Almost Somewhere

Yay! I’ve been waiting all day… heh, more like two weeks actually! It was “Coming soon” this morning and I’ve been checking throughout the day. Five minutes ago, I opened Firefox and it’s out so I’m downloading now. The download would take another 2 to 3 hours. But what’s a few hours compared to two weeks, eh? I can wait. Get it here.

I’ve been waiting for it because I’ve just bought a new notebook. I went to Ubuntu web site to download 7.10 and saw that its just two weeks away. So, I went and install several other Linux flavors one by one – openSUSE, CentOS, Mandriva, and lastly, Mint.

Well, Mint is such a joy but it’s based on Ubuntu. It works out of the box (almost, if you don’t mind putting the notebook to sleep every boot and then waking it up again to get wireless, bluetooth, and sound working). So, I like Mint but the applications are limited. Sure, you can use Ubuntu applications but if that’s what I’m going to do, might as well use Ubuntu.

The thing is, I really like the Slab in openSUSE. But YaST is too slow. Every time you open to configure something (even network), it tries to open the YaST database and so you can only configure one thing at a time. And even that is slow because it tries to refresh the repository, even when configuring the display card. *Sigh*.

Mint is a breeze. It’s beautiful and it’s fast. It also has a Slab-like menu and even better than Slab as I can configure it too. Ubuntu… hrmm.. I don’t mind the brown theme as I can change that but everything else is just as brown! The icons, the boot screen, etc., etc., etc. Although I like brown schemes and earth colors, I want to match the nice tones of my new Lenovo 3000 (IdeaPad) Y410 – a very good notebook for Linux at a very good price of RM2099 or USD656 and without Windows! I added another RM120 / USD37.50 for an extra 2GB or RAM and it was a good deal.

The web site list it for RM2699 but I got it at the recent Pikom PC Fair and it was selling like hot cake. By the way, the Y410 is a looker too – and it does have a bit of brownish gold and orange tones, just my type of colors (you might have guessed from the theme of this blog). But not Ubuntu-brown, though. You won’t believe it’s a Lenovo at first look.

Just as well that Firefox opens the last open page automatically and gave me Ubuntu. A minute after starting the download, I clicked some link on Ubuntu home page and all I get is that the server is temporarily unavailable. Not a minute too late, I must say.

P.S. – The download started at around 80+KB/s at first and that’s good for my DSL speed but now it’s slowing down… Hrmm, I must have been one of the first and now the traffic is heavier.