It's been a while since I updated the phlog/blog. Funny how things
like this tend to go in spurts, at least for me. I can write
regularly for a while, then lose interest but always come back at
some point.
I have an old Thinkpad I use on the rare occasions I travel, I've
had Ubuntu on it but grew tired of the breakage after simple
updates. The most recent was a complete loss of Network Manager. No
idea what happened, but I found out while traveling when I could not
attach to any wireless networks. The network-manager applet was
gone, and I couldn't connect to even open APs using iwconfig
manually. For some strange reason, at boot it would still connect to
my home AP automatically. Probably why I never noticed until I had
to connect to an outside network.
Anyway, I have very little patience for such bullshit any more, in
years past I would have spent days working through a fix, this time
I just installed Slackware (I actually first tried to install
Trisquel from my FSF member card, but the wireless chipset in my
Thinkpad requires non-free drivers). Works like a champ, with zero
BS. And I don't have to worry about updates borking the system. In
fact, even though 14.1 has been out almost a year, there were only
about 20 or so updates (I'm not tracking current, of course). They
installed flawlessly.
