archived.neilpahl.com (my old site)

Entry 1: My OS Usage Background

Topic: OS   

Created on Sat, 04 Feb 2012.

I grew up using Windows, even using DOS at a young age. In primary school we used Mac, but I didn't like it very much as I was used to having in-my-face-settings haha. The average user can sometimes find the settings confusing, but I found them empowering as they gave me the ability to customize things the way I wanted.

First year Engineering at my University does programming curriculum through Linux terminals, where they use the classic g++ and makefiles to compile the c++ code learnt. However, I transfered into second year and missed this exposure to linux. My first year was done on windows machines using eclipse and visual studio. I learned C++ and elected to learn java as well. At the time, I found programming quite strait forward and later found myself opting to go into Electrical Engineering instead of Computer because I liked the challenge of visuallizing Electric and Magnetic fields. I have since been more inspired to learn about good software engineering.

In 4th year, I saw a peer of mine do some fancy command line editing, compiling of C code, and loading it onto the micro controller. I usually just used Notepad. I was impressed with the workflow, and since he mentioned linux frequently It made me wan to give it a try.

On an an old and (at least 4-5 minutes to boot windows) slow laptop, I installed Debian after reading it was a very solid and stable version. It booted to the command line and I didn't know what to do. I ended up installing Ubuntu because it had a gui by default. I fell in love. I marvelled at the fact that when I had a problem, someone on a forum somewhere posted a few line of command line scripts that would fix everything. This must be a very well structured OS if people can go behind the gui and fix the configurations. Often times, they are not even using the same flavor of linux.

Now at work, I came accross a spare iMac which had better hardware than my current laptop. hmmm, Mac? A supporter of open source and free software, I really don't like their bussiness model. Sure it works out of the box (although I tried iPhoto and found it rubish), but you you really pay for it with $$$ as opposed to linux (free). I would probably like the bussiness model if I were part of their team, lol. What I can't complain with is how well they put together their machines. iPads, iPhones, Macbooks all have quite robust hardware which always seems to work better than the competition. I had dells before and I was really turned off with their design choices after my XPS laptop graphics card failed (I later found out that they were selling them still even with a defective line of Nvidea Chips that overheated and caused the chip to die, which effectively kills your mobo as well since its integrate....arg).

Anyways, I'm exploring the world of Mac osx 10.6 now and finding its not so bad, I'm comforted by the thought that its based on linux (+10 points to mac over windows) and +100 points for having a native terminal with bash shell. Other than mac, I use Linux mostly (Ubuntu 11+ if i have resources, Linux mint or Lubuntu on low resource machines (and live boot USBs), puppy for ultra-lightweight use (sometimes without Hard Disk), and ubuntu server. I hope to find the time to learn slackware and/or archlinux, but I tend to use ubuntu based distros because the apt package manager i just so nice. I am very comfortable on a Windows machine, but get the most frustration from it at the same time. I used windows to play Star Craft 2, and use adobe graphics programs (which I've been replacing with GIMP, and other open source alternatives).

I hope to log my usuage more closely in more specific subtopics relating to each OS.

PLEASE let me know if I'm doing something wrong, or if you have any suggestions or requests~

Subscribe to this topic: