Category Archives: vista

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 !

vista, Windows 7

How Windows 7 will “really” save money

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I read an article on infoworld where Steve Balmer cited an article by Gartner research how Windows 7 will save money. Now as you all know Gartner is a very trusted and honest research firm. They have earlier published how Linux is actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing – Linux claims it is open source and free and all that – but you need expensive system engineers, expensive training, expensive hardware etc. So many ignorant CTOs were saved from making a wrong decision and continued to recommend Windows – because of Gartner..may God be with them ( and Microsoft’s funding ).

Anyway, here is what Gartner missed in the report and I am filling in the gap to prove why Windows 7 will save lot of money for a company :

1. Save on Coffee, Milk, Sugar & Snacks

The Vista folks when they come to work and start their day, they switch on their laptop like every one else. But as you all know that it takes some where between 20-30 minutes before the machine is actually responsive, these folks go for coffee. Along with them they pull the other Windows XP, OS X, Ubuntu folks who have already started breaking the build.

With a record 10 second boot time of Windows 7 – these ex-Vista users will become super efficient and will break the build within 1 minute of them starting work. There by the organization can save money on Coffee and snacks – because the whole team will be busy fixing the build.

2. Save on Cooling charges ( applies only to Hotter climates )

In Vista the processor always runs at 100% – it is good because you are using all the GHz you paid for – but downside is machines and the room get hot quickly. Now with the super efficient kernel and indexing – Windows 7 will run lot cooler. If you are in Bangalore, you can turn off the AC and open the Windows ( the physical kind ).

However for our friends in cooler climates where they have to heat their building, I recommend all to switch to Vista – you will save on heating charges.

3. Save on Bandwidth

This is kind of negligible, but the kind of reporting Gartner does even the minimal saving should be reported – because they don’t leave even a toothpick behind.

Because Windows 7 is “Vista correctly designed”, there will not be any UI confusions like trying to understand UAC, or how to view the file name fully in the explorer window etc. So the users need not do a google ( or Bing ) search to find out how to turn off these annoyances – there by saving a lot of bandwidth.

Guess this makes the report complete.

and Mr. Balmer, you are welcome.

vista

Staples Print Center’s gift to me – Khatra.exe

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Last weekend I went to Staples Print Center in Marathahalli – Printo has closed shop and moved out. And when I got home I plugged the USB drive into Vista and AVG Anti Virus did not complain – but I saw a program called Khatra.exe asking for Admin privileges to run.

Then I rebooted into Ubuntu and was horrified to see the files that were there. There were folders and lots of exes. Now I am upset with 2 entities here.
1. Staples Print Center
Printo always scans the flash drives ( even if it used to take time ) and not once they loaded viruses on to my USB drive. Wish Staples learns from their competitor and educates their employees to follow proper process ( I am sure Staples will have it in their employee handbook ).
2. Vista
I did not give administrative privileges to Khatra.exe, still it managed to copy itself in the registry in some 10 places, got itself added to startup , and had the guts to ask again for administrative privileges when I rebooted.
I am shocked that inspite of all the zombie Windows XPs on the net, Microsoft has not learnt a thing – it is still a MG road platform – anyone can come, sit, pitch their tent and start doing business.
I am seriously considering investing in Codeweaver or trying out Virtual Box for Ubuntu – Office is one thing that forces me to reboot to Windows. It has wasted a few hours of my time – imagine the billions of hours people will be losing all over the world because of poor security measures in the OS.
vista

Vista is an A$$

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In my blog post a year back ( http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html ) I had given a favourable review of Vista. Now i take everything back that I said.

Earlier I thought my Dell 620 ( had a Vista performance rating of 3.0 ) was not man enough to run Vista – so I was forgiving. But now I have a Dell Studio 17 which has a performance rating of 5.0 – and it is still troubling me.  Here are the reasons :
1. I have an apple USB keyboard with the mouse attached to it. Every time the machine comes out of sleep I have to wait 1 minute before it gets activated. And yes the year is 2009 and it takes such a long time for Vista to detect a USB device/hub. Good job.
2. BSODs – I see it 2 to 3 times a week. I still have not found a pattern and I do not have any freebies off the net. 
3. I am in Bangalore and power goes off frequently. And along with it my internet connection goes off. Mostly I will be connected to Apartment Adda through putty and it will stop responding. The CPU usage will shoot up to 100%. It took a long time before I found this problem. I started suspecting that my machine got infected and ran scan after scan. 
How did the kernel overlords allow any process to consume 100% CPU – that too a lowly SSH client called putty which is 300KB in size.
4. Search and Indexing is a joke. Microsoft is trying to compete with Google? Good luck. 
5. Finally, booting speed. It is as slow as Windows 3.1, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Windows XP. Nothing has changed. I have to start the laptop, go brush teeth, read newspaper and drink coffee, wash the cup, read A to Z to my son, and then when I come back it might be ready – or it might have installed updates and restarting.
Oh so you recommend trying windows 2007? And I have to pay for it. Naah – I think I have had enough with Windows OSes the past decade. 
Now I have Ubuntu on the other partition and it blazes – takes full advantage of the hardware that is offerred to it. I am going to format this machine with just Ubuntu in another couple of weeks. Wish chrome is ready for linux soon.