Ubunchu 07 ~ Installfest!

Tada! Ubunchu as it turns out is still alive and kicking! Albeit in the same somewhat constipated way my own blog ekes its existence. It looks from the mailing list like the terrible beast called real life has also been wreaking havoc and slowing things down over there, and so in the long time that I had been too busy to check back, only one new chapter has been released. And it’s chapter 7 instead of 6 too! Apparently the author wanted to put some extra touches on 6, and so released 7, which was ready, first. Grab it here if you haven’t.

Nom nom nom

Anyway in this chapter our awkward trio of Sysadmin club members decided to hold an installfest, which as the name suggests is essentially an event where people get together to help each other (in particular new adopters) with setting up their Linux boxes.

They apparently decided that their amazingly awesome publicity poster would be more than sufficient to bring the world to their knees before them begging to be brought unto the light of Linux salvation.

Well, at least Akane probably did. From her grandiose visions for the installfest, I can only imagine that the poster must have been Akane-designed, which of course only makes her more awesome. I almost busted a gut when I first saw the outrageous thing. Unfortunately but predictably enough, the grand, prophetic, bearded visage of Richard Stallman failed to make up for the chronic lack of information and explanation in the poster, and so the Sysadmin Club found themselves sitting in an empty room with pizzas and coke (mmm pizza and coke), which of course could only lead to one possible outcome.

Thankfully drama club diva girl shows up to save the day. Of course, having gone through a domineering twin-tail last time round, it certainly shouldn’t surprise us that we get a well-groomed ojou-sama introduced next. But ara~ara~ divas aside, I have been prey to extreme and almost inappropriate feelings of delight watching Akane as she collapses into a tumbling mix of relief, happiness and smugness on receiving her apparent first customer.

That heartfelt pleasure of being understood, that triumphant smirk for her unbelieving deputy, that childish, skipping eagerness at getting a chance to do what she desired. I may be enjoying this a lot more than I should be, but Ms CLI wielding, Slackware-infatuated, forum-ophobic geek-tsundere-chan is truly a heroine that speaks to the heart of any uphill-trudging Linux advocate. I should add a prominent note that the ponytail certainly helps too. Or wait, was I supposed to have said that? Aaaanyway, tragically, things could hardly ever be relied on to go so smoothly in a comedic manga. The bombshell soon descends, and it was a big one indeed.

‘U’ is for Ultimate!

Blam! I’ll admit it, I probably laughed more this chapter than all the other chapters combined. Oh the pain! That musta broke her little heart. And diva-girl’s tears and her generous gesture of kindness could only have been expert insult onto crushing injury. The only thing possibly worse than being willfully auto-lumped into the geek category for using Linux is to be compassionately mistaken as being poverty-stricken for using Linux. Man, that’s not sometihng that happens every day.

Anyway, getting on with the story, Akane manages eventually to pick herself up from the smoke and ashes of her epic facedesk and offered to help diva-girl with her blasphemous installation anyway. I’m not sure how this netboot sorcery that she uses works, but apparently you can somehow use Ubunchu Ubuntu to boot a Windows DVD over the network, allowing Akane to install Windows 7 Ultimate in the absence of a functioning CD/DVD drive or USB port. Pretty intriguing bit of magic there, and I should probably find some time someday to figure out how it works. In the meantime the chapter swiftly wraps up in the wake of the successful installation with the trio toasting to their first successful install and with diva-girl unsurprisingly becoming intrigued with this mysterious free OS and taking a CD home.

I’d like to put in a final word here that it’s nice that our protagonists went ahead and installed Windows for diva-girl even though they were pushing Ubuntu. A nice little affirmation there of one of the differentiating factors in the spirit of free software – that choice is celebrated. Fundamental to free software culture is the desire to give the user more freedom, more control, and more avenues to make choices in their day-to-day computing. So we could promote free software and tout their advantages and features as much as we like, but it’s important at the end of the day I think to remember that the user should have a choice and that it should be honored. If a user honestly prefers a proprietary program, let him/her have it. And always offer what help you can, irregardless of the choice that was made.

Till next time :)