As I have said in my last post exactly two months ago (wow it has been a long time!!), I will try out Gentoo Linux! And so I did. I loved the experience and I would definitely recommend it to all geeks out there! And trust me, it’s worth it! the speed of my machine was incredible!
What proved to be my experience’s demise is a hard disk failure. My 4 year old HDD decided to go AWOL on me! Shame, for sure it is! I bought a new one and I’m back to my old faithful operating system. (no not Windows, Ubuntu of course! are you out of your mind?)
But as I promised many of you to tell you about my Gentoo experience. It all becomes easy as long as you follow, in Rami’s words, Legendary Handbook. The hardest part would be setting the flags up and setting your video card proprietary drivers (Only needed if you’re going to look fancy or you’re a gamer, neither of which is lately me). The most fun part was playing around with portage. The most useful thing that I came out with from the Gentoo Experience is that I can understand Linux a bit more than I ever did before! Am I gonna explain a thing or two? No, I won’t it’s all in the Handbook but I will surely try to answer any question you have. Oh, and please don’t ask about masked packages, HDD didn’t give me time to figure them out!
On a totally different note, I have been having a super-crazy semester so far but, all in all, one of the most exciting. I’m currently taking the two most interesting courses I’ve taken so far; Quantum Mechanics and Digital Signal Processing. Highly geeky stuff.
Quantum Mechanics applications in the near (5-10 years, hopefully) future are just gonna destroy everything we know about computer efficiency and communication. I’m talking about Quantum Computing and Entanglement. Two application, though simple in concept, relatively anyway, that can change the world. In theory, a quantum computer needs only a week solve an equation that takes a super-computer two years to solve. We’re talking about nanosecond boot up and ready to use systems here. On the other hands, Entanglement gives the ability to communicate long LONG distances instantly, without even speed-of-light delight. Main problem in both cases, is how to keep these systems alive without dying so fast. All engineers need to do is to increase the life time of a quantum system to few minutes. It’s a long way to go, for sure, but physicists leaped a great deal researching these two items. (I might blog a post about them once I really understand what’s going on)
As for Digital Signal Processing (DSP), it is a course that forms the basics of any modern communication system. How to deal with input signals, how to receive an output signal and try to revert it back to the input signal to understand a message, so long and so forth. What’s exciting about this course isn’t the concepts we’re taking, but the applications we’re using them for. For instance, sound engineering cannot be possible without DSP and the effort those guys do to make a concert a success will forever be underrated. Digital cameras and camcorders are only a fraction of the almighty DSP can do! (again, I will blog about it once I’m in too deep).
Sorry, for the briefing out everything and the non-comprehensiveness but it’s been two months since my last blog and I can’t really chew them all at once!
Thanks for reading, and wish me luck!
