Day 2 of Me and Ubuntu.

I see it has been long since I wrote a new post. There are two reasons for this. One being my XP installation getting affected by viruses and me deleting a system file assuming it was a virus. Then I saw what Su has done with his PC on Ubuntu and wanted to do the same with mine. Here begins the quest towards making my PC work better than it has ever worked up until now. This post is going to be pretty long. That is because I am describing the journey of an annoyed-to-the-core Windows user to the land of (virtually)unlimited freedom – Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning “Humanity to the People”. I was wondering why it was named this way until I conducted a very detailed research on its usage and manipulation. Let me start it off by mentioning some advantages of Ubuntu(or any other Linux platform for that matter) over Microsoft Operating Systems. Here they are:

• Open source – That means it is completely free! No CD-keys or activation or anything annoying you can think of. You can also modify it and release it under your own name. 😀
• All supported softwares are also open source or free for usage. 🙂
• Out of this world community support. There are so many forums that it will take you a lifetime to explore all of them. But Any question you ask will be almost immediately be answered.
• No viruses! 😀 YAY! 😀
• Detects all file systems. Unlike Windows, Linux OS can detect the Windows file systems like FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc., and even the Apple file system HFS. 😀
• This is not really an advantage, but still I would like to mention it. 🙂 You can boast about the exhilarating performance of your above average PC. If I am right in my approximations, it should perform 100 times better than Vista on the same hardware. 😛

That list might not even be close to completion. But let me progress onto the other things I wanted to tell. I faced a very irritating problem while I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 8.04 (the Hardy Heron release). My graphic driver was not stable. But I have kind of figured a very UN-technical way around it. I just switch to a lower resolution and switch back to my 1024×768 resolution. It performs exceptionally well. 😀

There started my never ending journey to the land of freedom. Whether I would make it or not, I could not tell then. I cannot tell even now. Guided by some unexplainable urge within me, I started learning the ways of the Ubuntu warrior. I guess that was the first “Boss Monster” I fought in the Quest for a better OS. After all that was aside, I found myself with a huge arsenal of weapons to use against comparatively weaker enemies. I kept getting stronger.

This way and that I slashed with the Mac OSX-like dock which Vista failed miserably in replicating, and killed the monster of really unappealing graphics. But the monster was effectively vanquished during midnight. The desktop got stuck to the Midnight Mac OSX look. Dark was the journey until now and light was slowly emerging thanks to the ever-powerful Terminal.

This was an even bigger challenge for me as this weapon is not only the most powerful and heart quickening-ly effective, but it could also mean the death of the OS in the hands of a clumsy warrior. 🙂 But the all powerful Terminal assisted me as I proved I was a warrior worthy enough; at least if not the most worthy to be given power.

On and on it guided me through the darkness; urging me to put one foot in front of another when I wandered through the unchartered realms of Microsoft Windows XP. I meant the installation of XP after Ubuntu has been installed. It was a very disheartening place. The more you were there, the more you would find yourself crippled. Me being a very average warrior, succumbed to the disease and sacrificed the spirit of the great Ubuntu. The GRUB armor had been lost. Alas! It was my carelessness.

And when all hope was lost, the unrelenting demon of the XP boot-up turned up. In its hands was the GRUB armor that protected me so long. I remembered all the times I had escaped from certain death because the GRUB armor which is induced with the spirit of Ubuntu itself. I felt an anger deep inside me well up inside me. It was so huge that I myself could not control it. And then I felt it… The spirit of Ubuntu. What I saw to my side made me dumbfounded for some that could not be counted. It was the great Firefox himself. With him was the ever powerful staff of the Ubuntu forums. One hit was all that took for defeating the Demon.

Now that GRUB was with me again, I could control the Demon and will it to carry out my every whim. It is day 2 of my journey and I have seen what can be explained in words as just the tip of the great iceberg. I learned that there was an even greater spirit at work here. The mother of all spirits that help a warrior attain his goal of freedom. It is the spirit of Open Source. The journey continues….

I have included a set of screen shots that I thought would show you all the stupendous sights during my journey. One more thing. I still am a very huge Apple fan and nothing can change that. 🙂 Not even you Jit a.k.a T 😀 Please click on the pics and see “The big picture” 😀 so that you don’t miss anything that is supposed to be seen. 😛

Ripples on the surface. 😀 The water effect.

The famous Apple dock. Marvellous isn't it? Elegance redifined.

The applications pop-up menu. The super- useful pop-up menu that comes up when you use the dock.

Check out the icons. This is all I could manage to capture before the screenshot manager popped up and the menu disintegrated. 😛 I went mad when I saw the icon for Firefox.

That completes the screen shot set of this time’s episode of….. UBUNTU!!! Signing off a happier man, Pavan a.k.a Anniyan. 🙂 Good day to you all. 🙂