Perfume Factory

Karnataka is all set for final phase elections. The people of whole North Karnataka including Belgaum, Gulbarga, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Bidar, Gadag, Haveri and Hubli-Dharwad will exercise their vote today.

Several elections have come and gone. Politicians visit people every time during elections and make huge castle election promises. But no representative and no party has ever done any significant development for North Karnataka. It is still the forgotten and neglected part of the state even after 50 years.

Many awareness campaigns were raised to motivate people to come out of home and vote. Lead India, several other volunteer/ non profit organizations, several organizations including my employer tried to bring awareness by putting ads on TVs, newspapers, notice boards and by sending official mails in order to increase voter turnout. But will these be really effective when the people have lost total interest in state politics because of lack of stable govt, opportunist politicians and all burning issues which politicians are not even having a glance on them.

Coming back to North Karnataka, it has been severely lagging from all aspects. There is a backwardness in everything infrastructure, education, economy, government facilities, rail links, road transport, airports, tourism..etc

Every politician come and give huge promises and unrealistic plans. They will promise like anything.. this that. that this..all blah blah and bullshit. This time,for third phase, most national leaders have toured for campaign.. L K Advani, Susma Swaraj, Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Lalu, Mayavati and many more. These are the people who build castle in the air. Someone has rightly said politicians build bridge even when there is no river. Let alone national leaders, even the politicians from North Karnataka like Dharam Singh / Kharge are doing nothing for NK and even after this they are winning continuously. Now whom to blame? NK people expected a lot when Dhram Singh became CM and unfortunately even he couldn’t do anything during his CMship.

Leaders of North Karnataka are good for nothing and they never fought for anything. All they know is earn(black or white doesn’t matter),  eat and sleep till next elections.  Inspite of number of agitations from people, nothing improved and nothing initiated.  Farmers of NK are dependent on rain for agriculture. Don’t politicians think irrigation projects are needed? The Kalasa Banduri Nala project for Hubli-Dharwad people, development of airports of NK region, new rail links for connecting various places of NK and several other projects are still a dream.

Myself being from North Karnataka, I feel shame to say that our leaders are useless. But fortunately decade by decade, there is gradual rise in mass agitation and also politicians started believing that they need to look into these long remaining issues.

We need to elect leaders who make difference to us. I know, these all have made us to lose interest in overall politics.  You may opt to choose not to vote thinking that no leader will do anything for us! But by your decision of not voting, worst leaders will be chosen and condition will be even more pathetic. Vote for good leader. If there is no good leader nominated, atleast vote for comparatively not so worse leader, thus by preventing worst leader to be chosen.

Exercise you vote today! Your vote will make a differnce!

Why 95% of us use Windows as a primary OS when we have so many other options to switch? Why not Linux? Why not Mac?

Let me start with Mac. Why people don’t use Mac? There are many reasons for this. First one is “they are too expensive and unaffordable”.  They are more closed than Windows. They are not easily upgradeable and if something goes wrong, there is no way that you can do it by yourself. You must call Apple Tech Support guys.

Before I come to the point of why not Linux… first I would like to put a light on why people use Windows? It is because; Windows is the only OS that common man is most familiar with. He will learn how to use Windows with a least learning curve. He has become so comfortable with Windows that he don’t want to switch to any other OS even if that OS provides more than what Windows provides.

So, why people don’t use Linux?  We used to consider Linux is for programmers and not for common man. Earlier, Linux is used to be tough to install, operate and most of applications are meant to be for geeks.

Now also, we still believe that Linux is not for us. This is wrong.  Linux has changed considerably. It is no more a geek’s OS. It has become easier to install and use than Windows.

Why we should use Linux instead of Windows?

First point: Linux is free where Windows’ not. Windows comes in a single flavor whereas in Linux you can try numerous distros with lots of variations. Linux comes with lots of free software that you use according to your needs. Linux provides more than what Windows gives.

Linux gives you an opportunity to use / experience it before you actually install it on your machine. Now most of Linux distros come with Live CD. You can run Linux OS right from CD. If you like it, install it else simply try other distro… as simple as that.

One more advantage of Linux is, it allows you to have dual booting; that means you can have both Linux and Windows on the same machine and use whichever you want. In addition, Linux allows you to access Windows partitions from Linux and vice versa is not allowed.

For those who are switching from Windows to Linux for the first time, I would suggest to use one of the following three distros.

Ubuntu: Ubuntu is one most recently popular Linux distro; that is designed especially for common man. It comes in a single CD that can easily installed just like windows. It is packed with most free software that you need for your day to day processes. Perhaps, there are more reasons why Ubuntu is so popular.

Fedora Core: Fedora is another popular Linux distro which is sponsored by RedHat. Fedora is a community project and it ensures you that you will always get leading edge technologies shipped with latest distro.

Open SUSE: Open SUSE is another community project and is sponsored by Novell. Off late, Open SUSE is becoming more popular. Latest stable release of Open SUSE is 10.3. Currently, I have installed Open SUSE 10.3 in my pc.

You must have a question in your mind that if I switch from Windows to Linux, what about the applications I am using like MS Office, Winamp, Windows Media Player… etc.

Don’t worry, you will find alternatives for Windows softwares.. here, here and here.

Try Linux ! It’s easier than you thought.