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!

Why Linux Still Struggles on the Desktop [but Thrives in the Datacenter]

I was reading through a Harvard Business Review article and I came across a distinction made by a Harvard professor which essentially says [in my own words] … “people don’t want a car, they just want to get from here to there”

I was struck by how true this is and how often we geeks fail to understand that subtlety. Linux is doing very well in the data center for this reason [plus the fact that it is free and libre] : organizations want a website, a mail system etc, they don’t want a server OS. Since Linux does this well AND is free and libre, then it is very compelling in many scenarios.

In the same vein, enterprise IT admins want to be able to control desktops and laptops, what applications are installed on them and enforce highly granular control of access privileges – it is only natural that they turn to Microsoft’s Active Directory in Windows Server and hence Linux hasn’t made a dent in that portion of the data center.

Now for the desktop – Linux hasn’t gotten this quite right [yet] because people just want to

• Type notes, resumes etc and share them with others.
• Edit photos and movies and share them.
• etc etc

They will use the tool that helps them do these things in the easiest and cheapest possible way.

While it is generally believed that the Apple Mac is the most elegant computer out there, its high cost keeps it out of the range of most people but most of those who can afford it do get it. This perhaps explains its popularity in the high end desktop publishing and graphics space.

Windows has evolved to be easy to use  [perhaps more accurately, Windows is familiar and popular] and has surpassed MAC OS by supporting a large ecosystem [applications and hardware] which gives users a greater range of options to get the job done and painlessly share their work.

For all its virtues, desktop Linux is not as elegant [visually and usability-wise] as Windows or Mac OS X. Yes it is getting better but consider these things that the typical person needs to do but can’t do easily on Linux:

• Play DVD movies.
• Manage and synchronize digital media on their ipod or Zune/Zen etc.
• Create documents and share them with others in their native format [aka file format agnostic]
• Connect and use the latest peripherals [printers, scanners etc]

Some of these limitations on the part of Linux are due to vendors and manufacturers not opening up their devices or applications for whatever reason. Such practices are evil but guess what? – the user doesn’t care – she only cares that she can’t play that new DVD, use that photo printer or sync her ipod.

The key then is to orchestrated the average user’s Linux experience well: A geek with taste takes the vanilla desktop Linux and

• Installs some good eye-candy and fonts.
• Sets up a cool media player with any plugin and codecs for using the popular media formats and working with the latest ipod, zune or zen.
• Sets up drivers especially for wireless networking and wireless WANs.
• Configure such things as hibernate and suspend etc etc.

…… and viola!!! when a user starts their PC, they can go straight to gratifying themselves. Now for the hard part: how do we do this and still give the OS for free?

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 …..