@ -731,6 +731,43 @@ The joke, of course, arises from the fact that she never changed the object of t
Yes, this is how computers ``think''.
\chapter{Ubuntu 22.04 \\(and Ubuntu 24.04)}
\begin{quote}
\textit{I just got this bucket back together. I'm not going to let something tear it apart.}
\begin{flushright}
---Han Solo
\end{flushright}
\end{quote}
\noindent{}Back in issue \#2 I wrote about what a complete and utter disaster Ubuntu 22.04 had been for me and for many other users. I'm pleased to say that most of those issues have now been taken care of through numerous updates. But it has definitely been an uphill climb that left me questioning my sanity at times.
Most notable is that I still have not been able to configure Python2 on Ubuntu 22.04.Which is \textit{not} a big deal really, as we all should have moved on to Python3 by now. (This is something that the powers that be at Python have acknowledged by deprecating Python2.) What I really needed Python2 for was PDF Booklet, which is what I use to turn all of these letter-half sized pdf documents into booklets that I can print and staple together.\footnote{What PDF Booklet does---and does well---is handle the page imposition. That is, it puts the pages in the order that you would get if you took the staples out of this zine and examined the pages---you'll note that the first sheet has pages 40 and 1 on one side and pages 2 and 39 on the other side. This pattern continues until you get to the last page which has pages 20 and 21 on one side and pages 22 and 19 on the other. Page imposition is not at all complicated, but it never fails to amaze me how many people simply can't wrap their minds around it until they see it in action. I was one of them, once.} I actually met the author of this package on SourceForge where it is hosted and he told me how to remove the Python2 dependencies, which I did. I figured out how to configure it as an installable (i.e., \texttt{deb}) package, but then I lost track of him on SourceForge and have no idea how to contribute to that project.
\medskip
\noindent{}\textit{…slides out soapbox}
\medskip
I'm going to take this moment while I have your attention to say that I detest SourceForge will all my heart. It's ugly, it places ads first and foremost in your user experience, it's ugly, it has a confusing interface, it's ugly, it's slow and clunky, and on top of it all, it's also ugly. It's like something designed by an alien who can only see half the visible spectrum and all of the ultraviolet spectrum. And it's been like that \textit{forever}. Why is this thing still a thing.
\medskip
\noindent{}\textit{…slides soapbox back under the sofa…takes meds}
\medskip
Anyway, because I could figure out how to get this on SourceForge, I just dropped it into my own personal git server at \href{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/pdf-booklet}{\texttt{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle\\/pdf-booklet}}. Enjoy.
As I write this, the release of Ubuntu 24.04 is less than a year away. Unlike the release of Ubuntu 22.04, I am not in the least bit excited. And I will \textbf{not} be upgrading immediately, if at all. (Ubuntu 22.04 has ten years of security releases,\footnote{See \href{https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle}{\texttt{https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle}} for more information.} so I will be good for a while.)
I do have a spare machine that I can experiment with Ubuntu 24.04 on. The main problem is that I don't have a lot of time.\footnote{If I did, you'd be reading issue \#12 of this zine, rather than issue \#3.} So yeah, I can install Ubuntu 24.04 and ooh and aah over whatever is new and shiny (and I admit, ``new and shiny'' was a big part of the reason I was so eager to update to 22.04---I'm a human and our eyes are quite naturally drawn to ``new and shiny''). But I don't have the needed time to fully experiment with it and determine if it is suitable to my needs (which range from ``needs to be perfect'' to ``needs to be just the right amount of shitty'') or if it's another disaster-in-waiting.
And yeah, the emphasis in the promotional material will focus on the ``new'' and the ``shiny'' because, like I said, human beings are just naturally attracted to those things. But \textit{new} and \textit{shiny} don't always translate to \textit{useful} and \textit{functional}. That was certainly true of 22.04 out of the box.
All of which is to say that it will be a \textit{long} time before I upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04. Canonical (the corporate interest behind Ubuntu) lost my trust with 22.04, and it's going to take a long time before they regain it. As the song says ``I won't get fooled again''. And that is assuming that they \textit{can} even regain it. (``Meet the new boss'' the other song goes; ``same as the old boss''.)
So yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Sometimes it's worth 22.04 of them.
\chapter{Coda}
\section{What I Learned About \LaTeX{} While Creating This Issue}
