obsess about loved ones who have since passed into the Hereafter visiting us --whether it is in our dreams or while we are walking down a misty, water-colored path in the garden of our imaginations-- the fact is, they do not.  They, instead, only seem to come back each time we remember the effect they had on us while they were alive.  It’s a beautiful story, but not the ending I had envisaged.

Refs:

Download and read The Garden of Survival for FREE here.

Avoid the Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

As it turns out, the latest upgrade (v.14.04.02 to be exact) to the long term support version of Ubuntu 14.04 is a colossal failure; At least for anyone using certain video controllers, that is.  I can't speak for anyone else's video card, but if you take a peek at AskUbuntu dot com, and search for "GUI disappeared" or "Can't log into GUI," you will find a shit ton of unhappy Ubuntu users all with different brand cards desperately attempting to find help to reenable the Unity desktop.

For my purposes here, however, I will speak only of the VGA controller on my beater laptop.  This glorified Dell brand doorstop's video controller is an Nvidia G72M Quadro NVS 110M GeForce Go 7300 and it doesn't much like the upgrade.  In fact, upon reboot after installation, if you are using this card then your desktop will be disappeared when you attempt to log back into the GUI. Sure, you can still hit a CTRL + F1 and login at the non-shell prompt, but that's about it.  Your desktop is, for all intents and purposes, completely and utterly nuked. Don't bother searching for help on AskUbuntu because the community doesn't really have a solution. While there are many suggestions to reenable the GUI, not all of them work for everyone. Case in point: Yours truly.

So after my desktop was removed by the 14.04.02 upgrade, I had to make a decision.  Go round and round and round with trial and error suggestions, spending hours upon hours trying to get back the Unity desktop or just bite the bullet and reinstall the OS. Shades of Microsoft Windows here, folks. Is it just me or is Ubuntu becoming more and more like MS?  As evidenced by its ever increasing, voracious appetite for RAM, and now, an upgrade to the LTS version screws up the GUI so badly it necessitates an OS reinstall, I think the writing on the wall is slowly becoming visible. Not good, people.  Not good at all.  If this shit keeps up, I smell an Ubuntu partition wiping in my triple boot laptop's future.

For those of you still reading and not sure whether the 14.04.02 upgrade will farck up your system, the following may be helpful.  It is a screencap of the window that appears upon a system update.

If you are unsure as to whether the upgrade will adversely affect your system irrevocably, you will, of course, want to avoid clicking on partial upgrade.  But to move forward with updates to the rest of the system, just click continue.  This action will result in asking for authentication and the usual list of software updates to download and install.  Thereafter, you will want to go into settings and remove the check for updates to the OS else you will be perpetually nagged by the Not all updates can be installed screen.

In closing, please note here that if your system is using the generic Linux Nouveau video driver, then you are probably safe and the 14.04.02 upgrade probably won't affect you, however, I include this blurb only as a suggestion.  The smart thing to do would be to download and burn to a disc the 14.04.02 upgrade and attempt to run it as live CD on your system to see if your video card will even render the demo.  If it does not, then you know it will nuke your desktop.

OTOH, if you read this entry and are confident your VGA controller will not be affected by the upgrade, and it turns out that it does in fact, nuke your system, don't come bitchin' to me about it.  I make absolutely no guarantees.  In fact, if your GUI does crap out upon installing the upgrade then you should contact Canonical and let them know that 14.04.02 is an epic FAIL because that seems to be the general consensus on AskUbuntu in not so many words.  Actually, the word "fail" is not used because the thought police on aforementioned website do not permit words to be published that can even be remotely construed to be critical of Ubuntu.

The sun is always shining in AskUbuntu land courtesy of the heavy handed moderators who patrol the site and immediately remove anything anyone has written that can be interpreted as criticism whether constructive or not.  I guess that's one way to ensure that the little people don't bad mouth the distro that billionaire Shuttleworth so desperately wants to monetize even having resorted to including a potential security hole enabled by default in the 14.04 LTS version debut.  Now to be accurate, this fiasco has since been addressed by Canonical, however, it was not until much Sturm und Drang generated by this site that it even acknowledged there was a problem with sending user searches to Amazon without knowledge or consent.  Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before Ubuntu becomes the OS to avoid because its source code has been completely compromised the better to add another dozen digits to Shuttleworth's bank account.

By the way, this same update to Linux Mint Maya 13 does not nuke the desktop, but then, it would not since Mint does not use Unity (which seems to be becoming a problem child.) I mention it here because Mint and Ubuntu are both based on Debian and download updates from the same repositories.