Dont Hate Windows!

I have been a Linux user for quite some time now. I don’t call myself a Linux freak or even a Linux pro, but yes I like Linux. I have frequented to many Linux forums or to the different Linux help sites or magazines.

One thing I have observed is that most the Linux Users or Linux lovers are in variably Windows haters. And believe me; I have seen Windows haters to the core. I don’t know why this happens, once people start using Linux they just start hating windows more and more. To be frank, when I started using Linux, I too joined this group of people who hate windows. But later on I realized, I don’t need to hate windows to love Linux! Why not use both the OS and take good from both?

Most of the people in the World still use windows. In case of India, majority of people still don’t know there exists any other OS apart from Windows (best part is, most of them think windows is free ;))

UNIX was there long before windows came, then why did UNIX was get a similar response as Windows? Why didn’t people plan to use UNIX for theirs PC? Well there are many reasons, but one of then is definitely GUI! Accept it, windows gives you a fantastic GUI.

I have tried thinking, is there anything in GUI I think which I think is missing in Windows? I did give it an honest thought and apart from tweaking the current features, there was nothing which came to my mind which I thought is obviously included in the GUI. Mr. Gates did invest a lot in developing a really user friendly GUI. Guess we should really give it to MS for giving us a really nice GUI.

Apart from GUI, the ease of package installations, ease of PC software maintenance, and most importantly, the ease of installing the OS at the first place!!

Here I am not comparing Windows with Linux or any other OS; all I am trying to say is Don’t just Hate Windows because you love Linux.

Don’t forget, by allowing dual boot, Its Linux way of saying “Love Linux, but Don’t Hate windows”

Live Free!

A Personal Computer or a Laptop has ceased to be a techie play thing and has become something which most of the people use. Today hundreds of millions of people use a personal computer in one form or other for work, entertainment, play or any other thing that they can think of. And when we think of a personal computer we imagine a desktop and a “Start” button on the bottom left had side. Yup, I am talking about Windows. Personal Computers have become synonymous to Windows (no offense to Apple and Mac OS users, but you guys are in minority). When asked, if you do not have Windows, what other OS would you use, and the answer is ‘Windows comes with the PC, howz it possible to have a PC without Windows?’

The truth is, PC does not come with Windows, you have to buy Windows separately and get it installed. Windows being the most used Operating System (OS); the vendor pre-installs this OS and adds the cost of it to the PC. But the other truth is, there are other OS which also can be used instead of Windows on your PC. Here I will briefly talk about ‘Alternate working environments on PC’

There are many OS which x86 architecture (Normal IBM compatible PCs) supports, few of them are Sun Solaris, different distros of Linux, OS/2, BeOS to name a few. But then the next question here is, if everyone uses Windows, why should one go for any other OS at the first place?

One can compare different OS on many parameters like

• Cost
• User – friendly
• Speed
• Requirement of PC resources for smooth working of the OS
• Look and Feel
• Loads of other technical parameters which were are really not interested in ;)

I really accept that Windows has the most user friendly interface and with Windows Vista (the OS with WOW?) possibly the best look and feel as well. But on the other aspects, Windows XP does not fair better as compared to Solaris or Linux (not comparing Vista as I have not used it and the specifications stated has ridiculous resource requirements). In terms of Cost, Windows XP professional is about $230 and compared to that, Linux is FREE!! Linux needs fewer resources than windows to run and has optimized resource utilization. All those people who has seen Linux at its birth, or who have used Unix based OS and still think that Linux is a command line based OS, they are up for a surprise. The look and feels of new Linux distros are fantastic.

Linux is an Open source OS, that means, the source code of the OS is open to all, and anybody can make changes to the kernel so as to customize it their needs. I know most of us wont even touch the kernel, but different companies do that for us and present Linux in different Distros. There are numerous distros of Linux like Red Hat, Mandrake, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, knoppix, Mandirva, Slackware, SUSE, CentOS …. (There are 352 Distros listed in Wikipedia) and one of them is an Indian Distro called Aryabhatta!

Everyone of them being Free OS with one or the other feature to boast of.

Most famous of them are the first 10 which I have listed which give most of the features of windows. I personally vote for Ubuntu as a home OS. It has a very good UI, very user friendly and there is hardly anything which you can do on Windows and not do on Linux.

When you install full version of Ubuntu (did I mention before that Ubuntu is free?) it come with almost all the day to day applications you can think of. To think of it, start with a web browser (firefox), a Mail client (thunder bird, supports Microsoft exchange), messengers, picture editing tools, pdf readers, Office tools ( this is free too and can open, create and edit Microsoft office documents), loads of system utilities like zip etc, and loads of Games!!

Once you have the Ubuntu installed, there is nothing which you need to install to start using it. But in case you are not happy with the messenger it comes with and you need yahoo messenger, or you don’t like the picture viewer and want picassa…just to their site and download the Linux version and install. Installing an application is now as simple as it is on Windows. Ubuntu comes with Plug&Play feature for most of the things you can think of, for all the cameras, USB storage devices etc, just insert and it starts working.

Now its not an pre-requisite to know Unix commands to start working on Linux, the GUI is powerful enough to do all the administrative functions. Linux is extremely customizable cosmetic changes in terms of themes, wallpapers etc.

One more important feature which Ubuntu, for that matter Linux gives you is the co – existence with windows on the same machine. You can have one of Linux flavor and windows on the same machine at same time and you can boot into any one OS at will. Linux gives you an option to access files from Windows work area too!

I am here not trying to say that Windows is bad, Linux is good, but Linux as an alternative OS to Windows has a lot of advantages if not more than Windows, I would definitely suggest, give it a chance and see, you would love it!

Live Free!!

Get fried again!!!!!......

After legally driving car for about eight years, I finally thought I should also possess a driving license to ride a Bike (Motor Cycle with Gears as it is called in RTO). Well ok, most of you would be thinking why after eight years when for most, the bike license comes first. When I turned 18, the only vehicle we had was car so got a license to drive a car (license here means permit from Govt. of India, it took 6 more months to get permit from mom). But recently my long time friend and fellow roommate Kalpak bought a shining new Pulsar 200, so thought I would also go with him to get the license.

Procuring the license is not as simple as passing HSC examination. Well that depends on what way you go about passing both! No comments about passing HSC, but getting a license have two major ways.

1. Fire and Forget: This is quite simple. Go to RTO agent or Motor Learning School. Tell him you need a Bike license (for that matter any driving license). He asks you for money (way more than the actual license fees) . Hand it over to him, DO NOT HESITATES, I repeat, DO NOT HESITATE! He gives you a date, go to him on the specified date and get the license.

2. Get Fried: This method is of toil and hard work! Here you yourself have to go to the RTO to get it done.

We made a choice, we will not grease no palms, we will get our license in the right way, we chose to get fried.

The first step in getting fried in the RTO is getting a Learning License. I call this Shallow fry! Got the form from the “Inquiry” desk. The moment we started filling up the form, a guy came to help us out. RTO, I guess was on the cost cutting spree, because the form was so faintly printed that it took us some time to realize it was in Marathi. The guy was used to filling those forms; he was just pointing at the dotted lines and telling us what to write there. He was fast, we were faster, we would fill up forms faster that his instructions! The form has a place where we had to get a doctor certificate of our health. The guy took us to the doctor just outside the RTO compound. The doctor asked me my name, asked for a birthmark and with no other check up, declared us fit to drive. This was coooool! This Doc was damn good, how did he know we were fit and fine to ride a bike. Must be some super natural power!!! Doc asked for Rs30 each from us and the guy who took us to the Doc vanished! ‘Hmmmm…he was doctors agent after all’ we said to each other. We submitted the form to a Sub Inspector for the learning license test, that’s when we realized that we had filled up the form all wrong. We had written our current permanent license numbers at the field which said “reason for cancellation of earlier license (if any)”, but luckily the SI didn’t realize this.

Once test was done, we were told to go to a room for further proceedings. Here to our surprise, they scanned our finger print and took a digital photograph! Shock of my life! RTO has gone the tech way! Biometrics in RTO!!!! Still discussing about the biometrics in RTO, we paid the license fees and left!

One month after the Learning license issue, we reached there to get our Permanent learning license. All ready with the bike and everything. We both filled up the Permanent License from, in English this time, and went for the test. Gave the test and passed! The SI there told me to give test for a four wheeler too. I told him I am in possession of a LMV (Light Motor Vehicle) driving license since eight years, to which he said I had filled up wrong form. The noble officer told me to fill up the right form and duly signed the same without any problems. It was extremely hot that day, sun in full form. We had been in the sun for last couple of hours but we were not complaining, were happy that we both passed the test and will be going to get new licenses in short time. We were told to go to a window to get a signature from another officer. He signed my form without a word, but asked Kalpak few questions and asked him to come back after an Hour. Once that was done we went to another window to pay the license fees. It’s a law of life, which states, in government office, you have to jump from window to window to get your work done. Proving and verifying the law, we jumped from window to window and finally reached the right window where we paid up the license fees. We submitted the form in the next window.

The lady at the computer tried taking another set of biometric samples of us, which the computer did not allow her to do. She called her senior, who faced the same problem. That’s when we suggested that they could carry on with the samples they took a month before and use the same ones. The Senior Clerk there was amazed at our intelligence and said that’s how it would be done! We successfully submitted the form!

A week later, my mom went to collect the license. That’s when she was told that they had not received the form at all! As per the earlier rule, mom jumped again from window to window to search for the form and finally got it. That’s when a clerk there told her that on of the forms was missing and she has to fill that up. This form was needed because I already had LMV license and the new license would be endorsed with both, LMV and MCWG. Mom promptly filled up the form and submitted it to the right window. After a couple of days, Mom when to collect the license, which to her surprise was given to her without any problem.

Mom triumphantly handed over the new license to me on the next weekend when I went home. Checked the new license, awesome!!! It was a smart card with a microchip embedded in it. My digital image on the card and all. Superb I said! Every trip to the RTO, getting fried in the Sun and jumping from window to window was worth it!

I started reading the license in details and that’s when the hell broke loose.
I could not believe my eyes!
It said “CALSS OF VEHICLE (license to drive): MCWG”

They had forgotten to endorse my LMV license on this new license!!

Sigh!!! Get fried again!!!!!......

Traffic in Pune

No city in Maharashtra has as illustrious history and past as Pune. Pune is one of the big cities in Maharashtra and definitely one of the most important. Pune has always been the "cultural" capital of Maharashtra. But Pune has another specialty, it has largest number of two wheelers in Maharashtra, possibly in India too.

Its been almost two years I have been living in Pune, but have been visiting Pune since childhood. I was always told 'The real driving test is to drive in Pune. Once you can drive in pune, you can drive anywhere in the world.' And the day came. I drove all the way from Thane to Pune and also "in" Pune. The moment I entered the city, I was in a different world all together. I saw something which i had not seen before, a special Specie of vehicle driver. The female of the specie was riding a complex vehicle which for simplicity we call "moped" The moped was ridden at the center of the road on the lane marking. All my indirect indications of overtaking were ignored, finally i honked, which to my amazement was ignored too. This was just the starting, Punekars' have found new and innovative ways to break traffic rules.

There are three flyover being build on the road from Pune University to Sancheti circle to ease the traffic at the junctions in between. Very noble thought from MSRDC and PMC but the construction work has been going on for ages now. One has to take a big detour if going towards Mumbai, you would have to get in the model colony and come out from the Senapati Bapat road into the University circle (mind you there is no circle there :) )
But people do not want to use this detour, so the next easiest way is to go on the wrong way. Don't be surprised if you see someone coming in opposite direction on your side of the road, best part is, not just mopeds and bikes but Huge trucks too, its quite common here. If fact if you don't let enough place for the vehicle coming from wrong direction, you might get a glaring look.
Apart from this, disobeying other traffic rules like parking in NO PARKING area, driving in NO ENTRY zone. Riding in opposite direction to the traffic to find parking on the road, riding on the footpath, all this is not counted in breaking traffic rules. Signals here are for the convenience of the drivers. Leave out the old teachings which our school teacher taught us - RED traffic light means STOP, Green means GO. Here the signals mean different - Green - GO GO GO GO GO, Amber - God knows why they need this light!, Red - If you have time you can wait for sometime, but if you are in hurry, no need to stop.

When ever we used to discuss the traffic problems in friends circle we used to say "Jab accident ho jayaga to pata chalega!!" but we were wrong. Every other day there is a front page news about someone being fatally injured in road accident. Most of the times the accident involves the Private company cabs. Even after so many accidents the tendency to flaunt the traffic rules has not changed. Few days back TOI had a news that PMC and MSRDC together is going to run a new project to improve the traffic conditions in Pune, and this is going to cost them Rs 1500 crore.

The government is doing their bit, all it needs is some effort from our side. Believe me its not so difficult, just simple traffic rules, we all know them. All we need to do it wait when the signal is RED. Adhere to the No Entry and one Way. And the most important is to be a little sensitive towards the other drivers on the road. If we all just be a little understanding, the traffic in pune would be a lot better than what it is today.