tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24108241.post-29358399723553254662007-11-28T14:53:00.000+08:002007-12-01T20:39:00.059+08:00On a regular day, I get in front of 4 PCs: My office PC, office laptop, home PC, and my home server. I decided to post a screen shot of each desktop... <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R06Lmt_fjpI/AAAAAAAAAIk/HBIaLwJ7kS8/s1600-h/office_desktop.PNG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R06Lmt_fjpI/AAAAAAAAAIk/HBIaLwJ7kS8/s320/office_desktop.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138197722173509266" border="0" /></a>My office PC is running on Windows XP SP2 with a 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD. My desktop "wallpaper" is, as you can see, an image of the the holy Flying Spaghetti Monster as depicted by the great Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (a.k.a. Michelangelo). Part of my job is to provide integration support to clients in the US, Europe, Middle-East, and parts of Asia Pacific; I use Qlock to keep track of timezone difference between regions. Obviously, I am not a big fan of cluttering my desktop but there are a few items which I find necessary to be there: Remote Desktop, WinSCP, Adobe Flex Builder 2 Eclipse Launcher, MS Office, and a couple of temporary folders. On my Quick Launch are the following: Command Prompt, Cygwin, Putty, Notepad++, Eclipse, xplorer2, Yahoo! Messenger, Firefox, Outlook, Show Desktop. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R00XRd_fjmI/AAAAAAAAAIM/zo-j_0tu4Ao/s1600-h/office_laptop.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R00XRd_fjmI/AAAAAAAAAIM/zo-j_0tu4Ao/s320/office_laptop.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137788338775756386" border="0" /></a>I am provided an office laptop which I use mostly for on-site visits. It isn't really much of a machine--really. I decided to use Linux on it so as to maximize performance. My laptop is currently running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon with an Intel PIII 1.0 GHz and 256MB RAM (seriously). I'm using the original Ubuntu flavor which comes with Gnome. As I've said, my laptop isn't much of a power horse so I've only manage to install gDesklets (clock and starter bar) for eye-candy. Nevertheless, I find my Ubuntu desktop much more pleasant to look-at compared to any Windows desktop. I don't do much development on this machine, which is a good thing considering how slow Eclipse runs on Linux boxes. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R02Udd_fjnI/AAAAAAAAAIU/FMEI2JMQ2K4/s1600-h/home_desktop.PNG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R02Udd_fjnI/AAAAAAAAAIU/FMEI2JMQ2K4/s320/home_desktop.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137925983887658610" border="0" /></a>My home PC is a relatively higher-end machine running on Windows XP SP2. It's built on an Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 processor with 2GB RAM, 256MB nVidia 7600GT video card and with about 250GB hard disk space. I'm using a wide screen display with 1440x900 resolution. I find the shade of green a bit relaxing so I themed my desktop accordingly. Again, my obsession over uncluttered desktops is pretty evident here. I no longer spend a lot of time on this desktop as I currently prefer Linux over Windows for daily computing. I assembled this PC with gaming in mind so I really can't abandon Windows just yet. I'm quite sure I won't be upgrading to Vista--at least not anytime soon. On my Quick Launch: Command Prompt, xplorer2, Notepad++, Eclipse (oh yeah, this machine serves as a development machine too), i-Speeder, Firefox (can't surf without it), Yahoo! Messenger, and a Show Desktop control. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R02Ynd_fjoI/AAAAAAAAAIc/_26yduyrF_U/s1600-h/home_server.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R02Ynd_fjoI/AAAAAAAAAIc/_26yduyrF_U/s320/home_server.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137930553732861570" border="0" /></a>My current favorite PC functions as my home server. It is supposedly just for JBoss, CVS and MySQL but I got bored with it and decided to dress it up a bit. I've just upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy this previous weekend so this is fresh as it can get. It is an old AMD Sempron 2600+ with 512MB RAM, 128MB nVidia 5200 video card, backed by a meager 26GB hard disk drive. It used to be running Ubuntu 7.04 but I recently evaluated Mac OS X (86x) with it so I had to re-install with an upgraded version. Compiz-fusion comes packaged with Gutsy Gibbon--because of which, my upgrade went way lot easier. I am running gDesklets and Avant Window Navigator and I can't be any more pleased with it. The desktop theme has this modern look which is accentuated by a really nice (albeit gay) clock desklet. AWN made it seemingly Mac-like. On my AWN Dock: Main Menu, Home Folder, Drawer, Show Desktop, Terminal, gEdit, Firefox, Pidgin, Totem, Rhythmbox, Calendar, Quick Quit, a savvy workspace switcher from AWN, and a trash bin. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R1FUaQpN3oI/AAAAAAAAAI4/lljdulwjnbU/s1600-R/home_pclinux.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_zewe_VnamZ4/R1FUaQpN3oI/AAAAAAAAAI4/URPmoVrbKZw/s320/home_pclinux.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138981459927621250" border="0" /></a>I also dual-boot to evaluate other Linux distros. I currently have PCLinuxOS as my alternate OS. It is using KDE and I'm inclined to say that it sure looks nice. PCLinuxOS is performing very well with this machine, I might actually keep it for good.Jan Amoyohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04727621188639609013noreply@blogger.com