Welcome to Gutsy

I upgraded both of my computers to ubuntu version 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, a mere six months after upgrading to 7.4, Feisty Fawn. It was quite easy this time, the installer ran all the way through without stopping, but there were still about a dozen pauses in the action where it asked me to keep an old configuration file or upgrade it. This made the overnight install on my desktop less efficient than it could have been. The only hiccup was that Gutsy dropped support for apache 1.3, so I had to quickly hack my httpd.conf into apache2 sized pieces.

The other notable upgrade was from emacs 21 to emacs 22, an event that only happens once every 6 years. The only thing that that upgrade broke was python support, which I regained by purging the python-mode package. Emacs 22 also ships with org mode, which I started using on Ron‘s recommendation instead of the hierarchical notebook, hnb, I’d been using for the past few years.

Org mode stores everything as a flat file, using emacs’ outlining abilities to fold things up. Hnb, on the other hand, uses an xml file and a diff shows many more differences than the ones I make. This makes merging hnb changes between computers nearly impossible, but it is slightly more possible with org mode. Org mode is also more flexible, keeps track of more information, and does better todo lists. It’s also actively maintained and uses my emacs keybindings. I’m still learning the interface, but it’s been very useful already. I wrote a little python script to convert my hnb xml files to org-style text files.

Gutsy also solved a few problems on my laptop. I no longer have to close the lid twice to put it to sleep. This was a mysterious problem that began when I started using some gnome applets in fluxbox with docker. NetworkManager was still worth the extra trouble, but now I can use it without worrying about sleep weirdness. Dbus crashes seem to be less frequent as well, although I really wish I didn’t need to run that at all. Every once in a while it still has trouble waking up, the sleep light flashes and the hard drive seems to be active, but the screen never comes on. Some combination of closing and opening the lid and plugging and unplugging the power usually snaps it out of its coma.