No peace yet :(

Nowadays every single day I am reminded of Tamil Nadu politics wherein there are effectively only two parties and people have no idea which one to vote for. Because both are equally bad. I switched from Windows to Linux because Windows was buggy and it could not stand my usage for more than 2 or 3 days. It kept crashing all the time and "Click OK to restart your computer" dialogue boxes were freaking me out. Now my Kubuntu installation is good by itself; but the awfully f***ed up Flash Player for Firefox makes Firefox unusually and intolerably slow, unresponsive, and whatnot. Jeez.. when are we going to get a good computer with software written by responsible human beings who could empathize with the real users. I know, this is how life is; but it just sucks :-(

Linux to Windows to Linux

Well, I am now moving back to Linux. I installed Windows on my laptop a month back (because I missed some Windows applications) and was using it till yesterday. There are certain things about Windows that just piss me off:

• Mediocre shell (not the command-line shell): Windows GUI needs a lot of improvements. Forget those usability metrics; it crashed five times in two days (yesterday and the day before). I usually keep too many windows and a number of Firefox tabs open. And whenever Windows shell crashes I am forced to log out and log in to get that stupid shell again. It just sucks. All my applications lose state (well, almost all). After logging in back, it takes a while for the computer to become stable because there is a ton of things happening in the startup.
• Software updates: While I always want to keep my computer up to date, Windows uses a poor model for overwriting a file which is open now. Upgrade IE? Restart computer. Upgrade Windows Media Player? Restart computer. Upgrade Adobe Reader? Restart computer. Security updates for Windows? Restart computer. I simply could not tolerate this nonsense. When I was running Kubuntu, I have had my computer running for about 2 months without restarting or logging out. Just hibernate and wake up. All the while I was updating all kinds of software in my machine. It just works.
• Slow apps, slow devies: as soon as I insert a disk inside the optical drive, the whole system including all the apps and OS just stalls for a few second. Until Windows recognizes the CD, you got to wait. No need to say that Microsoft applications (like IE, WMP, Office, etc) are irritatingly slow and occupies all of our system resources. (I don't use them at all; but they are part of the computer. They get automatic updates, this that etc.)
• Backup: When in Linux, all I needed was a single command to backup all my data to my iPod. But in Windows land, I have to search hard for a free backup software, install it and learn it's stupid user interface before using it. Heck, it takes hours to do incremental backup. Linux does that in a few minutes.

All this said, I was thinking for a lot of time before deciding to go back to my beloved Linux. I switched to Windows a month back because I wanted to use some nice Windows applications which I really missed. Support for iPod is not at all good in Linux. "But you know, that's life. You got to choose something and you'll regret your decision later on," I told myself when I formatted my hard disk to install Linux.

don't be nice to me!

I don't know why; but I get really pissed off when I find that people are "being nice" to me. No. I don't want anyone to be nice to me; I want people to be true to me. If I say something stupid, tell me in my face that I am stupid. I might be offended at certain times; but it's sure far better than the pain I experience when I find that you were just nice to me. I know it's very easy to be nice than being true. I know I ask for too much from the people I relate to. But that's me. Please don't be nice to me!

A bad web site

Have you ever seen a web site that is designed by technically illiterate programmers/designers who have a bad taste? If not, try http://www.pizzahut.co.in/. No, don't go to this site when you need some information about Pizza Hut. That site is designed to frustrate people who know what web sites are for. (I've warned you ;-)

Does Firefox use all your CPU?

Is your computer very slow because Firefox uses a lot of CPU even if it's not actively doing anything? For the past few days my computer was slow in general, and Firefox was horribly slow. The reason was that Firefox was using more than 70% of CPU all the time -- even when Firefox was idle. A quick Google search took me to the solution:

If you encounter problems with sites do not just complain that FF is not working but post the site address here for other people to check. No one doubts that you have problems but to decide if it is a FF problem or something with your system we must be able to check these sites.

I closed a few tabs (which I had open for the past few days), and my machine was back to normal :-)