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

Humble Award - Dr. A.N. Sreevatsan

Dr. A.N. Sreevatsan , ENT specialist located in Adyar, Chennai is one of the gems available in medicines. No assistants in his consulting room and he'd take at least 15mins for every patients. So far I have referred many and all are happy with his approach. Every wannabe doctor should visit him personally to understand his approach. I wish him to be more famous than now. Update (2010-11-21) : Added link to Google Map Keywords : Sreevatsan, Srivatsan, ENT, Adyar, Chennai, Hospital, Doctor

Tamil Castes and Consolidation - Hacker Style Cheat Sheet

Tamil caste system and its hierarchies are complex and difficult to understand--due to different addressing systems. Similarly, the caste consolidation or grouping of similar or different castes under some title is extremely confusing. In many cases, the caste consolidation doesn't make any sense, but due to ulterior motives of politicians for their vote bank politics, these systems exist. So, to explain the system, I created a formula like cheat sheet: Vellalar = Pillai + Mudaliar + [Gounder] Pillai > Mudaliar ~ Gounder Thevar = Maravar + Kallar + [Agamudayar + [Senathipathi]] Senathipathi >>> Agamudiyar > Maravar ~ Kallar Agamudayar ~ Gounder Vanniyar = Padayachi + Gounder + [Naicker + [Reddy]] Naicker >>> Reddy > Padayachi ~ Gounder * Gounder is BC, Padayachi is MBC

Save American College, Madurai (Update 2011)

This article was written on Jan 16, 2011 and updated on Jan 26, 2011, Mar 16, 2011, Mar 21, 2011, Mar 28, 2011, Apr 10, 2011, and May 1, 2011 In 2008, I have written Save American College, Madurai that seemed to help many people including alumni to understand the situation, politics and chaos. At that time, I was favoring Principal's party as favoring Bishop's party could turn adverse as they're was already trying to replace non-permanent staffs; in fact, I have even donated a meager amount for the legal battle.[ Update : Corrected the sentence to convey the intended meaning. Thanks for those who pointed out] This time, people hit the same old article and asking the details. When I contacted, this time, nobody have clear reason for the chaos--except that it's a ego clash between Principal and Bishop party. Problems and reasons Till now, all bishops were being part of The American College, Madurai Governing Council. All/Most of the bishops played subtle r...