Monday 22 October 2007

Pic of the day: Ubuntu login picture, a familiar sight by now. I nabbed this picture from debianadmin as I didn't photograph my own at work.

Ubuntu upgrade

In utterly uncontroversial news (I hope), I upgraded all three of my work computers to Ubuntu Linux 7.10, codename Gutsy Gibbon. I don't much like the new name, as it reminds me of the word "gibbering", which is one of the creepiest concepts I can think of. Seriously, you know that if you ever see anyone gibbering, you are not going to feel safe at all. It is always a bad sign, gibbering. On the other hand, 7 and 10 are nice enough numbers. So I prefer 7.10.

I have three PCs running at work, one at my office, one in the open landscape and one in the floor above mine, where a printer is attached. They are all connected to the Internet through a local network. My workplace pays for the Net access and anyone there can use it from the public PCs. Obviously those are really cheap machines. One of them didn't even have Windows. Why should it, when I can get a free operating system that does the things we need? Accessing the Internet, mostly, but it also comes with an office suite (OpenOffice.org) which handles text processing, spreadsheets and presentations. It doesn't have much in the way of pretty games, but who needs that at work? And Ubuntu runs faster on cheap machines. It probably runs faster on expensive machines too, but these already run so fast that you may not notice.

7.10 is just a minor upgrade, one of those that come every 6 months. It supports more rare hardware than earlier versions, and comes with Compiz user interface built-in. This is a fancy way of handling windows, useless in my opinion: Windows zoom onto the screen when you open them, and are folded away when you exit them. And you can see a large preview of a window before you switch to it, stuff like that. Seriously, who cares? I would be happy to start my programs by typing its number on a menu and pressing Enter, like I did in MS-DOS. (I had to make the menu first, of course, in the form of a simple batch file. Those were the good old days.) Art has its place, such as in churches I guess, and classrooms (not that I remember seeing much art there, but it would have been good for the small souls.) Art does not have a place in opening programs on my computer, if you ask me.

There are also improvements to security. Again, this is a bit overkill: People do not write viruses for Linux, or worms or trojans or keyloggers or backdoors or even adware. Malware is made for the majority platform. There are simply too many small Linux versions (and they change all the time) so it is not worthwhile attacking them. Even so, there are various layers of security built in, just in case. Just in case Linux should suddenly become popular, perhaps? It didn't happen this time either, but it is more popular than ever. People are getting their eyes up for it. Young people install it on old machines for their grandparents to read the papers online and receive e-mail. It is very easy to set up as long as you stick with the most common features. Easier than installing a new version of Windows, in my experience.

One day, I hope, Linux will replace Windows. For me, that may happen when it supports my three favorite games. Currently it only supports one for free, and another through a commercial program (Cedega). Sims 2 is not supported at all. Hopefully Windows XP (and I) will live long enough that I can skip Vista and move right to Linux at home. One of the PCs at work came with Vista pre-installed. I installed Ubuntu the same day I got it. Vista is simply too slow on cheap computers, and I am simply too cheap to buy anything more for work.

Long live the freeconomy! More about that later, Light willing.