It’s not the things that you know that you know. It’s not the things that you know that you don’t know. It’s the things that you don’t know that you know. Those are the things to fear. The unknown knowns. “War Pigs,” for instance, is not a song that I knew that I knew. Had you asked me last week what I knew about Black Sabbath or Ozzy Osbourne, I would have said “not much.” Then Johnny Rotten did a guest turn on All Songs Considered and played “Paranoid.” I knew “Paranoid” more or less. I liked that song. I have no idea how I came to know or like that song or “War Pigs” which came up in my search for a digital download of the studio version of “Paranoid” (not available from what I can tell.)
So I cannot claim to be anything like a fan of Black Sabbath or in any real way touched by the passing of Ronnie James Dio over the weekend. I just think it is weird how you know some things without knowing them. Like that Peppermint OS needed power management tools. Or that the web-app interface should allow you to place applications in different places in the menu. I knew this, and so too did the development team since they pushed updates with those features over the weekend. Sounds like I know what I am talking about, doesn’t it?
I don’t. What I do know is that my laptop is pushing 7 years old. That’s way too old. Maybe a year ago, I got tired enough of the ever increasing sluggishness to try installing Linux. I do not know how I knew that I was looking for Ubuntu, but I found it anyway. Kind of wonky, that Ubuntu installation, what with the not working with Flash and everything. But it got the job done so far as keeping the old boy up an running so long as I had the metaphorical paper clips and rubber bands handy.
See, I think the real problem remained that I had an operating system geared toward running my hardware when what I really need is an operating system geared toward connecting me to the internets. That’s where all my stuff is. Not just La Face and Twitter, but my check book, some documents, whatever few non-work spreadsheets I have, this blog, et cetera are all on the web. Just get me there and I am good.
That is why Peppermint OS is good. Really good, in fact. Yonder nerds can probably tell you dorks what the benchmark specs are. I don’t know what the benchmarks are. I don’t care what the benchmarks are. What I care about is that I get to put away the paper clips and rubber bands and connect to the ‘tubes, run a little flash, and keep the 600m love machine rolling for a few more hours. In fact, the old boy has never been zippier with the downloads.
Seriously, I use Windows XP and Vista at work, have a Vista machine and an iMac at home, carry the iTouchy, etc, and none of them load web pages as quickly as the Pep Boy. If you are kind of all thumbs when it comes to computers, a Linux operating system is not going to help with that and you are likely to get more frustrated than satisfied. If most of your work is still physically on the computer in front of you — or if you have no idea how you would know — then Peppermint OS is not for you. If you are a true Soul Brother who believes, as I do, that we will all be living in Cloud City in the not too distant future, you can chill with Lando today by downloading and installing Peppermint. Just be prepared to not have any time to kill waiting for things to load. It’s hell on a coffee refill schedule.
holy synchronized postings batman!