Linux Again after 4 yrs

This time it is Ubuntu and looks like it is in for the long haul.

After making a new PC two months ago, I decided to try Linux again. Waited for jaunty to be released and started off with Wubi a day after jaunty became officially available.Two days later I got rid of Wubi and installed a new partition for Ubuntu. More than a month later I am happy to stay.

There were some problems with the 64bit thing but not enough to send me back for Windows. I still go back to windows for somethings, but that is on a virtual box. Some stuff I do regularly and how they work on ubuntu

• uname -a : Linux XXX 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:58:03 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Web Surfing: Firefox works well for me. Flash sometime crashes but its ok. I hope it will stabilize soon.
• Office Applications: Google Docs for everything. I do need to open MS Office docs sent as attachment. Open Office works well for those.
• Finance Apps: I have been using MS Money for years. Used GNUCash for a while, and then moved to KMyMoney because the reporting and overall feel is better.
• Media: Vlc works as well as on windows.
• Passwords: KeePassX is a good replacement for KeePass and reads the same fine.
• Connecting to Work: vpnc is a good replacement for Cisco VPN and rdesktop connects me to work.
• IM: Pidgin works perfectly. Even on windows I am a pidgin user.
• Photo Editing: GIMP is good, but not as good a Photoshop. So while GIMP works well for quick editing, I do go to Photoshop often. And that’s where I use Virtual Box. No need to boot into a windows partition.
• Coding: Played around with eclipse. Though it is not as slick as windows, but ok. Given than I don’t have long coding sessions at home I can live with it. Perhaps it is just a matter of getting used to.

Installing Thunderbird on Linux

As much as I like the gmail interface, I prefer to use Thunderbird with gmail to read my mail on windows. Other than the richer interface, I like the security of being able to backup my mail on my disk. The plan was to use the share same mail repository between windows and linux.

Trying Linux…… again

For the nth time I am trying Linux again. This time it’s Fedora Core 4. Yesterday, I downloaded a 2.5GB DVD image and burned a copy. Since my 1st computer, I always have a linux partition available. Sometimes it has a distro installed, other times I clean it up in frustration and use it for a windows backup disk. I backed up the data, cleaned the 12GB partition on my laptop and started the install. As usual, the initial install was smooth and I was up and running in 40 min.