Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Linux to the rescue

I haven't posted anything on this blog since ages. Thats mostly because I haven't come across any more problems using linux. The nvidia kernel module problem mentioned in the previous post was sorted out thanks to another update by the cool ubuntu guys.

I've been really pissed off with windows. The computers in my college are quite slow, and they run windows XP. Opening a damn window takes ages. I opened about 5 windows of Internet Explorer today, simply because windows didn't provide any feedback (not even the mouse-cursor-timer...). Then then killing the windows takes another 10 minutes. And then the great explorer.exe decides to crash...

I had to make copies of a few VCDs of some dance performance for my cousin. No big deal right? Well, apparently windows can't even handle a couple of corrupt VCDs. Explorer.exe, as usual hangs like crazy, and lets not talk about Nero. I wonder why people pay money for that piece of shit?! Even VLC couldn't play the VCDs. Killing a process is practically impossible. Windows keeps reading the CD even when I tell it to stop....

In linux, copying the VCDs was a breeze. Mplayer and K3b are everything you need. For the corrupt VCDs, I could just use mplayer -streamdump, and a Clone Copy in K3b for the ones that worked. Nothing hung, it didn't even slow down the machine. Now that's the way it should be!