What do you get when you mix Beryl, Bezurk and a developer who recently jumped on to the Ubuntu bandwagon?

(more…)

Over in the Bezurk office (located in right smack in the middle of Boat Quay, Singapore), we run about 13 machines at any one time. Desktops, laptops, servers, Macs, Linux boxes, and even Windows machines. Recently, even our toilet got an upgrade and now runs on Ubuntu Linux, allowing us to ping washroom for availability, run cronjobs to flush away any, er, residue to keep the “garden freshness”, and of course, to defrag the hard disk during regular maintenance schedules.

Well, not really. I just took one of the Ubuntu stickers the nice guys at Canonical sent me (together with the free CDs I ordered) and stuck it on the toilet flush. Sure it’s not as impressive as sticking an Apple sticker on your Windows laptop, but I thought it’d help spread the word. Or maybe it’s just compulsive sticker behavior – I still have 2 stickers left and constantly think about where to stick them (the other one went onto our in-house server, which does run Ubuntu Linux).

It’s safe to say I don’t have any converts yet, but at least everyone in the office sure knows about “that Ubuntu thing”. Still, being able to ping washroom is infinitely nerdly – someday we’ll have to setup a ping-able washroom.

Hardware we use to develop Bezurk

We use a variety of workstation hardware to develop Bezurk. Some of us like Mac OS X, some of us are (regrettably) attached to their Windows boxes, and one of us uses Ubuntu Linux.

Trung, our resident Java head, uses a Ubuntu Feisty Fawn workstation. I remember it took Trung days to get X working properly, but he definitely feels it’s worth the effort!

Arun has the misfortune of having to use a Windows Vista powerhouse machine (it even has RAID on it) when all he really wants is a Mac. Sometimes he brings in his Powerbook to get things done.

Gary uses a Windows box and is happy with it. Sometimes he lapses into brief periods of Mac lust…

Wei Tat and Steffen use Windows machines as well. It works so I assume they’re happy with it.

I’m a full-time Mac user who converted less than a year ago from Windows. I dig my MacBook but hate that it had to come with a mini-DVI slot, which means more money to buy an adapter :”(. My opinion is that the natural progression for OS of choice for most techies is: Windows → Linux (of course, struggling with X configuration for days is unavoidable) → going back to Windows because the damn drivers just won’t work with my favorite game → checking out PearPC (now defunct) → crawling back to Windows → Linux (again) → Mac OS X on Intel machines. I’m convinced Mac OS X is the middle ground between running a UNIX box and having a pretty GUI.

Everyone has dual LCD monitors since, as everyone knows, multiple monitors increase productivity. Well, at least most of us still do – some monitors have since joined the garbage heap.

bezuntu, our in-house server, runs on, you guessed it, Ubuntu Linux. We use and abuse it for testing purposes.

And of course, someday we’ll get Linux into our toilet.