Sections
Introduction
1. News about
reinstalling Ubuntu 12.04
2. So if there
is no Nederlog tomorrow...
Introduction
This is a Nederlog
of Thursday, November 26, 2015.
This is not a
crisis blog. This file arose as follows.
I decided Tuesday November 24 to install a new version of Ubuntu -
14.04 as opposed to the 12.04 that I have been using for 3 1/2 years, very satisfactorily also [1] - and did so quite successfully in a few hours,
and then found 14.04 lacks THE feature that made 12.04 very attractive for me in 2012: It does not
have High Contrast Inverse, that basically interchanges black text on a
white background (as system colors for menus and backgrounds) to white
text on a black background.
I should have checked, but I did not, so it is really my own fault. It also was quite stupid,
for I really relied on High Contrast Inverse:
This High Contrast Inverse function is in fact what saved computing for me the last 3 1/2 years,
in which my eyes have - slowly, slowly - turned from quite miserable,
quite painful and very sensitive, to tolerable, still sometimes
painful, but not always, and sensitive, especially for backlighted white
surfaces.
Yesterday I decided that my health goes before everything related to computers,
and so I decided to go back to 12.04.
The problem was that I had no
working 12.04 anymore. I do
have a weekly copy of the main files, also since 2012, but that is
zipped on a backup disk. And I can't write it to 14.04 that I anyway
cannot use. And I have no means to install 12.04.
The rescue was that I also had installed another copy of Ubuntu 12.04
on my hard disk in June 2012, and had not used that for the intervening
years. So what I am doing now is updating that copy with the backup of
my files that is accurate until October 19 last.
This is where I left you yesterday...
1. News about
reinstalling Ubuntu 12.04
So this
continues yesterday's news about Ubuntu, which is the OS I use, since
the only somewhat
tolerable Windows I've seen was XP (that at least didn't crash every
three hours or so, and probably did not collect data on me itself).
Also, I know this isn't interesting news for many, but I do
depend on a computer ever since starting on one (an Osborne) in 1987,
and next to my health and general condition (that are worse since 37
years than of most people), I really
need a working computer, and what I have at present is working at best
partially.
What I have done yesterday is switching
to the 12.04 I had installed in 2012 but had not used since, and
have tried to upload most of the data I had gathered since.
By now, this mostly succeeded,
in good part because I have several backup systems for the files I do
not want to loose (which I did rather a lot until I switched to Linux
in 2012: Windows is pretty awful and quite slow), so most of my personal files are accessible
again, which is a considerable relief.
Then again, I have lost most of the other files, including Firefox-data
and Thunderbird: My mails have all disappeared. Also, the system is
still not stable.
And while I can upload my sites, I
cannot download mail or mail the last days.
Also, while I have meanwhile upgraded to Ubuntu 12.05 version 94, which
also works, that system (composed from parts from 2012 and 2015) is not
stable yet.
So... I am still busy, and it will probably take another couple of days
to have everything running well again, though I am pretty certain I
will get there, eventually.
I will have lost rather a lot, but most of that was not
very important, and was therefore also not part of my personal data.
But the mails I wrote and received since 2012 are all lost...
2. So if there is no Nederlog tomorrow...
The brief outcome so far is that I am
back in 12.04 but I need to do quite a bit of updating. It will
probably work (this is Linux, not Windows) but it may not be finished
today or tomorrow.
So in
case there is no Nederlog tomorrow, you will know why: I am busy
updating and restoring. And the same for my mails: I cannot read or
send them now.
---------------------------------------------
Note
[1]
The
difference between 12.04 and 14.04 is as between Windows 7 and Windows
8 (or Windows XP and Windows 7), but in Ubuntu there are many more
versions of each: I started in version 23 of 12.04 and ended in version
95 of 12.04, and the downloading and installing of each new version was
normally done in something like 5 minutes.
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