There’s a great post at Three Days to Anarchy on the realities of socialism, which we currently see failing here in our own country. Here are the 5 points that conclude the post:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

These are also illustrated in an earlier post here when beer was used explained Obama’s socialism.

I wrote about my Kimber M1911 .45 ACP loyalty in this post. I recently put that concept to the test. I decided it was time for another .45 ACP. My SS Ultra Carry has served well for over a decade, as has my SS Custom Target. Having covered the 3″ and 5″ barrel ground, I decided that the time has come for a 4″.

The Search

A friend suggested a Bill Wilson Carry Pistol. I respect Wilson’s pistols, but they tend to be pricey. In my mind, price must be commensurate with performance and competitive at that level. At just over $3,000 retail, the Wilson Carry Pistol isn’t any more accurate or reliable than a high-end Kimber that retails for less that half the price, plus the Wilson doesn’t come with night sights at that price.

Another deal breaker for that particular Wilson is the steel frame, which pushes the weight up to 35 oz. There’s no real advantage to a steel frame for other than a heavy-use combat pistol. That’s not what I was after. The alloy frame equivalent Wilson Ultralight Carry Compact at 26.5 oz runs over $3,600. I don’t think so.

Custom makers tout excellent hand-fitting, and that comes at a price commensurate with reputation. But a good CNC machine operation with hand finishing can produce the same quality with more consistency in far less time. That’s how Kimber revolutionised the M1911 pistol business in the mid-1990′s.

So, I quickly narrowed the field to a Kimber Custom Defense Package (CDP) II or a Super Carry. I really love the Super Carry lines and features, but it isn’t available in a Compact frame. I prefer the shorter Officers grip for my purposes, so that ruled out the Super Carry for a 4″ barrel. I already have an Ultra Carry in 3″ and don’t need another one in that length. So, the Compact CDP II from Kimber’s Custom Shop, weighing in at 27 oz with a stainless slide and Kim Pro II coated 7075-T7 aluminum frame, won the day. It lists for just over $1300 and includes Tritium night sights, 30 LPI front strap and trigger guard checkering, hand finishing, and carry melt. That’s a good value.

Kimber Compact CDP II

The Buy

Now the bad news. Demand is so high that Kimbers run about a 5-6 month wait from the factory. I’m not into that much deferred gratification, so I poked around locally first, then on the Net. Compacts are sometimes hard to find, but I located one on gunbroker.com from Nelson Tactical for about $1,100 and had it shipped to Dennis at NOVA Firearms to handle the FFL duties. That all went very smoothly thanks to great folks at both ends.

The Holster

I also needed a holster. With over a decade of experience, I’m still sold on the Milt Sparks Versa Max 2:

Milt Sparks Versa Max 2

These leather holsters sport excellent craftsmanship as they make each one by hand to exacting standards. Their stability and comfort in use set the standard after a short break-in period. Again, though, the waiting list from Milt Sparks’ holsters runs 5-6 months. However, I called Allan Yoast (his number is on Milt Sparks’ order page) and he had several on hand. I actually received the holster before the pistol!

The Range

I broke in the CDP II using Prvi Partizan FMJ (full metal jacket) .45 ACP ammo from Serbia. Yeah, I know. But it was cheap in bulk, perfectly reliable, and uses brass cases. I also shoot Wolf for practice, but they use steel cases. Kimber recommends using brass cases for break-in, so the Serbs won that debate.

The pistol proved virtually perfect in operation. It ate FMJ and hollow points without issue. I think that I had one FTF in the first 350 rounds, then none thereafter. The trigger proved crisp though just a bit heavier than I like, probably in the 4.5 lb range. The night sights add a new dimension, but the dot in the front sight makes its acquisition quick. The Compact shoots to point of aim out to at least 15 yards and beyond.

The 30 LPI checkering on the front strap makes for faster follow-up shots. The rosewood grips contribute to a good handle on the pistol. The ambidextrous safety proved handy when shooting with my “weak” hand. The Tritium night sights work great in low light, and the white circles around the tubes helps in normal light against dark target backgrounds.

Accuracy is outstanding. I don’t shoot from rests, neither did I measure any groups. Not my thing these days. However, I can consistently put rounds where I want them on tactical targets at 15 yards, and can shoot out the center of a rifle bullseye target at that range – all two-handed off-hand. That’s with the cheap Serbian ammo.

Minor Issue

I had one issue with the pistol but it didn’t involve its function, reliability or accuracy, but got to be annoying. Although the pistol operated perfectly, it would eject cases into my forehead occasionally. It wasn’t often at first, but became more frequent the more that I shot it. I thought that it might be a loose extractor, but I checked and that wasn’t the case.

After thinking about it a while and coming up empty, I finally called Kimber. They listened carefully and knew exactly what the problem was. Kimber insisted on taking care of that issue, did it on their nickel, and covered shipping both ways. Since I was sending the pistol back for work anyway, I opted to have a trigger job done at the same time (on my nickel) to bring the trigger pull down to between 3.5 and 3.75 pounds.

The pistol worked perfectly upon return, with no more gratuitous brass hits to my forehead. Reliability remains perfect. As a bonus, the trigger was great before but is absolutely awesome now!

Conclusion

I now have over 650 rounds through the Compact CDP II and trust it with my life. Like my other Kimbers, it worked great from the first round. The workmanship on the pistol is first rate, equivalent to custom-mades costing much more. The worked trigger represents the height of perfection. The Compact CDP II proved to be another great M1911 from Kimber and an excellent personal defense pistol.

I’ve been thinking about this post for some time, but my thoughts coalesced recently when the anti-self-defence crowd held their candlelight vigil against gun ownership. The anti-2nd Amendment crowd strikes me as incredibly naive.

The antis constantly say that the police will save you if you are attacked. Just dial 911. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled that the police have no obligation to protect any individual. That means that you and your family’s safety is your responsibility and yours alone. What’s your plan? Curl up in a ball and wait to die? Plead for mercy? Dial 911? What if the police are over 21 minutes away? Just hope that it never happens to you? Hope is not a strategy.

I read a great editorial by David Griffith in Police Magazine which is the best recent treatment of the subject. Griffith takes a great line from Firefly:

“If somebody tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back.” That’s a quote from the TV show “Firefly,” but it’s also the American way.

He correctly identifies the core issue:

But now we as Americans have forgotten that brutal bit of wisdom. We have taught our children that it’s wrong to fight for any reason, even their own self-defense. So when someone attacks them, they die helpless hiding under the nearest furniture instead of fighting back.

Griffith’s bottom line is this:

Stop telling people to lie back and be murdered. Americans are a fighting people. Tell them that when their lives are on the line, even if they have no weapons, their only hope is to take it to the thugs. Stop teaching people how to be victims. Teach them how to fight.

Interestingly, he never mentions candles.

The truth is that citizens use firearms over 2.5 million times a year in self-defence, but the vast majority of those times the firearms never need to be fired. Simple presentation of the firearm with clear intent to use it if necessary causes an instant behavior change in a violent predator. Been there, done that, here to tell.

Two real-life examples involve a simple trip to Walmart and a trip to wash a car, both with children to protect. Both ended well because the targeted victims refused to be a victim and took responsibility to protect themselves and their families. These represent but two of 2.5 million such examples. I’m willing to bet that none of the 2.5 million cases each year involve candles.

So, are these 2.5 million or so folks rabid nuts? Brady’s ilk would have you believe so, but that would be a lie. Rather, George says it as well as anyone. They are just mothers, fathers, and older children who refused to simply lie down and die when attached by violent predators.

In fact, the government’s own statistics show that as must-issue concealed carry has become more prevalent in the country, violent crime has continued to decrease. No big surprise, since even violent predators don’t want to be shot.

We have become soft as a country. Many buy into the lie that the government will take care of your needs. They put their trust into a 911 system that will more than likely fail them. They believe the lie that the police MUST protect them, when in fact the police have no such obligation. Even enlightened law enforcement and judges advise people to get a gun and learn how to use it.

Most folks have life insurance, car insurance, wear seat belts, and have fire extinguishers in their kitchens – all wise precautions against things that may never happen. Yet, many of the same people will not take responsibility for the safety of themselves and their families against violent criminal predators. I don’t get it. Maybe they think that hope really is a strategy.

Don’t be a voluntary victim. Take responsibility for your and your family’s safety before something happens that you will spend the rest of your life regretting to the very core of your being. Assuming that you survive.

Important safety tip: Whether from the air, sea, or land, be sure that you correctly identify your target before taking action against it. History is replete with examples of tragic fratricide incidents. Aircraft use Interrogation Friend or Foe (IFF) to differentiate between good guys and bad guys. Ships use flags and markings. Military ground forces use a variety of methods. The options decrease and chances of fratricide increase with the speed of engagement. Aircraft usually have precious little time at 450 knots, while ships and ground forces usually have more depending on circumstances.

On the civilian side, most uses of firearms in defensive situations, though not all, involve individuals who have been involved in the situation from the start. That minimises the chance of engagement errors if shooting becomes necessary. One must be very careful if choosing to intervene in a situation that one hasn’t seen from the beginning. The psychological and financial price of engaging the wrong target can be very high.

Law enforcement usually does not have that luxury. They seldom see situations from the start and must come to some judgement about situations which they either encounter or are sent into by dispatchers – an unenviable task. Exercising good judgement in such circumstances can prevent needless tragedies.

Of course, not all the armed good guys are in a uniform. Undercover officers, off-duty officers, and legally armed citizens all carry firearms. Every armed individual, law enforcement or civilian, must exercise very careful judgement before hostilely engaging an armed individual in a free society.

A classic case in point happened on Long Island recently. Tragically, John Capano,an off-duty ATF agent, was shot and killed by Lt. Chris Geraghty, an off-duty officer who responded to an ambiguous situation and unfortunately chose to shoot without any clear evidence of who the good and bad guys were. No one was in uniform, but neither was there a reason to shoot in a hurry.

While Lt. Geraghty obviously feels awful about killing an innocent man, that doesn’t bring anyone back to their loved ones.

This occasionally happens in home defense situations. Remember the SWAT crew in Arizona that killed Jose Guerena, a Marine veteran who thought that he was defending his home against home invaders. A SWAT member fired an errant shot that cause the SWAT crew to panic and fire 71 rounds at Guerena. The Marine never fired a shot.

For defense situations at night, one should always keep a working flashlight handy with which to identify potential targets. Never shoot at shapes or shadows.

The lesson here is for anyone responding to an ambiguous situation to take great care to be sure who the good and bad guys are. Better to either have everyone disarm and sort it out, or to just take a few seconds to consider all aspects, than to shoot and possibly kill an innocent person. The courts have repeatedly ruled that mere possession of a firearm is not reasonable articulable suspicion much less probable cause that a crime is in progress or has been committed. The conscience and wallet you save just might be your own.

While the Brady crowd works hard to take away your God-given right to defend yourself and your family against violent predators, others have written some great pieces about that God-given right. They also touch on the character of the firearms community, one of the best group of folks that you’ll ever meet.

While exercising the privilege of lighting a candle to honor the right of self-defense, I ran across some great posts by other bloggers. First, why do we keep and bear arms? North pass on a great piece of wisdom that answers the most common questions. I agree wholeheartedly with the piece. North even tastefully illustrated it!

I found another new blog started by a woman who used to be anti-firearms. Providentially, she received a wake-up call when she and her child were accosted and robbed in a grocery store parking lot (about 1/2 way through the post). Her blog, appropriately named A Girl and Her Gun, is a journal of the journey from helplessness to empowerment and taking charge of her and her children’s protection. She’s doing a great job. She even wrote a great post about the character of the shooting community. I thank her for her kind words.

2nd Amendment supporters and shooters (usually one and the same group) are about empowerment, not power. We want help people be empowered to protect themselves and their loved ones from vicious predators that would do them serious, even terminal, harm. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!

Before Christmas, I saw a blurb in the American Rifleman about the Laserlyte Laser Trainer System. It looked like a pretty slick setup that allows you to dry fire practice and train with your actual firearms while providing excellent feedback on how you’re doing. The military has used MILES for direct-fire training for decades, so the laser concept seemed worthy of consideration. My research found almost unanimously good reviews, so I took the leap.

The system consists ideally of two parts – the laser at the firearm side and the laser-sensitive target.

There are two possibilities for the firearm side of the equation. One is the Laser Trainer Pro (LT-PRO) that fits in the muzzle end of the barrel:

According to Laserlyte, it protrudes by 1/4 inch or less, so shouldn’t interfere with holster work. It’s a very small device that works from .380 to .45ACP by adjusting a black fitting on the back. The rear fitting stabilizes and centers the device in the barrel:

The LT-PRO works by detecting the sound impulse of the hammer falling. The reviews that I read said that it worked pretty well. Its advantage lies in the range of firearms in which it will work, as  long as they have at least a 2 inch barrel. The disadvantage lies in a limitation of its size. It has no on/off switch. When powered, the LT-PRO always listens for the hammer to fall. So, in between uses the user must remove the batteries or put in a small plastic piece that isolates one end of the batteries from the circuit. Otherwise the batteries will drain overnight.

The power issue was more than I wanted to deal with at every practice. So, I elected to go with the caliber-specific cartidge (LTS LT-45 in my case):

These fit into the chamber, held secure and stable by O-rings, and work by emitting a short laser pulse when the firing pin hits primer area at the back of the laser cartridge. It doesn’t need an on/off switch because the circuit only completes when the firing pin pushes in the switch where the primer would be. The cartridge fits tightly in the chamber and requires a dowel or wood pencil to push it out from the muzzle end. I really like this cartridge approach. You could use it by itself against any “target”, or…

The target end of the equation comes through the LTS Target TLB-1:

This device excels in its simplicity. It comes in the box with the back already off to allow the user to install the 3 AA batteries. The back screws are in a little plastic bag taped to the inside of the back. Simply put the batteries in, screw the back on with the provided tool, and turn it on. That’s it.

When the 100 ms laser pulse from the pistol hits the target, it momentarily flashes the hit for immediate feedback, then goes blank. When you are ready to see all the hits, shoot the little Display area below and to the side the main target with the laser. This displays all hits on the target area. Shoot the Reset area on the other side with the laser and it clears all hits. It couldn’t be simpler or more effective. Or fun!

I’ve found the laser trainer system to be very effective. It uses 62 laser-activated LEDs to display the hits, so the “resolution” on the target is a bit limited but more than adequate for the purpose. It’s a great feedback mechanism during dry fire practice to perfect grip, sighting, and trigger techniques. I also use it in low light to practice with night sights, something that can’t usually be done at the range.

Although not dirt cheap, the system saves on ammunition and range costs. I found the laser trainer system at a great price online at Optics Planet, one of my usual haunts. Unlike the range, the system always stands ready whenever time presents itself to practice for a little while. There’s obviously no recoil, so this system simply supplements range practice. But its an excellent and worthwhile supplement, almost like having a target range in your house. I highly recommend it.

I saw over at Gun Free Zone that Weer’d started a great way to poke the anti-freedom crowd. It seems that the pathetic Brady handgun control, inc. crew wants to light candles on the 8th of January to make the statement that you have no right to defend yourself against violent, predatory criminals. You should die or accept being raped, or your wife/daughter raped or feloniously assaulted rather than defend yourself and family with a legal firearm as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution. These are the most perverse of morons.

So, in honor of Weer’d World’s campaign to stop violence, here’s a very effective Kimber CDP II Compact in .45ACP with a nice Christmas candle:

This is my newest acquisition (not the candle). I haven’t had a chance to post about it yet. It would prove very effective in stopping violent predators from victimizing me or my family as the Brady crowd would apparently prefer to happen.

So, stop violence. Legally arm yourself to dissuade violent predators from doing violence to you or your family. When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away:

Just think how you’d feel if your family were victimized because you believed the Brady lies. Then grow a spine, legally arm yourself, and train.

Jesus: The Babe as Savior

Listen to the exhortation here.

OT text: Genesis 2:5-9; 15-17
NT text: Philippians 3:2-11
Sermon text: Romans 5:12-21

We just celebrated the incomparable miracle of the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. God the Son, second person of the Holy Trinity, who became man, setting aside the glory that is uniquely His from before eternity, coming as one of us and living as one us on the earth that He created. He experienced good food, the love of His parents and siblings, hunger, thirst, joy, friendship, fatigue, betrayal, and ultimately the shame of death on a cross. But do we think of all this, put it into overall perspective, as we contemplate the babe in a manger?

I like to ask my Sunday school classes a simple question: Why was this necessary? Why couldn’t Jesus have come down from heaven on Thursday night, had dinner with his chosen disciples, been crucified on Friday, rise on Sunday in triumph over sin and the grave, then return to heaven after the Eagles game?

Let’s start by looking at our text for today, Romans 5:12-21:

[12] Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—[13] for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. [14] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
[15] But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. [16] And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. [17] For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
[18] Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. [19] For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. [20] Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, [21] so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (ESV)

I will make three points today as required by my Air Force training. First, that we are saved by works. Second and hopefully before you burn me at the stake, I’ll clarify that answer. Lastly, we’ll explore how we should live in light of these facts.

So, what is God telling us through Paul here in Romans 5? Paul here describes in very basic terms the relationship and continuity between the two overarching covenants that God has made with man – the Covenant of Works or Life and the Covenant of Grace. Adam, who incidentally to whom Scripture always refers as a historic individual, served as our representative or federal head in the garden. That’s clear from verse 12 where it says that all sinned through Adam. Some might object, in retrospect I might add, to the idea that their status was tied up with Adam. But those same folks rarely object to being a beneficiary of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The Holy Spirit reminds us here that these are two sides of the same coin. Verse 14 makes this even clearer by pointing out that Adam was a type of Christ.

Looking at our Old Testament text from Genesis 2, God created Adam and then condescended to make a covenant with him as our Confession says. By condescended, we mean that there’s an infinite distance between the Creator and the created. God wasn’t obligated to bless or make a covenant with Adam, but chose to do so. God offered life in fellowship with Himself to Adam on one sole condition – that Adam obey God perfectly, which we’ll unpack more in a few minutes. Although God created Adam capable of perfect obedience, in the words of the knight guarding the grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “He chose pooorly.” Verses 14 and the beginning of verse 15 recount the consequences – that sin and death entered the world due to Adam’s transgression. Bad news, but not the end of the story.

The last part of verse 15 delivers the joyous news that a second Adam, Jesus Christ came with a free gift. That gift came by the free grace of God and it abounded for many. But what was that gift? Verse 16 elaborates that, in contrast to Adam’s fall in sin, the free gift brought justification. There’s hope for us yet!

Verse 17 cuts to the core of the basis of our salvation, the great hope that rested on that babe in the manger, and provides the heart of this passage. So, let’s unpack a key term in verse 17.

The underlying Greek for the word “righteousness” in verses 17 and 18 basically means “conformity to the claims of higher authority and stands in opposition to lawlessness.” (CWSB NT Dictionary, AMG, 1993) It goes on to say that righteousness is “conformity to all that God commands or appoints.” It is the opposite of sin as we see it defined in WSC Q/A #14 as the “want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” That definition of righteousness in the original Greek carries over to the concept of the righteousness of Christ that we saw in Philippians 3. As we heard there, Paul elaborates on how Christ’s righteousness credited to us forms the basis of our salvation.

So we see that righteousness stands as essentially equivalent to perfect obedience. Contrast the concept of righteousness with that of innocence. Righteousness requires positive action – perfect obedience. When the Bible says that Christ is righteous in relation to His incarnation, it implicitly requires that Jesus actively obeyed God’s commands during His life here. As the author of Hebrews tells us, Jesus never sinned. On the other hand, innocence is merely a passive state of being free from guilt. It doesn’t imply that an actor did anything, only that they didn’t do something. God never settles for innocence, but always demands righteousness.

Remember that Phil 3:8-10 says,

“[8] Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—[10] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,” (ESV)

The 1599 Geneva Bible comment on Phil 3:9 observes “That is, to be in Christ, to be found not in a man’s own righteousness, but clothed with the righteousness of Christ imputed to him.” The ESV Study Bible note on Phil 3:9 states clearly that, “God “imputes” Christ’s lifelong record of perfect obedience to the person who trusts in him for salvation; that is, he thinks of Christ’s obedience as belonging to that person, and therefore that person stands before God not as “guilty” but as “righteous.” This is the basis on which justification by faith alone is considered “fair” in God’s sight.”

These verses in Philippians provide additional context to the passage in Romans 5. Verse 17 again says that Adam’s failure to render the perfect obedience required by God in the garden resulted in death reigning from that day on through our resultant sinful natures. Without divine intervention, we don’t even have Adam’s ability to obey. But that’s exactly what God provided by His infinite grace and mercy for those who believe. Paul tells us in Romans 5 that Jesus Christ, God incarnate, came to live the life of perfect obedience that Adam did not, by which consequence neither can we. But by God’s matchless grace, He credits Jesus righteousness, the merit of his perfect obedience, as a free gift to those who trust in Christ alone for their salvation.

Verse 18 reinforces the blanket statement in 17 – Jesus as our substitute corrects Adam’s failure as our substitute. Jesus righteousness credited to us provides the basis for our justification and eternal life. Don’t be concerned by the expression “for all men”. The context for this statement in all of Romans to that point, including verse 17 where the gift is limited to “those who receive”, provides the boundary for the phrase. There’s no universalism taught here or anywhere else in Scripture.

Verse 19 also reiterates that God counts believers as righteous based on Christ’s perfect obedience, not anything that we are or that we do.

So, let’s step back for a few minutes and see where this passage leads us. One thing that this passage, or any other in Scripture, doesn’t say is that the Covenant of Works has ever been withdrawn. The Covenant of Works remains in effect. That goes directly to the question I asked earlier. The law comes with this promise in Luke 10:28 under that covenant: “Do this and live.” Jesus makes it clear there in Luke and elsewhere that we are still saved by works. That’s our first point today, and it helps put Romans 5:20 into context. We must do all the law perfectly for our entire lives. But we can’t, so in our fallen natures the law simply increases our sin. Calvin called this the first use of the law – a mirror to show us our desperate need for a Savior to obey in our place. In and of ourselves, we cannot obey perfectly. I can’t. You can’t. We’re hopeless sinners deserving God’s unmitigated wrath for cosmic treason.  Woe are us.

Ah, but someone did obey perfectly and possesses righteousness. We hear in Hebrews 4:15 that someone lived life as we do yet without sin. Matthew 5:17 says that He didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He fulfilled the Covenant of Works perfectly and stands righteous in His own works before our Father in heaven. Good for Him, but what about us?

God by grace alone provided the way through a second covenant, the Covenant of Grace. As our passage today teaches, along with Phil 3, 1 Cor 1:30, 2 Cor 5:21, and let’s not forget Gen 3:15 and 15:6, by grace alone the Father credits or imputes Jesus’ righteousness to those who believe – His elect before the foundation of the world. We stand righteous before the Father, saved from His just wrath, covered by the alien righteousness of Christ. So, we are saved by works, but not our feeble, sin-tainted works as described in Isaiah 64:6, but rather by Christ’s perfect obedience in the Covenant of Works imputed to us through the Covenant of Grace.

Now we see the answer to the question of “why” that I asked at the beginning. Jesus couldn’t have come down for dinner on Thursday evening because He had to fulfill the Covenant of Works for us. He had to live that life of perfect, active obedience to the Father that would be credited to all who believe. Without His righteousness, we have no hope. Remember the difference between righteousness and innocence? The Covenant of Grace requires that someone possess the righteousness necessary by fulfilling the Covenant of Works, that it might be imputed to the elect by grace alone through faith alone.

So that’s point two – Jesus saves us by His works of obedience.

Finally, how then should we live?

What we have here constitutes the very heart of the gospel. We sinners are controlled by our sinful natures that descend from Adam’s failure to obey the Covenant of Works, which God graciously condescended to make with him. Yet, we can have Christ’s perfect obedience in that same covenant credited to our accounts in the Covenant of Grace through believing and trusting in Jesus’ righteousness alone – apprehended by faith alone for our eternal life with Him.

I don’t know about you, but if any of this depended on me, I’d utterly despair of every attaining anything but the strict justice of God’s eternal wrath. But it doesn’t depend on me. Or you. Not on who I am or anything that I’ve done. Being the best pilot you’ve ever seen nets me nothing with God.

What great news! God chose us before the foundation of the world, before our birth and before we did anything, just a Paul describes in Romans 9. If I did nothing to earn my salvation, then I can do nothing to lose it either. We know from Numbers 23:19 and James 1:17 that God doesn’t change His mind. Once He chose us, that was it. As Romans 8:29-30 tells us, those whom God chose, called, and justified He also glorified. It’s a done deal.

So, can we now live by the following wisdom:

Here I sit, Oh blessed condition,
I can sin all I want and still have remission!

Absolutely not! That’s the antinomian’s unofficial creed. As Paul asks in Romans 6:1, should sin abound that grace abound much more? By no means! How can we, for whom Christ laid aside His glory to humble Himself, to be born a man and be placed in a manger because there was no room in the inn, and then died for our sins on a cross, continue to sin? May it not be so!

Calvin said that the third use of the law lay in its guide to the believer as to what pleases our Father in heaven, that we may do it. We obey first because God commands it, and also out of gratitude for what He has done for us. He replaced our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, that we could do that which honors, glorifies, and pleases Him. Remember the first question of both the shorter and larger catechisms? What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The moral law tells us how to do that.

We must live lives of confidence, confident that God loved us and chose us before the foundation of the world. He loved us so much that He sent His only Son to live and die for us in our place, that whoever believes in Him would have eternal life. We can and will sin, but as John tells us in the second chapter of his first letter, we have an advocate before the Father – even Christ. We have the gift of the Holy Spirit living in us to help and strengthening us for the cooperative task of obedience. That’s called sanctification.

What truth could provide us greater joy? Everything that is the Son of God’s is ours. Meditate on that for a while. We are coheirs with Christ! Christians of all people should live lives characterised by an internal and even external joy. Others should see a difference not just in our conduct, but in our demeanor. I’m not talking about vacuous smiles but a deep, abiding, contagious joy. [R.C. Sproul’s story about Africa, animism, and Christians in photo]

Yet, too often we join the rest of humanity in lamenting what we don’t have, rather than concentrating on the riches and blessings that we do have in Christ. I’m as guilt as anyone, but brothers and sisters, it should not be so. Particularly in this Christmas season when so much of society sets their happiness in whatever gifts under the tree make up their perfect Christmas – perhaps an Official Red Ryder Carbine Lever-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (and I wouldn’t shoot my eye out) – Christians should center on the gift of eternal life provided through that babe in the manger.

And how could we keep such a gift a secret. We can’t wait to share details of the bounty under the tree with friends, families, and blog, Facebook, and/or Twitter our readers. How much more so should we want to share the incomparable riches of the gospel? We’re never on our own to do so, because the Holy Spirit lives in us to remind us of the words to say.

But what if you haven’t come to trust in Christ alone for your salvation? Then you are under the Covenant of Works without a substitute. You owe the Creator perfect obedience. But you’ve already failed that criteria, so the condemnation of the first Adam still rests upon you. At the Day of Judgment, rather than receiving acknowledgement and acquittal at the throne because of Christ’s righteousness imputed to you, the strict justice of God’s holy wrath will fall upon you forever for your sin. As Hebrews 10:31 says, it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Meditate carefully upon that, and then repent of your sins, despair of your empty works, and trust solely in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. If anyone would like to discuss this further, please seek out one of the elders.

For believers, Christmas is a time when we should rejoice, and thank God the Father that He sent His only begotten Son to become a man, to live out a life of perfect obedience that we could never live. We should be grateful that Jesus died on the cross, a perfect sacrifice to pay a debt that He did not owe, but that we could never pay ourselves. Then on the third day, the Father raised the Son from the dead, vindicating Jesus’ righteousness.

So, when we think of the babe in the manger, we should remember the infinite glory that babe set aside, as well as the mostly ordinary life that babe would live in our place, yet without sin. Celebrate that we are saved by that babe’s perfect obedience in the Covenant of Works credited to us through the Covenant of Grace through faith alone, that is itself a gift of God. Christmas is about a moment in a stable, but also about eternity everywhere. And all to and for God’s glory alone!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for Reformed Musings.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 210,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Ligonier’s site has a brief statement posted here.

I’ve been following this situation for a while on R.C. Jr.’s blog and praying. For those that don’t know, Denise, Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.’s dear wife and mother of their children, was diagnosed with leukemia and underwent extensive treatment. It seemed back in April that she might beat the disease. However, earlier this month the situation wasn’t looking good. I used R.C., Jr.’s post, Terminal, in my Sunday school class just last week as an example of how we can face extreme adversity in life by the power of the Spirit and with full confidence in our Father’s plan for us. R.C. Jr. closed that post with this paragraph:

It is a good and proper thing that I should, and you as well if you are willing, pray that God would make Denise well, that He would allow us to grow old together. It is, however, a better thing to pray that I would be a faithful husband to my love, and a faithful father to the children He has blessed us with. It is less important that He believe me and my conviction, that the kingdom would be better with her here. It is more important that I believe Him and His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail (Matthew 16:18), and that He who has begun a good work in us will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus (Ephesians 6:10). This train is bound for glory.

R.C. Jr. and his entire family need our prayers as they travel a very difficult road in the coming days, weeks, and months. May our faithful God grant them all His peace and strength for the journey.

This classic explanation covers the stimulus theory, jobs program, unions, everything:

I’ve mulled over what, if anything, to say about the moronic occupiers. My first thought is that they should get a job and take responsibility for themselves before thinking about trashing taxpayer-funded locations. But I just found this timeless video clip (HT: Confessions of a Gun Toting Seagull) which pretty much says it all for me:

More truth about the deceit behind global warming. More evidence has come to light on how the purveyors of the big hoax kept the truth from real scientists with real questions. Foxnews reports that American taxpayers paid for data that refuted global warming but that Phil Jones hid from the public.

Science is about replicating others’ results. We saw this when cold fusion could not be indisputably replicated despite all the hype. All scientific theories must have falsifiable hypotheses which can be tested by others. Experimental results must be replicated independently to be accepted. By hiding the adjustments that they made to the raw data and refusing to provide public access to that data which the American taxpayer funded, Jones and his friends spit in the face of real science and American taxpayers.

On a related note, two leading hurricane forecasters admitted that after 20 years, they cannot forecast the coming hurricane season in advance. And global warning hoaxers think that they can predict the world’s climate hundreds of years from now? The models are based on the same underlying physics. Global warming isn’t science, it’s socialist politics pure and simple, designed to bring down the capitalist western civilization.

Don’t be fooled. Demand to see the raw data and independent replication of results. Don’t be fooled by models and the faulty assumptions therein. Demand raw data.

Greta Van Susteren interviewed Rush on the current political situation here in the U.S. As usual, Rush is right. You cannot miss this interview on Fox, especially if you’re a Republican.

In my previous post, I compared Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Unity, Mint 12, and generic GNOME 3. When I rank ordered them at the end, I included KDE in the mix based on an earlier version. However, I did not get a chance to test drive KDE 4.7 as implemented in Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric.

So, I cranked up VMWare Workstation 8.01 (recent upgrade) and installed Kubuntu Oneiric with 2 CPUs and 1MB of RAM. Workstation provides a “Smart Install” when it recognizes the operating system, so I don’t have any screenshots of the actual installation.

Upon restarting, KDE presents a clean desktop:

That’s pretty blue! It ran well in the VM as I set it up. VMWare improved the 3D acceleration and virtualization support in Workstation 8, which seemed apparent in the responsiveness of Kubuntu in the VM.

Plasmoids provide one noticeable new feature of KDE 4.x. The are basically applets that sit on the desktop and perform useful functions. They can be present on all workspaces or different workspaces may have different plasmoids. I’m a fan of the weather and hardware monitoring, so I added those. I used yaWP for weather which I had to download as it wasn’t in the default list. The default weather plasmoid uses a German weather service that didn’t include local information here.

By default, Kubuntu loads with a Desktop folder plasmoid. I never found it particularly useful, but for purposes of demonstration I set it to display my home folder. I also added a QuickLaunch plasmoid to access some most-used applications. The net result:

This provided a useful desktop for daily tasks. Not as neat as GNOME and Unity’s indicators, but not bad. If you don’t find a plasmoid to fulfill a particular purpose, just search the Net. There are a lot out there.

Activities provide the biggest story in KDE 4.x. While GNOME 3 uses the term ‘activities’, it doesn’t use it in quite the same way as KDE. I took some time to research KDE activities and what they bring to the table. I left pretty impressed.

Activities in KDE are alternate desktops that include their own user-defined plasmoids. There aren’t just different workspaces, but full desktops that include their own workspaces. One can swap to or create new activities by clicking on the three colored dots on the left of the bottom panel or on the “cashew” in the upper right of the screen and selecting Activities:

This panel appears across the bottom of the screen. Simply click on an activity icon to switch to it. Or, you can create a new activity or add widgets to an existing one with the buttons on the right side. KDE 4.7 comes with a few pre-defined activities to get you started, including a Photo setup.

One quick hint. On the bottom right of each activity’s icon is a tiny wrench. This allows you to change the activity’s settings, especially its name. A new activity inherits the inventive name “New Activity” by default when created.

I elected to create an activity for writing with custom widgets and QuickLaunch programs:

One other feature that feeds activities. Right-clicking on an app’s title bar produces some interesting options:

One can dedicate particular apps to specific activities. So, say if one dedicates LibreOffice Writer to the writing activity, opening Writer will send it directly to the writing activity. Nifty approach.

One can easily see the power of this approach. Activities enable you to tailor your work environment to the tasks at hand. You can have different custom at your fingertips. You can stop and start activities from their panel as well, saving memory if so desired. Very cool.

I’m not so thrilled about other features of KDE 4.x. The menu requires too much work, although the KDE folks have improved it a little since early versions. Click on the ‘K’ on the left side of the bottom panel for the menu:

The Favorites show up first. The screenshot shows the default favorites except for Krusader which I added simply by right-clicking on Krusader’s icon in the application list and selecting “Add to favorites”. You can remove apps from the favorite list similarly. The bottom row of icons offer to switch to the applications list, places on your computer, recently used apps and documents, or leave KDE.

I never liked the KDE 4.x menu system:

One must click on each category to change into it. I’d much rather have the next level display upon mousing over the category. The menu path appears in the upper right of the menu. To go back a level, you have to click on the path location in that corner as best that I can tell. It beats Windows 7 kludgey setup, but not by a lot. You can go back to the much easier KDE 3.5.x menu if desired using a different widget on the panel.

One of KDE’s strengths has always been the control it offers to users. The setup application remains strong:

One can control about every aspect of the KDE system from here. Of particular note are the Desktop Effects:

KDE uses KWin, its own compositing manager, rather than CompizFusion. I found it solidly stable. As you can see from the screenshot, it supports a lot of eye candy, including the sacred cube. However, Workstation doesn’t go that far. Bummer.

Overall, I enjoyed playing with KDE again. I’m still not thrilled with the new menu or the plasmoid widget approach to the desktops. Two words: no dock. On the other hand, the activity implementation is very powerful. System stability has arrived, as has its customizability.

I’m not ready to switch to KDE, but I think that Kubuntu Oneiric with KDE 4.7 rates pretty close to Mint 12, maybe even surpasses it. Tough call. But Ubuntu Oneiric Unity still rates on top for me with the customizations I’ve implemented, especially moving the dock to the bottom.

After making a good run with Unity, Mint 12, and generic GNOME 3, I have a few observations to make. The idea behind this exploration was to see if I needed to make a move. I thought that Unity would not fare well next to Mint 12, but I was wrong.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Unity

I have to eat some crow on this one, but Ubuntu made a smart move in significantly departing from GNOME 3. Unity is far from perfect, but it’s also far better than the generic GNOME 3 shell. I think that the global menus in Unity could be better implemented. Certainly the Unity panel needs some serious user customizability that it now lacks. I find the dock icons too large on a desktop computer even at their smallest setting.

On the other hand, Unity alone provides a dock. In fact, it’s sorta built around the dock. Unity’s top panel preserves the intent and function of indicators. While GNOME 2 indicators had to be adapted to a new API, at least they could be. Ubuntu may have moved the control buttons to the opposite side of the title bar, but at least they preserved all three.

In addition, Compiz-Fusion remains the premier compositing system in Linux. Any distribution that departs from Compiz has an uphill climb just to get to the base of the mountain. Compiz provides a variety of easy switching mechanisms to move between workspaces using either the pointing system or the keyboard. I sorely missed this ability when testing the other shells. It also provides some excellent and useful effects.

Third-party developers have stepped up to the plate to provide the customizability that Unity sorely lacks. I have found a number of them important to my daily productivity. Most GNOME shell extensions don’t work with Unity, but Unity really doesn’t need them as long as it continues to support panel indicators.

Unity still has a ways to go, but I’m amazed at how far it’s come in just about a year. I gripe because I care, but now I appreciate Unity far more than I did just a week ago.

Generic GNOME 3

Generic GNOME 3 sits far at the other end of the usability spectrum. The stock desktop proved incredibly clean, but also incredibly devoid of useful information and function for the user. The entire GNOME 3 scheme seems to revolve around the dash, which the user must conjure up anytime they wish to do something useful. Although attractive and functional, the dash proved to be both powerful and frustrating.

GNOME 3 seems to have replaced the trustworthy and plentiful GNOME 2 indicators with shell extensions. Using these adds significant utility to the desktop:

GNOME 3 hides indicators until summoned from the lower right corner of the screen. That’s just as well, because most don’t display their designed information anyway. That’s a lot of lost functionality that GNOME 3 apparently makes no effort to either preserve or replace.

I have no idea where Generic GNOME 3 plans to go in the future, but I think that the development team needs to give serious consideration towards minimizing required pointer movements without resorting to keyboard shortcuts. The default workspace information should provide useful functions and situational awareness for the user (workspaces, loaded apps, etc.) beyond the time of day. My watch tells me that with a lot less overhead.

Mint 12 Lisa

Mint 12 falls in between Unity and GNOME 3. Although essentially GNOME 3, Mint brings a number of helpful extensions to the table right out of the box. These include a windows list on the top panel for the current workspace, an excellent menu system, and even a populated bottom panel which I didn’t use. At the same time, it preserves the powerful GNOME 3 dash. The Mint 12 developers did a nice job of leveraging the underlying shell while preserving some usability from GNOME 2.

Although the indicators I tested don’t work exactly right in Mint 12, they at least display on the top panel. Most GNOME shell extensions work in Mint 12, opening up even more user customization. Mint is designed with new users in mind, and the developers work hard to make Mint easy to use. I believe that they have succeeded.

Conclusion

In the end, I place the competing desktops in this order:

1. Ubuntu 11.10 Unity
2. Mint 12
3. KDE 4.x
4. Generic GNOME 3

If you’re surprised that I rated KDE 4.x above GNOME 3 for usability, so am I. I had Kubuntu 11.10 loaded on the spare drive before installing Mint 12 over it and had no regrets about writing over it. Although I’m not all that happy with KDE 4.x, it’s far more useful out of the box than generic GNOME 3.

I have to admit that I’ve been wrong about Unity in at least one respect. Ubuntu didn’t shoot themselves in the foot by going a different direction than GNOME 3, they probably saved their distribution from an impending train wreck. I wonder if anyone at the GNOME project is listening. As for Mint 12, the developers succeeded in limiting the damage of GNOME 3, but it has a long way to go to equal Unity’s functionality.

Looks like I’m casting in my lot with Ubuntu and Unity for the foreseeable future.

I wrote yesterday about Linux Mint 12, which provides some nice built-in extensions to GNOME 3. Parts of the discussion about Mint apply to generic GNOME 3, especially the Activities features. To see how Activities works, read about it here.

I originally planned to write a post tonight comparing Mint 12, Ubuntu 11.10 Unity, and GNOME 3. However, in preparing I realized that I hadn’t fleshed out my GNOME 3 setup, and therefore hadn’t learned enough to discuss it. So, I played with GNOME 3 and learned some new things.

GNOME 3 departed in a new direction from its predecessor, losing significant functionality in the transition. The loss doesn’t appear to be as great as that in the transition from KDE 3.5.10 to KDE 4. However, the concept of indicators has apparently died.

Here’s the generic GNOME 3 desktop from Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric (look ma, no Unity!) with my fall background being the only customization:

You can’t tell from the desktop that this is the 4th of four workspaces and that several applications reside on other workspaces. I don’t look upon that void favorably. The only useful piece of information on the screen is the time. Simple and clean? Yep. Useful? Not so much.

Driving the pointer to the upper left corner of the screen, or clicking on Activities, or hitting the Super key brings up the activity screen that reveals all:

For additional details on how the Activities screen works, please see my Mint 12 review. One other note on this screen. You can drag icons from the Applications tab to the dock-like bar on the left to add them to your favorites. Right clicking on the icons can add or remove them from the favorites list. Simple and intuitive.

Clean? Yes. Attractive? Yes. Productivity enhancing? Nope. While preparing for this post and then writing it, I found repeatedly dragging the pointer to the upper left to open the dash and then back to the workspace bar on the right to be beyond tedious. Using the Super key didn’t improve things much. On a large desktop screen, this scheme leaves much to be desired.

Since Ubuntu provides a virtually generic GNOME 3 shell, the GNOME 3 Shell Extensions mostly work with this release. I installed a handful to customize my desktop and make it easier to use:

Once installed, they can be turned on and off with the Advanced Settings app. [Quick interlude: Note that the only button/control on the window's title bar is the close button on the upper right. That's standard for GNOME 3.] Here’s what I have after this customization:

I found the workspace extension particularly useful. Clicking on it brings up a list of active workspaces:

Of course, you have to remember what app is on which workspace. An extension exists to list all open windows on the panel, but it takes up too much room. There’s only so much real estate available.

I hadn’t originally intended to move the clock from the center to the right, but found it necessary because the favorites pushed the active window display over the center clock display. With this setup, I can see what workspace I’m on, go to places quickly, and access a standard GNOME menu to find apps quickly. This setup works better for me, but still leaves some holes.

One hole involves indicators. The old GNOME 2 indicators don’t generally work on the GNOME 3 panel. Some program indicators do load, but GNOME 3 hides them on the lower right of the workspace. Moving the pointer to the lower right area of the screen reveals them:

Note that they do not display as designed. The screen icon with the circle and line through it is supposed to be my hardware sensor display. The weather indicator next to it should be showing conditions and temperature. Mousing over them shows their individual names. All these indicators function correctly when right- or left- clicked. Even if the indicators displayed correctly, GNOME 3 hides them from view. That dramatically limits their usefulness.

That’s pretty much my quick spin with GNOME 3.  It looks great, and the dash is pretty cool. But simplicity doesn’t necessarily equal elegance. In this case, the simplicity comes at a price. The standard workspace tells the user nothing about their current computing environment. The dash tells you almost everything, but only when you call it up. With the right extensions, though, GNOME 3 can be usable, but it’s not ideal for me. Creating this post in GNOME 3 taught me that very quickly.

After hearing the hype over Linux Mint 12 recently, I decided to give it a spin. Not just a run in a virtual machine, but a full run on a spare hard drive. That would give a more robust opportunity to see how Mint handles full 3D video and other capabilities.

Installing Mint proved simple. I started with a LiveCD. Mint 12 doesn’t fit entirely on a CD and also offers a Live DVD for the full installation. That’s not an problem, though, because the rest of the installation can easily be installed later. The LiveCD booted and found all my hardware with no problem. After playing around for a few minutes, I installed Mint 12.

I don’t  have any screenshots of the actual installation since I didn’t do this in a virtual machine. The process proved simple and should be easy for novices. When all was done, though, the computer rebooted to an unreadable graphics screen. Ubuntu 11.10 did the same thing when I upgraded to it. Hitting ‘Enter’ moves the user to the login screen. After logging in, Mint 12 loaded:

The screenshot doesn’t do the 3D picture justice. It’s very sharp. The desktop looks pretty much like GNOME 3 except for the bottom panel and trash can. The Mint 12 developers created a wrapper called Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MSGE) for GNOME 3 to make it look and work a bit like the beloved GNOME 2. The extensions seem to work OK, but they don’t really bring back GNOME 2′s full capabilities that GNOME 3 sorely lacks at this point.

When Mint 12 first loads, a helpful window appears on the screen:

Unfortunately, I didn’t take this screenshot on the first run. In the lower left corner on that window, another entry appeared on the first load offering to install the proprietary codecs. I did that right away and it couldn’t have been easier. Ubuntu requires loading the Medibuntu repository and the ubuntu restricted extras package, which takes some specific knowledge. After taking this screenshot, I clicked on Upgrade to the DVD Edition, which installed the remaining software, including LibreOffice. All very simple and well thought-out. Big kudos to the Mint team.

Unlike Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric, Mint follows the GNOME 3 schema pretty closely. That includes the way GNOME 3 uses and allocates workspaces. Mint 12 starts with one workspace as you can see in the above screenshot (lower right on the bottom panel). When you open apps, Mint 12 adds another workspace:

Once offered, the user may change to that workspace and open applications in it. That will result in adding yet another workspace. This seems to be part of GNOME 3′s using an activities metaphor vs. a location scheme that’s been so common before.

Also, check out the area next to the word “Activities” on the left side of the top panel in the above screenshot. The name of the active window appears there, Firefox in the above case. If the pointer is moved off of the active window, the name is removed from the top panel:

Interesting, but I’m not sure it’s a particularly useful feature.

Clicking on the word Activities on the top panel or hitting the Super key brings up a dash-like display:

The default Windows tab displays all the loaded application windows on the current workspace. If more than one window is open, it displays them spread out:

It seems basically like a task switcher, and clicking on any window or workspace opens that item in the foreground. Loading more windows provides a better idea (yes, I used a different background at that point):

The left side of the display is a vertical icon array of favorite and running applications, kinda like a dock. The right side of the screen presents a graphic display of the available workspaces which become useful when you mouse over that panel:

You can see what’s on each workspace in miniature. Adding VLC on workspace 2 opens a new workspace 3:

I should note that as you mouse over workspaces, that panel opens fully and the windows in the middle shrink a bit. Selecting a different workspace produces a display of its windows in the middle section. Moving the mouse back to the window section causes the workspace panel to shrink and the windows to grow slightly. There’s no mistaking where your pointer is located.

I found this overall scheme a pretty interesting and useful feature, actually better than Unity’s dash in some ways. The Mint 12 feature page touts the schema as “activity centered”. Well, OK. I make particular uses of each of my workspaces and operate pretty efficiently that way. If the Unity panel had a decent workspace switcher, I’d be even happier with it. Compiz provides a number of nice task and workspace switchers, best of all the cube.

Clicking on the Applications tab produces a list of installed applications like the application lens in Unity’s dash:

Menu categories appear on the right so that you can narrow the choices.

The top panel indicators loaded by the user appear on the lower right of the display. Mousing over them puts their name next to them. Right clicking on each provides appropriate context menus to Open and Remove.

Lastly, I really like the Mint 12 menu system and how it works:

On the left side of the menu is a vertical panel of handy shortcuts that include Firefox, Banshee, Software Manager, Advanced Setup, Terminal, and Files by default. Mousing over a menu category like Internet brings up the menu’s contents on the right side. This menu implementation proved simple and intuitive – far better than KDE 4′s default menu. I’d like to have it ported to a Unity panel icon. If not for the great menu, I’d pass on the Mint’s bottom panel altogether in favor of its Activities display.

Overall, I think that Linux Mint 12 is well thought out and works quite nicely. It’s easier to load proprietary codecs and other helpful tools like Advanced Settings. The Activity display is pretty cool and quite useful, but not as cool as the Compiz cube. I’m impressed with Mint 12.

I started out thinking that I might like Mint 12 more than Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric with Unity, but it didn’t turn out that way. I really like docks like AWN. Although Unity isn’t as functional as AWN in that regard, it’s way ahead of Mint 12 which doesn’t have a dock. The GNOME Shell Extension site has a dock, but it isn’t compatible with this version of GNOME.

So, it looks like I’ll be sticking with Unity for now, but I will keep monitoring Mint 12 for developments. Their developer team is doing great work.

BTW, I wrote this post using Firefox in Mint 12.

My quest to recover some improved functionality from Ubuntu Unity in 11.10 Oneiric continues to produce fruit. So far, I’ve managed to:

Add hardware monitoring

Add weather monitoring

Add a GNOME menu launcher to the Unity panel

Move the Unity Panel from the left to the bottom of the workspace

I’ve never liked the global menu system either. Global menus kill the mouse-over focus functionality which I use heavily. The global menu for the last window passed over with the pointer appears on the top panel rather than the menu for the intended app. Since almost all apps open against the top panel in Unity by default, it becomes a tight rope act to tread carefully around other windows to get to the menu for a smaller window that isn’t against the top panel.

The Unity developers should give users  a choice on if/how global menus are used. Desktops with large screens should not be treated like laptops or netbooks with smaller screens. For me on a desktop with a large screen, the best use would be to only use global menus when windows are maximized. There’s some discussion about this for 12.04, but time will tell.

There is a way to eliminate global menus, but it involves a tiny bit of surgery. In the terminal, copy and paste:

sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

This uninstalls the offending libraries that control the appmenus for GNOME applications. You can also remove the packages using Synaptic if you don’t want to use the terminal. But, this won’t change the behavior of non-GNOME apps like Firefox and Thunderbird. Both of their global menu capabilities come from extensions which you can disable cannot remove. For Firefox, go to menu -> Add-ons, then disable the Global Menu Bar integration extension and restart Firefox:

For Thunderbird, go to Tools -> Add-ons, then disable the Global Menu Bar integration extension and restart Thunderbird.

Works like a champ.

I uninstalled the appmenu packages and disabled the extension in Firefox, but left global menu functionality in Thunderbird. I load Thunderbird at the top of the workspace, so the global menus actually save some space there without negatively impacting usability.

Which brings me to Window placement. By default it seems, Unity loads all windows against the upper left corner of the workspace. That makes it a pain to switch quickly with the pointer to smaller windows hidden behind larger ones. It drove me crazy until I enabled Place Windows in CompizConfig Settings Manager:

I then set the Placement Mode to Smart placement on its General tab:

The net result is that the first window is placed in the upper left of the workspace, but succeeding windows opened on that workspace are placed as far from each other as possible so that they only minimally overlap, if at all. That’s what I had before Unity and it works great for me.

I’ve finally come to a place where I’m not chaffing against Unity all the time. I’m sure that I can find more goodies over time and will keep tweaking my setup. If anyone has a great idea or two to pass along, please comment below.

I’ve been trying to live with Unity now since upgrading to Ubuntu Oneiric. As I reported earlier, Unity has become more stable but remains minimally configurable. If that were the end of the story, I probably would have moved on from Unity. But the beauty of open source lies in the ability of the community to enhance software.

I made a couple of modifications which kept me using Unity. First, I found a panel indicator application with which to monitor my hardware. That has been an excellent tool. I also found a decent menu application for the Unity dock, which mitigated the text-based Dash silliness. My screen then looked like this:

I since found a reliable panel weather indicator called my-weather-indicator. The stock GNOME weather-indicator keeps crashing, so I sought an alternative. And that’s where I sat until today.

OMG!Ubuntu! posted about a great alternative to move the Unity dock to the bottom of the screen, which was one of my top complaints. I had my AWN dock at the bottom of the screen, which worked out great. I didn’t make all the changes that OMG!Ubuntu! presented, though. I only moved the Unity panel to the bottom of the screen and toggled the icon backlight and edge illumination on the panel.

After following the installation instructions on OMG!Ubuntu!, the appropriate screen in compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm) should look like this with Ubuntu Unity Plugin Rotated selected:

Clicking on Ubuntu Unity Plugin Rotated brings up the Behavior tab, which I set to this:

Going to the Experimental tab, I set it up like this:

That produced a usable system that now looks like this:

Such a simple move of the Unity panel from the left to the bottom makes a big difference in usability for me. For one thing, it eliminates the constant annoyance of inadvertently triggering the Unity panel when using All-in-One sidebar to access Firefox’s favorites. This drove me crazy, causing me to move Firefox every time I executed it because Oneiric apparently doesn’t remember window locations like Natty and other predecessors did.

Given this new development, it looks like Ubuntu Unity may be continue to increase in configurability thanks to third-party open source developers. I’ll keep you posted!