My Experience with Ubuntu Maverick 10.10

I can’t recall where I read it, but I remembered reading it somewhere that “Gnome just works and works and works!”. No crashing, it simply works.

It has solution for almost all the needs of a desktop user that I know, that is why I rely on Gnome for my work system.

With Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 using Gnome is a great experience so far. Before the final version of 10.10 launched, I was trying with KDE 10.10 maverick beta. It was also excellent but unfortunately I encountered screen freezing at least five times in a month or so. That made me little nervous because I can’t allow that in my work system. With Gnome no such issues.

When I installed Maverick on the launch day, I had few issues on my Laptop but with some updates in a few days, those issues were fixed. One of them was my auto network had to be started manually everytime I boot the system but I fixed it later with help from our great community.

Social networking client Gwibber being a very good tool for both Twitter and Facebook, I think there was no need for me to look for other clients. Because then I would have to load one for Twitter and one for Facebook. Gwibber has some issues as sometimes I have found adding Facebook account is a problem but with more time, I feel these issues will be solved.

Avant-Windows-Navigator being such a wonderful docking application that it changes the whole look and feel of the Desktop for good. There are many applets to choose from the list which has weather, radio, system monitor etc. Sometimes you might feel do I need the panel there in the screen?

In Screnlets we have desktop widget support, but in this area I would like to see more choices.

By now, everybody might have come to know about Nautilus-Elementary or Nautilus RGBA. If not you might want to take a look at both and install them for a great desktop experience.

In all till now my Maverick exprience is great.

No posting for a long time….

Before I start my today’s post, I must explain why I was off for so long.

Personally I felt very bad, that I could not even make one post in more than a month probably. May be it has something to do with my busy schedule and different types of responsibilities, but above all it might be the well known habit of “Ok, I will do it tomorrow”.

That is why we should always write when it comes to mind.

I hope even though I did not post much last month, from now on I should write more.

– Arindom

Using Linux OS

While choosing a Linux distro, one should choose and install only that version, which is released for Public  and not the one which is under the development.

Although under development version may be the one with latest features, but it may also contain bugs (errors). This will not help you in case you are just a new user (newbie). So while a developer or a tester might like the newest version, we the normal users should only try and use the latest public version.

When you visit the Ubuntu website, there is a link for Download page. There you can choose which version to download depending on what kind of platform you will be using. If you are a desktop user you should download the desktop version.

While in these initial posts I am concentrating more on Ubuntu, later I wish to write more about other Linux distro’s as well.

This is just my small effort to make Linux users feel more comfortable in using Linux.

-Arindom

Choice of Linux Distribution for starters

This is for those people who are thinking to give Linux a try.

To start with one should first decide which Linux distribution should he/she give a try. This is very important because depending on your first experience you may or may not feel interested in continuing with Linux. As they say “first look is very important”, I also feel that one should spend little time in determining which Linux distribution you should use.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, there are several distros available, so it may become somewhat a task for a new user to decide which one should be tried.

When I started someone suggested me about Ubuntu. I then went to their site, and read some details to know more about it. Then I visited some forums about Ubuntu and found that it has a good userbase and more importantly you stand a very high chance of getting help form the community in case you need some help.

Ubuntu is easy to install – can be installed in parallel with Win. You can go to their site and download a copy of the latest available version. At the time of writing this post 10.04 Lucid Lynx is the latest Ubuntu version which has been released for use. The next version will be released in October 2010 and will be named as “Maverick Meerkat” version 10.10.

You might be wondering why after 10.04 we will have 1o.10. The Ubuntu version number is formatted as “YYMM”. So YY is 10 from 2010 and MM is 10 from month of October.

Next I will discuss about Ubuntu installation.

Starting over to using Linux

Continuing from my last blog post, I will try to explain today why one can try switching over to Ubuntu or some other Linux distributions for the daily usage.

There are several reasons that compel us thinking about an alternative operating sytesm which works.

1. Many of the available Linux based Operating systems are FREE for use. This is really helpful for many people. This will reduce your final cost for starting to use a PC/Laptop. At the other hand there are also paid software used by many. When one has a limited budget and the person needs a Computer solution, any Linux distribution (distro) can be a viable option. Being an OpenSource (one can view the source) program it attract the top developers also.
2. There are good alternatives with regard to the software that we use. For example there are Spreadsheet alternative, Word Processor alternative, Presentation alternative etc. There are also good photo processing, video processing tools available.
3. Multimedia, Social Networking, Voice Chat, Video Chat, Screen Sharing, Blogging tools, News  – everything has come to Linux. I have noted that many of the popular software have their Linux version already available. We have browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera available for Linux. We have Skype for Linux. We have Adobe Acrobat for Linux. We have VLC media player for Linux and similar many other tools are already available.
4. Linux gives you the power to imagine and Linux gives you the power to customize. You can change the look of your desktop (I am not talking about the Wallpaper) very easily on a daily basis.
5. One has a central source of software, form where you can install any software as per your choice.
6. Generally distributions like Ubuntu gets updated very frequently which gives the user more power, more features to use.
7. A very helpful community is available to help one out in case you find yourself looking for help.
8. Getting involved – you can book a bug yourself (if you find any), you can share your thoughts with the community if you feel that will be helpful for a large userbase.
9. I forgot when last I saw a “crash” screen (means Operating system crashed). I tried to recall but failed. May be two years or may be more than that? Hmmm…. let’s think.
10. Finally, I will not say that this is flawless. There are issues but the good news is that there are people ready to remove those issues that is why updates take place when needed.

You might be interested to know what my personal choice is with regard to the Linux Distro. My personal choice is Ubuntu though because probably I find it easy to use and I am using it for quite a few years now. But when I say that, I would also like to add that there are many Linux related distributions like OpenSuse, Fedora, Slackware, Red Hat Linux, ArchLinux, Linux Mint and many many more available.

To safely start using Linux I would share my experience here. I installed Linux in the same PC where I was already using a MS-Windows based operating system. Linux can be installed in a way that you can dual-boot it easily. It works like – when you boot the system you are presented with a menu where you can decide whether you want to boot into Linux or Windows.

In this way you have no risk in using it because in case you get stuck somewhere you can always go back to using your other Operating system of your choice. Giving a parallel run helps in understanding the system better.

I have tried here to explain why one can think about trying to use an alternative Linux distribution. Your comments and views are welcome. Please feel free to correct me where I may have gone wrong.

– Arindom

We now have choice for selecting the Operating System

Was off for few days and then I remembered that this time I aimed to continue blogging. So here I am today back again with a new post.

As per my knowledge most of the Desktop PC users these days are still using Windows based OS (operating systems). There is a good population of Mac OS users and then there are Linux users as well. It seems this statistics from Marketshare supports it.

There may be some difference of opinion with the above statistics or may be the actual data differs from what it is there, but I guess we can safely say that the Windows market share is very high. But for those who might be interested to know about other operating systems, you may continue to read on for knowing about an alternative which can be tried and used as easily as you might want it to be used.

Since the days of Windows XP, I was following different Linux based OS’s and felt like that day is not far when normal desktop users can try Linux on a daily basis.

There are many Linux based Operating systems available here today. For example : Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva, Arch Linux, Debian, Slackware and many many more. More importantly we are hearing that Google might probably launch an OS in near future.

Not going into the details of different Linux distributions (Linux distros), I can share here my experience with Ubuntu till date.

I will try and go into details of Ubuntu in future but for now I can say it is fulfilling my daily needs handsomely. Right from quick start time to office documents view, editing to preparing presentations to Mail operations of different accounts including MS-Exchange based mails to Professional level Graphics work to DVD preparation for Home theater, to listen to the streaming media and above all being connected with my numerous IM’s and also to my Twitter and Facebook accounts and writing to my blog, all is possible here.

Wow!! did I really finished or may be I have not mentioned many more.

So at end I can say that those who are willing to give Ubuntu a try should try it because it supports almost all the needs that you might want it to support. And moreover when you need help, you have a very good online help system available also.

The best thing to write about Ubuntu is that it is growing and getting better and better with every new release which happens twice a year (six months gap only).

-Arindom

Be careful from the Sales offers that you might receive

The issue of getting unsolicited sales proposals are now reaching a very disturbing level. Before I go into the details, I should mention that it is a problem being faced by myself and probably by many more people but it may not be an International issue faced by others world over.

Although it was going on for quite some time (may be more than a year), these days the frequencies have reached alarming level. Almost daily I get lots of SMS’s and sometimes calls to my 3G connection, requesting me to subscribe to some kind of service.

These request come from different sources. Some are send directly by the phone service provider and some by other service providers with whom you might had to share you phone number in the past.

Solution to this troubling issue is to get registered to a service called as “DND registry”. If your number is registered there then you are safe from these issues.

-Arindom

The Rupee symbol

Today I learned that India has got a new Rupee symbol.

The symbol will help the Indian currency to get a clear and distinct identification. I appreciate everyone who is behind the implementation of the idea.

The Indian Rupee symbol is very nice and it reflects India well.

– Arindom

Blogging from Desktop

With the advancement of technology, particularly in Information Technology segment, we have now come to a stage where social networking, blogging are the choice of many people.

In this regard, I thought to publish a post on how to do blogging from your desktop / laptop.

There are several free sites available for doing blogging. I have chosen WordPress because I find it very easy to use and particularly the feature that I like most is to post a blog entry by simply e-mailing. This is great.

There are several software available also, by using which you can send your blog post. If you are on Ubuntu-Linux desktop just search the repository for Blog and you will find many tools.

Here I am

For long I was thinking about blogging but due to time constraints and my nature of not continuing with writing were the main blockages.

But here I am. Starting again and hopefully…… will continue to write.

-Arindom