Resurrecting the Linux server

I dusted off the old linux tower that hadn't been plugged in since my college days (which is only 2 years ago). For years Linux was my primary desktop OS. 2 things gradually changed this

1. Mac OS X laptop


2. Changing Jobs

While I worked at The Chron my PC at work ran linux. At home I ran both Mac and linux, however, after I changed jobs I started using linux less and less, and using my Mac at home more and more.

I'm not exactly sure why I stopped using linux. I generally put in more hours at this new jobs so perhaps I just had less time to devote to tinkering and tweaking once I was home. Mac OS X is a great OS, it's beautiful, stays out of your way, and limits the amount of tinkering you can do (which for me leads to getting more work done)

I've got a few projects I'm working on seriously now - both using Perl. I started a development environment using Virtual Box on the Mac, however working in a virtual machine is less than ideal.

Today I wiped the 3 year old Ubuntu (6.x) off my linux server and now have Ubuntu 9.10 running smoothly.

There have been a few nice additions to linux desktop world since I left it.

1. Google Chrome - talk about a speedy browser. So far I love it.
2. Gwibber - in a nutshell, it's an open source microblogging client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK. It supports Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and RSS. it's slick. I didn't think I'd like having my twitter followers infused with my facebooks friends' status updates, but it's working out quite nicely so far.