David @ Tokyo

Perspective from Japan on whaling and whale meat, a spot of gourmet news, and monthly updates of whale meat stockpile statistics

3/02/2005

Linux geek

After recovering from a nasty disease, my interest in the Linux OS has been greatly rekindled. Several reasons for this:

1) I use Sun Solaris at work, and want to learn some more cool UNIX command line tricks (most commands apply on Linux as well, except the really internals specific stuff, like "prstat" instead of "top").

2) Enlightenment 17 preview videos ... What is Enlightenment? Well, it is a Window Manager. For you Windows users, this is the equivalent to the thing that displays all your application windows, responds to you moving them about the screen, resizing them, drawing those three buttons in the top right hand corner etc. In Linux, you can pick a Window Manager of your choosing. Sure, the default in Windows is fine, and you can even change the colours right? I didn't care either, but then I saw the videos for Enlightenment 17 (still in development) and it looks amazing. Check out some videos:
e17_movie-02.avi
e17_movie-03.avi
Can't wait for the final version. Don't people do some amazing stuff in their free time?!? Think you don't want this because it's a waste of RAM? I guess you have a solid blue background on your Windows too! This is just a natural progression methinks.

3) Linux is CHEAP to install now. Sure, Linux only cost the price of burning a CD, but you still need hard disk space to install it! My stumbling block has always been having an NTFS (Windows XP File system) that I didn't want to risk damaging with some commercial partitioning software. These companies take your money but tell you to back up your hard drive, just in case?!? No thanks! But I discovered a utility now included in many Linux Live CDs (like Knoppix) with which you can resize then repartition your hard drive for FREE!! ntfsresize. The authors still recommend users take a back-up, but from all reports I have seen this tool looks spotless, and like I said, it is FREE, not $99.

So with that said, I am cleaning up my NTFS partition right now, and come the weekend I will shrink it and install Linux on the free'd up space. Stayed tuned for some screenshots! (Maybe only Enlightenment 16 for a while... I need to learn how to compile Enlightenment 17 before I'll be able to show that off...)

UPDATE: These are not screenshots of mine, but you can see how cool Enlightenment is here (note that this is the previous version, 16 - first released about 5 years ago) and how Linux can also be made to look something like Windows XP too.

posted by David # 10:42 pm

Comments:

Hi David,
Julian here. Is there any easy way of contacting you when you are offline?
J

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:21 pm

Further to your post, I though I'd add in my two cents.

Sun is working on a prettier, 3d interface for Solaris (and any x-windows environment). Project Looking Glass.
I'm not a big fan of 3d interfaces, espicially given both the screen and the mouse are both 2d. There is a livecd based on Knoppix on dev.java.net Project Looking Glass Livecd if you want to try it without having to make, compile.

I used to run E16 in the day. I've now moved on, but E17 does look very polished.

I also wanted to add that there is a choice of how your Windows PC looks too: Desktopian and Shellfront are good places to start.

Linux can also be made to look like Windows XP with Xpde

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:58 am

There sure is - my mobile email is pretty much always on me.

I've had a busy time of it lately, and after getting sick I've been trying to jump straight to bed as soon as I get home. I'll drop you an email just to make sure you have my details!

# posted by

David : 3:01 pm

David @ Tokyo

3/02/2005

Linux geek

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