“Give credit to whom credit due.” – Samuel Adams

I must say the Task Manager on Windows 10 is amazing.

All the classic information I want to know is there: how much CPU, RAM, Disk, Network (WiFI and Bluetooth).  Recently they added tabs about GPUs usage. I got an Intel HD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA GEFORCE 940MX on my ASUS ZenBook.

You even get details on each program and which GPUs they are using

Additionally we get information about Disk and Network usage per process which is very helpful.

Last but not least, the Task Manager is very powerful but by default opens with a very minimal UI.

 

This approach is very in line with KDE Plasma’s moto:

Simple by Default Powerful When Needed

 

Yes you can. But in reality, you shouldn’t unless you have unlimited mobile data.

Since Microsoft can decide when to send updates to your laptop and update it whenever they want, you won’t have an idea whether you 100MB mobile data will be sufficient to write that that job application email or browse Facebook for 10 minutes.

A linux operating system on the other hand allows you to have control on when you want it to be upgraded. I highly recommend Ubuntu LTS or KDE Neon (also based on Ubuntu LTS). I also recommend Chilli’s Zeness Pack which give you 750MB of mobile data for Rs 75 per month. I think it’s a really good deal. The Chilli network is not always available in some remote areas though.

 

The decision was tough. The LG Gram was light AF. The screen was 14 inch with a very thin bezel. The display was amazingly bright. It had the WOW factor. You would immediately fall in love with it.

The ASUS on the other hand had a 13 inch display with a thick screen bezel. The screen looks cheap when compared to the Gram despite being 1080p. ASUS didn’t market the battery life of the ZenBook as LG did with a “17.5 hours battery life” sticker. Reading reviews online for the ASUS gave mixed results. But they claimed around 6 – 7 hours.

 

The LG Gram seems to be a much better contender but when I actually compared the spec sheets of both, the decision became harder.

The ASUS ZenBook UX310 had a 7th generation Core i7 CPU with a dedicated GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 940 MX) and 128GB SSD plus a 1TB HDD. The LG Gram had a Core i5 CPU with no dedicated GPU and a 256GB SSD. Both had 8GB RAM.

The ASUS ZenBook can easily become my main laptop while being light enough to be carried to conferences and attend on-site client meetings. On the other hand, the LG Gram has to be supplemented more storage and I might need to use a more powerful computer for editing pictures and videos. I preferred not to take the risk of buying something that might not be as fast I as I expected so I chose the ASUS ZenBok UX310 to be on the safe side.

Plus the webcam position on the Gram is really awkward for video conferencing.

Let’s see which version of MySQL is installed

root@mysql-bak:~# dpkg -l | grep mysql
ii  mysql-client-5.7                 5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1  
ii  mysql-client-core-5.7            5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1  
ii  mysql-common                     5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
ii  mysql-server                     5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 
ii  mysql-server-5.7                 5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1  
ii  mysql-server-core-5.7            5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1

Rumour says that MariaDB is a “drop-in” replacement for MySQL. Let’s try install MariaDB as is.

reimport them hereroot@mysql-bak:~# apt-get install mariadb-server
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libevent-core-2.0-5
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient20 libterm-readkey-perl mariadb-client-10.0 mariadb-client-core-10.0 mariadb-common mariadb-server-10.0 mariadb-server-core-10.0
Suggested packages:
  libclone-perl libmldbm-perl libnet-daemon-perl libsql-statement-reimport them hereperl mailx mariadb-test tinyca
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mysql-client-5.7 mysql-client-core-5.7 mysql-server mysql-server-5.7 mysql-server-core-5.7
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient20 libterm-readkey-perl mariadb-client-10.0 mariadb-client-core-10.0 mariadb-common mariadb-server mariadb-server-10.0 mariadb-server-core-10.0
0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 16.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 15.2 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

And we press Y!

And all your data is not accessible.

You’ll need to have MariaDB 10.1 or higher which can import MySQL data.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] http://mariadb.mirrors.ovh.net/MariaDB/repo/10.2/ubuntu xenial main'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server

You database should now be MariaDB 😉