Life satisfaction for geeks

Automatic configuration scripts and graphical interfaces are a wonderful thing at times. Since I usually use the proprietary drivers for better hardware accelaration and 3D support, I don’t often have to modify xorg.conf, but I have a few times. It sucks, in fact the last time was just a few weeks ago.

Since we’re already in the territory of Linux and related operating systems I do want to cover a few more things that have improved my life satisfaction, at least when it comes to computers:

  1. If there’s a good forum or wiki available, never be afraid to dig into the command line or a configuration file. Graphical interfaces are great and they make life both better and easier, but sometimes you need the power of the command line to do what you need to do.
  2. Linux gives you as much freedom and control as you want, for the casual or inexperienced user there are distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, for the intermediate users there’s openSuse and Fedora, then for the advanced (or insane intermediate) users there’s Arch Linux and Gentoo. Each has it’s pros and cons, but there’s a distro for everybody.
  3. Ubuntu doesn’t give you much geek cred, but if you can successfully maintain an Arch Linux system it does, for what it’s worth.
  4. As far as desktop environments go, between KDE, Gnome, Unity, XFCE, LXDE, and the handful of OpenBox based environments, there’s one for everybody. No one is better than the other, they just serve different people’s and different hardware’s needs. I like KDE, but I’ve played around with XFCE, LXDE, Gnome Shell, and Unity, each has it’s pros and cons but KDE is just a better fit for me, that doesn’t mean that it is for you.
  5. Whether someone wants to stick only to free and open source software or if they’re willing to use some proprietary software isn’t a big deal, there are times when the trade offs of going proprietary are worth it, even if it’s annoying (such as with Skype).
  6. If people are happy with Windows or OS X, then good for them, although if they only use them because it’s all they know, then I feel sorry for them since they don’t even know what they’re missing out on.

(Image via XKCD)