ubuntu Feisty Fawn

A few weeks ago tried out Ubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn. It's a Linux operating system. What an experience it gives me. The interface is striking and dazzling, and the architecture is simple and light. At the start, it gives a very good feel.

As I explores deeper into it, it somehow tires me with its difference with windows. There is such a huge demand to memorise computing commands to be "in control". No such thing as .exe file, no "download and run" kind of feeling. It is more like MSDOS with a colourful interface forced onto it. I think its a big reason why linux is not big on personal computing.

But as I get over the first waves of shock, all the benefits start to show. Just like stinky tofu, after overcoming the pungent smells, the delicious food is all mine to devour. Fast and furious, it doesn't eat into my system memory unnecessarily. There are great bundles of free softwares and on-the-fly installation system, and thus I get exactly what I want. No anti-virus, anti-spyaware, anti-malware, anti-Trojan horse, anti-key loggers, anti-adware, anti-scumware, whatever you name it, needed.

Not only I got a fair share of my curiosity satisfied, and conscience cleared, as the entire system is free, legally.

Still the switch back is inevitable. The lure of Dota and my printer (it doesn't work with linux) proved too much to resist. After installing windows xp back (nearly cannot switch back due to system error), I got unique feeling: I just alighted from a manual car produced in 2050, and got on to a auto car produced in 1950.

for langrange and tex

These days I have been writing the physics paper on rolling asymmetrical cylinders. It first seemed an impossible task due to our centre of mass approach, but in the end it still worked out. I learned quite a lot, such as Lagrangian (all thanks to Dax). The most daunting part of the whole thing looks to be presenting (or the typing out) the paper. Firstly, I’ve to learn this LaTEX language, which is really crazy. At first I was using a trial software (for typesetting in LaTEX), and it gives a very good mix of red, blue and black colours when I was typing, which are easily recognizable. But after searching the Internet for hours, I couldn’t find any crack to unlocking the full version. I have an older version, but sadly it doesn’t support pdf so I give up on it also.

As a result, I’ve to switch to WinEdt plus MikTEX, which proved to be more powerful. However the interface of WinEdt is so irritating; it gives at least 5 colours, dark brown, dark blue, dark green, black and purple, all of which look about the same after a while, and spoiling my already 800 degrees eyes. The red colour was assigned for spelling mistakes, which are far less important than formulae mistakes when writing a Physics paper. I still could not appreciate the usefulness of LaTEX, although it's widely popular in the scientific world (ask any science, maybe not bio or engineering graduates they would have used or heard of it).