Last month was a mixed one for us, with some good results against Southend and Charlton tempered by poor defeats to Norwich and Yeovil. However, in all of those games we can find positives if we look hard enough. There do remain many doubts amongst fans about the managerial skills of Greg Abbot. I repeat again my assertion that any manager should be given a full season to prove themselves, and Abbot has only had two parts of seasons to date. However, I am concerned that we've known two major failings since January and they have yet to be remedied:
- Silly defensive errors costing us too many goals
- Inability to score goals from good positions (mainly strikers to blame)
Any good manager would surely have resolved these two by now, but Abbot has not. Even I am now near breaking point and close to calling for his head.
I got to one away game last month, and that was Walsall. It was a ground out draw between two teams seemingly struggling to play well and/or find any consistency. However, I was subsequently spotted on the BBC's Football League Show as I and several other fans thronged to congratulate a fired-up Richard Keogh after he equalised.
This month I am planning to experiment with a Linux operating system again at home. I was on Redhat Linux for a couple of years (1999-2001) but moved back to Windows when my late wife first moved in with me. For the last five years I've been using a Windows PC that we got together, but it is starting to slow and churn a bit. So, rather than reinstall/clean Windows, I'm making the jump to Ubuntu. Whilst not football related, I thought I'd share my experiences over the next couple of months.
Everyone forgets that what they actually want to do is be productive, and that means running applications, not an operating system. So, if you can find all the applications you want and they run on Linux, then the next step is to decide if you want to pay for an operating system or have a free one which has lots of different looks and feels, including a few that look almost identical to Windows. Oh, and Linux is inherently more stable and secure than Windows. That is why most of the computers running Internet services are Linux.
It is particularly useful for use on older equipment that struggles with Windows. There are many "distributions" of Linux, with variants within those distributions. The beauty is, you can find something you like. One analogy I heard the other day was mobile phones. It is a device and you don't care what the operating system is. You change phones, and you get used to the new interface quickly, just as I am with Ubuntu. However, setting it up as you like it can be a bit daunting for a newcomer to Linux, and shouldn't be tried unless you're confident or have access to someone who is. This would be true of any installation of a new operating system, even Windows.
There are games available that run on Linux, and you can run some Windows and DOS applications (including games) through WINE and DOSbox, respectively. However, if you're addicted to your Windows games, then you're probably better off sticking with Windows and just doing a clean install and then "hardening" your Windows installation with appropriate user accounts, firewall and AV software.
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