A date with Linux

My office laptop is on dual boot with Fedora Core 9 and Windows XP Professional. I use Linux at times but not continuously. So yesterday I decided to use Linux at office and see if I will reach a situation where I can do with out Windows. Configuring the IMs and Mail took some time. And next comes playing mp3, support which has been removed due to legal issues. Not knowing what to do have to take the help of Linux Forums on the net and I got what I need in few minutes the sequence of commands to execute to install and play :) Cool and I don’t miss playing my mp3s now. And I went on using at till the evening with out any problems. As my work is also on Linux servers – No Microsoft Technologies:), I didn’t face any problem from that front too.

At the end of the day the experience was quite good. 

Getting used to the fonts, icons and the UI was a bit difficult. Tough there are no technical problems even by evening I was feeling like the UI needs some more control in customization. May be it is already there and I don’t know how to…..

And the animations on the desktop are just awesome. Not sure if MS can provide such features ever. The switching over to the next desktop, dragging and what else … everything almost was really good.  I was playing with them when ever I got bored. 

There are too many options for the utilities required, which confuses what to use and you will end up evaluating all of them.  But almost all the things you need (for a developer) are there by default including the Project Management Tool which is lot better in terms of usability than the Microsoft Project though the options are less. 

All it takes is a better UI and nothing else to make the Linux user-friendly. 

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Why Open Sources failed to capture the market?

Microsoft and Apple the major two players in the operating system sector have captured quite a good amount of market may be entire before the actual open sources started developing. Now as usual when you have a system in place and is good no one wants to even look at other options even there are better things available. There might be several bugs and security issues with Windows but people still tend to use that (including me, but at least I will have dual boot always even the office laptop) because they are used to it. Now that people are used to a kind of interface they find the other user interface difficult to learn.

A typical example a Nokia phone user will find it difficult to use any other mobile. So all the other mobile’s interface is bad is false knowing that all other manufacturers are having the same amount of market.  It’s the same with other brand mobile users with Nokia. So actually it is not that the things are actually bad, but it is that people are not used to. 

Coming back to the open sources at least to make people try you have to tell them it is better, to tell them it is better it has to go through some media, to go through some media it involves cost, for those costs some one has to support and pay. Huh? Now in spite of spending effort to write good programs and giving them free some one has to pay to make the user use it? Sounds awful. 

So what is the way out now?

To be continued..

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So Today.....

Reached home on time today and it started raining after I reached it started raining badly and as usual the power went off and so in dark :) This is what happens to the IT City. Had a busy day at office, and was not feeling well so reached home early. It rained quite long almost for 2 hours continiously.

Took a bit of rest and started to write this entry. Today have seen the Microsoft Ad of the Shoe Circus and was surprised to see how stupid ads can be. So they have started the ad campaign now. But why? Insecure about the open source or the free soft wares available today? Or Vista not working as expected? Might be few of the reasons. So the war of Open Source Vs Microsoft had already begun. Which side are you on? I support open source. At least if not war I like the competition with MS.  Most of the things I use daily keeping the OS aside are open sources and are free wares. And I am sure most of you out there will be using the free services of some one, yet we fail to recognize and acknowledge the importance and usage. Take it from the Instant Messengers, Mail accounts, forums, blogs, downloads and lot of utilities that are installed all comes free, there are few widely used of the many present out there.  Well these might be free but some did the effort to get all those applications. 

Coming to Open Source, I use most of them in my day to day life. If they are not going to give me those facilities and sources for free today I will have to close down all and will be struggling to get my own things up. To accept the fact there are out standing applications available as open sources, it is just that people are not aware. A friend of mine who is a software engineer for the past 3 years was setting up a site and he is going to take a paid service when I actually told him he can go for one of the open sources already available. He was like they are not ‘Ad Free’. I was shocked and told him that is a misconception and told him some facts. If a Software guy doesn’t know open sources how will a common man know.

So decided today to start an awareness program on open source. Do some ads or write some analytical statistics of the programs that are available and tell the people out there how good the things are. If you are interested in joining me please get in touch I will be happy to work with you and make a better software world.

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