The past couple of weeks at home have been spent brainstorming. I was running Windows Vista, but I’m simply not impressed with it. My dual core P4 with 2Gigs of RAm slow down to a crawl sometimes on it, with a 512mb NVidia Geforce 7300 Graphics card slow down toa crawl on it, and its quite disconcerting when that happens. Switched over to Ubuntu 7.10, and was more than impressed by it. Compiz Fusion knocks the living daylights out of Aero. The look and feel of the OS was very, very impressive. I then made the decision to switch over completely to Ubuntu. The overall experience seems so much more stable, and enough eye candy without having to compromise on resources.Unfortunately, I do not think its going to materialise in the long run, even though Ubuntu is a superior OS to MS Windows in many ways. Here’s a few reasons why.

1. The dependence on Windows for average everyday computing is way too much. For example, On Linux, sending a file over a messenger does not seem possible, and even if it does, its pretty darn hard to figure out how.
2. There are way too many applications available, that are Windows only. Linux alternatives for these exists, and though the effort of the developers is very commendable, these alternatives are not as feature rich as the original application. I know Wine exists, but quite a few apps above really have not gelled well with Wine.
3. Syncing Music to a Media Player is a tedious task. On Linux, I can do that easily using Amarok, but Album Art and the likes seem to be a major pain. Amarok, again, is a kazillion times better than Windows Media Player.
4. Firmware updates for my phone can be done only through Windows.
5. My Media Center remote has to be configured to work with MythTV. I’ve downloaded the modules and keymaps, but I’d rather have something that works out of the box.
5. The whole concept of configuring a new Operating System, however technically inclined you are, is an uphill task, that needs investing a lot of time. Unfortunately, thats precisely what I’m lacking.

And then, there a dozen other reasons like if I’m not at home and someone needs to use the PC, they’ll have to spend half an hour figuring out how, assuming I’m running a highly customised Linux.

And hence, that copy of Windows XP home lying around seems very very tempting right now. Everything can be worked out pretty easily, including the Media Center remote, on the excellent open source Media Portal application.

Sadly, Ubuntu, shall have to be reduced to the confines of backup PC, if I ever manage to have one, and get time enough to use it. The world is unjust, or Windows is a villan

Lesson to be learnt :- Thy shall not try to switch over to Linux when thy hath only singular computer at disposal.

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