Debian 7.1, is Fab

Debian 7.1, is Fab

This is going to be bit lengthy.

It was not my design.

But rain and elections had given me some welcome respite.

1.Rain

Rain is something I predicted many years ago.

Some of my predictions are in my book “Sri-Lankan Water Politics and Water Logic”.

No help from astrologers (no thank you).

This is mostly due to Global Warming.
I have already voiced my opinion elsewhere, no need to repeat.

In 1957 we moved to Kandy.

We only managed to get our belonging inside and it started raining for 10 days continuously.

That was the biggest floods in my living memory.

The Kalani River overflew.

2.Politics

Regards to the elections, this is the most boring election campaign in my living memory.

It looks like our minds are frozen with “War and Hate” or is it  “Hate of War.”

Rainbow coalition has their work cut short due to bungling of the election commissioner's department and the torrential rain.

This is not the time for elections and our astrologers have bungled it.

And our weather men also foul-up their reports.

They were not proactive.

Politicians are clueless.

I think, it is time to rethink and postpone the elections by at least 10 to 14 days.

At least for the relief work to be carried out without political insinuation.

The election commissioner , if he has a humane qualities, takes over the reins and make some bold decisions and look after the “Pura Vasia”, the citizens, rather the  rural folks or the so called villagers.

That includes the masses effected by floods.

He hasn't got to listen to anybody.

Touch his heart with his own hand tap to his consciousness.

I do not think he has the backbone be above politics.


3. Linux= Debian for Rescue

My solution is to have many distributions including windows.
One has to install windows first.
Then I quickly installed Abiword, Libre Office and even Apache's Open Office (it has changed hand from Oracle to Apache and Oracle was trying to kill it).
(It took a day to find the small Mini CD /DVD containing all the software).
Then I tried all the Linux distributions Live.
Pinguy Linux was a failure (I have stated it elsewhere).
Pclinux did get the sound but Firefox was a disaster (no plug in for Sinhala Unicode) and its Grub only recognizes window and Knoppix.
Fedora even though, very attractive, having read a review decided against.
I did not try SuSe since the latest is not out (It has many milestones) yet.
I got the Linux Magazine today. It has Suse only 64 bits version.
I have tried all the Linux Magazine DVDs and I have had already made up my mind about them (nearly thirty).

So what NEXT.

Nothing but Debian, my ultimate gold standard.

Ubuntu is pleasing but I have never used it on a regular basis.

Peppermint is dainty and skinny desktop!

I need a meaty desktop but now I hate KDE.

It got to be Gnome or xfce (I started my Live Linux with xfce Linux of PCLinux with the little mouse, the real mouse I hate but this mouse like Micky mouse I love).

That is my love affair with Pclinux but when FullMonty came with bloated tummy, I gave up.

It burned one of my graphic cards (wrong configuration).
That computer has gone to the end of its life time, after 7 years of daily almost 24 hour work.

No hard feeling and I dismantled its useful hardware and mother board (power outage) was declared null and void.

No hardware or software problem, simply burnt out syndrome!

If you are trying Debian, do not take it lightly.

Read all the instructions carefully, before pressing the OK button.

It gives you fall back options.

One should be thorough with the partitioning tool.

Make sure it is linked to a reliable repository (not your local or the nearest, Sri-Lanka or Singapore or India).

I always choose USA.

It does a yeoman service even though, some Sri-Lankans hate USA for no valid reason.

Only, downside it took 3 hours to install 1.2 GiB.

What that meant was every file out of 1306 was thoroughly checked and updated.

New gnome desktop is fabulous.

I was not happy, though.

I went ahead and installed LXDE desktop.

The xfce, openbox and SkolLinux theme.

Mind you, it does a good advertisement for Linux specially Debian for schools.

I wanted to download the DVD but it was direct download not torrent.

I will search for the torrent and download in a minute.

Currently, I am downloading PCLinux KDE (1.8 GiB).

In case, I need a KDE desktop as a consolation prize.

The experience with PCLinux KDE (2014-12) was very disappointing.

Postscript. 

1. Debian is Sinhala, Tamil and Telangu empowered.

2. It does not support Firefox (probably for right reasons, no flash plug ins).

3. It supports Chrome.

4. It has over 66,000 software utilities including hamradio, academic and scientific.

Apple and Microsoft can never overtake its marathon record.