Why I quit using Kubuntu and where I found my refuge

I has recently spoken of my experiences with kubuntu 9.04

Today I removed it from my system, due to several reasons, most on the functionality side.

1. KDE4 would not remember the settings. My desktop widgets would get reset on every boot. (this alone is a deal breaker)
2. Sound wouldn’t work fine. multiple sources of sound/flash problem (I needed it! youtube and media player)
3. Microphone wouldn’t work out-of-the-box (need Skype)
   
4. Hard disk drives would not auto mount. had to be mounted by typing the password each time.
5. The themes weren’t really appealing. The plasma desktop, however was.
6. General appeal. To quote Srik, “I always have this weird feeling that everything in Ubuntu is oversized.” I share the feeling.

Anyway, I truly couldn’t make myself try anything that did not have wubi to set it up. (separate partitions just aren’t necessary) Ubuntu, Kubuntu – tried both this month. The next release is in August, I think.
So here was my saviour… (drumroll…) LinuxMint

1. Cool looks (yeah, its important to me)
2. Things work out of the box (yea, Sabayon style on debian platform )
3. They have a good story behind it. I liked the story (the {clem} paragraph in the About page)
4. Everything I expect to work works (yea- graphics, flash, wireless, apt-get, drivers, codecs – you name it!)
5. Zero post-install customization necessary (installing apps, drivers, fixing things.. )

I have further more respect for Ubuntu now, seeing that things like Linux Mint can be built on it.
Linux Mint 7 will surely stand high in the rankings of my experiences with linux distributions, and will be my current recommended distro for new users.

QOTD and SOTD

QOTD (quote of the day)

It is hardly as if women leaders do not wield real power in India. 255 Lok Sabha seats have been won in the 2009 elections by parties where women are the absolute and unchallenged leaders. In spite of this, we have seen no change in the number of women Parliamentarians. The idea of reserving seats for a group is based on the pectation that when they come to power, they will use it to help other less fortunate members of the group. Clearly that expectation has been definitively belied.

- Santosh Desai writes in “Gender Reservations” under City City Bang Bang, Times of India, Bangalore, Page 8, June 15th 2009.

SOTD (software of the day )

VideoCacheView for windows
After watching a video in a Web site, you may want to save the video file into your local disk for playing it offline in the future. If the video file is stored in your browser’s cache, this utility can help you to extract the video file from the cache and save it for watching it in the future.
It automatically scans the entire cache of Internet Explorer and Mozilla-based Web browsers (Including Firefox) and finds all video files that are currently stored in it. It allows you to easily copy the cached video files into another folder for playing/watching them in the future.

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open source and job market

I am asked by many people of the working model of open-source software.

How can ppl give away their effort for free?

Why do ppl give away their effort for free?

While I myself am learning and ask the readers to put down their thoughts in the comments, the open source world is huge and complex and there are many facets to it.

At the bottom of it all, some acts don’t have reason. and other acts are initiated by these acts.  There could be a wish to get the needful done, and I could spend my time and effort to reach the goal.  Its like gardening. Leave that aside, for now.

Open source software did not not come into the top-100 searched term (is it?) for that alone. I wish to present a case (probably well used, given the generality of this) to show why a process which is bigger than just a few people should exist, and why it’ll help the people who are themselves the target segment of the processes.

Say there’s a person who is looking out for a job in the market and is having difficulty finding one, due to the present circumstances.

Polishing his skills is the best thing he could do in this time, along with spending time to look for opportunities.

It is just more convenient to show results, say in the form of involvement and contribution to a known open source software, wherein the processes dictate that you should be capable else it filters you out of the system, better than leaving it to chance in the interview?

There is sometimes a the-hen-and-egg reference quoted to say that opportunity alone provides further (future) opportunity and it is impossible to get into the loop without.

Take up an open source project. Work on it. You will be working with people in tougher circumstances than in normal IT companies. It demands high level of skills, technical and personal, which act as testimony to your capabilities in times of need, or right away.

Think. Create. Engineer