Two things that I am really into at the moment –

Firstly,..the goodness of ubuntu…

I have been an ubuntu user for around 3 years now. Its a great operating system, it has all the software you could ever need. It has the most gorgeous eye candy you could get on a computer screen. It has a huge and very helpful community which is always ready to help you. Just google your problems, and the solution is there within the first few hits.

Second, a natural extension of using Ubuntu is that you learn to appreciate the FOSS i.e. Free and Open Source philosophy. Its amazing how some amazing people from around the world devote time and the result is much greater than the sum of the parts.

As a programmer, I am pretty intrigued and inspired by the open source development workflow. So, I decided to contribute to the “open source” development. But how?

Well, I started with analyzing what were the two greatest open source softwares that I used. They were Ubuntu and Python. So now,

Python : Went to python dev, and tried to figure out how to get started. Install subversion, checkout a working copy of a branch, find and fix bugs, submit patches … sounds good …

Ubuntu : Really good help for newbie contributors. They have an entire set of youtube videos to guide you along. They start with the basics and you basically start by helping maintain the packages in the universe repository ( see here for more on that). Hence, the title MOTU (Masters of the Universe) ..

For now, I am biased toward Ubuntu because of the (apparently) easier learning curve. Lets see whats in store … will update the blog with new stuff…

Do you / intend / plan to contribute to any open source software? Please leave your comments …

P.S. If you still dont know what ubuntu is, go here. Download it, ship it .. its all free.

In case, you have not heard of python, go here — a beautiful programming language.

I can understand why the skeptics like Free Software Foundation say that MD shouldnt be trusted at all. But look at it this way, Linux is a great virtualization option and MS knows that. And MS also wants to sell its virtualization option to its huge business customer base. Its a win-win situation. And as long as its contributing to Linux for the better, lets accept its for the good (with a pinch of salt ) .

Its supposed to be out by 2010 and it will be initially released for net-books. This seems like one good potential challenge to Microsoft’s monopoly on the OS market. Google already dominates the internet with its search engine and plethora of other useful apps, and this is probably the logical next step.

I wonder what the OS would actually be like.

My expectations from chrome..sort of a wish list..

1. Good looks : Having seen google all this while, i dont doubt that.
2. Resources : Should be easy going on the machine ( duuh, it first releasing on netbooks)
3. Great interface : Of course, its google! I think it will be a neat minimalist interface. Probably X.org for graphic server and some google’s own desktop environment.
4. Kernel : Hmm..would probably be the linux kernel itself
5. Open Source : The press release already says that it will “allow third party developers to design compatible add-ons”. And I think that should be good enough for a start. But I hope it really allows you to get under the hood like linux and do what you want.
6. Integrable with other OS : It should have some sort of greater integrability with windows, for those who want to use both. Something like what Ubuntu does, where you can launch ubuntu after booting into windows.
7. Instant startup

The statement “We hear a lot from our users, and their message is clear: computers need to get better, Chrome is “our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”". Wow!

Let the long awaited revolution begin…

Some of the features sure are very good but I think they should have released it after some more testing.

Looking forward to a bug fix…