John Scalzi's Old Man's War

Old Man's War is probably the best book I've read lately. I got is as a Tor giveaway. I read it almost in a frenzy, and albeit I read it as a pdf -- which I generally find difficult -- I just couldn't let it go. The book is almost addictive, and it deserves it's spot near other science fiction masterpieces such as Ender's Game or Starship Troopers (a book from which Old Man's War borrow's heavily from). In spite of having many elements common to Science Fiction, the book is a stunningly good read.

The story goes like this. John Perry is a 75 years old man whose wife has just died. So he decides to join the army. To do that he must leave Earth and never return. Also be legally declared dead. Joining the army means joining the CDF (Colonial Defense Forces), and fighting to protect human colonies throughout the Universe. He gets a new genetically improved body from the CDF and he's trained as a soldier. What ensues is a brutal war where chances of survival are extremely slim. And intuitive tactics from earth really don't work that well against aliens. Neither are the awesome genetically engineered bodies, neither are the guns they're given, nothing guarantees a win except luck and ad-hoc tactics. Things get even a bit more complicated when John Perry is saved from certain death by a woman who looks just like his wive would have, had her body been pimped as his was.

The story is exquisitely well paced, a definite page turner. It's immersive, the characters are quite fun to read about, the technology presented is also a good read. I find aliens hard to digest, since they're always humanized by authors -- no matter how much authors try to de-humanize them. I accept them as given in sci-fi TV series¹, but I'm way more critical when it comes to aliens in books or even movies². Still I took the aliens in Old Man's War as granted. They serve the story well, and heck, when reading sci-fi one should always note that it stands for Science Fiction. In Ender's Game I disliked the fact that Ender has a bad conscience because he wiped out a race of aliens that threatened the whole of mankind. John Perry has battle fatigue once, and he gets a bit emo, but he gets over it three pages later and resumes obliterating aliens. Don't feel too bad for the aliens though, they eat humans.

I'm not going to get into any more spoilers, and just stick to the fact: Old Man's War is GREAT. It's definitely the best book I read in the last few months, maybe even the last few years. It fully deserved it's Hugo, and I'm really looking forward to read the sequels. I just hope John Perry won't get Enderized. I thoroughly recommend this book -- it's some of the best sci-fi has to offer, a future classic. Thoroughly enjoyable, well written and moreover a great story built on a strong premise. In my opinion John Scalzi is deserves his place next to titans of Science Fiction like Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein.

Also let's not forget to thank Tor for their giveways. And for the great free short stories they keep giving us every month.

---

1I think the label sci-fi/Science Fiction should never be used referring to a TV series, feel free 
to disagree
2Yes, I believe ET and Close Encounters of the Third kind are bad (and boring) films. The Alien 
series is an exception

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom

I could say that from all the futures presented in science fiction novels, Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom is the one I wish most was true. It's entertaining enough to keep me glued to the computer screen for the few good hours it took me to read the pdf. It's relatively short, I guess it barely makes it out of the novella category. It's a good story however, a wonderful debut for Doctorow as a novelist -- a debut only few could hope for.

The story goes like this: in the Bitchun Society no one dies. Everybody can backup him/herself -- so death is no longer a problem. You die, you get resurrected from the latest backup. Immortality is thus available for all (see why I really wish this society were true). What do people do when they know they're gonna live forever? They have fun, change their lives when possible. Crime is no longer such a big problem since death is not terminal. Jules is such a person, living his fourth life with his girlfriend Lil (who is about 15% his age). They both work at Disney at the Magic Kingdom. Basically they're pimpin' the rides there, though Doctorow doesn't use this expression. But along comes a woman named Debra with some gadgets that allows one to virtually immerse in the body of any of the USA presidents. This makes the rides in the Magic Kingdom obsolete, so Jules takes it upon himself to sabotage Debra. He's caught, which earns Debra a lot of sympathy Whuffie (money in the Bitchun Society). So Jules hit the rock bottom, and he has to get up again. Above all this his back-up system is broken, and he cannot back himself up anymore, meaning that if he dies he loses recollection of his past few months.

The story is good in my opinion. Initially it's a bit difficult to get accustomed with all those new terms, such as Whuffie, deadheading, ad-hocs, etc. It's kind of like reading a William Gibson novel -- skimming through any paragraph might result in a poorer understanding of future ones. Of course, in this sci-fi novel the world/the society doesn't change. It's just a story in a world that could be really thoroughly exploited again and again (I hope Doctorow will do that).

The story has some minor flaws, however. It's quite short, so don't expect to really be allowed to get to immerse too much into the Bitchun Society. Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom is a book that desperately needs a sequel, the Bitchun Society is just too interesting to be left for just one novel. A novel about a theme park for that matter. I couldn't really connect to the character's passion for the Magic Kingdom. It's a theme park for chrissake, Disney's theme park. So considering this it's understandable the book isn't that long. I found the parts in which Jules talks about his former life or the Bitchun Society is described much more enthralling than anything that happens with the Magic Kingdom itself.

Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom can be downloaded for free here and it's licensed under Creative Commons, so again -- thanks Cory! Chronologically I read Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom before reading Little Brother, it was the first book I downloaded legally for free (albeit it laid forgotten on my hard drive for a few years). It's quite nice to see that mainstream authors begin to see the benefices of sharing their work for free. Which is great.

So go on, download the book in your preferred format, read it and feel free to pass it forward to others.

Cory Doctorow's Little Brother

I believe Little Brother is a welcomed addition to the science fiction genre. Of course it's a retelling of 1984, with computers, kids and the Department of Homeland Security added to the recipe. It was a very pleasant read, even if I read it as a pdf I downloaded from the book's official site. I find reading books on a computer monitor quite tiresome, yet I'm trying to get myself accustomed to it.

Little Brother's main character is a 17 years old boy named Marcus Yallow, nicknamed w1nst0n (1984's main character was named Winston Smith). He gets busted by the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) after some terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. He is tortured in an island near San Francisco, and eventually gets released. The US after the terrorist attack grows increasingly paranoid, and gradually USA becomes a police state. So Marcus begins to get on the Xnet (a liberated version of the Internet) and start messing up with the system as much as possible. He also falls in love with a girl, and shares Linux cds. All this while the noose of the authorities starts to tighten around him.

Little Brother is a good read, I must admit. Not necessarily one of the best sci-fi novels I read -- and not even that sci-fi, if I come to think about it. Most of the technologies present in the book are available today. The book is also a good tutorial for privacy, something people keep forgetting about while we're on-line. I think that albeit a wiz-kid, Marcus is a bit too good of a programmer and hacker. I think that teenage hackers were always a rare and much overrated phenomenon. True hackers (and most hackers) have university degrees and years of doing nothing but hacking behind them. Of course, I may be wrong.

Artistically, Little Brother is (a bit) more than just propaganda for Open Source and better privacy laws. It's more than just a book that advocates piracy and peer-to-peer activity. It's a nice story set in a future-not-so-improbable. A surprisingly readable story -- pleasant for both children and adults alike. It's moral is simple: don't let the system fuck with your liberties. And what the heck, as much as it sounds like a cliché, it's a moral that I agree with. Even today harsh laws are passed in France and world-wide against so called software pirates, aka kids who download movies and songs they can't afford/want to listen to before actually buying them. So two thumbs up to Cory Doctorow for actually writing a book about the issues of the modern society.

However, I fear that all this propaganda takes just a bit out of the story itself. This is more of a philosophical issue of course -- I believe that sci-fi stories should be first and foremost stories about human nature. And if any political/social views are introduced, they shouldn't actually be the story itself. I felt Little Brother's story was conceived just to show us how we could prevent privacy abuse in today's world. Basically the propaganda is too obvious, kinda like a Richard Stallman short story. Of course, this is all forgiven since I'm all for increased privacy, software freedom and p2p. Also I'm going to look for the books Doctorow recommends at the end of Little Brother.

I welcome the fact that Cory Doctorow licensed his work under a Creative Commons license, which makes it redistributable and remixable for non-commercial purposes. It gave me quite a warm and fuzzy feeling, seeing I could legally download freely the work of an acknowledged author, a whole book, not just a short story or a novella. So kudos to Cory Doctorow for his exemplary move. More artists should follow his footsteps -- this is the way to go for the future culture. So, Mister Doctorow -- Cory, if I may -- I promise I'll buy a copy of Little Brother when I'll have the money. And thanks for releasing books for free on-line.

Linux Mint 7 Gloria

I finally decided to give Linux Mint 7 Gloria (a Linux operating system based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope) a try, since the software from 6 was kind of dated, and the idea of beginning to compile source code doesn't quite appeal to me. I didn't have a spare blank CD, but I did have a blank USB flash drive. Following these simple directions I managed to make a bootable USB drive -- the equivalent of a live CD (except I can now reuse the flash drive for other purposes).

The install process per se is pretty straightforward, no problems here. Soon I had a functional installation of Linux Mint 7 Gloria.

The first thing I had to do was remove pidgin and pidgin-data completely and download the latest Pidgin Jaunty binaries from here. Messaging on Yahoo is impossible on versions prior to Pidgin 2.5.7 (2.5.5 comes as a default in Gloria). The latest Pidgin, once installed, works just fine.

Also I installed Cairo Dock, but I am quite disappointed by it. The eyecandy is obtrusive, and I just cant seem to get along with it. I haven't yet deleted it, since maybe I'll get the hang of it one day. But for the moment I much rather the less bloated and more useful Gnome-do docky mode.

To my dismay I find it still impossible to get Skype up and running. My microphone just doesn't work under Linux. My webcam kinda works, but the image is crappy enough to make me want to reboot to Windows whenever I need to use it. There are frustrating parts to using Linux, and not managing to use Skype is a major annoyance.

And it's not the only program not to work fine. I downloaded the Yo Frankie game from Get Deb and even this open source game with binaries for Jaunty isn't usable (Gnome-do's dock and the Gnome pannel get in the way). I never quite got it how the dictionary installed by default ought to work, since it never returned a single definition ever since Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (my very first distro). SMplayer doesn't play videos (!!!), albeit I installed it via Mint Install.

Linux doesn't quite work on the desktop. It's usable most of the time, rather ok for surfing the web. However, from a user end perspective, it's no Windows killer, sadly. I found this link, that says it all IMHO.

Visually I opted for a darker theme (see picture) since it's more aesthetically pleasing. If there's one thing that'll always make Linux feel better than other OS's is the way one can configure it, until you have a desktop tailored for your reflexes and habits.

Hopefully things will continue to improve gradually.

Also, a mandatory screenshot :D

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

I just finished reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (or Män som hatar kvinnor in Swedish). It's been a while since I read a good thriller, or any other type of fiction for that matter, and I can honestly state that the aforementioned book is a pretty good choice for a new beginning.

I enjoyed it mostly, and in spite of it being the first book I ever read fully in French, it kept me pretty much hooked. Unfortunately I had to pause my reading for about a month since my exam session had started. However, as soon as the final exam was finished I began reading again, until I finished the book.

It's the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Initially it was set out to be a series of ten books, however Larsson died leaving only three finished books and a fourth unfinished one. Millennium is actually a journal, founded by the main character, Mikael Blomkvist.

The story goes like this: Mikael writes an article in Millenium for which he is accused of slander. He has to spend three months in prison and also Millenium heads towards bankruptcy. An old and very wealthy man, Henrik Vanger, makes Mikael an offer he cannot refuse. It regards the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger in the 60s. Mikael has to solve the mystery both for money and for insights on his sworn enemy, Hans Wenerstrom. In his quest Mikael is helped by a young goth hacker, Lisbeth Salander (the actual girl with the dragon tatoo).

In his quest Mikael finds out about the dark past of the Vanger family and evils that have not yet died. He is both under pressure and under threat as he digs deeper into the family's secrets. It's definitely a page turner, I can honestly say that I wasn't bored at any point in my reading.

The characters are well shaped, and I grew pretty fond of Mikael. Of course, they're not overly dramatic, this isn't The Catcher in the Rye or Men and Mice. But they're plausible. All except Lisbeth of course. I found the character of the young goth a bit over the top. Doesn't necessarily fit into the picture, and she's also too troubled. Throw in a goth, bisexuality, Asperger's, tatoos, ability to hack anything, abuse, and a propensity to sleep with older men, mix all that and you've got Lisbeth Salander. A melange that doesn't quite work. Not to mention that many times over, Lisbeth is given the role of the Deus Ex Machina, completely saving the day.

The thing that I liked most about the book was the atmosphere. Larsson managed to stage a pretty impressive thriller, and the scenery helps a lot. The island of Hedestad is a great place for the action, while the rest of Sweden too seems to add to the suspense. It really made me want to visit Sweden, or any Scandinavian country for that matter.

It's a good book, and I am anxious to read the sequels. They cost a lot, and I insist reading them in French (for practice). Hope I'll manage to get my greedy paws on them soon. Until then I'll have to find other things to read. I should also mention that the title actually means Men who Hate Women, I don't really understand why the title was changed in the English translation. Either way, if you find this book in a bookstore near you -- buy it and read it. It's fully worth it.

I heard Quentin Tarantino was thinking of making a film after the book, starring Brad Pitt as Mikael. I'd really like to see that one. Also there's a Swedish [update: I don't really think it's a Swedish film, the title is spelled different] movie based on the book. I haven't seen it, only a trailer in Swedish on Youtube and also some other scenes. The movie looks good, and it's a shame it hasn't yet hit the theaters in Romania (and I doubt it ever will).

PS: I also noticed that both the good guys, Lisbeth and Mikael have Macbooks while Wenerstrom (the guy who accused Mikael of slander) uses Windows. Funny -- however, good guys use Linux :)

Hitchens debates

Today I watched a debate (here) between Christopher Hitchens and a certain Dinesh D'Souza I never heard of before. Hitchens' books have not yet reached Romania, so I never got to read any of his works (nor am I a reader of Vanity Fair). Still I watched a handful of interviews of his on the Internet, and I am quite fond of his stance on religion. Pretty much agree with him on many points. Of course, as a secular humanist, I don't have much to hold against the guy.

A few months ago I also watched Hitchens debate Al Sharpton ( link). The fight was ok, and I felt like Hitches was a clear winner -- even though Al Sharpton was right when he noted that Hitchens mostly debated Christianity and Islam when the fight was more about the abstract idea of God. Maybe Hitchens should have explained that the idea of God and religion are linked inextricably -- no belief in a certain specific god is possible outside the framework of religion. Anyway if you look at the questions asked by the public in this Al Sharpton vs Christopher Hitchens debate you'll notice they're in poor taste sometimes and always stupid, i.e. they're not specific, usually they're just rants rather than actual questions.

Dinesh D'souza is a better opponent for Hitchens. In the debate I mentioned above one might say that in certain topics he even outdid Hitchens. Especially with the old recurring argument that Stalin and Mao were both atheists. In my opinion this is probably the best argument Christians have.

It's complete bogus, yes, Stalin and Mao weren't evil because they were atheists, just like Hitler was not evil because he was a Christian. We'll perhaps never know the reasons for which they turned out to be the bastards they all were, but I'm certain that it was not the fact that they realized that there is no God above to chastise them post mortem. One can always find excuses for violence in the Bible, even excuses for genocide. Is it just me, one of the reasons give for antisemitism in Germany was "the Jews nailed Jesus"? Also this concerns the fact that mere atheism does not give you a set of morals. Saying that being atheist makes you necessarily good is equivalent to saying that understanding 4th grade geometry gives you a higher set of morals. Why? Because being and atheist means just realizing something really obvious about the world. Being good is a rational and logic decision itself (maybe that's why being an atheist gives you statistically less chances of ending up in prison) but by no means is it strictly linked to being an atheist. To being a secular humanist... well, i'd like to see statistics before talking, but I do presume that statistics would show that self-confessed secular humanists are way more altruistic than Christians.

Anyway, D'souza made some wrong points, but made them well. It's frustrating to see that due to the very way the debate was structured not every argument was attackable and not every attack was defendable. Basically for every argument D'souza I already knew the rebuttal, and I'm sure so did Hitchens -- yet he was not able to speak at all. This very fact made me think that the best debate is one in which two opponents are faced without a moderator in between, and they're basically allowed to tear each other apart (through words of course).

Alas, the biggest problem is that reason alone does not win a debate. In fact reason and logic itself almost never win a debate. It's charisma and catchy phrases. That's why perhaps the most convincing atheist of all times was George Carlin. Sure would like to have seen him debating.

Projects...

One rather annoying thing about college is the existence of project papers. Whether you have to calculate something out of measurements performed at laboratory experiments or just bust your brains trying to make a Java simulation of the planetary motion, projects are just a dull and time consuming task. Not to mention the fact that always something must be wrong, no matter what.

So, how to write a paper. First off you need the initial data. Provided it comes from an experiment, hurray for you. In case you have to make a simulation -- you're pretty much f-ed. The results are next interpreted in Open Office Calc or Microsoft Excel, there's no actual need for Microcal Origin yet. Afterwards you migrate the results in Open Office Writer, write a couple of equations, do a bit of formatting, say your prayers, and watch a movie/drink a beer.

Also, you shoudn't leave everything for the very last minute, but who's to blame you (but the teacher) -- it's not exactly great fun you're having.

Maybe I should write a full tutorial about making such a project. But maybe later. When I'll actually do anything to get away from working on it.

Watchmen (the movie)

I've read the Watchmen comic book when I was still in my first year of college. It was a very good comic, in my opinion Alan Moore's finest. So when I heard Zack Snyder was doing a Watchmen movie, I knew a must see would come.


Every once in a while there comes a film that I know I must see fresh and that I mustn't wait for the DVD version to come out. 300 was one of those films, and so was The Dark Knight -- and I was right in both cases, these movies ruled. And now came Watchmen, and I had to go watch it with a few classmates. Payed cash I don't usually spend for the ticket, some nachos and a Cola. I was quite excited, and even maybe a bit afraid that the movie wouldn't stand up to my high expectations. From the very first minutes of the film I realized I was going to have a great couple of hours and a half.

The movie was absolutely stunning, every few minutes a "WOW!" escaped from my mouth. It had everything I could ask from a film, great fighting scenes, great soundtrack, really cool special effects, good acting (with one notable exception), a superb story, lots of Easter eggs and to top it all, the directing of Zack Snyder. Dawn of the Dead was a damn good horror, 300 was a work of genius, and Watchmen is poetry in images. So Zack Snyder can very well shoot himself -- he did it, and it's impossible for him to outdo himself. There are no comics as great as Watchmen left unfilmed, nothing can be better than a watchmen movie. Maybe a Rorschach exclusive in which that Silk Specter chick dies in horrible agony... Sorry, I was fantasizing.

Guess I already made you figure out one of the movie's very few shortcomings. That Akerman (or wossername) chick is an actress so bad she shouldn't even had been allowed to carry the coffee for guys like Jackie Earl Haley (is it just me or does he look a lot like Clint Eastwood in this movie?) or Jeffrey Dean Morgan (again, is it just me, or is this guy a Javier Bardem look-a-like?). Well, Zack Snyder is forgiven for casting that whatever-she-may-be-'cause-she's-no-actress woman, for the movie is pure awesomeness. I wish there's a DVD 4 and a half hours Director's Cut, because I want more. Really, that was one movie I really wished never ended.

I could go on and rant about it on and on, but one things certain -- people who criticize it don't know shit about what movies should be. It's great, go watch it now. Really.

---

PS I heard Alan Moore put a curse on the film. Well, Alan is crazy

Probably the best video game in the world

I just finished World of Goo -- and it's brilliant! It's definitely one of the best computer games I've ever seen, maybe even the best (I still have to decide between it and Curse of the Monkey Island). World of Goo has everything I could ask from a game -- puzzles, humor and simplicity. And adds sugar on top of all this with a good ol' dose of physics.

The mechanics of the game is astounding, thing that sometimes causes a good deal of frustration (after seeing your goo tower or goo bridge give up and crash in spite of having spent some good minutes meticulously crafting it). The puzzles are quite smart, and never repetitive. I had to work my brains on some of them, finally giving a big A-HA! after figuring out what had to be done. Major A-HA! moments:

• Last level chapter one -- the eyes are usable


• Last level chapter four -- burning the goo-support for the undelete button. Unfortunately I have to shamefully admit didn't figure it out myself, a friend tipped me as he was watching me play


• That controlled explosion level -- in my opinion it's the hardest level in the whole game

The game is not long, yet again another plus, for it makes the World of Goo relaxing and also allowing each level to be unique in its own way -- otherwise the game would have gotten quite repetitious after the kzillionth level.

Another thing I liked a lot in World of Goo was the soundtrack. It's freely available, and you can download it from here. I am listening to it as I am writing this post -- and it's good music. It's one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard (and by that I don't mean just video game soundtracks). Really, download it! And listen to the Red Carpet Extend-o-matic song.

The graphics are 2D bliss. I think 3D is way too overrated. And that's how Lucas Arts messed up the Monkey Island series -- by making it 3D. Graphics ought to be judged by the colours and design rather than pixel shading and other such useless crap (when it comes to gaming).

Official trailer -- notice the 2D graphics!

The difficulty curve is non-linear, meaning many early levels will be tougher than ending levels. However this did not bother me at all. Also the very last level was a ludicrously easy -- and somehow made the whole thing more fun.

Saving the best for last -- it's been ported to Linux. I played it on Mint and it ran without any problems, even though I didn't deactivate compiz or did any tweaking. It's great to have cool games ported on Linux, and considering the game costs little (around 20$) and it's 100% DRM free Linux users should flock to purchase from here. You can also download a demo from the 2D Boy (the developers) webpage.

Dual bootin'

Yesterday I spent a few good hours reinstalling everything on my computer. Not that I had to, I just felt like changing something. In over 7 months of using the same installation both the Windows XP partition and the Ubuntu one were filled with junk software. Plus I was curious about trying out Linux Mint for a while now. And with shame I admit I was a bit curious about Vista as well.

Windows Vista

So I burned a DVD for Windows and a CD for the Linux Mint Felicia Main Edition. Installing Vista was surprisingly uneventful and fast. Moreover I realized that I had no need of installing drivers for my soundcard or Nvidia videocard. A few months ago when I installed XP SP 2 I had to browse for a couple of days for the right sound driver (I found out what soundcard I have by looking in the Ubuntu sound applet). Anyway, in spite of an easy install I realized Vista just looks ugly. I changed the theme and shrinked the icons but still the borders dwarf the text and there's just something about the Aero interface that seems half-baked. And no, I don't want to switch to classic view -- I think a desktop should pe pimped enough to make me enjoy using it.

After installing Windows the next things had to be installed in order to make the OS useful:

• Firefox web browser


• Pidgin IM client


• Songbird music player


• RSSowl


• Daemon Tools lite


• Skype


• VLC media player


• SMplayer


• OpenOffice.org

I'll also have to install Microsoft Office (i need it for school, otherwise I use Open Office as much as I can) and a few games. Also I noticed that Vista is way buggier than XP. And annoying when it comes to installing stuff. Keeps asking me to press continue and ok until I feel like having played 3 straight hours of Diablo II.

Linux Mint

Installing Linux Mint was more problematic than I thought. Though the installer is pretty ok, I don't understand why distros don't use Gparted for partitioning. It's one of the best tools Linux has, and it also comes with a straightforward GUI -- using it is much more OK than whatever half-baked partitioning programs major distros come with. I tried making a 256 Mb /boot partition, but in my n00bity I was utterly unable to. So I just stuck to a 10Gb / (root) partition and a 30Gb+ /home one. The first time I started the installer I chose to skip the "fetching date/time from server" stuff -- thus the installer abruptly stopped. I rebooted my machine and Windows started, meaning the Mint install was incomplete. Confused and a bit frustrated rebooted in Live CD mode once again and this time I only skipped the language pack external download. This time I was successful.

First problem was the sound. There was none coming out of the speakers. After being a bit scared I had to search the nets for Linux soundcard drivers I realized the sound was simply muted from gnome. Yeah, n00bity again -- but c'mon, it's not like it couldn't happen to anyone else. I think that by default all sounds should be turned up to maximum. Next problem was the Nvidia driver. Without it I could have no fancy desktop effects and no resolution of 1280*1024 (the optimal one for my 17" monitor). Due to external factors the internet wasn't working that well, so I just watched a movie and went to sleep.

This morning I installed the video card, set the monitor resolution from nvidia-settings (which had to be run with sudo btw, so I could save the settings to xorg.conf). Then I proceeded to install all the software I installed on windows (save for demon tools) and I also promptly started some pimping. Not too much pimping, just enough to make Mint more... cozy.

RSSowl doesn't really work on Mint so I installed liferea, an excellent gnome alternative. Also Songbird abruptly stopped working for some reason -- it keeps giving me the error "Failed to connect" and then just crashes. At the moment I'm listening to music on Rythmbox but I'll have to do something about Songbird. No way it stays off my desktop.

There was some stuff I installed and needed a little meddling in /etc/apt/sources.list (this helped a lot). Mainly I'm refering to the latest versions of Wine, Gnome-Do and SMplayer. Gome-Do version 0.8 has this great mode called docky. I never consistently used a dock on my desktop, and this docky thinie seems to be a great little tool. It's definitely staying.

So...

Vista is so... Windows. Buggy, intrusive, I only use it for running apps/games that I really can't run on Linux. Mint is ok. It's not much of a change from Ubuntu, but by having some stuff preinstalled it almost forces me to try new stuff. Yes, it has it's share of headaches -- but it's Linux. And is free, as in free beer. And it has Wanda the Fish.

Pictures

So this is how my fresh minty desktop looks like. Not only that it looks good but it's also useful and very responsive. So I forgive Linux Mint the few minor glitches it made me put up with.