ankurb – Page 387 – Ankur Banerjee's personal blog

So You Think Linux Ain’t Good Enough, Eh?

Linux has been a passion for me a long time, and I do try to advocate it whenever possible. Guess what, people ARE waking up to the possibility of a world without Windows. That’s after the Windows Genuine (Dis)Advantage program they started. Some firms classify THAT as spyware. In fact, I came across this amazing article Windows Is Free. A highly non-technical, easy-to-understand language article which partly explores why Windows has a larger market share. I’ve loads of views on this too, but it’d take a whole book. Click here to download the article Windows Is Free (PDF).

One common misconception that people have when I speak to them is that Linux is difficult to use, or does not have a proper graphical user interface (GUI). That’s bullshit. You have as many Linux user interfaces as there are Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavours (and probably more) that you can choose from according to your needs – KDE, GNOME, Xfce, FluxBox, WindowMaker – there’s so much to choose from! And talking about the distributions (‘distros’) of Linux, there’s one for everything that you can think of – media editing distros, scientific distros, gaming distros, live distros, small distros, PlayStation distros, distros which run on some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, distros which run on the world’s oldest computers – there’s so much variety to choose from! So MANY of the Web’s servers are powered by Linux, because it’s so much more stable and secure. Have a look at the following desktop screenshots…

Freespire Linux with the KDE interface

A really cool Ubuntu 6.06 GNOME desktop screenshot I came across

My humble no-frills Ubuntu 7.04 desktop screenshot – yes, you can have plain vanilla too!

Back to GUIs, even if some people have the notion that Linux DOES have a GUI, they think that anybody with lower than 10 brains can’t decipher them. WRONG. Take the two major environments for example – KDE and GNOME. KDE is a complete Windows clone, down to settings control, menus, stuff like that; with more configuration abilities thrown in, and loads of built-in eye candy. GNOME on the other hand goes for the older Mac OS styles, and is geared towards simplicity and lower end systems.

So what some people say, Windows Vista with its Aero interface and Flip3D surely must leave Tux the penguin (the cute li’l Linux mascot) with his jaw dropped? Wrong again. Linux has had this stuff for quite some time now, and boy do you have variety there too! You can choose between XGL, AIGLX, Beryl, Compiz, Compiz Fusion – and most these projects are overlapping to some extent. Want to know what these can do? Have a look at this video by the major Linux distro maker Novell using Compiz…

Anyone still likes Vista Aero? What’s more, you really don’t need a supercomputer with multitudes of graphics and gazillion dozes of RAM to run the Linux stuff either, unlike Vista which starts crying for updates from day 1.

Comments and questions are welcome.

‘Crash’ Movie Review: Doesn’t Fall Flat In The Face

My rating of the movie Crash: 8.9 / 10
Directed by: Paul Haggis
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner
Released by: Lions Gate Films

Just saw Crash, the 2005 Oscar-winning movie on Star Movies. Boy, satellite television gratification eh? Now, my distaste for Oscar-stuff has been well-publicised on this blahg, and more often than not, at least for me, it’s justified. Take a movie from the same year, Brokeback Mountain. I mean, who wants to watch a movie on gays anyway? And guess what, critics liked it, liked it more than sensible stuff like Crash. Of course, I’m not saying that all Oscar-stuff movies are pathetic – oh no, I can’t ever forget that amazing movie The Departed. Hell, Marty got THAT right!

Coming back to Crash, it’s one helluva movie. To say that it’s a movie simply on racial discrimination is a big insult to it. It’s not – because it goes much deeper – into human nature. I’m not going to talk about the story, it’s something that the viewer needs to watch for himself and feel. Movies generally don’t make me cry, this one almost did (although it might just be that mom was cutting onions in the kitchen). And the way Paul Haggis brings the lives of the characters together, is simply brilliant. It just goes to show how small a world this is, and how intertwined our lives our. It gives out a message too – open your eyes, and set aside the differences; everyone’s human after all.

Coming to the cast, the major actors played pretty small roles. It’s the relatively unknown ones who drive the show. I don’t care if it was an unintended result of the fact that they might not have the budget to keep the big stars on screen for a longer time, but the smaller ones did a great job. I must confess, I’d no other good thing to do today and just started watching it because Sandra Bullock acted in it, but hey, she hardly has any role! Ditto for Brendan Fraser, though I never thought this chap would be able to do any role but in The Mummy. Ah, wrong again.

One word about Lions Gate Films, and how it churns out this amazing stuff. Some of my favourite movies are from their stable (including Saw). It’s good to see a studio which supports such fresh and off-the-beaten track films like these. Kudos to these guys, and keep the money rolling for such stuff!