I am an owner of a famous Asus eee PC netbook, a mini laptop manufacture line by ASUS. When i bought it Atom processors had just appeared and i did the wrong choice and  choose a Celeron-M processor. It generally as a laptop consumes very low amounts of energy and is extremely handy for carrying around because it’s so light and small. The screen it equiped with is a strugling 8,9 inch diameter length, where i sometimes find it really hard when using it. I tend to place my head very near to the screen because i can hardly make out the text on aplications or while surfing the web.

My eee PC came with a Xadros based light distrubution which i almost never use while operating my netbook. I choosed to install one of my favourite Linux distros, Ubuntu which has become extremely popular amongst desktop users. The Ubuntu community has developed a special sub-distro of it, called netbook remix. It takes in mind the low resolution screen outputs of netbooks as well as the specific hardware is most comonly used. The application panel covers the whole screen making it optically more easy on choosing software. I personaly use classic Ubuntu with Gnome and Compiz installed. I tried using XFCE as light alternative graphical desktop but it lacks many wonderfull features of good old Gnome. Here are the main key points of making life with a netbook more stress free:

• Buy a mini laser mouse for using the cursor on it. The touchpad provides multi-touch features though can sometimes become very annoying during certain tasks.
• Use Linux on it. Ok let’s face it. Its not suitable for games and high CPU demanding activities like manipulating graphics etc. Ubuntu Linux is the most popular distro around where you can find almost anything having to do with Internet activities (browsing, messaging, downloading) virus and spyware free. Flash could be an issue on it, though Adobe is the only one to blame for that CPU consuming web binary object webpages often load.
• Use a custom built kernel for your hardware. The linux community has provided a netbook specific kernel built. It just comes with all the hardware modules mostly found on these small eee PC netbooks.
• Use an external monitor when using it at home. The 9 or 10 inch screen may become very unpleasant when using for a long time. Text can become so difficult to read when being at certain distance for the screen. I personally have been using a 15″ LCD screen which outputs at a 1024 x 768 resolution ratio.The pixels on it are thicker offcourse, so i get a much reasonable view of my beloved gnome desktop. Its is equiped with a simple dual monitor calibration tool in order to get the most of the external screen you will be using. The netbooks screen can be operated as an extension of the main desktop, where i use it to place the window of Amarok, my software music player. So evidently i can so much on screen space and offourse usability
• Buy a 1GB USB stick and load it with the latest live version of Ubuntu. It’s the best emergency tool if your HD install become inoperable. Just plug in the USB stick and choose it as a bootable device. Wait till the live desktop is loaded and save any changes on it. Browse the internet for troubleshooting and directly access your local files on your netbook.
• Don’t treat it as something that could become your productive computing system unless you’re a professional facebook user or blog author. Buy yourself a laptop/desktop with reasonable resolution and CPU power in order to not be limited by your netbooks ultra-portability
• Use it as your main idle computing system, for tasks like messaging, music listening etc. In that way you will avoid extra noise from energy consuming PC’s thus spend less money and CO2 through your everyday computing rabbits.

Concluding netbooks today are revolutionising the way people tend to perceive their everyday computing habits. They are a perfect educational tool and are given nowadays to children all around the world, in order to be used in schools. Facebook addicts have found something they can hold to 24/7, where most suitable for light web usage. ASUS marked the opening of this new market which is starting to take a great percentage on the overall laptop usage ratios. If you are planning to buy one just don’t get hyped up thinking that this mini laptop will be capable of managing your everyday CPU consuming tasks you might be involved with. Also if its screen is not anywhere close to provide a relaxing view of your desktop environment.

Before 3 years or so, i decided it was time to change the way i used my computer. I had been using till then Microsoft Windows and more accurately Windows XP back then. After a small presentation of a very good looking Linux distro, i bacame so amazed by it and its compositing effects i told him that i wanted to have my laptop formated and install this new piece of software. Back then as i can recall it was Ubuntu 7.04. After experimenting with some old distros like Mandriva, Suse etc, Ubuntu stood at the only OS that could become my main operating platform.

This new distribution backed by Canonical seemed to try to unify all the chaos that software freedom consequently produces. Till now so many Linux distributions existed, each one with its own graphical framework (gnome, KDE, xfce etc) own package format (deb, rpm, tar.gz) and with a utterly different way of trouble shooting and installing new software. I myself frequently when using other distros was put down when i wanted to install a driver or a piece of software ,having to download a tarball and then compile it with the use of the console. All this for me as a beginer was hard to do and too much of an effort in order to make Linux my main operating platform. I  knowing how to compile a piece of software though i prefer to install directly executable packages for everyday uses. I always dreamt of having Linux as my main operating system, though many things kept me away from it becoming my reality

Back then in 2007, when Ubuntu was still in its infancy as a Linux distro, with the help of a collogue we formated my laptop i had then and put Linux for the 1st time as my main and only operating system. As i can remember i was really pleased that software was now organised and installed through a very good and efficient package manager. The only thing i needed on this new distribution in order to install something new a single deb file. Offcourse it was pretty troublesome back then to install drivers from my ATI graphics card and i had to edit manually the xorg.conf file. Now offcourse most drivers are included with the install and if not they can be automatically installed through the proprietary packages. Ubuntu has come to a point where it stands as the most significant and popular linux distro, without limiting the usability and openness to it’s end users. Mark Shuttleworth aimed to make Linux a poupal desktop platform and he has achieved that to a great extent. Most people i know using linux have Ubuntu installed for many good reasons stated below.

Why i cant live without Ubuntu Linux:

• Speed. Linux is fast even in an old computing system. It requires even less memory and CPU cycles than old OS’s like WinXP or Win2k
• Looks. Apart from being fast it has a very shiny and has a well  good looking GUI. The use of Gnome and Compiz is dead easy if you treat it as something  new and worth learning.

• Security. The most secure OS around. No need for firewalls, anti viruses, spy-ware cleaners and any form of memory consuming software that is built to protect my system from all the windows illnesses
• Freedom. Linux was built for providing a free as in freedom Unix OS. I can modify, change and transform my system in any way i want. It is very important that i feelfully in charge of the tool i am using and not limiting my freedom on it
• Price. Free as in free beer. No money required in order to legally use this OS and almost any software installed on it. As a developer i don’t have to pay fee’s, taxes and licences in order to use free software. I can and am supposed get it free and modify it without the permission of anyone under to GNU/GPL licence

• Package manager. It has one of the most cutting edge package managers around. Any piece of software can be searched, downloaded and installed through a unified graphical interface and will eventually be updated through this same system as well. This mythical tool is called apt-get and synapitc or its alternative interfaces like add or remove programs.
• Programming use. It is the best suitable platform for web designers (apart from flash) and application programmers. It has numerous compilers pre-installed and supports the LAMP architecture almost without any effort

So till this time speaking i am very happy using Ubuntu for all the above reasons though sometimes i get put down by some limitations i can point out:

• Proprietary software support. No support whatsoever for popular professional software suites like (Photoshop, AutoCAD etc)
• Freeware and other usefull software is only built for windows. Ofcourse with the use of wine api for linux all this can be overcome though it is not a full solution for this problem.
• Multimedia production. Ok lets face it. Someone who works with graphics and sound professionally is not recommended to use Linux. Photoshop, premiere, 3d max, reason, cubese etc is NOT supported through linux and probably all the above will not work with wine.
• Game support. I am not a gamer myself though i would appreciate if i could play an occasional network with a friend for a laugh. Wine or its implementations for windows game support are not recommended and by no one are a solution.
• Hardware support. This problem may be not so frequent any more. Not all hardware is supported by linux although most of the drivers nowdays are included with the kernel or are developed by the community. Big hardware corporations just dont publish drivers for linux though the linux community codes them and has filled that gap to a great extent

Evidently Linux may be suitable for professional coders, novice users (internet, office, msn etc) educational use but surrelly not for graphic or sound producers and gamers. I myself want to get involved with multimedia production and start using this digital tool as an expressive mean for my creativity so i start feeling that Linux cannot fullfill all my expectations

The most appropriate tool i can think for multimedia production is MacOS. It is a proprietary operating system built by Apple, packed with some very good software. As i know its is more stable, safer and well designed than Windows. The bad side is that its expensive to acquire because it requires specific hardware to be used. It only comes preinstalled with hardware from Apple. That was the main reason for not having used this OS till now. Ofcourse it has been hacked so it can be installed on PC’s with a x86 architecture with the  osx86project.org patched applied on it. It requires fast hardware in order to work smoothly and probably some hardware will  be unable to work because of lack of  support.

The laptop i own was the cheapest machine i could find and is equiped with a 900mhz celeron processor and a 8,9″ screen. It is one the 1st models of the eeePC series with the 900mhz celeron CPU. It not by any means suitable for installingd macOS patched or even using windows on it. Ofcourse now since my IT career has come to a start the basic tool i need is a good laptop. Luckily in a month or so by brother will start using a new macbook and he will hand me his macbook pro he purchased last year. In addition to its preinstalled OS i intend on installing a special version of Ubutnu Linux called Ubuntu Studio. The main aim for this distro is to provide a free platform for mutlimedia prodcution. Even if i wanted to use it right now i do not have the suitable laptop to run all thes software that requires plenty of CPU, Ram and a resolution someone could work with. So the ultimate tool which will be in my hands shortly will be:

Macbook Pro 2,4Ghz 15″ with MacOS Leopard + Ubuntu Studio dual boot or through VM

Humorous Comic showing the that Linux is mistreated by the userbase by the other 2 main OS’s

This is me. This is my mind. All of my thoughts quantified into small quanta of energy. They are called bits. I need tools in order to organise and transmit them. My small netbook and my adsl connection are just some of them. Some other things i need in order to create, is my imagination, curiosity and offcourse a lot of creativity. Some elements make all this process more easy: A comfy chair, a big screen, a nice room and of course good music to keep my mind synced with what i’m doing.

The blog you are reading is my personal effort to form a tech journal, with all the elements and ways of transforming data i am able and capable of. My ambition is start doing new stuff and being involved with new fields of multimedia creations like animation, 3D graphics and sound. So consequently this blog. This instant when forming this article i am writing it on a eeePC 900. Its a unreasonable small and slow laptop in order to work with. The only things i can do with it is to surf the web, listen to music, film/documentaries and do some basic graphic editing all that in its 8,9 inch screen. I am waiting to acquire a 13inch macbook along with a 26inch screen in order to do start having real tools for creating. My present desktop is as pictured bellow with one the basic tools in Linux, the console:

This is the space i can work with till now. A handful of 1024 x 600 pixels. I can learn to do with that just for now, because i know i will soon enough acquire a new macbook. I hope then to get involved in more creative fields, though all this will acquire time, effort and the right guidance from someone who already knows abut all that.

The interest fields i am currently involved with:

• Ubuntu Linux desktop user with some involvement with features like the LAMP architecture (Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP)
• Web Design using open source tools (WordPress, Joomla, SMF)
• Basic Programming Skills (C, C++)
• Web Programming Skills (html, css, php, mysql, javascript)
• Photo Manipulation (Picassa, Photoshop etc)
• Basic Photography Skills
• Basic Sound Editing (Audacious)
• Basic Video Editing (Adobe Premiere)

The interest field i hope to become involved with this winter/autumn:

• Form and complete my digital portfolio webpage: http://www.dodecahedro.org
• Learning to use the MacOS, through buying a mac ofcourse
• Making additions to my deviantart.com profile thus making some photo manipulations
• Experiment with 3D design (Blender, Maya etc)
• Aquire Basic Sound producing skills

So all this ofcourse cannot stand as a strict list of thing i have to do, rather than a guideline of making something creative from my free time. I will keep this tech blog, i had in mind making for so long, updated with all the things i am occupated and involved with in order to contribute to this global noosphere, the Internet.