Never update

We read in our school about Budhdha -that his first preaching is "Aseye dukhkhakke mUla"  Greed is the root cause of all misery.

How true.

I was happily coding in my newly found ubuntu android. And browsing as well ( browsing more and coding less). Then an idea struck me. Remember the good old days where we had window-ish pull down menu for all programs in a Linux system. Now even windows does not have pull down menus. So I came across an article about how to install that 'classic' gnome menu in ubuntu. Yes, I want that menu. Because current dash system lets us search for programs. How do we search when we don't know the name (or don't know what we are searching for). So I installed it.

And while at it, I even updated firefox.

Since many many years, my paronoidism, paranoidy or rather paranoia has a major entry - update. Remember the days when you were informed that "now windows will update. Do not switch off" and the screen will freeze for many many hours. This will invariably be followed by boot error.

So since then first thing I do, whenever I buy a new machine (or format an old one is disable automatic updates, stop and disable update service) and physically erase the term update from the laptop.

By the way, what does Windows mean by update?

So though my ubuntu system kept on telling me about many updates available, I just canceled them.

So this one time, greed had me in its clutches. And what followed was misery or a series of miseries.

To start with firefox would not run. Any page would just be blank with the message loading google apis at the status bar. I unstalled, reinstalled and again uninstalled. Repeat while true .. Or while firefox is not working. I thought fire wall was the problem. Played around with that. Nothing. Firefox - my trusted companion for years just would not run.

I tried to install chrome - but in vain. Then I settled for another small browser. I need to google to find out what is going on (with my life) with the laptop. 

But then thing turned even stranger. Suddenly the brightness of the laptop reduced and I brightness option stopped working. My aged eyes need a bright screen.

I suspected may be some driver is disabled in the boot screen and happened to look at grub - the boot loader. I e - ed the options there and I saw unfamiliar words there drm debug and ply something. I have seen many grub options and drm is certainly not familiar. Removed it and the system booted with bright screen.

Next even the small browser I downloaded started working off and on. More off than on.

So to cut the story short, I hunted down a installation file from somewhere, created a boot cd and re installed the os.

Now you know the lesson - never update the software, not even using command prompt, not even when using lan connection.