Techzone

Damm these Windows Promotions

2010-03-09T08:12:00.003+05:30

Windows 7 promotions are the order of the day. Specially bad ones are the upgrade from Vista and thats making my life difficult.

A brief history, I have just convinced my wife to replace Windows Vista with Linux Mint on her Vaio. She is ok with it but has a few problems with hibernation and using her iPod Touch. Now she was upset with Vista as resource hog, so Mint was a breath of fresh air and easily accepted. However, from nowhere someone gave her a promotion code to buy Windows 7 upgrade and she did.

As windows 7 was bought without my knowlwdge, I have told her that I cannot offer tech support with it. Lets see how she does it on her own.
I'll post all my observations after 1 week of her trying and getting mad ;)

From Mandriva to Mint

2010-02-25T07:02:00.005+05:30

I have liked Mandriva since Mandrake Linux 9.1. Its been an amazing distribution ever since. Pure visual delight and ease of use. I like KDE for the look and feel, GNOME is mostly a no no for me. Mandriva being a KDE centric distro fits the bill perfectly. Mandriva is the default king of our two year old Family Desktop. We all loved the latest version and despite KDE being a little buggy, find it convenient to use.
I gave this info to emphasize that it was not easy for me to think about moving from Mandriva to any other distro, specially a GNOME centric Mint. Here goes the story :

My wife's vaio completed 1 year and ran out of official warranty. Hence she allowed me to dual boot it with Mandriva and Vista. She was already comfortable with Mandriva, so it was supposed to be a smooth move. The problem started right after the first install.

The boot was fast but DKE would come up with plenty fo Akonadi errors. We tried searching for solution, but nothing on net/forums. As this was not causing any usage error so this was low priority.
Keyboard would hang. Yeah, while working all of a sudden keyboard would stop responding. We had to kill X-Server and restart for keyboard to be functional again. This was a big issue and evry frustrating.
The webcam worked with r5u870 drivers, but the inbuilt mic would not agree to work. Now I am using Linux since 5 years and am fairly conversant with Mandriva. Still I could not make it work.
Hibernation sucks. This is the first time I tried Mandriva on Laptop and I must say hibernation is great even in Vista. When I simply close the lid, the system does not go into hybernation. Though this was resolved quickly with some tips from Ubuntu forums, but it should work by default. More troubling is that comming up from hybernation is nto guranteed. Yuck !!! Strange but true. Many times even after clicking hibernate ( and not merely closing lid) the system would not resume. I would see some activity in battery and hard disk lights and some flicker on screen, but thats all. Even command line would not come up. CTRL+ ALT+ BKSP also does not work. My wife was so used to of closing the lid in Vista that she said its better to use Vista itself.
Plasma would crash and cause the X-Server to restart. Now I have seen plasma crashes in Desktop, but restarting X-Server means loosing all the unsaved work. This was unacceptable.

I wanted to stick to Linux, but Mandriva was causing lots of issues. We started looking for more options. My first choice was Arch Linux, which I use on my main desktop, however, my wife wanted something easy to administer with all GUI controls. We went to distrowathc and started looking at distributions as per Page hit ranks. She kind of liked Ubuntu looks, but was floored by Mint screenshots. She said this amazing and she would be happy to use it. Actually despite being a GNOME Desktop Mint 8 looks evry good. Also, due to known Plasma crashes, we were ok to try GNOME.

Now Mint is a pure delight once it boots, the LIVE CD takes a huge time to boot. The looks were as impressive as in the screenshots and operation evry smooth. The webcam mic worked in the LVIE CD itself and even after 24 hours of use there was no crash/ hang. Satisfied with LIVE D test, we went ahead with the install. Here are my thoughts :

All regular hardware works out of box. Things like Wireless, Bluetooth and USB Scanner/Printer require no config at all. Webcam worked fine with r5u870 drivers and Mic was functional with little tweaking.
Despite being GNOME, it looks and feels like KDE and hardly any difference while working.
Huge list of applications in repos, though I would use only a couple which are readily availble in alomst all distros. Package management is a breeze through Synaptic.
Skype download page has a version for Ubuntu and it works perfectly with Mint.
All media formats work out of Box. Youtube, flash, mp3 you name it and it works in Mint.
System config is centralized. Now this is one of the best feature in Mandriva, I was relieved to finid similar one in Mint. Though I must say Mandriav is much more exhaustive and refined.
Hibernation works with little tweaking, though I must say VISTA still outclasses it by leaps and bounds.
Stablity. No crashes even in LIVE CD mode. Installed version looks more promissing.
Speed. I can bet tha Mandriva is anyday faster. Right from bootup to application open time, Mandriva is much faster. However, Mint is not very slow as compared. Though I can feel the slowness, it is not a Black Mark. I will not use this on my main system, which is accustomed to speeds offered by Arch Linux.
Look and Feel. The more you say the less it is. In its default form it just impressed us too much. Compiz bring more eye candy. The transparent Titlebar, translucent windows when dragging, the inactive windows all make you feel wow. I think the implementation is as good as Win 7.

Conclusion :

Mint is not just one of the best looking distribution I have come across, its also one of the most easier to use. 90% of things work out of box and for the remaining there is Mint and Ubuntu Forums ;). Its an eye candy, which is eaqually easy to administer and at the same time very stable. Long time KDE users like me would be at ease with Mint's GNOME implementation.

Its a distribution which I can easily give to my Windows friends to try and be assured that they will atleast use it often as a LIVE CD if not install it on hard disk. The menu and options are evry intutive to a Windows Guy and would make the transition easy. The GUI is as good looking as Win 7 and would appeal to all.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. Even Mint has some issues. If the devs can improve the speed and make hibernation less painfull, Mint has all the possibilities to become the default option for Home users.

The future of package manager.

2008-03-20T15:14:00.001+05:30

I truly believe that dpkg ( Debian/Ubuntu) and rpm ( Red Hat/OpenSUSE/PCLinuxOS) are all dated package managers which have not evolved enough with time. Not to undermine any of the two -- they have been performing well since ages and have given us some excellent distributions.
However, like everything, technology also ages; enters the newer breed like emerge(gentoo/Sabayon), pacman (Arch/Frugalware), PBI(PC-BSD) and conary(Foresight/r-path).

Unfortunately Gentoo development team has gone crazy and are busy in doing everything but development. Check out a small review of the other three by lazytechguy.

Of the three mentioned Conary seems to be the most technically advanced. I came across an interview with the developer of Foresight Linux and was impressed by the description of Conary by the dev. Check out some of the fine points.

Foresight Linux seems to have an interesting release cycle, can you explain it in-depth?
- Our package manager, Conary, follows many of the principles found in version control systems. Not only does it maintain the source of our packages in the same place as the binaries created, but there are branches. So we have development, QA, and release branches. We are able to do our development on the development branch, without affecting our users. We then promote packages to our QA branch, and test them as a group. The entire operating system is defined in a group, and the packages are built together for optimal compatibility. We test the group of packages together, as a whole, when the QA cycle is complete the entire group is promoted to the release label for user consumption.
NOTE: Foresight is the first distribution to make a release immediately after a GNOME release.
When did you come to realize that Foresight Linux was needed?
- Well mostly frustration with existing distros. At the time I was working for a large enterprise where we managed a very large scale linux infrastructure. We struggled with maintenance and deployment issues, as well as the “we have to customize red hat mentality”. I always hated rpm spec files, and hated that our environment was never easily reproducable. Using Conary, I was able to very quickly build a distro that was made up of what I defined as of proper desktop OS using the latest GNOME.
NOTE: Foresight follows a rolling release so we need not wait for 6 months to get a new package as in Ubuntu or one year in case of Red Hat
How does Conary differ to other popular package management systems (such as dkpg, Portage, and Yum) and why is it a better method of doing things?
- Whew… where to start Conary does so much more than legacy packaging systems such as apt(dpkg) and yum(rpm). Conary melds version control concepts into package management. Not only on the build/packaging side of things, but even for system maintenance. Conary stores sources with the binaries, in the same package, supports branching, merging, etc. On the flip side of that, Conary does some other very nice things. For example, every operation is a transaction. So you can actually rollback your last update or even all the way back to when the system was installed. And, these rollbacks contain local changes that get merged. Also being transactional, Conary breaks updates into smaller “jobs”. These jobs are dep complete, so if at anytime an update fails Conary will rollback to the previous job leaving your system dep complete and fully functional. Conary also breaks packages down into manageable components, :runtime, :lib, :devel, :devellib, :doc, etc. So unlike other packaging systems, where you might have 2 packages, firefox and firefox-devel, Conary would have one package with the devel headers split into firefox:devel. This is a great thing, you no longer end up installing -devel packages from random repos in your sources.list just because it looks like a newer version. The devel headers are just part of the same package, you just don’t have to have them installed. These components combined with rich dependancy information really shines.
NOTE: This means that even if we subscribe to dev repository we will be shielded from a development version of an application.

All the above statements( except for my comments in form of NOTE) are copied verbatim from fscking.com.
Enjoy the full article there.

ATI/NVIDIA Driver install in PCLInuxOS 2008

2008-01-23T10:20:00.001+05:30

PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime is a boon for so-called advanced users, who like to keep their system free of flab.
It comes with a minimal set of applications and an amazing artwork.
This ultra small release also comes with a few good utilities including an easy setup for ATI/NVIDIA drivers.
Check out the images below and see for yourself how easy is it to install NVIDIA driver.

The Utilities Folder

The Video Installation Tool

Click the NVIDIA Tab

Click the "Install Driver" Button

NVIDIA Driver installation in Progress

At the End, the installer gives an option to restart X Server ( I missed taking a screenshot of that), and on X restart, the correct NVIDIA drivers are installed and used. I think PCLinuxOS 2008 has made ATI/NVIDIA drivers install very easy, however it is still not as easy as the Restricted Drivers Manager of Ubuntu, which not only correctly auto-detects the driver for the card but also gives a pop-up to install it, making the user aware that there is a better driver for his hardware.
Nevertheless, this is a very good attempt by PCLOS devs.

Blogged with Flock

How to install KDE 4.0 in OpenSUSE 10.3 - 1-Click install

2008-01-15T13:37:00.001+05:30

I saw this excellent tutorial on ubuntu-tutorials about steps to install KDE4.0 in ubuntu. Its easy, actually fairly easy.
However, it involves use of command line, vim and warns to remove any previous installation of KDE 4.0.
Basically the steps are

Remove any previous KDe 4.0 install
sudo aptitude remove kdelibs5 kde4base-data kde4libs-data
edit the /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list
and append this line
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu gutsy main
Finally install the KDE 4.0 packages by these two commands
sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install kde4-core

so a total of 3 steps involving command line.
Hey why am I mentioning command line this often ? This is Linux and command line is an integral part of it, specially for installing packages ;right ?
Well !! its partially right, true that command line is integral to Linux, however, for trivial tasks like installing KDE 4.0 its not required, provided the distribution you choose is OpenSUSE 10.3.

Lets check the OpenSUSE KDE4 webpage for the steps required to install KDE 4.0.
Bingo !! OpenSUSE guys have integrated KDE4 install with their famed 1-Click install service and now KDE4 could be installed just by clicking this single icon .

Just a minute, what about any previous installation of KDE 4.0. Intrestingly, you are lucky if you already have a KDE4 version installed, as all you need to do is open YAST GUI and update all pacakges. All the KDE4 packages will be updated to the latest version.
OpenSUSE has truly eliminated command line from KDE4 install and I love mouse clicks.

KDE4 System Settings

2008-01-14T14:01:00.001+05:30

In KDE4 they have changed the KControlCenter and named it System Settings.
I found it to be easy to navigate and very intuitive. Lets start the visual review.
The start page looks very similar to KControl of KDE3.

Lets start with Look and Feel section.

Appearance :: Configure Theme, Colors, Style
Desktop: Configure Cool desktop Effects and Screen Saver
Notification : System Notifications and Bell
Splash Screen
Window Behavior : Titlebar Actions, Windows Actions, Focus, Moving Actions etc.

Second Section is the personal Settings

About Me. Configure user details
Accessibility. Improve accessibility for differently abled people
Default Application
Regional and Language Settings

Going over to Network and Connectivity Section

Network Settings: Set Connection preferences, proxy etc.
Setting for Samba Client (Not Server) Windows Share

KDE4 System Setting also provide some Computer Administration settings

Date & Time
Display Settings
Font Installer
Joystick configuration
Keyboard & Mouse Settings
Sound Settings

These are normal settings. The Settings manager considers some more settings are part of Advanced Settings

File Associations
Input Actions
KDE Resources
KDE Wallet
Service Manager
Session Manager
Solid Configuration

and
Samba Configuration. I do not have Samba installed so got this message

All in all, I can say that KDE4 System Settings provide and exhaustive interface for almost full system settings.
I liked the new and crisp interface, please do share with me how you liked this screenshot tour.

KDE 4.0 Final packages released.

2008-01-11T11:31:00.001+05:30

I have installed KDE 4 on OpenSUSE 10.3, you may read the detail in my previous Article. Today morning, I fired up YAST and found that there was an update available. The KDE4 packages now have version 4.0.X instead of the previous 3.97.X. If its available in YAST that means that KDE team has released the KDE 4.0 final source and OpenSUSE team is quick enough to package them.

I found the package kdebase4 having a version number 4.0-1.3 against the previous 3.97.2-4.5. Same goes for most of KDE 4 packages.
Now I am here in India and its already January 11, 2008, however, in NewYork it will still take more than 4 hours before the clock ticks 0:00.
A strange thing I noticed is that the following KDE PIM packages are marked to be deleted. ::

libkdepim4
libakonadi1
kdepim4
kdepim4-wizards
kde4-korn
kde4-korganizer
kde4-knotes
kde4-knode
kde4-kmail
kde4-kaddressbook
kde4-kakregator and
akonadi.

At the same time "oxygen icon theme scalable" package was marked to be installed.
Looks like the KDE4 PIM is still not stable so KDE devs have removed them from the official release.
I had to come to office so could not install and check the packages, surely this will be the first thing to do when I get back home.

Disable Touchpad while writing

2008-01-11T10:37:00.001+05:30

I code a lot and also write some blogs, during writing sometimes my thumb or palm touches the touchpad and results in mouse pointer moving to another window or at a different place within the same window. While coding in "vi" editor in konsole, sometimes I have even accidentally closed the konsole terminal resulting in me loosing all the unsaved work.

Now I do not want to permanently disable the touchpad of my Laptop, but was looking to find a solution where I can disable and enable it at will. I found a great article on gentoo wiki where they use ksynaptics or gsynaptics to accomplish this.
I followed their manual config and found it to be much simpler and easier than the GUI versions.

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add the Option "SHMConfig" "on" to the Section "InputDevice" where the driver is "synaptics".
The entry would now read something like ::
Section "InputDevice" Driver "synaptics" Identifier "TouchPad" Option "SendCoreEvents" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0" Option "Protocol" "event" Option "SHMConfig" "on" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on" EndSection
Thats it !! Config has been done. Now we just need to make use of the syndaemon utility to disable touchpad while typing.
If I want to disable touchpad for 1 second after the last keystroke then I would type
$syndaemon -i 1.0 -t -d
If we see the man page of syndaemon, then we can see that "-i" governs that seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling the touchpad; "-d" makes syndaemon start as a daemon, we can close the terminal and still syndaemon will run; "-t" indicates to only diable tapping ( the accidental touch) and not mouse movements.

Job accomplished.

Installing Banshee - Gnome Music player

2008-01-10T21:12:00.001+05:30

Banshee is a music management and playback application for GNOME. Over the course of the year a variety of high quality, highly polished, and all around “swell” Mono GNOME Desktop applications have been popping up. As with many of these apps, Banshee has a beautiful user interface and is well architected.

It features

Import Music
Organize Music
Play & Share
Rip CDs
Sync with IPod and most popular Music devices
Play Last.fm playlists
Play podcasts

The latest version ( 0.13.2) got released on January 8, 2008 and I was pleased to see the packages in Arch Linux. A simple pacman -S banshee revealed the fo;;owing packages will be installed.

 pacman -S banshee
resolving dependencies... done.
looking for inter-conflicts... done.

Targets: libgdiplus-1.2.6-1  mono-1.2.6-1  gtk-sharp-2-2.10.2-1  
         libgnomecups-0.2.2-4  libgnomeprint-2.18.2-1  
         libgnomeprintui-2.18.1-1  gtkhtml-3.16.2-1  gnome-sharp-2.16.0-2  
         sqlite3-3.5.4-1  gstreamer0.10-faac-0.10.5-1  
         gstreamer0.10-faad-0.10.5-1  pmount-0.9.13-4  sg3_utils-1.25-1  
         libipoddevice-0.5.3-1  ipod-sharp-0.6.3-1  libnjb-2.2.5-3  
         njb-sharp-0.3.0-1  banshee-0.13.1-2

Interesting to note is that banshee comes default with ipod-sharp, the C# library for syncing with IPod. However, Banshee does not currently support IPod Touch or the IPhone. Also the latest version of Banshee supports PodSleuth, which replaces libipoddevices. However, Arch linux still does not have packages for PodSleuth and still use libipoddevices, I am sure this will soon change.

Banshee requires HAL and Dbus to be started before starting banshee.
I have just installed it and started using it for playing music from my hard disk.
Will try bnashee soon to sync my IPod Video.

Well if doing pacman -S banshee is difficult for some people, then they can install latest banshee with a click of mouse on OpenSUSE 10.3.
Aaron Bockover, the developer of banshee, got a comment saying that

dude a release blog without a 1-click link is like coffee without caffeine
So Aaron has promptly released the 1-Click install package for OpenSUSE 10.3.
Just click the following icon and let YAST do the work for you.

KD 4.0 Desktop blossoms

2008-01-09T22:39:00.001+05:30

I have installed KDE 4.0 RC on OpenSUSE 10.3. I was just checking the installed version and found that we have an updated version (3.97.2-4.4) of kdebase4 and almost all kde4 packages in YAST. A simple YAST update took me to a much better looking KDE desktop.
The new KDE 3.97 is beautiful, more stable and a little slow.

Now I have a NVIDIA 6200 with propriety drivers and Compiz Fusion works very well with KDE3. KDE4 comes with its own desktop effects. Though as of now I am not able to use them, but will soon find a way. For the time being I am loving my current desktop.

KDE4 now comes with a few desktop wallpapers, I really liked the KDE4 black wallpaper.
Next was the time to configure some plasmoids

KDE4 took up all the desktop icons from my KDE3 desktop and displays them as plasmoids. Hence, I had plasmoids for Firefox, SUSE Help, etc..
I added the plasmoid to display KDE news. It acts as a news ticker and clicking any news opens it up in konqueror. The plasmoid configuration option allows to add more feeds apart from KDE news.
Also in my must have list is the "New Device Notification" plasmoid. I have a TSONIC MP3 player, when plug it into the USB port, I get an intimation in "New Device Notification" plasmoid. Clicking it opens the TSONIC device in Dolphin.

Here is my beautiful desktop screenshot.

The desktop is lean, elegant and well organized. The inclusion of plasmoids make it compatible to VISTA ( Lets accept it that MS definitely knows how to offer a very good looking and usable desktop). Unlike the traditional means of adding desktop widgets, plasmoids are easy to add and very functional. All in all I would say that KDE 4.0 is turning out to the the dream desktop I could imagine.

Konqueror in KDE 4.0 RC2

2008-01-08T08:04:00.001+05:30

Konqueror has the distinction of being the default file manager as well as the default web browser of KDE 3.xx. It supports basic file management on local UNIX filesystems, from simple cut/copy and paste operations to advanced remote and local network file browsing. It has support for KIO slaves and has the KParts object through which it can embed components like media player, KWord etc. As a web browser it is HTML 4.01 compliant, supporting Java applets, JavaScript, CSS 1, CSS 2.1, as well as Netscape plugins (for example, Flash or RealVideo plugins).
Konqueror is a also universal viewing application, capable of embedding read-only viewing components in itself to view documents without ever launching another application.

Its like the center of my KDE desktop, hence when KDE devs decided to limit Konqueror as a web browser and introduce Dolphin as the default KDE file manager, I was disappointed. KDE devs, however, had their own reasons and say that what often happens in Konqueror when you are browsing the internet is that Konqueror still wants to behave as a file manager and not a web browser. This split behavior is easily noticed through elements such as toolbar buttons. For example: the "Up" arrow is still available on the toolbar even when browsing Google Maps, but it is totally irrelevant in this context; another is having a web bookmarks toolbar visible while sorting icons in your /home folder.

Here is my take on the new konqueror.
The default interface still remains very similar to the earlier one, it still acts as a file manager ( and I still like it over Dolphin)

I, however, faced a little problem while accessing "Storage Media" and got the error that Protocol not supported: Media

I found a similar issue with Dolphin, luckily the Konqueror of KDE 3 works and I was able to view my DVD contents. I will limit myself to using Konqueror as a web browser and will cover it differences with Dolphin when I review Dolphin.

Konqueror now supports OT4 based WebKit, a modified version of KHTML used by Apple in Safari web browser. It renders a variety of pages very nicely.

The rendering is as neat as we would expect it in Firefox or IE. Konqueror, by default, does not allow any cookies and asks user permission. While this acts as a good security measure, this can easily disturb a novice user. I believe some cookies should be allowed.
I found Konqueror too much integrated with Konsole, it has a option to start Konsole (Tools -> Open Terminal) and another option to start Konsole embedded in Konqueror (Window -> Show Terminal Emulator). If we use Konqueror as a file manager, then Konsole integration makes perfect sense, but purely as a web browser, I really fail to understand the importance of integrating Konsole within Konqueror, but KDE devs must have their own reasons.

Another interesting feature is integration of download manager KGet. Now this was possible even in KDE 3.x konqueror, but with KDE 4.0 an icon for KGet comes floating to the desktop and we can simply drag and drop links from konqueror to KGet. Not only is this handy, it also looks cool!!. Talking about cool feature, we have different split views in Konqueror (Window -> Split View (left/right and Top/Bottom) ).
Check it out.

I really found the split views usable. Foe instance if I want to compare the Page Hit Ranks, in Distrowatch, of PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE for different Time frames, I can simply open two views ( Left/Right) and compare all distributions. We can also open different websites in different views. Like I have opened Distrowatch in two of the views and Linux Today in the third.

The KDE 3.X Konqueror had and option to configure the plugins in "Configure Konqueror". With this option I could easily specify the mozilla plugins I want Konqueror to use, notably java and flash plugins. In Settings of KDE 4.0 Konqueror, I did not find an option to specify plugins, also I does not take the Firefox plugins by default, hence I do not have flash integrated into KDE 4.0 konqueror and cannot watch youtube videos.
This is expected as KDE 4.0 is still not stable, but I wish that on 11th when the devs make the stable version public, they enable flash in Konqueror.
Finally, I found Konqueror 4.0 to be faster than Konqueror 3.x and it appears that Konqueror 4.0 renders better. This might be a case on my OpenSUSE desktop, btu as OpenSUSE is one of the first distribution to release packages and LiveCD for KDE 4.0, I believe that OpenSUSE does not do much modifications.

The next gen of SMS

2008-01-02T18:34:00.001+05:30

Airtel and Affle have launched SMS2.0 - the world's first upgrade to
SMS. Airtel is the first in India to offer this service to its 55
million customers. SMS2.0 enables an interactive and non-intrusive platform on the
mobile phone that allows Airtel users to discover content services
along with enhanced messaging features.
With Affle being the inventor of this
technology, Airtel claims to be the first in the country to offer this
innovative service to its 55 million-odd customers.

While riding on the popularity of the
familiar SMS application, SMS2.0 is unique in that it converges
messaging, content, and contextual advertising into one seamless
application that resides as the default SMS application on the
customer's mobile handset.

SMS2.0 also serves free content to users, contextual to their areas
of interest. The content is served in the form of teasers on the
Message Compose/Read window and a Full Screen that appears along with
the Message Sent/Sending Window.
SMS2.0's message personalization options
include additional features like composing and sending messages with a
variety of text, background colors, and emoticons.

The content experience is driven around leveraging SMS, and
delivering user-relevant content such as news, jokes, movie updates,
Cricket, Astrology, etc -- all seamlessly integrated into the messaging
experience.

Available as a 'free upgrade' to the regular SMS application,
Airtel subscribers can download SMS2.0 by sending "SMS2" to 543210.
There are no charges for downloading the new application or for
subsequent content delivery on this platform.

Anuj Kumar, Executive Director (South Asia) Affle, says, "India is a
very exciting mobile market and in Airtel we have found a great partner
to take our services to users. We are confident that SMS2.0 would
redefine the messaging experience for a large set of users and become
their entry window to the world of Mobile Internet. We have already
seen a very positive response from users, for the value features and
the rich non-intrusive content, and expect to grow it substantially
during this launch. We are very confident that given Airtel's
significant marketing efforts, this service would soon be accessible to
a huge mass of users."

Ubuntu for Dell 6200 Laptop

2008-01-02T08:35:00.001+05:30

Canonical ships the (K)Ubuntu CDs and I received mine as a New year gift. I was really excited and decided to try it immediately.
My wife has a Dell 6200 Laptop and I tested the LiveCD on it.
I popped in the Live CD and it booted into a nice looking desktop. Ubuntu gave me a warning about the Laptop battery,
.
I checked it and was amazed. It read "Your battery has very low capacity (5%), which means that it may be old or broken. Since last month my wife is complaining about the battery problem, the battery lasts only 15 minutes. Since this problem started after the flight from Delhi, which had a bumpy Landing, I think the battery might be broken.
Its amazing that the user friendly "Windows XP" could not issue such a warning, neither did PCLOS. Kubuntu or OpenSUSE, however, Ubuntu was prompt to report it.
I hope this feature of Ubuntu will help my wife in making up her mind to use Ubuntu instead of Windows XP.

NOTE:: The KDE cousin of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, also failed to report this problem.

Failed Attempt with Mepis

2007-12-30T10:33:00.001+05:30

Simply Mepis 7.0 got released on December 23rd. The release announcement proclaims it to be a holiday present and surely it looks like one.
A quick look at the packages reveal a detailed list containing 2.6.22.14 kernel, Xorg 7.1.0, KDE 3.5.8, OpenOffice 2.3.0, Firefox
2.0.0.11, Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, Digikam 0.9.2, Sun Java 6.00, Amarok
1.4.7, mplayer 1.0.rc1, fuse driver 2.7.0, ntfs-3g 1.710, madwifi-ng
Atheros driver 0.9.3.2, wpa-supplicant 0.6.0, ALSA sound drivers
1.0.15, libglib2.0 2.14.0, libgtk2.0 2.10.13, and QT 4.3.1-1.

Some of the additional packages in the MEPIS 7.0 pool include:
acroread 7.0.9-0, icaclient 10.6-1, evolution 2.10.3, NVIDIA driver
100.14.19-1, NVIDIA legacy drivers 1.0.9639 and 1.0.7185, AMD fglrx
driver 8.43.2-1, libgnome2 2.18.0, compiz 0.6.3, and compiz-fusion
0.6.0.

After reading all this I got excited and decided to try it myself. Little did I knew that it will be a disaster. It was easy to download and burn the iso. Problem started immediately after that. The boot screen has many thoughtful options like

Default Boot
Run CD with r/w more
Boot with 60 Hz ( for digital Monitor)
Boot with 75 Hz
Boot with Vesa drivers
Failsafe, and
Memtest

I tried the default Boot but got some problem with my monitor VSYNC/HSYNC and got a black screen. Then I tried all the remaining ones and every time the HSYNC was not proper and I was never able to get a GUI. Whenever KDM tries to start, it would result in a Monitor HSYNC out of range error. I have NVIDIA 6200 256MB card, which no distribution supports out of box, however, in (K)Ubuntu the vesa options worked perfectly. Looks like Mepis shifting from Ubuntu was not welcomed by my desktop.
Interesting thing is that on the command line I can see Mepis complaining about not finding 915 chipset and saying that the current chipset is "wrong". Comeon is this Mepis release only for 915 chipset.

Anyhow this was not a big deal, I added HSYNC=30-60 in the kernel boot line and booted with VESA drivers. I was greeted with a good looking KDM login menu.

The KDM gives an option to login as either demo or root. Mepis does not believe in tell the passwords of the users, though the passwords are an easy guess. The password for user demo is "demo" and user root is "root"
I logged in as root.
The default wallpaper of root user has a warning icon to indicate that the user is root and can perhaps cause damage to the system.

I wanted to install Nvidia drivers so that I can evaluate Mepis with all the cool effects. Opening Synaptic resulted in a pop up errot.

I thought that maybe I should refresh the Synaptic repositories and get fresh package lists. However, this resulted in further errors.
and .

You can see that my network was properly configured and this was simply an error with Mepis repos.

The last thing I tried was to install Mepis on my hard disk. Check out the cool looking installer.

The Mepis installer resembled the Windows installer a lot but was easy to navigate. Sadly, whenever I tried to install, the installer froozed the entire system and I could never get Mepis installed on my system. Maybe this error is because I do not have intel 915 chipset.

My wife has a Dell 6200 Laptop which has intel chipset. I decided to try Mepis on that and Met with even more errors. The Live CD would not reach KDM no matter what boot options I choose. It gave some error about hard disk spinning too fast ???

In a nutshell my experience is like

Problem while booting
Had to guess user password
Synaptic not working
Hard drive installer not working
System hangs while running.
Would not boot on Dell 6200 Laptop.

This is end of Mepis trial for me. Maybe I'll try another of their release if it gets good reviews from users.

NOTE:: Thanks to The Coding studio for a few screenshots.

Ubuntu Community Page on iPhone

2007-12-28T09:37:00.001+05:30

Ubuntu has perhaps the strongest community and the community is its greatest strength. The community members go out of their way and try to make things simpler for other users. Check out this webpage regarding using iPhone/iPod Touch with Ubuntu.
I specially liked the small directions which makes life simpler like, Auto mounting tips and integration with Amarok.

Waiting for iPhone to become legally available in India so that I can also use the "Most hyped gadget of 2007".

KDE 4.0 install on OpenSUSE

2007-12-28T08:11:00.001+05:30

I have previously installed KDE 4.0 RC2 on Kubuntu. It involved adding deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu gutsy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list and then installing a few KDE4 based packages. To be true, I was not able to do that using Adept, the Kubuntu package manager. I had to go to command line and then the install went fine.
OpenSUSE, however, changes the entire perspective of installing applications. Their revolutionary 1-Click install performs the job very well here too. All we need to do is to goto KDE4 page on OpenSUSE website and click this button . There are a few alternative install too; like the basic install and the KDE4 build dependency for developers who want to install KDE4 from source.
After clicking the KDE4 Desktop install button, YAST2 takes care of the install and does its job very well. Please check out the screenshots from the install.

KDE4 Page
Welcome screen with the option to choose Advanced features.
Repository chooser.
Aditional Package chooser.
Final Install .
Lastly the default KDE4 desktop and its beautiful.

Check out the plasmoids. I really love them. My next article is going to be on Pasmoids.

As compared to Kubuntu, the install is a breeze and very easy. I love mouse clicks.
I hope you enjoyed the article as much as I had enjoyed installing KDE4. Watch out for more articles on KDE 4 on OpenSUSE.

Merry Christmas From Google

2007-12-25T13:51:00.001+05:30

Google has linked up Reader with Google Talk (also known as chat in Gmail) to make your shared items visible to your friends from Google Talk. Once you've logged into Reader and been notified of the change, these friends will be able to see your shared items in the Reader left-hand navigation area under "Friends' shared items". We've provided an option to clear your shared items in case you don't want your friends to see what you've shared in the past. We've also added a Settings page so you can choose which friends you see and invite friends who aren't yet sharing to try it out.

"We're really excited about adding friends, but want to make clear that this is a work in progress. We know you might not see every feature you want just yet, so we hope you will play with it and send us your feedback. For now, this is available only in English on www.google.com/reader."

Readers, however, did not find it exciting or amusing.
Some of the replies at Google Groups thread indicate this.

Don't you think there might be a method of being selective with what

you share that might be slightly more fine grained than, you know,

deleting our shared items en masse? This is the worst "feature" you

have ever introduced.
This is BY FAR the worst feature ever added by google.
I think the basic mistake here, as Modulo has noted, is that the

people on my contact list are not necessarily my "friends". I have

business contacts, school contacts, family contacts, etc., and not

only do I not really have any interest in seeing all of their feed

information, I don't want them seeing mine either. This is a major

privacy problem.
I don't need Gmail to become a social networking tool. If I wanted

that, I'd sign up for Facebook, Orkut, or whatever. I want it to do e-

mail, feeds, docs, etc., and I want it to *respect my privacy*. :P
Using my Gmail contacts as a friends list is a dangerous thing.
How do I turn this off? Do I need to unsubscribe from all my feeds?

I do *NOT* want colleagues seeing my personal feeds. Unless I'm

misunderstanding something here, I have to stop using Google Reader.
This "feature" sucks big-time. How do I turn it off?
This is a terrible idea, and a violation of privacy, and it

contradicts your own documentation
I want this turned off and like, now.
'm going to stop using Google Reader

if they don't fix this SOON.

The thread is full of complaints like these. Not sure if Google will look into this soon, but ifthey delay, many people will either delete all their "shared" data or switch to Hotmail or yahoomail. I am planning to revive my Hotmail account.

Holiday gift for OpenSUSE entusiasts

2007-12-24T10:16:00.001+05:30

I just love OpenSUSE, I think it is one of the best distributions for a Linux user ( Novice or expert).
For people like me an ideal holiday gift would be an OpenSUSE branded T-Shirt or a bag so that I can flaunt my association with the Green Linux Distro.
The OpenSUSE Shop, presents an excellent place to get all OpenSUSE stuff.
Check otu some of cool T-Shirts and Mugs.

I specially liked their offering for babies -- teach them open source from toddler age.

Happy holiday shopping.

Reveal Firefox Passwords

2007-12-24T10:04:00.001+05:30

I was browsing the Firefox settings for optimizing performance and came across the "Security tab in Firefox Preferences". I was amazed to see a button called Show_Passwords.

.
I decided to probe further and clicked on it, viola it showed the list of websites with my user name on it. What more it even had a button which said "Show Passwords".

Clicking on it brought a dialog box which confirmed if I really wanted my passwords to be displayed.

Clicking yes revealed all my usernames along with respective passwords.

Now this can be handy for a home computer where if I forget my password, I can easily get it back. At the same time this poses a huge risk in Office environment, where many a times we go to get a steaming cup of coffee without locking our desktop. I know leaving the desktop unlocked is a foolish thing to do, but its a fact that many a times we do forget. In those circumstances, a colleague might easily get our personal passwords. Imagine someone getting your mail password, without your knowledge and silently read through your mails/chats.

Having discovered this, I immediately looked for similar "feature" in Konqueror- I found none. I know of a few hacks in Windows which help reveal the IE stored passwords, but the password-self-revealing feature of Firefox takes the cake when it comes to security loophole.

Advanced Web Statistics -- Distrowatch

2007-12-18T18:49:00.001+05:30

For the month of December 2007, the web statistics of Distrowatch show an interesting pattern.
This stats shows the number of hits made to Distrowatch from many Operating systems and different Linux Distributions.

As usual the highest number of users have accessed Distrowatch from Windows XP ( 43.74 %).
The second position goes to Ubuntu (11.47 %).
Here we see that the best amongst Linux distributions still lags too much behind Windows XP.

Windows Vista is comfortably placed at third position with 6.94 % hits. Mac OSX scores a respectable 2.8%, considering that not many Mac enthusiasts look outside of Apple. The BSDs combined form a mere 0.3%.

Among the Linux distributions Ubuntu tops with no other distribution in near sight.
Debian (3.80%), OpenSUSE (2.27%), PCLinuxOS (2.03) and Linux Mint (1.89%) follow Ubuntu to form the Top five Linux Distributions. Its amazing that the KDE cousin of Ubuntu (Kubuntu) scores a poor 0.09%.
Decent numbers posted by PCLOS and Mint justify their page hit rankings. Surely these easy to use distros are going to be a huge hit in near future.

Sharp Fonts on Linux

2007-12-17T14:07:00.001+05:30

Linux today has very good looking fonts, however, some of the people who migrated from Windows still feel the lack of Windows Type fonts.

Luckily we have two very good options

Install the core fonts. Usually most current distributions contain a package to install the core fonts through the package named msttcorefonts.
Use Sharp Fonts.

Now which one to install is just a matter of personal taste.

Okular. The universal document viewer. KDE 4.0 series

2007-12-17T12:03:00.001+05:30

With KDE 4.0 release in sight, I plan to test some of the prominent features of KDE 4.0 and explore their functionalities.
I am starting off with Okular - The universal Document Reader.

With KDE 4, we will get Okular, the one stop shop for all our Documents.
Okular supports the following document types:

PDF
Postscript
DjVu
CHM
tiff
images
dvi
xps
ooo
FictionBook
ComicBook
Plucker.

Okular began as a replacement of KPDF and was part of Google Summer of code, the project description is at KDE Developer's Corner. It is such a hugely successful project that it will form part of kdegraphics module and will replace the following KDE 3.x applications

KDVI
KFax
KGhostview and
KPDF

Watch out for more KDE 4.0 applications on this blog.

Few Okular Screenshots ( Taken from Official Okular web site):

Installing Skype 2 Beta on Kubuntu

2007-12-15T13:41:00.000+05:30

Skype seems to be following a tradition. They had first introduced Video chat with 2.0 Beta version for Windows. They followed the same version pattern and introduced Video chat in Linux with version 2.0 Beta for Linux, though this happen a long two years after the windows release.
Whatever said, Skype 2.0 Beta has fulfilled a huge gap in the Linux world. With internet speeds reaching 100 Mbps and more, video chat is soon becoming very common and skype is the most dominant player.
Skype has provided installable packages for most of the prominent distributions on their Linux beta download page.
I had opened the site in Konqueror and choose Ubuntu FeistyFawn, I was expecting that Adept Package installer ( or a variant ) would open up and offer to install, however, Konqueror gave me merely the option to download.

I knew that things cannot be this dumb, so I fired up Firefox ( NOTE:: Firefox is not part of standard Kubuntu install and has to be installed separately).
Firefox appeared a little more intelligent and offered to open the deb file with debian-view

The download was easy, but after the download I did not see any installer being fired. The download simply ended. I knew that the downloaded file will be in /tmp and there it was.
I opened the /tmp directory in Konqueror and clicked on the deb, Luckily this time gdebi fired and gave me the option to install.
I thought that all's done, how wrong I was. The gdebi installer gave an error that another installer ( adept, apt-get etc..) was running. I killed the adept-updater icon I had in the Kicker tray, still the problem remained. Then I fired Adept Manager, which also gave me the same error but also gave me an option to release the lock. I selected to release the lock and Adept Manager crashed. Wow!!
I again Fired Adept Manager and this time it came up without any error, I presumed that the lock is removed and closed it. Again clicked on the downloaded Skype 2.0 deb package to bring up gdebi. This time there was no lock problem and the installer went ahead fine and I became happy( I know I can just delete the lock file, but wanted to do it through proper channel, without any command line tweak).
My happiness was short lived as gdebi was unable to install due to missing dependency of libc6. My only option was to fire up Adept Manager and install libc6, OOPS!! libc6 is already installed only an upgrade was required.

On my third attempt with gdebi installer, I was finally able to install Skype 2.0
What a relief !!.
As expected Skype 2.0 video is all that I expected and I was able to do a video chat with my friend instantly.

Regarding my experience, all I can say is that in Ubuntu has one of the best package management whereas its KDE cousin Kubuntu presented an extremely frustrating experience. Not sure if Canonical does it deliberately, but in no way is the quality of Kubuntu same as that of Ubuntu

PCLinuxOS vs Ubuntu -- the Battle Continues

2007-12-15T09:59:00.000+05:30

There is little doubt that Ubuntu is the most popular desktop Linux distribution. However, lately people have started noticing PCLinuxOS. Did I say noticing, actually it is much more than that. Since a long time PCLOS is at the top of Distrowatch Page hit rankings, PCLOS is featured in LXF magazine in an *8 page article*, the number of derivatives ( called remasters) of PCLOS is growing.

Its rather funny that once Ubuntu was considered just a derivative of the mighty Debian, now Ubuntu has hogged all the limelight and left Debian far behind in terms of popularity. Debian is considered one of the most stable Linux distribution and most suitable for Servers. However, Hardware vendors ( Like Dell) are considering offering Ubuntu preinstalled even as a server; I am not aware of any vendor selling Debian pre-installed.
Debian acted as base for many newbie friendly distributions like Mepis, Linspire, Knoppix etc.
Now Ubuntu is acting as a base for many other including Mint, Freespire, gOS etc. Here a point to note is that all the Debian derivatives, except for Mepis, are not in news too often; whereas the Ubuntu derivatives like gOS and Mint are on almost every Linux site.

With PCLinuxOS, it seems history is repeating itself.
PCLOS is a Mandriva derivative, well !!! that was long time back. Now PCLOS is poised to take Mandriva head on in terms of popularity.
Mandriva which was considered the easiest distribution for a newbie has lost its status to the newer ones like Ubuntu and now PCLinuxOS.
People have started using PCLOS as base distribution instead of Mandriva, though the numbers are limited.

Looks like PCLOS is going on the same path as Ubuntu. However, PCLOS is still very distant and has a long journey to cover before it reaches anywhere near Ubuntu, with respect to popularity and support from hardware vendors.
For a normal home user its a matter of choice, if he likes debain based -- Ubuntu/Ubuntu derivatives is the way to go. If the user is OK with an rpm based distribution then PCLOS acts as a serious contender.

Finally, a distribution is also judged by the distributions it is compared with. Nowadays we see many comparisons of PCLOS with Ubuntu.
Check out two interesting ones Here and Here. These are enough evidence that the Ubuntu community is taking notice of growing popularity of PCLOS and even reacting to it.

PCLinuxOS all over Linux Format

2007-12-14T11:24:00.001+05:30

The latest issues of Linux Format ( UK's best selling Linux Magazine) went on sale on 13th December 2007.
LXF have put a lot of emphasis on PCLinuxOS. The article about PCLOS is titled "Why PCLOS is so great". They have proclaimed it to be the

"Next Gen distro for 2008"
Fast
Reliable
Easy
Powerful
GoodLooking and lastly
Ubuntu Alternative.

Check out the cover page to find PCLOS overshadowing everything else.

From their web site

Features

PCLinuxOS - With a new update
just around the corner, we look at this remarkable distro, finding out
why many beginners and experts alike find it to be the perfect antidote
to their lust for Linux. (Graham Morrison)

LXF has an eight page article on PCLOS, readers claim this to be the biggest ever for any distro.
Apparently reporters from LXF had asked a few questions from Tex a month ago
You may want to read the discussion about this article on PCLinuxOS forums.

PCLOS is already at the top in Distrowatch, now with the good publicity from LXF it will reach more home users.

Differrent meaning to RTFM

2007-12-13T20:32:00.001+05:30

RTFM ( Read the Fxxxing Manuals) - a term popularized by Debain/Redhat veterans, has got a new meaning.
Earlier RTFM was a derogatory term used to insult the Linux newbies, who would ask simple questions on various forums.
With the advent of user friendly Linux Distributions like Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE, RTFM was slightly modified to
Read the Fine Manuals.

Now the website tuxs.org has found an innovative way to encourage users to visit its site.
Read its definition of RTFM.

The site has many articles which might be helpful to new users.
Do you happen to know of "other" meanings of RTFM ? Do let me know.

Quicksilver for Ubuntu

2007-12-13T08:30:00.001+05:30

GNOME DO is a application launcher, a la Katapult in KDE and Quicksilver in Mac OSX.
From the developer's website ::
GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many objects present in your GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies) and perform commonly used commands on those objects (Run, Open, Email, Chat, Play, etc.).

GNOME Do is inspired by Quicksilver and GNOME Launch Box.

This application is available through the famous Launchpad ( of Canonical fame).
The download page contains the packages for Ubuntu Gutsy.
To install, add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list



    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rharding/ubuntu gutsy main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rharding/ubuntu gutsy main

and install GNOME Do with the command:


    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do

For Hardy packages, change "gutsy" in the lines above to "hardy". PPA downloads are not signed so you have to ignore the error about "The following packages cannot be authenticated."

Ubuntu has a wiki page for usage, copy/pasting from there.

Usage

Start gnome-do by using the Gnome-do entry in the Accessories menu.

You can now launch the gnome-do dialog by press Super + Space. On most systems the super key is also known as the windows key. You should see a dialog with a small search icon and two boxes. The one to the left is the Item box, which shows the item you have selected, and the one on the right is the Action box, which shows the action you wish to perform on the Item.

To startup gnome-do without it actually showing the UI use the --quiet flag.

gnome-do --quiet

Starting Applications

Launch gnome-do and type the application name - for example Rhythmbox.

Press enter and the selected application will launch. Be aware that gnome-do will start matching as you type, so you shouldn't need to type the entire name.

Fun with Music!

Note: This requires the rhythmbox plugin which indexs the database of Rhythmbox, the default music player for the Gnome desktop. This is pre-installed on Ubuntu.

Launch gnome-do and type the name of an artist in your music collection. Once the artist you want is shown press the right arrow key to view a list of albums beneath that artist. You can select albums by using the up and down keys. This list is also searchable (so for example if I had searched for Radiohead and had a list of albums, typing Ok Computer at this point would select Ok Computer). To view tracks in the selected album press the right arrow key again. At any point pressing enter will play the selection in rhythmbox. So, if I type Radiohead and press enter all Radiohead songs are enqueued, if I go across to Ok Computer and press enter...(you can see where this is going). Clever, isn't it?

Now, what about queuing songs up? The procedure is basically the same but we need to change the action from 'Play' to 'Queue'. Once you have selected the music you want (Ok Computer yet again) press tab to change focus to the Action box and press the down arrow to change the Action.

We can perform other music related actions too by typing them! For example...type Pause to...erm...pause! Others include:

Play
Volume up
Volume down
Show current track
Mute
and finally Unmute

File Management

Gnome-do can help open files for you as well. For example, start typing home. You should get an option to open the home folder in nautilus by pressing enter. This will work for any folder in your home folder, although be warned it does not take proper Unix paths (so for the ubiquitous example, Documents will work where /home/john/Documents will not). You can also open files by typing their name and things in your Places menu.

Opening URL's

Just type it in! For example www.ubuntu.com.

Execute in a shell

As above! If your command is one word long you will need to change the Action from Define to Open in shell by pressing tab and the down arrow.

Email and instant message

Type the name of the contact, then tab across and select the required Action.

Third Party Extensions

Tomboy

URL: http://bzr.mitechie.com/do-extensions/

Drop the .dll from compiled_dlls into your .do/addins/ directory.

It indexes your notes by title and adds the commands:

Search Tomboy Notes
Create Tomboy Note

Add more!

This is probably just a taste of the basic features of gnome-do. As you find them, add them!

Hints and Tips

After using gnome-do for a little while you will probably want to autostart it with your desktop. To do this, open System --> Preferences --> Sessions and add Gnome-do as the name and gnome-do --quiet as the command.

To change the keybinding Type alt-f2 and run gconf-editor. Drill down to /apps/gnome-do/preferences and change the keybinding. You may need to restart gnome-do for this to take effect.

Thanks to David Siegel and everyone who contributed to this excellent program.

Addins

You can find some addins here: http://do.davebsd.com/addins. Place these addins in ~/.do/addins and restart Do. The source for these addins can be found in our do-addins branch.

The Pidgin addin requires libpurple-bin (contains purple-remote) in order to use the Chat command.
The Evolution addin requires libevolution3.0-cil to read your Evolution address book.
The Rhythmox addin uses rhythmbox-client to communicate with Rhythmbox. You probably already have this if you have Rhythmbox installed.

Requirements

I suggest you have Tomboy (libtomboy) installed to use the keybinding.

Do displays different icons depending on your GNOME Appearance preferences. I suggest you use a high-quality icon set like Tango.

sudo apt-get install libevolution-cil libpurple-bin

You will also probably need the program the plugin is for...

Screenshots::

You may want to check out the official screenshots at Flickr.

Citrix Client on PCLinuxOS Updated.

2007-12-11T19:36:00.000+05:30

Citrix is the dominant player in in application and desktop virtualization.
The latest Citrix Client is Version 10.6 and they have rpm and tarball available for installing the client on Linux Systems.

I downloaded the rpm ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm and tried to install it using


rpm -i ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm

I got the error that libXm.so.3 is a dependency and is missing. Now this is a normal error with ICACLient and Citrix users know that libXm.so is installed as a dependency of libopenmotif.
I fired Synaptic and installed libopenmotif only to find that the motif library version ( and its dependency) has revised and now the library is libXm.so.4 instead of the required libXm.so.3.

Not sure if we can install libXm.so.3 through Synaptic, so searched for it and found a downloadable version at
http://filer-1.filearena.net/pub/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/RPMS.extra/.

After that things were as easy as


rpm -i libopenmotif3-2.2.3-1pclos2007.i586.rpm
and
rpm -i ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm

Hope this helps the readers.

Webcam Driver Writers for Linux

2007-12-11T01:01:00.001+05:30

I came across this blog post about Michel Xhaard, A Lone Hobbyist, who wrote drivers for 235 low-cost webcams and contributed to Linux community. He did not ask anyone for money for his excellent job ( at least not from normal users -- not sure about corporates). Hats off to people like him.

On the Other hand we have Luca, who believes in writing drivers, but offers them as A trial (time-limited) version.

As printed on his website ::
Q: Will you release the source code one day?
A: It's likely I will never release the source code, unless I have financial proposals. The best candidate is the manufacturer of these controllers. If you would like to see this driver released under the GPL to everyone, please send them a personal request. The more requests they will see, the more they will consider this driver.

Another way is to collect the money once from all the potential users, according to the principles of the ransom model:
"A publishing model where copyrighted works (such as books, software, or music) remain proprietary until a total amount of money is collected or a certain date arrives, at which point the work is automatically freed to the public." The terms of this approach will require a preliminary discussion between me and a group of interested users. Contact me in this case.

Well, though I do not support charging money for Linux driver, but its his wish -- he wrote them.
At the same time it he who has made those drivers available to Linux world, we must give him credit for this.

SuseForumError

2007-12-10T19:29:00.001+05:30

SuseForumError
Originally uploaded by Abhay Srivastava

I am having a little trouble in setting up Wireless on OpenSUSE ; which is very easy on both Kubuntu and Granular( PCLinuxOS) Linux. I had asked a question for that in OpenSUSE forums, but looks like I will have to wait longer to get an answer as the OpenSUSE forums are not responding right now.
I tried http://www.suseforums.net/

On opening in Firefox, I am getting error,

IPB WARNING [2] mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections (Line: 131 of /ips_kernel/class_db_mysql.php)

There appears to be an error with the database.
You can try to refresh the page by clicking here.

SQL error: Too many connections
SQL error code:
Date: Monday 10th of December 2007 08:38:30 AM

Hope this gets resolved soon.

DLink Wireless card on Linux

2007-12-08T10:56:00.001+05:30

I just bought a wireless PCI card and installed it on my desktop.

It is a "DLink DWL-G510 Revision C " card. "lspci -v" shows
00:06.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc DWL-G510 Rev C
Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at db000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

A little search showed me that there are no native Linux drivers for this card, however, installing and using this card is very easy with the help of ndiswrapper.

Installation procedure.

I popped in the Windows driver CD and went to the Drivers directory (/media/hdd/Drivers/Drivers/Win2KXP).
Installed the driver using "ndiswrapper -i NetRt61G.INF"
Confirmed the installation using [root@localhost ~]# ndiswrapper -l
netrt61g : driver installed
device (1814:0302) present (alternate driver: rt61pci)
Added ndiswrapper to /etc/modules, to auto start at boot.
Refresh the network configuration using "dhclient" and get a IPAddress using DHCP.

I dual boot between OpenSUSE 10.3 and Granular Linux ( a remaster of PCLinuxOS ).
Below I have summarized my experiences with both.

OpenSUSE.

ndiswrapper is installed by default.
OpenSUSE hardware wizzard detected that a new device is found and gave the option to configure it.
Due to some reasons "dhclient" is not able to find a wireless lan (send packet failed).
Cannot establish connection with wireless router.

Granular.

ndiswrapper is installed by default.
ndiswrapper is not loaded at boot, despite it being in /etc/modules.
A manual "modprobe ndiswrapper" followed by "dhclient" results in good connection.
I have tried it for continuous 7 hours ( was running Synaptic updates) and there was no disconnection.

End result:
Despite similar procedures on the same hardware, OpenSUSE fails to connect to my router; whereas Granular Linux connects flawlessly ( though some manual intervention is require). Posting from Granular Linux using the wireless connection.

Multimedia Codecs installation in OpenSUSE 10.3

2007-12-07T11:33:00.001+05:30

OpenSUSE 10.3 is one of the easiest desktop Linux distribution and does most of the configurations. However, it does not come with multimedia codecs by default.
On the brighter side OpenSUSE 10.3 has 1-Click install -- a feature which makes installing software very easy, almost as easy as a mouse click.

OpenSUSE provides 1-Click install for most multimedia related applications and codecs for both Gnome ( ) and KDE (). To go through a simple wizard guiding you through the installation
process of some additional multimedia codecs where necessary, simply
click on one of the links icons above.

This will enable you to have:

Flash
Java
Latest Amarok (with MP3 Support) for KDE, or Helix-Banshee for GNOME users
Encrypted DVD (libdvdcss)
Extra xine Codecs, for MPEG-4 etc. (libxine1)
K3b with MP3 Support (k3b-codecs)
Win 32 Codecs (w32codec-all)

..as well as the option of installing (select Advanced mode at the screen) many more applications, including Opera, KMPlayer, Kplayer, MPlayer, Azureus, VLC, Codeine, and more.

Enjoy and say thanks to OpenSUSE developers.

If you happen to know of certain codecs that are not part of this package, please do let me know.

New openSUSE Packages: KDE 4.0 RC1, KOffice 2 Alpha5, Firefox 3.0 Beta

2007-12-06T12:35:00.001+05:30

OpenSUSE 10.3 users now has the option to install the latest development releases of KDE 4.0, KOffice 2 and Firefox 3.0.
The best part is that this is available through the innovative and easy to use 1-Click install.

KDE 4.0 now has Kickoff KDE menu, Plasma, Dolphin File manager, Oxygen, new icons and cool 3D effects. To install latest KDE 4.0 RC1 use . Full KOffice packages are also in the KDE4 Repository.
Similarly Firefox 3.0 Beta could be installed by clicking

Some user Comments.

Install kde4-wallpapers if the 1-Click install does not install the cool KDE 4.0 wallpapers ( It might conflict with existing kde3 packages).
I find openSUSE packages for Firefox3 to be more responsive (switching tabs and scrolling) compared with Firefox2 packages.
After 4 attempts, I managed to get everything up and running, and I’m glad I did.

The one click install did its job well, even in my previously failed attempts by rescuing the aborted installations.

Now I’ve got it, two things really suprise me; Firstly, how much
quicker web browsing is, and secondly, I now have 3D graphics without
all the fuss of repeatedly initalising it through a terminal window.

Linux has indeed come a long way since my first encounter with SUSE
9.0, and for sheer speed, 10.3 has overtaken much of what Microsoft has
to offer.

For now, I’m hooked.

Allan Green. (Cutting Edge Systems)
never mind, I tried it, and it’s ok, but not usable. I found it to be, on 1gb of ram, twice as slow as 3.5.
KDE 4 is really starting to come together. I would like to see how it
comes together in final, and what SUSE does to polish it up in 11. It
might be what makes me switch from GNOME to KDE…. hmmm…

Read the full article at
openSUSE News » Blog Archive » New openSUSE Packages: KDE 4.0 RC1, KOffice 2 Alpha5, Firefox 3.0 Beta

YaST Gets Ported to Qt4

2007-12-06T09:02:00.001+05:30

Stephan Kulow writes on his blog to inform us about his successful attempts in getting YaST ported to Qt4:

"Certain voices claimed, porting Yast to Qt4 would be almost impossible due to the different event loops and threading and all that. But thanks to Thiago's little explanations on how things to go together, it was actually a job done pretty quickly (it was once tried in july, so I didn't start from scratch). Damn! Did I say, I have the rest of the year?"

Here's a screenshot of what can be done with a little editing of the styles:

Read The full article here.

Blogged with Flock

Kubuntu Tutorial Day

2007-12-05T09:36:00.001+05:30

With KDE4 only a month away, now is the time to get involved in becoming a Kubuntu developer. We've set up these IRC sessions below to get you started.

Who's it for? Coders who want to get their apps and themes in the Kubuntu archives; learn about distributed revision control; get into KDE programming or just ask about us.

When is it? Thursday December 13th from 1500UTC

Where is it? On freenode IRC chat network in the #kubuntu-devel channel

15:00 UTC - 16:00 UTC: Packaging 101
How to turn some code into a .deb, one of the best ways of getting into distro development or for getting your code out there.
16:00 UTC - 16:30 UTC: Kubuntu bug triage
Not a coder but want to help? We show you how to make good quality bug reports and triage existing ones.
16:30 UTC - 17:00 UTC: Branch your svn with bzr
How to commit your changes when you don't have an account? How to work experimentally on some code? Distributed revision control is the way forward and bzr is the simplest yet most fully featured system there is.
17:00 UTC - 18:00 UTC: Get programming with PyKDE 4
Scared by C++? Quite right too. Learn how to code graphical apps in an hour with PyKDE 4.
18:00 UTC - 19:00 UTC: Get your work into Kubuntu: PPA, REVU, how to pass New queue
Now you know how to make a .deb, get it into the archives for millions to use.
19:00 UTC onwards: Kubuntu and KDE Q&A
Want to know how to get into Kubuntu development? Want to ask why we love KDE so much? The Kubuntu developers are here to answer any question you have.

Read the Full information at the Kubuntu Wiki.

Blogged with Flock

2007 Linux Desktop/Client Survey

2007-11-30T21:00:00.001+05:30

Do not miss the 2007 Linux Desktop/Client Survey.
The survey is designed to pinpoint areas of user need in order to focus
development efforts and accelerate the global adoption of Linux
desktops and clients. The information from this survey will assist the Linux Foundation Desktop Linux workgroup to focus on areas of development that are important to you.
The 2007 Linux Desktop/Client Survey asks you to answer a few questions
based on your company's desktop/client plans and not necessarily your
personal desktop usage.

You can take the survey in English, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Brasilian Portuguese, Chines and German.

Hurry the survey ends today.

Novell Open Audio: AutoBuild/Build Service

2007-11-30T20:52:00.001+05:30

As part of their openSUSE release series, Novell Open Audio has talked to Michael Schröder and Andreas Bauer about the openSUSE Build Service,
our powerful cross-distribution package build system. They discuss a
bunch of updates which happened over the year since last coverage, what
is being worked on currently and a little bit on how you can have your
projects hosted on the service.

PulseAudio: “Compiz for Sound” on openSUSE

2007-11-30T20:48:00.001+05:30

We’re jumping on to the PulseAudio bandwagon, same as Fedora(Interview with Lennart Poettering). To prepare the groundwork for that move, Rodrigo and I worked on porting all the required packages and getting it working on openSUSE.

Here is the result

Read the Full story Here.

ATI RadeonHD Driver: First Release!

2007-11-30T20:40:00.001+05:30

The X Window System developer team at SUSE has released version
1.0.0 of the ATI Radeon R5xx and R6xx chipset driver it has been
developing over the past few months for Novell’s technology partner AMD.

The source code was initially released
to the public on September 18th. Since then numerous features have been
added to the driver and numerous issues have been fixed in cooperation
with the free software community.

Packages can be found in the openSUSE Build Service, and more information is available on SUSE X.org wiki page.

Why GNOME Sucks

2007-11-30T20:30:00.001+05:30

As Reported at this blog.

I love Qt. Really, not only it’s very integrated, and has a lot of high level functions, things like QString::split(QRegExp), and high level functions, in QSettings. It also has IMHO the best BiDi support, much better then the alternatives (IMHO).
Here is a small example:

Lets count the horrors in that screen shot (taken by running “LANGUAGE=he monodevelop on KUbuntu 7.10):

English translation, on RTL desktop.
In RTL mode, the toolbars are left aligned (should be right aligned)
The wizard’s next arrow points to the right (should be left)
Next/prev windows arrows in the menu point to the wrong direction (not visible in the screen shot)

Don’t get me wrong, KDE3 had some of those issues. But after 3-5 years of usage, someone had to fix them and that someone did. At KDE3 it was done so magically inside KDE3libs, that when Dolphin3 was released, I tried to find some bugs on it and fix them, but I found no visible bug. Then I looked at the code, to see who actually did that job, and I found that the code contains no logic to RTL desktops. Yes, writing KDE3 applications which are RTL aware, is trivial and done for you.
And now a tip for the developers: please run your Qt/KDE application with the “–reverse” command line switch. Thanks.

OpenSUSE on Chocolate Laptop

2007-11-29T16:05:00.001+05:30

Who says devs don't have fun. OpenSUSE developers sure know how to be different.
They have surely made the most amazing and easy to use desktop operating system and this time they showcase their skills in installing OpenSUSE on a chocolate Laptop. Its a Laptop made from Chocolate.
The Laptop configuration is

Chocolate Laptop Fikar FJ

Best before: 2009-01-31
Net Weight: 200g I think the most light weight Laptop.
Contains: sugar, cocoa butter, milk powder (14%), cocoa mass
Emulsifier: lecithin E322
Flavor: vanillin

Enjoy the full article at OpenSUSE site.

Monitor Goes Black after booting

2007-11-29T15:02:00.001+05:30

I am getting too many mails regarding this.

While booting we might get vertical / horizontal Frequency out of sync. This is a indicator that your monitor does not support the frequency Linux is expecting, so the monitor shuts down resulting in Black / Blank screen.
There are two main scenarios

LiveCD boots to a blank monitor.
After Install the Monitor is blank.

In both the cases, the problem is xorg.conf.
This mostly happens when the display driver settings are incorrect in /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Resolution: Most current system offer a "safe mode" boot.

On Ubuntu it is called "Safe Graphics Mode".
Similar options are there for Kubuntu.
On PCLinuxOS it is called "Video Safe Mode FBDev" or " Video Safe Mode Vesa".
OpenSUSE, the Live CD unfortunately does not have any "safe Mode", Please read my previous article to tackle OpenSUSE.

I am sure that other Distributions also offer Similar boot options.

Once installed, the best bet is to use "Failsafe" option. If it fails try the method listed for OpenSUSE, it should work most of the time. If you are not able to still resolve the issue, please mail me the exact distribution, I'll give it a try with the latest version of the distro.
I know I have not covered many other distributions like Fedora, Mandriva, Mepis, Sabayon etc. Please leave comment regarding how you have resolved this issue on these distributions. I have not tried them as I do not use them, but can if required.

SUSE Real Time Linux

2007-11-29T08:53:00.000+05:30

Novell today announced the availability of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, the latest version of Novell's enterprise-class, open source real-time operating system for running high-performance, time-sensitive, mission-critical applications. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, financial organizations can respond more rapidly to changing markets and new information, get greater application reliability and predictability, and identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks. This will allow them to increase revenue opportunities and improve service to their customers, even while reducing computing infrastructure costs.

"In order to win in today's increasingly competitive global markets, companies need to be able to respond quickly while delivering superior products and services," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "Companies that leverage technology such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 to improve responsiveness and availability of critical business services will be better able to compete and grow their own top-line revenues."

With Novell's real-time technology, customers can segment portions of their processors for high-priority mission-critical workloads, as well as ensure that other system processes and tasks do not interrupt them. That means these workloads deliver predictable performance in time-critical environments. Fully supported by Novell®, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is the only open source, enterprise-class real-time operating system available in the market today.

Enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 include the latest enterprise-hardened open source technologies that reduce system latency or delay and improve predictability, such as CPU shielding, priority inheritance, sleeping spinlocks, interrupt threads, high-resolution timers and the latest OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution for commodity high-speed interconnects, OFED 1.2.5. As a result, customers gain time advantage over competitors to make more money or avoid financial losses. They can also increase the availability of their mission-critical applications to ensure quality-of-service targets and service level agreements are met, even while cutting hardware costs.

Read the Full announcement Here.

Vista Glow Emerald Green Theme

2007-11-28T22:27:00.000+05:30

OpenSUSE has a green theme by default. The theme is so well integrated into the entire desktop that it provides a very pleasing experience. To add to this eye candy, installing Compiz Fusion is just a matter of 1-Click install. After that it is a matter of personal settings that which Emerald theme we select to set the environment as per our liking.
I came across Vista Glow Emerald Green Theme and think that the theme gels with the Green Theme of OpenSUSE.

Installing the theme was just a matter of Downloading and extracting into /usr/share/emerald/themes/.
After that all I had to do was select it in Emeral Theme manager.
See the magic here.

Look how well the green border gels into the green wallpaper of SUSE, producing a mesmerizing effect. I sure will keep this theme for long.

Using an IPod Touch/ iPhone with Amarok

2007-11-28T21:24:00.000+05:30

Well, there's a lot of partial instructions on the web, but not a consistent set all the way through, so here's my attempt - hopefully there's enough information here to find everything you need here. Also, this is going to involve resetting your iPod to factory settings, so you'll lose everything currently on it. These instructions should also work on an iPhone - of course, these instructions are for information only, do it at your own risk. Also, sorry, you need a Windows/OSX machine to do the initial setup, and, you need a wireless LAN where you want to sync (with internet connection for setup) - on the plus side, you'll have wireless sync, which even Windows and OSX users don't have :)

Download the 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 firmware images for your iPod Touch/iPhone
Open iTunes, go to your iPod's tab, and shift-click (option-click) "Restore", and select the 1.1.1 firmware image you downloaded earlier
Go to JailBreakMe.com in Safari on the iPod, and click the install link at the bottom
You now have an "Installer" application - run it, then click "Install" at the bottom; click "Tweaks (1.1.1)", then "OktoPrep", and click yes when it asks you if you want to install it
Open iTunes, go to your iPod's tab, and shift-click "Update" (*NOT* "Restore"), and select the 1.1.2 firmware
Download and run the touchfree jailbreak 1.1.2 software - tick "Enable SSH Server", change the password, and press the magic button
Wait a long time for it to finish, and for your iPod to reboot a few times
Click "Install", then "System", and "BSD Subsystem", and say yes when it asks if you're sure
ssh to root@your.ipod.ip.address, and edit /etc/sshd_config (nano, vi, vim are available), enabling rsa public key authentication
Make a passwordless rsa ssh key
ssh-copy-id it to your root@your.ipod.ip.address
restart sshd on it (from the "SSH" icon in the iPod's launcher)
Install fuse, sshfs-fuse, and a recent build of libgpod onto the linux machine you want to sync it with sudo mkdir /mnt/ipod; sudo chmod 755 /mnt/ipod
Mount the iPod's media area with "sshfs root@your.ipod.ip.address:/var/root/Media /mnt/ipod"
cd to /mnt/ipod
ln -s iTunes_Control iPod_Control
cd iPod_Control/Device
sudo lsusb -v -d 05ac: | grep iSerial | awk '{print $3}' | cut -b1-16 | xargs printf "FirewireGuid: 0x%sn" > SysInfo
Leave /mnt/ipod
fusermount -u /mnt/ipod
Open Amarok, and open the page for configuring media devices (Settings->Configure->Media Devices)
Add a new iPod device, at /mnt/ipod (or /media/ipod, depending on your distribution)
Click the two cog wheels by your iPod in Amarok's list of Media Devices
In the "Pre-connect command" box, type "sshfs -o workaround=rename root@ipod.ip.addres.here:/var/root/Media /mnt/ipod" ("workaround=rename" fixes issues with album art).
In the "Post-connect command" box, type "fusermount -u /mnt/ipod"

Use Amarok's "Devices" pane to sync music to and from it - remember that you have to exit and restart the Music app on the iPod after syncing (open it, and hold down the home button until it disappears)

If you're a user of a 64-bit distribution, you'll need a small patch for libgpod.

This post has been flicked Verbatim from Here.

openSUSE KDE Packaging Day: 30th Nov - 1st Dec

2007-11-28T21:20:00.000+05:30

This Friday and Saturday, the openSUSE KDE team will be hosting an openSUSE Packaging Day. It will happen from Friday, 30 November until Saturday, 1st December, from any timezone to any timezone. We will help new packagers to create high-quality packages for KDE for all kinds of distributions, like openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu or Debian via the openSUSE Build Service, so that other KDE users can benefit from it.
Read the Full article here.

Best Community Linux

2007-11-28T14:17:00.001+05:30

I came across an article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nicholas about the Best Community Linux.
I must say, he makes his point clear and highlights the good points of each.
For instance Fedora is the only distribution to have the "Cutting edge" Pulse Audio sound Daemon, which has the ability to set the volume for individual applications and send direct audio streams across the network to other PCs and audio devices. At the same time Fedora is so "Bleeding edge" that users can cut themselves and bleed.

I never liked Fedora's package management, though. For me the choice is only between Ubuntu and OpenSUSE 10.3.
Lets bring in one more community distribution which is gaining user recognition very rapidly -- PCLinuxOS.

Steven mentions that Ubuntu is a good solid distribution, which makes installing codecs and propriety software easy. This is absolutely true about Ubuntu. Its really great for the beginners who need hand holding in setting up their system. The best part about Ubuntu is that it is offered pre installed on Dell systems.

OpenSUSE is a experimental branch of the enterprise grade SLED. OpenSUSE developers tinker with some cutting edge software, but amazingly they somehow keep the distribution very stable.
Ubuntu on the other hand is the final offering by Canonical, there is no separate "Enterprise" version of Ubuntu. Hence Ubuntu developers do not experiment too much. Hence, it tends to be stable.
Same holds true for PCLinuxOS, which I found to be the most stable distribution of the three.

Just comparing the user friendliness of the three

Live CD. Most hardware is correctly auto configured by all the three.

PClinuxOS. Its Dated. I do not understand the usefulness of making user click mouse just to configure network, when this can be auto configured. Also what is the point in making a user enter as either Root or normal user. Comeon this is a LiveCD. If you want to enforce Root protection then you can give a warning on invoking any System level software, such as install to disk. At the same time this is the only LiveCD having non-OSS software and browser plugins. This translates to the ability to play mp3 and watch youtube videos in a Live CD.
Ubuntu. Simplicity is the key word. No user configuration, no entering username and password.... just a good looking LiveCD. However, no non-OSS software or browser plugins. This means that we have reduced functionality than PCLinuxOS.
OpenSUSE. Elegant! This is the word that comes to my mind when I first saw OpenSUSE KDE Live CD. Functionality wise its identical to Ubuntu with no non-OSS software.

Installation.

PCLinuxOS. A very easy install which takes hardly 15 minutes.
Ubuntu. Exact similar to PCLinuxOS
OpenSUSE. Now this is the one which provides too much options. If we choose the default ones, it is like PCLinuxOS/Ubuntu; but user have the option to choose even expert mode which gives a lot of flexibility. Also if we have a single user then the installer auto configures that user to auto login. This is great for a home computer with a single user, eliminating the unnecessary hassle to entering the password each time. Not sure what happens if we add two or more users.

Installed Software.

PCLinuxOS. Almost everything a normal user might need, including the eye candy in for of Compiz. Though i had to install drivers for my Nvidia card separately.
Ubuntu. Again almost everything except for the very essential non-OSS software like Java, media codecs and browser plugins. All this has to be installed manually. Thankfully Ubuntu has a meta package by the name "Ubuntu Restricted Extras". This does the job of installing almost every essential non-OSS software. The restricted driver manager makes installing Nvidia driver very easy, interesting thing is that it requires a reboot; its annoying as no other distribution has asked me to reboot after installing Nvidia drivers. Ubuntu has Compiz pre-installed but does not have Compiz configuration manager or Emerald manager installed. Ubuntu does not installs a dedicated CD/DVD burner, though Nautilus can perform the function with reduced functionality. Its KDE cousin Kubuntu has almost the same software as PCLinuxOS, sans the non-OSS ones.
OpenSUSE. Similar Software to Kubuntu. Installing non-OSS ( ), Nvidia ( ) and Compiz Fusion ( ) is just a matter of clicks. OpenSUSE configures the required repositories and installs the packages.

Package Management. All three have a huge list of software in their repos, sufficient for any normal user. Of these PCLinuxOS has perhaps the most updated packages, OpenSUSE is trying to catch up with its wonderful 1-Click install. Ubuntu by far has the least updated software packages.

PCLinuxOS & Ubuntu. They use Synaptic which is a proven tool to install software.
OpenSUSE. It uses YAST, which is good but a slower tool.

System Configuration.

PCLinuxOS. It uses a customized version of Mandriva Control Center and provides easy configuration to almost all aspects.
Ubuntu. There is no centralized tool, however, various tools makes configuration easy.
OpenSUSE. it uses YAST which is by far the best tool for configurations.

Community Support.

PCLinuxOS. It has possibly the smallest, but a very helpful community.
Ubuntu. The mecca of user Community. The best possible with a huge HowTos.
OpenSUSE. Decent community, but scattered across different forums.

Any of the three easily qualifies as a very good desktop replacement for Windows. Finally the one to use depends upon personal preferences. I like KDE so Ubuntu in its native form is a big NO NO for me. Also its KDE cousin, Kubuntu, lacks the finesse of Ubuntu and is not at all comparable to either PCLinuxOS or OpenSUSE. I have having trouble deciding between OpenSUSE and PCLinusOS as they are both equally good, so I have PCLinuxOS on my Laptop and OpenSUSE on Desktop.

The Perfect Desktop or "The Perfect Bloat"

2007-11-27T15:14:00.000+05:30

DISCLAIMER:
I do not, in any means, want to state that "The Perfect desktop" Guides are not good enough. They are actually very good. They are very exhaustive and have demonstrated everything very nicely with the help of screen shots. My point is that they have gone overboard with their selection of Software.

I want to write a guide to setup a complete windows replacement for a novice and did a little research for the common software a normal user will use. I came across the Perfect Desktop Series of howtoforge.com. They have an excellent guide for setting up "The perfect Desktop". I, however, found this guide to be a little too exhaustive and having too much duplication of software. Lets check their latest guide for Linux Mint 4.0.

Their Preliminary Notes says:
To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Linux Mint 4.0 desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
F-Spot - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
Google Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photos

Internet:

Firefox
Opera
Flash Player 9
FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client
Thunderbird - email and news client
Evolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
aMule - P2P file sharing application
BitTornado - Bittorrent client
Azureus - Java Bittorrent client
Pidgin - multi-platform instant messaging client
Skype
Google Earth
Xchat IRC - IRC client

Office:

OpenOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word
OpenOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel
Adobe Reader
GnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) application

Sound & Video:

Amarok - audio player
Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
Banshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA
Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods
gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
XMMS - audio player similar to Winamp
dvd::rip - full featured DVD copy program
Kino - free digital video editor
Sound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
VLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)
Helix Player - media player, similar to the Real Player
Totem - media player (video/audio)
Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
GnomeBaker - CD/DVD burning program
K3B - CD/DVD burning program
Multimedia Codecs

Programming:

KompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
Quanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editor

Other:

VMware Server - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows
TrueType fonts
Java
Read-/Write support for NTFS partitions

Gosh !! Thats hell of a software and that too many with duplicate functionality. I realize that a normal user might need some of these packages, but definitely not all of them. Thats just simply wastage of space/bandwidth and too much configuration.

Here is a simple review of their software list.

Graphics

Picasa & F-Spot. They both perform very similar functions of organizing photos and doing basic editing. Though picasa also offers to upload to Picasa web and there can be very small differences in their functionality, but at the end, both perform the same function of organizing photos.
GIMP -- Most normal people would not require all the advanced features offered by GIMP, actually speaking most people just want the basic editing offered by both Picasa and F-Spot. GIMP is good, but can be intimidating for novice

Internet.

Firefox and Opera both ??
Thunderbird and Evolution both ??
Azureus and BitTornadi both ??

Sound and Video.

Amarok, Rythmbox,XMMS and Banshee. All four just for playing music ??
gtkPod. Now if you have Amarok, you can control your iPod, gtkPod is not required.
Audacity & Sound Juicer CD Extractor both ??
MPlayer, VLC Media Player, Totem, Xine Media Player, Helix Player -- Did you guys leave anything else on this planet ? Oh yes you missed out on Kaffeine :)
GnomeBaker,dvd::rip and K3B. Wow, when just K3B can perform all the possible CD/DVD burning functions.

Programming.

KompoZer, Bluefish and Quanta Plus. All three for creating a web page.

Others.

VMware Server -- If I want to run Windows desktop, I'll dual boot. Why shall I run a virtual machine in Linux ? Comeon these are GEEKS jobs, who want to tinker with their desktop and play with various options. A normal user will never try this.

Here I can see that too many software share similar functionality with just minor differences between them. Some people might argue that the extra software provides flexibility and an average user might user just the one he/she likes. If that is the case then a normal user should install just the software he/she likes an not three- four similar type of softwares. For instance between Amarok, Rythmbox,XMMS and Banshee, I prefer Amarok and it performs almost all the functions which either of Rythmbox,XMMS or Banshee can perform. Then why should I bloat my system.

HowToForge promotes GNOME as desktop ( even PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE are configured as GNOME )and all their applications are mostly GNOME centric. Then what is the futility of having applications like Amarok, Audacity, QuantaPlus or K3B. We have good GNOME replacement of all these, why not just restrict to pure GNOME, when we can.

There is nothing bad in installing all the above applications, but giving too much choice to users can be confusing. Look at the current most successful desktop Linux distribution - Ubuntu. Ubuntu has carefully selected set of applications for each task. There is not duplication and still user can perform most tasks.
And not to forget, keeping minimal applications keeps the system lean and easier to maintain.

Just my two cents.

Something Cool About Gmail

2007-11-27T00:11:00.001+05:30

You can take almost any variation of your email address and alter it slightly and it will still magically get to you!

read more | digg story

Skype 2 ( Beta ) On OpenSUSE

2007-11-26T11:48:00.001+05:30

I got a mail, asking me how did I install skype 2 ( Beta), with Video support, on OpenSUSE 10.3.
I replied to him and then did a google search to find out any page detailing the procedure. Strange I could not find any.

Though installing the latest beta version of Skype is very trivial, but the fact is that no document exists to let new users know the procedure. Here we go.

Go to the Skpye 2.0 beta for Linux Page.
There are several packages listed for various distributions, Select the one for OpenSUSE 10+.
Click on it to install -- thats it. Job well done. YAST2 will take care of the remaining things. You would just require to fill in your super user password and click the install button. YAST2 installs all the required dependencies ( if any not already installed). Just for information. Skype 2.0 lists Qt 4.2.1, D-Bus 1.0.0, and libasound2 1.0.12 as dependencies.

After the install, Skype was able to auto detect my Creative web cam and correctly configure it. Though like normal skype, I can still configure both video and audio.
I use KDE as desktop, hence, Skype is auto started on each login and I am auto logged in. As with normal skype, I get all the alerts about my contacts being online/ offline and I can start chat/call/video call with them. I was able to video chat with my wife who has skype on windows. No issues of operating system compatibility. Best thing about skype is that unlike Kopete, I can set the incoming image to Full Screen and get a more realistic feel of the person I am talking to.

I think that video chatting with a windows user was one of the major restrictive factor in Linux, which Skype 2.0 beta video has successfully eliminated. Wish that Skype Video for Linux gets a stable release soon, even better, Skype for Linux becomes open source !!!

The Complete OpenSUSE Desktop Setup

2007-11-21T14:46:00.001+05:30

DISCLAIMER: This is not a review of OpenSUSE. Just my experiences in making SUSE work for me. This is just on the line of my previous similar article about Ubuntu setup.

The Live CD:
The biggest gripe about OpenSUSE is that it does not have a LiveD, a la Ubuntu, so that users can test their hardware compatibility and get a feel of the distribution before installing it. SUSE developers took the task and came out with OpenSUSE LiveCDs both for KDE and GNOME and when SUSE devs get to work, they create a marvel. I downloaded the KDE version of LiveCD and here are my experiences with it.

I have a Nvidia 6200 256 MB card, which no LiveCD seems to like; I have tried (k)Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS and Mint. If I select normal boot option on the Live CD, then the boot "hangs" after some time. Its like the screen goes black and the indicator on the monitor goes from Green to Amber. This is due to incorrect xorg.conf generated by the LiveCDs. On OpenSUSE 10.3 KDE LiveCD, I had to enter "3" in the normal boot options so that LiveCD boots into init 3 more ( a non-graphical mode). I then logged in as "root" with no password and ran "sax2-vesa". This created a generic xorg.conf with "vesa" drivers and enabled me to start the graphical mode with command "init 5 ".

I was greeted with a beautiful green OpenSUSE default desktop. This was the first time I was looking at an OpenSUSE LiveCD, and boy I was impressed. In my previous experience in installing SUSE I had to wait for 6 long hours before install completed, so this time I wanted to prepare myself before that. I had installed scibefire in Firefox and started writing the install experience. Having set that, I tried the hard disk install. For the first time OpenSUSE LiveCD has and install option. I always believe in LiveCD install and happily clicked the icon. The install was very similar to a normal SUSE KDE install.
The installer asked em to reboot after 10-15 minutes. What ? a reboot ! Is the install over ?
The answer was NO, OpenSUSE does a minimal install of kernel and required softwares and then reboots to finish the remaining configurations. After reboot I was brought to a normal SUSE installer with no Firefox or other applications. It was going to be the repeat of last experience; I was expecting OpenSUSE to download loads of packages and take 6-7 hours, however, SUSE installer gave me a pleasant surprise and after around 10 or 15 minutes announced that the install is over. Well if OpenSUSE can do a seemingly full system install with a LiveCD, without requiring much downloads from internet, then why can't it do so with a dedicated install CD ? One notable good thing here is that during User Addition OopenSUSE by default enabled auto-login for my single user.
This is a nice feature. On a personal computer, normally we have only one user using it and I always enable auto-login in KDE preferences; it was nice to see the installer do it for me.
The security conscious people can disable auto-login and can also set a grub password using YAST2.

Intial Impressions on hard disk boot:
SUSE exhibits style and elegance and its even pronounced in KDE; KDE being their preferred area. The default desktop is simply beautiful and elegant. The applications open fairly fast, are well integrated into green desktop theme and are very stable. First thing to do was to enable playing mp3 and videos, I just clicked a link and it started the YAST2 package manger and installed the following software.

Flash
Java
Latest Amarok (with MP3 Support) for KDE, or Helix-Banshee for GNOME users
Encrypted DVD (libdvdcss)
Extra xine codecs, for MPEG-4 etc. (libxine1)
K3b with MP3 Support (k3b-codecs)
Win 32 Codecs (w32codec-all)

..as well as the option of installing many more applications (select Advanced mode at the screen), including:

Opera
KMPlayer
Kplayer
MPlayer
Azureus
VLC
Codeine
..and more

Now I had most of my video and mp3 playing, added to it I have my Firefox capable of playing flash video. I like Firefox customized to my specific needs so I went ahead and installed some of my favourites add-ons like scribeFire, Gmail Manager, PDF Download and Answers.

Search: OpenSUSE comes pre-installed with kerry which has proved itself as a very competent front end to the Beagle desktop Search daemon.

Media & Internet :OpenSUSE has one of the best selected media software which are well suited to the task. To list a few

Amarok
Digikam
Kaffeine
Kopete etc
Krita Image Editor
KTorrent - Arguably the best torrent client we have today.

OpenSUSE has NTFS write support by default and the best part is the SUSE auto-mounts all the windows partitions, enabling them in the konqueror Storage Devices area. This is a very nice feature allowing me to keep common data between Windows and Linux on my Fat32 Data Partition. All my photos, mp3 and Videos reside in this partition.
I also got a huge list of KDE3 and KDE4 games installed on my system which are good enough for me to while away my time.

Now here comes the best ( or the worst, depending upon perception ) aspect of OpenSUSE 10.3 - YAST2.
YAST2 is a one stop application for full system configuration. It can mange hardware, set screen resolution, change grub settings, manage software repositories, configure printer, configure network, set login properties ..... and yet YAST2 can also install/remove software.
Though I did not like YAST2 as a package manager, due to the fact that it refreshes the repositories each time it is envoked. This results in a long time gap between YAST2 invocation and it being usable. Why can't YAST2 keep a cache of packages in repositories, a la Synaptic ?

Some Additional Softwares: OpenSUSE comes preloaded with a huge list of usable software, however, many still remain. Here is a list of the extra softwares that are
essential for normal usage of my desktop.

Skype 2 ( Beta). With the addition of Video in Skype 2 for Linux, even a Beta should not
deter most of us from installing this exceptional application. Skype2 has a version for OpenSUSE 10+ and when clicked it starts the YAST2 package manger.
Realplayer and Firefox plugins
Latest version of GIMP using 1-Click install.

As you can see that total extra softwares are negligible when compared to Ubuntu. OpenSUSE simply comes preloaded with most of the required softwawres.

Having installed all this, I had a fully functional Desktop. However, I wanted eyecandy too.
For this I had to install the latest Nvidia drivers and the Compiz Fusion packages. With 1-Click install it was all very simple, Please check my earlier article about it. All it took was 3 clicks and I had my video driver setup and compiz enabled. Now the default configurations lead to borderless windows so I used Emeral Manager instead of the default kde-window-manager as Display manager.
Best thing is that even after all the desktop effects enabled, I always have a snappy system with very good performance.

I would say that OpenSUSE is a desktop oriented distribution and makes life simple for its users. It detected all my hardware by default and installed correct open source drivers for them. The default applications are very good and the system appears very responsive, specially applications like OpenOffice and GIMP open very quickly -- much faster as compared to Ubuntu. The best thing about the SUSE desktop is good aesthetics and a very stable system. Despite the fact that I have installed some bleeding edge applications like Compiz-Fusion and latest GIMP, I am yet to receive a single application crash/freeze. Kudos to OpenSUSE devs for delivering such a good distribution.

Please check some eye-candy screenshots of OpenSUSE 10.3 at their official website.

NOTE: In my earlier install of OpenSUSE 10.3 I had faced some stability issues, running a video in full screen mode used to crash XServer, however, with my new Nvidia 6200 card I have never faced the same issue. Actually I am yet to get any application crash in this install. The system looks rock solid and responsive. I think earlier it was an issue with my unichrome/openchrome graphics drivers for my VIA KM400 card.

OpenSUSE LiveCD results in blank Screen

2007-11-21T00:23:00.000+05:30

I have just installed a Nvidia 6200 256MB graphics card in my desktop and suddenly all install/Live CDs have started behaving funny with me.
First I tried Ubuntu 7.10 LiveCD and got a blank screen with the Monitor power light turning "Amber". I then did a hard reboot and this time tried the "Safe graphics Mode" and was able to get a XServer desktop.

However, in OpenSUSE 10.3 KDE Live CD, there is no such option such as "Safe graphics mode". Hence for novice users like me there is no option by which I can boot through this CD and get a graphical desktop. I searched a little and found this workaround.

Select to boot from SUSE LiveCD and enter "3" in the Boot Options. This ensures that "init 3" mode is selected and the Live CD boots in text-only mode; hence, no GUI server is started and we get a login prompt.
Login as "root" with no password.
Run the command "sax2-vesa". This starts the SUSE configuration utility and select the default graphics driver "vesa". Just select the default option, that should work for most hardware. This was will not be able to use the full functionality of my card, but will be able to get a GUI.
Restart the GUI server by entering the command "init 5".

The default OpenSUSE 10.3 KDE desktop starts and I was greeted with this beautiful screen.

The OpenSUSE 10.3 LiveCD contains, for the first time, an icon to install the distribution to the hard disk. The install is as convenient as a Ubuntu install, only difference is that OpenSUSE install offers more flexibility.
Enjoy your OpenSUSE KDE LiveCD.

NOTE: This works well for any video card that is not supported by default by the LiveCD. I have learned from friends that they followed the same trick with their ATI cards and were successful.

The Complete Ubuntu Desktop Setup

2007-11-16T12:23:00.001+05:30

DISCLAIMER: This is not a review of Ubuntu. Just my experiences in making Ubuntu work for me.

The latest release of the very famous desktop oriented Linux distribution, Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, was released last month and has earned high accolades from a very wide range of users. Almost every professional reviewer has applauded and appreciated this release, I can quote Ars Technica , PC World, Ditrowatch and Seopher.
Soepher actually goes to the extent of claiming that

"Show me one Vista user who isn't in awe of Gutsy Gibbon and I'll show you a liar".

These all present a very rosy picture of Ubuntu Gutsy and made me try Ubuntu. My experiences, however, were not as good.
Ubuntu is a great distribution and is one of the major causes of increase in Linux on Desktop. It definitely is an easy to use distribution and has a great community. Most of the hardware is self detected and auto configured; still I found it lacking in some small areas. This article represents the measures I took to make Ubuntu truly workable for me.

The Live CD:
I have a Nvidia 6200 256 MB card, which Ubuntu does not seem to like. If I select normal boot option on the Live CD, then the boot "hangs" after some time. Its like the screen goes black and the indicator on the monitor goes from Green to Amber. I simply took out the Nvidia card and used the motherboard in-built Via KM400 card and Ubuntu booted without any problem.
What happened to the so called Bulletproof-X ??

Then I again re-inserted the 6200 card and booted to Ubuntu in "Safe Graphics" or something like that mode. This time again the monitor light turned Amber, but all it took was a single click of mouse to bring back the Green Light and a beautiful looking Ubuntu Desktop.
After this I tried playing some videos from youtube, so that I can while away my time during the Ubuntu install. As expected the plugins were not found and Firefox gave me an option to install it. However, the install resulted in a failure as the required software were not found in the repository. I believe that I got this error as the correct repositories were not setup. Then I tried playing some avi videos from my Fat32 partition. Totem again gave me the option to install some gstreamer plugins, I was not sure but again tried the install. This time the installer added some repositories and the install went fine.
NOTE: The Ubuntu installer claims to install to hard disk any software that has been installed in Live CD. Hence I hope that it will also install the Totem gstreamer plugins.

Having fixed that, I tried the hard disk install. Ubuntu has made it very easy to install the distribution to hard disk. They also claim to copy the Firefox/IE settings etc from Windows partition. I was a fool to have believed it. The install got stuck when it tried to read my windows NTFS partition. I think I got frustrated and instead of Killing the install and retrying, I quickly rebooted in "Safe graphics" mode and started the install without copying anything from NTFS. The install went smoothly and soon I was able to boot from my newly installed Ubuntu.
This time I had not installed the Totem gstreamer plugins, so could not check if Ubuntu disk installer actually copies them.

Intial Impressions on hard disk boot:
Now I knew that Ubuntu does not come with many plugins and Non-OSS software pre-installed, hence, I simply went ahead and installed the package "Ubuntu Restricted Extras". In the meanwhile, I saw a pop-up on the top menu bar indicating me that Ubuntu thinks that I have a hardware for which Ubuntu Restricted driver exists. I just clicked the pop-up and it guided me in easily installing the drivers for Nvidia 6200. Immediately after the driver install, I felt like I am in the blissful world of Windows -- The Ubuntu driver installer asked me to reboot. Wow !!
I don't think that a display driver requires a reboot, most distributions would be OK with a XServer restart.
Maybe this is another way Ubuntu is luring Windows customer -- by offering them Windows like experience. :)

Now I had most of my video and mp3 playing, added to it I have my Firefox capable of playing flash video.
Ubuntu has done many customizations to Firefox. If there is no flash plugin then Firefox offers to install flash using Ubuntu package manager and offers a choice between open source Gnash plugins and Adobe Flash, though Adobe flash plugins are selected by default.
Similarly many Firefox add-ons can be installed/updated using Ubuntu package manager. This gives a more integrated look and feel to Firefox and is a very useful feature. Its like when I upgrade my system using Synaptic, then Firefox add-ons also get updated. I went ahead and installed some of my favourites add-ons like scribeFire, Gmail Manager, PDF Download and Answers.

Search: Ubuntu come pre-installed with Tracker as a tool for desktop search. Its good enough, though I have not tested it throughly.

Media & Internet : I am not fussy about any particular software unless I get too much benefit out of it. Hence, the Ubuntu defaults like F-Spot, Rythembox and Totem are OK with me; though I must say that Digikam, Amarox and Kaffeine are much easier to use and are more feature rich. One Ubuntu default software that I had to replace was Pidgin, I replaced it with Kopete; reason being that Pidgin does not support webcam on Yahoo messenger, while kopete does.

Ubuntu has NTFS write support by default and the best part is the Ubuntu auto-mounts all the windows partitions. This is a very nice feature allowing me to keep common data between Windows and Linux on my Fat32 Data Partition. All my photos, mp3 and Videos reside in this partition.

Some Additional Softwares: Ubuntu comes preloaded with a huge list of usable software, however, many still remain. Here is a list of the necessary softwares that are essential for normal usage of my desktop.

Adobe Reader with Firefox plugins
Microsoft Fonts
Windows Codecs
Sun Java 6.0 with Firefox plugins
VLC; Totem does not play some file formats while vlc is at ease with them.
Auto-fsck. This is a killer modification to Ubuntu and removes the nagging 30 boot scans
K3B. Gnome does not have a dedicated application for Writing to CD/DVD, though Nautilus performs the job. K3B is becoming Linux standard as a CD/DVD ripping application and is a must.
Skype 2 ( Beta). With the addition of Video in Skype 2 for Linux, even a Beta should not deter most of us from installing this exceptional application.
Realplayer and Firefox plugins
GTKPod. I want to manage my iPod from Ubuntu itself. I could not figure out how can I do it with RythemBox, though with Amarox it is very easy and a separate application could be avoided.

Having installed all this, I had a fully functional Desktop. However, I wanted eyecandy too. Luckily Ubuntu comes with Compiz-Fusion by default. As I had the correct Nvidia Drivers, so I could use compiz-Fusion without any modifications. I found it a little strange that Ubuntu does not install Compiz Settings Manager or the Emerald Manager by default. These two are very essential for configuring Compiz-Fusion to my taste, so here goes Synaptic at work and I had both installed.

After this I added some of my favorites like skype, kopete, katapult and Compiz-Fusion to the session manager so that they start every time I log in.

I would say that Ubuntu is a desktop oriented distribution and makes life simple for its users. It detected all my hardware by default and suggested correct drivers for them. The screen resolution was also set accordingly. The default applications are good and the system appears responsive. Having said that it does require too many additional applications to make it truly useful. Thankfully I was able to do that.

World's Fastest Supercomputers

2007-11-14T10:19:00.001+05:30

The 30th edition of the TOP500 list was released on Nov. 12, 2007
at SC07, the international conference on high performance computing,
networking, storage and analysis, in Reno, Nevada. The Top 10 shows five new and one substantially upgraded system with
five of these changes placing at the top five positions. The new TOP500
list, as well as the previous 29 lists, can be found on the Web at http://www.top500.org/.

Topping the list was IBM with two of its computers occupying first and second positions. They are installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif and Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ), Germany respectively.
The third fastest computer belongs to the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) in Rio Rancho, N.M. and is built by SGI.
India proving its presence in high end technical world has bagged the honour of having the fourth fastest computer. It is a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform and installed at The Computational Research Laboratories of Tata Sons in Pune.
The No.5 system is also a new Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000
BL460c system and installed at a Swedish government agency. It was
measured at 102.8 TFlop/s.

The last new system in the Top 10, placing No. 9, is a Cray XT4
system installed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing
Center (NERSC) at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was
ranked based on a Linpack performance of 85.4 TFlop/s.

Read the full article at Top500.org

Windows Users download Ubuntu

2007-11-14T00:11:00.001+05:30

Today I was downloading Ubuntu 7.10 desktop i386 iso and came across an interesting fact.
I was using kTorrent and was delighted to see more than 1400 seeders and around 150 leechers.
There were seeders from many countries prominent among them being

U.S
U.K
Germany
Italy
France
Finland
Canada
Brazil
Argentina
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland and
Mexico.

Now the total number of peers from a specific country, whom I was connected, was varying however the maximum number of peers were from the U.S, Finland and Germany. Now this data can vary from person to person and I cannot comment upon the usage. Google trends does shows a better stats about searched made regarding Ubuntu in different countries.

I also observed the torrent client used by the peers I was connected to and came across an interesting discovery; the maximum number of peers were using utorrent. The torrent clients I saw can be listed as

utorrent
Ktorrent
Azureus
BitTorrent and
Transmission

The above list is in the descending order with maximum numbers of peers using utorrent and Transmission being used by least number of seeders. There were others too but their number was insignificant.
Now utorrent is a Windows only client, this makes this observation very interesting. Imagine, the maximum number of Ubuntu peers are actually using some version of Windows :). This indicates the growing awareness of Ubuntu among Windows users.
I really wish that those Windows users do give Ubuntu a fair try and then decide if they want to go back to Windows.

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Distribution Statistics- Ubuntu Tops again

2007-11-12T22:06:00.001+05:30

Distrowatch has released some interesting stats about prominent distributions.
First one is the page hit rank (PHR) on the day of the distribution release.
As expected Ubuntu tops the number of page hits on its release date, followed by PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE.

The Top 10 are

Ubuntu 7.10
PCLinuxOS 2007
openSUSE 10.3
Fedora 8
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0
Mandriva Linux 2008
SimplyMEPIS 6.5
Gentoo Linux 2007
Slackware Linux 12.0
Sabayon Linux 3.4

The Other stats relates to the number of people using IRC channel of a distribution.
Here again Ubuntu is way ahead of others. However, there is a huge deviation from PHR and we have Gentoo on second place followed by debian.

The Top 10 in this list are

Ubuntu
Gentoo Linux
Debian GNU/Linux
Kubuntu
FreeBSD
Arch Linux
Slackware Linux
Fedora
openSUSE
CentOS

Mandriva occupies 12 place and the current Distrowatch PHR topper PCLinuxOS is at 18th position.
Key thing to note is that Ubuntu had 1,240 users on IRC where as PCLOS had just 32.

The IRC stats collector Marijn Schouten concluded:
"I think that IRC statistics are more representative of current number of users while PHR is more representative of the number of people that are not actually using a distro, but are merely curious as to what sets it apart from the others. Such interest is more fickle than being an actual user of a distro. Therefore I think IRC rank is more representative of the actual size of the community around a distro, which I think is the relevant measure to rank distros by."

Now this does not go well with me. IRC is more for technical users; most of my friends using Linux never log on to any IRC channel. If they have any issue, they Google for it or look at the distribution Forums. My claim to technical users using IRC is further supported by the fact that "geeky" distributions ( Gentoo, Debian, Arch, Slackware and CentOS) and operating system ( FreeBSD) constitute majority of the top 10 list. Not sure how many average users use either of the above listed ones as their desktop operating system. I was a great fan of Arch Linux on desktop, untill I found PCLOS and gave in to ease of use, however, I do not consider myself as average user.

Ubuntu is a distribution used equally by geeks as well as average user. We see too many software being developed on top of Ubuntu, mac4Lin being a very good example. Hence, I assume that those developers contribute to high number of users of Ubuntu in IRC.

If you have a different opinion, please share it.

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Firefox Bleeds Memory

2007-11-12T20:44:00.001+05:30

I am a long time Firefox user and know that it uses a lot of Memory.
Currently on my system, Firefox is using around 400 MB. On the other hand, Opera with more tabs open is using only 150 MB.
I was looking for some tweeks to somehow control this excessive usage of memory in Firefox and came across this article on CRN.
The author Ed Moltzen quotes Christopher- a member of Mozilla Board as


" As Mozilla starts down the path to running in the mobile space we are spending time looking at memory pressure issues more closely. . . (I)t sounds like the early data suggests that Mozilla really doesn't leak that much memory at all. But it does thrash the allocator pretty hard and that's what causes the perception of memory leaks."

The Mozilla dev attribute this problem to memory fragmentation , but the fact remains that Firefox can bring my system to a standstill.
I hope there will be some relief in Firefox 3, till then its Opera for me.

Here is an excellent Article that tries to fix some of the problems.
I have tried a few and they seem to work, though the memory utilization only reduces marginally.
Please try them and let me know how they go for you.

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Is Eye Candy bad for Ubuntu/Linux ?

2007-11-07T14:46:00.001+05:30

I came across an Article on the relevance of Compiz-Fusion in Linux particularly in Ubuntu. The Author, Matt Hartley, has published two different articles Here and Here to emphasize the same thing. His main argument is that Compiz makes Linux Complicated.
The Ubuntu GNOME looses its very foundations -- its simplicity.
I think he might be right on certain points but overall I do not agree with him.
Lets look at some of his points

Ubuntu Looses Stability with Compiz enabled. Now some people still claim Compiz Fusion to be an unstable software, but for home users it is fairly stable. I just started using it on my SUSE KDE 10.3 and have found it to be very stable and an eye candy. Though I surely results in a decrease in performance or the snappyness of the system, but stability wise I have no complaints. I believe Ubuntu should be equally good too.
Compiz-Fusion is too Complex. If you read my post mentioned above and an addition to it regarding some easy configuration, you can see that Compiz is easier to setup and use than configuring a XOrg Server. Its a one time configuration using GUI tools and I never had to check it again. Where does the question of Complexity comes ? If Matt refers to the various options offered by Compiz, well those are options -- use only the ones you like. Also by default some options are enabled which might be good for most users.
People should try Linux for reasons other than Compiz. This is a debatable topic. If people can try Linux for its stability, for it being virus-free then why not for its eye-candy ? Lets agree that Linux does not support all the hardware supported by Windows, Windows have better applications and Windows have better games. If Linux can claim that it has better eye candy, then whats the harm in this ?
Is Running Compiz-Fusion An Insult to GNOME's Mission? No Comments. I am no expert on GNOMEs mission or its simplicity- heck I don't even use GNOME. I am a KDE Guy, but strongly believe that a beautiful desktop is a beautiful desktop -GNOME or KDE.
Metacity Allows for Duplicable results. Not sure what does he means, but if he means that by running Compiz we give more options to user, then is it a bad thing ? Linux is all about option. We have options in form of Window manger ( KDE, GNOME, XFCE, E17, Fluxbox etc.. ) Web Browser ( Firefox, Konqueror, Flock, Opera etc.. ) then why not have an option to beautify our desktop. If all it takes to have beautiful effects is a few clicks in a GUI Configurator then options are good. Well !! even for a beginner.
Following Vista/OSX/KDE is not good. If Vista has some good points, I see no shame in duplicating the same on Linux. People love Vista/OSX looks. gnome-look.org has many Vista/OSX themes. Even a project called mac4Lin exists and is a huge success. People love eye candy. If Compiz Fusion saves them the trouble of manually doing these things then following XXXX is good.

Stability is a very big factor for me, I have even bashed SUSE when I had some stability problems with 10.3. However, we should not forget that we install the latest SUSE or a Latest Ubuntu the day it is released. We want the latest softwares. Here lies the catch.
Now if we go for the latest software some bugs are destined to crop up, however, Compiz is to be used on Home Desktop and not production Servers, hence some slight problems should be OK. Some problems are found even in the Latest versions of Firefox, Should we revert back to Firefox 1.X and look for stability. If we are so stability conscious then we might try Debian sarge with Linux Kernel 3.1 instead of the more contemporary Ubuntu.
All this apart, I have not faced any stability problem with Compiz-Fusion on my SUSE, else I would definitely have mentioned in this blog.

For any Distribution the first appealing point is its Looks, thats the reason almost all leading distributions have screenshots on their sites. If Linux can impress a possible convert with the help of Compiz-Fusion I think its a job well done.

Compiz Fusion results in borderless windows

2007-11-07T11:38:00.000+05:30

I have just installed the beautiful eye candy on SUSE 10.3 and I think its simply great. I specially like the cube rotation and the Fire Effects. Configuring Compiz Fusion was really easy with the help of compizconfig-settings-manager.
As recommended I was using the kde-window-decorator as Display manager.
There was one big error in this arrangement -- All the windows were borderless and I can't move them. This way I was missing on many cool effects which appear on moving/resizing a window.

How to solve this ? Easy!! use Emerald manager instead of the default kde-window-decorator.
The Emerald Theme manager also offers some cool themes. I selected Vista-q and now I have Vista like glossy window borders. I must say the buttons look beautiful and I get to move the windows, tilt them, resize them, bend them ( yes it is possible with Compiz) and get all the cool effects. Soon I will be posting the beautiful Compiz effects on my elegant SUSE 10.3.
Stay tuned.

gOS- The Google inspired Linux Distribution

2007-11-06T23:36:00.001+05:30

Internet is Full of news about the success of Everex PC with gOS installed on them. The main reason for the success could be attributed to its price tag of $200, however lets look beyond the price into the technology powering this highly successful machine. I did a quick research and found gOS to be an interesting project.

The philosophy behind gOS is that the desktop OS is just a means to activate the actual Operating System -- The Online Operating System. They believe that all the applications should be on internet and have created a marvel using this approach.
Google is the leader in Online applications with its extensive Suit of applications like GMail, Google Docs & Spreadsheet, Reader, Calender etc and an association with Google increases the likelihood of people trusting the product. The gOS developers rested their trust on two of the most hyped companies today
Google and Canonical ( of Ubuntu Fame).
Lets see what gOS is all about.

The About page of gOS says

An alternative operating system for the masses. Our idea is to be a simple, user friendly, beautiful desktop for normal people.

Out Of the Box Applications Support

Ubuntu 7.10
Enlightenment Window Manager
Firefox Browser
You Tube
MP3
Connection to iPod
Skype
Xine
OpenOffice
1-Click connection to Facebook
GMail
Gtalk
Google Calender
Goolge Docs & Spreadsheets
Google Maps and Above all
Integrated Google Search

Clearly this is a very good implementation of the latest buzzword in Linux community -- Ubuntu.
It sticks to its goal of being Google friendly and could turn out to be very useful of an average user.

Everex is not content with launching just an ultra successful desktop PC, PCWorld reports that Everex is now planning to introduce a $300 Laptop. Man !! now that banking on the success. In the end this will turn out to be good for common people like me, so I support it.

Here is a demo video of gOS.

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1-Click Compiz Fusion onOpenSuse 10.3

2007-11-05T18:48:00.001+05:30

I have a three years old desktop with AMD 2400+ CPU, 640 MB RAM on a Via KM400 motherboard. I love my desktop as it helps me in experimenting with the latest and the greatest software and distribution releases. Currently I have OpenSUSE 10.3 on it. Its a fairly old computer so I could not try the latest eye candy on it, I am referring to compiz-fusion.
I also wanted to test mac4Lin, but could not test the eye candy again.
One fine day I decided that I had enough and went ahead to buy an economical graphics card which will run fusion easily. A little search and I had determined that I am going for Nvidia 6200 256 MB card. Now this card is just for RS 2300 ( aprox $60, might get even cheaper in US ) and delivers excellent results for compiz-fusion.

Buying the card was the toughest part, after it was all smooth. From opening the chassis and physically installing the card to getting beautiful compiz, all was like a child's play. Here are the steps I followed after physically installing the card and rebooting to OpenSUSE 10.3.

The system could not start KDM, as it was configured to my earlier via driver, and brought me to command line login. I just edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and changed the driver to vesa ( a generic driver ) to enable GUI mode.
Next I had to install Nvidia drivers. I little search on SUSE site took me to their Nvidia Page. It has detailed instructions for OpenSUSE 10.2 and OpenSUSE 10.3. It even distinguishes between "new" and legacy Nvidia cards. Here again I saw how easy is it to use 1-Click install. I choose the "new" Nvidia card for my 6200 and just followed the YAST2 install procedure. Here is a direct link for new Nvidia cards driver for the lazy readers
To use NVIDIA's driver directly to run Compiz or Compiz Fusion run the following commands and restart X (Logout and press <CTRL> <ALT> <BACKSPACE>).
su - nvidia-xconfig --composite nvidia-xconfig --render-accel nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24
With proper drivers for my card installed, I went to the OpenSUSE 10.3 compiz-fusion install page. Again the install was as simple as clicking For KDE and For GNOME.
I did not follow any further instructions, instead I went to KDE Menu and clicked on "Compiz Fusion Icon" under New Applications. Thats it. I had the beautiful Compiz-Fusion in all its glory.

As of now I do not know how to take screenshots while rotating the desktop, else would love to flaunt my beautiful desktop. Could someone please leave instructions for that?
Also would request to please tell me how to have that ultra cool FIRE burning effect that I have seen in numerous you tube videos.

OpenSUSE have really hit the bulls eye with their one click install concept and I am loving it.

Open Source projects prefer to close the project

2007-11-05T00:40:00.001+05:30

Read this amazing article about open source projects trying to apply the closed source tactics.

KDE's Oxygen Project ( icon redesign) releases a few icons under LGPL and then the project people object when an outsider releases a GNOME theme package based on the above icons.
GIMP UI Redesign team closes the access of project wiki. Only the project team can make changes. This goes to an extent where an excited would-be participant volunteered to help and got the reply "I am afraid that I do not have positions open at the moment." from the project lead of GIMP UI redesign team.

In my opinion open source should be really open, with inputs from all. However, the core team should have the approval rights, denying to submit a patch is total gross. Similarly, if a release is made under GPL (variants ) then the people should not crib about its legitimate usage or reproduction.

Please do read the full article for details.

Nouveau: A First Look

2007-11-04T21:42:00.001+05:30

Nouveau is a community project that is working on producing open-source
3D display drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards. Nouveau is not affiliated with
NVIDIA Corporation and is an X.Org Foundation project. While this project is still
far from being completed, for this holiday special we are sharing some of our
first thoughts on this project from our experience thus far. We would like to
make it very clear, however, that the Nouveau driver is no where near completed
and still has a great deal of work ahead for the 3D component. This article today
will also hopefully shed some light on the advancements of this project so far.

Read the full article at Phoronix.

PCLinuxOS improving its community

2007-11-02T14:21:00.001+05:30

We have loads of websites, reviews and blogs about how "radically simple" PCLinuxOS is.
People that try it almost always like it ( there are exceptions though) and like it to the extent that they have made it Number One Distribution on Distrowatch.

As PCLOS has displaced Ubuntu, so many people try it and then rate it in comparison to Ubuntu.
To site a favorable example, check Maarteen's open source Blog.
I have seen numerous examples of such comparison and in almost all PCLOS wins easily.
However, there are three major problems with PCLOS

Its only in English. Now PCLOS is based upon Mandriva and Mandriva can be customized to most of known languages, the same holds true for PCLOS also, though it might require some tweaking.
A fresh install would mean more than 500 MB of updates. Ubuntu has a 6 month release schedule, for PCLOS it is unknown. PCLOS has a rolling release system, so people who have installed 2007 simply need to do an upgrade through Synaptic and they will have the latest PCLOS. Any new release would simply be a snapshot of the existing stable software in PCLOS 2007 repository. That apart Texstar is planning to make a release some time soon.
Community. Now this is one area where Ubuntu scores heavily over PCLOS. Agreed Ubuntu has got the greatest community amongst all Linux Distributions ( gentoo users may contest this ), however, PCLOS is improving on its community and improving very rapidly. Recently I had posted a query in PCLOS forums and was delighted to find and answer by Texstar himself. It was about including Adept Package Manager ( Kubuntu Fame) in PCLOS and Texstar writes back
"I looked at Adept a couple of times already. The first time it just crashed out. Later I snatched Ark Linux srpms and got a little closer but it still crashed out looking for some kind of catergories. Im more interested in Packagekit that Foresight Linux is working on but we'd have to do some udev, hal,dbus updating for 2008 before we can get it into PCLinuxOS."
Now a reply by the Project Manager of the Distribution indeed instills lots of confidence that the Forums are being monitored by the PCLOS team at the highest level. Just read his words, how cleverly he has not only answered my question, but also gave another interesting information about the possible package manager in PCLOS. I then went ahead and check the "software and Installation folders on PCLOS forums". As expected, they are full of questions, however, to my surprise almost all of them has an answer. There are many "Senior members" who take the pains of answering and helping others. Definitely the community is growing.

Its simply a great feeling to know that Texstar himself looks at the questions in the Forum and when appropriate replies to them. This shows how much importance Tex pays to the users of this great Distribution. Tex, I am already a huge fan of PCLOS, but now you have simple won me over.
Thanks for making such a nice distribution and for making me feel great about being a part of it.

1-Click install of GIMP 2.4 on OpenSUSE

2007-11-01T22:59:00.001+05:30

The 1-Click install is turning out to be really productive. People are adapting it for installing many softwares.
The latest version of Gimp, version 2.4, is also available for install via the Community repository.
Install it using the Following links

For OpenSUSE 10.3

For OpenSUSE Factory.

Copied Shamelessly from James Ogley.

Ubuntu vs OpenSUSE

2007-11-01T17:34:00.001+05:30

Disclaimer ::
My default distributions is PCLinuxOS and I am not a fanboy of either Ubuntu or OpenSUSE.
I have tried to be as impartial as I can, but I am human after all and can be biased.
This comparison is written purely with people new to Linux or for people who wants to get things done easily.
Advanced users may find it lacking or might even differ with my views, apologies to them, but I am basing this for average user.
I know that some people are against SUSE for the deal with M$, however, this comparison totally ignores politics and focuses only
on ease of use, even if some features are a result of M$ deal.

I had done the similar comparison some times earlier with OpenSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu/Kubuntu 6.10.
In that I found SUSE leading on most accounts. However, this time I am going with Ubuntu Gutsy ( 7.10) and OpenSUSE 10.3.
Ubuntu Gutsy is proclaimed to be the best Ubuntu ever and it really appears to be, everything simply works .
On the other hand, OpenSUSE 10.3 though great release, but I had some stability issues with it.
I will use the same comparison factors as I have used in the earlier comparison. Lets not waste your time and get started

Installation :
OpenSUSE impresses from the first boot, of the install CD, itself. I was greeted with a beautiful screen screen.
Ubuntu too does a good job but them SUSE reflects elegance.

The Green Welcome	Boot Selector

The Ubuntu Screen

OpenSUSE loads into a nice looking GUI installer. It is the same installer that was in 10.2, though a little more improved.
Ubuntu on the other hand boots into a nice looking LiveCD. Ubuntu also offers an alternate install CD which has advanced install options.
SUSE install is very comprehensive and results in adding the required Non-OSS ( Non -Open Source Software) repositories.
However, this takes a huge amount of time, 6 hours on my 256 kbps connection.
Ubuntu install takes just 30 minutes, but does not add extra repositories.
Here I would give Ubuntu the advantage as installing from a LiveCD is much easier for a normal user,
also LiveCD gives the benefit of doing other things ( Like browsing the net) while install is going on.
In case of SUSE for nearly 7 hours my desktop was useless.
Scores : Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 1

The initial Grub Screen:
SUSE displays a very exciting and eye pleasing GRUB menu.
Ubuntu has a text based grub by default which looks ugly in comparison.
Though we can install a SUSE type GRUB on Ubuntu, as described in my previous post, still the SUSE GRUB looks much more elegant.
Here I am giving less score to Ubuntu as even after tinkering with command line, the GRUB of SUSE is still better.
Scores: Ubuntu 0, OpenSUSE 2

Boot Speed:
Looks like that with the new release both OpenSUSE as well as Ubuntu have improved the boot speeds.
On my AMD 3200+ , 1GB RAM desktop I could not make out any difference between the boot speed of the two.
Kudos to the devs of SUSE and Ubuntu for improving the boot speed.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 2

GDM login Menu :
Ubuntu has improved a lot on the look and feel, however, the green of SUSE still takes the cake.
Check out these login screens of the two.

SUSE GDM	Ubuntu GDM

Both the login screens are clean, with only the distro logo and place to enter login id. I prefer the green screen
of SUSE, but then its my personal choice.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 2

Gnome Menu:
Ubuntu has stock GNOME menu which definitely pales in comparison to the beautiful SLAB menu of SUSE.
Though some people claim that SUSE has heavily modified the GNOME menu and made it look like KDE,
but man just have a look at the images below and decide for yourself.

SUSE Gnome Menu	Ubuntu GNOME Menu

Scores: Ubuntu 1, OpenSUSE 2

OpenOffice:
Novell has a deal with M$ and hence has improved the OpenOffice to incorporate M$ "proprietary" code in it.
Ubuntu has no such liberty, so its OO is stock again. SUSE OO also has better look and feel.
The load time of OO in SUSE is also faster than that in Ubuntu.
Please ignore the politics behind M$ deal and just look at the features.
Scores Ubuntu 0, OpenSUSE 2

Theme:
Ubuntu has really refined its look and feel and now even the default desktop looks WOW!.
I just loved the default wallpaper, nautilus theme and icon sets. Every thing is just WOW.
However, when I compare this to the highly integrated green theme of SUSE, SUSE appears much ahead.
All applications on the desktop look as part of one single theme and well blended.
Again Ubuntu developers missed blending some of the applications with the beautiful human theme.
Scores: Ubuntu 1, OpenSUSE 2

Default Applications:
Ubuntu comes with almost all the applications I use on GNOME , like Totem, Rythembox, Tomboy, Firefox, F-SPOT, GIMP etc.
I even came with tracker search tool pre-installed.
SUSE too has a very good collection of default applications. It has almost all that Ubuntu has with Banshee replacing Rythembox.
Now Banshee can play and import audio CDs and play and synchronize music with iPods, as well as Creative Zen players. I can easily sync with my iPod and export my playlist to last.fm.
Question: When Ubuntu can come with F-SPOT as default application, why not Banshee too ?
However, I felt that SUSE installs too many applications, a little too many.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 1

Stability:
I had bad experiences with both.
In KDE version of OpenSUSE, XServer crashes when I try to play any video file.
In Ubuntu, when I asked F-SPOT to look at my FAT drive (20 GB) for photos, the entire OS simply got hung.
I could not even go to virtual terminals and a hard reboot was the only solution.
Though these are the only two instances of instability in both, but they are reproducible.
I would not rate any one as good in stability.
Scores: Ubuntu 0, OpenSUSE 0

Installing Java, Codecs etc:
This is one area where both have done tremendous improvements and have made things easy.
In both if Totem does not find the correct codecs, it will ask for searching and subsequently installing them.
I was not aware of this functionality in SUSE and had already installed java and codecs using 1-Click install.
Later on I read this at DVD-Guide.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 2

Package management:
YAST2 is the package manager for SUSE and it works well.
SUSE has now integrated Guru repository with packman repository, thus decreasing the number of repositories.
One major issue I had with YAST2 is that every time when I start YAST2 it loads all the repositories and downloads from internet.
This really slows up everything. On the contrary Ubuntu has the famous and revered Synaptic.
Synaptic makes installing/ removing/updating very easy and its much faster than YAST2.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 1

System configurations:
Ubuntu has GUI tools for many admin tasks but they are all segregated. I this respect I like the Control Center of PCLinuxOS ( derived from Mandriva).
YAST2 goes a step further and make admin and configurations a child's play.

SUSE Administration	Ubuntu Administration

Scores: Ubuntu 1, OpenSUSE 2

Security:
Both have AppArmor by default. A word about AppArmor:
AppArmor proactively protects the system from security threats, both internal and external. It enforce the applications to only be able to access resources aimed to be accessed by the application. In this way the system is protected to both known and unknown threats.For each application we want to protect or increase the security around, a security profile is created. The profile describes what files or devices the application is allowed to read, write and/or execute.
Scores : Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 2

Fonts:
In both the distributions, I had to install MS and Apple fonts.
Its very easy to install and use different fonts in both the distributions.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 2

Community Support:
Here I would maintain my previous statement. SUSE is a very mature distribution and enjoys a good community support, however, that dwarfs in comparison to Ubuntu community. If you post a single thread to Ubuntu forums, there will be multiple instant replies. The Ubuntu community is huge and very active. Best part is that they are very helpful. The Ubuntu forums are full of HOWTOs and various tips and tricks. In terms of technical knowledge Ubuntu forums can easily rival Gentoo forums.
Scores: Ubuntu 2, OpenSUSE 1

Conclusion:
The developers of SUSE and Ubuntu have done a great job and ensured that their transition from Windows to Linux is pretty smooth. Both make a new Linux guy at ease with their appealing looks and easy functionality.
All my hardware was easily detected and configured correctly.
Installing software is a breeze in either of them and so is system configuration.

Things I like about SUSE are Autoupdater, 1-Click Install, Easy Repository Management and Easy Software & System Administration. However, I still prefer Synaptic over YAST2 and then SUSE had the XServer crashes.

Ubuntu scores in Software management, excellent hardware detection, restricted driver manager and the Godly community. The inclusion of Tracker for desktop search technology take the system up a whole new notch of usability. At the same time, I would like the theme to be more integrated into default desktop applications and Ubuntu need to get away from the system freeze like I experienced with F-Spot.

Who the winner is ??? Do simple maths.

Acknowledgments:

Distrowatch. For tis review of both Ubuntu and OpenSUSE
Sunny's Review of OpenSUSE.
Phorolinux. For the excellent screenshots.
DVD-Guides. For their SUSE review.

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Some Issues with Technocrati updates

2007-10-31T20:54:00.001+05:30

Hi,
I have listed this blog with Technorati but seems that they are not updating my blogs.
The last blog as per them is

My Distribution is the most updated.

which was posted 5 days ago. After that I have posted many blogs but they do not figure in my blog listing at Technorati.

I then did a little research and found that similar issues exist with their TOP Blogs.

Engadget The last post listed is
ASUS' Eee PC now being served at NewEgg
which was posted long ago. After that seven blogs are posted at http://www.engadget.com/
Gizmodo. The last post posted is
Like Breasts? Get a 250GB Pink WD Passport Drive to Celebrate [Think Pink]

After this two more posts have been posted.
Boing Boing. The last post listed is
Blog-goggles and red cape make another webcomic appearance
which was posted 7 hours ago. After that another post has been made.

Not sure what is the issue with Technorati, maybe server overloaded.
Probably thats the reason why they are not able to update even their top listed blogs.
I think my blogs number will come much later..........

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Howto Have Grub Like SUSE on Ubuntu

2007-10-31T08:28:00.001+05:30

By default Ubuntu has a text based grub, which at best looks very plain.
When we compare it to the beautiful grub of distros like OpenSUSE and PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu default grub screen looks ugly.
OpenSUSE has the most elegant grub GUI and I decided to install that.
Luckily Ubuntu Forums are the best technical resource too.
I followed this post on Ubuntu Forum and was able to easily install the alternative grub.
Though this is still nothing in comparison to original grub GUI in OpenSUSE, still it is much better looking than the default Ubuntu text-based grub.

Here are the detailed instructions

REMOVE OLD GRUB

Code:

sudo apt-get remove grub

DOWNLOAD & INSTALL GRUB-GFXBOOT

Code:

wget http://quasarfreak.googlepages.com/grub-gfxboot_0.97-5_i386.deb

Code:

sudo dpkg -i grub-gfxboot_0.97-5_i386.deb

GET THE ANIMATED IMAGE & COPY IT TO YOUR GRUB DIRECTORY
(You can also get some from gnome-look.org or from the bottom of post #1 in this thread)

Code:

wget http://quasarfreak.googlepages.com/message.suse

Code:

sudo cp message.suse /boot/grub/

EDIT YOUR GRUB MENU TO USE THE ANIMATED IMAGE
(good practice to backup the file first and then edit)

Code:

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst_backup

Code:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

ADD THE FOLLOWING LINE (IN RED) TO THE TOP OF THE FILE SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS...

Code:

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message.suse

# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
#            grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
#            grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
#            and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

THEN, INSTALL THE BOOT-LOADER
(this may vary based on your computer)

Code:

sudo grub-install hd0

Code:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

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US tops dirty-dozen spam-relaying countries for Q3 2007

2007-10-29T09:17:00.001+05:30

Sophos, the anti-virus and anti-spam software maker, have released their report on span-relaying countries for Q3 2007.
As expected, US continues to be the country responsible for maximum number of spams (28.4 %), followed by South Korea (5.2 %) and China (4.9%) in second and third place respectively.

"It seems as though a major American spammer is arrested every other
week at the moment, but despite these high-profile lawbreakers being
put away, the US continues to relay far more spam than any other
nation on the planet," said Carole Theriault, senior security
consultant at Sophos. "This level of activity can't be attributed
solely to the slick operations of a few cash-hungry criminals. The
problem is there are thousands of spammers using many thousands of
compromised zombie computers in the US."

During August 2007 Sophos identified a series of large-scale malware
attacks made via spam email, with weblinks inserted into spam messages
that directed recipients to malicious websites designed to infect
their PCs.

The report also identified a growth in malicious spam containing
malware, and the virtually overnight rise and fall of PDF spamming.

"The only way we're going to reduce the problem is if U.S. authorities
invest a lot more in educating computer users of the dangers, while
ensuring ISPs step up their monitoring efforts to identify these
compromised machines as early as possible," added Theriault.

Please read the full article at Sophos site.

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Changing the Layout of Blog

2007-10-29T00:38:00.001+05:30

Hi,
Today I have changed the layout of this blog and adapted a three columns template.
Please do let me know if you like the new template.
Your comments will help me improve this blog.

Abhay Kumar Srivastava

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PCLinuxOS Bounces Back on Distrowatch

2007-10-28T23:08:00.001+05:30

The latest version of Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon aka 7.10, was released on 18th October 2007 and it immediately catapulted Ubuntu to top of Distrowatch rankings for 7 days.
PCLinuxOS has dominated Distrowatch rankings since some time and many speculated the rise of Ubuntu as the end of reign of PCLinuxOS at Distrowatch.
However, release or no release, PCLinuxOS has established itself as a force to reckon with. It immediately bounced back and now again enjoys top position at Distrowatch.
Here are the rankings

Rankings for 7 Days
Rankings for 30 Days
Rankings for 3 Months
Rankings for 6 Months

Great going PCLinuxOS.

Disclaimer ::

Please do not add HPD of other canonical distributions like Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc as Canonical itself releases them as separate distros, moreover Distrowatch lists them individually.
I do not mean that PCLinuxOS is more popular than Ubuntu. I agree Ubuntu definitely is much more popular.
These are Distrowatch HPD rankings and I am merely reporting them.
People have not setup any bots or agents to increase PCLinuxOS HPD, the Distrowatch experiment proves this.

My Distribution is the most updated.

2007-10-26T10:17:00.000+05:30

October is generally the month when major distributions like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva etc make a release. I wanted to check which of the major distributions keep themselves updated and the release of Gimp 2.4.0 on 24th October 2007 ( two days ago) gave me this opportunity. In this article I will list the version of Gimp present in various common distributions, the source of different versions is Distrowatch.

Here is the table I made by getting data from Distrowatch.

Distribution	Latest in Official Repositories	Released version with the Latest ISO
OpenSUSE	Factory(2.2.17)	10.3 (2.2.17)
Mighty Ubuntu	Snapshot (2.4.0rc3)	7.10 (2.4.0rc3)
Fedora	Rawhide (2.4.0)	8 Test 3 (2.4.0rc3)
Mandriva	Cooker ( 2.4.0)	2008 (2.4.0rc2)
FreeBSD	7Current (2.2.17) 6Stable (2.2.17)	6.2 RELEASE (2.2.13)
Gentoo	Unstable(2.4.0rc3) Stable (2.3.19)	2007.0(2.2.14)
Arch	Current (2.4.0)	2007.08(2.2.17)
PCLinuxOS	apt (2.4.0)	2007 (2.3.16)

As we can see that of these FreeBSD has the least updated version of Gimp and Arch, PCLinuxOS, Fedora and Mandriva have the latest versions of Gimp 2.4.0. Others have an in between versions.
However, the latest version of Gimp in Fedora and Mandriva is present in their testing repositories and not release in their stable repositories.
Hence we have only two distributions which have the honor of having the latest GIMP in their stable repositories ARCH and PCLinuxOS. Hats off to both of them for keeping the distributions fully updated and enabling people like me to work on the latest version of software ( Gimp in this case).

One more reason why I Love PCLinuxOS.

DISCLAIMER :: I have tried to stick to some common distributions (which I have used in the past) and this comparison is solely based on Gimp version in the repositories of various distributions at 9:56 AM IST on 26th October 2007 as reported by distrowatch.

Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 with rich features ~ Linux Mini

2007-10-25T19:51:00.000+05:30

Kubuntu Gutsy is the latest release from the Ubuntu KDE platform. It has the latest KDE, OpenOffice and many other features. Noticeable among them are inclusion of Dolphin as file manager, this takes Kubuntu one step towards the impending KDE 4.0 release.
I found a great review, you may view it here.
Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 with rich features ~ Linux Mini: "FRIS "

The Flock Experience

2007-10-24T23:38:00.001+05:30

I just came across a new web browser Flock. and found it to be amazing.
It is optimized for media, blogging and much more. In fact I am writing this blog from the inbuilt editor of Flock itself.

Lets talk about the blogging editor first : Like scribefire extension of Firefox, Flock blogger could be configured to any blogging service. It has options for Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, Livejournal.com, Blogsome.com, Xanga.com and even for any self-hosted blog. Setting it up is very easy and the editor interface is like that of Blogger.com editor. It has tabs for Editor, Source and even a preview tab. Also there are options for saving as draft and the best one is to save it on a web clipboard to be used later on.
Photo and Video. Flock activates various special effects when you log in to flickr, photobucket, youtube etc account. A media stream (Media Minibar) is generated and displayed on TOP enabling easy browse of Media. Its hard to explain this feature, you just have to experience it yourself and I can assure you its great.
Online Favourites . del.icio.us, digg and various other feeds are here. They all form part of your web page.
Flock My World. This is the central place where all the configured streams are displayed. It could be the blogging sites, Feeds and even Media Streams and Accounts.
Upload Photo. This option can upload photo to Flickr, photobucket etc. The uploader has a cool feature wherein we can drag and drop the photo.
Some More features include Indicators, Notifications, Find and Favorites.

Please do try it out, it is definitely a next generation web browser. Flock has got every thing that Firefox has, add to it are many features which make it my default browser on my new shiny Ubuntu.

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All praises for Ubuntu 7.10

2007-10-24T17:26:00.001+05:30

OpenSUSE 10.3 was the most anticipated release this October, but it failed to impress me with its highly unstable desktop.
I had crashes with Kaffeine, Kmplayer, Quanta and Kompozer. This was enough to frustrate me and look out for better options. Ubuntu 7.10 released at the right time and I was almost waiting for it.
I downloaded the i386 iso via bittorrent and was amused to find more than 700 seeders. Wow !! Thats some community!.

Initially I tried to install from hard disk by just copping the vmlinuz and initrd to a FAT32 partition, but it gave an error about some missing module for my DVD-Writer and the load failed, what the heck. I then logged in to the beautiful KDE of my existing SUSE 10.3 and used k3b to burn the iso. I know its an irony that I had to use SUSE to help me replace SUSE itself.
The Live CD booted into an equally impressive Gnome desktop. The default chocolate wallpaper is really beautiful. I think apart from Linux Mint, this is the only Gnome desktop I liked. My desktop is a fairly generic one and almost all Linux distributions always detect all the hardware, I just did a quick test that my sound card and internet connection are working and then clicked the install button. The install was straightforward and asked me minimal questions, a la PCLinuxOS install. I think that the default install of modern desktop OS should be like this and have an option for advanced install, unlike the SUSE install which asks too many questions and requires too much user intervention. One thing I missed while installing was the in ability to listen to songs from internet or view youtube videos, a feature which I really appreciated in Linux Mint. However, the install took only thirty minutes so it was OK.

On reboot, I was a little disappointed to find a text based GRUB, against my previous beautiful GUI GRUB of OpenSUSE 10.3. I know this is easy to add by using SUM, but would have been better to have it by default. That apart, the boot was fast and I reached the clean GDM menu. I really liked the fact that there was no clutter and no option for the user name, it was just very clean. I entered my username and password and logged in. It was nice to find that Ubuntu has set the correct resolution for my Monitor, configured my network using DHCP, configured teh sound card and even mounted my FAT32 partition. Now, I had read at many places that Ubuntu offers to search and install all the missing codecs and decided to give it a try :

Video files. I have some video files in my FAT32 partition and I simply double clicked on one of them, the video player application ( Totem) opened and asked me if I want Ubuntu to search and install the required codecs. I said yes and in no time the codecs were downloaded and installe3d and Video was playing properly; impressive isn't it ? I then proceeded to try other video extensions like "avi", "mpg", ".dat" etc and all played without any problem.
MP3. Looks like that in th process of installing codecs for video, the MP3 codecs were also installed and my MP3 played without any issue.
Youtube. I tried to play a Youtube video in Firefox and it asked for flash, on selecting to install the Ubuntu installed got fired up and bravo I had the youtube Video playing. NOTE. I also got the option to install open source gnash, but choose the tried and tested Adobe flash player.
Yet to try. I have not yet tested the java support and playing DVD videos. Will try tonight.

The best thing about these installations is that all I had to do was click a button and supply my password, no extra effort was required from my side.

I then checked what software got installed by default and found that Ubuntu had almost everything I need. It installs OpenOffice, Pidgin, Tracker Search, Tomboy Notes, Firefox, Gimp, Evolution etc by default. These are what I use most commonly. I also use many other software which are easy to install using Synaptic. I tried to install Kompozer the first, as it used to crash easily on SUSE. I must say that Ubuntu devs have done a great job and even after extensive use ( during which Kompozer would usually crash at least twice on SUSE) there are no issues. I will keep on testing this and report it back on this blog. The other software I intend to install are Katapult ( does it has a Gnome equivalent ?), Digikam, Flickr Uploader and possibly Google Earth.

Ubuntu have churned out a really impressive release, but the most impressive part of Ubuntu is the community. Sadly, everything is working out of box, so I have not yet got any chance to look into Ubuntu Forums :). I will however, log in and try to answer any queries that others are asking, I think this is the least I can do to thank Canonical for providing with such a good distribution.

Ubuntu Back on TOP

2007-10-23T02:26:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu is making its way back to TOP at Distrowatch page hit rankings.
For the last 7 days Ubuntu is way ahead of PCLinuxOS

1	Ubuntu	4378
2	PCLinuxOS	3180

However last 30 days and above rankings still have PCLinuxOS in the lead.
30 Days

1	PCLinuxOS	3642
2	Ubuntu	3322

3 Months

1	PCLinuxOS	3023
2	Ubuntu	2513

6 Months

1	PCLinuxOS	2865
2	Ubuntu	2346

I will definitely keep an eye on the rankings. It would be interesting to know if Ubuntu can regain the top slot at Distrowatch.

The SUSE impression fades a little

2007-10-10T00:15:00.001+05:30

I was in total awe of SUSE 10.2. I liked its stability, performance, improvements to OpenOffice, YAST2, security, default fonts and above all the default theme and artwork. I was all praises for SUSE in my comparison of SUSE with Ubuntu. My only problem was package management in 10.2 which resulted in several broken packages and finally me shifting away from SUSE to a lesser knows distro PCLinuxOS

A lot has changed since then, PCLOS has replaced Arch as my default desktop OS. However, the love for SUSE still remains in my heart and when 10.3 got released I simply had to try it. SUSE 10.3 came with a bag full of goodies, notable among them are

Guru repository merged with Packman ,
Novell enhanced OpenOffice 2.3; it should be noted that even a later released Mandriva 2008 supports OpenOffice 2.2.1,
Giver - file sharing utility,
1-Click install for non-OSS software, and above all
The improved YAST2.

These in themselves are overwhelming; add to it the legacy of SUSE and the time proven stability and we have a winner. These were my thoughts when I had set myself the task of installing SUSE10.3. I had some initial problems with the install ( mirrored on ITWire.com), but I could live with them considering the usage experience I was about to get. Luckily for me SUSE 10.3 did not disappoint me on most of the accounts. I have just used SUSE for three days and I strongly feel that this is too short a time for me to write a review, so I'll only mention some of my experiences. I might write a review after two months of SUSE usage.

Performance:

SUSE has a huge list of processes which run in the background. I was assuming that this might make it sluggish, but SUSE surprised me with its performance. All the resource hungry ones like OO, GIMP, Firefox, Digicam open in no time. I was astonished to find that Firefox too has minimal "hangs". By Firefox hangs I mean the time when one tab of Firefox is loading some graphic intensive site, entire Firefox seems to hang for a few seconds. This is common to Linux and Windows. However, on SUSE this hang was minimal.

Software Included:

Its SUSE, so I can be rest assured that all my required software will be present. I , however, was a little taken aback by non-inclusion of kompozer in SUSE repositories. Kompozer is a modification of nvu and presents a better user experience. That apart SUSE has every software I need. I could easily feel the improvements in YAST when I downloaded and installed Quanta Plus. YAST is better looking and much faster than before. 1-Click install is as easy as publicized.

System Admin:

SUSE has YAST2, what more can I ask for. It is a one stop solution for managing my system. Now some people might find YAST lacking in many fields and options but I found it to be perfect for my needs and I believe that most common users will find YAST as per their liking.

Artwork:

Another area in which SUSE has always excelled. This time too their artwork is simply impeccable.

System stability:

The SUSE I remember, was the most stable distro of its time. With SUSE 10.3 things have changed a little. I faced these two problem which I can recreate any time.

When connecting to the ftp website, Quanta Plus crashes. Not sure if this is a problem with Quanta or SUSE, but the end result is a process crash.
If a single process crashing was bad, imaging how bad the entire X Server crashing could be !! Whenever I try to play VCD with kaffeine, the XServer crashes and logs me out. Then I have to re-login only to find that my unsaved work is lost. Now I can understand that due to certain issues Kaffeine is not able to play VCD, it can be plugins issue or any other. I can also, upto some extent, accept kaffeine crashing. However, XServer crash is too much for me; it means loosing all the unsaved work which is an extremely negative point.

I faced only these stability issues, but these are reproducible.

I always put stability as the most important factor while judging a distro. I was extremely impressed by the stability of SUSE 10.2 and thats the reason that I am more depressed with SUSE 10.3. I have done the online updates, but still the crash problem is there.

The stability problem apart; SUSE is the most polished distro we have today. Everything simply works out of the box, they have very comprehensive HOWTO's and the system feels very responsive. I think SUSE has again impressed me, but there are some issues too.

NOTE:

By SUSE I mean openSUSE.

Why SUSE Why ?

2007-10-08T09:23:00.001+05:30

NOTE::
This article describes my experiences when I tried the KDE install CD, now the KDE Live CD is released which has install option and most of my problems reported in this article are resolved by the Live CD.
RELATED ARTICLES :

SUSE 10.3 was released and I had to try it. All geared up, I started downloading the torrent of the KDE version. I realized that it was not just me who was eager to download and try, but a whole lot of other people were also downloading the same torrent. I had 736 people as seeds and more than one thousand as peers. That's some numbers, SUSE definitely has a big fan following. The 700 MB iso took some 4-5 hours of download time on my 256 mbps connection and I was all set to install.

I already had Linux Mint on my system, so instead of bothering to burn a CD, I just followed the excellent tutorial on SUSE site to install from hard disk. I thought that hard disk install would be the fastest as accessing files from hard disk is much faster that that from CD, unfortunately SUSE install was determined to prove me wrong. When I booted from the SUSE iso, the first thing that hit me was that the install CD was just an install CD. Come on, in today's world where we have beautiful Live CD's which also function as install CD, why does SUSE still has just a plain install CD. Look at install CD's from PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu and Linux Mint, they all double up as Live CD + install CD. This option makes the computer usable even when the install is going on, apparently SUSE does not believe in this.

When I test a distro, I always accept the default options -- i.e just keep pressing next till the install is over, except for hard disk partitions. In my Mint install, I just had two partitions the root (/) partition and /home partition. I had copied the SUSE iso on the /home partition and booted from it. During partitioning the SUSE partitioner never allowed me to designate my existing /home partition to be mounted as /home because the current iso was present on that. I had no other option but to have my SUSE home on the root partition itself. Not a big issue, I can fix it when the install is over.

Next the installer asked me if I wanted to configure my networking, Cool ! why not. The installer got the settings from DHCP and went ahead with configuring online repositories. All well, or was it really well ? Installer gave me an option to confirm the install and I did. On the install screen I saw some download going on, why download when I have the install media on hard disk ? However, the download rate was too fast and I realized that even getting files from hard disk is termed as download. Still OK, suddenly the download rate dropped to snail pace. I then switched to virtual terminals from 1 to 6 but did not see any indication that any files are actually being downloaded from Internet. Back to the GUI installer, I saw that SUSE will install around 2GB from the hard disk and around 600MB from the online OSS and non-OSS repositories. Now SUSE 10.3 was released just days back, so there is no chance of 600MB updates, hence why install from Internet and make things slow.

Unfortunately it was too late by now, the install had started and it was going to take its time. I had also formated my Mint root partition and with it went the grub, so I cannot even restart the install. The download took a sweet 6 hours and I was watching TV to while away my time. This 6 hours also highlighted the need for a Live CD, at least I would have used the desktop. Maybe taken some screenshots or even written this blog from the Live CD itself, no such luck for me.

Further Shocks :

During the install I noticed that the java version being installed was 1.5, why install an old version when java 1.6 is already released and this is a spanking new version of SUSE.

At the end of six long hours, the installer asked me to reboot, reboot now when I can see on the left side menu that many things including setting a root password is remaining ?? Anyhow, I had no choice but to reboot. After the reboot, the installer continued the remaining tasks to having the root password and further configurations. This reminded me of another six years old desktop OS, which does a reboot during install -- Windows XP. However, that's a six or seven years old OS.

Here on for every configuration, I had to click a button. SUSE does not believe in minimal intervention from users. I think in total I pressed more than 15 click during the install.

Conclusion:

This article is purely from the point of view of initial install and does not cover the usage. I know still I have to add the packman repository and install the video codecs etc.

I think this the the worst install experience I had in last one year. I was spoiled by the likes of PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Granular and Mint Linux. I feel that even the text mode install of Arch Linux presented a better experience than SUSE.

I know that usage wise SUSE is one of the best, but SUSE developers have to understand that installing the OS is the first part of the total experience.

Ubuntu with Elegance

2007-10-02T08:38:00.001+05:30

Linux Mint is an adaptation of Ubuntu, with packages for browser plugins, java, media codecs etc forming part of the default install. Their latest release Linux Mint Celena is compatible with Ubuntu Fiesty repositories.

Having spent some time with Linux Mint Celena, I am all praises for it. The punch line for Celena is From Freedom came elegance and I could not agree more. This is the most elegant Linux desktop I have seen. The artwork is just out of the world. You may see some screenshots here. The experience starts right from GUI GRUB menu, against the text based menu in Ubuntu, the beautiful splash screen and GDM login screen, the gnome splash and finally the Celena GNOME theme. Every thing is an eye candy but with elegance, there is no in-your-face blatant display of colors and the color scheme is well integrated. In terms of artwork Celena easily matches OSX and Vista.

Celena provides a complete desktop right from booting the Live CD. It has all the required software for Office, email, calendar, listening to songs and even watching youtube videos. Most modern distributions have very easy install procedure through the installable Live CD, Celena also follows the same and does a good job of installing to hard disk. I have described the install and my initial experiences in my previous blog entry.

Celena is Ubuntu Fiesty:

Celena has base in Ubuntu, which is considered as a benchmark in desktop Linux. Keeping this in mind I started evaluating Celan. To check the difference in default packages, lets not bash Ubuntu for not having some essential non-OSS packages like java by default.

Celena uses Amarok for playing music, whereas Ubuntu uses Rythembox. Amarok is now becoming industry default and is more user friendly.
Celena uses Synaptic for package management, Ubuntu uses 5(five) GUI applications for package management including Synaptic and Add/Remove Programs. I feel a single application reduces confusion.
The Update Manager and Update Notifier were removed from Celena so users would not perform un-educated upgrades. With more than 2 releases a year and many modules affected by upgrades, stability was preferred to security in Celena. No more pop-ups telling you a new version of Ubuntu became available, no more pop-ups telling you to download the latest kernel... your system is stable, tested and it should stay that way.
MintAssistant in Celena proves very helpful in initial system configuration.
MintUpload allows the user to upload any file smaller than 10MB on the Internet. The user doesn't have to worry about getting an FTP client or finding Web-space to store his files. It's never been easier to share files with friends. MintUpload is also compatible with the mint-space service which allows files to be as big as 1GB.
MintMenu looks like an adaptation of SUSE gnome menu but is much more elegant and useful. Ubuntu still uses the lackluster GNOME menu.
Celena only has a bottom panel, a la KDE/Windows, as opposed to twin panel of Ubuntu.
Celena uses Thunderbird instead of Evolution, which is default in Ubuntu.
Lastly, Mint Control Center provides a more user friendly experience than the GNOME Control Center of Ubuntu.

Apart from these Celena is just like Ubuntu Fiesty and provides for wholesome desktop experience.

Desktop Usage Experience :

Celena believes in Stability so it does not have the latest version of certain software like OpenOffice, GNOME and Firefox in its repositories or shall we call them Fiesty repositories. However, the installed packages perform very well. Celan applications have an amazing lead over Ubuntu when it comes to performance. Big and resource hungry applications like OpenOffice load very quickly in Celana. Here is a list of common applications I use.

Media Player:
- Amarok for all MP3, oog songs
- Totem for playing Videos, though I prefer VLC and have installed it through Synaptic
Photo Organizer/Editor
- Celena does not come with any Photo organizer as default, but installing Digikam, F-Spot or Picassa is easy.
- Gimp is installed by default and is the best image editor.
Internet Utilities
- Firefox, with all plugins
- Pidgin - one of the best IM client, though I prefer Kopete.
- XChat - Its a must. All my IRC queries are through this.
Office
- OpenOffice 2 - Do I need to say anythig ?
Desktop Notes
- Tomboy does this job perfectly. I actually like the known yellow background in it.
3D Effects
- I do not have a 3D enabled video card so could not test Envy to install the proprietary driver, but from the reports I have from other blogs, Envy performs its job very well. Also Beryl is installed by default. We just need to enable beryl to have those beautiful and wobbly windows.
Multimedia
- Out of the box almost all type of media works. I have tried mp3, avi/mpg videos and even flash videos through youtube. All work perfectly. Though there can be media types which may not play by default, for those we can follow the normal Ubuntu procedure.
Personal Finance
- GnuCash is present, however, this is such a complicated application that it is really difficult to use for an average user. It is more suitable for small businesses. I use Buddi or KmyMoney2.

Some Issues:

The above applications pretty much make my desktop an almost complete desktop. I am using the word almost complete as still many useful applications are not installed by default also there are some stability issues. Let me list them

Default bittorrent client is gnome-bittorrent. This is probably the most user unfriendly client I have seen. Imagine a scenario, where I am downloading the DVD of a Linux distribution. This might take more than a few hours, so I shut down my system and go to work, only to resume the download after I return home. The gnome-bittorrent will not remember where the torrent file is, so we need to download the torrent file again and tell gnome-bittorrent about its location. Oh!! miss the blissful world of ktorrent.
Celena is for average desktop user, so it must have an easy personal finance client, GNU cash is for pro.
No default Photo organizer and no k3b.
I faced a strange device mounting problem. Here it goes. Suppose I have connected a USB device to my system, it will be auto mounted and an icon displayed on the desktop, now if I simply remove it and then re connect it, the device will be mounted ( I checked in terminal through mount command) but the icon will not be placed on the desktop.
I was unable to mount VCDs, let alone playing them.
In the default install MintMenu was crashing, I had to do a full system upgrade ( 147 MB) to resolve this. One of the major goal of celena is stability - Well I had a different out of box experience. However, apart from that I never faced any stability issue. No applications crashing, no system hang, nothing. It is stable in those terms.
Full system upgrade lead to a dependency problem with openoffice-common, which is still not resolved. Though it does not deter any other program to install, but always gives the error. However, this can be my fault as Mint developers advice against doing upgrades. One question though - In the age of distributions like Gentoo, Arch and PCLinuxOS which have a rolling tree releases and new versions are just a snapshot of the current stable stack, does it make sense to ask the users not to do an upgrade.

Conclusion :

Whatever said and done, I think Celena is a breath of fresh air. It is the best GNOME distribution I have ever used. The artwork is simply amazing, I think PCLinuxOS must take a hint or two from Celena. Strong emphasis is given to integrating the theme with applications, as demonstrated in the Firefox screenshot. I can see the hard work Mint developers have put behind custom applications like Mint Menu, MintUpload, MintAssitant and Mint Control Center. They have done a commendable job and made our lives easy. They have not followed the trend and have included KDE applications, wherever they felt the need.

Looks like the hard work of Mint developers is paying off as Mint is steadily rising on distrowatch popularity. I am surely going to keep Celena as a Live CD and even recommend my friends to use it. For my desktop -- Sorry but SUSE 10.3 is releasing and I need space to install and my primary hard disk contains PCLinuxOS.

Funny Helper

2007-09-30T13:00:00.001+05:30

I had posted a problem at UbuntuForums
I was sure that despite this being a problem with Linux Mint, someone will help as Mint is 90% Ubuntu. However, I can see that only one user tried to help. Well I have to say that he probably tried to best of his abilities, but either he is lacking technically or lacking somewhere else.

To install a package one needs to have admin privileges, in Ubuntu the common way is to use "sudo". Eg
sudo apt-get install <package name >

However, if we try this command without sudo, apt-get will give an error saying that it could not acquire lock on package database

E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

Looks like my helper forgot these basics.
You can also acquire admin rights by "sudo -s".
Please read my conversation with my helper, it really funny.

NOTE :: I have not got a solution to my problem !!
I thought that Ubuntu users really pride themselves for having the most responsive forums.

Microsoft Excel Fails Math Test

2007-09-30T08:55:00.001+05:30

According to a post at tech2, Microsoft Excel is displaying the results of calculations incorrectly.
I searched for the magic number 65,534.99999999995 and looks like the entire world is reporting this error. Its rather amazing.
I then went to the actual source where this problem was reported. It is a blog by a MS employee.
Why do MS has to report a problem in a blog, why can this be on MS site itself ??
I am sure that when they release the fix, they will have it posted all over internet, starting from www.microsoft.com.

Japan Looks for Internet Replacement

2007-09-28T08:06:00.001+05:30

Copied from an article on TopTechNews

Japan plans to start research on new networking technology that could
one day replace the Internet amid its growing quality and security problems, according to the nation's communications ministry.

U.S. and European researchers already have started similar efforts to rebuild the underlying architecture of the Internet.
When researchers largely knew one another, the Internet's early
architects kept the shared network open and flexible -- qualities that
proved key to its rapid growth. But that later allowed spammers and
hackers to roam freely. The network's designers also assumed that computers would be in fixed
locations and always connected, creating headaches as laptops and other
mobile devices proliferated.

Many scientists are starting to believe a totally new network is
needed. It could run parallel with the Internet or eventually replace
it, or parts of the research could go into a major overhaul of the
existing architecture.

"The Internet is reaching its limit," said
Yoshihiro Onishi, assistant director in Japan's communications
ministry. Scientists are starting to believe a totally new network is
needed that could run parallel with the Internet or eventually replace
it, or the research could go into a major overhaul of the existing
architecture.

If the research brings some fruitful ideas, the the internet as we know today will be a history. We might even have new Google, MSN, Amazon and e-bay. However, we have to wait for at least 10-15 years to see these changes.

Open Source adaptation in indian Courts

2007-09-27T15:57:00.001+05:30

As per this blog post, Allahabad high court in Uttar Pradesh, India has adopted opensourse.
The judges have been provided laptops, that run on Linux, with the following software

OpenOffice
Evolution
Firefox.

Inclusion of Evolution indicates that the desktop is running GNOME. At least one government department is adopting open source instead of Microsoft software.

Quoting from the blog entry
"The biggest problem with open source software is lack of awareness and
help. A decision to supply the laptops on open source software,
combined with training and technical help, will ensure penetration of
open source in every district, every Tehsil, and every nook and corner
of the country. It will lead more awareness, more accessibility, and
more reliance on open source."

I welcome this move by the Judges and hope that this encourages other government departments to open up to "open source".
India has two major Linux Distributions; BOSS and indLinux, which promote Linux in local languages.
Of these, BOSS is very easy to use and has excellent documentation for a newbie.

ScribeFire- My new Blogging friend.

2007-09-27T14:56:00.001+05:30

ScribeFire
(previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor
that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your
blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing,
take notes, and post to your blog.

I came across this excellent tool and this is the test blog I am writing out of it.
Its like I am at a news site or blog and I find something interesting, I can then and there post it to my blog.
Wow.

It easily detected my blog at blogger and logged me in. Like the blogger writer interface it also has the usual shortcuts like bold,itallic,underline, hyperlink etc.

I am loving it, will write more in detail.

Linux Mint Celena - Initial review

2007-09-26T20:12:00.000+05:30

Linux Mint is a user friendly variant of Ubuntu and many of its users refer to Linux Mint as "Ubuntu done right". Their website says that
"Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution". Wow, sounds impressive. Hence when the new version of Linux Mint, Celena, was released, I could not resist the temptation and decided to try Mint on my desktop. While the Mint iso torrent was downloading, I went ahead and read some of the reviews here and here. The jest of the two reviews is that Mint is Ubuntu made simple by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other essential non-OSS softwares.

This article will collate my initial experiences with Linux Mint, if I like it I might keep it for some days and do a full review in future.

The download was slick and the LiveCD booted to a very impressive looking desktop. The artwork was awesome, I was simply bowled over. However, an error popped up informing me that Linux Mint Menu has quit unexpectedly. I tried reloading, but to no avail. That apart, the desktop looked very impressive and had an icon for installing Mint to hard disk. The install proceeded like normal Ubuntu install, but took a huge time to install. I utilized this time in viewing some videos from youtube, yes!! Linux mint Live CD has the capabilities to play videos from youtube.
A simple reboot brought up a Minty grub menu and thirty seconds later I saw the most elegant gnome login. One first login, Mint takes you through Mint Assistant which helped me in adding cute and funny fortunes to my terminal window.
Immediately after the login I faced my first major problem :
Problem :
Linux Mint Menu quit unexpectedly and no amount of reload, re-login or even creating and adding to new panel would help. Now without a menu, all the commands have to be executed through terminal, this can be very frustrating even for a long time Linus User like me.
Steps taken to Resolve :

This gave me the opportunity to test the Mint Forums. It appears that Mint users did not find this problem critical enough and I got only one reply in two days.
Luckily I ran sudo aptitude update and sudo aptitude upgrade.

Solution:
Upon logging in the updated system, I was greeted by the beautiful Mint Menu, which appears to be an adaptation of SUSE Gnome menu. Its beautiful, elegant and very intuitive. Though I loved the Mint Menu, but this leaves me with some questions - Should a user be expected to download 147 MB of data and upgrade his newly installed system ? What about the users with no internet connection ? Isn't Linux Mint supposed to work out of box ?

Now that my system was working, I had the time to look at the installed applications and admire the aesthetics of my beautiful desktop. Linux Mint comes pre-installed with almost all the applications a normal user might need. To name a few

OpenOffice 2.2 and Sunbird Calender
Gimp
Firefox & Thunderbird with java and flash plugins
Pidgin ( Formerly known as Gaim )
Sun Java jre
XChat IRC client
Amarok, MPlayer and Sound Juicer CD Extractor
Beryl 3D Effects
Tomboy Notes
Mint Upload, now this is a unique tool which helps to upload a file ( upto 10 MB) on internet and share it with friends.
Ntfs support to auto mount Windows XP partitions.

These combined make a very good combination and does not require much new softwares to be installed. What I missed from my usual KDE desktop was a dedicated torrent client, default gnome torrent client sucks badly, and the mighty k3b. I think that when Mint devlopers can add Amarok they can as well add k3b and ktorrent.
Anyhow, I wanted a torrent client and bittornado appeared a good one. While installing with Synaptic, I met with my problem number two
Problem :
segmentation fault ( core dump) while installing openoffice.org-common.
Steps taken to resolve :

aptitude install -f. This asked me to remove xchat and install language support for french and spanish, although my system has en_US as the language. Still the problem persists.
Remove all openoffice stuff and reinstall - problem persists.
Post this problem to the forum. Waiting for a reply.

Solution:
No Solution yet.
Just thinking that when a long time Linux user like me cannot resolve this problem, can we expect this from a newbie ?

Going further, I found that Firefox and OpenOffice open very quickly and the system is overall very responsive, kudos to Linux Mint for this.

Well this is a new install so I did not have the time to evaluate it further.

Conclusion:
Mint is definitely got one of the finest artwork I have seen in any Linux distribution; add to it the ability to play youtube and MP3 out of the box and we have a winner. Wait!! does PCLinuxOS also provide the same ? YES; then lets do a quick comparison.

Browser plugins and other non-OSS stuff. Tie. Both ditros perform the same.
Artwork -- Mint wins hands down.
Default applications - The absence of good torrent client and K3B makes Mint loose this round.
Performance, I could not make much difference. Tie.
Stability. Mint Menu not loading on first boot itself. On the other hand PCLinuxOS prides itself on its amazing stability.
Package Management. Both use Synaptic which is fairly easy to use. However, in PCLinuxOS I never came across dependency problem. Mint developers have to improve on this.
Updated packages. Mint still has OpenOffice 2.2 while PCLinuxOS has the latest OpenOffice 2.3 in its repositories.
Community support. Now this is one of the most important aspect of a free distribution. PCLinuxOS has a small community, but a very helpful one. Mint has an even smaller community and I am yet to get a good reply. I hope it will improve.

In my opinion PCLinuxOS wins this comparison by a huge margin. However, Mint still is an interesting distribution and I will keep it for few more days to evaluate.
Do look forward for more articles on Mint on this blog.

Back to the future ?

2007-09-25T12:15:00.000+05:30

OOPS IBM did it again !!
IBM is a great software company and produces probably the best server softwares; however, when it comes to desktop software or the software for common people IBM goofs up badly.
We have seen many instances like the (in) famous Lotus Smart Suite, Lotus notes and IBM java.
Some people like the Lotus software and some might also use IBM java, however, they do not form a sizable number. Lotus is only used in enterprises, hardly any home users use it. IBM software for common people lacks badly in user friendliness and sometimes features.
When IBM announced Lotus symphony, based on OpenOffice, my first question was why re-brand?It would have been much better to simply support OpenOffice. I got my answer a little later; IBM has taken the code base of OpenOffice 1.4 ( against the current OpenOffice version 2.3), modified it and is launching it as Lotus Symphony. Its like old wine in a new bottle. Unfortunately, unlike old wine people do not prefer old software.

Quoting from the PCWorld report about this
"according to an OpenOffice.org official. John McCreesh says Symphony's shortcomings are less a reflection of its OpenOffice foundation and more a result of its reliance on obsolete OpenOffice source code."
He even goes to the extent of comparing Symphony with a dog
"Symphony "runs like a dog and has a pretty amateurish appearance," blogged McCreesh, who is OpenOffice.org's marketing project lead, late last week during the organization's annual developer conference in Barcelona. This "does beg the question as to why a company of IBM's stature should take software well past its sell-by date, and try and pass it off as a new product."

Well, I would say that if someone has to face mighty MS Office, they better release a strong product, with comparable features and good performance.

PCLinuxOS - Despite the fact.

2007-09-25T11:26:00.000+05:30

I came across a post at blogspot, which reports PCLOS becoming number 1 on distrowatch PHR.
Thats nothing new, this news is there all over internet. New was the way in which that fellow has reported.
Taking a few lines from it

Despite the fact that Ubuntu is by far the most widely used distribution among the DW readership (as shown by awstats) while PCLinuxOS is not even second
despite the fact that interest and hype over the Canonical OS never cease to increase, attracting even big PC makers
despite the fact that Ubuntu has a clear release schedule and plans to ship a new release in little over a month, while PCLinuxOS is a mystery when it comes to roadmaps
despite all that and more PCLinuxOS seems to attract a constantly increasing number of clicks to its DistroWatch page.

I simply loved his narration. I think the author is awesome.
I understand that he has mentioned all this ironically and seems to make fun of PCLOS rankings, but lets not forget the fact that despite all this, PCLinuxOS is the numero uno at Distrowatch.

PS: Please do read the comments in that post, they are nice too.

PCLinuxOS gaining recognition from driver makers

2007-09-23T15:33:00.000+05:30

I have a webcam which has a sonix chipset . Unfortunately the drivers for the webcam are yet not available on Linux, hence for video chatting I have to login to windows. However, this article is not about my video drivers, its about PCLinuxOS. There is a site where the driver writer "luca" has developed drivers for similar hardware. Initially that site offered the binaries only for Ubuntu Fiesty, for all other distributions, we had to request ( and possibly pay ) for the drivers.
Recently when I checked if luca has implemented the support for my webcam, it was still not there; however, I was in for a pleasant surprise. That site now offers binary drivers for one more Linux distribution, other than Ubuntu, guess which one can it be, yes you are right --- PCLinuxOS.

The time has come when even driver makers are considering PCLinuxOS as very important distribution. Its amazing to find that they do not offer binaries for SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva or gentoo -- its only Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS.

PCLinuxOS is getting its well deserved place.

Just for stats, the distrowatch page hits
1) For last 7 days

1	PCLinuxOS	4245
2	Ubuntu	2261

2) For last 30 days

1	PCLinuxOS	2923
2	Ubuntu	2159

3) For last three months

1	PCLinuxOS	2591
2	Ubuntu	2095

4) For last 6 months ( default)

1	PCLinuxOS	2602
2	Ubuntu	2439

I am enjoying this.

Google Tools for Firefox

2007-09-21T09:40:00.000+05:30

I recently came across the web page for Google Firefox tools .
Google really has a amazing collection of tools for Firefox.
1) Google toolbar : Instant suggestions as you type in the search box, bookmarks you can access from any computer, automatic web form filling. So if I have this toolbar and am signed in at two different computers, I can access my bookmarks from anywhere. Couple this with easy interface to Google search and we have a winner.
2) Browser Sync : Synchronize your browser settings across computers. Restore tabs and windows from your previous session. The best feature is that the settings on my home computer and Office are exactly the same.
3) Notebook: Add text clippings, images and links to your Google Notebook and share them with friends. I have not used it, so cannot comment on this.
4)Blogger Web Comments : See what bloggers are saying about the web page you're visiting, and add a post to your own blog.
Possibly the best tool for blogger users. I use it extensively. Whenever I comment on any blogger post, it links the same to my own blog post so that I can easily keep track of it.
5)Google Send to Phone:Send text messages of web page content to your mobile phone (U.S. numbers only). I stay in India, so have to wait a little more.

Some Firefox shortcuts :
( DISCLAIMER :: Taken from other blog sites, thanks to them )

Close Tab Ctrl+W Ctrl+F4
Restore Recently Closed Tab Ctrl+Shift+D
Close Window Ctrl+Shift+W Alt+F4
New Tab Ctrl+T
New Window Ctrl+N
Select Tab (1 to 8 ) Alt+(1 to 8 ) [ Windows Ctrl +(1 to 8) ]
Select Last Tab Ctrl+9
Bookmark All Tabs Ctrl+Shift+D
Select Location Bar Ctrl+L F6 Alt+D
Open Address in New Tab Ctrl+Enter
Web Search Ctrl+E Ctrl+K
Next Tab Ctrl+Tab Ctrl+Page Down
Previous Tab Ctrl+Shift+Tab Ctrl+Page Up

IBM supports openoffice

2007-09-18T21:28:00.000+05:30

IBM announced that they are going to support OpenOffice and launch it as Lotus Symphony.
IBM will also put 35 programmers to the Symphony-cum-OpenOffice development effort.
Kudos for all this.
With IBM's backing OpenOffice will certainly be benefited and we might see OO emerge as an worthy competitor.
However, I have one slight doubt.
Why is IBM launching it as Lotus Symphony ?
Why not simply support it as OO ?
Why is this re-branding necessary ?

OpenOffice is now a very familiar open source application. Almost all desktop Linux know about it. Even some of Windows users use it and like it. Now one fine day when IBM introduces Lotus Symphony; will that not result in confusion in peoples mind ?
Users like me will see that same product ( at least more or less the same product) is being offered in two flavors
1) OpenOffice
2) Lotus Symphony.
Which one to choose and why ?

Will Lotus Symphony be having more features than vanila OO ?
If no, then why not just stick to OO ?

IBM has with this OO initiative tried to further promote its Lotus brand.
If IBM really wants to help OO, then it should simply help OO with its talented developers, provide commercial support and promote OO as such.
This in my opinion would be truly helping OO.

Th lead consolidates

2007-09-18T10:18:00.000+05:30

Distrowatch was down for some time and when it came up, we saw that PCLOS has established itself.

1	PCLinuxOS	2534"
2	Ubuntu	2469

Way to go PCLOS. I am for sure enjoying it.

Desktop Arch- some tips and tricks.

2007-09-17T07:56:00.000+05:30

Its been three months since my father had made me revive my old desktop with Arch Linux. I really thank him for this. He, however, have gone further and now have found more tweeks and keeps me updated.

To list a few :

Install YAPG. This excellent KDE based GUI for pacman works really well and is very easy for users who do not like konsole. Though it is still in beta and sometimes hangs. For myself, I prefer the command line pacman. EDIT: YAPG is also available in AUR.
Add yourself ( the user ) to the following group : wheel dbus hal network video audio optical storage camera users.
Add hal to DAEMONS in /etc/rc.conf. His computer's /etc/rc.conf DAEMONS entry reads DAEMONS=(syslog-ng network netfs crond hal fam kdm alsa). This helps in auto-mounting USB devices and DVDs.
Install gimpshop instead of gimp. This gives a more familiar interface to Adobe photoshop users.
To install SUSE kickoff menu : pacman -S kdemod/kdemod-kdebase-kickoff
If you use kdemod, then never install direct kde packages. For instance if you want to install a few kde games, there are two options

install extra/kdegames. However, this will try to install the entire kdegames package.
install individual games like kdemod/kdemod-kdegames-ksnake. This provides much more command over the install process and does not allow unwanted games.

Be very careful when pacman -Syu updates your kernel. Do read the changelog before pressing "y".
Some programs like Citrix client do not show properly if transparency is enabled.
The best driver for video chipset via KM400 is xf86-video-via.
If you want to burn mp3 with k3b, install the gstreamer-mad plugins.

I will keep on adding his tips and tricks for Arch Linux, as and when he updates me.

PCLinuxOS does it

2007-09-15T09:46:00.000+05:30

The inevitable has happened. I must say it happened a day or two before I expected.
As per distrowatch, PCLOS is the top distribution in terms of page hit ranking.

1	PCLinuxOS	2522
2	Ubuntu	2517

I just hope that this is the beginning PCLOS required.
This excellent ditro has long deserved this position. It nice to know that finally people are acknowledging it.
For me and my couple of friends PCLOS has been the default choice, because of its user friendliness and stability.
I am bound to have more friends as and when PCLOS is more accepted.
Way to go.

I Love you Microsoft

2007-09-14T09:22:00.001+05:30

I have just developed an interest in blogging. Today a friend of mine, and I must say a very good friend, had forwarded me the URL of Windows live writer. He said that this will help me write faster and upload to various blog sites. So now I only need to know one interface and can publish my blogs to live spaces, wordpress and blogspot.

The installer gave me the option to install Live photo gallery and Live mail as well. I simply selected them and went ahead with the installation. While the application installer was being downloaded, I took a tour of various live applications and found live photo gallery to be of my taste.

Here I had a single installer, installing more than one programs. It was very much like a Linux package manager - a single place to install/manage all your programs. Though Microsoft has not yet achieved this functionality for all the windows programs, however, there is one area in which MS outdid the package managers from Linux world.

If we have more than one programs to install and we select them together in most of Linux package managers, then the package managers first download all the required binaries ( and libraries). Once the download is over, they go ahead with installing it. Hence if we are installing huge number of binaries and libraries, so first it takes good amount of time to download them from repositories and then it again takes another huge amount of time to install them. This is very apparent in packages like xorg and OpenOffice. I always thought, why cant this download and install happen in parallel. I mean thinking from a programmers point of view, we can always download in one thread and then install using another thread. Does Linux package managers not believe in multithreading ?

One argument that comes to my mind is that package managers play it safe, they think that something might go wrong in download and installing only half of the libraries/binaries might result in unstable system. Well this might be true, but do we actually expect download to stop, specially in today's world of high speed and reliable net connections. Even if there is some problem in downloading once, we can always restart the download, possibly using another download mirror. Looks like the popular package manager including apt-get (used by Ubuntu/Debian etc), rpm ( Fedora, SUSE, PCLOS ) and even portage (Gentoo ) does not think like me. Strangely Microsoft does.

Check out this image from the latest install of Live Writer, Live photo gallery, Live Mail etc.

Here Microsoft is doing what I believe is correct, Installing the programs and downloading at the same time. Simple things which make Microsoft great. Does this mean that I will ditch PCLOS and shift to Windows, I don't think so.... However, things are changing at MS and changing for good. Looks like MS is learning a thing or two from Linux.

Why I love MS, because they do things in a manner an average user would expect them to be, MS simply puts users first and reaps the benefit of it.

DISCLAIMER ::

I know of many blogging tools for Linux too, I just wanted to try Live Writer.

Watch out for PCLinux OS

2007-09-12T11:56:00.000+05:30

Looks like PCLinuxOS is destined to reach its well deserved place in the Desktop Linux world.
More and more of my friends, both in India and abroad, are switching to PCLOS. Its like a unanimous verdict. It is truly a system that just works and works fine. It's fast, it's decently stable and has all the Desktop oriented configurations by default.
I know many of us rubbish the distrowatch rankings, however, it does give an indication to a distro's popularity. I still remember Ubuntu replacing Mandriva became a big news and then Ubuntu never turned back. History repeats itself, only this time it is Ubuntu which is at receiving end. Today's ( 12th September 2007 ::12:04 PM) stats for the last 6 months are

1	Ubuntu	2541
2	PCLinuxOS	2511

Here the interesting fact is that page hit of Ubuntu is decreasing, while PCLOS is increasing.
In last 3 months, 1 month and past 7 days, the page hit rankings of PCLOS is much more than Ubuntu. It is just a matter of time when PCLOS will be at the top of 6 months page hit ranking too.

This is not to say that PCLOS is in any way more popular than the mighty Ubuntu. If we look at any other popularity criteria, we find that Ubuntu is way ahead of others ( including PCLOS) . The current Lenovo vote about what Linux distribution would users like to see on Thinkpad also has Ubuntu leading at 47% (16274) of all votes, while PCLOS gets a meager 1%(425) votes.
Another poll by tuxmachines is much more encouraging for PCLOS, where Ubuntu get 26%(1436) votes and PCLOS get 25%(1396) votes. This looks more on the lines of current distrowatch page hit rankings, with Ubuntu and PCLOS being neck to neck or Ubuntu having a very slight edge.

However, lets not forget that Ubuntu has the commercial backing of Cannonical, hence many users would opt for Cannonical support ( a la Dell Ubuntu option) instead of non-commercially supported PCLOS. Also Ubuntu people know how to be in media and hence many users believe Ubuntu to be the most user friendly distro. This might be true for some people ( Ubuntu Fanboys), but for other normal people like me, Pradus, Mint and PCLOS presents a better default desktop.

Lets check some comparisons

Lets check what Ubuntu users say about PCLOS on Ubunut Forums ::

On Dell 1420n Ubuntu Fiesty does not boot into a GUI, PCLOS does.
Fiesty Crashes, PCLOS is stable.
GNOME faster in PCLOS.
People looking forward to OpenSUSE, Mint and PCLOS.
Ubuntu Fiesty does not work on old hardware, PCLOS does.
Easy way to get Broadcom 43xx based wireless cards working -- PCLOS.

I can go on and on about Ubuntu users themselves praising PCLOS against Ubuntu, but thats not my point. I just want to state that PCLOS is a viable alternative to Ubuntu for Dekstop use.
What PCLOS lack badly is a good community and this is the area where Ubunut scores heavily over others. I think Ubuntu has the best and the most exhaustive forums. This provides users with adequate free support to get their problems resolved.
If PCLOS overcomes this shortcoming then there is no stopping them. Who knows some big commercial player might purchase them and provide commercial support. It is for sure that without support no hardware vendor will pre install PCLOS on desktops and laptops.
I just hope that PCLOs gets some backing, for it has all the elements to make it the best possible desktop Linus distribution.

EDIT::
Disclaimer::
I do not mean to say that PCLOS is more popular than Ubuntu; definitely not!!!
Ubuntu is anytime more popular.

With respect to comments about Desktop Linux poll, lets take the observations at this site
http://www.huliq.com/31587/2007-desktop-linux-survey-results-revealed.

"Perhaps the most surprising result of our survey was that PCLinuxOS showed so poorly. On DistroWatch, PCLinuxOS has been at the top of the site's page hit ranking for the last 30 days. Frankly, we're not sure why this popular, easy-to-use community distribution didn't do better. The site supporting it had recently had problems, but that problem's long been history. Perhaps, it's simply that unlike the other popular community distributions -- Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora -- PCLinuxOS doesn't have corporate backing. Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat all provide support and hardware partnerships for their community distributions that PCLinuxOS can't match."

All find PCLOS to be user friendly and stable distro, yet its a fact that many users do not know about it, being on top on Distrowatch can bring about the required publicity. As for commercial support --- there is always a hope.......

Making money The Redhat way

2007-08-21T18:02:00.000+05:30

We all believe that open source is associated with free, as in free speech, software. Any open source software can be downloaded free of cost and without paying any money and we have plenty of those softwares; I believe the most commonly used free open source software is Firefox browser. The span of open source softwares covers the entire spectrum of possible softwares, let me list a few.

Linux operating system. Do I need to say more about it?
JBoss and Apache - Application and Web Servers.
GNU Compiler collection (GCC) - perhaps the most commonly used compilers in open source world.
MySQL - RDBMS
GIMP - image manipulation software like Adobe photoshop.
OpenOffice - Office suite like MS Office.
Azureus and eMule - peer to peer torrent tools

Well the list goes on...
As a layman, I started thinking about the sanity of people who work so hard to produce such
quality software products and then allow anyone to simply download and use them for free. What the heck!! Where the hell do they make money ?? How can so many people simply be doing charity ??
I did a little check on the popular open source companies, to find out their source of income, and it turned out that these open source zealots have a very sane mind in their heads. Open source companies are indeed making huge money. In this article I'll give a brief of the money Redhat is making.
I started with checking the financial results of Redhat ; I quote

"Total revenue for the quarter was $118.9 million, an increase of 42% from the year ago quarter and 7% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $103.0 million, up 44% year-over-year and 7% sequentially."

Revenues of $118.9 million in a Quarter !!! Holy god. Now this is real big money, do people actually pay even for free software ? Looking further, a 42% increase in revenue -- thats simply incredible. How many traditional companies can boast of such a huge increase in revenue. I can almost bet that even Microsoft cannot.
Reading further on I found that Net income for the quarter was $16.2 million against $13.8 million a year ago. Actually these guys are making money and they are getting better at it. But how ? Who gives them the money ? and for what ? I know the software they deal in is "Free and open source".
Redhat does not charge for the software, instead it charges for the services it provides on top of it. Open source provides technically savvy customers with a challenging opportunity to try their hands at the new and emerging technology. Redhat ropes in the value that if things go wrong in their software implementation, Redhat will provide the required support. Redhat also provides its customized bug fixes and performance enhanced code and all of it open source, hence if the customer wants they can have their technical team evaluate it.
Quoting from Redhat business model site
"Red Hat subscriptions give you access to the latest technology as it's tested and released. This includes upgrades to newer releases at no additional charge for as long as your subscription is active. Your subscription also includes access to Red Hat Network, an efficient solution for managing, updating, and supporting your systems. And finally, you get the reassurance that Red Hat will stand behind and support each product version for seven years."

This subscription based strategy seems to be working, and working bloody well.
To complement their paid subscription based product, they also have a free and community driven Fedora project. Sometimes the customers simply evaluate Redhat software on Fedora and when they are very comfortable, they go ahead and buy the official support to have peace of mind. The latest example of this is Virgin America's migration from Fedora to RHEL. The tech department of Virgin America thought that its time to scaleup their operations and for that they wanted a software solution for which they can get enterprise level support and Redhat perfectly fits the bill. Quoting again from Redhat site
"Fedora was a fantastic solution for us as we began our journey with open source," said Ravi Simhambhatla, director of architecture and integration at Virgin America. "As our need for fine-grained control and scalability grew, we decided to migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its reputation as a resilient, secure and scalable platform as well as for its incredible support. Red Hat has the best kernel engineers in the world and when I'm in a real bind, it's priceless to have the ability to call someone who has the knowledge to get us on track quickly."

Redhat also employs another very important technique of providing a whole suit of applications.
They offer a huge list of products including JBoss, Redhat Exchange, Directory Server, Cluster solutions etc. and customers love the one stop shop for all their needs. As pointed by Dafflon of Swisscom IT Services
"The acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat was a stroke of luck for us," said Dafflon. "This way we profit from the same outstanding price-performance ratio at the middleware layer as well as on the operating system level."

I see Redhat further consolidating its position in times to come.
One way or the other Redhat has proved that there is money in open source software, lets see more companies capitalizing on it.

Ubuntu Certified Professional

2007-08-09T20:42:00.000+05:30

Whatever Mark Shuttleworth does, he does in style.
So when Canonical started Ubuntu Certified Professional ( UCP ) courses in partnership with Linux Professional Institute (LPI), it became an instant media craze;
for this was unique in many ways.

From Ubuntu website
"The Ubuntu Certified Professional is a training certification based on the LPI level 1 certification. To earn the UPC, candidates are required to pass the LPI 101, LPI 102 and the Ubuntu (LPI 199) exams."

Now similar certificate programs are already offered by Novell and RedHat , however, those two do not partner with LPI. Association with LPI automatically means that a UCP would have already cleared industry standard LPI courses and would specialize in Ubuntu.

If we check the course objectives and details,

The courses are designed for System Administrator levels and tests the candidate's ability to:

Perform easy maintenance tasks: help out users, add users to a larger system, backup & restore, shutdown & reboot
Install and configure a workstation (including X) and connect it to a LAN, or a stand-alone PC via modem to the Internet.
Work with the Linux command line.

Ubuntu offers two courses:

Basic Ubuntu usage, command line, package management etc
This is an advanced level course comprising of

The kernel - managing kernel modules, reconfiguring, building and installing a custom kernel and more
Printing - managing printers and print queues locally and remote
Documentation
Shells, scripting, programming & compiling
Administrative tasks
Networking fundamentals
Networking services
Security

Now this course does offer some depth in Linux knowledge. Further details of the course is available at Ubuntu web site.

Canonical did not stop at simply announcing the courses, they made sure that the courses are easily available at all the places. For this Canonical has formed partnership with major Linux training providers in different parts of world.
To name a few

Trai Cen,
LynuxTraining Sàrl,
NT+C Network Training and Consulting, and the latest
Altkom

They went a step further and formed a partnership with Thomson Prometric and Person VUE and the Ubuntu Certified Professional exam is now available worldwide at over 7,000 Thomson Prometric and Pearson VUE testing centres.
This expanded the reach of UCP exam and made it very easy for perspective students to appear for it.

With these steps, Ubuntu sure appears poised to make its place in the exponentially growing Linux server market.

Safeguarding Ubuntu

2007-08-08T08:10:00.000+05:30

My wife has Ubuntu Fiesty and she always take pride in the fact that Ubuntu is one of the most secure desktop OS due to it "no open port" policy. As Ubuntu has no open port so the outside attackers cannot gain access and get hold of my private data.
A friend of mine has Fedora, with Security enhanced Linux kernel. I thought that was an overkill for desktop use. We started a debate on this and decided to check our system against vulnerabilities. Now it was a matter of "my computer" vs "his computer".

I came across an article on Security Quick-Start HOWTO for Linux and followed to find that I have the following ports open :

$ sudo netstat -ntap | grep LISTEN
Password:
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2208          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     4950/hpiod
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:631           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     4924/cupsd
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2207          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     4958/python

So Ubuntu does has some ports open, however, these look like printer ports. Well these should be open if I need to use my printer - isn't it ?
I did a little more research and came across an excellent tool to scan all my open ports "nmap".
It is not there by default in Ubuntu, you can install it by
"sudo apt-get install nmap"

I ran the tool and got the following results


$ nmap localhost

Starting Nmap 4.20 ( http://insecure.org ) at 2007-08-08 08:21 IST
Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 1696 closed ports
PORT    STATE SERVICE
631/tcp open  ipp

Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.183 seconds

A simple google search on "631/tcp open ipp" led me to detailed description by
Kurt Seifried. What he wrote was horrifying, I quote

Common problem(s): Attacks against print servers are common, the most common IPP server CUPS has suffered a number of serious flaws over the years, many of which are due to it's PDF processing code being taken directly from xpdf (an X Windowing System based program for viewing PDF files on UNIX), from the CVE database:

So, unknowingly I have rendered my home computer helpless against a very common form of attack.
Also when we download a new version of Ubuntu using bit-torrent client, we even open the bit-torrent port.
Wow!!
I had two options

To stop the printer services. Why ?? I need to print sometimes and starting printer services each time I want to print does not seem a good idea. For people who do not mind it ::
sudo /etc/init.d/hplip stop sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys stop
Install a firewall. Ubuntu does not come by default with a firewall. However, it is easy to install one.
sudo apt-get install firestarter sudo firestarter

Now I feel much safer. At least I have guarded my desktop against most common attacks and hope that my personal documents, passwords etc will remain safe.
Attackers will surely find a way to break my defences and gain access, but I will make it difficult for them.
As of now, my friend has not reported the vulnerabilities he found with SE Fedora, but surely this port issue is going to be a common one.

Two weeks without Windows

2007-08-04T11:14:00.000+05:30

I have set myself a target of 1 month without booting to windows.
A little history --
1) I use Windows 2003 at Office.
2) I have tried many Linux distributions including Arch, Gentoo, Ubuntu and openSUSE and now have the perfect windows replacement at home -- PCLinuxOS.

The day I installed PCLOS, I was so impressed that I decided to refrain myself from booting to Windows. However, I had to make a few changes to PCLOS to make it workable. I'll go over them one by one.

The usual multimedia codecs installation. Though PCLOS comes with many codecs, but I was not able to play wmv files, so had to install win32-codec. Strangely, now Kmplayer was able to play the wmv videos, but it was not clear. A little googling made me install VLC player and I was home. VLC plays most files as good as Windows media player.
Office. I am a home user and have very limited needs from Office suite. OpenOffice perfectly caters to all my needs. Well I cannot say the same for Office use, where we have to integrate all the documents with sharepoint, but thats another story.
System upgrade. PCLOS uses synaptic, do I need to say more. I think after "Adept", from Kubuntu, this is the best GUI based package management tool. Windows can never come even close to keeping full system updated in such an organized manner.
Internet chat. I use yahoo chat and Kopete provides a very familiar and intuitive interface. Two major issues here

PCLOS does not have the drivers for my webcam, which runs perfectly in Windows. So If I want others to see my video, I have to boot to windows. There is no other way.
The Linux version of Skype ( at least the version that comes with PCLOS) does not support video. I cannot even view others webcam. Now this is really bad.

Web browsing. I use Firefox even on windows and PCLOS install it by default. I do not feel any remarkable difference between the two. The same extensions that work on windows, work on PCLOS too. Well at least the ones I tried, like webmail notifier, video downloader etc.
Online Video. PCLOS has default support for videos from Youtube and similar sites. No issues here.
Online radio and streaming media. PCLOs ships with Real player version 10.0.8 which fails to play songs from some sites like www.raaga.com. I had to search and manually install Real player version 10.1.0 to make things work and now I can play song from any site.
Connecting to Digital camera. The moment I plug my camera ( Sony DSC-H9) to USB interface, I get a pop-up on the screen which allows me to view and download the images from the camera. The default camera application is digicam, which has basic editing features and the ability to upload the pictures to flickr. I had to install Gimp for advanced editing of photos, but normally I do not use it.
I can burn my photos to a CD using k3b, well I must say that k3b is very feature packed tool for CD burning. I found it very similar to the Nero utility that came with my CD writer driver. All the interface, procedures to select and burn are very similar.
Using Bit-Torrent. Ktorrent is arguably the best torrent software. I find it to be much lighter and less resource hungry than Azeurus and does not lack in features. Specially I like the ability to download selected files from a huge list of files in a single torrent.
Games. Oh with "wine" I can play most of Windows games like "Quake", "Diablo- LOD" etc. However, Linux games are good too.
Google desktop search. Though Linus has an open source desktop search in form of Kerry/beagle, but I have read at many places that they crash a lot and slow down the system. Again GDS is from Google and hence trustworthy. The search interface is same as that of Windows version and is equally effective. However, we do not have the cool Google gadgets.
Citrix desktop client. I connect to my office computer having Windows 2003 using the Citrix client for Linux and have not encountered any problems as yet.

PCLOS provided me with a system which auto decets almost all my hardware correctly, set the optimal screen resolution, requires minimal command line configuration and has all the software required for normal house usage. I really do not feel the urge to boot to windows. Its only during my free time when I want to talk to my friends through video chat that I start missing Windows. I know even if I Google a lot and somehow find a way to make my webcam work, still the current Skype version will not support Video. Just hope it will improve in future.
One major problem I have with PCLOS is, though I always keep my system updated through official repositories, many applications crash on their own. Kicker, konqueror and kmplayer have each crashed at least once. Specially the new kicker menu ( copied from SUSE ) crashes a lot, though it restarts on its own.
I am resisting the temptation to boot to windows as video chat is not that important to me.
I'll try to complete the remaining two weeks of no Windows on my home desktop.
If I succeed for one month, I might as well set a new target of 6 months. Maybe that will happen when SUSE 10.3 or Ubuntu 7.10 is released.

Is Google secretly helping M$ ?

2007-08-01T10:07:00.000+05:30

I know it sounds bizarre, but I do have a theory to substantiate this. Don't know how to formulate it so just listing it.

Google is a closed source company. Ok, to begin with, Google internally uses Linux ( all that hype about Gooobuntu ), contributes to MySQL and supports Mozilla foundation. However, how many of Google own software are open source ?? Zilch!! Zero. Its like Google loves to take advantage of open source technologies, for its own benefit, but refuses to make its own products open source. Even its Linux products, like Linux Desktop Search and Picassa, are closed source. In todays world, Google and M$ are two biggest technology companies for desktop users. As they both promote closed source, are they not helping promote the notion that closed source is not evil -- one of the biggest motivating factor for people using Linux.
Most, if not all, of Google's applications are on Windows. Google has just started porting its existing applications to Linux, the first being desktop search. Picassa for Linux is just a "wine" adaptation of windows version of Picassa.
Most Google web applications are written with IE in mind. All Google web applications supported IE7 within days of IE7 releasing. At the same time Google supports Mozilla foundation, still some Google applications do not work well on the Linux version of Firefox. For example; in picassa web album, the option to upload multiple images at the same time is disabled in Linux version of Firefox. Here I am talking about Firefox 2.0.0.4, which is fairly recent. Whereas, picassa web albums work great with the same version of Firefox on windows. and Lastly ...
Linux is all about open source software. Lets take Ubuntu, the most famous distro. Ubuntu by default has only open source softwares, some other essentials like flash, mp3 etc form part of "restricted media", which are exceptions but necessary for normal desktop use and have no other open source alternatives. We already had good desktop search application in the form of beagle and then Google introduced its closed source desktop search. As this is a Google application, so people will trust it and use it. This way they will think that Apart from cost factor, windows still costs some money and Linux is free, what is the difference between the two when it comes for normal desktop usage. The purity of Linux is gone, many common applications on Linux are no more open source. Couple this with the fact that most hardware vendors write drivers for Windows and not necessarily for Linux.

Now we have a situation where Windows supports more hardware, has access to more free desktop applications from Google and the normal free open source applications. In some countries like china, M$ is offering windows at ~7-10$ and that is negligible when compared to the cost of entire Desktop/Laptop. On the other hand we have excellent Linux distributions like Ubuntu/PCLOS, which support less number of hardware, have the same open source applications as windows, have less applications from Google and lastly not all the applications/drivers used are open source.
The open source battle is lost.
Long Live Windows.