Ubuntu Lumina "break" - New Plan Needed
Published: 2020-04-06 11:45:40

I have worked on Ubuntu Lumina alone for the entire existence, except when Joshua from Ubuntu Cinnamon tried to help but didn't explain what I was supposed to do and left me confused and stressed. It was a nice gesture but it didn't last. So now on the brim of the 20.04 release, I plan to take a break from the Ubuntu Lumina project until 20.04 is fully released. Am I still gonna plan how I am going to work on the project? Yes. Of course. I plan to work on it lightly, however, I may or may not have burnt myself out a lot during this time. Since March 24th, it wasn't uncommon for me to spend 13, 14, over 24 hours at a time working on Ubuntu Lumina. I looked for options, I worked on every last idea that I could understand and the ones I thought "Hey I don't prefer this" or "this is not possible at this time, let's put a pin in this". Now with 20.04 about to hit the market later this month, me being burnt to a crisp emotionally, little to nothing being usable, and no known solutions that make sense.

## What's the Issue?
Other than spending roughly 14 hours a day on the project, quite a lot has gone wrong. The issues of Ubuntu Lumina are mostly in the hands of me being new to this, no one to help me, workload, and more. So let's get through the issues one by one.

### Newbie Problems
Being new to a project like this, not counting other distributions I made and LFS (I will mention this in a second), I have no idea what tools to use or what method works best. There isn't really any "tutorial" on this. Now, this isn't an issue, I could take my LFS and other distribution projects to help me, right? Wrong... as they used software no longer supported (at least by Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04). Many of those apps also are deprecated, which isn't normally problematic for a few years, but the packages are old and unusable.

People have tried to help me, but always just set things up, and left me with no idea how to contribute to it or how to update it for the next release. Now these people are nice, and I thank them for spending time on it, but if I can't use it... well why use it? Yes, they have documentation but that is an issue of it only tells me how to run it, not how to continue development. Also, this happened when I wasn't ready for what they needed me to do with DEB packaging, also known as the worst thing to ever exist, especially for things I have never contributed to NOR have premade deb packages. So I became lost.

### No Help.
This issue has been at the core of most of my issues. The only real "help" I have had is for the website, and Josh from Ubuntu Cinnamon leaving me with tools, not telling me how to use them. Again, these people are wonderful and kind to spend their time helping me, but it isn't what I need help with the most OR the thing that does directly help me, the other person doesn't explain it nor leaves me with information. Nothing against them, seriously, but everything is sort of just a massive shit-show. 

The Lumina developers don't have deb packages, nor can I find anyone to do them. While I am left with being 100% unable to do it, as deb-packaging properly *for a basic application* is difficult enough. This doesn't even mention trying to run a desktop environment with a billion dependencies, so I spent many hours and days working on the deb packages too.

### Workload
This is the main issue, there is a lot to compile, a lot of research, a lot of rebooting/changing partitions. This isn't just hard on me for workload, it's hard on my hardware. I would gladly make a Virtual Machine, or run complex scripts for hours a day *if my laptop could handle it*. My laptop is HP, that alone says it isn't usable. Well, I have 2 CPU cores at 3.?GHz, and 4 gigs of RAM. While yes most of these complicated scripts *could work*, the many issues of my laptop using a terrible WiFi driver, having an HDD with less space than a large USB, RAM that can't allow a virtual machine to run higher than 2GB RAM on a good day, a CPU that doesn't like existing in general. Having to fix my machine, plus the maintenance of the OS installs because nothing stops properly, PLUS the horrid fact of my laptop being **very picky** on which distribution of Linux I use, AND FINALLY (for this list) my RTL wifi-drivers, along with not working right, don't have many options for other distributions.

I cannot access any websites when working. I often (when working) borrow other laptops in the house in order to do research AND work. I am limited by hardware so much it alone has been the cause of hundred headaches. Not to mention my USB issues, where: not enough ports to actually use my laptop with mouse and external keyboard (as mine is very picky on what character I type, and if it says "no" I can lose access to my keyboard until reboot), my USB external drives don't work right half the time and my microSD card reader over USB doesn't allow another USB to be plugged in at the same time, and I have no regular USB drives (my main OS install drive is over 1TB).

### What's gonna happen?
I am going to wait, think, and experiment. I am also going to cut the 13+ hour days. I also will not be focused on ***any*** projects as my brain is actually dead at this point, I need to recharge it. I actually usually fall asleep randomly and in general, follow all 7 ways to "Maximize Misery" as illustrated by [CGP Grey in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o). So now, I really need to try to bring myself back together, as what I started doing is about as healthy as chugging a big gulp of 5-hour energy while injecting monster energy into my blood. So I need to take care of myself and not spiral into a worse depression than what I already put myself in.