Spot the Difference

In which The Author sends his latest despatch from the front line of the War Against the Machines

I've been running Ubuntu Linux on a variety of Netbooks since 2009, and I think I've explored just about every release of the operating system from Lucid Lynx right through to Trusty Tahr. I haven't gone any further down the alphabet (they're currently at X) purely because I don't think my system will handle it. Still, Trusty is Long-Term Stable until at least 2019, so I should be able to manage until I can upgrade my hardware too.

In all that time, I've noticed an interesting trend developing. I don't know whether it's just me, or whether other Linux users have spotted the same thing. Maybe I'm just sensitive to the ways of the Cyberworld – even though, as I assured my pal Huw D. a few weeks ago, I'm not actually The One. I know I spend a lot of time online, and I wear a lot of black, and some young people think I'm cool (for whatever reason), but I can't actually reshape the Matrix.

No, what I've got in mind is the way that certain programs seem to start running slowly all of a sudden, when they've been working quite happily for ages. When LibreOffice begins to chug, freeze or close abruptly in the middle of a university assignment, that's bad enough. When it starts to chug, freeze or close abruptly in the middle of a 400-page novel you're working on, that's another matter entirely. We're talking about a fortnight's work here, not a little creative writing exercise you can (mostly) rebuild from the handwritten drafts.

That was what was happening on Friday night, while I was putting the final nips and tucks in my current project. After the fourth sudden shutdown, I got a bit worried, so I saved everything to a USB drive and continued work on the desktop setup.

I recognised the symptoms straight away. LibreOffice wanted to be updated. It's like a puppy, really (and one lightweight version of Linux is called Puppy – maybe with good reason). Normally it plays nicely, but every so often it feels a bit poorly and just wants your attention.

The problem was that I'm running Linux Mint on the other computer. It hasn't been updated since 2011, either. I had to give up the Internet at home when my university career crashed and burned. I can't really lug my entire system to the library and attempt to connect via an Ethernet cable. So the version of OpenOffice I was attempting to use is quite different from the current release. It didn't make a huge amount of difference until I saved my Notes and Queries and promptly lost everything I'd done, except for the numbered outline.

It's all marked up on the hard copy, of course, but it still meant that I had to start afresh and reconstruct the whole thing from memory. It turned out to be a happy accident, because I'd missed a few things on the first read-through that I've picked up subsequently. I'd have done a second pass anyway, but now I had a good reason to do it.

Anyway, this afternoon I had a few things I wanted to check online, so I've come to Thereisnospoon to use the Internet here. And – exactly in line with the Oracle's predictions – my system has just downloaded and installed the very latest, brand new, showroom-shiny and still slightly warm release of LibreOffice. It didn't even need to be prompted. It just went ahead and did it after I'd been online for ten minutes or so.

Windows users will no doubt be used to the deluge of updates, patches, licence agreements, online registrations and other virtual hoops they're expected to jump through every time they switch their systems on. Rhian first had her laptop back in 2010 or so. She couldn't connect to the Internet via Wifi until her system had been updated – and how do you update your system if you can't connect to the fucking Internet? Well, boys and girls, what you do is to take your laptop to a mate's house, connect via the Ethernet cable, start everything running, and then repair to the Llwyncelyn (in our case) for a couple of pints while Windows downloads and installs no fewer than 178 updates.

I really have no idea how many patches it's had since. Windows reminds me of the old TV advert for Allbright bitter ('the most popular pint in Wales' – allegedly). The landlord of the Sheep's Head had started selling Allbright. So many people started coming into the pub that he had to build an extension. Then he had to build an extension on the extension. Windows seems to be a bit like that. It's no wonder the system gets bloated and starts to chug over time, with all those extra downloads and patches cluttering the place up.

With Ubuntu, you can decide which bits you want to update, which bits are working fine, and which bits you can strip out entirely (the games, for example). And when critical updates come through, or when a whole package is upgraded (as with LibreOffice just now), it just goes ahead and installs them. You just need to authorise the procedure, and you can carry on doing whatever you're doing in the meantime.

Furthermore, it doesn't cost you a penny – apart from beer money in Thereisnospoon, of course. But I'd have come out for a pint this afternoon anyway, so I'm killing two birds with one stone.

Elsewhere, the War isn't going so well. In a few short months, my microwave, washing machine and my fridge/freezer seem to have packed in. The loss of the microwave is inconvenient, but nothing too alarming. The loss of the washing machine isn't desperate yet. I've been able to wash stuff by hand, and hang it outside during the nice weather. There's also a new laundry service in Aberdare, so I can drop stuff in there for the time being. My machine might be persuaded back into the fray if I can track Mike G. down. It's probably just a fuse or a bearing. I hope. I think the fridge/freezer will be buried with full honours, though. I think I'll be paying a visit to TooGoodToWaste this week and seeing what they've got for sale.

You haven't beaten me yet, you bastards!