Currently Listening To...Album: Jazz In The Spirit: His Eye In On The Sparrow
Artist: Unlisted
Song: Awsome God
I just had to link this. Rove's been airing clips of it on Rove Live. Absolutely hilarious the things people will do to be a "real live superhero".
Random Pic Of The Week
Sorry if I stole this off someone, but it's pretty funny...- Torchwood
- Forza 2 Motorsport
- Linux
- TV Advertisement Rants
- TV Network Rants
I figure since tv has been way overdone by everyone else already, and the people who I know read this blog don't own an xbox 360, it would be pointless covering TV and Forza (at this stage). And since I've only watched the first 4 eps of Torchwood, I might as well cover the lot when I've seen them all.
Since this blog is, after all, called "Confessions Of A Computer Nerd", I might as well cover the most nerdiest topic of all - Linux.
Lots of people seem to ask me questions about what linux actually is, I guess I should start there. Trouble is, explaining it is difficult. So here's the wiki. In short, it's an operating system based of an old operating system called unix (see wiki link). OSX, incidently, is also based on unix.
The key behind linux is that is is open source. This means that it is fully customisable down to the last detail. To make things a little more confusing though, Linux (or any operating system) isn't actually what you see on screen. It is the code behind it.
A poor analogy is a photo shop. You take in your oldskool film to be printed and hand it to the customer service person. They then hand it to the guy who actually prints it. Once printed, the photos are given to the customer service person, who gives the photos to you.
Ok, stay with me. Linux is the printer guy, the one who does all the work on the photos. The customer service person is just there to make things easier. In an operating system's case, this is the fancy graphics. You see it? Huh? Bad I know, but you (hopefully) get the picture (get it? Picture?).
So now I've clarified what linux is, I'll explain the GUI or Graphical User Interface. This is the stuff you point and click at with the mouse. The two main types for this are Gnome and KDE (pics in wiki link). Gnome is comparable to OSX, while KDE is comparable to the windows interface. These too are open source, meaning that you can make them look exactly how you want them to look without having an extra application change it for you (in window's case).
When you combine these two things together you have a distribution, a whole free operating system that I find easier to use than windows and OSX (which I admit, I haven't used much of).
You can still access windows files and folders, osx files and folders, and most hardware works straight after installation without drivers and such. It even has windows emulation, which while not perfect, is acceptible for small tasks, and even apparently runs microsoft office adequately. Not that you need it, with perfectly reliable free legal software that doesn't cost you a cent to use.
So, how's this compare to OSX and Windows? Well, linux is finally at the stage where it can probably be installed by someone whose computer literate, and without a degree in software engineering. With the one that I use, all you need to do is put in the disk, and there's a simple step by step program that does eveything for you. You can even try it out from the cd without breaking everything. The user interface is a decent quality, and you can change it as you see fit. It's prime advantage is application managers that can automatically download free software from the net. Just click it and it downloads, installs and is ready for use without EULA's, and usually without reboots (for most apps).
So, what's left to mention? Windows 90 odd % market share. It can't be that bad with that kind of record, can it? WRONG!!! again, wiki link.
As you can read in the link, it really all began gaining momentum at widnows version 3. It was the first pc operating system that could run on more than one type of hardware (3 at the time). At the time it was revolutionary, and there was finally someone to rival apple. Problem was, they got too successful. Jobs had been kicked from apple, and linux was concentrating on server orientation. This left a gaping big hole for windows '95. After this, we start to see windows downfall. Windows '98 was thought to be a minor upgrade to '95. This is when MS started getting nasty in the web browser wars. When they bundled IE into windows, no one had any reason (at the time) to use nutscrape - sorry, netscape navigator. So instead, netscape decided to add more uneeded features, resulting in it's downfall.
Now MS are far too comfortable in their success and have dropped the ball, and people are filling in the gaps. According the apple's (laughable) release of safari to windows, IE marketshare is down to 75%, because they haven't released a decent update to it in years. Hence firefox. Safari is bug filled crappy software by apple's standards, but is still better than IE. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, there are no real security/virus threats to linux machines. Virus protection is completely unneccesary, although freely available if wanted.
Anyway, I still have windows on my desktop because I like to game. But my laptop boots just as quick and WITHOUT CRASHING AND DRIVER UPDATES with ubuntu linux installed. It's easier to use and took me 1/2 the time to install.
What's more is that when I bought the laptop, I had no choice but to have windows installed. This is how microsoft makes their money - from manufacturer support. Manufacturers are always going to prefer a nice long legal agreement with lock in contracts than a free, flexible operating environment. This is the reason why windows succeeds, and no other. But with Vista, things may change, but I doubt it. While large businesses won't spend the millions needed to change to linux, and home users don't know the difference, thing won't change.
So, I hope that clears up peoples knowledge of linux a little bit. In reality, I've probably confused you more than anything else, but what the hell.
Also, feel free to comment/critique/suggest improvements for the template colours and such. It ain't no where near finished yet, so I might need some creative input.
