Why I Shifted To Linux?

There is no telling what truly prompted me to shift to Linux. My friends called me crazy, some people even doubted my computer usage pattern. Why was I leaving the familiarity of Windows and moving into something so, for the lack of a better world, “uncommon”? Surely I must have lost it.

They do have a point though. Linux might rule the super-computers and the servers, but its Microsoft that calls the shot in the desktop world. A distant contender would be the integrated systems of Apple. Then again, unless you are a fan-boy or do not like tinkering with your computer and do not want to break your head on different hardware configurations there is really no point to a mac. Don't get me wrong, I love the sleek designs, the iLife suites are enticing, iTunes is the last word to iPod integration, but I need autonomy. I like my expanded architecture. I like the freedom to choose the things that make up my computer.

May be the most important thing that changed about a couple of years back, is that I moved out of I.E. and naturally started using Firefox. Yes, at that point of time, Firefox wasn't supported everywhere, it had its occasional bugs (like I.E. didn't ?), but its wonderful extension architecture made everything more productive useful and entertaining.

The second thing that changed, was once I was out of school, I was no longer slave to their dogmatic, MS office compatibilities and of course there was Open Office. This wonderful MS office alternative was a revelation in itself. Unlike MS it was standards compliant. And to boot it supported and could create documents in the various proprietary formats of Microsoft. With Open Office, even my desktop reliance on the windows platform went.

The last straw towards me going completely open source was definitely Gmail, Greader and Google Calendar. There was now no need to have a full-fledged mail client like Outlook for me any more. Everything that I needed to do, could now be done on the web.

That being said let me tell you what kind system I am using now:

I have Ubuntu 9.04 installed (also known as Jaunty Jackalope). I am running Gnome as my window manager. Compiz (watch compiz in action below) is for advanced and extremely functional desktop effects.

My browser of choice is Firefox 3.5 naturally. I did like Chrome's stellar speed while on Windows, but I still need the extension capabilities to do the things I have come to expect from my browser. I also have the latest Opera because I do like the way it has been packaged.

I am using Open Office 3.0 (comes with Ubuntu 9.04) for all my . I do my offline blog writing therein. As an online counterpart I have the Firefox extension Scribefire adding the final flourish.

Songbird is my music manager of choice (again because of its excellent extensibility). VLC on the other hand is my media player demon.

So what're the good parts:

Ease of installation:

Ubuntu has an incredible versatility when it comes to the installation process. You can run a live CD just to try without causing any changes to your existing operating system install.

Run it as a program (with the same limitations as a program) out of Windows through Wubi (I was running Wubi for 3 days to get the idea before I shifted). This method allows you to use Ubuntu along with your existing windows install and once you think you don't want to try it any more you can remove it, just like a windows program from the add-remove column.

Once you feel a little confident or more determined, think of a dual-boot. Obviously you'd have to meddle with the partitioning process a little. Ubuntu's graphical install process though makes it pretty simple. You need only follow the directions. I used the wonderful Ubuntu derivative Mint back in 2007, and I had loved it.

Finally when you know what you really want, its time to go for a clean install of Ubuntu. Its wonderfully easy. It takes under 20 minutes for the process and out of the box you have a standard compliant browser (Firefox), an office suite (Open Office) and PDF viewer/creator, media player (Totem), music manage (Rhythmbox), torrent (Transmission), graphics editor (GIMP aka the Linux Photoshop: you can see my handywork here) and printing options (including a powerful in-built scanner XSane).

Last but not the least, you can also install Ubuntu from start-up disks (USB).

Forget system restarts, bloated anti-virus. Use optional firewall:

Once you have installed, you'll be prompted to update the system. Don't worry about finding an anti-virus to safe-guard, just go ahead and install. Not only are the updates checked, as they come from dedicated repositories but installing such updates seldom needs a system restart. Actually get used to it, you might not need to restart your system for months. These updates are also system wide. That means, not only the core Ubuntu components but all the programmes installed in your computer would also be updated through the same mechanism. So there is no need for an update checker (I used to make use of the File-Hippo Update Checker in my windows system). You will also not need an anti-virus if you follow safe net practise (nevertheless, for the ultra-paranoid, try ClamAV as a Linux anti-virus and install the wonderfully efficient and configurable Firestarter as your firewall). The need for such programs are still disputed in the Linux community, but if you are fresh from the windows side, you'll feel more relaxed this way.

Ubuntu like most Linux comes with a built in firewall. It is set to keep all ports closed by default. You need to manually open ports to make them visible. Thus in built safety is from the very beginning.

Forget the registry cleaners or deffragmenting:

Windows is like a burgeoning waist line. With age it keeps on increasing. Its always a challenge to keep a Windows install run the same vivacious way always, like it did in the initial days. With time you will have slower process times, slower calls on files and thereby your system as a whole will slow down. When I was using Windows, I regularly maintained my OS install with a registry cleaner (I used Ccleaner, highly recommend it) and a deffragmenting software (try Defraggler) amidst a multitude of other things. Linux handles files differently. When issuing space to any file, it finds the highest continuous available cluster and uses that. Thus there is virtually no fragmentation. For the lack of a better analogy, I would use the one, I had read a couple of months back. Ubuntu's Ext-3/Ext-4 filing system is like a diligent assistant. It ear-marks all the available resources in such as way that once required, only the most appropriate commodities are used.

Forget the cumbersome software install process:

Ubuntu has 2 inbuilt GUI based software install mechanisms. Synaptic and Add-Remove. In the terminal side, there's the simple Apt-get and the superior Aptitude. Bottom-line is, if you need a program, just type it in, and it will be installed for you. Not only the software you asked for, but everything that is required to run that program will be also installed, provided you give permission. This way, you will not end up downloading useless programs.

You want to know what are the choices available, both synaptic and add/remove allows you to browse the softwares, with added data on what all it can do and popularity ratings. If at all you find something whose repositories are not there, just adding the main repository would make it available. For Ubuntu alone there are over 18,000 software choices available. So you'd not be going wanting for anything.

Ease of use and maintenance:

Ubuntu is an easy OS to use and maintain. There are no system actions that you need to do to use it on a regular basis. In fact if you want, you will never have to even touch the notorious Terminal (I have grown to love it. Things get done just so much easier on a terminal, even at my novice state). You can keep using the system and then when the OS support time is over (Jaunty's is there till October 2010) you can just click a button or two and viola! You have the brand new roll-over update to the latest OS. Give me any other instance where you can have it this way.

Forget drivers:

Gone are the days when you had to hunt down drivers just to make a device work in Ubuntu From the humble USB device to the monolithic printers, you name it and there is almost plug and play support for it. All my devices worked the moment I plugged them in and switched them on. Only my iPod is giving me a little problem still, but there are reasons for this which I'll explain a little later.

Now coming to the caveats:

Games:

No matter how you put it, if you are a gamer, serious or otherwise, you should steer clear of Linux. Yes there are games for Linux, but both mac and Linux are not the primary fuellers of the gaming industry. As a result naturally, the games you can play on Linux are fairly limited.

If you still want some form of gaming distraction in Ubuntu try Frozen Bubble, Super Tux 2  or Extreme Tux Racer (Screenshot above) along with the inbuilt casual games in keeping with the Mahjong, Minesweeper traditions. Another approach rapidly gaining preference is the browser based games. I occasionally visit a few after a hard day. But the development to look forward to is the browser based multi-player games.

Support of iPod-iTunes:

when two products are inextricably linked it is very difficult to find replacements. Songbird, Amarok, Banshee are hands down better music players than the arcane iTunes. However, if you are an iPod user, like most of us are, it is still a little hard to find a replacement for this junk. Songbird's add-on iPod device support is still a tad buggy and GtkPod is a little quirky. Transferring videos and photos are herculean tasks. Finally till date iPod Touch and iPhone require the veteran iTunes to run them. One way to beat this out, is to use Wine. A compatibility layer that runs an enormous number of windows only program in Linux, with full or limited capacities. Wine is the panacea to any software dependencies we might have. There is even IEs4Linux, for all the web developers who are tied to the frustrating IE simply because their consumers need support. However, it is still young, so give it time and eventually many many more programs will be supported and in time even proper gaming support will come. If you know programming, help them compile.

Proprietary codecs:

Lets put it this way. There is no problem at all. You can download them right away into Ubuntu However, due to the licensing differences, Ubuntu cannot come pre-packaged with a few essential things like Adobe Flash or Sun Java. They are all available easily from the installation methods I mentioned, but you have to install them. Many people would find it off-putting. However, this deficiency is more in terms in keeping with their licensing than the OS's capability. Somehow though, studies are showing it to be the number one reason why consumers are returning the spanking new Linux net-book and choosing to go with the underwhelming old-faithful XP instead.

Well that's about everything I have to say. It was a mammoth post. If you have come this far, I'll leave you with a few nuggets to make it worth your while.

Try the following books if you want to know more about using Ubuntu/Linux (clicking on the link will take you to the amazon sites):

• Beginning Ubuntu Linux- From Novice to Professional
• Linux Bible
• Ubuntu for Non-Geeks
• Ubuntu Linux Bible

If you are intrigued and need any help while sojourning the pathways of Ubuntu try getting tips and how-tos from the following wonderful blogs (in no order of preference):

• Fresh Ubuntu
• HowtoForge
• Linux * Screw
• Planet Ubuntu
• The Daily Ubuntu
• Tombuntu
• Ubuntu Geek
• Ubuntu Linux help
  

Ubuntu/ Linux beginner: you need help with a particular problem, you can try the following forums:

• ubuntuforums.org
• theubuntuforums.org
• ubuntu official support
• ubuntu documentation

Let me know what you think, and if I can be of any help.

Related Articles on my blog:

• Why I don't Like iTunes
• Bye bye Windows
• We love to See Goliath Fall
  

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The State of Clinical Trials in India

I distinctly remember that hot July afternoon in 2001, when I finished reading celebrated author John le Carré's fascinating book “The Constant Gardener”. With a number of counselling rounds lined up for various medical colleges of India, I stood dismayed. What was I getting into? Was it right for me to get into medicine, after knowing that the poorer sections are often exploited by the pharmaceutical companies through the help of medical professionals?

However, studying and practicing medicine for all these years has been a far cry from the horrors that the book and later the wonderful film had unleashed upon us. Probably because in our hospital the drug-trials were never undertaken. Specifically because in more than one ways, it undermines patient care. That being said, later on I also worked in a big medical labs facility for sometime and there I occasioned to see many a drug-trial going on, as patients regularly dropped in for their clinical monitoring.

I am not saying drug trials are not important or that they should be banned. Far from it. In fact every single medicine that patients take or are prescribed have undergone multi-stage human and animal trials to render them fit enough to be mass-marketed. They are like drug-advertising a necessary evil. It often risks a number of patients, but the benefits coming out of it, if after everything a successful drug is found out, is enormous. Millions of people stand to benefit when a a few hundred only need be exposed in the beginning. That being said, clinical drug trials are also the principle reasons for escalation of drug costs and delays in releasing efficacious products because the cycle lengths are tediously slow.

To say that India is presently the global hub of drug trials would be an understatement. Clinical research is the new name in outsourcing business with a global expansion by 12% per annum. The US companies manufacture the drugs and the molecules are then tested on human subjects in the underprivileged countries like India, Brazil, the African belt, Russia. It is much easier and cheaper to recruit and test new chemicals on people from these nations. And among these places India is emerging as the destination De jure.

• English is widely spoken by the professionals.
• The population is large with diseases of all kinds from the exotic to the commonplace.
• Vast sections are uneducated.
• The concept of informed consent and liability barely exists.
• Suing doctors or companies is unheard of.
• The people are desperately poor and hence being choosy is out of the question.
• Health insurance has not yet penetrated a sizeable section of the society.

I have herein prepared a small 'slide-show' to help get my points across:

This method of cost-cutting on the part of the pharma companies however has severe outcomes. In the past few years, the FDA has inspected just a handful out of the thousands of clinical trial sites in India. In fact even after numerous monumental failures to stop the launch of harmful drugs, FDA barely inspects 1% of all trails in US. Offshore, the number is far worse.

On the sites in India, it is impossible to find any independent institutions monitoring or auditing these drug trials. All these auditors are on the pay-roll of the pharma companies. Doctors, are also paid, based on how many patients they can bring into the whole system, rather than by the trial efficacy they maintain. As a result, not only the data collected, but even the quality of drugs administered, practices and follow-up patient care is called into question. The practice of cherry picking positive results and the penchant for concealing negative findings is nothing new for the drug industry. But such concealment often results in incorrect assessment of a drug’s safety and efficacy.

One well-known scandal occurred about eight years ago, when a Johns Hopkins University researcher injected an untested chemical in 27 patients at a public cancer hospital in the southern state of Kerala.

Lawyer Vincent Panikangulara represented an illiterate coolie labourer with throat cancer who unknowingly enrolled in the trial after signing a form in a language he did not understand. India's court dismissed his claim of a human rights violation, citing a statute of limitations of one year from the time of the injection. By the time the court ruled, the patient was dead.

"There was an institutional commitment to protect other institutions at the expense of the rights of individuals," Panikangulara said. "The question of human rights violation was never even on the agenda."

Asked whether India today offers a safer environment for clinical drug studies, the lawyer leaned back and smiled.

"Are you talking about safety for the patient or the corporation?" he asked. "For the corporation, it's 100 percent safe. For the patient, that is a matter for study and investigation. It's a sad situation here."

At this time, it must be remembered the US federal laws provide enough judicial opportunities in the form of Alien Tort Statute for allowing United States courts to hear human rights cases brought by foreign citizens for conduct committed outside the United States. But the destitte population of this country has no access to adequate legal representation to capitalise on these recourses.

In another example of the dire consequences going on here,

Dr. C. M. Gulhati, editor of an Indian medical journal, Monthly Index of Medical Specialities, said authorities cannot cope with the tsunami of trials. “India's drugs controller general's office is both understaffed and incompetent,” he said, citing a case where the agency claimed it reviewed an 800-page trial protocol in just five days. “How is that even possible?”

Gulhati, who fights unbridled drug testing from a dim and cluttered office above a busy Delhi shopping plaza, reeled off a litany of troubled trials:
In 2003 in Hyderabad, an unregistered study of a heart attack drug that resulted in six deaths.
In 2004 in Delhi, a first-in-human trial of a new suturing device on 13 patients without regulators' approval.
Last year, India's decision to become the only nation to allow domestic drug maker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries to market the anticancer drug Letrozole (which forms a very important part of anti-breast cancer regimens in postmenopausal women) for infertility in women despite the drug's originator, Novartis, warning that it may cause foetal harm and should be used only in post-menopausal women.
And in October in Bangalore, the death of a baby during the testing of a new Wyeth vaccine.

“It's a total farce,” said Gulhati, who could not think of a single case of an Indian doctor disciplined for mishandling a trial. “When I complain people have broken the law, they ask 'What harm have I done?' ”

Hope, though is not all lost. The new government has ushered in a few mandates that when enforced widely should result in much greater benefit and transparency in the entire scheme of things:

• The registration of drug trials is being made mandatory.
• The registration is to be made in a public registry, freely accessible to all, before the first volunteer is recruited.
• The knowledge of the fate of trials must be disclosed, so that it is known what drugs worked and what was abandoned.

Now all that remains to be seen is whether the agencies and other concerned parties (precisely here the NGOs, conscientious doctors and lawyers) armed with the newer laws can at least guarantee justice for all in case there are gross undermining of human rights. This is because, as far as totally transparent drug trials are concerned, they are still a distant dream.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

Recent News pulled from Tampabay

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The Time is Now

We as a society like to believe that change and progression over time will help us create a better future. We needn't feel very complacent but even in the wake of great human tragedy and suffering the essays of Professor Steven Pinker (a collection of links to the essays and videos of Steven Pinker's works) and the likes of him have shown that we are in fact in one of the most peaceful times in the history of man. That is very fine and gratifying. However, it is not a license to stop trying to be better and by better I mean becoming more humane, compassionate and knowledgeable.

The world is a global village (wikipedia link). We are no longer separated from the other countries. Every action taken by a country is under the direct scrutiny and examination of others. Still we have war ravaged Iraq (collection of weblinks about the most current news on Iraq war), massacres in Darfur (collection of links about current news on darfur war)and insurmountable hate-crimes and ethnocides (wikipedia links)being carried out the world over.

[And just to limit the discussion in this article I will not even comment on the systematic female infanticide (wikipedia links) being carried on in India and China (two of the world's leading emerging economies never mind). Female foeticide is too sensitive and far reaching a topic with its roots in superstitious religious gibberish and sexual inferiority to be just put aside with a mere lip service.]

We have enormous amounts of money being channelised towards war. Many a times depending on the nationality, race and sex of the victim(s) we either cry foul or turn the other way. We are as a civilisation still obsessed about the holocaust (wikipedia link) and the Jewish extermination and the importance of Israel (wikipedia), but when it comes to Africa and Darfur's ethnic cleansing apart from prosecuting a few (BBC report on the Darfur war suspects) we seem to be content doing nothing else. The coming back of the American troops; for that matter even an aids giver's disappearance gets more media, and hence public attention than men and women dying in these war-ravaged unstable areas. Beginning from doing very little to control Pakistan (wikipedia link to terrorism state in Pakistan) to adding fuel to the instability of the middle-east (Times coverage of the middle east) through further oil-mongering, the modern society has still to curb the ways of all people into a more civilised way of life.

Certain sections of intelligentsia (author background of ones supporting noble savage) would have us believe in the existence of the noble savage (wikipedia). A condition of man untouched by human inventions where we were pure and kind and lived in a state of universal brotherhood. Looking back though and after examining all the evidence we can see there is barely anything noble about a world without the light of education and civilised codes of conduct. Religious wars, vendetta, clan fights all of this went on to create an atmosphere of hatred and intolerance. Even till this day, it is a place (country/ state) without a rational and civilised governing body, is the one which is rife with human rights violations. Take on any place, hatred and inherent violence spreads as the evil religious and communal roots take over and make us less amicable.

It has been a long time coming. Modern sensibilities now do not appreciate violence, do not applaud infliction of pain. This has to take on a greater form though. We cannot be content with just not killing or raping or pilfering. We cannot justify saying “I am not doing it, so I'm doing my bit”. This simply cannot be enough. We the youth, the able-bodied, the able-mind, the vociferous and the conscientious should make it our life's mission to bring justice to every act of hatred that can be seen. There is an acute need for activism to stop all of the crimes that are happening against humanity.

Nobody is denying the right to self-defence but it should end there. Every other act of violence, bigotry, intolerance no matter how large or small is unpardonable and should be justly taken care of. We have a right and duty to protest this.

For centuries religion, superstition, slavery, revenge-killings, terrorism and ludicrous notion of subjugating others to gain an edge have threatened the human society. Plagued it like a disease that rots its very foundation to the core. Now, however, we are in an age of reason, of science. This is the time when we say “enough is enough”. We will allow no more of this non-sense. We will report, we will be heard, because it is not only what affects us as individuals, but what affects us as a nation, as a species that matters the most.

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