Neil Tyson Demonstrates Absurdity of "Flat Earth"

Not that I ever doubted the earth was round, but I believe Neal deGrasse Tyson nailed it on the head why flat earthers are either believers in freedom of speech or proof our education systems has gone in the tanks.

Do yourself a favor and subscribe to Star Talk along with 1.19 million other people and get some education

Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 20.04

I really enjoy 5:00 PM PDT every Saturday night by watching and sometimes participating in the Big Daddy Linux live YouTube stream every week.  In the past BDL would have a distro challenge and feature a Linux DE that would normally last 2 weeks but since the release of the new Ubuntu flavors they've changed it to a new DE every week to highlight all the Ubuntu releases.  Rocco, the host of BDL, does not make it mandatory to review a DE if you want to participate and the show also covers other topics that involves Linux.  I just want to say that the participants are normally very knowledgeable when it comes to Linux and most know the ins and outs of what makes a DE good.

This week the review is on Ubuntu Cinnamon 20.04 LTS, which I installed Sunday.  For me this release is probably the 3rd best release in the Focal Fossa releases, right up there with Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Budgie, but there are a three things that make Ubuntu Cinnamon stand out as a top notch release.  

First is that it is a really well done and put together version of the Cinnamon desktop environment.  The developers use version 4.4.8, which is a little behind the latest stable release of June 2020 which is 4.6.5 but expected by Ubuntu.  I don't think they change any of the DE's versions except on point releases. 

Second is the fact that this is not a recognized flavor or Ubuntu, meaning Ubuntu has not officially adopted Cinnamon but there a things that the developers have to prove out before this version will be one of the chosen flavors.  To me by the looks of this release they should not be far behind.

Third is that I am really impressed with Joshua Peisach, the lead developer of the project.  At this time he is still a teenager and seems to have real understanding of how a DE should look and feel.  With that said one person does not make a DE, it takes a community.

If you like Ubuntu and want a nice desktop like Cinnamon, then give it a try.  I know lots of people are down on Ubuntu but it works nicely.  Ubuntu Cinnamon is a nice move to people that like the Ubuntu side of Linux Mint, which is probably the most loved of all Linux DE's but always seem to keep themselves in the news.

C. J. Box, Long Range, Joe Picket Series Book 20 (2020)

I haven't posted any books since last September because of my health and just couldn't find anything that would get me excited about reading.  I would read during lunch at work but like I just said, everything seemed blah, and no excitement to really write anything about what I was reading and just couldn't write anything about what I was reading, which now I can't remember much of what I read.

But yesterday I changed.  I had to go someplace that I thought would require me to be left alone so I loaded the newest C. J. Box book, Long Range and I had to force myself to put it down.  One thing I love about about Box and hate it when a lot of other authors do is when they use too many paragraphs or pages to describe what is happening without getting into characters or the story.  Too many writers seem to add too much fill to a book by describing what is happening at that moment and time.  Box spends the 1st chapter describing 3 seconds, talking about the flight of a bullet.  Long Range, hence the title.

Box really brings Joe Picket to life, and between Cassie Dewell and Joe Picket he has 2 of the best book series out there.  Every book he writes you think this is the best in the series which only a few writers can accomplish.  So if you haven't read any Joe Picket novels, get Open Range, the first in the series.

All I have to say about this book is that it makes me happy that I started reading again.

Kubuntu 20.04

Kubuntu has come a long way since the first time I used it.  The first time there was no such thing as Plasma  with the release probably around KDE 3.5 around 2006.  A little later KDE 4.0 was released and both the KDE 3.5 and 4.0 were basically unusable on the hardware I had back then, needing more resources than my system could offer.  I would keep trying over the years and I never had any good luck with KDE matching up with the economical laptops that I would own over the years, even the 8 year old laptop I'm writing on now.

I had better luck with 19.10, the resources  were OK but it didn't matter if I was using Kubuntu or Neon I would always have a plasmasession failure, resulting with me having to log out and log back in until I could get a working desktop.  Part of the reason for the Kubuntu problem was that I was backporting into a more recent release of KDE which was version 5.16.

A couple of weeks ago I was keeping up with Big Daddy Linux and installed Lubuntu 20.04 and I just couldn't get it to work and look the way I wanted it so I installed Kubuntu 20.04 and basically it's been pretty flawless on this old laptop.  My only complaint is that I feel that I need to restart it every couple of days because the memory doesn't seem to clear like it does on my Ubuntu Mate 20.04.  My mouse pointer would start to drag and skip and then become unresponsive for 5 or 10 seconds and then continue to work okay just to repeat the problem again  a few seconds later.  A restart would correct this. I'm really liking Kubuntu now and I just might start using it as my main distro.  I've always liked Dolphin, Konsole and Latte Dock and I don't game so I don't need a lot of resources like an expensive CPU or graphics card so this little laptop keeps chugging along.  Here's a look at my current desktop.

Enjoy!