I'm guessing by the looks of the members list, I'm the only one living down this way. I'm not entirely new to Linux, having first found it when I tried Fedora 10 just after its release and then got lost in the live environment. The then-current Ubuntu saved me from just giving up as so many have done before. Since then, I've gone through two laptops and three tower PCs, using Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware, Wolvix, and then finally my current favoured distro Arch. I've broken systems more than once with my incessant experimenting (like it's a rather bad idea to remove bash...), but on the other hand through experimenting I've learned more than I ever have by just reading the (don't)readmes, man pages and so on. I learn by doing, which explains why I have no official qualifications in IT. Well, that and my allergy to paperwork - I break out in procrastination! My family and work mates regularly put up with me trying to explain to them at least something about Linux, but so far only my younger brother (A recent Ubuntu to Arch convert) and my mother (Who uses Vinux - Ubuntu for the Visually Impaired) have adopted the system. I can't think why they like Windows so much - I even prooved all the stuff worked through Wine... I don't like Mono, but tolerate it on my system only because I like Gnome Do. Adobe Flash is a regularly cursed plugin, and one I try to avoid tanking the CPU usage on. A handy Firefox extension aids there with flash videos, at least. About the only other real preferance on my systems is in desktops. It used to be Gnome, but I detest the Gnome Shell. Maybe it's just me, but I find it slow, overweight and very buggy. KDE converted me recently, after a long bad history between me and it, and I find aside from a few quirks, it's far better. One it cooperates with someone who prefers GTK apps instead of QT ones. I swear they're lighter and do more.
Well, I reckon I've probably rambled on long enough. Nice to meet you all, hope I can contribute something in the future! Fred Williams, signing off... and rocking out. (I finally fixed an audio problem I was having in mid-mail...) -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
