Category Archives: linux

linux, vista

Penguin Zindaabaad – Ubuntu 10.04 review

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They : Is this Apple?
Me : No. This is Ubuntu !
They : Huh? 
Me : Yep! 
The above conversation happened yesterday when I had gone to give a demo to an Association Committee.  Half an hour we were discussing on Ubuntu and then I realized I have come here to sell my product and not Ubuntu – and went on with the demo! 

That’s the screenshot of my desktop – on Ubuntu 10.04. Very minimal, OS Xish, smooth, fast, snappy, extremely responsive – and a conversation piece at every demo.

In May 2009 – a year back I installed Ubuntu 9.04 with dual boot with Vista ( http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2009/05/finally-switched-from-vista-to-ubuntu-9.html). Now after a year – in may 2010 – I clean formatted the laptop and have gifted the entire hard drive, boot sector et all to Ubuntu 10.04. I am confident / convinced that Windows is not needed any more.

In fact I am very grateful to Microsoft for having produced a crappy OS. If Vista was a little better I would have lived with it – how I lived through Win 98, Win ME, Win XP ( truly the best of the lot ). But Vista is a class apart – bloated, slow, buggy, random, restrictive, frustrating….!

Here is my take on the new Ubuntu.

Speed


The new one boots fast ( however not the 10 second boot time everyone is raving ) – I count 15 dots in the new bootup screen everytime – and by the time I login – the system has picked up the wireless, I click on Chrome – one jump on the dock and Chrome shows up. Not the same with firefox though – man it is bloated.

Almost all the applications ( Open Office, Filezilla, Gimp ) open up really fast.



Dock


I missed the OS X Tray. In the earlier avatars I tried Gnome Do and few other hacks – but nothing came close to the OS X dock. Now the new Docky has come pretty close to the real thing. It is included in the repository – just apt-get install it.

Ubuntu Software Center


Earlier I had to google and then learn about an app, then search in synaptics package manager. All that is gone – the new software center kicks ass. If you had used Fink Commander for OS X you will love using this. My only gripe is there should be a more button – minimal is nice – but once in a while it is a pain.

Compiz 

The wobble, desktop cube, cover flow view on ALT-TAB – all are very smooth. In fact when I use Windows ( 7 of course )  it looks pedestrian. Moving the windows gives me a stiff back – why are they so rigid?

Expose ( we call it scale ) works perfectly. I have most of the head spinning effects disabled – perhaps will leave them on before demos and get a few oohs and aahs for the OS also ( apart from the oohs and aahs for the apartmentadda demo 🙂 )

Copy dialog


The copy dialog goes and sits at the top right corner – double click and you get the copy window – neat.

Switch user


Works. In 9.04 the OS will hang. However it is not as fast as “fast user switching” in OS X – when they released this feature in 2004 or something.

Tata Photon


It shows up in the networking setup screen > mobile broadband – chose defaults – and it connected.

Laptop runs cool

With Ubuntu 9 it used to get really hot. I have the processor tray on my top panel and now it is like a placid ocean. Shoots up only when I start an application. I am not sure if it is the new Linux Kernel or there was a buggy app in the old release.

The Bad stuff


Penguin lovers close your eyes and ears.. Here are my gripes

Social media integration

Why are they wasting everyone’s time?  Linux is for serious users – the Canonical developers are just wasting time trying to build such stuff – which no one will use. In my opinion linux will not get widespread adoption because of such social stuff – but will get accepted if it is as usable as an OS X.

Window buttons on the left


Horror of horrors – why will they do that? Just by copying a small OS X style they are not going to get a usable OS. A google search solved it – it is a simple configuration change – need not even reboot.

Lack of a good iTunes alternative


There is none. zilch. I tried Amarok, rhythmbox – Sorry Mark Shuttleworthji – I will never recommend Linux to my friends for this very reason. Songbird has ditched Linux – and we are left with no options. I am seriously thinking of starting an open source project which will be a true iTunes alternative for linux.

I don’t know what beer the developers of Amarok and rhythmbox are drinking – guys – if you want to beat Windows / OS X – we need a better jukebox – or atleast bribe or feed the ego of the Wine guys to make iTunes run in Linux. Sheesh – I am appalled.

Only good thing out of this is it makes me more productive. I do not waste time downloading, playing, dissecting songs on the laptop – my trusty iPod classic has all the stuff and I update it occasionally on my iMac.

Anyway – bottom line – I am one happy linux geek. 10.04 is truly the most awesomest OS Canonical has ever produced. I am hoping that, with 10.10 they will release Gnome 3 – and there will be no looking back. I will put Ubuntu on my 5 year old iMac ( damn chrome does not run on it because it is a power PC )

Penguin Zindaabaad !

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Finally Switched from Vista to Ubuntu 9

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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

linux, tools

My Best Friend Linux

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Today I was setting up a cron job and suddenly realized – Linux has been such a good friend to me all these years and I never recognized this fact. This post is how Linux has stood by my side silently and quietly helped me do difficult things easily, has never once failed me, is always there when I wanted, does not require me to pay, teaches me cool tips & tricks and is a joy to talk with – what else can you expect from your best friend.

I will summarize some of the features I love linux for.
1. tail -f error.log

I use tail command a lot. Only Textpad in windows world has something equivalent of it and that too is a little jerky and with large log files Textpad becomes slow. Tell me if there is a better alternative to Textpad and Notepad++ ( should I have to always manually reload in Notepad++?).
2. crontab

Hats off to the geniuses behind crontab concept. Scheduling programs to run every minute to run on a particular day once a year – is so simple. Just by editing a text file you can schedule your programs to your needs.
3. CLI

I can do “anything” from the command line. It is much faster, can pipe actions, can script them and much more.
4. VI Editor

Navigation, search, replace – cannot be any simpler and faster. Emacs fans – I know you guys can get it done too – we are brothers here.
5. Permissions

Read, Write, Execute permissions – the first thing I learnt in Unix land and lets me sleep peacefully at night!
6. No License hassles

This is the biggest reason why I love linux. I can download it, burn it, install it in my machines and not worry about the license or legal issues. For a startup with a shoe string budget – this is a boon.
Of course there are numerous other benefits – lack of viruses, malware, great performance even in lowly hardware, ease of installing applications and countless others.
To all the people who have contributed to Linux – my sincere thanks.