It's been awhile. I'm tiring of things electronic.

Not sure how I feel about things electric.

But I felt like picking up the guitar. I'm thinking about swing on the steel-string acoustic.

I have a couple PDFs of classic Eddie Lang methods to work with, but as always it would probably be better to learn some tunes.

This post originally appeared on http://jazzguitarjourney.blogspot.com.

Time gets away from you.

I'm 45. I need to know where I'm going. To feel like I'm getting there.

I need to pay attention. Plan. Execute.

Remember what's important. And who.

I don't have anything against Ubuntu 11.10, or the Unity interface. I might even like it. I'm getting so used to the way my Android phone works that I'm open to new desktop paradigms/metaphors.

But Debian Squeeze with Backports + sundry extras is running so well, and I remember so very well how I regretted my move away from Debian Lenny in 2009.

If Ubuntu doesn't fall off the track into "every damn thing is new" crazy for 12.10, then I'll be interested. It needs to work.

The Make Tech Easier site offers a short post titled How to Build a Lightweight Linux for your Low-End Laptop on why and how to use Debian to set up an older laptop.

I've used Debian many times to get old hardware running and, like the author of this entry, Joshua Price, I find the flexibility and lightness of Debian really helps the Linux distribution live up to its billing as "The Universal Operating System," which can run well on many different kinds (and eras) of hardware.

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I like it when Jono Bacon, community manager for Ubuntu, can focus on the cool things the Linux distribution is doing and not just the problems with the project. Not that those problems should be ignored, but if Ubuntu doesn't have the goods, what's the point?

To that effect, Jono offers a detailed screen-by-screen look at the upcoming 11.10 release on his blog.

Seen above is a smallish grab from Jono of what happens when you use alt-tab to switch between applications.

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I just discovered the debianandi blog, and wanted to point out Complete Debian Linux Guide - On Your Desktop, which shows you how to install the debian-reference package and then access a guide to Debian that you read from your local drive with a web browser.

The blog itself is well worth following. It's in my bookmarks now.

I haven't come across Orange, Calif.-based eRacks in awhile, but I followed a link over there today and was re-acquainted with its suprisingly full line of systems that do just about anything you want and ship with a multitude of Linux and BSD operating systems, including Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS, along with Free-, Open- and NetBSD.

They also offer Fedora, Gentoo, PCLinuxOS, Mint, Mandriva, Puppy (who else ships boxes running Puppy??), Mepis, OpenSuse, SLED, RHEL, Xandros and even Windows 7 if you want it.

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One of the main reasons not to run Debian Stable is that you have newer hardware that doesn't respond well to the older packages in the release. For those with Intel Sandy Bridge and other newer chips, the X server as it is packaged in Squeeze can be a problem, which can be solved by running Testing or Sid, or now with X in Squeeze Backports.

This is a great thing. While many users prefer Testing or Sid, or the six-month releases of Ubuntu (or Arch, or your favorite often-released or rolling distro ...), it's nice to be able to run Debian's stable distribution on your newer hardware.

I'm doing this, in a way, with my newer Liquorix kernel -- version 2.6.38 instead of the 2.6.33 that ships with Squeeze. With the newer kernel, my Lenovo G555's sound chip behaves much better.

At this point in the Squeeze cycle, a newer kernel is now available in Squeeze Backports (and currently 2.6.39), so Squeeze-running users can get a newer kernel directly from Debian. And now they can get a new X server, too.

I hope this newer X server in Squeeze Backports allows many more people to run Debian Stable, and I once again thank the Debian Developers responsible for continuing to make Squeeze -- and Debian in total -- even better than it already is.

This brings up a question: Should you run Debian Stable?

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Windows for Linux Users admittedly is an attention-grabbing title. I'd say the great majority of Linux users have either some or much familiarity with the Microsoft Windows environment. Very few have never used Windows before (though some might have come from the Macintosh environment and may be wholly unexperienced in Windows).

In my case I spent maybe a year using Windows as little as possible, doing as much work as I could on my Debian GNU/Linux laptop. Thus the performance issues I experienced in Windows didn't affect me as much as they do now that I'm not bringing the laptop to the office and must rely on the Dell Optiplex GX520 (Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, 1.2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD) running XP SP3.

The Icedove (aka Thunderbird) mail client is back in the Debian Mozilla team APT archive.

http://mozilla.debian.net used to be the place to get a newer version of the Mozilla mail application for Debian, but Icedove disappeared from the archive for awhile when version 3.1 moved into Debian Backports proper. Now that Icedove in Backports seems stalled at 3.1 (and is the same in Wheezy and Sid for the time being, with a newer version in Experimental), the Mozilla Debian team has brought the app back into its own archive at version 5.0.

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