Finally I have made the jump from Windows to Linux – the 3rd time. First 2 times I did it when I was on a J2EE project ( weblogic environment ) and a SOA project ( Tomcat ). Once I rolled off the projects again I had to go back to Windows.

Now this is the 3rd time I am switching and along with it the development environment of Apartment Adda to Ubuntu and I will be here for quite some time – perhaps till I get a powerbook 😉 The build and production are already on linux – so it was easy to make the switch – the scripts were all working. A few things were holding me back – like Nokia PC Suite, ITunes, Chrome – but I am feeling better already for having made the choice.

1. Ubuntu 9 is slick, good on eyes and blazingly fast

My thumbrule for judging the performance of an OS is – everything should launch like how a notepad launches in Windows XP ( vista notepad takes longer than XP notepad). In Ubuntu most of the apps meet the critieria. Ubuntu boots really fast and is immediately responsive after desktop comes up and doesn’t cheat like XP or Vista. 

2. Terminal

I had putty for SSHing, a cygwin window for tailing error file, and a command prompt for building, running tests – I know I could have merged cygwin window and command prompt – habits die hard. Now I have one window – with tabs for each of the above. Really neat – and I have switched to the mainframe green – gives me a nostalgic feeling since thats where I started my career.

3. Multiple Workspaces

I am a big fan of multiple workspaces. Missed it in Windows and earlier OS X versions. Helps segregate work and fun. Now with extended desktop and multiple workspace – it is productivity quadrapled. And to switch all I have to do is to move the mouse to the desktop area where there are no windows and scroll the mouse wheel – and it switches.

4. Feeling light

I am not running any of the memory hogs :

1. AVG Anti virus
2. Windows Defender
3. Windows Firewall
4. Spybot S&D

5.Unixiness

Vi, cron jobs, apt-get ( debian specific though ), pipe, grep – the list of toys is endless. Now when I think back I should have switched in Jan 09 when I got this laptop. But kept postponing the switch thinking it will take time to set things up – apparently it took me half a day yesterday and the time / frustration saved from today onwards will pay back within a week.

What I will miss : 

ITunes, Chrome, Nokia PC Suite, Tortoise SVN, HeidiSQL… Do let me know if youknow of some alternatives.

So after crying here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2009/02/vista-is-a.html and misjudging here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html – I have made the switch wholeheartedly and following is the request my machine will be making to the webservers all over the world – doesn’t it look beautiful 🙂

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10