Customize your linux ISO

Lot of things are happening in arena like launch of google G1 and apple iPhone. But the thing that caught my attention in particular is one more step towards OS customisation. Well now if I tell you about the kind of services and softwares by which you can customise your linux OS then it wont be something new. But what about installing an OS which will have default wallpaper of your own choice. Yea, stop rubbing your eyes...its true.

With NimbleX it is now possible to build your own Linux distro with your own wallpaper (for eg, your photo), your choice of login name and password, your choice of root password, and your very own boot greetings. You can add your own software, at click of button to a given base Linux distribution. Its like having your own distro. With all things said, real treasure is at http://custom.nimblex.net.
Navigate to custom distribution and from the group of games, office, network, multimedia, system, dirvers etc, select the softwares that you need. Rest unwanted softwares are eliminated. Finally ISO image is created. Each ISO image has its unique number and 12 hrs to download. For those folks who are facing power problems, I recommend they use wget with -c option hence the remaining download is resumed when power is back. This is a live ISO image. You download a fully-customised Live OS with the software you need, rather than depending on what the distro vendor thinks is rights for you. This is what they call "giving power to people"!

Is linux really so difficult?

As my friends know, I'm OS enthusiast. Linux user for long time n fan of debian based OSes. I've laptop with ubuntu 8.04 installed. Desktop effects 've made it look eye candy. Although now I've upgraded it, ubuntu used to run smoothly on my laptop, when it had 512 MB RAM. Actually previously I was KDE user, but found kubuntu 8.04 somewhat unstable on my hardware, and hence shifted to gnome. Though i've fallen in love with gnome because of its ease of usability

I come across many people on daily basis who are engineers, MCAs etc n asking me the reason 4 using linux on my machine. All of them complain of it being very unuser friendly and ****doz based systems being very user friendly. One thing that I always tell them that the smoothness that I get on my system wit linux is that keeps me attached. Also i get all the tools required for my day to day work on linux for free.

This blog is for those who say linux is not user friendly. Now I met this particular friend of mine who has just joined college. He is from remote area of maharashtra and has not been in touch with computers much earlier. Good for him, his college has all PCs based on fedora. He came to my house coupla days back and saw me workin on my ubuntu machine. Yea, next to it was ***doz machine running (with viruses). This young lad, was mesmerised by desktop effects of beryl/compiz and had his view fixed on my lcd. Later when we were talking, he asked me "why is ****doz so difficult to use"? This was the most shocking statement i've ever heard (although internally i knew some where that this is obvious). He liked the ease of gnome desktop. The way all menus are arranged nicely in submenus releated to context. Things become more easier rather than staking everything into "all programs" n letting user to search for application.
Now those who say linux is not user friendly think again. Imagine if you knew linux quite early in childhood when you are started to learn computers (then you would have been similar to this lad). ***doz is for our grandpa and grandma who didnt knew much in computers. Now for geeks like us, linux is perfect solution. There are 'n' number of reasons why I like linux. One of them because I its FOSS (free and open source software). A country where people are not able to afford bread and butter for day, hardly can they afford hardware for computer, how can they purchase OS that costs more than 5K bucks. On the top of that cost of other propreitary softwares like MS Office.Moreover the hardware itself required to run ****doz OS is very demanding, and costs more because of system requirements n doesnt even perform half what linux performs. Many times at my work place people compile their programs on linux because of half the time it takes as compared to windows. This country has seen many revolutions in past. Now it needs to get ready for FOSS revolution , and it is you who can bring it. I feel title of this blog should be "why is windows so difficult"?

Open ID

Now this is great initiative taken in web world. I'm bored remembering and changing my passwords for 8 email ids that I've. Hope this clicks up big and bring revolution on web. Long live openID. \m/