Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness? - <AUTHOR> Even in a CS class (in this part of the world anyway), not so many people might be as interested in coding as you are. It's therefore you and your laptop mostly, with the effect that you lag behind in developing social skills (I sometimes feel like an 8 year old among teenagers). The loneliness even saps my programming energy. Does anyone else experience the same, and how do you cope with it, including bringing yourself to interacting with members of the opposite sex?<p>EDIT: Not suicidal or anything like that. Just want to hear you opinions. <comment><USER2> Use your loneliness as an advantage. How? Being lonely means that you don't belong to any group and are free to move as you see fit. This is what I did, and it worked.

I assume that you start from 0 friends (I did, since I moved to another country some months ago). Start knowing someone close and easy: classmates, colleagues, occasional acquaintances, but beware not to be stuck with someone as lonely as you. Your objective is to expand from there. You can also go to special events or meetups made for people who want to know other people. Or go to some course for something you like (I dance Tango, for example). Once you know someone, try to go out with these people as much as you can: they will have other friends you can be introduced to.

Parties are a good way of doing this. Me and my friends occasionally host dinners or small parties in our houses. People are encouraged to bring new friends, which allows you to know more people. If nobody of your friends organizes some party, start the trend. If you have 3 friends and they bring a new one each, you will be already a group of 7, which is enough for a dinner/small party. Organizing one is really easy, you just need a living room, some snacks/food, some drinks.

This will almost solve your loneliness problems from a friends point of view. Members of the other sex specifically are a little more complicated. But if you do as I described above you will definitely be able to know some. After a while you can start going out alone with them. For example, I am dating some girls I met at the tango course and at some party. I know couples who formed this way.

<comment><USER3> If you like dancing, then I too highly recommend dancing! A majority of my (admittedly largely disastrous) romantic life was based on dancing. Note: this only works if you like it and you're good at it. The latter often results naturally from the former.

Parties are also great. My current relationship was the result of going to a School of Public Health crêpe party.

<comment><USER4> Seconded for Dancing. But you don't have to be good at it...

Everyone who starts learning the Waltz or ChaCha (or Swing, or Tango) is appalling at it. And it's pretty liberating to be in a group of people all of whom are happy klutzes.

At my (pretty tech-centric) university, the dance club had over 2000 members : the key selling point for the guys being 'girls like to dance'. And learning steps together has a logic component (so it's satisfying to see yourself getting better), but also a huge WTF component - which takes everyone out of their comfort zone in a good way.

Don't worry about the excellent dancers showing off : they'll be taking other classes.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say great or excellent, just good. If you don't like it, you won't get good. Competence is sexy. Shared WTF will get you started, but that's about it. Shared passion is another level entirely.

<comment><USER4> Agreed - and I'd be the first to admit that I personally took getting competent too far (and that in itself starts getting less social, since it's hours of practice each week with just one partner).

However, the basic initial win for the OP is to get out of the house, and have a blast learning something with a bunch of other people. The aim doesn't have to be to get good - it's a major step just to turn up. I was just trying to suggest that every beginner will be in much the same boat. IMHO, learning to dance is a much easier social activity than 'going to parties', for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're a programmer right? You build web apps and stuff? When you build one and launch it out into the world, do you expect everyone to drop everything and flock to your website? I hope not. You need to reach out, as uncomfortable as it might be, and engage people. It's hard work.

Now let's take your personal life. When you're at your computer most of the day, do you expect people to magically gravitate to you and be your friend? If so, you're living in a Field of Dreams. You're fooling yourself.

Try Rejection Therapy: <http://www.rejectiontherapy.com>. It's like a radical new form of networking. I've heard so many amazing stories of people pushing past their fear to make a rejection, and it ends up starting an amazing new friendship.

Stop being attached to outcomes. Stop being obedient to fear. Stop driving down that same road, day after day. You'll end up in the same lonely destination. Put on the 4 wheel drive and start off-roading into new territory. It's exhilarating.

People want to meet you, but you have to meet them halfway.

For inspiration, look at how this guy does it: <http://sneakylittlefox.tumblr.com/>

<comment><USER6> Absolutely agree with this. And I'll add to it also, if I may (it might seem slightly off-topic at first, but there is a point)

I used to be very shy (I still am in some specific ways) and one of the consequences I didn't realise at the time is that I had no idea where my true boundaries were.

So I challenged myself to discover them with initially small tasks; stuff as basic as "keeping eye contact when handing over change to a clerk" that sort of thing. I'd then progress to starting conversations with people in queues, going to bars on my own and trying to make friends and so on and so forth.

I'm very aware that at all points to an outsider I was probably acting a little weird (in the same way that someone learning to rollerskate looks a bit silly), but progressively these tests pushed my boundaries further and further. I even turned it into a bit of a game, trying to find more and more elaborate ways to make myself uncomfortable... I soon discovered that no matter how nerve-wracking and scary these encounters were, I never ended up harmed.

The net result is a compound benefit a/ the confidence to be able to the social things I want b/ a million amusing anecdotes to tell new people I meet when I do those things. Now it's pretty hard to be lonely, because it's easy to strike up a great conversation with almost anyone and find some amusing/interesting common ground.

Hope that helps a little.

<comment><USER7> The little tasks you assigned to yourself to try and tackle at least the low hanging fruit are in a way core to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT is the most often used form of psychotherapy not in small part due to its reported effectiveness. It's great to hear your story, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've met brilliant 30+ year olds who were still on the 8 year old level you describe.

You need to adjust your value system until you don't feel like you've been wasting time by working on yourself rather than your software project.

Be prepared for horrible failures in the same fashion that you expect segfaults the first few hundred times you code in assembly. Segfaults wouldn't shake your confidence, neither should a girl who is either not interested or openly annoyed by you.

Take a lot more risk and be prepared to fail hard and make a total moron out of yourself. You will still feel better than just cocooning yourself.

Listen. Don't judge the cool, preppy, jock, whatever guys, observe what they do and how they talk, dress, etc. You're not trying to be like them, but you're just learning like you are when you are reading source code or reference manuals.

Do not intellectually dominate. You will draw attention to yourself and lose all the opportunity to learn. Observe other people's sense of humor. Is yours too confined to stuff only the reddit crowd would laugh at?

Read bullshit magazines like Maxim. There is so much crap in there, but there's some truth too and they are very direct about it.

Ideally, try to get a good friend who is a girl and not a geek. Forget about ever hooking up with this girl, she is there just to give you feedback on how you look like when you say or do some things and how your appearance/dress affects others. If you have a sister/cousin, even better, ask for feedback.

</comment><comment><USER8> I went through 14 years of Catholic schools before going to university.

When I started out, I realised that everyone else was new like me so I took initiative and introduced people to each other, etc. At the time I was very excited about going there because I would meet new people, people like me.

People kinda picked up on that vibe when I started I guess. To be honest, I normally wasn't like that. But anyway, I realised quickly that if you are the kind of person who is seen as friendly, approachable, etc. then people will want to hang out with you, and invite you to things, etc.

An important thing to realise as well is, you don't really have a lot of common interests to be friends with people. I've met great people over the years who were totally different to me. Having things in common helps but, relationships in general to me are more about understanding, not checking off a list of things we both like.

Being on your laptop really isn't an excuse not to socialise. Most of my time in my CS classes was spent in the lab, with a laptop sure, but I mean people need to eat and of course have their all important coffee breaks... or even just to get up and walk around for a bit. The thing is, if you're seen to just spend all your time alone / on your laptop then people will just assume things like you're busy / don't want to be disturbed etc.

As for members of the opposite sex, well, I can say that things got better for me as I got older. It might seem like a really big deal now but when you look back years later, you might not feel that way.

For approaching women, dating, etc, know that chances are if you're new to the game, you will screw up. That's nothing to be worried about or take personally though.

I see you're doing CS so I mean, chances are when you started programming you will have made mistakes along the way, even basic syntax errors. Heck, you can still write software for years and still make mistakes. So I mean, it's like anything really just practice and you'll get better.

<comment><USER9> Focus on creating a coed group of friends, it makes it far easier to get feedback from both sexes, as well as expand it from both sides. If you're capable of being a friend with a girl, it makes it much easier to sustain a more complicated relationship. Then again I had an odd group of friends where exs tended to stay friends. (I had 4 exs as guests at my wedding.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's something that worked for me: salsa dancing. It's fun, and good music, and it's a great way to meet lots of women in a brief span of time, if you go to the right sort of places (avoid the ones where it's all about seasoned couples showing off their repertoire of crazy moves). Also, you learn to shrug off the 'no thanks' that you'll of course receive. I should also add that it's an acquired skill, and very much about a man dancing with a woman, so it's not like dancing in some random place where everyone sort of shuffles around in tune to the music.

<comment><USER9> I've done salsa, but always preferred swing. At least in Philly, the salsa crowd takes it self far more seriously, and the swing dancing crowd seems to attract more of an intellectual crowd.

On the same note, the salsa events tend to be at nightclubs/bars, while the swing events are at dance floors. I suspect I just prefer the environment.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I suspect finding the right environment is the important thing. In Padova, a friend and I found a really great bar where they do salsa, which was full of people having a good time rather than people showing just how awesome their talents were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company." - Satre

<comment><USER12> I don't know how this should help. There's a difference between social isolation and not being able to be alone from time to time.

<comment><USER11> It helped me. I think it depends on someone's outlook on being alone is. I am an introverted guy so I enjoy being alone more than being with other people (small company is fine occasionally). Some of the bad feelings some people have towards being alone comes from the social pressure of "if you are alone something is wrong with you".

If you can get over the feeling that there is nothing wrong with being alone, you might actually enjoy being alone.

But of course everyone is different. This might not work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Coping with loneliness is a temporary fix(speaking from experience here), you have to get rid of it.

Im not sure exactly how, but during the last 6-7 years(im 21) I've slowly transformed from the typical socially awkward super shy nerd kid, to a somewhat social friendly nerd. It didn't happen in a day, i just slowly opened up to people, I slowly learned the social rules, practiced them, and now i speak social as a second language, even though i still have a strong nerd accent. Even though i still prefer to be alone in my room on my PC, with my slime repl, i still get drunk with my friends at least once every two weeks, or go out to play pool, or hang out in coffe shops, or go to lan parties.

</comment><comment><USER14> I got out of my self-induced mode of minimal outside contact by regularly (3x times a week) going to the climbing gym. You go regularly, you meet a bunch of people who regularly go, and there is no pressure to do anything but chat about your common interest, rock climbing. It's fun to hang out in a casual way with people when there is a focus...Some people like to casually hang out at parties and don't need an activity, but that isn't me.

With an example like the rock gym, you can take it as far as you want. You can just be friendly and another regular at the gym, or you can slowly work your way into climbing trips with other regulars, etc. Not to mention, you get in great shape.

BTW, you can replace rock gym with ____ readily (above comments mention dancing), the key is to have a common activity that is fun and lends itself to interaction, learning how to break the ice, etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Join a few meetup groups in the city. For example, there might be technical meetup groups about Linux, Python etc as well as non-technical meetup groups about a ton of interesting activities like music or food or various hobbies. Various foreign language conversation groups can also be interesting. I found a few meetups through meetup.com and Craigslist and even started one or two.

The other suggestion would be to maintain the friendships you already have! Don't forget them even if you are in a new city now. I regularly call up old friends and my family and ask how they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Start small, learn how to make small talk when you're out and about, shop assistants that sort of thing, get used to talking with strangers.

Learn to listen, this is _the_ secret to getting on with females. The other secret, when they tell you about a problem, don't immediately give them your suggestion for a solution, often you're being talked at, don't think you're being asked for an answer, you almost never are.

The only way to develop social skills is ... get out and about and interact, find people with common interests, above all make an effort. The onus is on you to do all the work.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have no specific advice for you but I had a similar experience during my youth and I can convey some advice that an old mentor gave me at the time:

If you find something you are passionate about and share it with others you will not have to find friends, they will find you.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are you willing to hang around with _any_ people that don't mind you hanging around? If not, then your loneliness is a choice. Maybe an unconscious one but still, a choice. In that case you have _chosen to value_ your alone time more than the social time with people you possibly don't click with. At this point you are aware of something you feel you deserve, having rejected the things you feel you don't deserve.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was in your situation a couple of months ago, but I realized that joining a club/team is the easiest way to meet people who share the same interests as you.

If you want to meet other programmers or people who are similar to you, join a CS or Robotics club. If you want to meet different kinds of people, join a sports team.

I noticed that tech people tend to float towards techy things, but a whole variety of people do sports, and that trend was visible both in high school and university. On my dragon boat team, there are people from every faculty on the team, even other CS people.

So it depends on how you want to meet people. Staying in your room programming is definitely not going to make you meet new people. If you want to know a lot of different people, a team is your best bet, because they usually have team- building games or social events where they go out to eat or have fun.

</comment><comment><USER20> a friend told me once that "friendship is based on trust and mutual interests". maybe not 100% true, but not a bad starting point i think.

it is easy to work on these. just look at people you tend to trust easily, and eminate the qualities that allow you to trust them. (act well grounded, speak slowly and softly, look people in the eyes when talking to them, act caring)

nurturing broad interests is also not too hard: decide often you think somehting is interesting... nobody likes everything, but not liking (or disliking) something clearly raises barriers in getting to know new people. for instance i dont care much for football (soccer), actually i dont care much for sports in general: by this i miss out on a lot of easy socializing. [i consider to start liking sports just for this reason]

for making intimate relations (opposite sex or same sex, im openminded here) i suggest using the friendship route. just build a friendship, but make sure to let know you are interested in getting intimate in a polite manner: a long hug, a kiss on the cheek, a hand kiss, expressing you really like him/her. rejection is not a big of a deal when you build friendship first -- it is not bad to have friends that you would like to get intimate with but are not.

it helps to get intimate with people if you feel comfy with your body. so dance, practice yoga, taichi, sports, gym, or what ever... i prefer dance. :)

please let me know if this was helpful advice.

</comment><comment><USER21> How old are you and where do you live?

This is similar to how I felt during my two-three years of university.

Some people already suggested that, but I will repeat: \- find a hobby outside of computers (like Salsa) \- sign up in an NGO (Toastmasters, AIESEC in my case) \- cut off internet cord to force yourself to program outside of your home \- absolutely remove all instant messengers, ircs etc. if you want to socialize with people then go out and eat lunch with them. if you don't know any people irl (or afk ;) then go and meet some on networking meetings / parties

Perhaps the most important thing is that you need to broaden your horizons. I know it may sound like a heresy, but a good programmer is a one that "feels the real world". If you lack social skills and you lack interests outside of programming then this _will_ influence the quality of your work.

Why? For one - you will have problems working in a team of programmers. Two - if you're into anything else than low-level systems programming then you will need to interact with people who are not programmers. Not understanding normal users will hurt your career a lot.

Oh - and if your city doesn't have enough people interested in programming then move as soon as possible. Living far away from a community will hurt a lot (if you want to be really good).

</comment><comment><USER12> Often it's a vicious circle. You're shy, introverted with a lack of self esteem. So you start avoiding social interaction. Also if you're in an interaction you can't enjoy it. You often are afraid to act non-conformal. Avoidance leads to less self-esteem and social skills and so on.

You need to tackle the problem on all fronts.

1) This is about your learned behaviour. You have to relearn. As some mentioned before, do some training. Stuff like going out alone. There're programs for stuff like that. Do it professional! That's the most important thing right now in your life! Don't rely only on internet ressource, even if they can be a great inspiration. Go to a therapist if you think that your shyness (or social phobia) is a problem, e.g. if you can't go to salsa dancing because you're to shy. You _must_ break the avoidance circle.

2) Work on your own thinking process. Often, people don't know their own needs or don't dare to stand up for them and try to compensate by being great to get attention. That's a dead-end street. If you don't understand how you "work", the training ( 1) ) can only be of shallow impact. It's really important to unveil your thougts and emotions. I like the Yoga approach very much. To me, it's sound and practical. swamij.com is the greatest resource on the planet. It's a lot and takes time to understand. You could start at the articles about Karma. The kind of awareness and unattachment you step by step achieve makes you stronger. Stronger to understand and handle your legitimate desires. (which does not mean, supress them. In your case, don't supress your loneliness but go out to socialise. But overcome your fear and go to the salsa dancing event.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't tell you the number of times that Hacker News has helped lift my day. Also, going to a coffee shop with a book works short-term wonders. There are times where I question my short-term goals (finish client work) when they prevent me from hanging out with friends (deadline).

Get a cat or a dog. Sitting alone in my house with my crazy cat is better than being alone.

</comment><comment><USER23> I will also echo the advice to start dancing. It will teach you much more about male and female interactions (particularly intimate ones) then just "going to parties"; the only other subject matter I know of that would do it faster is Pick Up. You also make a lot of really great friends who love to have fun. There's nothing like going to the Salsa club on a Thursday and Friday night with your "Salsa group" and dancing away the night till 3AM - sure beats being lonely to me.

I really like what DeusExMachina had to say about using your loneliness as an advantage. You are free to move about and if you learn how to be secure in that as well as socially capable "on-the-fly" you will be able to go anywhere and do anything without fear of people and without fear of no-people. You are in a much better place than just "loneliness" and all it takes is a shift in your attitude towards it (IMHO) for something to blossom from it.

\----

Here's a bit of my own story, maybe it will help give you some perspective:

I'm naturally a loner, I prefer to be self-sufficient but love very much having fun with people that know me; I believe in personal autonomy and freedom from the need for peer-based validation that many of us are raised to seek. I believe friendships are healthier when they are "I want" rather than "I need".

I wasn't always so calm and confident about my social presence though. Five years ago, a new city, and loner behavior had me yearning for a social outlet - I had just moved to Vegas, which is (in addition to my social short-comings) notorious for its cold social climate and hidden, niche social groups.

After deciding that I was definitely depressed I made my mind up to remedy the silly situation. I remember coming across a website called meetup.com and quickly started searching for one of my favorite activities [hiking] on their website. A year later, I was happier, had many more casual friends and was going on three to four weekly hikes all around Las Vegas (Vegas is _awesome_ for outdoors because it is so close to many great locations). I was also being constantly invited out to singles parties, volleyball games, bbqs, and 2AM treks by moonlight to the Goldstrike hotsprings on the Colorado river. I'm also an avid snowboarder and had a number of great bonding experiences with some of my regular hiking buddies doing that.

All of this though and my interaction with the opposite sex was still lacking and uneventful - I was wanting more fulfillment there.

Then, one day, a hiking acquaintance emailed me and said I should try out Salsa dancing; interested, I showed up for a Tuesday night class, fumbled like an idiot (we all do for the first three weeks) but really enjoyed the experience. The next class was Friday night and the class was going to go to a local Salsa club afterward. FYI, it's particularly helpful, when starting out, to go with your class to a club because it provides you with other newbie women to dance with and people to shoot-the-shit with on the sidelines when you don't feel like dancing. This is _very_ important because experienced Salsa dancers tend to ignore the noobs - much more so women than men, because if you can't lead there's no dance.

The class+club experience changed me for life. I forced myself to "scout" the club and get up the balls to ask a girl to dance. That act is one of the most frightening in the world; I've done back country powder runs off of 60ft cliffs and that doesn't even compare to the feeling of walking up to a gorgeous (even more gorgeous when she's dancing), critical, and experienced woman and asking her for a dance - especially after having watched her be lead like a pro by another hot, well dressed, and experienced dancer. But you do it and do it again and sooner or later your dancing will get better and the regulars at the club will remember you - women who dance regularly at a club go there for connection, so being goofy, fun and conversive on the dance floor won me their affections. Unlike a lot of men, I also had the balls to ask them for a dance; I was also improving very quickly.

I'm now at the point where I dance for a Salsa team, made numerous casual friendships, and had made a couple of girlfriends out of those I met while dancing. Salsa is a social hobby, I do it casually like most people go to the movies except I'm using my body, meeting fun people, and interacting with the opposite sex in an intimate manner most of us in the West don't get to do _anywhere_ else. Salsa, if you love it, will become a big part of your life.

I won't bore everyone with the rest of my personal life story but I do hope this is an inspiring comment for you and anyone else that ever "deals" with their loneliness rather than actually embracing it and doing something about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Like many responding I understand your situation at least in part. One thing that helped me during my lonelier times was mailing lists. If you have a specific interest, see if you can find a mailing list hwere you'll find people with similar interests and geekiness. For me that was music, for you it could be something different entirely.

It may sound strange but I find a lot of friendship just in people's words - old books that I've carried with me through the years, literary critics, dead philosophers, internet famous (like PG) programmers who I've never met in person, and so on. An essay like "Why nerds are unpopular" goes a long way to getting some perspective on why you might be different.

Finally, as others mentioned, use the loneliness to your advantage. There may come a time where you're married with kids and your blissful moments of quiet come when you're on the can.

This too shall pass, make the most of it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Go see your family. If you can't, find a good housemate.

Also, host parties or social gatherings in your home.

Hosting a party in your home is great practice if you have trouble socially. It takes some work and planning, but most anyone can learn to do it. It forces you to take some responsibility for entertaining guests, and to relax ssome of the control you maintain over your personal domain. You won't be able to spend the entire time avoiding attention.

It does help, though, to have handy at least one socially outgoing person who is comfortable leading conversation beyond the typical introductory chit-chat.

Oh, and it doesn't have to be a drinking party or a dinner party. You might gather to play games (card/video/board), discuss books, or watch sports, TV shows, or a movie. I mention sports and TV shows because they're more conducive to breaks for conversation than a movie.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do you lag in developing social skills?

I have met very social people that moved to a new place, had 0 friends and you know what? they made new friends on weeks time(I'm talking from Spain). Do they have so good "social skills", no. The reason they made new friends quickly is because they love people and enjoyed being with other people instead of staying home thinking about excuses.

Your laptop, CS class is no excuse. Just remember, no excuses, just go out and meet people. If your brain stops you, refuse to think and do it, experience, don't plan. People is going to see you are alone,face it like a man, but it will change fast as you make new friends.

</comment><comment><USER27> Being lonely is easily one of the best things that has ever happened to me. When I was in high school I was quite social, never found myself alone.

Since high school I have become an entrepreneur. I can count the number of friends I have on one hand (not including acquaintances) - and I'm 100% fine with that. The more relationships you actively participate in, the less time you have to code, work, and change the world.

Just make sure you have enough really close friends to count on one hand and you're fine :) I'm always glad to be your friend too! email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a ACM club or something similar (robotics perhaps?) at your school? If not, it can't hurt to try to start one and attract others with the same problem as you. You never know how many others at your school may be feeling the same way, even if it's just a couple others.

disclaimer: if you do start a club, make sure it doesn't become too elitist or cultish, I felt really out of place because I didn't know anything at a robotics club before, but once the seniors left we restructured it to be more inviting to folks with a will to learn.

</comment><comment><USER29> I had this problem 4 years ago. I joined a fraternity. It was awesome. Was it juvenile sometimes? Yes. Was it one of the best decisions I've ever made? Yes. It greatly widened my social circle and introduced me to people I'd never have met otherwise. Plus, I met my soon to be wife from a function there. I never would have met her slogging through engineering.

Also, I've been in the work force about a year and a half, and I think the social skills I learned were probably more important in the long run than the technical ones.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have the exact same problem in my CS class. I cope with the issue by coming to HN or more recently, by reading up stuff on programming related sub-reddits (/r/programming, /r/python etc.).

<comment><USER7> I am ill and bed-ridden right now otherwise I wouldn't have time to comment so much on HN or read reddit.

I am not sure your "real-world" social skills will improve through reading reddit. It takes real time investment and accepting that you will fumble, fail and make a lot of mistakes. HN people often talk about how domain expertise rarely transfer easily into another domain and here's a perfect example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You may come to find that 95% of people are assholes anyway. And the remaining 5% are perfect assholes. I don't too much believe in friends just different people with different agendas. I would say of all the people I've met in my life >=.01% where for any period of time actually friends. If anything work on diplomacy and worry about yourself. As for members of the other sex, just remember they're after the same thing you are only thing is their brains are fu¢ked.

<comment><USER32> Sucks to be you. Enjoy life my friend, is not as bad you might think :)

<comment><USER33> I doubt he doesn't enjoy life. It's possible to enjoy life with such attitude too. And actually it's quite easy.

And no emotional hangover after "friends" fail you!

<comment><USER34> You and the OP both have some serious issues. Don't listen to either of them.

Actually, the two of you have a lot in common. Maybe you guys should be friends!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you are still in college, do _study abroad_.

It's a great way to meet new people, both from your home country and the country you are visiting. Living in one country you get accustomed to a certain way of life, so this can help you break out of your comfort zone to try new things. Studying abroad was really an eye opening experience for me; definitely one of the best decisions I ever made.

Also, have you tried dancing? :) As Woody Allen said, "80 percent of success is showing up."

</comment><comment><USER36> Some suggestions:

1\. Go to events that thematically match your interests. If you're an university student, that probably will be attending student conference or science fair. You'll definitely find people like yourself there. It helps if you participate and show your work to others. I met a number of smart people this way. 2\. Considering getting in some research group. Not only you will find people to talk to, but also it will help you grow professionally.

</comment><comment><USER34> _Even in a CS class (in this part of the world anyway), not so many people might be as interested in coding as you are._

So you're having trouble relating to people because they're not as interested in coding as you are? Sounds like what you really need is a broader range of interests.

I can't tell you what you should be interested in. All I can tell you is that there's a lot more to life than sitting around coding, and university is the perfect time to experience it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Get a job outside the dorm/studio/home to fill your free time. Get a cat. Play RPG games.

(not being sarcastic, that's how I dealt with my five years of university)

<comment><USER38> Upvoted, but I have a small disagreement: do NOT take a cat (or any animal) while lonely. You won't truly get rid of loneliness, but you will decrease your motivation (by providing small distractions). Animals are fun, but get friends first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Join a volunteer group, or perhaps a church (that actually does something useful). Mix with non computer people, and contribute to your community. You will feel better about yourself, and help others. Appreciate what others do for school or a living, and they will appreciate what you do, rather than try to run a rivalry.

</comment><comment><USER40> Get a dog. Seriously. Cures loneliness. Great prep for human relationships. Also puppies are people magnets.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not practicing it, but you can always go to a totally different place where you can just be a more social person (gym, some art class, etc).

OTOH, I'm do not envy those folks that are friends of everyone and anyone. Frequently they are lonely too, on a deeper level.

</comment><comment><USER42> Whenever I feel lonely I review this classic comment from proggit:

[http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac295/fractastical/ui2ik9...](http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac295/fractastical/ui2ik9181fa766dviewattth12365bf99d5.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER43> I know how you feel.

When I went to university I went to a different city, I was completely lonely. Back then, I decided to focus only on the course and tried to learn as much as I could. As a result I've got several friends. Good times :)

</comment><comment><USER44> I party/get drunk with my non-programmer friends at least once every 3 weeks.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is precisely how and possibly the best answer I've ever heard: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs>

</comment><comment><USER46> Beside Salsa dancing (where I met my girlfriend 3 years ago), I can also recommend meetin.org - at least for people who are 25 or older it's a great way to meet people and hang out.

</comment><comment><USER47> in my experience it has been moments these that have forced me to grow, forced my out of my comfort zone. more often then not resulting in new friends.

its a lot like traveling alone verses traveling with friends. if you have friends around you are less likely to talk to those around you.. conversely when you alone.. the only way to meet others is to talk to them.

over time i became better at it, and now i almost prefer to start out someplace alone, slowly building new relationships.

</comment><comment><USER48> being un lonely all starts with your own operations ...

first decide what you'll do ... ONLY THEN .. who to bring along

and theres MUCH subcontext that gets conveyed through communications

if you believe you're lonely .. thats going to seep out into your interactions

so find hobbies to unlone yourself ! lol

im also a big fan of IRC ... ive added tons of Facebook friends from IRC channels ... AND they're got really quality topics to talk about

</comment><comment><USER49> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity>

</comment><comment><USER50> Check out meetup.com - I expect you will find there are local meetups of programmers in your area.

</comment><comment><USER51> I got a dog. Seriously. I'm cured.

</comment><comment><USER52> there's beer out there. go forth.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm in a similar situation. Although I got it pretty much under control.

\----Long story alert----

Back in high school, in-class socialising with little out-of-school chit chats was enough for me. Few meetups here or there and the rest of time knees-deep in code and/or listening to music.

After high school I went freelancing and traveling way (2 foreign countries in different continents in 2 years, back in my home country now). Living 10k kilometers away from everybody you know is quite a loneliness :) I handled it quite well the first time, but got stuck quite worse the next time (too rural area). Also had same problems when moved back home - some old friends went abroad, some are quite different people now.

\----Long story alert----

tl;dr been lonely badly in foreign places, managed to fix that

Few things that didn't work:

\- Be dragged into parties I didn't like (theme or people) - there's nothing worse than mandatory socialising

\- Locking myself in and working all around the clock

\- Choosing money/savings over going out/socialising/traveling - you can't work unless you're sane. Saving in this area causes lower productivity and even less food on the table in the long run. Although it's always possible to go out cheaper :)

Few things that did work (works best when you use few of them!):

\- Get out of town. Cycling and hiking works best for me. It's a nice way to keep yourself busy, while enjoying new experiences. Also, it's easy to socialize this way. Just say Hi! to anyone on the trial. Small chit chat will follow naturally. And health benefits is a nice bonus!

\- Go to public parks, squares etc. Take a book or whatever (no headphones, this will cut your off from outside world) and just hang out there. Even if you're not lucky to score some random conversions, being around other people gives that warm socialising feeling

\- Hit the streets. Just go for a walk. Better hit busy downtown streets - more possibilities for conversations, more being-around-other-people feeling. Again, without headphones/music works better.

\- Pick up an indoor hobby. Reading, building models... Whatever works for you (although for me PC-based hobbies didnt work well..) Just enjoy yourself.

\- Rock shows. Enjoy music, get a few drinks, talk to random people, party.. Evening well spent + maybe new friends or at least socialising/being in a crowd feeling :) Not sure about non-rock music based events, never been there.

\- Hit the bars. Go to bars alone and start talking to strangers. Although this is one of the hardest things, requires a lot of courage :) But results are quite good.

edit: messed up smth with formatting, looks ok now...

</comment><comment><USER53> I cope badly.

I've had to work from home since a few months, because of a strange allergy reaction at work.

It is depressing.

This seems to be the only major city on the planet where there aren't lots of nice cafes to work from. Otherwise, that is what I would do.

I've noted the same effect in others and also hopes for good answers to your question.

For the record: I like people but have limits, since I'm really quite introvert.

<comment><USER7> The comfort of being alone and not interacting awkwardly currently outweighs your resolve to solve this problem.

It's hard to self-diagnose with introversion, you might just be seriously depressed and not willing to admit it to yourself, but I don't know you at all so all this is maybe BS.

<comment><USER53> Good thinking; you are often wrong when generating hypotheses about yourself and they are hard to test.

But I've seen it in myself at other times over the last decades, too.

(I didn't know introspection was harder for introverted? Reference?)

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say introspection was harder for introverted and I definitely would have no reference for that.

It's just that introversion is a personality trait whose meaning was overloaded by pop-culture and pop-psychology. Stuff by Freud, Jung, Eyesenck, Myers-Briggs, etc. is useful to know as much as it is useful to know about the work done at Xerox in the 70s and 80s. Informative and a foundation for later work, but by no means current.

This [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers- Briggs_Type_Indicator#Rel...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers- Briggs_Type_Indicator#Reliability)

will tell you about just how inaccurate it is to take a classic test like MBTI. While there is something to be said about personality traits and nature vs nurture, Psychological Types are so 1923.

There was a lot more concrete research done in the last 20 years on depression and related mood disorders as it is somewhat of a modern-day plague (OK plague is too harsh, can someone help me with a disease analogy here?).

<comment><USER53> I was trying to use the term "introverted", which isn't exclusive to Myers- Briggs. Sorry for the confusion.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introverted>

<comment><USER7> Cool, understood. Just keep in mind that most psychologists will tell you that you are (or you can be) by and large in full control of your personality traits and that these things can change dramatically through your life, either through your conscious decision or through environmental influences.

So to make a determination over why you are the way you are based on how you perceive yourself in terms of a personality trait category that (Jung or not) is related to the Psychology of Types is doing a bit of that self-fulfilling prophecy.

There's nothing wrong with preferring to keep to yourself and socialize less frequently, but perhaps it would be wise to rule out other hypotheses (like, really really convince yourself that there's not something else bothering you in life). That's as far as I can speculate, because although I might claim you might not be consciously aware of the whole story, I am even less aware, it's just a pattern that I noticed with some friends and some of them, years later, refer to those periods as periods of depression, some of them even talked to a good psychologist about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> When I was at Purdue University, Molecular Biology is just as lonely, I joined an International House a fraternity that housed us and non us students in one place with weekly parties.

The weekly parties were set up as cultural exchanges where we had interesting meals, presentations and social gatherings.

If it is a State or non-state USA college I am sure that one of these types of fraternities exists to help the social interaction aspect.</comment>


Distribution of Law School Graduate Starting Salaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.mymoneyblog.com/distribution-of-law-school-graduate-starting-salaries.html

<comment><USER2> Another commonly overlooked fact is that many law schools contact recent graduates who have yet to find employment and offer them brief opportunities to assist professors with research projects for $20/hour. Other schools offer to subsidize internships with public defenders' offices for similar pay. These outreach programs invariably coincide with the period when U.S. News and other organizations start doing their surveys for yearly law school rankings. Apparently, these programs are enough to count recent graduates as "employed" for the sake of rankings.

Truth be told, recessions hit the legal profession early and hard. Anyone considering going to law school and waiting out the recession should carefully weight their options. Obtaining a law degree is an expensive and time- consuming process that provides little guarantee that good jobs will be available upon graduation. I graduated from a great law school in 2009 and found good work, but I have several classmates that were not so lucky.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most interesting aspect of this is that starting salaries follow a bimodal distribution, with one cluster around $50K and another around $165K. This is very unusual. You would think that lawyers would follow a normal distribution, peaking in the middle, but instead the salaries suggest that there are a bunch of stars and a bunch of laggards, with very few falling between the two extremes. Bottom line: law school is very risky. If you don't reach the $165K starting peak, you fall off the cliff.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the article? The reason it's bimodal is because there are two distinct, significant employer types that make up the endpoints: large, prestigious firms with fixed $160k starting salaries on one end and the government on the other end. Small firms and independent attorneys fill the gaps in the range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140283>

tl;dr: Law schools are liars.</comment>


What I Learned from Tickling Apes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/opinion/sunday/what-i-learned-from-tickling-apes.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> Problem is that many people feel a desperate need to be special. A thought that an animal can have same feelings, thoughts and behaviors is terrifying to them. Especially if that person have been raised in western culture.

</comment><comment><USER3> He learned how to bait people into his views about anthropomorphism.

<comment><USER4> > Laughter? Now wait a minute! A real scientist should avoid any and all > anthropomorphism, which is why hard-nosed colleagues often ask us to change > our terminology. Why not call the ape's reaction something neutral, like, > say, vocalized panting? That way we avoid confusion between the human and > the animal.

These "real scientists" seem very anthropocentric in their rules about not anthropomorphizing animals.

I feel like he's attacking a straw man ... I'd rather hear more about these anthropocentric real scientists he's railing against, his railing isn't doing much for me without context.

<comment><USER5> For some context do a search for "infant surgery without anesthesia". Allegedly infant surgeries were routinely done without anesthesia into the 70's. It was believed babies do not really feel pain and we are just anthropomorphizing their reflexive responses. Anthropomorphization is a real phenomena that needs to be taken into account but so is the use of skepticism as a tool for rationalizing established beliefs.

<comment><USER6> > It was believed babies do not really feel pain

Or maybe it was because too many anesthesia can easily kill a baby and the other option was seen as safer and better for his/her life. Not all in the history of the humanity is necessarily related with the new painphobia wave.

In any case that history about paralized babies and evil surgeons seems entirely or mostly faked to me, telled in the most truculent way possible to elicit a visceral reaction and attract donors or gain social cookies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Many ways to answer a physics questions.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mycoted.com/There_are_many_correct_ways_to_answer_a_test_question

<comment><USER2> Very amusing! Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Cloak VPN is now Encrypt.me - <AUTHOR> https://blog.encrypt.me/2017/08/30/introducing-encryptme/ <comment><USER2> Odd that they would rebrand since the Cloak brand was pretty well established (unless this is an acquisition in disguise). Any ideas behind the motivation?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm wondering too.

<comment><USER2> Looks like it was a conflicting trademark. Would have been nice if they were more upfront about it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Myth Busting Hammer - <AUTHOR> https://app.cdac19.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello. I make a new tool ageinst MYTH. True stories are boring and hard to spread, so I made a tool to make them interesting. I also applied to the Maker's Festival, so you can use it if you like! [https://www.producthunt.com/makers- festival/wfh/voting](https://www.producthunt.com/makers-festival/wfh/voting).</comment>


Dive into Responsive Prototyping with Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dive-into-responsive-prototyping-with-foundation/

<comment><USER2> Call me a cynic, but I find it much easier to start with a blank slate. It may be slower to begin with and I may end up missing out a few edge cases, but I find that I end up painting myself into a corner with css frameworks as the project grows.

</comment><comment><USER3> Zurb Foundation is a very nice responsive framework. I'm both happy to see it here on HN and sorry to find that the post has done a terrible job at capturing readers' attention during the first 5 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER4> OT, but I love the sketches. Are they pen/paper or (I suspect) a sketching app?

<comment><USER5> Looks like Balsamiq Mockups.

<http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I almost thought Mark Pilgrim was back...</comment>


Why Google's CEO may be ducking investor questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.precursorblog.com/content/googles-liability-decade-why-googles-leadership-ducks-investors

<comment><USER2> An interesting and thought-provoking overview. _The abrupt change, that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will no longer be accountable to shareholders on Google's earnings calls, should prompt investors to ask why?

Google claimed that they wanted to put more focus on Google's strong financials, but they did not disclose any more than Google's usual barest of minimum of information to investors. The most obvious reason for this abrupt change is the literal explosion of real franchise liabilities and risk overhangs to Google that reared their ugly heads this past quarter._</comment>


Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal released - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/ubuntu-12-10-quantal-quetzal-takes-flight-with-a-bag-full-of-juju/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I actually like the innovations canonical keeps bringing to unity (although I'm not in love with the amazon searches). My problem with it is execution - run gnome shell on the identical hardware and it will always run circles* around unity especially in terms ui responsiveness. Just press the super key after you've been doing something else for a while and start typing - in my experience gnome shell seems to respond almost instantaneously while unity can take as long as several seconds to bring up the default lens on decent hardware.

I like a lot of their design decisions like the global menu, dechroming maximized windows, easy custom lenses etc. But the compiz/custom code base just isn't up to the task. Worse, unity is so tied to their non-mainline gui stack that it is a herculean effort to get it to run on anything besides ubuntu, preventing them from getting fixes from outside their ecosystem.

I know there is a lot of bad blood these days between gnome and canonical but they really need to bite the bullet and rebase on mutter, gtk3 & gnome shell. Canonical is great at a lot of things, but core performance oriented software just isn't one of them. Let somebody else do the heavy lifting.

I haven't gotten a chance to try the gnome shell spin that they're producing this cycle. Can anyone comment on how well its working? My experience trying to go vanilla gnome 3 on ubuntu in the past has been less than stellar, but I really appreciate the ubuntu community and things like launchpad ppas.

*250ms-2000ms lag

<comment><USER3> How do I switch from Unity to Gnome Shell in Ubuntu? (12.04)

<comment><USER4> Make sure you also check out Gnome Shell's killer feature : extensions.gnome.org

<comment><USER5> I wish there were an amazing guide for building these shell extensions somewhere. I tried to look for some and couldn't find any that really got into the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _[Unity] has received a number of additions, all built around the idea of demolishing the walls between local applications and web applications_

Here's the thing why Ubuntu is on shaky ground these days.

The above idea is grand but like everything that tries to be the future of something—in this case computing—it leaks. And leaky things will never take off for real much like leaky abstractions will not hold because the truth will leak out sooner or later, and then the abstraction isn't worth much since you can only trust it superficially.

The early Ubuntu and Windows 95 and XP had something in common: they all were built mostly on how the computer worked. These operating systems tried to make the underlying computer available to the user, give or take a few sugar- coatings. And they all pretty much succeeded.

Conversely, I think most systems that try to pretend to be something that they aren't will not succeed. Web applications won't become local applications just like that: the user will just see some visible glue that holds some parts together. You've seen it so many times: something comes with great features that only work till you really want some things done, and then it turns out the system doesn't do its magic all the way through. You just see the one kind of magic that has been preprogrammed into it and you've already observed that besides an initial impression, that one kind of magic can't deal with everything you need from the system. Then you can't trust the system anymore since you know there's more available than the system can agree to offer you.

Ubuntu is still basically a local installation: some stuff can originate from the cloud but it can not be a grand computing environment that unifies web and local services because it matters that the user has his own local installation. You can't boot Ubuntu from a USB stick and have your environment seamlessly load from the cloud.

Something like Android or iOS are much better positioned for seamlessly integrating local and web applications and local and cloud services. Using a tablet interface you don't really have the sense of local vs. web at all: you just have apps and once you sign up another device your apps will be available automatically. This is maybe what Shuttleworth is envisioning with the Unity and his current plans for Ubuntu, but the downside is that the regular Ubuntu desktop will suffer.

Ubuntu suffers because it doesn't pay respect to its natural, physical environment that is a local computer. It can be a highly tuned system that takes the most out of your hardware or it can be an ethereal, ubiquitous cloud service that's available regardless of hardware. But not both.

<comment><USER7> This is pretty insightful, this bit in particular:

"Ubuntu suffers because it doesn't pay respect to its natural, physical environment that is a local computer. It can be a highly tuned system that takes the most out of your hardware or it can be an ethereal, ubiquitous cloud service that's available regardless of hardware. _But not both._ "

Emphasis added there at the end.

My claim is that "we", folks who engineer software and create products, have made those software products indispensable to folks who never used to care about computers much less shell out money to own one. They never did want to buy a computer, they don't want to buy one now, what they want is the _function_ that is provided by some app or collection of apps. These people want to follow tweets, or facebook, or chat, or see cat pictures, they buy computers to do that because they have to, not because they want to. What is worse, the 'computerness' of computers, their re-programability, their flexibility, causes more problems for these people than it solves. They want turn-key, instant on, instant off, tools.

And folks are making these tools for them, Chromebooks, and iPhones, and iPads, and Slates and Surfaces. They are marketed as tools that get a particular job done, not a universal tool. Can you imagine a power drill where you take the motor off and use it in your mixer, then take it off and use it in your desk fan, and then take it off and use it to pump water and wash your deck? No you get separate tools for those tasks, and they all have a motor in them but the motor isn't universal, its optimized for the tool. We are moving that way with processors. No more 'boot whatever you want' no more manuals describing the instruction set or peripherals, no more general purpose tool chains or operating systems. Processors designed to do one thing well like be a 'phone' with proprietary value added parts (like a GPU) and special instructions (like Jazelle) which you only get to know about if you agree to buy a million a month and design it into your specialized product.

The needs of an operating system for one of those devices is very much different than the needs for a programmer or developer's operating system. Sure they share some things in common (both render to a screen) but how or when they do that, and what API they use, those things are important to a developer but not to a tool/appliance user.

Yason is exactly correct that Ubuntu is standing astride this crevice while it widens underneath them. Soon, unless steps are taken, it may find itself neither fish nor fowl, an unacceptable environment to developers (too closed off) and to appliance users (too technical). Personally I'd love to see two distros in Desktop one is "End user" and one is "Developer" with very different design targets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One word of advice, don't do the automatic upgrade, do a full reinstall instead. After trying that for the last 5 or so releases. Always thinking that _this_ time they fixed it. I'm not falling for that again. You'll see, as always, some reports of people saying they tried and it worked. But be careful, it's a trap!

<comment><USER9> I really don't understand why the upgrade seems to be so hit and miss between people. My current laptop has been on the same ubuntu install since (at least) 10.04. I've even upgraded to beta versions a couple of times and the only problem I've ever had was when I upgraded to the 12.10 beta and it ran out of disk space in the middle of the install. But that was recoverable.

Of course, this comment might be a trap. There's only one way to find out...

<comment><USER10> Me too, upgraded from 7.04 to 12.04 without major problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As of 0842 UTC, it's not actually released yet. The link still refers to 12.04. Ars appear to have jumped the gun a little.

<comment><USER12> 1500 UTC, the ubuntu.com homepage isn't updated but the 12.10 release is now available for download at <http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How are people's experiences with using Juju based setups on real production servers? Was anyone "lazy" enough to try this?

\-- EDIT (adding context): the article says about the use-case for Juju "configuring and setting up complex services with lots of application components can still be a bit tricky"... then goes on to give a basic LAMP WordPress setup... the thing is that a LAMP WP setup is neither complex nor it has lots of components, it's basically the "drop dead simplest" case of web app deployment, so they are clearly missing the point using this as an example :|

</comment><comment><USER14> What I loved the most - the integration of webapps as native desktop apps. Awesome addition. This changes the whole game. The HUD will be a search bar for that webapp. Mind = Blown!

Worth mentioning, I've used many Linux boxes before, but after using Ubuntu 12.04 from the past 5 months, its the most Productive System I've ever used. And It's only getting better over time.

Many thanks for the team that's behind this change.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the past month or two, I've come around on Unity after hiding out in gnome- session-fallback and then cinnamon. With the launch bar icons shrunk to their smallest size and Docky on the bottom, the Unity interface has gotten to the point where it's smooth and usable. Call me a convert, but I decided Unity has gotten to the point where it's easier to work with it than to keep trying to work against it.

<comment><USER16> Well, not quite the level of praise that "it's worth the hassle of installing", but "not worth the hassle of uninstalling" is worth something, I guess.

<comment><USER15> I'm interested to experience what changes 12.10 brings to Unity. I have a hunch that sooner or later, Unity will improve to the point where it meets your former criterion as well as your latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those who prefer Gnome3 on the desktop instead of Unity, there's the Gnome Ubuntu Remix: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Switched to Mint with MATE (Gnome2 Fork) and am not looking back. Give it a try, it's worth it.

<comment><USER19> So I use Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and Linux Mint Debian Edition on the desktop. LMDE is OK, but I'm not sure Mate is a long-term solution. On the one hand it is great that they have maintained the old look and feel of Gnome 2, but forking so much "crap" seems like a huge wasted effort.

For example the configuration changes - instead of gconf, you now have mateconf, which uses a whole other set of files that are not compatible with gnome. So switching from an old Gnome desktop (say) to Mint+Mate means your settings are all lost, even though the forked code between gnome2 and mate is really close.

On a default LMDE install it adds gnome-terminal and mate-terminal, so on the menus you have 2 "Terminal" entries. Ditto for a load of other core applications that are in Gnome and Mate - stuff like Archive Manager, screenshot, and document viewer. Was there really a need to fork file-roller?

Debian have already pretty much said "no" to including Mate - the reason being that the duplication and resuscitation of crufty old code is not a good idea. It would be better, the say, to work with Gnome upstream to get a more Gnome2-ish feel in Gnome3. I think Cinnamon is in Debian or will be shortly, which probably has a brighter future.

Anyway, for now I'm happy with Mate - it works fine and didn't need any tweaking to get to a usable state, compare that to Gnome3 classic-session on Ubuntu 12.04 which I spent weeks tweaking and patching (!) to get back to a state that worked like 10.04 - but I think its days are numbered. The Mint devs alone can't keep a full-on Gnome2-fork alive forever, it has too many duplicated applications that are already fine in base Gnome, and eventually I think Cinnamon will be the only viable option for Mint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not yet released and ars didn't say it was released, rather:

        Ars has its hands on 12.10 and we'll be bringing you a
        full review within the next couple of weeks.

<comment><USER21> Maybe we are reading a different article:

        Today, Canonical has released version 12.10 of its Ubuntu Linux
        distribution, code-named "Quantal Quetzal" after a ridiculously
        awesome-looking bird.

<comment><USER22> Yet it hasn't actually been released. The download links on the website all point to 12.04, and 12.10 is not available through the update manager yet either.

Looks like Ars jumped the gun.

<comment><USER23> It's in the update manager, I ran the upgrade a couple of hours ago on a VM on my work PC, worked fine.

<comment><USER22> I can only get it to show up in update manager as a developer release, with a warning that it is still in beta.

This is using both the main and my local archive...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I question whether it is more profitable to move forward and have what amounts to really good devs build mashups than to go back and focus on OS stability and core functionality (the thing which you arm sales people with when selling to corp, and that provides for greater general user loyalty _).

The immediate rebuttals for my comment will be (1) user studies, (2) the os is fine, (3) were making money, (4) customers told us.

The not so obvious rebuttals will be: (1) someone told us to do these, (2) we've reached user and customer saturation, (3) desktops aren't the rage, (4) core customer/users moved to using server only and were reeling them in to desktop, (5) corporate entities cannot perceive enough value thus all the new mashups.

It is this second set which I want to hear discussed and why they are or aren't the case.

Basically my guess is that core users are moving away from where these guys are spending money and they think spending more in the area will bring them back.

_take with a grain of salt but the marketing theory is people when obtaining something (convinced or otherwise) will benefit if product in context serves all their needs and more if possible. That grey area or boundry of core->nice to have is what is in question here. The more they use it, and the more it serves them, the more likely they will return to it (product context). Take with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER25> Have they turned the Amazon stuff off by default or are they giving an option to do so at install time?

If not, I will not be downloading this.

<comment><USER26> `sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping`

<comment><USER27> There's now a proper option in the privacy settings to disable remote searches.

<comment><USER16> It really should be part of the installation questionnaire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Been using it a couple weeks now, it's actually not too bad. Trying to get used to Unity as it's obviously not going anywhere. I'm still not a fan but it is improving.

<comment><USER29> How's the performace? I tried a beta of Quantal a couple weeks ago and Unity was so slow compared to vanilla Gnome that it wasn't really usable (I have a Radeon HD 3000 card, using the FOSS driver). I hope it's not that bad in the actual release.

<comment><USER26> I had the same experience until I enabled the proprietary driver for NVIDIA graphics card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "includes Python 3.2.3 as standard"

Won't this have any impact on existing python installers, designed to be used with python 2.x?

<comment><USER14> If its only coming with 3.2.3 it will break many existing tools.(think django)

If you see MAC, it does come with lower versions of python too, so it supports older python projects.(python2.7, python2.5 based and doesn't break the system)

Latest Ubuntu might well come even with lower versions of python too - as many Ubuntu apps and tools itself use the lower versions of python. But the default python will be 3.2.3

To use the right version of python we have to -

Manually install older versions if it doesn't have one.

And do symbolic Linking the installed versions to /usr/bin and set $PATH appropriately for the correct Python version we need. Just use them as python2.7 python2.5 python2.6 while calling your scripts.

Also see virtualenv.

<comment><USER31> I run a django based website, and this upgrade didn't break anything. "/usr/bin/python" still refers to Python 2.X instead of Python 3.X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been using 12.10 for several weeks now. The only difference I notice is the new kernel, otherwise my xmonad desktop looks just the same as in 12.04.

Although the installation was a bliss. The fastest OS installation I've ever done. Even the boot time is pretty fast, around 6 seconds with my workstation.

</comment><comment><USER33> What is likely to be quicker/easier and the best decision in the long term ... Upgrading to 12.10 from 11.10 or moving to Linux Mint?

This is for my work machine which I run PHPStorm for web development, virtualbox for CS5 and Chrome and various other apps.

</comment><comment><USER34> Getting Ubuntu to work reliably on a laptop that is sometimes docked to a dual-screen setup is a pain. It used to work very well. But recent releases - not so much.

I'll give this one a try again (sigh).

<comment><USER35> No problems here with lenovo t500.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Might have to go and work from another computer as 12.10 installs on this one. Clean install really overdue as this machine started as Xubuntu 11.04 and is now Ubuntu 12.10 Beta.

<comment><USER9> If you have kept the beta up to date you're already on 12.10.

<comment><USER36> Right, but it's a little buggy due to being a mashup of Xubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 12.10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> fglrx xserver module segfaults (at least for me).

Without hardware OpenGL it is just a crap.

unity-2d-shell eats tons of memory, more than chrome. No wonder when

      ldd `which unity-2d-shell` |wc -l
      93

including Qt _and_ Gtk-3.. idiots.

but without running X11 it is nice and fast.) gcc-4.7, linux-3.5.0, python3.2, etc.

</comment><comment><USER38> Juju reminds me of Linode's StackScripts, no?

</comment><comment><USER39> what is the Java situation here?

<comment><USER40> Perhaps you could be a bit more clear. What Java situation?

<comment><USER41> I'm guessing he/she's asking what JDK/JRE is installed. Since 1.6 still seems to be the default for other OSes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Everyone has their own preferred setup, and that's great! It's part of what makes FOSS great: Your choice.

My choice is Xubuntu. I've been using Xubuntu on my laptop for the past 6 months, and the 12.10 beta for the past two.

The link below is my tasklist after install to really make Xubuntu shine. Oh! And now with updates to the Ubiquity installer, FDE can be done with the GUI instead of fiddling with the debian-installer text partitioner!

[http://wiki.cyberfoxfire.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tech:xubuntu_t...](http://wiki.cyberfoxfire.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tech:xubuntu_tips)

<comment><USER43> Thanks for this. I have been on the lookout for a lightweight OS like Crunchbag to upgrade my desktop from Ubuntu 10.10. Being a intermediate user, I do not want a lot of bells and whistles but appreciate a more responsive system. I manage a lot of Ubuntu servers so I would prefer an Ubuntu development environment as well. In fact, I am seriously considering using a virtual machine for this purpose.

<comment><USER44> If you want responsiveness, check out openbox. For intermediate users, the setup isn't difficult.</comment></comment></comment>