Grey Matter

I don’t intend to write a FUD article supporting either Windows or Linux.This opinion is based on my personal experience.

Every once in a while i would take the decision that i wouldn’t use Windows any more and install some Linux distro.I would use it and after some time i find myself creeping back to windows.

When i installed the first time linux on my machine i didn’t have a Internet connection.This made it really difficult to install new apps.For non linux users:Installing application in linux is slightly different from that on windows.On Windows we would have a setup.exe for most of the applications that would take care installing all that’s  needed for the app to run on your machine.But on most of the  linux we have a package manager through which we would download and install the apps. For any app to install the installation of its dependencies is a prerequisite.The package manager takes care of downloading and installing the dependencies for you.But the problem i had was that since i was not having a Internet connection i had to manually download all the dependencies somewhere and install them. Imagine a six layer dependency tree.So with out internet connection its a bit difficult living with linux.

The other major concern why i would switch back was performance.I have a modest 256 MB RAM,Pentium IV,40 GB hardisk machine.This is a decent configuration for running windows XP.With Windows XP my machine never slows down unless i have more than one big software running simultaneously.But for linux the above stated configuration is the minimum required.The ubuntu live CD didn’t even install with this configuration.I had to use the alternate CD(text based installer) for installing it.Never have i got the apps running fast in linux.Even with only firefox open the speed would be very much less on it.So if you have not so bleeding edge hardware most of linux will be slow.

I am currently on Xubuntu which is ubuntu with Xfce desktop environment.This is supposed to be a fast OS because of its Xfce advantage.But even this is slower than the Windows XP professional.

I know there might be exceptions.I read somewhere slackware running on a 90 MB RAM.But slackware is 6 cd download! I wouldn’t try it until i get extremely bored .

I was going through the list of Best Open Source Projects,found a few interesting open projects….hmmmm they aint projects perse…

Religion goes open

Yoism is the world’s first open religion.Yoism joins the already long list of religions around the world.But this is open.Their ideology is inspired by open sourcing.

Open Humans  

Was wondering what open humans was…free and customizable humans??

Lol..Its a site where people can be open.Reveal all their secrets.Do what ever freaky thing.

So Religion,human beings wats the next thing going to be open??i am keeping my fingers crossed.

We see .rpm packages is very much popular and is available for most of the softwares.But installing a software in Ubuntu requires it to be a .deb package so we have to convert the package using the alien tool.This tool comes along with the debian distro.

the command alien -i <package name>.rpm converts the package from .rpm to .deb and installs it.

ref:howtoforge

Today i saw about a movie called elephant’s dream by Orange team.The movie is fully open source!!.

it was made entirely with open source software. Modeling, animation, compositing, and editing were done with Blender 3D. Postpro and texturing in the Gimp.

This movie was released under a Creative Commons Attribute 2.5 license

The movie was conceived and created by the Orange team over the course of about 6 months. The rendering alone required 125 days on a supercomputer farm comprising over 200 processors.

Wow amazing…..i am yet to see the movie…will write the review after that…

but i still wonder why these people put in so much of hard work and resources to give it freely….how do these people earn…. have any one got an idea??

I saw this video of a XGL linux desktop..wow the user interface is really cool.Similar to mac OSX.

Catching up with the release of IE7 mozilla has released the next version of firefox-firefox 2.0.True that IE7 was more surprising yet dissapointing release when compared to FF2.0.Firefox2 has improved on the UI,now there is close button on each tab,without bringing in a radical change.Resuming the session is also a nice feature which i longed for in FF.You could see all the new features here. I tried out this sample page which uses css extensively in FF2 but still its not displaying it correctly IE7 does this well.But thats no reason why one should use IE7..nobody is going to use css this extensively.FF is still my favourite browser.

download FF2 here

After toping the chart among the various linux distributions,Mark plans to release the next version of Ubuntu-its going to be ubuntu 7.04 code named ‘Fiesty Fawn’.I am sure its gonna rock.

via[Mark Shuttleworth]

this is so easy
upgrading ubuntu breezy
to the dapper drake
did it while eating angel food cake
the magic word is gksudo “update-manager -d”

And thou who has no internet
gets it free!!!
not even the shipping fee!!!
gets it from shipit.ubuntu.com

Mark Shuttleworth deserves a salaam
for he spent his pocket money,
(while i used it to eat idli chutney,)
to push this open source magic
and prove again why microsoft is sick
think the shelling ye gonna make
for the xp->vista ye gonna partake
yep save millions or rather billions
from going to billG’s kitty
with which we could build a new ‘new york’ city