Skip to main content

3-years of Ubuntu MATE - Good and the bad

Many people are getting shocked to know that I'm using Ubuntu in my workplace. Linux/Ubuntu is more of an alien here as Windows 10 and Mac OSX is having good market here.



First of all, I'm a very happy Windows XP user. In XP, I used to do most of my JavaScript and PHP in Devl, the editor that our team has developed.

Reason for switching to Ubuntu MATE

Primary reason for switching to Ubuntu was, at one point of time PHP team stopped supporting Windows XP. So, we're left with few options: 1. Upgrade to Windows Vista, 2. Switch to Ubuntu.

We chose the second option to experiment it. One of the major challenges was choosing the right code editor and we chose VS Code.

Ubuntu MATE - Pros

Linux comes with lots of command line tools. I have started to do many tasks using these shell scripts and found very productive.

We switched from Google Chrome to Chromium for good.

Ubuntu MATE - Cons

We started with GNOME for desktop, but it was memory hungry and was not suitable for our old machines and so had to switch to MATE. MATE is great for memory and good when we compare with other desktops. But, the speed is still not good as compared to Windows XP--if we don't add at least 2-GB RAM.

Though we switched to Chromium and happy, few things like translate options won't work out of the box; will need manual steps to enable it.

But, the major challenge is the editor. VS Code is good, but being an Electron app, it is more of a memory hog. In my experiment, the only editor that is somewhat reasonable in performance is Pluma.

In Ubuntu, we have LibreOffice (previously, OpenOffice) and WPS Office as two alternatives for MS Office. But, neither of them are real alternatives for MS Office. If your work is heavily based on MS Office, unfortunately Ubuntu/Linux is not yet ready for that.

Of late, we're feeling the heat from 64-bit push. As we're in 32-bit, we can't use tools like docker that are only 64-bit.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Using Sodexo Meal Pass Card in BigBasket.com - How-to

How to Use Sodexo Meal Pass Card in Bigbasket.com Sodexo started to issue Smart Card similar to Credit Card--instead of their usual paper based vouchers. I was using Sodexo vouchers for longtime, but it was a big letdown when I can't get some of my unused vouchers renewed. And so, I was somehow happy with their new Meal Pass Card. But, again, it was a big letdown as I can't use it with BigBasket--where I usually use most of my meal coupon vouchers. SMS message from Sodexo on December 20, 2017 1:18 PM came as a big surprise, as I was waiting for this for longtime: Great News! Pay with your Sodexo Meal Card for food items ordered from Big Basket. Choose Sodexo in the payment section & pay on delivery. And so, this month, I tried to use my Sodexo Meal Pass Card in BigBasket. BigBasket website had not much information; I thought that I have to swipe my Meal Pass Card. Delivery person also didn't have much information; initially he was rejecting my Card! I trie...

Looking Back at My Predictions

People who work closely with me often appreciate my ability to anticipate trends in technology stacks. With that in mind, I recently revisited some of my old blog posts—and it turns out, many of those predictions have held true. Here are a few handpicked posts that aged well: Prediction: Expensify will crash through its insane question-based hiring process February 23, 2022 BlackLivesMatter campaign may consolidate votes for Trump June 15, 2020 Technology prediction for 2018 January 16, 2018 Node.js and client app are the future of webdeving? December 29, 2011 Yahoo! and delicious.com - What's wrong? December 19, 2010 Disclosure: The following ChatGPT prompt is used in this blog post: Please fix the language of the below text and highlight the changes in bold:

Valen Smith, the English teacher videos are missing!

I vaguely remembered that sometimes around 2009, engVid on YouTube was very popular. I especially liked a teacher by name Valen Smith's videos. She was not only beautiful but also very good at explaining the English usage. I also vaguely remembered to check her channel ValenESL around 2015. But, not sure what happened to her or engVid, all her videos are sadly gone. I have also noted that many people on Twitter were asking the same. Not sure what happened. Some people seem to have reuploaded her videos and YouTube continuously removing them with a note "This video contains content from LearnVid, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." Strangely though, on Facebook, some people have managed to create a fake account using her old channel name ValenESL.