Minor Frustrations—Life Is Beautiful
The Good News Is That the Frustrations Are Minor
I ran into my first real frustrating Linux moments today, but the upshot is that it was a minor thing.
The Backstory: One of my co-workers is a bright young student teacher who, it occurred to me, might appreciate certain video files I have. So I thought to give her a copy. Strangely, though, something happened to one of the files—indeed, one of my favorites among the set—so that it experiences playback trouble, and the file cannot be copied because the issue originates with bad sectors that cannot be read or written. Normally, VLC Player fixes these problems, but on this occasion it cannot. I don't understand the nature of data degradation (it's stored on a WD Passport hard drive, if that makes any difference), but that's probably a different discussion.
So I had the all-too-brilliant (ha!) thought: I know, I'll torrent a new copy!
Problem: I haven't done much file sharing recently, and had not bothered with torrenting clients until, well, now.
Okay, I can figure this out.
The Frustrations: Ubuntu comes with a lightweight torrent client built in, called Transmission. Having never used any torrent client before, I sat and stared at the screen for a few minutes, having the, "Okay, what now?" conversation with myself.
But I'm not completely feeble. Having a brother who writes technical files for hardware and software, it suddenly occurs to me that, well, there should be a help file available, and, hell, I can certainly read a help file. Transmission's menu refers to an online help manual.
404.
Bastards!
Oh, well.
Okay, so, I already know that Transmission is bare-bones, and if I'm going to torrent, I might as well dive in deeper. So I call my brother and ask him the simple question; he recommended µTorrent. In his several years of torrenting, this is, in his opinion, far and away the best.
And, hey, that sounds great. Just dive into the best option and go from there.
Problem: µTorrent for Linux is currently in Server Alpha.
Apparently, the current version is being built for Linux specifically; one can run the Windows client via WINE. There came a point, though, as I reviewed the command line instructions—yeah, right ... ask me to use Synaptic and listen to me laugh—I decided to simply fuck it and move on to something else.
And, yes, I even know how to look around for older versions. If there are older versions of a Linux-specific build, I didn't find them, or, really, any reference to them. Then again, I didn't look that deeply into the world wide web.
As longtime Ubuntu users know, the Software Center replaced Synaptic in the build and besides, as I suggested, I haven't learned how to run Synaptic properly yet. So off we go to the tidy Software Center and, what do you know, qBittorrent is getting great user reviews.
Fine, I'll work with that.
Five minutes.
Actually, less, most likely.
But within five minutes I had installed, searched, finished cussing out the thousands of irrelevant searches, and begun a download of a five-gig archive of the files I needed. All of the files. Not just the one 350 MB file that had corrupted, but three seasons' worth of British television that I did not steal in the first place. And no, I have no conscience issues about software piracy in cases like this; I'm simply replacing existing files, and yes, I know people can reasonably pick nits about that outlook.
Still, though, it was a refreshing frustration because the situation did not force me to surrender. Sure, it took me ten minutes to figure out why µTorrent wasn't ... uh ... opening? ... working? ... doing anything at all? And then I felt stupid for not having noticed it was the Server pack. And that took me all of thirty seconds to finish the self-excoriation. Cussing out the Transmission folks? Hell, things go 404 all the time; life goes on. With Apple or Microsoft, there is always a CEO to cuss out. With Linux, not so much. Ubuntu saved a decent box from the dust of sitting unused in my closet. For a system relying on open-source, which means we can expect some problems, the problems haven't been nearly as frustrating as what I run into with Windows and Apple systems.
It's not so much a matter of, "So, I have to admit ...", but, rather, something of a celebration. Seriously: Oh, your user manual is now 404? Effing bastards! Yeah, big effin' deal. Oh, right. This isn't actually the software I need. Whoops. Big effin' deal.
When these are the frustrations of using a computer, it's not so much that I will survive, but, rather, that I ought to be jumping up and down, whooping at the clouds, praising the gods of Linux. Sure, in that moment, you smack yourself in the forehead, staring at the 404 in the span of a heartbeat, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. In the end, you're going to want a stronger application than the one whose help files have gone 404, anyway.
Move on, move on.
I like cloudy days. Life is beautiful. Hell, I might be getting better files than the glitchy ones I have been keeping for five years, moving from hard drive to hard drive when circumstances demand.
And the point is that I can do this. Seems to me that nearly anyone should be able to do this. Especially if you're smart enough to pay attention to which software pack you're downloading, a faculty that apparently escapes my grasp. I mean, really, I could have skipped the whole µTorrent chapter and gone from 404 to downloading the file I wanted in under five minutes, except that I'm apparently oblivious to certain minor but important details.