Debian as a Next Step

Posted on: October 17th, 2011

When I first started using Linux as a desktop OS I started with Ubuntu like most everyone. This was quite a while ago however. I believe I started with Feisty Fawn in 2007. Back then I had a lot harder time than a beginner Ubuntu user would have today. I remember the first thing I realized was that I didn’t have wifi support and that was quite the experience to fix, but, it made me so much stronger. It was actually a great first experience and it showed me a lot of little bits of information that allowed me to jump in and stick with it. I stuck with Ubuntu for quite a while, I tinkered with a couple other distributions, a little Fedora here, a little openSUSE there, but Ubuntu remained superior…until recently.

When I began running a few VPS’s I experimented with a few different distributions. I started with Ubuntu server and soon realized that this was foolish as Ubuntu runs a lot of stuff by default that I didn’t need. I decided to move to a more minimal OS. I decided on ArchLinux. I still love Arch, I really do, and its a great system, but I missed the familiarity of a Debian based system. The subtle differences were getting annoying. I realized, why don’t I just use Debian? I began researching Debian and realized that I should have been doing this all along. Debian has all the familiarities of Ubuntu without all the bloat. Also, Debian is insanely stable, I’m pretty sure the most stable around. I can trust the updates on the Debian’s stable track not to break my system. I might not have the latest versions of software, but I don’t need it.

This weekend, I moved to Debian on my laptop computer, which is my development machine. I am not looking back. I really love the speed. It’s something that I never knew with Ubuntu. Debian feels no different from Ubuntu, but it preforms so much better. Debian still runs Gnome, uses apt-get, etc. but it does literally everything faster. It boots faster, it runs faster, it shuts down faster.

I still feel Ubuntu is an excellent first step for someone who is new to Linux. Debian certainly requires more command line use, you will get a little lost in Debian if you have not yet become comfortable in the command line, or at the very least you would be uncomfortable, but once you get to the point where you use the command line more in Ubuntu than it’s fancy tools, you’re ready. All in all, Debian is a logical next step for a Linux user who is ready to move on from Ubuntu and I would encourage you to try it, you’ll love it.

Posted in Linux | 1 Comment »

Asus Slider 2 with Tegra 3?

Posted on: October 7th, 2011

The hottest new thing in tech right now is the release of Nvidia’s Tegra 3 mobile quad core CPU. However, Asus just released the Asus Slider in July and it just came to America in September and its running Tegra 2! The Slider seems like a perfect mobile solution for computing, but when will Asus release the Slider 2 if they even do? The Asus Transformer 2 is going to be released soon with Tegra 3 so maybe it is possible that the Slider 2 will be released sometime this year or at least early next year? If Asus does release a Slider 2, it’s an absolute buy for me.

Posted in Gadgets | No Comments »

The Death of Steve Jobs

Posted on: October 6th, 2011

Steve Job’s death is a tragic and untimely end to a man’s great career of innovation and changing the world. Despite my personal views on Apple as a company, respect is certainly due to the great mind that was Steve Jobs. From the early days of Apple to the day he retired as CEO, Jobs was making his dream a reality by making the change that he wished to see in the world. He changed the personal computer industry as we know it, not simply by introducing a popular brand of overpriced laptops, but by introducing ideas in hardware and software that have since become standard in all products today. A moment of respect is absolutely due to a man who will forever be missed as one of the best innovators and pitch men to have ever lived.

Posted in News | 2 Comments »

Personal Website: Take 3

Posted on: October 6th, 2011

In my attempt to create a personal website that I will actually use, I have made several changes between ben.kulbertis.org and codezroz.com. Originally, I owned ben.kulbertis.org and it was a WordPress blog that was regretably underused and I felt that personal blogs were less likely to be successful than a blog with a seperate identity (this idea was likely rooted from css-tricks.com). I created codezroz.com as a website dedicated to web development and programming, and it was heavily branded as such. I then converted ben.kulbertis.org to a static site that had a little bit of personal information and a tumblog that was essentially pointless. Unfortunately, this idea has become too narrow. I no longer just want to talk about web development and programming, I now have other interests in addition to those such as Server Administration and news from the Technology Industry. Therefore, I have decided to again return to a personal blog. I have seen that personal blogs can also be successful and that what really matters is that you post content that is relative to others. Popularity, however, is not my only goal. A personal website also servers as an indexed searchable collection of things that I have learned, an online brain dictionary of sorts.

So, this website is now dedicated to containing the thoughts, discoveries, and opinions of Ben Kulbertis in my ever ongoing journey into the realm of technology. The content of this site has no particular topic and may range from a great and many different things.

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »