Tinkering addict running out of ideas....

[HDave]

I am addicted to tinkering, and am constantly looking for new ways to break Ubuntu. But for the past year, I've gotten totally bored -- Compiz/Wireless 3G/KeePass on Mono/VMWare/AWN/Dropbox/VLC/Wifi/Java/Songbird/Thunderbird 3/Netbook Remix/Various Kernels/Dual Boot/Webex/Minimal Gnome Desktop/Kubuntu/Manual GDM/etc + various PPAs -- no matter what I do...it all just works after a day or a few hours of fiddling...and now I can't stand the boredom!! :-(

About a year ago I switched over to servers and was enjoying life once again!! I now have 29 servers running inside Ubuntu VMs ranging from 8.04 to 9.10. But I am now running out of ideas....currently I have:

LDAP/Gosa/Jinzora/Subsonic/Joomla/Subversion/Trac/Hudson/Nexus/Samba/SSH/OpenSwanVPN/Funambol/Zarafa/DNS-DHCP/BackupPC/Zabbix/Oracle/MySQL/CUPS/UPSMon/Autopsy/Apache (various)/Tomcat (various)/WikiMedia

The only things I have left are: Ampache/ZNC/IRC/Snowy

Currently in the market for good ideas for either (re)breaking my desktop or some new cool servers to play around with.... I don't have enough hardware to try out SANs, clusters, or clouds, but am rapidly running out of tinkering ideas! HELP!

[NightwishFan]

Make a Linux from scratch.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Personally, I rarely tinker. I like things to work so I just stick with latest stable Ubuntu. I would use LTS, but I like some newer stuff.

[houseworkshy]

You could try nipping over to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com or https://launchpad.net and satisfy the tinkerings mania with your own and others peoples ideas and bug reports. More than enough going on there to satisfy any techplay itch and it could even lead to new developments.

[steveneddy]

Well - something you might think about.

You could go outside and get some sun and exercise. Maybe that would help you clear your mind, maybe you'll even find a girlfriend.

[NightwishFan]

He is allowed to do what he wants without any judgment. Do you have any advice you can add?

[H4F]

I have great idea for you.
You can upgrade all your 29 servers to Lucid and start helping to testing new system.

Hope you "will" find enough thinks to fix there

[llawwehttam]

You could always try conky. Its always given me a lot of work.
Or you could do what I did when I had your problem and install arch linux on a machine.

[steveneddy]

He is allowed to do what he wants without any judgment. Do you have any advice you can add?

That was my advice. Go outside and think about what you really want to do.

At least he has a hobby.

[TheNessus]

Buy a Mac. This way you can't tinker anything and all your worries and sleepless nights will disappear :P

[juancarlospaco]

Install and configure LXC, and then post the documentation at the Wiki.

[lukjad]

Learn Bash.
Change shells.
Learn the other shells.
Take up programming. :D
Recompile your kernel.
And be sure to run an IRC network, I'd love to try that out myself, so if you ever get it up and running, PM me and I'll gladly play around with it with you. :D

[Shibblet]

it all just works after a day or a few hours of fiddling...and now I can't stand the boredom!! :-(

Have you considered a different hobby?

[pookiebear]

setup a mythTV server not using mythbuntu. Get it to pull shows from websites, not cable providor

[Shibblet]

I'm serious. People who like to tinker can learn all sorts of other hobbies, and quickly I might add.

For example, building a model helicopter, and tweaking it to run more efficiently.

[Twitch6000]

IF you like that kinda stuff why not try and make your machine work on opensolaris or freebsd?

Or why not jump to haiku :O?

[user1397]

try GNU/Hurd

[HDave]

Make a Linux from scratch.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Personally, I rarely tinker. I like things to work so I just stick with latest stable Ubuntu. I would use LTS, but I like some newer stuff.

So far, I avoided the other distro's and have just stuck with Ubuntu, but I have to say, this looks really cool...thanks.

[HDave]

I have great idea for you.
You can upgrade all your 29 servers to Lucid and start helping to testing new system.

Hope you "will" find enough thinks to fix there

Actually -- that is a great idea. I was planning on doing that anyway because Lucid is an LTS release. Might as well start now....thanks.

@llawwehttam -- Conky is awesome...had a blast tweaking my own kick-butt conky config...still wished it supported true transparency.

[phrostbyte]

Yeah definitely upgrade to Lucid. There is no shortage of breakage ATM. :p

[BenAshton24]

do this: http://xkcd.com/350/ :D

[sandyd]

I have great idea for you.
You can upgrade all your 29 servers to Lucid and start helping to testing new system.

Hope you "will" find enough thinks to fix there

+1 :lolflag:

[HDave]

Install and configure LXC, and then post the documentation at the Wiki.

Woah -- I honestly thought I knew just about everything regarding virtualization -- having spent a lot of time with KVM, Xen, vmware, etc. Can't believe I totally missed LXC. It's like the ultimate in paravirtualization. Thanks for the tip. Will be looking into this for sure.

[HDave]

I'm serious. People who like to tinker can learn all sorts of other hobbies, and quickly I might add.

For example, building a model helicopter, and tweaking it to run more efficiently.

You are so right about this...I actually have several additional hobbies outside of computers including music, sailing, hiking, mathematics, engineering, history, electronics, etc. -- but my favorite is tinkering with Ubuntu...

[HDave]

IF you like that kinda stuff why not try and make your machine work on opensolaris or freebsd?

Or why not jump to haiku :O?

opensolaris?
not another unix please!
i love ubuntu

[juancarlospaco]

I honestly thought I knew just about everything regarding virtualization

Nice, ...because is not Virtualization, thats "Contextualization".
:)

[HDave]

Nice, ...because is not Virtualization, thats "Contextualization".
:)

According to IBM (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lxc-containers/) its a kind of virtualization.... ;)

"Containers provide lightweight virtualization that lets you isolate processes and resources without the need to provide instruction interpretation mechanisms and other complexities of full virtualization."