From Ubuntu to Debian, and Back Again
I'm sure the title of this post on it's own will dissuade most people from immediately skipping past it (sarcasm fully intended)and given the stupendous numbers that regularly stop by my blog, at least we're giving the WordPress servers a rest from the immense strain my posts cause.
After two days giving Debian Linux a shot on the workhorse desktop computer at home, I'm re-installing Ubuntu. Debian was stable, solid, dependable, minimal, and all those other nice wordsbut it looks horrendous. The guys at Ubuntu have obviously spent a ridiculous amount of time making sure the fonts used throughout the operating system render correctlywhereas the developers of Debian obviously had other concerns. Given that we tend to stare at writing on the computer screens for the vast majority of the time we use them, I tend to rank font rendering pretty highly.
I'm not a font snob, honest.
At the time of writing, the little Download meter in Google Chrome reliably informs me that it has 7 minutes left to download the Ubuntu 13.10 DVD image. With a fair wind, and a good memory for whatever the hell I normally install, the machine will be back up and running in a couple of hours time.
I'm really not a font snob, honest. Really.
Oh, and if you're interestedthe picture accompanying this post is vaguely related to both fonts and Linux. Steve Jobs famously had a tantrum during the development of the Apple Macintosh because the word processor had no font controls. Also, OSX is based on a Unix/Linux derivative called BSDwhich makes OSX more a “twin” of Linux, than even a brother, sister, or cousinif that makes any sense at all.