Microsoft 1, Hippies 0

OK, so I'm putting together a new set of spell sheets like those in the Deluxe Character Sheets pack, to include those from the Players Handbook, Players Handbook II, and the Spell Compendium. And I'm doing it in Ubuntu using OpenCalc.

And trying to do some simple filter on my master list keeps causing OpenCalc to crash. Rather ridiculous that OpenCalc can't handle that. So, where do I go? Back to Excel on Windows.

Now, I'd prefer to continue in OpenCalc, but I can't and I don't have time to screw around trying to figure out a workaround for OpenCalc to work the way it should. Excel doesn't require a workaround for what I'm trying to do - it just works.

So, in this round, the Evil Empire wins and the hippies lose.

(Though I should point out that this is the first negative experience I've had with OpenCalc - outside of it's fonts just looking like total crap in Ubuntu - and looking at the big picture the hippies probably have more points than MS...).

Ubuntu + Firefox + Flash = Out-of-Sync Sound

This problem is a type of thing that needs to be overcome to get people away from OSes like Windows: The sound in Flash in Firefox for me is out-of-sync. Things start fine, but eventually the sound gets out of sync on sites like YouTube.

Yes, I've checked various sites on the web, including this one and this one, among others. I've tried everything that's been mentioned - nothing has worked.

YouTube, Google Video (soon to be the same thing?), etc. work fine under Windows.

Is this enough to drive me back to Windows full-time? No, but it is quite annoying.

And Thus Begins Our Journey into . . . Ubuntu

I may have mentioned in the past that I played around a little with Ubuntu, one of the more popular Linux distributions. I used version 5 ("Breezy Badger") for a bit but switched back to Windows, with a minor dalliance with the Vista beta (which has gone untouched on my other computer pretty much since the initial installation). I downloaded version 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"; gotta love them cutesy names I guess), but I'd been holding off on installing it until now. This time, I didn't mess around with using VMWare under Windows, but did a full-blown install into it's own partition (after repartioning my drive with GParted, which was very intuitive and easy to use; of course, I had to defrag the drive first to have a large enough contiguous space to install Ubuntu; unfortunately, neither its installation utility nor GParted informed me of that first).

Despite that initial obstacle and another problem (which I'll cover below), I'd have to say I'm rather impressed. Ubuntu installed much easier than Windows, more quickly, and recognized most of my hardware. I particularly liked the fact that v5 would only give me a 1024x768 resolution, but v6 has no problem seeing that I've got a 1200x800 screen. Though that may have been an issue with the VMWare player rather than v5. In any case, it recognized my video, my Microsoft wireless mouse, my printer (after I set it up - about a 30 second task), and my onboard sound (AC97). I did have a problem with the sound - it recognized the device and installed the proper drivers, but I couldn't hear anything. I tried a bunch of things people mentioned on-line but that didn't help. Finally I found the solution (I double-clicked the speaker icon at the top of the screen to get "Volume Control" (Alsa mixer), selected "Switched", and unchecked "External Amplifier"). Network connectivity worked like a charm. I haven't tried my wireless networking (I'm connected via cable at my desk), so I'm not sure if that works yet, nor have I tried my scanner. I'm sure I can get both to work with Ubuntu somehow - the question is, will they work without a bunch of extra effort on my part?

All is not roses, however. A few issues remain:

• Microsoft seems to have a better handle on readable fonts in the OS, and Firefox's choiced are a bit hit-and-miss. This is something I'll have to play around with for awhile. I've actually turned off the "subpixel smoothing" since I see too much of the color "fuzziness" with it on. Though the "TSCu_Comic" font actually works quite nicely as my system font.
• The extra buttons on my mouse don't work. I generally only use them in Firefox for "back" and "forward", but it's a pain to be without them. Still, I'm sure someone's created a plug-in for Firefox and/or Linux to use them. Just have to find it...
• Hmm...guess that's it at the moment.

There are other things I haven't tried yet - burning a CD or DVD, for instance. One thing that is nice is that the volume buttons built into my laptop not only register with Ubuntu, they show me a visible bar of what my volume is when I use them, unlike Windows XP. Score one for the hippies! All the hardware buttons work, actually, except for the musical note, which is probably because I don't have a default music player set up yet.

For anyone interested, this installation is on a Gateway 7330GZ.

Now, time to see if the scanner works...