I think I have more fun configuring my computer than I do actually ussing it.

[Amablue]

After spending the last few months getting used to the way Linux and Ubuntu work I've been messing with themes and settings and finding which programs I need to do stuff, and now that I've got everything just about done, I'm bored. I got a theme I like, the programs that work best for me installed, I've tried out different software and games, the partitions are set up so all my OS's can reach my media, there's just nothign left to set up, configure or customize.

It almost makes me want to steal the living room computer and force Ubuntu on the rest of my family so I have an excuse to play with settings some more.

Well, at least school starts in a few days, that'll keep me busy.

[Sam]

It almost makes me want to steal the living room computer and force Ubuntu on the rest of my family so I have an excuse to play with settings some more.

I had this syndrome, too :D

[tom-ubuntu]

This happened to me aswell. But after a few years trying out many distributions, specially Gentoo, I got bored with that. Since i switched to Ubuntu, I just use my computer for daily work. I haven't played around with it anymore. Actually I hate it now, if anythings does not work anymore. In the past, I really enjoyed fixing it.

So enjoy while it last and have fun :)

[Titus A Duxass]

I am the same, I reinstall for no apperent reason, at this moment in time I am into MythTV installations with various TV cards.

My wife got so hacked off with my screwing our pc up she made me buy another pc ot mess with!

So I now have a pc to test distros, hardware, etc. plus I have a fully functioning pc next to it work surfing.

[kriding]

I'm the same, but I usually bork my install so i get to do it all again.

However, if your stuck for something to do, try another Distro, one that's less user friendly, and dig your teeth into that one.

[Emerzen]

I hear ya.

I actually do this more w/ Windows now than Ubuntu. On my XP side, after I've installed all kind of cr$p, it starts acting funky. My OCD side starts worrying that something malicious is at hand, or the registry fubar, so I do a complete reinstall and the cylce repeaats every couple of months.

[argie]

So THAT's the problem. Lately I noticed I haven't been using my computer much at all. I just don't do much on it.

The reason is clear now. It's all fitted up and working fine! I have everything I need!

With Windows, as far as my experience goes, now is when something dumb will happen. Like the Scheduler not running and so I have to do all the defrag, scandisk tasks all manually. And then some or other program having trouble.

I'm going to see what happens if I dist-upgrade. that'll be fun again maybe.

[Erik Trybom]

I was totally about to create the same thread. Or a similar topic such as "do you ever finish tinkering with your system?".

My tip, if you haven't done it yet, is to check out the Howto thread named "bash scripting". I haven't dug into it yet, but it seems like an immensely cool thing to play with.

[slimdog360]

I've been having that problem for a while now, especially since I really found out how to install and use both xfce and kde along side gnome. Xfce is just so fast on my computer Ive been tinkering with that for a week or so now.

[thepoeticdragon]

i feel the exact same way. actually, that's why i started using ubuntu in the first place!

with any new windows installations i put into my PC (i do restores every six months or so, just to get everything fresh and fast again in windows), i can get my desktop/program setup done in under half an hour. i've pretty much tinkered with windows so much that i know exactly what/where to get what i need to make things more comfortable. new theme, desktop sidebar, programs for various tasks like bitcomet, etc.

i got sick of that, since it was too easy and because afterwards i'd be reduced to just surfing the net aimlessly. so, i decided to learn some new stuff. i heard stuff about linux, so i tried suse 10.1. i found it, for lack of a better term, weird. but hey, i learned how to dual boot and partitions... and then i did ubuntu, and it was so much easier to find my way around without knowing about coding and stuff (for the life of me, i can't survive doing console/terminal stuff without a guide).

so these days i'm looking for cool things to do in ubuntu, and it's not that hard to find stuff to do because it's so new to me! woohoo

[Michael_aust]

You could always givevarious scripting things ago. Or start learning python coding.

You could also try rewriting the init scripts to cut out sleep calls and things. Thats sure to be a lot of fun and cause a lot of head scratching.

[tribaal]

Welcome to the club.

:)

- trib'

[fuscia]

i do more redecorating than configuring, but yeah, the last time i learned anything outside of linux, from using my computer, was when i was still using windows.

[Hotaru]

I feel the same! Once everything works the way it's supposed to, I'm bored.
Luckily, I talked my friend into formatting his HDD and I'll be configuring and tuning his laptop as well! Luckyyy :D

[nephish]

i used to be like that too, then i was a distro junkie. I have found the cure to the 'got it all set up the way i like it, now im bored syndrome'

Take up a programming language. Opens up a lot more stuff to do !

And yes, by all means, take over your family computer and force ubuntu upon them, they shall thank you in the end. :-D

[%hMa@?b<C]

school sucks. please dont even utter that word to me.](*,)

[Amablue]

school sucks. please dont even utter that word to me.](*,)

School is awesome if you get classes you like. Once you get GE out of the way, if you like your major school is all kinds of fun.

Anyway, I've been tinkering with XGL and Compiz for the past day or two, so I've got to get the bugs worked out with that before I'm completely happy, but other than that, everything is just about set up.

This is what I got up yesterday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhW8VUhxUzc) (I showed my freidns and now they're all jealous) :-D

[djsroknrol]

I know I enjoy configuring them more that working with them, because, well...work is work....

[philipacamaniac]

I hear you! Tinkering is, I guess, the reason I use Ubuntu. Everytime I get everything working smoothly, my OCD starts to remind me that I do have that one peripheral that doesn't work yet, or some missing software element.

I tend to work on "projects." Get wine working, get Photoshop working in wine, make my iPod shuffle usable for my wife, etc. For example, here is what I spent my weekend doing, on a perfectly functional Ubuntu machine that I should have been happy with:


Attempted to install Line 6 Edit in wine so I could edit patches on my PODxt Live. Java from the installation didn't work. Reported some bugs. Downloaded manual Java install file, installed it in a clean wine directory, and ported those changes back over to my actual wine directory. Installed Line 6 Edit. It installed, but didn't run. Reported some bugs. Installed latest wine. Still didn't work; updated bugs.
Attempted to program my own Line 6 Editor in Glade, using midicontroller. Failed miserably; I hate Glade. Looked into programming a driver and editor for jsynthlib. Ran away scared.
Compiled qemu, kqemu module. Installed WinXP, installed Line 6 Edit (working now!), installed Yamaha Studio Manager. Wrote shell script to start image as needed, but then compiled qemu-launcher to make life easier.
(Partitions were now bugging me because of that large Qemu image). Installed ntfs-3g, dropped $HOME/.wine and my qemu image onto my NTFS partition, so that all my Winblows directories were roughly in the same place. Converted raw qemu image to qcow so the size could be dynamic.
And that is just a taste! For the last couple of weeks, I had been working on installing all the synths/samplers/sequencers in Linux, testing them to see which ones I liked, and then I configured them all to work together with each other and my external MIDI devices. But have I actually used them? No. I also like to get Windows games working with wine, just for the challenge, but I never play.

When I upgraded my hardware last month, I spent about 2 weeks trying to solve a 3D acceleration problem, and I finally ended up patching and compiling my own kernel. Solved the problem, and now I feel like I can tackle anything... :KS

[anasofiapaixao]

school sucks. please dont even utter that word to me.](*,)

I guess few people at your age don't feel like that, dont worry :) As time passes you are forced to choose an area of specialization, and you start to get rid of the subjects you don't like. It was great for me when I got to grade 10 to be free of Geography, French, and History. Unfortunately I am in of the two only freaking countries in the E.U. (the old 15) that has PHILOSOPHY as mandatory!!

It was the same kind of happinnes when I enrolled in college to get rid of Portuguese, English (who am I kidding, I haven't studied for english since grade 6) and (in grade 12 already)... Philosophy.

... And independently of all that... at 15 you always hate school, because. That's just how things work, it's a fact of life.

The feeling of ending up congfiguring a system is like when you finish a beautiful Lego construction or finishing a puzzle. You don't want to play with it; you want to MOUNT it again!

[Nonno Bassotto]

Unfortunately I am in of the two only freaking countries in the E.U. (the old 15) that has PHILOSOPHY as mandatory!!
Really??? I live in Italy, which I suppose is the second country, and I always assumed that it is common to teach philosophy at school (at least, in most schools). Anyway, don't complain: in most schools (not in mine, luckily) we have latin too. ;)

[Amablue]

The feeling of ending up congfiguring a system is like when you finish a beautiful Lego construction or finishing a puzzle. You don't want to play with it; you want to MOUNT it again!

I think that's a perfect analogy for it.

And by the way, philosphy is fun. I'm taking a modern philosophy class right now in fact, and we're going to be reading over Descartes Meditations soon.

[transactionlogfiller]

I guess few people at your age don't feel like that, dont worry :)

I hated my entire educational career, up to and including university. I guess I'm just someone who likes to learn, but doesn't like being taught. I learn more in a day at work now than I did in a year at uni.

[.t.]

Here in Britain, I'd love to do philosophy. We did a couple of weeks of it in RE (that's Religious Education) last year, but now I'm starting my GCSEs, I have to give up Latin (which I actually enjoyed) in place of Music, which I'm probably better at Also, it's good to do something practical, rather than academic, I think.

[rowanparker]

Here in Britain, I'd love to do philosophy. We did a couple of weeks of it in RE (that's Religious Education) last year, but now I'm starting my GCSEs, I have to give up Latin (which I actually enjoyed) in place of Music, which I'm probably better at Also, it's good to do something practical, rather than academic, I think.
I'm going into year 10 too. I'm doing GCSE ICT, but it's so pointless as I know it all anyway. Earlier last year, I actually taught the class a few times (teachers these days ](*,)).


Back on topic, I took up Python and PHP so I normally tinker with those. I often make completely useless sites in PHP just so I can see what go's wrong and fix it.


In my last Python command line app, I made a easter egg so when you entered -472 it came up with this: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7175/extracheesesh4.png

[atrus123]

After spending the last few months getting used to the way Linux and Ubuntu work I've been messing with themes and settings and finding which programs I need to do stuff, and now that I've got everything just about done, I'm bored. I got a theme I like, the programs that work best for me installed, I've tried out different software and games, the partitions are set up so all my OS's can reach my media, there's just nothign left to set up, configure or customize.

It almost makes me want to steal the living room computer and force Ubuntu on the rest of my family so I have an excuse to play with settings some more.

Well, at least school starts in a few days, that'll keep me busy.

I know what you mean. You might enjoy playing with Gentoo if you want to get really crazy with customization.

[.t.]

I'm doing GCSE ICT, but it's so pointless as I know it all anyway.At my school, we don't do IT and even if we did I wouldn't choose it!

[rowanparker]

At my school, we don't do IT and even if we did I wouldn't choose it!
Why wouldn't you choose it?

It will be funny, end of last year me and a teacher were finding ways to get round things that shouldn't be gotten round of. We were also trying to get on the internet with DSL, didn't work though.

[Dragonbite]

Whew! I'm glad I'm not the only one! It was bad with Gentoo, but when I installed Ubuntu.. and it just WORKED and was easy to maintain.. it was tought to stop fiddling.

That's why I realized that my biggest problem with converting the family to Linux was ME! I would keep changing things, adding things and so on so my wife never quite knew what to expect when she sat down to do something.:-\" :oops:

[G Morgan]

I'm going into year 10 too. I'm doing GCSE ICT, but it's so pointless as I know it all anyway. Earlier last year, I actually taught the class a few times (teachers these days ](*,)).

That changes with A-Level Computing to some extent. You have to prepare a system for data handling and my school allowed us to program (only Pascal and VB6 unfortunately) as well as the standard Access affair that seems prevalent. Nag your teacher into allowing you to program a solution then make it so complicated that your the only one who knows whats going on then they can hardly mark you down for it (I had full marks on exceptional work when following the syllabus I'd only have got 50%).

[rowanparker]

That changes with A-Level Computing to some extent. You have to prepare a system for data handling and my school allowed us to program (only Pascal and VB6 unfortunately) as well as the standard Access affair that seems prevalent. Nag your teacher into allowing you to program a solution then make it so complicated that your the only one who knows whats going on then they can hardly mark you down for it (I had full marks on exceptional work when following the syllabus I'd only have got 50%).
Well done.
I sure will.

[peabody]

Here's a suggestion. Try learning Latex. You may ditch traditional word processing forever.