Yipeee!! Just one word - Fantabulous.

The most painless install ever. Well, actually, I haven’t yet completely migrated to Ubuntu, but I just might. Today, I downloaded the latest beta of Ubuntu codenamed”Feisty Fawn”. The thing that amazed me was that it had to use a restricted driver to get my Wireless working, but it did detected it and also most other hardware on my laptop. Amazing how far linux has come in the last couple of years. No wonder, Ubuntu has captured significant market-share from other linux distros. Now what is required to push wide-scale adoption, is to make a slicker interface. I know there is Gnome and KDE, but we need to rethink requirements. Greedy as I am, I fail to be satisfied by “better than windows” performance. It would be great if the Ubuntu developer push the envelope further, and develop something that can compete with MAC OSX.

Beagle, Banshee and Mono integration would be great. Also, I sorely miss voip functionality that skype and gtalk provide. What is my alternative? Anyone out there with a good app for voip? A developer edition anyone?!

It is amazing how much a little money and the eye for perfection can achieve. Kudos to Mark shuttleworth and his millions! :). Here are some of the features of the new release:

• A migration-assistant, which helps you move your data from your “old” OS into Ubuntu. Read old as Windows; Wink.
• New Games: Sudoku and Chess
• Disk Analyzer
• VMI enabled kernel, for improved performance when running on VMware hypervisors
• All new artwork
• New Graphical Desktop Effects

Update: I just installed Ubuntu on my external USB drive using the QEMU processor emulator. There are several ways to run it off a USB drive.

1. Create a vfat partition on the USB drive and install using the a special boot sequence as detailed here.
2. Install on the USB drive and boot using GRUB - A how-to by Doug Ly.
3. Run Ubuntu using QEMU. I went with this option, since I can switch between windows and linux without a reboot. Also, installing a small add-on , kQemu, increases the performance to almost that of a native install. There is a wonderful how-to here.
4. run Ubuntu on Vmware. Do you want a how-to?

I need to have access to gtalk and skype for atleast the next few months, so that has prompted me to stick with an emulated version. I hope to move completely to Ubuntu around mid May. So let’s see what happens then!

I ought to resist the temptation of writing posts full of only links to other blogs .. but this one is good

http://www.douglaskarr.com/2007/03/25/selling-news-is-dead/

He talks about how “selling news is dead”. I thinks he hits the nail on the head with this one. When was the last time, that you read/saw, a news items that was worth buying the newspaper for?

I can hardly remember the time, I needed to pick a newspaper, let alone buy one. Well, I do read a couple of articles once a week, on the papers that lie around in my office reception.

Marius Oiaga of Softpedia News argues that Windows Vista is more secure than MAC OSX, on the grounds that there are more security patches for MACOSX in a 1 month period. Now, how naive is that?!! Developers at Microsoft are probably just catching their breaths after years of trying to get Windows Vista out of the “window” (excuse the pun).

Now, why is Mac OSX more secure that Windows. Well, you never need to run as administrator (root, in unix speak) to get all applications to work efficiently. Since it is based on BSD unix (FreeBSD), Mac OSX’ architecture is definetely much more secure. Also, take into account, the fact, that there are only 6% of users on Mac OSX, and hence proves to be a very unlikely target for security breaches.

I guess the answer to your security woes, go use an absolutely obscure OS. No one will ever trouble you or you can switch to almost any linux platform (Think FreeBSD, OpenSuse or Ubuntu)

After moving to bangalore (it’s been 3 months already!!), I never had an opportunity to got visit good friends who have moved here. Last weekend, I managed to find time to meet up with my old pals.

Koushik

Introducing, Koushik. a very good friend from Pondicherry. He is currently work as a Project Manager (yup, the youngest there!) at Accenture. This giant of flesh and bone (much like me) is a strict veggie and drinks non-alcoholic wine only (I tried it but … ugh).

If you want to know anything, I mean anything at all, about western music, especially rock, jazz, instrumental, classical go to this guy! He is a huge encyclopedia of music. Everytime I meet with him, I end up getting introduced to new kinds of music. Off late, he is into John Mclaughlin, Sakthi, Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Thanks Koushik for the great lunch, and also the wonderful music you have introduced to me through all these years. If you want to get in touch with this guy, use the comments section.

Dinesh ‘SPB clone’ Sivaraj

Another good friend, fed me dinner on Sunday. Dinesh is the god of all things in networking (atleast for me ). He has completed his CCIE qual, and is currently working at Juniper Advanced TAC. He is also a great singer/composer/arranger/ ohh a lot more! Great skill at mixing music using his Nuendo-enabled, JBL speakered-workstation. He has a stunner kid, Shaan.

I had a great time with you guys this weekend. Thanks for the yummy chicken you fed me!

He is a great guy in general (Dinesh, you have to give me more food, if you want more of this kind of praise :D). You can get in touch with this guy too, via the comments section.

P.S: If you are from ODC, please, I say, please, refrain from teasing dinesh (:x> wink, wink)

More photos of Shaan, and his baap