It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally have my Ruby environment set up in Puppy Linux's Xenialpup (based on Ubuntu 16.04) so I can use my BlogPoster app and also work on its code.

I didn't have any trouble installing Ruby and the ruby-nokogiri package from the Puppy Package Manager. But I couldn't get ruby-twitter to install. gem install wouldn't work -- I didn't have the ruby-dev package -- and I didn't see the Ubuntu package that I needed.

I looked at the problem again, and I figured out that I was missing a repository in the Puppy Package Manager. Once I added the "missing" repository (which involved checking a box -- nothing too difficult), I was able to install ruby-twitter and get my script running.

My next problem was the vi in Puppy. I think it really is vi and not Vim. I couldn't get any formatting commands like :set number to work, either in command mode or .vimrc. The fix for this was quick: I installed Vim from the Puppy Package Manager.

Now I can call the "old" vi, or the "newer" Vim as needed, and my BlogPoster script is running great.

I'm having some issues pasting links into the terminal, but that's something I could overcome. Right now it's a lot of awkward "middle" clicking on the mouse, which for practical purposes means clicking both buttons at once. I'm getting better at it, but I could also use Geany instead of Vim as my editor. I tested Geany with my Ruby script, and it does work.

In other development-related news for this Puppy system, I installed the Racket programming environment from the script provided by the project. So far it works pefectly. I started up DrRacket and was coding right away.

Since I am not anxious to either dual-boot or replace Windows 10 with Linux on my main laptop (HP Envy 15-as133cl 15t), I thought I would go back to the live distribution that introduced me to Linux -- Puppy -- and see if I could make it do all the things I want and need it to do.

My history with Puppy goes WAY back. I remember running version 2.13 on all kinds of hardware -- castoff laptops, converted thin clients. It would run on anything.

Back then I booted Puppy from CDs. Nowadays, with "modern" Puppy I could boot from USB and save either to the laptop's hard drive or another USB drive.

I downloaded the latest Puppy, Xenialpup, and used the Fedora Media Writer in Windows to put it on a 4GB USB flash drive. Xenialpup is UEFI-compatible, and after turning off Secure Boot on the laptop, I was off and running the super-fast JWM desktop that has traditionally anchored the Puppy live system.

Surprisingly, I was able to get a pretty comprehensive Ode blog-posting setup going. I have Unison: I pulled version 2.40 from an old Ubuntu package and used dpkg-deb to extract the binary since I need the old version and not the Ubuntu Xenial version of Unison, which is 2.48. (On a related note, why is it so hard to get a working Unison 2.48 for CentOS?)

I pulled all of my scripts from the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and I've already synced the blog over to this system.

Thankfully, Puppy's unusual running-as-root way of working didn't screw up my file ownership on the server, or in my Windows Subsystem for Linux copy of the filesystem.

There was one old problem from Linux that I haven't had to deal with in a while: While typing, I had the typical "jumping" behavior due to "interference" with the touchpad. Though Puppy doesn't have a "disable the touchpad while typing" setting, I was still able to solve the problem quickly by disabling tap-to-click with the system's straighforward Input Wizard configuration utility.

Where I ran into problems was with my development environment. I got Ruby to work in Puppy after a little effort, but I couldn't get the equivalent of ruby-dev to build things like the Ruby Twitter gem, and the gem itself, which is a package in Ubuntu, is not easily available for Xenialpup.

So I can post to the blog but can't use my "new" social-posting routine that turns URLs into Ode-compatible files and then sends the results to both the blog and Twitter.

I can't run all the gems I want in Ruby. But I am also exploring Clojure, so maybe that would work.

I did manage to install the JDK, though I had to add it to my path, opting to do so in /etc/profile, in order to get it to work.

I downloaded the Leiningen script and installed it. I can create new Leiningen projects, but the REPL errors out in spectacular fashion.

I haven't tried to get Node working yet, but the Ubuntu version is old (4.2.6), and I'm not confident that this installation will play well with the overall npm ecosystem. I could try to download and install direct, but there's potential for a lot of trouble.

The mechanics of Puppy are working great. Despite the unorthodox packaging and software installation, I did manage to get quite a few things working. I have my favorite text editor (Geany), the full LibreOffice suite via SFS package, the Firefox browser with all of my bookmarks synced, and a super-fast desktop packed with a lot of (mostly) home-grown utilities.

But I couldn't get Puppy to go the last mile.

So the "story" for me and Puppy Linux in 2018 is good until the point at which I want to do development work. At that point it's better to stay in Windows (and the WSL) or opt for a traditional Linux installation.

Now if only there was a "full" Debian live environment that allowed for persistence. Maybe there is. I'll be looking.

I'm doing my Linux due diligence by trying out Ubuntu 17.10 now that Canonical has issued new ISOs that won't brick a BIOS. That's a bit of nasty business, to be sure, but it's not enough to put me off of Ubuntu for good.

It's unfortunate that Canonical/Ubuntu made the kind of mistake that would brick a computer, and I can't see Fedora doing this kind of thing, even though the Red Hat-sponsored distro is closer to the bleeding edge.

Not coincidentally I just tried Fedora 27, and I liked it. I don't see much different in Ubuntu 17.10. Both distros use GNOME 3, feature Firefox as their default browser (good because since FF 57/Quantum, it's also my default browser) and offer the LibreOffice suite.

Sure there are major differences in package management (dnf vs. apt) and firewall (firewalld vs ufw), but it's still more similar than different.

The distros both look fairly similar on my 1920x1080 screen, and the fonts seem about the same in both, though Ubuntu features its own font in places where Fedora offers Cantarell. Both are interchangeable, so it's horses for courses, as they say.

The GNOME-ified Ubuntu made its debut in 17.10, so there will be no GNOME-powered Ubuntu LTS until 18.04 (which, now that I look at the calendar, is due in 4/2018, which is only a few months from now).

Until Ubuntu dropped GNOME 2 for Unity back in 11.04, all of the "top" distros shipped GNOME as a default. By that I mean Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat/CentOS and Suse. So there was a great deal of uniformity that made the distro "wars" seem kind of stupid since the desktop is such a major part of a user's experience, and every major distro pretty much offered all of the major desktops (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE). It was notable that only Ubuntu shipped (or even offered) Unity (to the best of my not-comprehensive knowledge).

Now that Unity is dead and Ubuntu is back to GNOME, I hope that there will be more emphasis placed on not just tweaking GNOME but actually developing it to have more of what "power" users want (like actual knobs, levers and buttons to tweak to get the behavior we want).

Hey, as I write this in the Ubuntu 17.10 live environment, my screen keeps momentarily turning upside down and blanking for a moment. This is on an HP Envy with an Intel i7 processor. Hmm. Hopefully that's a byproduct of the live session and not something that will persist in a full installation. I hope not. I didn't experience that behavior in Fedora 27 or Debian 9.3.

To sum up, I'd say that Ubuntu 17.10 and Fedora 27 are more similar than different, with six-month upgrade cycles unless you opt for the Ubuntu LTS in a few months' time. Both are much more "polished" than stock Debian, with less setup pain, though probably more maintenance pain, as Debian Stable is exactly what the second word in its name says it is.

It all comes down to how new you want your packages to be. This really only matters (to me) for the purposes of software development. I think you can either run Fedora, or Ubuntu (possibly the latter with PPAs), and have things be acceptably new. If you need a newer stack, you'll probably be managing it outside of distro package management anyway, so it all comes down to personal preference and what works.

I just booted into a Fedora 27 live system on my HP Envy laptop with an HD screen, and already the fonts in Firefox look better than stock Debian, which is to be expected.

Just like with Debian, I'm astounded that everything works in Linux out of the box. This laptop is about nine months old, and I have been avoiding running Linux for that whole time, choosing to explore Windows 10 (which is not bad at all, in case you were wondering).

I'm very happy that Fedora (which I ran for pretty much the entire "run" of my old HP Pavilion g6 laptop, which is running F27 as we speak) is so good on what, for me is new hardware.

The improvement in font rendering on this HD screen (1920x1080) is enough for me to say that I could definitely make the switch from Windows 10 to Fedora. I'm not ready just yet, but it looks like I am able.

Maybe it's the new laptop talking, but GNOME 3 looks more polished and usable than ever. The first thing I did in the live environment (after pumping up my Firefox magnification to 140%) was installing GNOME Tweak Tool and changing to the Adiwata Dark Theme.

True for both Debian and Fedora: The laptop is running very cool, too.

Next up: A test of the new non-BIOS-bricking Ubuntu 17.10, where I hope the GNOME 3 experience will also be a good one.