sparkymat

I have started a programming blog here.

Ubuntu continues to amaze me!! Trying the RC for the Intrepid Ibex. I don’t know if its just me, but I think there is a significant speed boost. Everything feels faster and smoother. The user experience has improved quite nicely. Screenshots below (note: I am using the Dust2 theme from here) . Oh, and love the new VLC (note the playing-from-youtube feature in action).

Ubuntu Intrepid Screenshot

Ubuntu Intrepid Screenshot

Ubuntu Intrepid Screenshot

I finally have my “ideal” mail system up and running. Everything goes into a “wait” queue which is cleared on a regular basis. Only white-listed mails are moved to my Inbox.

Bye-bye spam!

Of course, I need to review mails in the queue periodically to make sure I am not about to purge valid mails, but considering how spam mails seem to bypass most spam filters, I feel this solution is more resilient that blacklisting (but yeah, not fully foolproof).

Using: qmail + courier_imap + procmail + RoundCube
And yeah, currently have to white-list by adding entries manually in .procmailrc, but will get off my ass and hack the RoundCube interface to GUI-fy this.

Some screenshots of my current Debian desktop

[Click on the thumbnail to see them full-sized]

I have a fairly powerful machine. A 3-GHz C2Duo (45nm) processor. 4 gigabytes of DDR2 800MHz RAM. An FSB of 1333MHz. SATA chugging at 3GBps. A Geforce 9600GT with the latest (beta) driver installed. Yet, it takes 62 seconds for my Ubuntu installation to load up. And don’t get me started on application launch times or Firefox response times. I need more speed!! That too, without sacrificing eye candy.

So, I am starting Project Need For Speed. The aim? To configure a Linux desktop that boots in a jiffy (not setting any concrete goals here) and is light on the resources. No, its not Arch Linux for me. I need everything to be just download-able and installable/configurable. That, and my love for Ubuntu, drove me to try Debian as my distro of choice.

I debootstrap-ed a new partition with Debian Sid and installed a 2.6.26 kernel and pppoeconf onto it. Switching to that now.

Watch this space for regular updates on this!

Update 1:
Xfce4 desktop w/ GDM auto-login. Desktop ready to use in 21 seconds!!! That’s good progress! Now starts the part where I add in useful stuff and pretty them up.

Update 2:
Switched to E17. 16 seconds!! And the thing looks damn beautiful! Expect screenshots

I have never used Windows Vista excessively. Nor do I plan to. However, I love it that Windows Vista is driving more and more people to Linux/Ubuntu.

Vista rules! It helps Linux/Ubuntu rock even harder!!!

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