Finally, a decent setup!

Well, almost.

I downloaded the Ubuntu 5.10 preview release the other day. Setup was smooth and simple, everything worked to a charm and I got a good system up and running in no time.

Except for a few kinks.

-> Java: Ubuntu 5.10 includes a free alternative to Java, whose compatibility must be real good, as it loaded Azureus without a hitch. However, uh... it's still to be optimized a bit. Had to switch back to the J2RE, adding a repository I found on the net. Somehow, Sun's package didn't work off the bat.
-> Printing: Blarg. Don't get me started here. It's just horrible. I spent a day looking for drivers (GOOD drivers that WORKED). Guess what. No luck. I'm thinking about going and buying TurboPrint, but it's unnerving having to PAY for something I've already paid for. Darn those EPSON people.
-> Japanese input: The Breezy repositories are still on the low, so this was quite annoying. I built scim with a few extras I wanted on my own. But it took me a darn good while until I could actually use it, as there wasn't much info on how to configure it. Google helped, though.

But now, it's really nifty: unlike before, I can perfectly type in Spanish, then switch over to Japanese. Oh well, it doesn't work in Emacs, but hey, it's not like I need it, and besides, that'd mean I'd have to switch to UTF-8 in there (and gcc does NOT like utf-8 encoded input files, no siree).

Also, the Anthy SCIM module is much better than the UIM-Anthy I was using before, it's pretty much the Windows IME ported to Linux. I also have a character pad and a handwriting tool (which is not too good, but hey).

The one thing I still have to get working is printing. I dunno, I just don't have the heart for it now. I think I'm going to work maybe on the recursive equation solver for a while.

Ja ne!