Cory moves to Ubuntu

For reasons I don’t quite understand – well, I do understand, I just don’t quite agree with the interpretation – a couple of fairly prominent Mac users are switching to Ubuntu’s GNU/Linux distribution. Which is fine. If it does what they need, good luck to them. I’m thinking of dusting off my old K6 desktop and trying Ubuntu on it too, and am hampered only by a marked lack of spare monitors round these parts. Oh, and the basic problem that there’s nothing – nothing that’s important for me, at least – I can do on Linux that I can’t do on OS X. Also, I don’t have a quasi-religious passion for ‘free’ (as-in-have-you-any-idea-how-nonsensical-this-phrase-is?) software. But hey, hedged bets and everything, I’m still interested.

No, what worries me about Cory’s migration in particular is his declared aim of ‘documenting every step of [his] switch‘ at Boing Boing. Oh please, please don’t do that, Cory. I’m already a tad fed up with the sheer volume of posts on that site, and more posts doesn’t help at all. Particularly if they’re off-topic for the blog. See, Boing Boing is ‘a directory of wonderful things’ – my perception is that it’s about the lovely, the unexpected, the dramatic, the impressive, the quirky, the alarming, the plain interesting. Its strength is the diversity of its stories.

It’s already arguable that all the DRM activism stuff is misplaced – why isn’t that at an EFF blog, again? – but if they add platform evangelism too, well… sheesh, I don’t know. Particularly if that category of post is coming from Cory, who can be prolific in a please-stop-I-can’t-take-it-any-more sort of way.

It’s not that I don’t want to read about Cory’s Ubuntu experience. I do. Pilgrim’s list of Ubuntu/Linux software is extremely useful, for example, and it’s clear from that alone that desktop Linux has come a long way since I last tried it. I just don’t want to read this sort of stuff at Boing Boing, because it doesn’t fit my image of what Boing Boing is.

Perhaps I’m being ‘old-media’ to think that the audience is important. But Boing Boing’s signal:noise seems to have been falling of late, and I’m not alone in thinking that.

(next target: Make. Which really should post less than fifteen things an hour).

5 thoughts on “Cory moves to Ubuntu”

  1. Isn’t it part of ‘geek mentality’ – to want to expound, in detail, the latest obsession?
    Is Linux the new ‘cool’, now that Macs are becoming more mainstream (says the bloke who bought a new Mac yesterday).
    But I agree with your point that this isn’t ‘Boing Boing’, it isn’t a ‘wonderful thing’ to hear about how cool Linux is and how he’ll be forever free of DRM using it.
    Boing boing is about insect collections and outsider art, it shouldn’t be the EFF’s unofficial newsboard.
    Heaven knows – If I wanted to write about a lot of non-ambulance related stuff, then I’d have to start a new blog, because it would wreck my currently focused blog.

  2. (OK, that entirely confirms my whole A-bomb hypothesis. Tom Reynolds! Here! etc etc. I’ve rumbled you all, hah!)
    One of the reasons I’m not satisfied with The Daily Grind is that it’s ‘just’ a personal blog – it’s a weird mish-mash of things I happen to like/stumble upon/be working on. To an extent that’s fine, and it may even be a Good Thing, but nevertheless I’ve recently started wondering about splitting it up.
    Hmm. Much as I dislike blogging about blogging, there’s a post in itself in this. ‘Focus’ is an interesting subject, and the audience here is shifting of late (no, nothing to do with my self-aggrandizing elevation to the ‘must read’ lists of famous bloggers…). I’ve never needed to think about what The Daily Grind is for, and now I find I should.
    It’s on a smaller scale to Boing Boing being the unofficial EFF newsboard, though. So I’ll probably just not bother.

  3. (A-Bomb? Hardly ‘A’ dear fellow, somewhere around the ‘F’s methinks – And I’ve been reading you for *ages*, although I can’t remember why… But have stuck around because you write good stuff)
    I’ve also been thinking about it, and may have written little posts here and there onmy own site about it. Am I happy being “The Ambulance Blogger”, especially when something new and shiny and interesting comes along?
    I think that in part it’s because we’ve built up some decent traffic, and some decent commentors, that we are loathe to
    a) Change, therefore driving people away.
    or
    b) Start a new blog, therefore having to start pretty much from scratch.
    My view for blogging is it’s for the writer, and whatever they want to get out of it. This is, of course, a horribly wishy-washy answer but contains a kernel of truth methinks.
    See this blog as advertising you, and the ‘you-ness’ that you bring to work and conversations and I don’t think you’ll be too far off the point, the interesting stuff happens when you want to change yourself, and use your blog to do so…
    But now I’m blathering, time to eat/sleep.

  4. Tom, you have a *book* deal. Of course you’re A-list, you numpty. Oh, and I think you’re here because we met at OpenTech last year, though I could be wrong on that.
    I’ve always maintained that I blog because I find it an interestingly difficult form to write. That is, I’m doing it for myself. What’s rattled me of late is that it turns out people I don’t know but might, possibly, find myself working with read this blog, and I’d never really thought of that. So I have the whole personal/professional debate going on.
    I envy you Random Acts and its clear focus, and it serves you well – but you’re right that too much non-ambulance material there would dilute the concept.
    Hmm… want to join Giles Turnbull and myself in resurrecting ItLikesYou.com?

  5. Yes – I think you are right, it was Opentech.
    Even if they don’t read the blog, they’ll find it by Googling.
    Ok – I’m intrigued, what is ItLikesYou.com? I know it was a blog you wrote, but *what* is it…?

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