Ultimate Ubuntu Linux EyeCandy

Ok …out of the box, most Linux distributions are eyesores compared to MacOSx and Vista [even XP for that matter]. But the tools to make this beautiful lady shine are out there. Here is what an average guy like me was able to accomplish … so you can imagine what an organized set of people can do in this sphere.

So let me give you my own version of the Obama dream for Linux …. ¨If there is anyone out there who still …
….doubts that Linux can be as cute or even cuter than Windows or MacOS,
…who has not yet awoken to the the fact that Ubuntu is the most flexible operating system there is…..
…. who still doubts that Ubuntu is the virtual land where all dreams can come true …. THIS POST IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!!!!¨ [not exactly like the great guy himself but .... u get the idea ]

First by laptop is an HP Pavillion dv5-1199ei, 2GHz Intel Centrino 2, 4GB RAM, with Nvidia chipsets for graphics. To honour this beauty [my girlfriend calls the laptop by concubine ] … I decided to go with 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 and so far, I have not been disappointed [...I am NEVER using the 32bit OS if I can help it].

Here is a list of the common applications I installed:

• I installed Wine so I can run some Windows applications.
• I installed Google Desktop Gadgets and Screenlets to suit all my desktop Widget/Gadget itches.
• Songbird for media player — it is the only Linux media player beautiful enough for me [others may be better but the aesthetics also matters to me]. Even then, I have installed the latest version of WinAmp using Wine [but in truth, it is not much better than XMMS]
• I also have Mplayer [with additional skins], and also VLC player.
• For Bible study, I have GnomeSword [a lot like e-Sword which I use on Vista]
• I use Pidgin for instant messaging [waiting for Digsby to become available on Linux]
• For the geek in me, I have GNS3/Dynamips/Dynagen for network emulation, Ethercap and Wireshark for packet analysis.
• To support my Webcam, i installed and use Cheese Webcam booth — works great.
• Openoffice Draw is a little clunky for my liking, so I installed Inkscape.
• My life is always very miserable if I don´t have Freemind, so I have the latest beta version of Freemind.
• I have latest Java installed with Flash 64-bit plugin for Firefox so I can watch Youtube movies.

bla bla bla, so here are some of the pictures ….

Fig 1: My desktop with some Google Gadgets running and my custom panel that holds shortcuts for applications I use most [my version of Windows QuickLaunch bar]

Fig 2: My cool dock application – AWN: I especially love that cool curving popup of a frequently used partition on my hard drive.

Fig 3: This is one version of my ¨Start¨ menu …. from the top toolbar [which automatically hides itself to give me more screen real estate when i am using other applications]

Fig 4:Freemind … the other part of my brain that is outside of me.

Fig 5: Songbird, my favourite audio media player on Linux.

Fig 6: All my running applications in ¨shaded mode¨ … let´s see you do that on Vista [out of the box]

Fig 7: What can I say? my workspaces visible at the same time in 3D! Cool isn´t it?

Fig 8: Switching through my running applications in an elegant and visual way.

Fig 9: Another way to flip through my running applications … the more traditional way.

Fig 10: My dock [AWN] and the second way to access my applications.

Ok …. all of these are not some artist impressions, i use them everyday. And this post was done using the ScribeFire plugin in Firefox.

Thank you to all those wonderful guys out there who make these beautiful things possible and affordable. Welcome to the future of computing …. it is painted in Linux!

OS [Ubuntu/Vista] Cross Compatibility – Critical Success Factor for Application Success in the Market

Anyone who has been reading my blog knows am a Ubuntu fan … and on all my computers, I dual-boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu desktop. It just occurred to me this morning [18th May 2008] why of two applications capable of achieving the same task, I choose one over the other even though both are installed on my machine.

Since I use both OSes approximately equally, what determines what application I use is whether I can continue my work irrespective of Operating system. It is for this reason that open file formats and cross compatible applications [even if file formats are closed] are an extremely important determinant of application success in the marketplace.

Even though I think Mindjet Mindmanager is way cooler than the Freemind, I almost always use Freemind for my mindmaps because it is installed both in my Windows & Ubuntu OSes and I can start my work in Windows and continue in Ubuntu [Linux] or vice versa. That is not as easy to do with Mindmanager unless u are a WINE guru — I for one frown on running XP in a virtual machine on my Linux just to run one application … thank you sir …. I’ll use Freemind.

Other applications in this category … ie those becoming more and more OS-agnostic [ie apart from web applications that is] which I frequently use are

1. Inkscape over CorelDraw [I think OpenOffice.org Draw sucks!!!]

2. Juice [Linux version is called Icepodder] as podcast aggregator vs Itunes.

3. OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc for wordprocessing and spreadsheets.

It may then be that one strategy for an application to take to gain market share is to keep your file format proprietary and closed but make the application OS-agnostic … and there better be a free [yes as in free beer] version or else …..

The Importance of Eye Candy towards Linux Desktop Adoption

For most people born within the last 35 years or so … using a computer has become and inextricable part of living. Unfortunately [for Linux] most of the not-too-technically savvy amongst them got started using some version of Microsoft´s Windows or an Apple Macintosh. These people have been used to a certain way of doing stuff and how things should look. For Linux to appeal to this people, not only must it flaunt it´s technical excellence, freedom of choice and low cost, but must also prove as easy to use, flexible, simple and aesthetically pleasing. In computer-speak, eye-candy refers to how beautiful or pleasing to the eye the whole user experience is. It involves beautiful graphics, icons, mouse cursors as well as animated feedback.

These characteristics plus simplicity is perhaps the primary reason why Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution today not only on the desktop but for servers. I used to be a Fedora fan but today, I don´t see myself downloading and burning six iso images and spending about an hour to setup my system when I could do all that from a single CD in about 30 minutes. Therefore, switching to Ubuntu on both my desktop, laptop and any server services was just a no brainer. A key department in which most desktop linuxes have improved is the eye-candy department but to get the kind of eye-candy that makes people drool a little tweaking needs to be done which may be more than the average joe is comfortable with doing [eg installing compiz theme manager, emerald, using svn to get keys and then download themes.]

Eye candy has become important because our laptops have become very personal objects, much in the same way we by cute phones with nice covers for them and change wallpapers regularly. Eye candy is the primary reason why most people go WOW!! when the first see a Macbook [both hardware and software eye candy]. Personally, one way in which I have spread the Ubuntu word is with my own laptop. Immediately after installation, I enable compiz themes, install emerald theme manager, get some beautiful themes, cute icon packs, cursor themes and nice looking fonts. I also get rid of most of the default login screens (except the Human Circle) and add cutter ones which come up at random. So when most people see my laptop, they go WOW!! … what OS are you using? — giving me the perfect opportunity to sell them not only to how aesthetically pleasing [aka eye candy] Ubuntu and Linux can be but also the fact that I usually don´t bother much about antiviruses, the moral issues of pirated software, or system instability. Yes I know, focusing on eye candy might seem like a trivialization of the technical excellence of Linux, but then most of the people out there whom we´d like to adopt Linux on the desktop are people who would gladly ´…make the mistake of falling in love with a dimple and then marrying the whole girl [and live to thank God for the mistake].´ to paraphrase Evan Esar, italics mine. I think eye candy is that dimple that can be used to seduce people to marry the whole girl (desktop Linux)

Piracy ‘Disrupts’ Disruptive Innovation?

I have been fascinated by Harvard’s Clayton Christenson work on Disruptive Innovation. One of the premises of his work is that a new technology can garner huge market share when it competes against non-consumption, or it suddenly makes it possible for people who couldn’t afford technology to do something equally well. Well, this is a business technology blog and I have been looking at the penetration of desktop Linux in Africa i.e. desktop Linux as a disruptive innovation for Windows.

Linux really fits the disruptive innovation bill clearly on both counts but there is a huge saboteur to it becoming THE desktop OS of choice on most desktops to people who can’t afford to spend $1000 on a PC (See my other blog on how I arrive at this figure). That saboteur is piracy. First, because of the sheer number of other people using it on desktops around the world – Windows is the natural tendency for most people (besides the fact that most new laptops come with Windows pre-installed) – now if it were not affordable by any other means, these people would then have no choice but to love and use desktop Linux and unless Microsoft can find away to make Windows equally free – most of the developing world would end up with Linux.

 

That is not going to happen as long as piracy enables these people to obtain almost any commercial software for as low as $2. It is for this reason that desktop linux hasn’t grown as much as one would expect from the Disruption models especially in the developing world. So ….. how do we remove this limitation? – Food for thought.