indiboi.com

I’ve used Linux for a very long time, with Gentoo being my distribution of choice for most of that period. Lately though, it seems that any update breaks so many applications unexpectedly. I just switched to xorg 1.5.x, which went through almost fine, but only because I was paying close attention. Random little things like the volume buttons on the keyboard needed some tweaking, but that only took several hours to figure out (ARGH!!). The new kernel has fucked up ALSA, without a random patch the system won’t even reboot now. Sound was working, then stops completely, and now works again. Quirk, fluke, I have no idea.

Unfortunately I wasn’t paying such close attention to things like bluetooth when I updated the bluez package, and now I can’t for the life of me get the personal area network to work anymore. The whole palm syncing thing is so screwy as to require a network sync over bluetooth, since it won’t work directly. Who knows, maybe it does now, but the eighty billion guides are all out of date, each one says to do something completely different.

Up until the last couple of months my Linux install was very stable, it felt like a real OS, like it should. Unfortunately now it feels like this toy that needs constant fiddling. I don’t want a toy OS, I want a real working OS that will accept updates without breaking half a dozen different things. Even if something breaks, then at least I’d like to be able to find useful help. The bluetooth guide at the bluez site is completely incomprehensible, and everything Gentoo is worthlessly old.

I fear my days of Linux may be coming to an end, maybe I’ll get an iMac, heh. Updating your workstation software shouldn’t have to be a hobby.