Since the OpenShot video editor is pretty much broken in version 2.0.x, and I'm using a Fedora 22 package of version 1.4.3 so I can keep editing video while I contemplate learning KDEnlive.

I installed the OpenShot 1.4.3 package, and in my next run of the yumex-dnf package manager, it cheerfully offered to upgrade to 2.0.7.

No.

So how do you keep yumex-dnf and regular ol' dnf from bugging you about this every time?

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Just like on the laptop before this one, if you bang on it and take it enough places, you end up with a busted key.

Where do you get a new one?

HP won't sell you one key.

Enter third-party individual-key sellers like ReplacementLaptopKeys.com, which attempt -- usually very well -- to send you any individual key to replace a broken one.

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I hadn't edited a video in a long time, and when I opened the OpenShot video editor in Fedora 24 yesterday, I found a completely updated user interface in version 2.0.7 that made the app harder to use. I could barely see the tracks at the bottom, and there appeared to be no way to make that window big enough to remedy the problem.

I could no longer change the "properties" of an item and modify the time it occupied on the video.

It wasn't recognizing linefeeds on my Inkscape-generated titles.

And then it crashed all the time.

In short, a decent, workhorse app has become totally useless.

I then tried to edit some audio. Again, I haven't done it in awhile. Audacity is very stable, so how could there be a problem?

There was. The play/pause buttons kept disappearing, as did the icons for switching modes. I was able to do a quick audio edit, but it was neither easy nor pleasant.

I think the OpenShot issues are systematic to the project and its one-man-band development situation. (I know -- I really should figure out KDEnlive and be done with it.)

Audacity's problem lies elsewhere in the system, as this Fedora bug report details.

I have a test Ubuntu 16.04 system on another drive. I loaded it up and installed Audacity (same version, 2.1.2). It worked perfectly.

I installed OpenShot, which RPM Fusion distributes for Fedora users in version 2.0.7). Ubuntu provides version 1.4.3. Which is old. But it works.

So I'm wondering if I should just make the leap and dump Fedora 24 for Ubuntu 16.04. It would do wonders for my video- and audio-editing productivity, for one thing.

And I thought that Ubuntu's HUD (heads-up display) was roughly equal to what GNOME 3 offers in its "hot corner" search. Nope. In GNOME, you can search for applications but not files. Ubuntu's HUD allows you to find applications and files. This is no deal-breaker because you can search for files in the Nautilus/Files file manager in both Ubuntu's Unity and any system running GNOME. Still, the HUD (love or hate what it CAN search for) is better than anything else out there for Linux.

So will I do it? I hate replacing systems and moving my files over. But I'm thinking.

Cormen's "Introduction to Algorithms" (aka CLRS) looks hard. People who understand the material say the math involved is trivial, but I'm not anywhere near there.

So how do you get comfortable with the math before tackling CLRS itself?

A writer on Quora suggests reading a free textbook from an MIT open course called "Mathematics for Computer Science."

Others suggest that the appendix in CLRS serves as a guide to the mathematics needed to understand the rest of the book.

Another Quora writer recommends algorithm books by Sedgewick and Dasgupta (the latter available for free) as alternatives to CLRS.

The Saguache Crescent is the last newspaper in America to use "hot" metal type produced with a Linotype machine. Take a look at the pictures from the Baltimore Sun web site. Amazing.

I'm finally getting to the Fedora 23-to-24 upgrade on my laptop, which has been running Fedora on the same installation since the F18 release. (That means the upgrade has never failed.)

The upgrade process is getting smoother and smoother. This time the upgrade uses dnf instead of fedup.

I think that there will be a graphical upgrade for Fedora Workstation (i.e. GNOME) systems in this current release. But since I'm in Xfce right now, it's still a command-line process.

I used this guide from the Fedora Magazine site, and all is going great so far. Dnf has 4,033 items to download and 7,870 tasks to perform in the course of the upgrade, so it'll take a while to finish.

Update: As expected, the upgrade is taking a long time. That's normal. I managed to start early, and I have a whole day ahead of me. Plus I have use of another computer, so I'm able to continue working while the laptop is unavailable.

No 'n': When I finally resolve the issue, I'll recount my tale of the broken 'n' key on the HP Pavilion g6-2210us. With a barely working 'n' key, it's a great time to do an upgrade since typing words with the letter 'n' is not my favorite activity (though at home I have an external keyboard to get around the problem).

After the upgrade: I don't use GNOME very often, but I can confirm that the default Catarell font does display better (as promised). A better-looking display definitely makes me want to use GNOME more.

GNOME Shell itself seems more responsive. But again, I don't use it enough to know for sure.

I just found out that I'll soon be able to leave Citrix Receiver behind, and that will mean that I can use just about any desktop environment. For the past year and then some, only Xfce has played well with the Citrix apps that I use, which stretch across multiple screens and pose problems when it comes to switching from one screen to another.