Windows 7 Review

I’m now forced to use Windows 7 for security reasons at work, which sounds dumb, but it’s in the name of being uniform across the org so that they only have to focus on one plan of action for security. I guess it makes sense. Anyway, so I’ve been using it for a few days and I now have a review.

Ubuntu Was My Idea.

I’m getting real sick of the “Windows 7 was my idea” commercials. No, this is not just my standard hatred for everything Microsoft. Yes, I get the point they’re trying to convey. But it’s the delivery, man. There are two points against their add campaigns.

Linux Learning Curve

I had a minor realization today. I figured out why transitioning from Windows to Linux isn’t very smooth. I know we’ve all heard the pat answer: “Linux isn’t Windows. Get over it.” But there was always a stick in my mind about why. Now this begs the question: “Why should Linux be like Windows?” Aside from a possible desire to make conversion from Windows easier, there really isn’t a reason. But I was still curious.

Then it hit me. I’ve been using Linux for a while now and just realized today that I’ve hardly ever touched Vista (thank God), and still haven’t seen Windows 7. I’ve been out of the Windows world long enough that I’m not sure what the latest greatest and most user friendly features are. So even if I were a major contributor to a distro and wanted to make it my goal to improve transition from Windows, I wouldn’t know where to start.

So for everyone who’s tried Linux out and said “Why doesn’t Linux do x like Windows”, I’ve got news for you: We have no idea what you’re talking about!

Browsing Statistics

I stumbled on the following visualization of browsing statistics over the last few years. It’s cool to see it all a laid out. Check it out:

http://www.axiis.org/examples/BrowserMarketShare.html

What I thought was funny was the resemblance it shares to the Firefox logo. Wonder if they’re getting at something there?

Suggestion for Ubuntu

One of the huge advantages of Ubuntu is the very easy to use Package Manager. One major disadvantage is that if your software is not in the repository and you can’t find a .deb of it anyway, you’re probably going to have to end up installing from source.

Now this isn’t a huge problem for the hardcore Linux users who are probably using Gentoo, but for those of us who are on Ubuntu, it would be nice to have a less interactive way of doing it.

I wonder how difficult it would be for Synaptic to have an add on that would import a tarball, make sure necessary libraries (build-essentials, etc) are installed and install the tarball for you? This way it could put the config files and binaries all where it would have put them if it was a package from the repository to maintain a level of consistency.

Just an idea….

Bonus Points to Skype!

Those of you who are geeks like me know about sed. You know it can be used to search/replace text from the command line. Well several geeks like me like to use it when we make typos in chats and IMs. Like for example, I’ll be typing.

Helo

OOPS! I misspelled “Hello”. DOH! Normally I would just type the sed command as an indication of correcting my typo.

s/Helo/Hello/

And it would show up in my chat window as:

Helo
s/Helo/Hello/

So other geeks like me will know what I’m talking about and you non-geeks will be quite befuddled. Nevertheless it’s cool. But my shocking discovery came today when I was using Skype. I made a typo (as I am wont to do) and so I went to correct it…. But instead of showing my sed command, skype actually edited my typo! It interpreted the sed command!

Needless to say I was thoroughly impressed!

Why Linux is Better

Ever hear people bashing Linux about hardware support? Ever stop to think about what this really means?

Why is hardware not as “well” supported in Linux? Several reasons come to mind, but the biggest one is that there aren’t enough Linux users yet to make it economically wise to support Linux. There wouldn’t be a return on the investment – especially seeing as how Linux users are notorious for keeping their wallets shut. It’s the same reason my company doesn’t support Opera or Safari. It’s also the same reason why, as much as we want to, we simply can’t ignore Internet Explorer. It is what it is.

However. Think about Linux for a second. Yeah, there is no guarantee your hardware is going to work. Companies don’t develop drivers for Linux. They don’t put a friendly penguin on their packaging to reassure buyers that their product will in fact work with their computer. They even go so far as to list Windows and Mac in the system requirements, apparently leaving no room for Linux. And yet, plenty of hardware does work in Linux. Why?

Because Linux is awesome!

Useful Tip I Just Learned

Ever have a command you run in Linux that ends up asking you the same question over and over again? Isn’t it annoying how you have to type the same thing in over and over again. I’m specifically referring to if you have a folder with a bunch of files that you’re trying to remove. So of course you say:

rm -r <direcotory>

Or maybe:

cd <direcotory>
rm *