Ravi Mohan's Blog

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Farewell to Windows

I just switched the Thinkpad over to Ubuntu Linux. I am generally not prone to waxing lyrical about Linux distros, but Ubuntu is really awesome installs flawlessly on the Thinkpad in about 20 minutes flat (and that includes the windows partition resize step).

I had forgotten what it was to mind meld with your computer in the last few years when I used windows + cygwin almost exclusively on my laptop.

I am home again :-)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ubuntu is great considering "ease-of-use" - But, did you find Gnome + metacity faster than Windows XP?
I did not.

Ravi said...

"did you find Gnome + metacity faster than Windows XP?"

yes I did. Still do. my thinkpad is a fairly high end machine. Maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.

It is not a "perceptual" thing. I showed off the "speed of reaction" to a friend of mine who was on Win XP and his reaction was "wow! that's *fast.* I want linux on my laptop as well. Can I borrow your Ubuntu CD?".

Besides, most of the good devs/admins i know (some in Thoughtworks, yahoo etc) confirm that the same software runs much faster/consumes less resources in Linux than Win any day.

All anecdotal, but convincing enough for me.
YMMV
Regds,

Anonymous said...

Man, Watch out for Windows Vista.MS rulzz !!! Had it not been for MS, we would have still been in the stone age.

Ravi said...

"MS rulzz !!! Had it not been for MS, we would have still been in the stone age."

bwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!

ROTFLMAO !!!!!!

Ravi said...

Ranjith,
I saw your blog post regarding your difficulties with Picasa.

Mark Pilgrim says "digiKam with the Kipi plugins pack blows it out of the water." so that maybe something you want to try (if you don't mind kde)

Your blog requires a ms passport id to comment on it. Too much pain. Hopefully you'll read this.

Anonymous said...

Check out xgl with OpenSuse....

Anonymous said...

Ranjith,

After I switched to the "right" kernel (linux-686; I have a P4), Gnome + Metacity sped up noticeably. Don't know if you've already done that.

Anonymous said...

"Had it not been for MS, we would have still been in the stone age."

Indeed. Metallurgical science led to the bronze and iron ages. Here's a cookie.

Anonymous said...

Ravi,
Thanks for the suggestions - will try!
The problem is I am stuck on iPhoto and expect every photo app to be like that - I have only seen Picasa that can match up to iPhoto.

Anonymous said...

I liked gnome on ubuntu but missed kde too much. Luckily its easy to move:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Anonymous said...

Hi Ravi Mohan,

Comments are as interesting as your blog.

But while reading the comments, readers cannot comeback to the blog and get a quick glance.(basically,to understand comment)

Could you please change the settings of the blog so as the comments would appear in an pop up message box.

-Praveen Kulkarni.