Other Interests

I'm a big Linux enthusiast. I started using Linux as a desktop system way back in 1997, with RedHat 5.0. I tried a lot of distros after that. Mandrake, Caldera, Corel, Slackware and most recently Fedora to name some. But the one that I really got to like was Gentoo. Amazingly customizable piece of OS. But even the load of compiling everything from scratch was a bit too expensive when I needed stuff quickly. Gentoo was fast. And I wanted a distro that was fast as a desktop. In came Vector. Not a flashy installation by any means. But man, does it fly! Even faster than my custom-compiled gentoo ever was. Maybe for newbies Suse/Fedora/Mandrake is still the way to go. But if you're a veteran Linux user, and you happen to like Slackware for its flexibility, then VectorLinux is definitely for you. It's still very new. But being a distro based on Slackware, you get all the packages for slack to run on your Vector box. Head over to vectorlinux.com, grab the installation iso (which is less than a whole CD, compared to 3-4 discs for the large distros), and take it for a spin. Don't expect anything fancy for an installation yet. The choice of FluxBox as a window manager wasn't exactly to my liking either. But setting up GNOME is a snap. Dropline helps you with that. With Dropline GNOME, you get a lot of useful goodies. It's basically an entire GNOME desktop system, just not the simple GNOME desktop. You get additional goodies (Abiword, Evolution, Mozilla, Gaim etc) with it as well.

That much said, my goal is to find a perfect combination of software that suits my needs, eliminates my need of windows, and something that I can setup quickly and easily, given only a broadband (cable/DSL) internet connection. A safe, secure desktop in windows can be expensive in terms of money and number of software required, and Linux historically has a better safety record than windows. In this worm-infested age, I prefer not to get my pop/imap mails in outlook! So in the days to come, probably I'll have some ideas about my ideal desktop, and how I have been going about creating it in Linux. Maybe some of you brilliant people out there could give me some ideas too? :)

Had it not been for computers, I could have well taken the career of a professional cricketer. I was once into the game big time; as a spectator and a player. I used to bowl fast (or tried to!); fast bowlers always excite me. Missing out on the latest happenings from Canada though.

That's a pretty recent hobby. I own a Canon EOS SLR, unfortunately I don't have it with me here in Montreal. I loved that camera. You will find a few pics of mine in my webshots album. Right now, I have a Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital cam. I like this baby too, but nothing like an SLR. One big goal of mine is to buy a digital SLR as soon as I make some money. And an iPod. And a PowerBook. Well, you get the point... I'll try to share my experiences in photography with you. I'm an absolute beginner, so don't expect much. I expect to be helped a lot though!

--Music--

Music has been one of my favorite pastimes. A big one. Actually, its not a pastime, i'ts just another part of my life. I don't play stuff. Used to do a little something with an acoustic once upon a time, but now thats history. I listen to almost anything that I find exciting. What I don't hear much is metal and hiphop. Yeah well I am a bit old fashioned. My favorites? U2, Phil Collins, Genesis with Phil's vocals, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits, Eric Johson's guitar. Another band I've really taken a liking to is the Alan Parsons Project.