Just for the fun of it, I hacked an old ASUS 3000L notebook back into existence, after I had initially discarded it. The thing is old, makes a helluva noise, weighs tons and has a battery lifespan of a mere fleeting moment.
The funny thing is, that it was on its way out because the kids, who haven’t got the remotest inkling about benchmarks when it comes to computers, and to whom I had donated this piece of antiquated hardware out of the goodness of my heart, were complaining about Windows XP performing so badly, that they could fetch the bits faster on foot than over the Internet.
I, as a concerned father, trying to keep the kids happy, off the streets AND far away from my State Of The Art high power laptop machine, figured that I should maybe look into Linux to solve this problem. So I did. And it was a lucky grab at that.
I have always had a weak spot for one particular LINUX initiative, and that is Ubuntu. It takes a while to sort through – and make sense of – the different varieties, but once you get the hang of it, and after you have consulted a specialist with real big-people knowledge of the matter, you will be able to make the right choice of flavour.
For anyone who is familiar with ASUS notebooks of the 3000 series, it is obvious that this clay tablet should already have been put out of its misery a long time ago. Without joking, the thing is almost 10 years old now. It is slow, totally obsolete and the cooling-fan makes a sound that was only tolerated before there were any laws on the noise levels in a working environment. It is as if there is a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet taking off from my desk, but then a few clicks worse.
The noise is still there, but the move from Redmond to Ubuntu was a good one. Since yesterday I have the Ubuntu flavour Xubuntu 8.04 running on the old bag, and now it has – speed-wise – become serious competition for my SuperSnazz Windows Vista machine.
In my time, I have seen very fast hardware come to a sorry, slow slugging shuffle after installing a sloppily programmed operating system before. But I had never expected a 10 year old machine with Xubuntu to outperform an almost new, dual-hard-core notebook choking on Vista.
See, I learned something new again: the Ubuntu initiative is an ecologically sound one, because it keeps low-end PCs and notebooks in the running for longer, hence facilitating a longer lifespan and thus decreasing the consumer pressure on manufacturers to produce new hardware. It simply saves valuable resources.*
Also, playing with Linux made me aware of the fact that Windows is certainly great to look at and very friendly to use, but it is terribly wasteful at using machine resources. Our friends at Redmond should be aware of the fact that the high-end version of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, has a very palatable interface, which is almost as appetising as Windows. So, wake up, boys and girls, your hegemony is about to end!
*) That is, IF manufacturers were influenced by the consumers in such a way, which they aren’t. But that may come, especially under an economical crisis like the present one.The car industry – currently falling out of grace because of its Gas Guzzler mentality and its lazy “response” to global warming, is a good example of how consumers can give manufacturers an effective knuckle-rap. The motorboys are tumbling over one another, presenting one electrical car after the other.
