bionic installed

I installed Kubuntu 18.04 LTS ("Bionic"), choosing the "Minimal installation" option in the Ubiquity installer. "Minimal" is kind of a stretch, turns out, but it's a good way to go -- provides the user with a nice, working system without some of the stuff that might not be wanted or needed.

I ended up with Kubuntu as the second distro in a dual-boot setup with Debian Stretch. I ran the installer from the live session by opening Konsole and using the ubiquity --no-bootloader command. Nice little trick.

The default Kubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop:

After some tweaking, my empty desktop, with vertical/left panel:

Konsole, showing off my neofetch:

I spent a good amount of time messing around with the System Settings, eventually getting things set up to my tastes. I'm running KDE Plasma with most of the desktop effects turned off. I've added a few apps -- Pale Moon, Geany, Double Commander, and some others.  I'm finding Kubuntu 18.04 to be an excellent release, in the live session as well as installed to the hard drive.

bionic live

A few shots of the live session of Kubuntu 18.04 LTS ("Bionic Beaver"), running from a flash drive on my HP 15 notebook.

The default KDE Plasma desktop, empty:

With the desktop right-click menu opened up:

KInfocenter:

Dolphin and Konsole:

Via Dolphin, it was easy to access my hard drive's partitions right from the live session.

Here, the main menu is opened up to the Live session user's Favorites (Kubuntu 18.04 ships with Firefox 59.0.2):

VLC played my wma and mp3 files (stored on another flash drive) with no problem:

Kubuntu 18.04 LTS performed fine from the live session. For kicks, I set up a few extra desktops, and played around with the desktop cube a little:

The official release announcement: https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-18-04-has-been-released/

so long, albuquerque journal

I am a former subscriber to the print edition of the Albuquerque Journal. Several years ago, for various reasons, I decided to stop having the paper delivered to me. I still go out and pick up a newspaper sometimes -- maybe two or three times per month -- but most of the time I simply visit abqjournal.com instead.

But today, I see this:

Nope. Screw that.

Okay, here's what happens whenever one of these news sites starts pulling crap like this: I stop visiting their websites. The End.

I refuse to subscribe to the digital edition, and I will not disable my ad blocker.

I have stopped visiting elpasotimes.com and other sites for pretty much the same reason. I'm able to view some of the articles from the El Paso Times online, but it seems that most of the articles can be viewed only by digital subscribers.

Perhaps it's a good business decision for these businesses to try to strong-arm people into paying to read digital content, or to attempt to get folks to disable ad blockers. I don't know, and I don't care. What I do know is that the approach doesn't work with me.

So, goodbye, Albuquerque Journal, at least for now. You aren't all that. Seriously.

I'll check back later to see if they stop doing this stuff, but frankly, there are too many other sources for news and information out there. People have choices. I'll continue to buy the print edition a few times per month, but other than that, they won't get any money from me. I'll get my news from someplace else.

road trip

Last weekend, I took a drive up around North-Central New Mexico. Very relaxing little road trip. From Albuquerque, I drove up I-25 to Las Vegas, then up NM 518, through the mountains -- a very beautiful section of the Carson National Forest. Then up to Taos, where I stayed at the quaint El Pueblo Lodge (website: https://elpueblolodge.com/).

The next morning, I took US 64 over to Eagle Nest Lake, then to Cimarron Canyon State Park. That's a gem of a park. Then back to NM 38, around the Enchanted Circle Drive up through Red River to Questa. Then back around on NM 38, down to US 64, and back to Taos. Another (mostly) quiet night at the El Pueblo, then back down NM 518 to Las Vegas, with several lingering stops along the way. Finally, I took I-25 back home.

I'm hoping to get back up that way later this year; driving up to this area is my favorite thing to do when I want to get away for some R&R, and it's one of the things I love most about living here in New Mexico.