Switching From Windows to Ubuntu: Part 1 - Why I Switched

For those that are used to me using 'clever' titles for my blog posts (by 'clever', I mean 'retarded and confusing') the basic simplicity of the title of this post must appear odd and out of character.

Well, there's a reason - whilst I would recommend switching from Windows to Ubuntu to most of the regular computer users out there, most of the 3rd party literature available on-line of Ubuntu - reviews, praises, etc - are written by people who are already Linux users and can be quite daunting for those that have no frickin' clue what an operating system is, much less what GNOME is.

The hope is to write a post that might aid in no small part to the switching to Ubuntu for those that it'll benefit the most in my own special, rambling way of explaining things.

(And at the same time hopefully generate enough hits on this goddamn blog so that I'll finally get a check for displaying ads on this thing. I swear, I'm giving it another couple of months and if I don't see a check, Nuffnang can suck it. If I'm not gonna get revenue from this blog then those that do read do not need to be inundated with ads about Cornetto contests.)

So here it begins - the first of God knows how many parts. I was originally going to write it all in one post but after realizing how much I'd written up to the point of installing it I figured it would make more sense to split it up. I mean, seriously. Look at how much I've written for the introduction.

I just ramble. Uncontrollably. Pointlessly. Just for the sake of it. I guess it's all rooted in that one event that happened so many years ago, across the moors of Scotland where a red-haired thing of beauty caressed me in ways no other farm animal ever did...

...crap. What the hell was I talking about?

Oh. Yes. Of course. Ubuntu. Right. Back to the plot.

Rambles aside, the fact of the matter is I do strongly believe that Ubuntu is ideal for a lot of people out there and I'd like to get the word out there because there are a ton of people out there that it could benefit but because the switch appears so daunting it puts people off.

Please don't be put off. Please. Ubuntu is your friend. Let it caress you and fondle your nether-regions with glee. Please.

How It All Began

It all started, simply enough, with my search for the ideal laptop.

From the age of 17 I'd been using a laptop. As a student in England, constantly switching from boarding school dorms to university dorms to apartments, a laptop was essential - surfing the net for 'research', checking e-mail, recording and playing back music and, most important of all, writing. Almost every script I've ever shot was written on a laptop. It made sense - the evolution of the typewriter, as it were.

But as I got more into filmmaking, I switched to a desktop to edit my videos and as time went by my laptop was relegated to the corner to pick up dust.

Over the past three years I've bought and sold a number of laptops, trying to find one to replace my old laptop for the purposes of mobility. I bought one of the first generations of eeePC's from Asus, only to be eventually put off by it's tiny size, tiny keyboard and numerous people saying it looks like a girl's laptop.

After selling that, I bought a 15" Acer which would've been a very powerful laptop... if it didn't come with frickin' Windows Vista.

Recently, I bought the Asus eeePC 1201T, a kind of hybrid between a regular laptop and a netbook - 12" screen, AMD processor with 2GB of RAM and an ATI graphics card. Slick and slim enough to bring around without causing shoulder-ache-y-ness, yet powerful enough to do everything I intended to do on it - writing scripts, doing up spreadsheets and powerpoints, surfing the net and showing videos to clients.

However, like every netbook out there, this came with Windows 7 Starter.

When I was first introduced to Windows 7 I instantly fell in love with it - lighter than Vista, more aesthetically pleasing and since it was the Ultimate 64 bit version, my PC was fully maximized which was perfect for video editing.

But if Windows 7 was the souped up sports car of the Windows lineage, Windows 7 Starter was like a cheap local car kitted out with a fancy body kit - looks like a sports car, runs like a retard.

To this day, I still don't understand the logic of Windows 7 Starter. Whilst I understand that it's meant to be a stripped down version of Windows 7, when you can't even change the desktop background, something every OS in the entire world has pretty much allowed you to do in the past decade, alarm bells start ringing.

And forcing someone to have to put up with a light blue background of your logo is one thing. Making the use of any software or hack that changes the desktop image as grounds for voiding the warranty is just plain petty.

The whole desktop background thing was just the tip of the iceberg - snooping around Windows 7 Starter made me realize just how much it won't let you customize, change or fix yourself. There was no way I was gonna use this and I honestly don't believe anyone should have to put up with it, even those who are using their laptops for the most minimal of things.

Unfortunately, for some reason ALL Asus eeePC's in Malaysia come with Windows 7 Starter and nothing else. You literally can't buy the laptop without the OS (and bear in mind, the cost of the OS is included in the cost of the laptop so if you didn't have Windows 7 Starter on it the laptop would be about two hundred ringgit cheaper).

I knew I wanted to remove Windows 7 Starter after about half an hour of using it. But what OS to replace it? I could switch back to Windows XP but I was curious to find out if there was something lighter, simpler and user friendly.

I also didn't want to pay a damn thing and the pirates are getting less reliable (I swear, their not even trying now).

After giving it a lot of thought and researching on-line, I decided to finally give Linux a go with their most popular version at the moment, Ubuntu.

Got A Lust For Linux

I remember always wanting to try out Linux in the hopes of one day converting to it, going way back to when I was a teenager and wanted to learn how to hack. Something about the thought of possibly sneaking into the pentagon mainframe and renaming all the cool missile code names into Simpsons characters put a smile on my face.

When I first entered university I discovered that out of the many computer labs there was a dedicated Linux room. I went in with such high hopes...

...until I switched on one of the computers and wondered what the fuck I was looking at.

Ever since then, there's always been that feeling that Linux systems weren't within reach - they were in another world, the elite geeks who knew code and programmed complex algorithms for fun in between bouts of three-dimensional chess.

And I just couldn't be bothered to learn code.

Earlier this year, however, I got myself a brand new phone as I figured it was high time I got a smart phone knowing I'd use it to its fullest. However, I knew two things for certain:-

1. I wanted the phone to have a keyboard
2. Under no circumstances whatsoever did I want an iPhone

(I'll get into my feelings about the revered Mac products later on in one of the other posts).

After trying out a bunch of phones I finally settled on the Nokia N900 - only RM100 more than a Nokia N97 mini and packed with a lot more features. The phone was so new on the market when I bought it I had to wait a couple months before I could find a shop that was selling a screen protector for it.

What attracted me most to the phone, however, was the operating system - the phone ran on Maemo, which was based on Linux. The phone even had a terminal to write code and commands in, for God's sake! The thought that there was a phone running on Linux really intrigued me and, after using it for a week, I fell instantly in love with it.

The Linux bug was back, and with the new laptop, perhaps it was time to try out Linux 'for real'.

Googling for information on different Linux operating systems, however, feels infuriating for the uninitiated - all the sites on different OS's have so little real and understandable information. It's as if everyone who creates Linux OS's know everything there is to know about code but hardly anything about communicating information to the regular human being.

(And, in quite a few cases, it also looks like they have no clue on how to design a website in a manner that's both attractive and understandable).

It's also annoying to find that a lot of the Linux OS's websites are very obviously written with Linux users in mind, making it very difficult for a non-Linux user to step in and discover it's fruity goodness.

Ubuntu, however, isn't like that.It probably has the most understandable and attractive website I've seen yet, though still a bit vague in areas. Nonetheless, from reading the website you know this is a community that wants you, the non-Linux-y person, to give it a try.

And for those that can't be bothered to click this link to find out more, in a nutshell all you really need to know is this:-

1. Ubuntu is an operating system for a computer
2. It's simple to understand after fiddling with it for a bit
3. There's a ton of free software to suit (most of) your needs
4. It's free and regularly maintained and updated

After looking at a number of other possible operating systems with either incomprehensible or vague websites, I decided to give Ubuntu a go.

Installing Ubuntu

There are a number of ways one can install Ubuntu, but for a lot of people (myself included), the thought of completely deleting an OS that I understood but didn't like in order to install a new OS that sounds great but I've never tried is kinda scary.

That's where the wonderful Wubi comes in.

Wubi is a software you can download at the Ubuntu website that allows you to try out Ubuntu within your Windows computer. You basically download the Ubuntu iso image (an iso image is essentially the file equivalent of a CD or DVD that you can download and burn to a CD or DVD in order to have your very own installer) and use Wubi to install Ubuntu onto your computer in Windows and when you re-start the computer you are given the choice of either running Windows or Ubuntu.

If it turns out Ubuntu isn't the OS for you or it simply won't install on your computer (I'll get to that in a bit) then all you have to do is uninstall Wubi by opening Windows, going to your programs list and uninstalling it like you would any other software.

Pretty simple, right?

After trying out Ubuntu through Wubi for a while, I decided why not - let's jump into the deep end and install the lil' bugger.

The version of Ubuntu I downloaded was the latest one - Ubuntu 10.04, or Lucid Lynx as it's also known. Unlike earlier versions of Ubuntu, the installation process for Lucid Lynx is via a rather attractive and easy to understand graphical interface, much like how you'd install Windows.

And if you're still worried about how the whole process of installing Ubuntu, don't be - the website shows you how to do it in very simple steps. And if you still don't get it, just google 'how to install ubuntu' and you'll find a number of sites telling you exactly how to go about it.

After less than twenty minutes, Ubuntu was installed on my laptop.

And after a week of fiddling around with it, I was in love.

Next up: Using Ubuntu, the software I love, the dark side of Linux and my personal opinion of operating systems in general.

Oh. And a picture of a cat doing something cat-like.

Infinite Mental Crisis

I have, of late, been feeling rather odd.

This whole week, in fact, has been a strange sensation of oddness. It started off mildly, but increased exponentially as the week continued. The oddness was an emotional one, a strange feeling that I couldn't really pinpoint but new it was not a pleasant sensation, and the feeling grew and grew, this odd oddness, and the more it grew, the more frustrated I became, annoyed that I couldn't pinpoint any cause or reason which would mean not knowing any solution or cure.

A few hours earlier, the oddness subsided, aided in some strange way by watching 'The Dead Poets Society' again. However, as the emotional oddness subsided, physical oddness has now taken its place -  I'm not sure whether I'm tired or ill, it feels like I'm either high or drunk but have imbibed no substances of any kind. In conversation I've been finding it harder and harder to maintain a flow of sentence, and even whilst typing this I know I am not doing so at my usual speed, constantly fixing numerous typos.

I have no idea where these waves of oddness are coming from. I have no clue as to the emotional underpinnings behind it all. I have no explanation for the physical oddness (apart from the possibility that Dominos once again either laced my pizza with illegal herbs and spices or some form of bodily fluid that I'd rather not know about). I have no idea where all this is coming from this week.

But I do know what doesn't help - reading 'Final Crisis'.

In an earlier post I had written about how I wanted to know how Batman has died in the DC Universe and picked up Batman R.I.P. thinking it would be the story of how Batman had finally kicked the bucket only to discover that it was the prelude to the actual event happening in a book called 'Final Crisis' which I picked up this morning, hoping that a dose of comic goodness would lift me out of this funk oddity.

I got home, did some work and proceeded to read it to discover the dawn of man, multiple earths, the death of J'Onn the Martian Manhunter (which happens off-screen, sorry, off-panel), good gods, evil gods, the destruction of all mankind, Japanese harajuku super hero teenagers, multiple Supermans, every Flash in existence, multiverse vampires and the enslavement of all mankind as they ride giant dogs.

And somewhere amongst it all, over two to three pages, Batman pops up out of nowhere, pulls out a super-gun, caps the dude that's behind it all but just before he gets shot, the super-baddy zaps Batman in the head with lazer thingeys and fries him. Batman turns to skeleton (though his suit is surprisingly intact).

As for Superman? He was too late to save the Bat. Because he was in the future, somehow. Or something. I have no fucking clue.

Superman had a huge story-arc dedicated to his upcoming death when he died back in the early nineties. Batman gets two to three pages and dies like a bitch. There's something wrong with all this.

I have read the book three times today because, like my emotional oddity, this book is like a puzzle that I can't seem to frickin' figure out. It reminds me of when I read Grant Morrison's 'The Filth', except somehow that was easier to accept.

Like almost every other comic book I've picked up recently after my hiatus of non-comic goodness, it feels like the only way I can truly appreciate 'Final Crisis' is if I've read every other DC comic that preceded it, the '52' books and every single character book that has a crossover with this - Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, everyone. And it's frickin' frustrating. It's actually putting me off super hero comic books more and more because they seem increasingly inaccessible. Where am I going to get my sequential art fix now? I remember being super-excited every time I'd go to the comic book store - what wonderful stories would I read today? I now feel like every time I pick up a comic book it's as if I've walked in halfway through a movie.

Regardless, the oddness of feeling has finally subsided, perhaps due to the complete emotional, physical and mental draining that this book has endured upon me, and I have learnt three valuable lessons:-

1. I may be too old to pick up superhero comics now
2. I'm probably too dumb to understand anything Grant Morrison writes
3. I'm not that financially secure to waste more money on frustrating items such as these

Next book I buy is gonna be a 'Hellblazer' book. And if John Constantine disappoints me (which he never has) I'm afraid I'm going to have to say goodbye to comic books forever and start reading 'Twilight'.

Kind Words Go A Long Way

So I just found out Benjamin McKay passed away.

I didn't really know Mr. McKay. I'd only met him once. He e-mailed me because Criticine had asked him to cover my feature film 'Ciplak' and asked when it was being screened so he could do a write up on it.

There were two people who were invited to the 'Ciplak' screening who's review I was quite nervous about. Benjamin's review was one of them.

I remember meeting him after the launch party for the flick at Laundry. He came over and introduced himself and told me the review would be up soon and that it would be positive.

I remember clicking open the review, nervous as hell, worried about whether or not he would like the movie...

...and instead discovering the most in-depth review of 'Ciplak' I had ever read.

I was amazed, proud, honored and incredibly touched that someone would write about my tiny little low-budget movie the way he did and I was incredibly grateful that he would even consider taking the time to write such an in-depth review in the first place.

I never met Mr. McKay after that, but I'll always be grateful for that review and thankful that he was such a presence in the local independent film scene.

Rest In Peace, sir.

Comical Frustration

I haven't bought comic books in a while. A long while. There haven't been any storylines or new books that piqued my interest. I've pretty much given up on trying to find books on par with stuff like Watchmen, Sandman, Transmetropolitan or Preacher. Hellblazer's always been reliable but I've been jones-ing for something different before going back to ol' John Constantine so I thought I'd check out some good ol' superhero stuff.

And it sure's been a mixed bag.

As I was browsing through Borders last week I saw there was a new 'Astonishing X-Men'. I'd been loving the series under Joss Whedon, a fresh and enjoyable run after Grant Morrison's 'New X-Men' became more and more of a headfuck (btw, totally looking forward to the Whedon touch on the Avengers movie). And the series was now being written by Warren Ellis.

I'm a huge Ellis fan. 'Transmetropolitan' is one of my favorite comic books and his novel 'Crooked Little Vein' was brilliant. Seeing his name on an X-Men book instantly made me salivate and I bought it straight away, even though I thought the price was a bit high...

...and I wish I could say the book was thoroughly enjoyable, but it's not the case.

Don't get me wrong - the writing is classic Ellis, but the entire story is predicated on the reader knowing about a whole bunch of crap that happened in the Marvel universe somewhere between the last book and this which involved Wanda Maximoff killing all the mutants in the world except for about 198 of them by giving birth to a baby with her brain or something.

The entire story in this book is based on all this stuff that's happened before. There was no such problem with the transition from 'New X-Men' to 'Astonishing X-Men' but in this it's just nuts. The last thing I knew about the Marvel universe was the whole 'Avengers Disassembled' storyline where Wanda went nuts which really just felt like Marvel trying to do something like DC's 'Identity Crisis' and reaching nowhere near the strength of that storyline. As for 'Civil War'? I haven't a frickin' clue. Now Wanda's gone nuts again? And it's affected everyone? And there's no explanation given, just assume the readers know all about the entire Marvel universe and carry on? Rather annoying.

On top of that, whilst the art is beautiful and the paneling creative, it's also real difficult to read and follow, sometimes downright confusing. Quite a disappointment indeed.

Now, remember how I was saying that Grant Morrison's run of 'X-Men' turned into quite a head fuck? I've always found Grant Morrison's writing difficult at times for my tastes. I know people who swear by him, and I can see why, but sometimes his head fucks really fuck up my head.

'Batman R.I.P.' is no exception.

I'd heard that Batman had been killed off and was really curious to read the book on how it happened and I assumed 'Batman R.I.P.' was the one only to discover it's the book that leads up to his death in 'Final Crisis' (which, I guess, since I started with R.I.P. I might as well buy to find out what the hell's happened). I'd read earlier Grant Morrison Batman stories and I thought his style really suited the character.

This book is also written with the assumption that you know what's been going on before and makes a lot of references to it, but it's a lot more acceptable since it's an on-going series and the book's just a compilation of a bunch of issues that make up a story arc. A bit frustrating, but understandable as opposed to X-Men which assumes you've read every other Marvel story arc from every other damn comic.

However, after reading R.I.P., I think my brain's just not tuned for Morrison stuff. I dunno. It was just really hard to get into. Yet another head fuck in which Batman is the one being head fucked. leading to one's own head feeling fucked at the sight of Batman going bat-shit crazy.

Still, would really like to know how Batman buys it in the end.

Out of all the comic books I bought, though, the one that I enjoyed the most was the one I didn't expect to grip me at all - 'Ultimates 3'.

Now, although I have been following the 'Ultimates' series since issue 1 (for those not in the know, 'Ultimates' is basically the Avengers done as if in the real world here and now, starting from scratch), at least 'Ultimates 3' has the courtesy of having a 'previously on Ultimates' type intro on the first page to catch new guys up to speed. Jeph Loeb's writing is fast and fun and in keeping with the 'Ultimates' style of a huge, epic blockbuster movie and Madureira's art is mind-blowing.

However, yet again it's all centered around Wanda Maximoff. What's everyone's beef at Marvel with the Scarlet Witch?!

I'm not sure which books to buy next. I'd really like to get into a brand new series, one that blows my mind and grips me the same way my favorite graphic novels of the past have, but I have no idea what to pick up. If anyone's got any ideas, holla back.

Feeding the Head Bones

I have odd head bones.

It's no fault of mine and I don't complain. In fact, I'm quite proud of my head bones. It is through the strangeness of my head bones' activity that I attribute most of the things that I do. My head bones act differently and feed off different things and from this oddity comes the things that I do.

My head bones like to learn. Like Johnny 5 from the Short Circuit movies it constantly needs input. Back in the day it fed off a diet of writing, filmmaking, music and sound production, learning as much as it could in these creative tasks. The head bones were happy - there was much to eat.

The problem with my head bones is that, once it's decided there's nothing else to learn, the head bones get bored. The head bones have a voracious appetite and constantly need to eat and when the head bones have nothing to eat, the head bones get sad. It works the other way as well - when I'm sad for others reasons, feeding the head bones makes me happy.

It is because of the appetite of these head bones that I built my own guitar, for example, as well as all the other stuff I find myself randomly doing at times. And it is because of the appetite of these insane head bones that I've found myself occupied with another activity this past month...

...there used to be only one computer in The Hub. Now there's four (with another three in various states of repair).

My main computer for the longest time was a pentium quad core with 4 gigs of RAM. This was the computer for which all my video editing for the past two years was done as well as the recording of my band's soon-to-be-released album, but recently I've felt like I've been pushing it a bit too much and some parts may need an upgrade.

Then, instead of an upgrade, I figured I might as well build another PC for editing and keep the quad for audio production. It made sense since I was torn between having a 64 bit machine which would be great for editing and a 32 bit machine which is better for audio since a lot of the sound cards and plug ins for audio don't have 64 bit support (yet).

After some research, I decided to build myself an i5 quad core with 8 gigs of RAM and 2 terabytes of hard drive - 500 gigs for windows, another 500 for design and photography and a terabyte for video editing running at 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate slightly overclocked (simply because I can) and it is gorgeous. Meanwhile, I set up the old quad core streamlining it for audio production running trusty Windows XP 32 bit.

After that, I started researching turning PC's into media centers. Eddy had an old PC he wasn't using so I asked if I could gut it and mess around with it but, unfortunately, it's specs were way too low to have it as a permanent entertainment center (256 MB of RAM, for starters).

I did, however, discover a very cool freeware called SesamTV which was pretty simple to install and use and decided to turn the audio PC into a media center as well since I mainly use the video editing computer than anything else. Not only that, I loaded it up with a bunch of emulators for old-school arcade games as well as Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive and also got myself an old-school arcade style joystick.

As for the old PC, I then tried fooling around with Linux, deciding on Ubuntu, but there wasn't enough RAM to make it usable. I then tried sticking the components into a much smaller casing of a very ancient PC but it wouldn't fit. What to do with this ancient machine?

Simple. Turn it into a torrent machine.

That settled, I was still very curious about Ubuntu and Linux in general. I'd always wanted to try it out and see what it was like. I decided to pull out my old laptop and try it out using the wubi software to install a dual boot without having to partition my windows.

After a lot of testing, I decided to keep trying out Ubuntu and keeping it on the laptop.

One problem, though - the laptop was indeed old and needed some fixing. The plug jack was loose which meant I had to use the bulky laptop dock to plug it into a socket and batteries weren't an option since it was so old it would only last less than half an hour. The DVD-R drive was also shot to hell. I decided to go to Low Yat and find out how much it would cost to fix all these parts and maybe add some RAM.

After checking out the costs, it made more sense to just buy a netbook and decided on the Asus Eee PC 1201T.

About two years ago I bought one of the first generations of Eee PC netbooks and, after a while, sold it. I like the idea of a compact laptop but one of the things I really didn't like was the keyboard - tiny, unresponsive and not enough clickety-clack.

I like clickety-clack.

I sold off the Eee PC to Davina (who promptly over-heated it to death, from what I gather) and later bought an Acer with a dedicated graphics card and decent RAM and processor so that I could edit on the go.

The problem with that? It was big. And it came pre-loaded with Windows Vista which sucked balls. I sold it off to Colonel Kurtz and remained without a laptop, occasionally pulling out the old trusty Toshiba I'd written countless screenplays on whenever I wanted to work on the sofa instead of a desk.

That's when it really hit me - I enjoyed writing on a laptop. I liked my big and powerful quad core monsters for video and sound editing but when it came to writing out ideas I liked being mobile. All my past screenplays and television scripts were written on a laptop. It was just more comfortable and conducive to writing.

The 1201T is a little different from usual netbooks - it's kinda like a hybrid of a regular laptop and a netbook - 12.1" screen, AMD processor with 2 gigs of RAM and an ATI graphics card. It was a choice between this or a Thinkpad but the keyboard on the Asus was a lot more comfortable.

With a lot more clickety-clack.

The only thing that annoyed me about it was the fact that it comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 starter. Now, I love Windows 7 but the Starter version is beyond retarded - you can't even change the desktop background without hacking into the Windows which, according to Microsoft, kills the warranty. Besides, I was going to install Ubuntu anyway.

And after a few days using it on this laptop, I've fallen in love with the OS. I'm already looking up audio production software for Linux which I plan to test out that are apparently pretty decent and if someone comes up with a video editing software on Linux that stands up to Sony Vegas Windows can say goodbye.

Even now my head bones are still swirling - Ubuntu is keeping it fed quite a bit, researching other things to twiddle with on this lovely free OS as well as learning the code whilst I type this on the new laptop, uploading the latest corporate video I edited on the i5 and watching The Big Bang Theory on the other PC, switching between episodes with the wireless keyboard. I'm already thinking of other things I can do with the old Toshiba laptop as well as an older Compaq laptop I've got hidden away somewhere (which actually works fine except for the fact that the screen is cracked and the keyboard's missing a few keys thanks to my brother's curiosity when he was two years old) and I'm even thinking of turning the old torrent PC into an old arcade machine instead.

I have happy head bones now, and they're geeking out. I sure hope it lasts a while because it was a choice between either fiddling with the innards and OS's of computers or picking up painting again.

And that's just messy.

(P.S. If anybody out there has any ancient PC's they're thinking of throwing in the garbage, gimme a buzz.)