I’m not going to say they are all related, but a bunch of changes have presented themselves to me lately, things that demanded decisions. Somehow I sense the biggest is yet to come, so I’m trying to take care of the little things as soon as they show up.
For example, today I switched my desktop over to OpenSUSE Leap 15.0. Most of you have no interest in such things, and I’m okay with that. I’d like to get away from having to take so much interest in computer stuff. I still love serving others in tech support, but I’ve long been tired of the hobby side of this stuff. I’m trying to reduce the attention load it requires, and OpenSUSE promised better than the Ubuntu stuff I’ve been using. So far, it seems that promise has come true. I’m also dumping XFCE for KDE Plasma. It’s not superior; it’s less work. I’m doing my best to find a usable desktop with what comes pre-installed by default. That means caring less about the nit-picking details and just finding a way forward with the fewest hassles.
The only gotcha so far is dealing with printers, something Linux users will face for a long time to come. Most printer manufactures don’t cooperate that well, though drivers are generally available for most of the ones I’ve encountered. In the case of OpenSUSE, you have to be ready to install extra driver collections from the standard repository. Then you have to look it up on the Open Printing site’s database to see which drivers are recommended for the printer in question.
The other gotcha is simply getting used to how YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) works. It’s not always obvious and can be frustrating at first. Too much of what you encounter assumes you know the jargon. Even those who do know the jargon can get tripped up, but I’ll get used to it. Oh, and screensavers aren’t easy to get working on OpenSUSE’s KDE desktop right now because the folks writing the software at KDE aren’t sure how they want to proceed. It’s not built into KDE and it’s not that easy to set up. It requires a little command-line-fu right now.
That’s still far less hassle than I’ve had with Ubuntu stuff.
One new feature is actually a better security feature than appears at first. The system files are mounted read-only so nothing can happen to permanently break things while in use. The file system for the OS itself is Btfrs, and everything is done with snapshots. When the system updates, it first creates a fresh snapshot, and then applies the updates to that. The update won’t disrupt the running system while you are using it. Then, when it’s all updated and you are ready, you reboot and it grabs the updated snapshot. If all is well, off you go (which is most likely the case). Any work you are doing is saved to a different file system, so it’s not lost. If something with the OS isn’t working right, you can back out and reboot from the previous snapshot until you can get help with the updated one. Users report that trouble has been quite rare so far.
There are other things going on with me, of course. I’m praying for a motor vehicle I can use. Now that my knees are cooperating much better, I’m starting to hike a lot more. I’m ready to go back out and see some natural hiking areas across the state and take pictures. That’s assuming the Lord doesn’t have other plans for me, because He hasn’t told me about it. But the biggest thing I’m praying about is the burden of getting this Radix Fidem thing established firmly on enough human hearts for it to outlive me. This is not a small task and I can’t/shouldn’t do it alone.
