I have embraced Open Source software with open arms. This began after reading Linus Torvald's "Just for Fun" where his appeal for supporting open source software was convincing (I think). I installed Ubuntu on my PC and this blog post was typed and published on a Linux platform.
Have I told you about my new passion for programming and learning more about computer software? I have started learning C++ and also Linux. Windows is all good but I need to learn Linux because it is open source and thus offers flexibility to its users. Plus I am one of those guys who believes in open source, individuality and dislikes corporate control over intellectual property or strict regulation of copyright laws. You got the point.
Anyway, I will share an interesting troubleshooting story with you. After installing Ubuntu, I wanted to use Opera browser instead of Firefox. Don't even mention Internet Explorer, that's for old generation people who still live in dark ages. Do you ever think why people still use hotmail and yahoo while Gmail is available and it's free? I guess they might be afraid of giving too much control to Google that will link their browsing history with Gmail content. Or maybe they are just indifferent. One of my friends suggested Opera and have been using it in conjunction to Chrome. I realized Flash videos didn't work with Opera on Ubuntu. I also have Opera on Windows 7 so I checked if flash worked. It did. Flash also worked with Firefox on Ubuntu. So Flash only didn't work with Opera on Ubuntu. What a niche, you might think. A fraction uses Ubuntu and out of that even a tiny fraction uses Opera. So, maybe no one cared to fix the bug.
I decided to fix this problem because I thought it would be a good practice to start learning Windows-Linux interoperability. This was certainly a start among several other incompatibility problems to pop-up in the future. I went online to seek a solution. Adobe forums did not have anything about it but Opera forum seemed to have a thread on this because other Opera users on Ubuntu platform seemed to have the problem too. The solutions were very geeky with detailed descriptions of using terminals to open directories, locate files and then moving files around. I tried this option but commands for displaying files in the directory did not work on my terminal. I could have been putting wrong commands. So, I tried to adopt the second route: locating system files and manually copying and pasting into plugin directory of Opera and Mozilla from Flash. Unfortunately, the system denied permission for me while trying to paste the required file into Opera and Mozilla plugin directories.
I did not know how to fix the problem. I was scratching my head. I mean dreadlocks. When I looked at the clock, it was 6:50 pm, and suddenly I realized that in ten minutes Coates (food cafetaria at Trinity) would be closed. I grabbed my Tiger card and ran out of room towards Coates. I made just in time but the guy at the grill certainly wasn't happy to see me. More work for him. After eating, I made my way to the room still thinking how to fix the problem. I opened up Opera again and loaded youtube site and magic- flash player started working. I laughed ecstatically sharing the joy with myself. Now I am sharing this joy with you all readers.
After reading this you might realize I am aiming to become a proper geek now.
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