[plug] Frustration

[Onno Benschop]

On 7 September 2012 12:45, Brad Campbell <brad at fnarfbargle.com> wrote:

> Sometimes I wonder why I stick with Linux....
>

Hi Brad, just came back from some technology free leave and I saw the
subject of your email among the deluge.

I've removed your tale of woe, since it mirrors mine - albeit different
hardware and software combinations. I came to the same exclamation as you
did and then I went sideways to go forwards. I love Linux, it gives me
stuff that I now take for granted, tools that make me more productive, the
ability to fix stuff at a low level if I have the need, but sometimes I
used to spend more time fixing my desktop than I did earning money.

I'll preface this with, "This may not be a solution for everyone, but for
me it has changed my life."

In brief, I run Ubuntu inside a VMware Fusion container on a MacBook Pro
17".

In more detail, I came to believe that OpenSource and latest hardware are
fundamentally always going to be at odds. Worse still, if you have hardware
that is no longer "in vogue", or never even made it to that point, you're
pretty much hosed unless you write your own code / hacks / fixes etc.

I have been a VMware user for over a decade. Initially I used it to emulate
WinNT inside Debian to run MYOB, these days I emulate Win98SE for that. I
now run images with client specific installations, or the latest OS, or a
trial of Android x86, whatever, all in VMware, my desktop included.

Right now, my MacBook is connected to 4 external monitors, I'm typing this
inside Google Apps Mail, running on Chrome, on Ubuntu  10.04.4 LTS, inside
VMware Fusion 4.1.3 on Mac OS 10.6.8.

Sure there are issues, there is a persistent bug where a mouse-up click
doesn't always register, OS X doesn't sleep well with VMware, so I have to
Quit, but in the sanity stakes, I'm so much happier. I can make snapshots
before I install some "new fix" and basically hit Undo if it hits the fan.
I backup my images, so if I upgrade my hardware, I install VMware, add the
images and I'm back to where I was.

Do I get 100% of my CPUs, no, of course not - but do I really care?

My hardware compatibility issues have all but vanished, most of them are an
issue between VMware and Apple, not my problem.

As I said, it may not fix issues for everyone, but I've been running this
since 2009 and I'm happy.
-- 
Onno Benschop

()/)/)()        ..ASCII for Onno..
|>>?            ..EBCDIC for Onno..
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ITmaze   -   ABN: 56 178 057 063   -  ph: 04 1219 8888   -
onno at itmaze.com.au
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