NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

Remember that odd James Bond film of the same title?  It's one of my 
favorites, actually, even though it, seemingly, had no reason to be 
made: a remake of a an earlier film in a franchise that THIS one film 
was modeled after, but not directly a part of; it starred an actor who 
was/is likely the most popular Bond of them all in the aforementioned 
franchise; it starred the incredible Klaus Maria Brandauer as the 
villain (how the hell did they score HIM?); it had Kim Basinger as the 
Bond Girl, I presume because she was an A-Lister back then, for no 
reason I can fathom (a lousy actor, but I must admit, she WAS easy on 
the eyes); it made no great attempt to incorporate itself into previous 
Bond "cannon" -- if you could even use that term for a franchise that 
had had such a tumultuous production history.

I bring up this film, specifically, for precise reasons I'll get around 
to, but...for now, let's just say, I'm doing it because I seem to have 
settled on Ubuntu 10.04, using Gnome, for this machine.  I am eating my 
words as I write this.  I used to use Hardy Heron once upon (and for an 
extended) time, and, really, never had issue with it, but it's been 
while since then.  My experiments on this hardware with other "big" 
distros have proved disappointing.  I started out with Mint, then went 
to Fedora, OpenSuse (which seemed very nice, but wouldn't install, 
despite repeated attempts), and then PCLinuxOS for two weeks.  All but 
OpenSuse had sound and/or video issues right out of the box.  I expect 
that sort of thing with smaller distros, NOT from one of the big guys.  
On a whim, I fired up Lucid Lynx, and, sue me, but everything "just 
worked".  And, even though it's Gnome, it's fast.  I don't know what 
crippled piece of skunk crap Fedora uses for Gnome, but it crawled, 
gasping on its knees, compared to this thing.  I mean, I just have no 
complaints.

Which is a far cry from dying and going to Ubuntu heaven, mind.  I'm no 
fanboy.  I like it.  It works.  But I don't love it.  Why?  Maybe 
because it's easy to DISLIKE a supposedly-solid distribution that 
doesn't deliver on it's hype and/or promise, but harder to LOVE one that 
simply does what its supposed to do.  Ubuntu works?  Well, great.  It's 
SUPPOSED to, right?  Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse (close, but no cigar), and 
PCLinuxOS couldn't even manage what a year-old Puppy Linux Live CD could 
pull off with ease...and What Ubuntu 10.04 pulled off as well: working 
the way they're supposed to work, with no problems.  Also, not to add my 
voice to the many who bitch about compiling woes on rpm-based systems, 
but -- I had nothing but.

I'm hoping to actually get some work done on this machine.  So far, I've 
installed a bunch of slightly higher-end games on it, which I guess 
doesn't count, but I wanted to take advantage of this modern hardware 
while it still qualifies as such; and, getting these things to work at 
all has been a new experience entirely for me, so I feel it's been 
worthwhile, for that.  Hell, one of my original goals was to have 
something that looked nice -- maybe not something to pimp out, 
necessarily (I turned off the wobbly windows -- damn things always make 
me seasick), but something I can look at and enjoy.  I'm also determined 
not to let my /home directory become a mess of random files, like usual.  
We'll see how THAT goes, but if I have a good-looking machine, running a 
fast, solid, modern distro (at least for a few months), I think I might 
make the effort to keep it spruced-up.  Worth a try, anyway.

Thus, my clumsy analogy fits in like this: I'm back on Gnome, after 
swearing at and off it.  I'm back on Ubuntu, after looking for a good 
alternative.  It's all familiar, but new.  And it's pretty good.  I 
mean, it's really very nice.  It's not the be-all end-all, but I'm 
enjoying it.  "Never say Never Again"?  I liked it.  It was really good.  
Not the greatest film ever, but satisfying.  Familiar, but different.  
Better, in many ways, than the Bond films that had come before it.  
Maybe not as good in other ways.  No matter.  Takes nothing away from 
it, or from any other film out there.  Ubuntu worked on this specific 
hardware, with the smallest amount of effort from me.  The others 
couldn't do that, which was exactly what I WASN'T after this time 
around.  They sit on my distro CD pile, while Ubuntu runs.  Next time, 
maybe things will be different.

So, it's Gnome for me, again.  Ubuntu for me again.  I'd ask how the 
hell that happened, but I guess it's easy to see.  Humble pie, anybody?