ubuntu on the netbook, & another cold ride

For all my raving about Fedora Linux (see here & here), it's been less-than-ideal on the netbook; the Atheros wifi card has been locking up, and there have been other minor problems. Now that I can get a decent copy of an install file, I decided to try Ubuntu 11.10 on the netbook again. So in the midst of an insomniac night, I got a new copy, verified the md5sum, and installed it on the netbook, did all the updates and installs... and lo and behold, it's running nicely and the wifi card doesn't lock up (at least so far). And it turns out the controversial Unity Interface is written on top of a partially crippled Gnome, so a number of my tricks and tweaks are working. (E.g., I like the old interface where you could keep files on your desktop; newer programmers evidently like a cleaner look - or maybe newer devices don't support that - in any case, it's disable by defaults, and you have to jump through a number of hoops to turn it on again, but I was able to do it in both Fedora and Ubuntu.)

I feel like SuperHacker.

Short ride today, colder and windier than I would have thought. We started with five, and wound up with two: Ken decided to break off a bit over halfway, and Tom (the leader) and his sidekick Herb went to go investigate an accident site with an overturned car. Dave H and I made it the rest of the way back to Etra Park by ourselves. I've been thinking the desertions were a Hill Slugs thing, but now I'm beginning to think that I'm the omen... I'll be looking for a ride I do where all the same people finish that started.