Tag: Windows

Why I Have A Windows Laptop at linux.conf.au

This is just a quick blog post to get something off my chest. It’s about the open-source conference I’m currently attending, linux.conf.au. The thing is this: I run a Windows 10-based laptop, I’ve brought it with me to LCA, and I’m proud of that.

  • I use Windows for work. I’m a .NET developer. It’s how I earn my cash to attend this conference. That, apart from anything else, is why I don’t run Linux on the desktop.
  • A lot of people run Apple Mac OS X, another closed-source operating system. I don’t understand why people don’t discriminate equally against that.
  • Speaking of Apple, nobody directs ill thoughts their way at LCA. Microsoft does attract this discrimination, despite them actually releasing a large quantity of open-source software (including most of .NET) over the last couple of years.
  • I write open-source software. I write this in C# on .NET, because it will make it easier for the end users of this software to install and use, since they will be Windows users for the most part. I consider myself to be doing a lot of good by writing this software, giving users options apart from closed-source and cloud-hosted software.

In my mind, when somebody makes fun of Windows at an open-source conference, they’re buying into an anti-Microsoft herd mentality, forgetting that Microsoft does a lot of FOSS stuff, that Microsoft users do a lot of FOSS stuff, and the Apple laptops and Android phones that the majority of delegates have all contain a lot of closed-source software too.

End rant.

Going from Windows to Linux

A typical Linux Mint desktop (from ExtremeTech)
A typical Linux Mint desktop (from ExtremeTech)

I’ve recently installed Linux Mint on my laptop, replacing a horribly broken install of Windows 8.1 Preview. There have been good and bad things:

The good:

  • The Windows 8.1 Preview broke the wireless connectivity on my laptop horribly. Every time the laptop booted up or awoke from sleep, I would have to uninstall the wireless card from the device manager and then scan for new hardware to add it again. I would then have to key back in all the wireless keys for the networks I used before I could connect again. This got a bit annoying after a while. Installing Linux Mint, I had no issues with drivers or network connectivity, even with sound drivers, which is something that has plagued the Linux desktop world for years. It just works, and that is truly great.
  • With all the attention being given recently to the NSA’s spying on the citizens of the world, it’s nice using an operating system that gives you a little more protection (even if it isn’t very much more) from the spooks. I am still using many cloud services (including accounts with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple) so I still have a long way to go, but I can now PGP encrypt my mail with little effort, and should the need arise I can inspect every line of code on my system for back doors (though, it might take a while).
  • The GUI can actually be described as beautiful. While I’m a big fan of the classic Windows look (circa 2000 and XP) and I’m also a big fan of the Windows 8 Metro theming, the horrible combination of the two that most Windows 8 apps seem to have leaves much to be desired. In addition, most GNU/Linux distributions (looking at you especially, Ubuntu) have completely unusable GUIs. Linux Mint takes a beautiful looking GTK+ theme and marries it with a window manager (called Cinnamon) that is just stunning. It’s what Linux should have been like for years. And no Unity in sight.
  • Steam now works on Linux, and I can play Counter-Strike: Source again. This is a big deal, and it’s a great benefit to “Linux on the desktop”.
  • It uses Ubuntu’s package repositories, which use in turn use Debian’s awesome apt-based package management system. This gives you access to all of Ubuntu’s packages (which is a massive collection) and it uses familiar Debian configuration files. It’s a rock-solid (less stable than Debian Stable, but so are most nuclear reactors) core system.

The bad:

  • Over recent months I’ve done a lot of software development in Visual Studio. VS 2012 is a great IDE. And it has nothing that comes even close on Linux. Netbeans (my preference on Linux) is a pretty powerful IDE, but VS still blows it out of the water in every way. Similar to Evolution vs. Outlook, there are still a few killer applications on Windows that make it the default choice for getting things done.
  • Firefox and Thunderbird look ugly as sin on Linux Mint compared to Windows. I’m really disappointed as everything else is so good looking in comparison.
  • There’s no good replacement for MetroTwit. I’ve tried most of the Twitter clients for Linux, and they all suck in various ways. MetroTwit, as far as I’m concerned, is pretty much where it’s at with Twitter clients. It’s awesome.

Overall, I’m very impressed with Linux Mint. If you haven’t tried a GNU/Linux distribution in a while, give it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

30 Days of Geek #10: My primary computer.

I’ve decided to partake in Jethro Carr’s 30 Days of Geek challenge, so I’ll be writing a post a day on my geekiness for an entire month! You can find all the posts in one spot here.

Today it’s all about my computer. Currently I only have one computer, a laptop. This is unlike quite a few other geeks, and very unlike myself in the past. I’ve had 3 or 4 working computers, plus lots of spare parts. I now have 1 working computer, and a few spare parts.

So, this laptop. It’s an ASUS UL20A ultra-portable laptop. Halfway in between a netbook and a full-sized laptop, it’s just that perfect compromise between portability and usability.

My Laptop (UL20A)
My Laptop

Specifications:

  • Intel CPU, 1.3GHz dual-core. Surprisingly, this actually feels really snappy. It’s amazing how we’ve got used to this natural progression in computing for faster and faster, when we actually don’t need it for a lot of tasks.
  • 2GiB of DDR2 RAM. This, on the other hand, isn’t enough. As this post is being published, there’s another 2GiB in the mail, to make a new total of 4GiB.
  • 250GB SATA HDD. Plenty. My movie collection is stored on an external drive.
  • 12″ screen, 1366 x 768 pixels. It would be nice to have more (isn’t it always true?) however this much allows me to get what I need to do done. It’s also a 16×9 aspect ratio, which is very nice for watching videos.
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. See yesterday’s post for why.
  • There are some other specifications, but I can’t remember what they are, and don’t really care.

I’ve also been told to share a screenshot of my computer. Well, here it is:

My Windows 7 laptop running PuTTY
My Windows 7 laptop running PuTTY

30 Days of Geek #9: What OS/distribution do you run?

I’ve decided to partake in Jethro Carr’s 30 Days of Geek challenge, so I’ll be writing a post a day on my geekiness for an entire month! You can find all the posts in one spot here.

My workstation runs Windows 7 Home Premium x64. The primary reason for running Windows instead of Linux is that running Windows allows me to use Outlook. Yes, Outlook is just that good. I used to do a lot of computer gaming too, which was better on Windows. Since I’ve stopped doing that (because I only have a laptop now) that’s not so much of a reason.

I run the Home Premium version of Windows simply because it came pre-installed on the laptop, and I saw no reason to upgrade. I would have upgraded to the 64-bit version had it not been pre-installed, however.

Unfortunately for all my Linux-fan friends, I don’t think Linux is the best workstation operating system for my needs. It just doesn’t fit so neatly into my mental work flow, and it gets along horribly with the other Windows machines in my house. Samba is the devil, basically.

On the other hand, I always use UNIX-based operating systems on servers. Wouldn’t dream of anything else (unless I had to create a Windows domain controller). On the servers I’ve set up, I’ve always used Debian GNU/Linux. It’s the most stable operating system I’ve ever come across, and that’s what counts. It also happens to be free software, but that’s less of a consideration for me.

The best thing about UNIX-based operating systems is not the operating system itself though, it’s the application software available for them. The best web servers all run on UNIX. Ditto for software development tools, typesetting software, text editors, command-line shells, the list goes on. Everything except for Outlook, basically. 😛

A lot of the time then, you’ll find me sitting on my Windows-based laptop, with an SSH client open connected into my server so I can take advantage of all those nice tools. Firefox, Outlook, PuTTY, Pidgin… what more could a man need?