[121001860010] |<title>Ubuntu Dedicated Servers and Server Administrators</title>
[121001860020] |Oh behalf of a client, I have been looking for Ubuntu Dedicated Servers, as well people in the know who can administer the server.
[121001860030] |Starting with <a>WebHostingTalk</a> my search so far has been more or less futile.
[121001860040] |How hard can it be to find a good dedicated server, or for that matter an administrator for a server you ask?
[121001860050] |Real hard. 
[121001860060] |Let me define a “good” service provider: With servers more than anything else, the added benefits are the biggest variable, and the one that will have the most long-term impact on the person who buys the server.
[121001860070] |There are several hosts (not Ubuntu hosts) that provide, for example, Cisco’s hardened external firewall, and some provide a serial console, some provide <abbr>DDoS</abbr> protection.
[121001860080] |These are often overlooked by someone who jumps in for a server.
[121001860090] |The other big differentiator between the good and the not-so-good is the quality of the hardware and the extent to which the offered services are backed by the provider and this is something that you learn over a period of months, if not years.
[121001860100] |Now, to define a “good” administrator: There are those that setup and adminster servers for a living, those who know the ins and out of managing servers.
[121001860110] |Such individuals(not corporations) are the best source for reliable information regarding servers, their security and their upkeep.
[121001860120] |If you have tried getting your hands on some of these individuals you know how hard they are to find.
[121001860130] |People for whom such service is a pleasure, and who are not in it only for the money –for whom such services are not the be-all and end-all, but a natural extension of their acquired skills.
[121001860140] |<h3>Ubuntu’s Market Presence</h3>
[121001860150] |Now when it comes to gaining a strong foothold in the server market, Ubuntu needs to work on visibility, and needs to make sure that those who want to try it have access to resources that point out the options available.
[121001860160] |Here’s where Ubuntu falls short currently.
[121001860170] |For <a>Debian, there is a list of dedicated server providers</a>.
[121001860180] |Though there is no guarantee as to the level of service provided by these hosts, there is a list, which is the least there should be.
[121001860190] |I wish there would a similar initiative from Ubuntu’s part.
[121001860200] |Also, for Debian, there is a huge list of <a>Consultants</a> from which you can pick and choose an administrator or manager for your server.
[121001860210] |Again, though there is a list of <a>Ubuntu Partners</a>, not many of these are individuals of the kind I mentioned before.
[121001860220] |I wish it was easier to find an Ubuntu developer(not necessarily someone with “main” commit privileges), who will do maintenance work for me.
[121001860230] |But this post is not just about me –it is about Ubuntu gaining a foothold in the server market, and for that Canonical needs to seriously think about constructing easily managed lists of both server-providers and service-providers, if I may call them that.
[121001860240] |Such information has to be available for various levels of prospective clients –the huge 1000+ employee corporate clients as well as small-business entities and enterprising novice individuals.
[121001860250] |You might state the case for a community wiki-based effort to build a catalog of information.
[121001860260] |This would be a good first step, but what is essential is for the company that promotes Ubuntu (Canonical) to put the word out.
[121001860270] |This can inspire a lot of confidence in someone who is as yet undecided about going the Ubuntu way.
[121001860280] |Though there is evidence of <a>Canonical’s interest in providing such info</a>, the support page seems inapplicable for a person like me –I’d rather work in association with a good individual.
[121001860290] |A not-so-obvious reason for this is the fact that if I pay an individual for working on my Ubuntu server, then I am providing an incentive for the person to keep working on Ubuntu, without his/her having to “officially” work for a company that supports Ubuntu.
[121001860300] |I would think that a page at the Ubuntu wiki with a list of dedicated providers, and another page of Ubuntu developers with the services they are willing to offer would be an awesome way to start things off.
[121001860310] |Finding a good Redhat, or Fedora dedicated server is easy, at various price-points.
[121001860320] |You can easily find servers for $100, and a reputed admin for $30 per month.
[121001860330] |I’ll be happy the day it is just as easy to find resources for Ubuntu servers.
[121001860340] |It is not that no one offers Ubuntu servers, search and you shall find some, but the important question is which of these are lemons? 
[121001860350] |I am sorry for the rant, if this looks like one.
[121001860360] |A day of flailing about on the internet looking for a good solution to a temporary problem gave rise to these thoughts.
[121001860370] |Please take this with a pinch of salt, for I might be over-reacting <img/>
[121001880010] |<title>Year 2006: In Retrospect</title>
[121001880020] |This last year was great for this blog.
[121001880030] |A few posts got dugg, a few made me smile and overall I am a happy camper.
[121001880040] |To wind up the last year, here’s a list of all the posts that were featured on <a>Digg.com</a>:
[121001880050] |<li><a>First Ubuntu Billboard Spotted</a></li>
[121001880060] |<li><a>Super Fast Internet for Ubuntu</a></li>
[121001880070] |<li><a>Flash 9 for Ubuntu</a></li>
[121001880080] |<li><a>Software to Watch DVDs and All Multimedia Files on Ubuntu</a></li>
[121001880090] |<li><a>The Meaning of “Ubuntu” –Explained by Nelson Mandela</a></li>
[121001880100] |<li><a>Ubuntu (Canonical) Decides to Offer Non-Open-Source Commerical Software!!</a> </li>
[121001880110] |Not surprisingly, these are also the most popular posts of the past year.
[121001880120] |The other posts that make up the top 10 most popular posts are:
[121001880130] |<li><a>Installing using an RPM file</a></li>
[121001880140] |<li><a>How to mount a remote ssh filesystem using SSHFS</a></li>
[121001880150] |<li><a>Adding a startup script to be run at bootup</a></li>
[121001880160] |<li><a>Disable Synaptics Touchpad</a></li>
[121001880170] |<li><a>Enabling CPU Frequency Scaling </a></li>
[121001880180] |The total number of posts stands at 187.
[121001880190] |The total number of comments is amazing: 2502!
[121001880200] |That is more than 10 comments per post on average.
[121001880210] |Thank you!!
[121001890010] |<title>Tamil Nadu Embraces Linux</title>
[121001890020] |Earlier last year, we saw <a>how Kerala opened the doors of its schools to Linux</a>.
[121001890030] |Now its the turn of its big neighbour, Tamil Nadu to choose Linux over Windows.
[121001890040] |Tamil Nadu is a state in the south of India.
[121001890050] |The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), which is the government owned entity that brings IT-enabling services to the state <a>has chosen Open Source solutions over Windows-based solutions</a>.
[121001890060] |ELCOT decided in favor of open-source software because of its lower cost than proprietary software from Microsoft Corp. and other vendors, C. Umashankar, managing director of ELCOT, said Wednesday.
[121001890070] |Open-source software also provides better ease of operation and higher security, he added.
[121001890080] |Further, this could be just what is required for the state government to choose Linux as well.
[121001890090] |ELCOT will migrate to Linux at the server and the desktop levels.
[121001890100] |Something tells me they might choose Ubuntu for their desktop.
[121001890110] |Last year, the Ubuntu India mailing list saw some activity and the name ELCOT turned up back then too. 
[121001900010] |<title>Ubuntu Just Sucks Less</title>
[121001900020] |With the cursory <a>hat tip to Marketing Pilgrim who does a sentiment analysis for firefox Vs. Internet Explorer</a>, lets get started on Ubuntu and Windows.
[121001900030] |Sorry folks, I just could resist plugging in the words and let them duke it out.
[121001900040] |Most interestingly, according to opinmind, <a>87% of all bloggers who have blogged about Ubuntu like it</a>, as opposed to <a>67% for Windows</a>.
[121001900050] |Opinmind seems to be a real neat tool –wonder how many people use it, and in what innovative ways.
[121001900060] |Ok, now for the next step, technorati has 1116 results for <a>“Windows Sucks”</a> and only 62 for <a>“Ubuntu Sucks”</a>. 
[121001900070] |Almost no one thinks Ubuntu sucks, as opposed to a higher of people who think the contrary about Windows, (in the year 2006) according to <a>Google Trends</a>.
[121001900080] |Enough with the negative stuff already.
[121001900090] |One might say that Windows has been around longer, is a market leader, and therefore has more critics than Ubuntu has.
[121001900100] |Sorry, I couldn’t overlook this myself –so I had to ask Google: What rocks more?
[121001900110] |Windows or Ubuntu?
[121001900120] |<a>3,340 votes for “Windows Rocks”</a> as opposed to(hold your breath) …<a><strong><em>21,200</em> </strong>votes for “Ubuntu Rocks”</a>.
[121001900130] |The 1.5 million odd results for <a>switch to Ubuntu</a> provide a stong hope that this number will keep rising.
[121001900140] |Amazing, eh?
[121001900150] |Now maybe you can pardon me for stealing someone’s idea and creating an article much like <a>the original</a>. 
[121001910010] |<title>Ubuntu Screencasts from the Doc Team</title>
[121001910020] |I had written earlier about a way to <a>create screencasts</a> in Ubuntu.
[121001910030] |Well, it looks like we have come a long way from there.
[121001910040] |I was glad to find the <a>documentation team’s collection of screencasts</a> and also the <a>details on how the screencasts were created</a>.
[121001910050] |Awesome work!
[121001910060] |There are a whole lot of screencast, including how to set up a dual-booting system with Windows and Ubuntu and how to install Flashplayer.
[121001910070] |That’s all for now, folks.
[121001920010] |<title>About the Ubuntu Installer for Windows</title>
[121001920020] |Lifehacker featured a post about the Ubuntu Installer for Windows, with the headline: <a>Install and run Ubuntu without disturbing Windows</a>
[121001920030] |This is disturbing, since the installer is not yet finished and tested.
[121001920040] |Lifehacker’s readers belong to a variety of “categories” but I worry about the users who expect everything to work ship-shape and start bad mouthing if it does not at first try.
[121001920050] |It is not clear where one would file bugs with this installer, for one.
[121001920060] |I hope this does not end up creating a “Ubuntu does not work properly” image in the minds of these readers.
[121001920070] |The installer prototype features ntfs-3g, which itself is experimental, and since Ubuntu will “reside” within windows, auto-detection and automatic configuration of hardware might not work the same as it does with native Ubuntu installs.
[121001920080] |Background: There is a <a>prototype of the Install.exe installer for Windows</a>.
[121001920090] |In layman’s terms, this installer is just like any other software application installer for Windows.
[121001920100] |It works by copying an image of Ubuntu to your Windows partition and using that to “drive” Ubuntu.
[121001920110] |So it does not repartition your hard drive, or install Ubuntu independent of Windows.
[121001920120] |In C:\Ubuntu an image will reside and be complemented by the auto-detected settings for Ubuntu, the home directory for the users etc.
[121001920130] |So Ubuntu will end up borrowing space from Windows, without repartitioning.
[121001920140] |For more details, <a>read the specification</a>.
[121001920150] |Don’t be scared by the word specification –Ubuntu specs are a pleasure to read, with the rationale,use cases, to-do items etc written in simple English.
[121001920160] |I love the idea of the Ubuntu installer, and it sure makes it easy for folks to try Ubuntu out.
[121001920170] |I expect problems when these users finally want to switch completely to Ubuntu while preserving their Ubuntu installation, settings, files and permissions.
[121001920180] |Now that would be difficult since uninstalling windows will wipe out Ubuntu(which lives “within” Windows). 
[121001920190] |So, the approach will solve a problem but might end up inventing some more problems for its users.
[121001920200] |All you need to try out Ubuntu without risking data loss is the Live CD –that really can’t be beat for simplicity and ease-of-use!
[121001930010] |<title>Linux Cartoons</title>
[121001930020] |Go over to the <a>LinuxToons</a> page and enjoy some cartoon strips that feature Linux, from Dilbert to Foxtrot <img/>
[121001930030] |via the <a>Ubuntu_users LJ Community</a> 
[121001940010] |<title>Trying Dreamhost for Backup</title>
[121001940020] |So finally I gave in and decided to give <a>Dreamhost</a> a shot.
[121001940030] |I need cheap backup space, and since <a>Dreamhost</a> promises 200GB or so of space with 2 TeraBytes of bandwidth, I thought it is worth a look.
[121001940040] |They promise to refund my money if I cancel within 2-3 months.
[121001940050] |Frankly I am still suspicious of the offer –so much space can’t be so cheap ($10 per month approximately).
[121001940060] |I guess, in the worst case, as I use up the maximum storage, or even, say, about 100 GB, I might get a warning or something.
[121001940070] |I can just up and leave then.
[121001940080] |I don’t really care about website performance, PHP, MySQL or anything else, since all I need is the storage space.
[121001940090] |I will get my rsync-based backup scripts going at work and school, and we’ll see.
[121001940100] |In the best case scenario, they will let me use the space they promise, and I will recover the cost of the hosting from the referrals from this blog.
[121001940110] |If you, or anyone else signs up using my referral link, I will get $97.
[121001940120] |That is a lot of money, yes, so if you want to support a poor Ph.D. student, you have one more method to do that.
[121001940130] |If I were you, I wouldn’t sign up just yet –let me be the sacrificial lamb, so to speak. 
[121001940140] |$10 a month is still gnawing at my conscience –that is a lot of money for just backing up data, but if you look at it another way, it is less than what I think my data is worth.
[121001940150] |I know, I could just buy a huge harddrive and backup to that (which I do on and off), but there are a lot of advantages to backing up to a server somewhere –you can automate the process(don’t have to connect the USB HDD), and the physical seperation provides some extra peace of mind. 
[121001940160] |I also looked at other online backup service providers, most of which are <a>listed and reviewed here</a>, but none of them seem to be too eager to support Linux.
[121001940170] |Also, all I <em>really</em> need is a way to log in via SSH, and the permissions to run some rsync scripts.
[121001940180] |<a>JungleDisk offers some utility to access Amazon’s S3 storage system for Linux</a>, but at $0.15 per GB, and $0.20 per GB transferred, it will still cost me way more than $10 per month.
[121001940190] |The only thing is, with Amazon, I can trust and rely on my backups, with <a>Dreamhost</a> I can’t. Dreamhost has had <a>data loss disasters in the past</a>, and I must remember that I get what I pay for, always.
[121001940200] |I have also had friends who have been kicked off in the past because their blog used up too much of the shared resources.
[121001940210] |The only resource I will be using is the <a>generous disk space</a>.
[121001940220] |They use Debian, so there’s that little bit of feel-good factor in it for me, too.
[121001940230] |For starters, I am holding on tight to my local USB HDD backups while trying to store my data on this server.
[121001940240] |Anyone with any cautionary tales please caution me now, before it is too late!
[121001940250] |Does anyone else pay for data backup or is it just me? 
[121001950010] |<title>Use reportbug to report bugs better</title>
[121001950020] |This little gem is from the <a>Debian Administration blog</a>.
[121001950030] |The article deals with how to report a bug in Debian without a working <acronym>MTA</acronym>.
[121001950040] |However, with a little modification it can be useful for Ubuntu Users and bug triagers too.
[121001950050] |reportbug is a nifty command that creates a template for reporting a package bug, which it then fills out with your comment and emails to the bugtrackers.
[121001950060] |It automatically adds info about your system and about the package that has the bug to your report.
[121001950070] |Only, in Ubuntu, reportbug sends the email to the ubuntu-users mailing list.
[121001950080] |This is a <a>known bug</a> and has been around for a long time.
[121001950090] |The emails with the bug reports are bounced from the mailing list and then they end up in my inbox, where I sort through them, and then report the bug manually on behalf of the original reporter if the bug deserves attention, is not a duplicate etc.
[121001950100] |Needless to say, this is a minor pain <img/>
[121001950110] |So, if we were to follow <a>the trick at the debian administration blog</a>, we could all use reportbug’s useful, templated output regarding the package that has a bug and report the bug manually at <a>Malone</a>, our beloved bug tracker.
[121001950120] |The next time you have a bug, find out the name of the package that has the bug (say “package-name”), and do the following: 1) Use the command <code>reportbug --template -S normal package-name</code> 2) Fill in an appropriate comment regarding what the bug itself is 3) <a>File the bug</a> after checking to see if it has already been reported.
[121001950130] |The “–template” in the command will produce the template for the package, and the “-S normal” will set the severity of the bug to Normal.
[121001950140] |Of course, you can <a>report the bug via email too</a>, but it currently requires that you have a gpg key on record at launchpad, so it might not work.
[121001950150] |Reporting via a web browser will work, a 100% of the time!
[121001960010] |<title>The Absurdity of GNOME Font Sizes</title>
[121001960020] |The Fonts used and the way they are displayed on the screen play a <em>vital</em> role in how we users interact with, and how much we <em>love</em> the operating system.
[121001960030] |Federico has a very intelligent critique of the <a>Gnome Font (size) Management</a>.
[121001960040] |What is “Terminal font”?
[121001960050] |Is that the font they use on your tombstone when you die?
[121001960060] |Jokes aside, the article throws some light on a long-standing question I have had:
[121001960070] |What does the “Size” referred to in the GNOME Font Management menu actually refer to?
[121001960080] |What are the units used?
[121001960090] |(They are not pixels, and they are not points, or mms).
[121001960100] |He says the “Size” field virtually means nothing.
[121001960110] |It is not meaningful. 
[121001960120] |For long, one the first things I do after installing Ubuntu is to tweak the “DPI” setting to something lower than the default 96.
[121001960130] |There is <em>no other way</em> to have a shorter (thinner) GNOME taskbar on my desktop.
[121001960140] |I have to reduce the DPI to have sane font sizes everywhere.
[121001960150] |I guess I could have changed the font sizes, but reducing the DPI reduced all the font size in one fell swoop.
[121001960160] |I recall thinking that it was really weird I <em>could</em> change the DPI setting.
[121001960170] |A usability-oriented, user-friendly GUI such as GNOME, which prides itself on being more easily understood, and having less (confusing) options certainly could do without the “DPI” setting. 
[121001960180] |This also brings to mind what a friend said when he logged into a GNOME session for the first time after Ubuntu had been installed.
[121001960190] |He said, “There is something wrong –everything is so <em>big</em>,” and then he proceeded to check if the resolution was right –it was.
[121001960200] |I then had to help him tweak the DPI setting and the font size settings, and he kept asking me, “So why does the taskbar on the top and the bottom have to be so fat?.”
[121001960210] |Exactly what I thought when I first saw a GNOME desktop. 
[121001960220] |Usability considerations are not to be taken lightly –user interfaces must serve the largest-possible cross section of people.
[121001960230] |But for ordinary normal folks, used to the teeny-tiny, but well-rendered fonts in Windows or OSX, maybe we need to have an easy way to make the fonts and text appear reasonably sized.
[121001970010] |<title>“True” Word Count In LaTeX</title>
[121001970020] |By way of <a>Wei</a> comes this little nugget of useful information of the kind I love.
[121001970030] |If you were to count the number of words in a LaTeX document using the “wc” command, you will find that you have counted, in addition to the words you wrote, all the LaTex formatting text, like the “\paragraph”s and the “\textit”s. 
[121001970040] |Of course if you use <a>Kile</a> like I do, all you have to do is go to “File -> Statistics” to see the word count.
[121001970050] |But if you don’t use Kile, then you can follow Wei’s advice and install and use the “untex” package by doing a: <code>$sudo apt-get install untex</code> and then a: <code>$untex source.tex >target &&wc -w target</code> to count the number of words in the file named “source.tex”.
[121001970060] |Alternatively, you can use this <a>online tool to count the words</a>.
[121001970070] |A word of caution here —untex does <strong>not</strong> ignore equations, and so the output of the word count might be off by a bit.
[121001970080] |If you are a perfectionist, I would recommend using <a>detex</a> instead.
[121001970090] |There is no seperate package for detex, it ships in the Ubuntu package <a>texlive-extra-utils</a>.
[121001970100] |If your document has citations, references, and include other files etc, the only reasonably efficient way to count the words in the final result is to convert the pdf file to text and then to count the words.
[121001970110] |Here is a command that will help you do that: <code>$pdftotext file.pdf - | egrep -E '\w\w\w+' | iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 | wc</code>
[121001970120] |pdftotext is a command line utility provided by Xpdf.
[121001970130] |You may have to tweak the charsets in the previous command.
[121001980010] |<title>Ubuntu &Linspire –So Who Else is Keeping Tabs?</title>
[121001980020] |So Ubuntu and Linspire have declared their intention to work together toward their common goal of making Linux Universal.
[121001980030] |You can read the <a>press release here</a>.
[121001980040] |Now that you are done reading with that, read the story at <a>desktop linux</a>.
[121001980050] |I read them yesterday, and allowed myself a day to think about it.
[121001980060] |Here are some thoughts, in no specific order, and with no specific intention:
[121001980070] |<li>I don’t think Linspire’s primary motivation is to make Desktop Linux popular.
[121001980080] |I think it is to <em>make a profit</em>.
[121001980090] |So the “popularize Linux” common goal stops with Freespire, Linspire’s step-brother</li>
[121001980100] |<li>Ubuntu is now “upstream” for a whole bunch of distros –each with a different kind of users.
[121001980110] |“Upstreaming” bugs from Ubuntu to Debian and to the individual packages’ bugtrackers is a really painful process and has been so.
[121001980120] |The upstreaming problem might get worse with Ubuntu having to deal with bugs from downstream too, about which little can be done except to upstream them to Debain, since that’s how Ubuntu tries to minimize the delta with Debian</li>
[121001980130] |<li>Linspire jsut seems to come out the winner in this deal.
[121001980140] |Ubuntu benefits only by having access to a not-yet-built CNR.com</li>
[121001980150] |<li>Mark says in the press release that the CNR system is open –well it is not entirely open source –only the <em>client software</em> is open source.
[121001980160] |I suppose he meant open as in open for access and use.</em>
[121001980170] |<li>Even without the agreement cnr.com would have been usable by Ubuntu users, if I am not missing anything big</li>
[121001980180] |<li>The fundamental assumption is that restricted decoders, plugins and apps will now be available “legally” after you pay some money.
[121001980190] |I’d like to see if this actually turns out that way –that is, to see if w32codecs, libdvdcss2 etc are made available.
[121001980200] |A cursory search of the current cnr website did not yield these packages –maybe they are just called something else</li>
[121001980210] |<li>Ubuntu will now have to face the problems that the software people installed using CNR will create –since the tie-up is official, one can’t say, “well, we don’t support packages from external repositories in the Ubuntu bug tracker</li> 
[121001980220] |Yes, I am a pessimist, but in thinking about the worst case we find comfort in things that work out well.
[121001980230] |I hope this was the right decision to make.
[121001980240] |I can’t forget, however, that there is no way one can stop anyone from using the repositories that Ubuntu’s developers and users garden.
[121001980250] |It’s probably too early to say it, but I’ll say it anyway —Ubuntu is the New Debian.
[121001990010] |<title>Gimparoo –Converting Photoshop Tutorials to Gimp</title>
[121001990020] |It’s not everyday that I get stoked enough by a website/blog that I decide to write about it.
[121001990030] |I happened upon <a>gimparoo</a> today, and the first thought I had was, “The world so badly needs this blog –what a great idea.”
[121001990040] |Though I don’t muck around with the GIMP as much as I used to a few years ago, I still appreciate a good, useful resource.
[121001990050] |Gimparoo converts photoshop tutorials for the Gimp.
[121001990060] |Linux users rejoice!
[121001990070] |To whoever the author of gimparoo is –please keep updating the blog once a day <img/>
[121002010010] |<title>Find Hardware Specs (Details) on your Computer</title>
[121002010020] |I stumbled upon the nifty “lshw” tool today. lshw lists your hardware.
[121002010030] |Try it now: <code>$sudo lshw</code>
[121002010040] |You can get specific details by using the -C flag: <code>$sudo lshw -C disk</code> will list all you hard disks.
[121002010050] |It create an html page with your hardware details if you do a: <code>$sudo lshw -html >your-file-name.html</code>
[121002010060] |<a>I generated one for my laptop and put it up for future reference</a>.
[121002010070] |Now I have an answer to the question, “what network adapter do you have, or what wireless driver are you using?”
[121002010080] |I know, this is something probably all of you know already.
[121002010090] |I just found out about this little tool today.
[121002010100] |I expect this info might be useful for those of you just learning the ropes, like me. 
[121002020010] |<title>Ubuntu Bug Statistics Graphs Now Goes Back 6 Months!</title>
[121002020020] |I finally got around to updating the <a>Ubuntu bug stats graphs page</a> to display graphs for bugstats over the past:
[121002020030] |<li>One day (24 hours)</li>
[121002020040] |<li>One week (7 days)</li>
[121002020050] |<li>One month (30 days), and</li>
[121002020060] |<li>Six Months (180 days)</li> 
[121002020070] |I had received a few requests for updates.
[121002020080] |When I had <a>created the page</a>, I did not have the data for more than a week prior to when I created it, so I had not included the monthly, and half-yearly plots.
[121002020090] |Now, finally, I got off my lame posterior and updated it, with a minor improvement to how the graphs are presented in the form of a tabbed “menu” inside a tabbed “menu”.
[121002020100] |Comments, suggestions welcome <img/>
[121002030010] |<title>Dell Caught in Storm of Its Own Making?</title>
[121002030020] |So <a>Dell</a> emulated digg and put the idea to (good) use in letting people submit and vote for ideas to be implemented at Dell.
[121002030030] |The result was <a>Dell Idea Storm</a>.
[121002030040] |Now maybe Dell regrets it, just a wee bit.
[121002030050] |You see, <a>the popular requests page right now</a> is dominated by Linux-oriented requests.
[121002030060] |The most popular idea is for machines with Linux (Ubuntu/OpenSUSE/Fedora) pre-installed.
[121002030070] |Followed closely by an idea to distribute PCs with OpenOffice preinstalled.
[121002030080] |There are popular ideas that suggest PCs without Windows installed, PCs with open-source Linux drivers etc.
[121002030090] |Now, for Dell, it would be a small publicity setback if they do not act on at least a few of these ideas –them being the most popular ideas.
[121002030100] |It will be interesting to see how it develops.
[121002030110] |I hope Dell does not just seem to be attentive to customers, and actually gives them what they demand.
[121002030120] |I, being the eternal optimist, voted with my mouse for <a>systems with Ubuntu pre-installed</a>. 
[121002040010] |<title>ESR Switches to Ubuntu!</title>
[121002040020] |<acronym>ESR</acronym> (<a>wikipedia</a>), that prototypical open-source geek, the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, to whom Linux and Open Source owes so much, has moved from Fedora/Red Hat to Ubuntu!
[121002040030] |He announced his decision in an <a>email to the Fedora Devel mailing list</a>.
[121002040040] |Among other things, he notes about how the Linspire deal is actually good, and how it was easier to install Ubuntu Edgy from one cd, not five. 
[121002040050] |In less than three hours’ work I was able to recreate the key features of my day-to-day toolkit.
[121002040060] |The after-installation mass upgrade to current packages, always a frightening prospect under Fedora, went off without a hitch.
[121002040070] |I’m not expecting Ubuntu to be perfect, but I am now certain it will be enough better to compensate me for the fact that I need to learn a new set of administration tools.
[121002040080] |Today is a big day for Ubuntu. (via <a>The World of a Penguin</a>, where I first read the news.
[121002040090] |I knew the <a>list of Ubuntu blog</a>s could only lead to good.)
[121002050010] |<title>Ubuntu Draft: Available on Tap</title>
[121002050020] |I don’t know how this has managed to evade my attention for all of 9 months –clearly, I am slacking. <img/>
[121002050030] |Imagine having a network port you could plug into to install Ubuntu!
[121002050040] |Well, its not so hard, apparently to serve Ubuntu on tap!
[121002050050] |<a>The Ubuntu Port</a> is a neat little idea.
[121002050060] |It was installed by <em>the combined efforts of David Basden, Matt Johnston, Davyd Madeley, James French (who broke the network, twice), one power drill, a multimeter named Albert and the Klone Krone</em>.
[121002050070] |<a>Davyd’s gallery has some photos</a>.
[121002050080] |To install Ubuntu, all you have to do is plug in to the tap, reboot, choosing to boot from network, listen to the Ubuntu theme song, and press Enter as Ubuntu gets installed.
[121002050090] |Installing from a CD might be simpler, but it sure ain’t as sexy/geeky.
[121002050100] |Heck, this is a <em>must-have</em> for every install fest, and university tech support office! 
[121002060010] |<title>Remove Wrong Firefox Auto-suggest text</title>
[121002060020] |I found the solution to another long standing gripe I had with Firefox –if you mistype a url once in the url bar, the ‘fox remembers it for a long long time.
[121002060030] |So I’d type “ubintu” once, and then, each time I type “ubu”, firefox autocompletes the url with “ubintu….” which is very annoying.
[121002060040] |<a>Lifehacker tells me</a> that I delete those annoying typos using Shift+Delete.
[121002060050] |So the next time the bugger pops up, I will delete ubintu.wordpress.com!
[121002060060] |It also works for form text entry fields.
[121002060070] |I am sure more than a few readers would be as glad as I was when I read about this <img/>
[121002070010] |<title>Ian Murdock Uses Ubuntu Too</title>
[121002070020] |<a>Ian Murdock</a> –the “ian” in “Debian”, founder of the Debian distribution likes to use Ubuntu on his desktop.
[121002070030] |At least one of his desktops.
[121002070040] |<img/><em>Image Credit:</em> <a>Ian Murdock</a>
[121002070050] |<a>Ian’s latest blog entry</a> had this screenshot.
[121002070060] |You can spy Ubuntu’s logo in the top left.
[121002070070] |Ian confirms that this is indeed an Ubuntu desktop in the comments.
[121002070080] |I was glad to see it, and thought I’d share it with you.
[121002070090] |We have heard from Ian before, talking about <a>Debian-Ubuntu</a> <a>compatibility</a>.
[121002070100] |(lets try the <a>new digg this feature</a> at wordpress.com)
[121002080010] |<title>Sylpheed-Claws is Claws Mail</title>
[121002080020] |Sylpheed-Claws, the email client for Linux has a new name –<a>Claws Mail</a>.
[121002080030] |Though this is not exactly news (the earliest <a>“official” announcement I can find is from December 04, 2006</a>), I just came across the news today.
[121002080040] |I have been a sylpheed-claws Claws Mail user ever since I tried it for the first time.
[121002080050] |There is no email client that fit my needs the way Claws did.
[121002080060] |Claws’ beauty lies in its speed —of start up, synchornizing and in general, of all operations.
[121002080070] |The <em>sensibility</em> of the software surprised me, since it provided those features that I wanted most and felt the lack of earlier.
[121002080080] |You can “harvest” email addresses from a folder full of emails, and so many other small things that I forget.
[121002080090] |Never, ever has it crashed on me, which is more than I can say of other clients. 
[121002080100] |In fact, many times over the last few months, I have thought of writing down what exactly makes Claws superior, in my opinion.
[121002080110] |I held back since it could be some work to make notes, now that I am used to Claws.
[121002080120] |I still use Thunderbird on a Windows XP machine occasionally.
[121002080130] |It has been ages since I used Evolution, which I found heavy, slow and sometimes unresponsive.
[121002080140] |If you guys are interested, I can start keeping notes and publish an article introducing claws(though it really needs no <a>introduction</a>. <img/>) 
[121002090010] |<title>Using sshfs to Access Remote Directories in Windows</title>
[121002090020] |I had a tough time deciding on a title for this post/article (“in” Windows or “on” Windows? I give up!).
[121002090030] |J Wynia writes in to share a method to how to access remote directories, such as those on your web server through sshfs on Windows.
[121002090040] |Actually that’s not the full story. 
[121002090050] |The full story is: 1) Install Ubuntu in a virtual machine in Windows 2) Setup sshfs and use that mount your remote directory 3) Setup the sshfs-mount as a Samba share 4) Access said Samba share from Windows
[121002090060] |Tin foil hat people keep away! <img/>
[121002090070] |<img/>Also, the author mentions troubles with his Ensim server administration software (which he worked around).
[121002090080] |Folks who use cPanel or some other server control panel might have some trouble too. 
[121002090090] |So head over to <a>the article</a> already!
[121002090100] |My old article on <a>mounting remote directories using sshfs</a> is what prompted J Wynia to write it.
[121002100010] |<title>Daylight Savings Time &Linux Boxes</title>
[121002100020] |Sort of late, but since its never too late, head over to Daniel’s blog for the lowdown on <a>how to make sure your linux box knows that we humans have decided to change the length of days</a>. 
[121002100030] |Daniel’s Blog is a must-read for me.
[121002100040] |He’s also one of the leading motors behind the <a>fridge</a> –he seems to sniff out Ubuntu-related news much better than anyone else.
[121002100050] |When you are at his blog, make sure you <a>whine a little about Ubuntu/Linux</a>.
[121002100060] |I wonder if Daniel intends to produce a summary of all the whines.
[121002100070] |If he is, then he better be prepared to spend some time on it.
[121002100080] |I remember creating the <a>List of Ubuntu Blogs</a> –especially how freaking long it took. <img/>
[121002110010] |<title>Ubuntu’s New Website</title>
[121002110020] |<a>Ubuntu’s new website</a> is the talk of the town.
[121002110030] |Color me impressed!
[121002110040] |To read more about the creation of the new design, visit <a>Matt Nuzum’s article on the redesign of the website</a>.
[121002110050] |The decision was difficult.
[121002110060] |We finally chose Drupal.
[121002110070] |They have excellent documentation, the cms is easy to extend through modules, they have a responsive security team and it’s easy to learn to edit and add content…each server can now handling(sic) 5,000 to 6,000 simul connections.
[121002110080] |Congrats to Matt, the sysadmins and Canonical for a job well done!
[121002110090] |Also, interestingly enough, I found that <a>ubuntusucks.com</a> redirects one to <a>ubuntu.com</a>.
[121002110100] |Talk about pre-emptive measures! 
[121002120010] |<title>Saving Sound Volume Levels Across Reboots</title>
[121002120020] |I have a weird problem with a desktop where the volume settings for PCM, Microphone etc are all set to mute when I restart the machine.
[121002120030] |I then have to use the alsamixer command line tool to set the volumes to desired levels.
[121002120040] |This annoyed the hell out of me.
[121002120050] |Finally I found a solution to this problem.
[121002120060] |So, if your computer has a volume memory problem, the following might be useful.
[121002120070] |To set the volume and other sound settings to your desired level and save the settings, do the following:
[121002120080] |<li>Delete the /etc/asound.conf file if it exists –Read <a>Daniel’s Comment Below</a></li>
[121002120090] |<li>Use the alsamixer command to set the various volume levels etc</li>
[121002120100] |<li>Save the settings by using the command: $sudo alsactl store</li> 
[121002120110] |And that is it!
[121002120120] |Another tip I read on <a>lifehacker</a>: This works to suppress the volume when you boot up a laptop in a place where it is not supposed to annoy others —think library, seminar, conference….
[121002120130] |Take an old, non-usable headphone, and snip off the wire just above the jack that plugs in to the speaker output of the computer.
[121002120140] |Plug this into your laptop before you boot up to prevent annoying people with the startup sounds as the computer boots up!
[121002120150] |It is a simple solution to a serious problem. 
[121002130010] |<title>Freedom Is the Addiction, Ubuntu the Gateway Drug</title>
[121002130020] |It’s Ubuntu’s fault, really.
[121002130030] |If I hadn’t gotten started on the free software ride, I wouldn’t have any compunctions about stolen music.
[121002130040] |What’s 300 stolen albums when you’ve collected $2000+ in stolen software?
[121002130050] |–<a>K Mandla</a>.
[121002130060] |After using Ubuntu long enough, I too don’t see the <em>need</em> to use pirated software on Windows.
[121002130070] |I still use Windows XP at work/school.
[121002130080] |I get it for free, legally, from school.
[121002130090] |When that stops I will have to stop using it.
[121002130100] |On XP, I use The GIMP, VLC media player, and a host of other free alternatives.
[121002130110] |Life is good, light and joyful with free software.
[121002140010] |<title>Feisty Feedback –Free For All</title>
[121002140020] |I installed Feisty Beta on my main laptop and I must say it is <em>very</em> impressive.
[121002140030] |In fact, I am more impressed with Feisty than any other release so far, especially when it comes to making life easier for new linux users and non-geek users.
[121002140040] |More than once, I was pleasantly surprised by the detail that seems to have gone into making life easier for regular desktop users, and this includes the documentation.
[121002140050] |Another thing I noticed was that on the IRC channels, there seem to be a lot less people complaining about random problems with Feisty.
[121002140060] |I still remember how busy #ubuntu+1 used to be after a beta release in the past.
[121002140070] |Since I don’t have any quantitative information, this has to remain a subjective observation for now. 
[121002140080] |Oh and yes, the rule that states that the busy-ness of a blogger’s life is inversely proportional to the frequency of blog posts is true <img/>I have ideas for a couple of posts, and an interview, on my mind for about 2 weeks now.
[121002140090] |Wish I had the time and peace-of-mind to share it with all of you.
[121002140100] |I am maintaining a log of the features in Feisty that impressed me most.
[121002140110] |I decided to completely reinstall Feisty on the laptop, since upgrading never gives one a very good view of what life is like for someone who is installing Ubuntu from a specific release.
[121002140120] |I will try and summarize what others like about Feisty too.
[121002140130] |To help me with that, please let me know what your experiences have been with Feisty so far. 
[121002140140] |<strong>What do you love about it?</strong> and more importantly, <em>What do you dislike most?</em>
[121002140150] |Extra points for originality, and for not repeating what other commenters have said <img/>Watch this space for more.
[121002140160] |See you in a day or two!
[121002150010] |<title>“Want to” Vs. “Have to”</title>
[121002150020] |So what is this ground-shattering revelation that forced me to write at 2:45 AM?
[121002150030] |It is one of those things that literally make you sit up, and think for a moment.
[121002150040] |When you are done thinking, you want to write it down –such thoughts don’t happen too often, you see.
[121002150050] |So here it is:
[121002150060] |More people use Windows not because they want to, but because they <em>have to</em>.
[121002150070] |More people use Linux not because they have to, but because they <em>want to</em>.
[121002150080] |The balance is tipping.
[121002150090] |Soon, there will be fewer people who will be willing to do what they have to at a high price, and more more people willing to change things so they can use the platform they want to use. 
[121002150100] |I’ll probably regret writing this a few years from now.
[121002150110] |It is, after all, so obvious.
[121002150120] |What I won’t regret is writing this down before I go to sleep tonight. 
[121002160010] |<title>Encrypt GMail using GPG Keys</title>
[121002160020] |<a>FireGPG</a> is the firefox plugin you need to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails in Gmail using your trusty GPG keys.
[121002160030] |The <a>installation instructions</a> are heavy on sentence ending exclamations, but they let us know that you can use this extension in Linux.
[121002170010] |<title>Feisty CDs to be Available Through Shipit</title>
[121002170020] |Unlike Edgy, which was not available through <a>shipit</a>, free cds of Feisty Fawn, the upcoming release may be available for free shipping.
[121002170030] |I logged into the shipit website and was greeted by this: <img/>
[121002170040] |Yippee!!
[121002170050] |Update: <a>You can now pre-order the CDs</a>
[121002180010] |<title>Linux is Mainstream, Paul.</title>
[121002180020] |<a>Paul Thurrott</a> writes at <a>internet-nexus</a> about the previous post I’d written <a>about how more people “want” to use Ubuntu</a> or some other flavor of Linux.
[121002180030] |First off, it’s great to have Paul’s attention.
[121002180040] |Paul is an opinion leader in the Windows-centered world. 
[121002180050] |I would like to point out some small misconceptions he seems to have:
[121002180060] |I never said that most people want to use Linux, or that most people use Windows since they have to.
[121002180070] |The word I used was <strong>more</strong>, and in this case, I meant it to mean that the numbers seem to be increasing –which is a good sign, as far as I am concerned.
[121002180080] |That aside, the following is what worries me most, Paul says:
[121002180090] |The truth is, for most people–like, 99.99 percent of the computing using public–a computer is a tool.
[121002180100] |What they “want” isn’t a particular OS.
[121002180110] |What they want is a solution to a problem, or an answer to a need.
[121002180120] |They want email.
[121002180130] |They want the Web.
[121002180140] |They want Office.
[121002180150] |Games.
[121002180160] |Digital photos and music.
[121002180170] |Paul, we Ubuntu users belong in the 99.99% you mention, too.
[121002180180] |Have you used Ubuntu lately, and have you been able to compare how easy it is to use Ubuntu on a day to day basis?
[121002180190] |Heck, it installs much faster and easier than Windows, and if you support open-source friendly hardware providers, like Intel, then everything works great –much faster than you can say “install windows driver”. <img/>
[121002180200] |Then again, he says:
[121002180210] |Anyone who stays up at night worrying about OS platforms just isn’t part of the mainstream.
[121002180220] |That’s not good or bad, it’s just reality. 
[121002180230] |We Linux users <strong>are</strong> part of the mainstream now, Paul.
[121002180240] |Linux is <strong>not</strong> just for geeks.
[121002180250] |For one, governments the world over are adapting to change, and thus driving it faster.
[121002180260] |In a few years, entire cities/states/countries will see vastly increased number of Linux users.
[121002180270] |People who use them in offices/schools will tell the others.
[121002180280] |I trust them to.
[121002180290] |Good news can’t be stopped from spreading.
[121002180300] |Oh, and Bill Gates’ (or Microsoft’s) first clients were geek hobbyists(a minority that was not part of the mainstream), and computers used to be a hobby back then.
[121002180310] |Look at where we are now.
[121002180320] |While no amount of personal examples from me, or from other Linux users can convince someone that this is the case, it cannot hurt to have a list of “normal” “mainstream” people who use Ubuntu —how they do, why etc.
[121002180330] |I just checked and there seems to be no such list.
[121002180340] |<strong>If you read this blog, and don’t do programming/computer related stuff for a living, please drop us a comment here, saying you use Ubuntu.</strong>
[121002180350] |Let’s see where this goes.
[121002180360] |Our world view is inclusive, Paul –anyone who has the hardware for a computer should be able to use the computer for free.
[121002180370] |We will get there.
[121002180380] |Ubuntu is amazingy easy to setup and use.
[121002180390] |GNOME, even KDE, are much much more intuitive and easy to use (from the usability point of view) than Windows.
[121002180400] |Of course, this is a subjective statement.
[121002180410] |I wish there was a study report I could point to.
[121002180420] |Could <a>Canonical</a> sponsor an Ubuntu Usability Study, comparing it to OSX and Windows?
[121002180430] |Just so that we have something to point at?
[121002190010] |<title>Beryl &Compiz Reunite to Form “Composite Community”</title>
[121002190020] |Beryl and Compiz come together again.
[121002190030] |<a>There is talk of a Compiz-Core with Compiz-Extra being where the main action will be</a>.
[121002190040] |- The Compiz-Extra division (what we think of as Compiz) will merge with the Beryl project to form a new community with the temporary name of “Composite Community”.
[121002190050] |- The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins, decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz communities.
[121002190060] |We will create a code review panel consisting of the best developers from each community who will see that any code included in a release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution in an officially supported package.
[121002190070] |Support for existing packages will be continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.
[121002190080] |Here’s the <a>announcement from the Beryl Dev Blog</a>
[121002190090] |Congratulations to all involved! 
[121002200010] |<title>Getting Details about My Laptop Battery –and Taking Care of it</title>
[121002200020] |Recently I have noticed that the “stamina” of my Acer notebook’s battery has been getting progressively worse.
[121002200030] |The laptop is hardly a year old and yet I get only 3/4ths of the time I used to get with it when I bought it.
[121002200040] |I wanted to know more details about how my battery’s doing.
[121002200050] |<img">(img credit: <a>Sean Dreilinger on Flickr</a>)
[121002200060] |To find out all the details you would want to know about you battery, browse to the directory <code>/proc/acpi/battery/</code> and then to the directory that has your battery in it.
[121002200070] |Once there, see the contents of the files to learn more about your battery.
[121002200080] |Here’s what my files tell me:
[121002200090] |So, as you can see, my battery does not charge to its full design capacity of 4400 mAh.
[121002200100] |It only charges to 3134 mAh, which is almost 3/4ths of the original capacity.
[121002200110] |Looks like my battery is on the downhill slide.
[121002200120] |Since it is a Lithium Ion battery, I went looking for details on how to take good care of it.
[121002200130] |It is a good thing I did, because it demystified me –Letting your battery drain to “dead” before recharging it is not good.
[121002200140] |I really thought it was, but it is not.
[121002200150] |Wish I had known this earlier!
[121002200160] |I found an <a>excellent page</a> online with details of what factors affect the performance and lifespan on Lithium Ion batteries.
[121002200170] |The page includes graphs to show stored charge levels, temperature, discharge load etc affect battery longevity.
[121002200180] |In case you don’t have the time to read the page, here’s some points for you to remember to ensure a long life for your LiON battery:
[121002200190] |<li>Avoid frequent discharges to 0% stored charge.</li>
[121002200200] |<li><li>Several partial discharges with frequent recharges is better, since Lithium-Ion batteries have no “memory”</li>
[121002200210] |<li>You still have to allow it to go from full charge to near-empty charge once in 30 charge cycles to make sure that the battery charge monitor is properly calibrated</li> </li>
[121002200220] |<li>Avoid Heat</li>
[121002200230] |<li><li>Don’t leave the laptop in the car</li>
[121002200240] |<li>If you are going to use the laptop connected to power for a week or more continuously, take the battery out.
[121002200250] |This will save it from the heat and from the charge-discharge problems</li> </li>
[121002200260] |<li>The batteries deteriorate even when they are stored cool!</li>
[121002200270] |<li><li>Don’t buy a replacement battery or a spare battery until the time when you really need it!</li>
[121002200280] |<li>If you have to store a Lithium Ion battery –store it at 40% charge and store it in a refrigerator</li> </li>
[121002200290] |Take care of your battery, because there is no way to restore capacity to failed batteries.
[121002200300] |Also, an average battery is good for 300-500 charge/discharge cycles, or about 1-2 years.
[121002200310] |The main physical reason for the degradation of performance seems to be increased internal resistance, which causes the battery to be unable to deliver the charge stored in it to the outside world (the internal resistance eats it up <img/>).
[121002200320] |Chemical decomposition of components also reduces the charge delivery capacity over time.
[121002200330] |So it is best to do the most you can to slow down the degradation by following the tips above.
[121002210010] |<title>Convert/Import from PDF and Keep the Formatting</title>
[121002210020] |I have often wanted to convert a PDF file to a MS Word (.doc) file or an openoffice.org file.
[121002210030] |Usually I just copy the text from the PDF file and paste it in the new word document.
[121002210040] |Soon, this gets pretty tiring.
[121002210050] |Recently I found a way to convert a pdf file to other formats, including .doc and .odt which preserves the formatting of the text pretty well.
[121002210060] |It is not perfect preserved but it is way better than having no formatting at all.
[121002210070] |The secret goes by the name KWord.
[121002210080] |KWord is a KDE application that has a pdf “import” feature which lets you import either entire pdf documents or just a few pages from a pdf document <em>while preserving the formatting</em>!
[121002210090] |Of course –this only works for pdf documents which are not scanned images of pages.
[121002210100] |I tried it out on files created using <img/>, MS Word and OpenOffice.
[121002210110] |The font sizes in the imported document are larger than they need to be, but at least the headings are heading, the normal text is normal text, and the bullets are bullets!
[121002210120] |Start the import using the “File” -> “Import” option in the main KWord menu.
[121002210130] |After you select the pdf file to be imported, you will see a window like the one above where you can specify the pages you want to import.
[121002210140] |I did not change the default selected options –changing them and seeing what happens is an exercise left to the reader. <img/>
[121002210150] |Of course, if you want to install KWord on your Ubuntu system, you can run the following command from the terminal window: <code>$sudo apt-get install kword</code>
[121002210160] |Then you can launch KWord using: <code>$KWord &</code>or by clicking the entry for KWord in the menu on your desktop.
[121002220010] |<title>Request Feisty (7.04) CDs Now</title>
[121002220020] |<a>Shipit is now accepting advance orders for Feisty CDs</a>.
[121002220030] |<a>“<img"></a>
[121002220040] |You can also request <a>Kubuntu</a> and <a>Edubuntu</a> CDs.
[121002220050] |I wish there were Xubuntu CDs for those that like their toast lightweight.
[121002220060] |You can request 10 or less CDs using shipit.
[121002220070] |For mass orders (for your LUG, class, or country) try the <a>special request form</a> after you login.
[121002220080] |Of course, the responsible thing to do is to <a>download the CD image</a> and burn it when it becomes available.
[121002220090] |Remember the CDs are shipped free of cost, and there is always someone else without a stable and fast internet connection who could use these shipped cds.
[121002230010] |<title>Ubuntu-tan Wallpapers Make Up for Missing Ubuntu Mascot</title>
[121002230020] |There is some <a>small talk about the need for an Ubuntu Mascot</a> at the <a>Ubuntu-sounder mailing list</a>.
[121002230030] |Though there are suggestions for a space-helmet sporting penguin, the idea hasn’t come to anything so far.
[121002230040] |In an email in the thread, there was link to some OS-tans to temporarily make up for the lack of a mascot.
[121002230050] |Its about time Ubuntu got a chweet-overloaded mascot,for the kids if not for us, don’t you think?
[121002230060] |Without much further ado, here’s a couple of OS-tans for you to love, and to optionally invite to reside on your desktop <img/>
[121002230070] |To avoid flooding the <a>planet</a> with pictures, there are two more pics, and some more details below.
[121002230080] |The first two images can be obtained in various resolutions from the <a>Ubuntu Japan artwork page</a>.
[121002230090] |They were created by <a>Piro</a>.
[121002230100] |I wonder what the text on that desktop image means.
[121002230110] |I hope it is innocent, in any case.
[121002230120] |The last image was created by <a>Juzo-kun</a>.
[121002230130] |I got them from <a>this page with more OS-tans representing other Linux distros</a>. 
[121002230140] |What’s an OS-tan you ask?
[121002230150] |<a>Wikipedia provides the answer</a>:
[121002230160] |The OS-tans are an Internet phenomenon that originated with the Japanese Futaba Channel.
[121002230170] |The OS-tan, or OS Girls as they are sometimes referred to, are the personification of several operating systems by various amateur Japanese artists.
[121002230180] |Although a pure fan creation, the appearance of each OS-tan is generally consistent across artists.
[121002230190] |File this under “fun” <img/>
[121002240010] |<title>Ad or Not?</title>
[121002240020] |Well, it turns out, the <a>logo misuse</a> may have been the magazine’s fault.
[121002240030] |I received emails from the institution that we thought was advertising in the magazine, and someone at the magazine.
[121002240040] |It was not an ad for an institution.
[121002240050] |I just got a couple of emails, and so, since I have no intention of getting someone a bad name without reason, I edited the post and removed some links.
[121002240060] |I would publish the emails I received but after some thought, since the senders had no clue they would be published, I won’t publish them.
[121002240070] |Sorry for the interruption in your regular planet programming <img/>End of Transmission.
[121002250010] |<title>“Gutsy Gibbon” to Replace “Feisty Fawn”</title>
[121002250020] |As Ubuntu tries to increase its reach, and manage all the branches that are springing forth from it, the next development codename “Gutsy Gibbon” seems to be perfect.
[121002250030] |Mark Shuttleworth declared as much in <a>announcing Gutsy Gibbon</a> to be the chosen name for the developmental release that is expected to be released in October 18, 2007 (so this will be Ubuntu 7.10).
[121002250040] |<img"><em><a>Gibbons</a> are small apes found in South East Asia</em>
[121002250050] |<strong>Highlights from the announcement</strong>:
[121002250060] |<li>The Gibbon defeated the “Glossy Gnu” to the finish</li>
[121002250070] |<li>This next version will also feature a brand new ultra-free, no-nonfree flavor of Ubuntu for the purists</li>
[121002250080] |<li>Glossiness in the form of Beryl/Compiz enabled by default might hit the Gibbon</li>
[121002250090] |<li>Any “monkey” should be able to install Gibbon –with new improvements to the installer to allow network-managed upgrades</li>
[121002250100] |<li>Agility of deployment, together with integrated management will be a focus for the Ubuntu server team –leading to leaner, meaner and faster server version of Ubuntu</li>
[121002250110] |<li>GNOME 2.20.0 will definitely be in Gutsy Gibbon, with GNOME 2.20.1 being a distinct possibility</li> 
[121002250120] |You can view the <a>Release Schedule for Gutsy Gibbon</a> at the wiki.
[121002250130] |Like Mark says, “Go Ape!” and celebrate the arrival of the new Gibbon.
[121002250140] |I love how he pushes the animal metaphor and displays a sense of humor in making these new release name announcements.
[121002270010] |<title>Ubuntu’s Logo Copied By ReviewIt Mag</title>
[121002270020] |The <a>latest edition of Reviewit Magazine</a> features the Ubuntu Logo on the 37th page. (via <a>Digg</a>).
[121002270030] |Also, as <a>Jeff points out</a>, they also use imagery from the Fedora stable(the bubbles), and so it is twice lame.
[121002270040] |Thanks for pointing these out, Jeff.
[121002270050] |Earlier there was that offending <a>MSN Spaces Logo</a> which looked close but wasn’t a 100% copy.
[121002270060] |That logo is not being used by spaces now, which is now called Windows Live Spaces.
[121002270070] |So what do we do about blatant trademark violations?
[121002270080] |Somehow, the idea of a corporation that aggressively pursues copyright and trademark violation does not fit in with Open Culture.
[121002270090] |That said, it is essential to <a>maintain the integrity of Ubuntu’s branding</a>.
[121002270100] |I suppose since the magazine in question is not so popular, and since it is a one-off violation, nothing will be done about this (then again, I might be wrong).
[121002270110] |By the way, I have been blogging here at a crazy rate over the past day or two.
[121002270120] |Most of the posts have been news or opinion items.
[121002270130] |This is so unlike me <img/>This is the last of them, I promise.
[121002270140] |It is tempting to blog about every little Ubuntu related thing that I think is interesting, but doing that takes me a little farther from the <a>blog’s stated goal</a>. 
[121002270150] |<strong>Update</strong>: Earlier I had implied that the logo appeared in an advertisement.
[121002270160] |It was not an ad –it was an article in the magazine.
[121002270170] |So, since it is no fault of the institution featured in the magazine, I have removed references to the institution in the article above.
[121002270180] |I apologize if I misled/misinformed anyone temporarily.
[121002270190] |I have also edited some comments below to remove references to the institution mentioned upon request.
[121002270200] |I received two emails –one each from the institution and from the magazine that seem to confirm that the logo appeared in an article, not an advertisement.
[121002270210] |Thank you!
[121002280010] |<title>An Interview with Mark Shuttleworth on Talk Radio 702</title>
[121002280020] |There have been quite a few podcasts featuring <a>Mark Shuttleworth</a> recently. 
[121002280030] |First there was the <a>interview conducted by Questions Please</a> with <a>questions from ordinary decent people solicited on the Fridge</a>.
[121002280040] |Then there was the <a>Linux Action Show podcast</a>.
[121002280050] |But there is one other interview that seems to have missed all the radars so far.
[121002280060] |South Africa’s 702 Talk Radio has a podcast in two parts of <a>Mark being interviewed by Aki Anastasiou</a>.
[121002280070] |Since it is a little difficult to find the links to the mp3 files on <a>the page with the podcasts</a>, here they are: <a>Part 1</a> and <a>Part 2</a>.
[121002280080] |Unlike the other podcasts, this one is hosted by a professional radio host.
[121002280090] |I believe 702 Talk Radio is a regular full-service radio station.
[121002280100] |I enjoyed listening to the interview last night, where talk ranges from space travel to Ubuntu on the desktop to philanthropy.
[121002280110] |I learnt that Da Vinci said what he did about flight, as featured on the <a>wonderful quote on Mark’s homepage</a> before any man had flown.
[121002280120] |It is obvious once you realize that there were no flying machines in Da Vinci’s time.
[121002280130] |I love it when I realize something that is obvious and go “D’oh” mentally <img/>Mark’s expectations for Ubuntu are so rational, it amazes me –I love it that he does not “oversell” Ubuntu as something it is, in his view, not.
[121002280140] |I find this a welcome change from the normal “My foobar is the best thing that has happened to the planet, evar!” kind of marketing talk.
[121002280150] |<a>Two</a> <a>readers</a> commented –and I even received one email –saying more frequent posts of the kind that I have written recently are welcome –that I should not limit myself to writing only helpful tips.
[121002280160] |That is what encouraged me to write about this interview. 
[121002280170] |Enjoy the interviews!
[121002290010] |<title>Mark’s Interview at DerStandard.At</title>
[121002290020] |<a>Mark talks candidly about Ubuntu</a>.
[121002290030] |Turn to page 4 for where Mark describes who Linux is good for, and what makes him think Linux is not ready for commercial pre-installed computer sales.
[121002290040] |Sensible, rational, and very lucid. 
[121002300010] |<title>The rsync Download Post is Gone</title>
[121002300020] |The rsync download/update cdimage article I wrote is no more.
[121002300030] |Both Jonathan Riddell and Matt Zimmerman left a comment on the post to say that the excessive load caused by rsyncing users would kill the rsync server.
[121002300040] |So while this might have worked for one or two people, it won’t work if everyone tries it.
[121002300050] |I believed the best thing to do was to make the article “private” so as not to cause undue stress on the servers –I love servers and won’t have them thinking bad of me.
[121002300060] |I like humans too, and am sorry for posting a “solution” that was flawed.
[121002300070] |The right thing to do would be to download the image through <a>bittorrent</a> the day Feisty is released.
[121002300080] |We have to be patient. <img/>
[121002310010] |<title>Download or Upgrade to Feisty Fawn (7.04)</title>
[121002310020] |<a>Feisty Fawn is here</a>!
[121002310030] |Here’s the <a>Press Release</a>.
[121002310040] |The <a>Release Notes</a> contain things you should watch out for when installing or upgrading, including the most common installer bugs and other issues.
[121002310050] |Read it before you install or upgrade.
[121002310060] |The <a>7.04 tour</a> guides you through what’s new.
[121002310070] |<a>Phil Bull’s 41-item list of what’s new in Feisty</a> is an awesome collection of the new bling. 
[121002310080] |You can <a>download Feisty</a> by bittorrent, or you can download the cd images.
[121002310090] |Using bittorrent would be right thing to do.
[121002310100] |<h4>Upgrading</h4>
[121002310110] |If you are upgrading from Edgy, read the <a>upgrade notes</a>.
[121002310120] |Please note that the graphical method using the Update Manager is recommended over the command line method using APT.
[121002310130] |For <a>22x faster upgrades, read my earlier post</a> <img/>
[121002310140] |Thank you, Ubuntu developers, MOTUs, Documenters, Bug Fixers, Forum members, IRC chatters, and Ubuntu users.
[121002310150] |Let us not take predictable, regular, ultra-cool releases for granted.
[121002310160] |My heart is so big right now, it might just explode.
[121002310170] |Thank you for this release, and for the release from the mundane, the bloated, the untrustworthy, and the unstable!
[121002320010] |<title>Behind MOTU: Meet the Masters of the Universe</title>
[121002320020] |You might already know about <a>Behind Ubuntu</a>, a website that features profiles of the people behind Ubuntu –the ones who contribute their time and effort to making Ubuntu what it is.
[121002320030] |<a>Behind MOTU</a> is a similar effort to bring to the fore members of the <acronym>MOTU</acronym>.
[121002320040] |The MOTU are an elite squad of mostly volunteer developers who keep the 10,000+ packages in the Universe component of the Ubuntu repository in shape.
[121002320050] |Yes, that is a whole lot of packages to keep track of, and without the MOTU, the task would be impossible.
[121002320060] |The <a>MOTU team on launchpad</a> currently has 65 members. #ubuntu-motu is their online hangout.
[121002320070] |I wish Behind MOTU posts had pictures of the Masters.
[121002320080] |It helps me greatly to put a human face to the awesome people I am thankful to.
[121002320090] |Also, it would be nice if they had a “Page” with links to the profiles of each MOTU.
[121002320100] |So far, <a>Michael Bienia</a>, <a>Scott Kitterman</a>, and <a>Barry deFreese</a> have been profiled.
[121002320110] |I look forward to more interviews in the future. 
[121002330010] |<title>Ubuntu Open Week: Get Your Questions Answered</title>
[121002330020] |…by, <a>among others</a>, Mark Shuttleworth.
[121002330030] |The <a>Ubuntu Open Week</a> is a week of sessions on <a>the IRC chat channel #ubuntu-classroom</a> where you can learn more about Ubuntu.
[121002330040] |You have sessions about getting involved with translating, patching, packaging, bug fixing, getting involved with communities, the desktop team and much, much more.
[121002330050] |The open week runs from Monday 23rd April through Saturday, 28th April.
[121002330060] |<a>Melissa</a> has an additional request —that you <a>help spread the word</a>! <img/>
[121002360010] |<title>The Ubuntu Community Interviews Mark Shuttleworth</title>
[121002360020] |As part of the <a>Ubuntu Open Week</a>, everyone interested had a chance to ask Mark Shuttleworth, the <acronym>SABDFL</acronym>, their questions.
[121002360030] |Thanks to the volunteer efforts of the wiki gardeners, you can <a>read the entire interview online</a>.
[121002360040] |I was intending to post the entire interview here, after formatting it, but since the interview at the wiki is formatted, and ready, I will just share the salient points.
[121002360050] |<li>Regarding requesting <acronym>ISVs</acronym> to port their applications to Linux, Mark says that unless Linux users decide to pay for software like AutoCAD and Photoshop on Linux, the ISVs won’t migrate their apps so easily –since there are two things that drive ISVs to explore new oppurtunities –the raw size of the users in a market, and their willingness to pay for software –Mark says Linux is doing well on the number-of-users front, but the second factor is critical.
[121002360060] |I think one of the ISVs have to take the plunge, and try selling software to Linux users, and serve as a case study for the others to follow.</li>
[121002360070] |<li>Regarding the $3 MS OS initiative, Mark says <a>this guy gets it</a>.
[121002360080] |Basically, there are lots of reasons why, despite the MS OS being only $3, Linux makes a better choice.
[121002360090] |Interesting.</li>
[121002360100] |<li>The inevitable question of why Launchpad is not open-sourced yet was raised.
[121002360110] |This time, I think I understand the reasons behind it being closed, thanks to Mark’s answer.
[121002360120] |Basically, launchpad might remain closed till launchpad.net is established as the pivot of bug-tracking and as a general software development support system.
[121002360130] |Releasing the source now might mean that there will be many “launchpads” like the many bugzillas, thus compounding the problem launchpad is trying to address –that of not having a central issue tracking system that tracks the same unique issue across multiple bug trackers. </li>
[121002360140] |<li>Canonical will not go public anytime in the near future, and will also not accept funding from venture capital firms.
[121002360150] |Mark’s reasoning is that accepting any sort of external financial support will shift Canonical’s focus to a short-term profit/finance driven strategy.
[121002360160] |Canonical wants to take the long-term view and focus on building a better Linux desktop, among other things.</li>
[121002360170] |<li>Here’s the most inspiring part of the interview –Mark says the goals with Ubuntu are to be the best desktop linux distribution and to <em>create a self-sustaining platform for Ubuntu, one that does not rely on license fees</em>.
[121002360180] |He admits it has never been done before, but believes it can be done. </li>
[121002360190] |There is a lot more where these points came from.
[121002360200] |<a>Read it</a>.
[121002360210] |The interview seems to suggest there will be another Q&A session with Mark on Firday, April 27th, but the the <a>Open Week Schedule</a> does not have such a session listed.
[121002360220] |So I am not too sure if there will be another of these sessions.
[121002360230] |If there is one, I hope I can find it possible to be there for it, live.
[121002370010] |<title>Free Ubuntu Magazine: Full Circle</title>
[121002370020] |The zeroth issue of the Ubuntu <a>Full Circle Magazine</a> has been out for a while now.
[121002370030] |You can <a>download it in your chosen language here</a>.
[121002370040] |If it is not available in your chosen language, then maybe you can <a>help translate</a> it the next time for others like you.
[121002370050] |<img'>The magazine is a community effort –I think it was kickstarted on this <a>Ubuntu forum post</a> by the forum user ronniet.
[121002370060] |“Development” of issues revolves around the wiki.
[121002370070] |The <a>Ubuntu Magazine page lists what you can do to contribute articles and columns</a>.
[121002370080] |Maybe I should contribute an article or a regular column in the magazine –after all it is a volunteer effort and the magazine is provided free-of-cost.
[121002380010] |<title>Dell to Offer Ubuntu to Consumers</title>
[121002380020] |So Dell did not get caught in the <a>storm of it’s making</a> –it swept the storm off its feet!
[121002380030] |This is the day the scales started tipping.
[121002380040] |Dell will start offering consumers PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 (aka Feisty Fawn) on its PCs for interested customers.
[121002380050] |The <a>Dell Ideas in Action Blog announced as much earlier today</a>, stating very clearly that Ubuntu was their distribution of choice, and that they have worked out the specifics of the deal with Canonical, the entity that support Ubuntu’s development.
[121002380060] |Read <a>Canonical’s brief announcement here</a>.
[121002380070] |According to Canonical’s Jane Silber, <a>the timing couldn’t be better</a>:
[121002380080] |“The market is ready,” Silber said.
[121002380090] |“We think the combination of the timing, the technology and the partner are aligned to make it happen.” 
[121002380100] |There is a <a>video interview with Mark Shuttleworth over at the Direct2Dell blog</a> in which he talks about how the deal came about, and how this will make wide Linux adoption a much easier goal to achieve.
[121002380110] |He’s right when he says that this will increase Linux’s visibility across the board, and draw out closet Linux technologists who will now see some commercial benefit to advertising the Linux expertise they had, but never really talked about before. 
[121002380120] |I think this is a big step forward –hell, I look forward to answering, “what’s that Ubuntu-thing on your laptop?” with “Haven’t you heard, it comes pre-installed on some Dell PCs?”
[121002380130] |Kudos to Dell for following up on their promise to listen to customers.
[121002380140] |My voted counted, for once.
[121002380150] |Depending on how many Ubuntu laptops get sold, Dell might just be the trailblazer in making and selling computers –once again.
[121002380160] |The interesting thing is, I wonder if Dell sees the future, can the others be far behind.
[121002380170] |Also, going by the example Mark states in the interview about how Linux adoption on servers led to hardware manufacturers ensuring that their stuff was up to snuff on servers, this can only mean better support for Ubuntu from the hardware component and peripheral manufacturers.
[121002380180] |Congratulations Ubuntu –stand up and be recognized now!
[121002390010] |<title>Ubuntu Partners with Intel for Mobile Device Support</title>
[121002390020] |From BBC, we get to learn that <a>Ubuntu and Intel are working together</a> to get to the point were Ubuntu-powered mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs.
[121002390030] |They talk about the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project which hopes to have its first release in October 2007.
[121002390040] |Pervasive Ubuntu –oh yeah! 
[121002390050] |It’s really cool to see Intel pushing the envelope with Open Source friendliness.
[121002390060] |Maybe AMD needs to catch up and brush up the ATI drivers –open source them and have a fighting chance in the newly growing desktop Linux market.
[121002390070] |By the way, I came to know of the BBC article via Ercan, a reader, who adds:
[121002390080] |I enjoy your ubuntu blog.
[121002390090] |I like the general updates on ubuntu but don’t forget the tips and tricks.
[121002390100] |Tips, hmm, yes… it is hard to come by good ones everyday –and it becomes harder as Ubuntu gets better.
[121002390110] |I will work harder or it, Ercan. <img/>
[121002400010] |<title>Installing Ubuntu in a Library</title>
[121002400020] |I installed no software, except for the Operating System, and look –it works! 
[121002400030] |Jessamyn is a librarian with 3 donated PCs and no legitimate OS.
[121002400040] |She installs Ubuntu and shows us why she loves it.
[121002400050] |I woke and saw this.
[121002400060] |Today will be a good great day!
[121002400070] |I hope she posts a follow-up of how people in her library use it.
[121002410010] |<title>Using “tee” to write to files and the terminal</title>
[121002410020] |The utility “tee” is very useful for plumbing on the command line.
[121002410030] |Curiously enough, it gets its name from the T-splitter used in plumbing, shown below: <img/>
[121002410040] |Say you want to run a command, and be able to see the output and errors on the screen, and be able to save them to a file.
[121002410050] |That’s where tee comes in, so you could do a: <code>$sudo apt-get upgrade 2>&1 | tee ~/apt-get.log</code> …to run apt-get upgrade and save the output and errors to the file apt-get.log in your home directory.
[121002410060] |Purists please excuse the following explanation <img/>The “2″ refers to the “tap” from which the errors pour out (called stderr).
[121002410070] |The “1″ refers to the tap from which the output pours out.
[121002410080] |The 2>&1 makes the errors to also pour out of the output tap.
[121002410090] |So then stderr goes to stdout.
[121002410100] |The pipe “|” redirects the output to tee.
[121002410110] |Now tee splits the output of the previous command two ways, and puts it both in ~/apt-get.log and in the standard output, which happens to be your screen/terminal. 
[121002410120] |tee is also handy when you have a small permissions problem.
[121002410130] |Say you want to write some text to a file “filename.txt” owned by the “root” user –you would just use something like: <code>$sudo vim filename.txt</code> and then change the file, right?
[121002410140] |Now suppose you want to echo what you write, and write the file, all in one command, you then can use tee thusly: <code>$echo "localhost 127.0.0.1" | sudo tee filename.txt >/dev/null</code>
[121002410150] |This would write the text “localhost 127.0.0.1″ to the file filename.txt which is not owned by you.
[121002410160] |The output of tee itself will go to /dev/null (nothingness) instead of the standard output, which is your terminal.
[121002410170] |Don’t lose sleep over this, but someday it will come handy, and when you can figure out why the “sudo” does not apply after the “>”in your command, remember tee and come back here.
[121002410180] |For all your command line redirecting needs, and to learn to wield pipes and tees like nunchakus read this <a>excellent page</a>.
[121002420010] |<title>Preserve Threaded View in Thunderbird</title>
[121002420020] |Via <a>Chris Ilias’ Blog</a> comes this gem of a tip.
[121002420030] |If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, and love the threaded view, but hate losing the threaded view whenever you click on “Sender” or “Date” to sort the messages, then this is the tip for you.
[121002420040] |This helps you keep the threaded view regardless of how you sort the messages.
[121002420050] |Go to <strong><em>Tools–>Options–>Advanced–>General</em></strong>, and select the Config Editor option.
[121002420060] |In the Config Editor, search for “<strong>mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads</strong>” by typing it in at the top.
[121002420070] |When you see the preference, change the value from “True” to “False” by double-clicking on it, or by right clicking and changing the value.
[121002420080] |This will help you keep the threaded view stuck across the different sorting methods.
[121002420090] |I find the threaded view useful when browsing the list of bug-related emails, for one.
[121002420100] |Of course, I use the Claws GTK email client much more than I do Thunderbird, but I have Thunderbird setup on an infrequently used office computer, and I thought many of you might be using Thunderbird anyways. 
[121002440010] |<title>Typing Break and WorkRave: Keep RSI at Bay</title>
[121002440020] |I woke up on Thursday with a left arm more painful than a 100 episodes of Wheel of Fortune.
[121002440030] |I had almost pulled an all-nighter the night before to finish reviewing/correcting a paper.
[121002440040] |I went to the doctor, fearing the worst.
[121002440050] |My left wrist was aching, and no change of position or angle would suppress the hurt. 
[121002440060] |The doctor said I had <a>tenosynovitis</a> –which is a member of the much talked-about <a>Repetitive Strain Injuries</a>.
[121002440070] |He advised me against using the laptop on my lap –this keep my hands all hunched up together.
[121002440080] |He also advised a couple of days of rest.
[121002440090] |So needless to say, I haven’t typed much over the weekend, though I wanted to write a short guide on implementing a <a>Getting Things Done</a> workflow in Linux.
[121002440100] |I had set things up for GTD the past week, and the search for tools that work on Linux was frustrating, to say the least.
[121002440110] |I finally had to narrow it down to an online tool that seems very capable of the task.
[121002440120] |I have been itching to write the article and yet have resisted. 
[121002440130] |Monday brought me back to work, and I thought I should look at options to reduce the risk of recurrence of the pain.
[121002440140] |For two reasons –the pain was real bad, and the doctor said that repeated occurrences of RSI would lead to the much-dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and perhaps permanent numbness of the digits in my hands.
[121002440150] |GNOME is very advanced when it comes to providing methods to save your hands.
[121002440160] |There is the Typing Break in GNOME’s keyboard preferences dialog (System -> Preferences -> Keyboard).
[121002440170] |Here’s a snapshot: <img/>
[121002440180] |It is easy enough to ask you computer to lock up every once in an hour or so for 5 minutes to enforce a break.
[121002440190] |But for those of us who are not satisfied with a fly swatter to swat flies, there is <a>workrave</a>, with the little sheep for a mascot.
[121002440200] |You can install workrave using: <code>$sudo apt-get install workrave</code>
[121002440210] |Once installed, you can add it to your panel as an applet by right-clicking on a panel and adding the applet: <img">.
[121002440220] |Once on the panel, you get to right click on the panel applet and set preferences: <img/>
[121002440230] |There’s a whole lot to choose from –you can choose to have micro-breaks of less than minute every 10 minutes, say.
[121002440240] |You can also enforce a longer break every hour or so.
[121002440250] |A break of 5 minutes every hour seems normal.
[121002440260] |You can also choose whether to be able to postpone the break when you get the warning of an impending break or not.
[121002440270] |A break can be either just a disabled keyboard, or a locked screen too, just so you don’t use your mouse to sneak a peek at you mail, or visitor stats <img/>
[121002440280] |Workrave also has a neat feature where you can exercise your fingers, wrist, neck and arms during the break –there is an on-screen display of how to do the exercise and a virtual character does it with you.
[121002440290] |<a>Marcel has written about workrave in detail</a> and even has some more screenshots –including one of the dudette who does the exercises with you.
[121002440300] |In addition to the forced typing breaks, I am thinking this would be a good time to switch to the <a>Dvorak keyboard layout</a>.
[121002440310] |The initial learning phase where typing gets really slow is what’s holding me back.
[121002440320] |Maybe that is one thing to filed under “someday/maybe” in my GTD system. <img/>
[121002460010] |<title>Alright you drooling idiots!</title>
[121002460020] |<a>Jem Matzan thinks we technical writers treat you as stupid drooling idiots</a>.
[121002460030] |Do I?
[121002460040] |I can honestly say I don’t.
[121002460050] |I write for the competent computer user who has switched to Ubuntu.
[121002460060] |Anything that 90-95% of the people who formerly used Windows or Macs, and are competent enough to help others won’t be published here.
[121002460070] |Guaranteed.
[121002460080] |I can say that since I have a target audience of one –myself before I knew what I wrote here.
[121002460090] |I write so that, some day in the future, when I search for a solution to a problem, I get the pleasure that only a goojà vu (google + déjà vu <img/>) can provide –finding something you wrote as the result of a Google search is priceless.
[121002460100] |There are some authors of blogs that write tutorials and guides that cover all and sundry.
[121002460110] |The installation of some software that should be pretty straightforward to install, and so on, ad nauseum.
[121002460120] |I understand that the pleasure of earning a check through Google’s adsense can be great, and I wish these authors good luck.
[121002460130] |There are also the book equivalent of these sites that really do treat Ubuntu users as dunces.
[121002460140] |But Jem, what’s the problem with any of that?
[121002460150] |The world needed a “Linux for Dummies” –something that is inanely simple to install, setup, use and maintain –and that is exactly what Ubuntu is. Power users don’t need to fear it since it does not take away anything in doing that.
[121002460160] |So there you are –a Linux-based OS that is simple enough for the stupid and as (if not more) flexible and powerful than the best OSes out there.
[121002460170] |It’s not like there aren’t books out there that don’t address the intricacies of subjects that are technically complex.
[121002460180] |The wiki and the Official Ubuntu Book, not to mention all the documentation and books out there for Debian all address the power users’ documentation needs.
[121002460190] |I was happy to read that article, especially the parallels drawn with how Mac users were once perceived the way the author perceives Ubuntu users now.
[121002460200] |I was happy because it is a sign that we are moving in the right direction –towards a “Linux for Human Beings” (regardless of IQ). 
[121002470010] |<title>Thoughts that make me go hmmm!</title>
[121002470020] |<a>This thought just struck me: the GNOME “save file” icon is still an image of a floppy (or it is at least in Gnumeric).
[121002470030] |How many people still remember what a floppy looks like?</a>
[121002470040] |Should the save icon be replaced by something else (a picture of a cd/usb drive)?
[121002470050] |Or should floppy discs be “icon”ized forever?
[121002470060] |Somehow, all these days, the above thought never occurred to me.
[121002470070] |That icon with a floppy drive in it meant “Save” and to be honest, I have failed to think “floppy” when I have seen the icon before.
[121002480010] |<title>SSH Menu –Save and Open SSH Connections from the Panel</title>
[121002480020] |I was looking for a replacement for <a>SecureCRT</a> in Ubuntu.
[121002480030] |Something that would let me save all my SSH connections and make it possible to open a connection with the least effort.
[121002480040] |As is often the case, I found something better than SecureCRT –a panel applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of SSH connections.
[121002480050] |<a>SSHMenu</a> is cool, way too cool. <img/>
[121002480060] |Above, you can see my list of ssh accounts in all their glory.
[121002480070] |A connection is just a click away. 
[121002480080] |When you set up the connections, you can specify the geometry –ie, where on your desktop you want the gnome-terminal window to pop up, as well as a “profile” for the gnome-terminal instance –very handy if you want to have different color schemes for different ssh accounts to be able to distinguish between them better. <img/>
[121002480090] |What’s even better is, in the “Hostname (etc)” field, you can prepend ssh options to the hostname.
[121002480100] |The figure below shows my port forwarding setup for IRC at school, since I can’t chat using port 6667 at school. <img/>
[121002480110] |There’s a <a>Debian/Ubuntu repository for SSHMenu</a>, and of course, nothing stops you from downloading the .deb packages and installing them if you don’t wish to add another repository to you list of repositories.
[121002480120] |I wonder how long before SSHMenu finds itself into the Ubuntu repositories <img/>
[121002480130] |Once you get SSHMenu installed, you can add it to your panel by right-clicking on your GNOME panel, and selecting “Add to Panel”.
[121002480140] |SSHMenu should be listed as “SSH Menu Applet” under the “Utilities” section.
[121002480150] |Then all you have to do is use the tool to add accounts that pops-up when you install the applet, or add the accounts later by clicking on the “SSH” in your panel.
[121002480160] |However, this still doesn’t take us to “one-click” login, since you will be prompted for your password by the server you are trying to connect to. 
[121002480170] |To make the connections truly one-click (or two-click), you might want to setup password-less logins using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id.
[121002480180] |A quick overview of that process follows: On your local computer, type: <code>$ssh-keygen -t rsa</code> When prompted for a password, you may want to enter none.
[121002480190] |If you enter a password there, you will have to enter it everytime you try to use the “passwordless” login, which kind of defeats the purpose.
[121002480200] |Enter a password here.
[121002480210] |Then when you try to connect to the accounts using SSHMenu, you will asked for the password only once, the very first time.
[121002480220] |(Thanks to Grant, SSHMenu’s author for the explanation in the comments).
[121002480230] |Once your RSA key-pair is generated, you need to add the public key to your server’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file.
[121002480240] |You can do this very easily by typing (on your local computer): <code>$ssh-copy-id ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@example.com</code> This will copy your public key for the just-generated RSA keypair to the example.com ssh account, where your username is “username”.
[121002480250] |Of course, for this passwordless login to work, the server needs to accept this method of authentication.
[121002480260] |There’s an <a>old article at the Debian Administration blog</a> that describes the process in a little more detail, and countless others have written about this, so you won’t have trouble finding info.
[121002490010] |<title>Ubuntu’s Audience Defined</title>
[121002490020] |I read the <a>impressive growth and traffic details for WordPress.com</a> at Matt’s Blog.
[121002490030] |WordPress has always been very dear to me, and it makes me happy to note that the WordPress team grows from strength to strength, without compromising on values, and while keeping things open, almost entirely so.
[121002490040] |However, the stat freak in me got another <a>tool</a>, and the results are surprising!
[121002490050] |I did not have any clue that the number of 45-65 year olds that visit my site are above the average numbers for the internet by around 25-45%.
[121002490060] |Also, most of my visitors are as poor as I am, with an income of less than $30K a year.
[121002490070] |That is surprising when you realize that college graduates outnumber any other kind of visitor, based on education.
[121002490080] |Finally, the male-female disparity is not too high –I get 25% less female visitors, and 25% more male visitors than the average site.
[121002490090] |Here’s my <a>quantcast report</a>.
[121002490100] |Now, like me, you must be thinking, what about ubuntu.com?
[121002490110] |Maybe Canonical should sign up for the quantcast setup like WordPress.com and then we could start fixing the problem where, right now, my blog seems to get more visitors than ubuntu.com.
[121002490120] |Clearly, quantcast is orders-of-magnitude off with the numbers.
[121002490130] |Let’s hope the percentages are right when it comes to the demographics.
[121002490140] |If they are, then then, again, Ubuntu seems to attract a middle-aged, may I say “mature” crowd.
[121002490150] |Ubuntu.com attracts more Asian, Hispanics and “Others” than the average website out there.
[121002490160] |Also, “linux drivers” seems to be leading the charge of visitors to Ubuntu.com.
[121002490170] |It would be good to put something related to drivers –perhaps an article with links peppered throughout to the various compatibility resources and hardware profiling tools somewhere on the front page of help.ubuntu.com which seems to be quite a popular destination.
[121002490180] |Of course, if I had a say in how Ubuntu’s websites worked, I would first ensure that the help pages show up where they belong on Google searches.
[121002490190] |Somehow, I can’t seem to end up at the Ubuntu help wiki after a web search.
[121002490200] |I suspect the wiki software’s intricacies, and the “https://” (now why does a help wiki have to be served over https?), are partly responsible for that issue.
[121002490210] |You get the idea that <a>shipit</a> must be doing something right, since it seems to be quite a popular destination.
[121002490220] |Also, OpenSuse, FreeSpire and Damn Small Linux seem to the other Linux distributions that are popular among those that visit the Ubuntu website.
[121002490230] |Scanning the <a>quantcast results</a> might help lots of folks involved with planning, developing and marketing Ubuntu –whether it is deciding what/who to focus on, or finding out how meta-plans are working out. 
[121002500010] |<title>What’s Common to Ubuntu and CircuitCity’s Firedog?</title>
[121002500020] |Ans: <em>A guy in a pic….</em>
[121002500030] |Trivial, I know, and not too original either, since I got it from <a>LiveJournal</a>, but I couldn’t resist posting this <img/>
[121002510010] |<title>End of a Love Affair with Acer</title>
[121002510020] |I was in love with Acer laptops.
[121002510030] |I bought my first one, an <a>Acer Travelmate 290 LMi</a> in my second year of grad school.
[121002510040] |I did pay ~ $1200 for it, but it was awesome, right until the moment there were errors with the hard disk controllers about 3 years later.
[121002510050] |When I sold it for parts on ebay, it still retained more than 3 hours worth of charge in it’s battery.
[121002510060] |The finish and the quality of parts spoke loud and clear.
[121002510070] |I liked the simple looks, the ruggedness, and above all, the dependability.
[121002510080] |So when I had to find a replacement, and was short on time and money, I settled for another Acer.
[121002510090] |An Acer Aspire 5003 LMi.
[121002510100] |Piece of junk.
[121002510110] |The plastic looks cheap.
[121002510120] |The “Aluminum” next to the keyboard is poorly spray painted plastic.
[121002510130] |The area next to the touchpad, and the left-click button have lost all their paint due to repeated use, and then look white.
[121002510140] |All within a year.
[121002510150] |For the last few days, occasionally, I would open up the laptop, and the display wouldn’t work properly.
[121002510160] |Loud cracks can be heard at the hinges when I open it up.
[121002510170] |I’d usually fix the display problem by opening the lid to an angle where the display worked.
[121002510180] |Today it failed completely.
[121002510190] |No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the display to display anything coherent.
[121002510200] |The quality of the parts, and the “casing”, is terrible.
[121002510210] |I admit, this was a cheap laptop, but it had what I needed at a minimum.
[121002510220] |I am not someone who buys the cheapest thing around.
[121002510230] |I buy computers with exactly the minimum I need.
[121002510240] |This one has a Broadcom wireless card, but I thought I could live with that for a bit.
[121002510250] |I don’t need a separate video card –I never play games.
[121002510260] |I do need a large screen, and a DVD-burner –well, you get the point.
[121002510270] |I would have gladly paid $250 more to Acer for the same laptop with better quality.
[121002510280] |Personally, I have vouched for Acer laptops, and have directly influenced my friends into buying at least 3-4 Acers.
[121002510290] |Now I feel like an idiot.
[121002510300] |I have to try something new.
[121002510310] |I don’t like how ThinkPads are designed with the recessed screen and clunky looks and all.
[121002510320] |The Sony Vaios I have known through friends and others have all been terrible –each of them making the trip back to Sony at least once.
[121002510330] |That leave the glitzy HPs and the Dells.
[121002510340] |I’d rather have a MacBook or the Pro, which looks infinitely cooler.
[121002510350] |Wish I had the money for a new MacBookPro.
[121002510360] |It has way more features and power than I need, though.
[121002510370] |Anyways, I feel much better having written this –may those that I recommended Acers to find it in them to forgive me!
[121002520010] |<title>Bring Jorge’s Blog Back, Please.</title>
[121002520020] |So <a>Jorge Castro is now a Canonical employee</a>!
[121002520030] |Jorge, I for one, would love to see your mug again on <a>Planet Ubuntu</a>.
[121002520040] |I would love to see whiprush.org up and about again. 
[121002520050] |Jorge’s disappearance from the interwebs was followed by <a>pleas for his return</a>, about 9 months ago (you can find his last post <a>here</a> if you really want to).
[121002520060] |I used to love reading what Jorge had to say.
[121002520070] |It’s good to have him back in the Ubuntu world, now if only we could have his blog back too <img/>Welcome back, Jorge!
[123000030010] |<title>FAQ: How to open files .daa in Ubuntu</title>
[123000030020] |<strong>Q</strong>: How can I open .<strong>daa</strong> in <strong>Ubuntu</strong> or other <strong>Linux</strong> distribution?
[123000030030] |<strong>A</strong>: <a>DAA</a> file is <strong><a>PowerISO</a></strong> Direct-Access-Archive and should be opened with PowerISO for Linux or <a>AcetoneISO</a>.
[123000030040] |In order to install PowerISO do the following:
[123000030050] |<code>cd /usr/src</code> <code>wget http://poweriso.com/poweriso-1.3.tar.gz</code> <code>tar -xvzf poweriso-1.3.tar.gz</code>
[123000030060] |It comes as <em>poweriso</em> binary so you can execute it without compilation.
[123000030070] |Now you can convert .daa into .iso:
[123000030080] |<code>./poweriso convert your_file.daa -o your_file.iso -ot iso</code>
[123000030090] |Coming to <a>AcetoneISO</a> program.
[123000050010] |<title>Ubuntu Feisty Fawn at Dell Inspiron 1501</title>
[123000050020] |<a><img/></a><strong>Ubuntu</strong> now works perfectly at my just bought <strong>Dell</strong> <strong>Inspiron</strong> <strong>1501</strong> laptop that has the following characteristics: AMD Turion 64 X2 1600 Mhz, 512 Mb RAM, 80 Gb HDD, Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter, 15.4” wide screen display… 32-bit Fiesty has been installed without any problems and provides all needed hardware support for the laptop.
[123000050030] |I really recommend this operating system to be installed onto Desktops and Laptops. <a><strong>ubuntu</strong><strong>1501</strong>.blogspot.com</a> contains all necessary information and provided invaluable help.
[123000050040] |In case you have any problems and/or questions regarding this laptop running Ubuntu feel free to contact me at artiomix{at}gmail.com.
[123000060010] |<title>Prevent Fedora Core yum hang up</title>
[123000060020] |I think that everybody who works with Fedora Core noticed that software installation utility YUM hangs up sometimes.
[123000060030] |I happens for me after killing yum process during it downloads package or etc.
[123000060040] |Next time I start yum, it hangs up.
[123000060050] |Here are two commands to avoid this:
[123000060060] |<em>killall -9 yum #to kill stopped yum</em> <em>rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.* #to prevent hanging up</em>
[123000060070] |After it’s done, yum will start normally.
[123000070010] |<title>Moving Linux to remote server (over ssh via third server)</title>
[123000070020] |Source: server running rather obsolete Fedora Core 1 with Apache, sendmail, ftp and other stuff.
[123000070030] |Target: any Linux server with at least one hard drive of appropriate disk space installed (in this case target server was running Knoppix).
[123000070040] |Third server: any ssh running system.
[123000070050] |First of all it’s necessary to get all servers to be accessible to each other via ssh.
[123000070060] |Read your distribution’s manual to find out how to achieve it.
[123000070070] |There are several possible ways to move Linux to another server by means of using dump/restore utilities over ssh.
[123000070080] |I’ve chosen this one: I’ve saved source server’s filesystem backup to third server over ssh and then restored this backup to target server (again over ssh).
[123000070090] |To do this I’ve installed dump 0.4b41 onto source server and performed the following commands to save it’s <strong>/boot</strong> and <strong>/</strong> filesystems backups to third server (both in one line):
[123000070100] |<em>dump -0uan -f –/boot | ssh -c aes256-cbc @ dd of=/home/artemn/backup/dump/dump-boot-l0.bak</em>
[123000070110] |and
[123000070120] |<em>dump -0uan -f –/ | ssh -c aes256-cbc @ dd of=/home/artemn/backup/dump/dump-root-l0.bak</em>
[123000070130] |It took several hours to transmit 20Gb over Internet in my case.
[123000070140] |If you’re performing these operations remotely I recommend to use utility <a>screen</a> to be sure that transmitting won’t be stopped when ssh session to source server is closed.
[123000070150] |To use it just login to source server over ssh and type <em>screen</em> and then <em>dump</em> command with necessary agruments (see below).
[123000070160] |In case you’ve been disconnected just ssh again and restore screen session by command <em>screen -r</em>.
[123000070170] |You can control above mentioned dump command activity by watching file size of dump-root-l0.bak and dump-boot-l0.bak files at third server.
[123000070180] |After dump is finished you can check backup at third server by performing <em>restore -i -f dump-root-l0.bak</em> and walking through directories in backup file (use <em>ls</em> command).
[123000070190] |For further information read restore manual (interactive restore section): <em>man restore</em>.
[123000070200] |Then login to target server and partake hard disk in the same way as it’s done at source server.
[123000070210] |In my case I’ve created three partitions <strong>/dev/sda1</strong> for /boot, <strong>/dev/sda2</strong> for / and <strong>/dev/sda3</strong> for swap.
[123000070220] |Target server can be running Live CD like Knoppix and have only one hardware drive.
[123000070230] |When partitioning is done create filesystems at every partition:
[123000070240] |<em>mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1</em>
[123000070250] |<em>mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda2</em>
[123000070260] |<em>mkswap /dev/sda3</em>
[123000070270] |Then set volume labels to just created filesystems by commands:
[123000070280] |<em>tune2fs -L “/boot” /dev/sda1</em>
[123000070290] |and
[123000070300] |<em>tune2fs -L “/” /dev/sda2</em>
[123000070310] |Labels should be the same as at source server (you can see them by executing <em>tune2fs -l /dev/sda1</em> and <em>tune2fs -l /dev/sda2</em> at source server).
[123000070320] |Sometimes it’s also necessary to set up volume label for swap filesystem.
[123000070330] |When it’s done mount created filesystems by commands:
[123000070340] |<em>mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1</em>
[123000070350] |and
[123000070360] |<em>mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2</em>
[123000070370] |(be sure that /mnt/sda1 and /mnt/sda2 are created).
[123000070380] |To restore filesystem from backed up copy, ‘<em>cd</em>‘ to destination directory and restore data by commands:
[123000070390] |<em>cd /mnt/sda1</em>
[123000070400] |and
[123000070410] |<em>ssh @ “cat /home/artemn/backup/dump/dump-boot-l0.bak” | restore -r -f -</em>
[123000070420] |then
[123000070430] |<em>cd /mnt/sda2</em>
[123000070440] |and
[123000070450] |<em>ssh @ “cat /home/artemn/backup/dump/dump-root-l0.bak” | restore -r -f -</em>
[123000070460] |In case of success <strong>/mnt/sda1</strong> and <strong>/mnt/sda2</strong> will contain the same files at /boot and / directories at source server.
[123000070470] |When filesystems restoration is done we should install boot loader onto hard drive of target sever: start grub console by typing <em>grub</em> and then type <em>root (hd0, 0)</em>, then <em>setup (hd0)</em>.
[123000070480] |After this boot loader will be installed and target server can be booted from hard disk.
[123000070490] |Note: be sure that dump and restore commands run at source and target servers are of same versions as it causes problems sometimes.
[123000070500] |I’ve used 0.4b41 at Fedora Core 1 (source) and Knoppix (target server).
[123000070510] |Another note: I’ve spent a day to solve the problem with kernel panic when booting into target server’s hard disk.
[123000070520] |The problem was in volume labels.
[123000070530] |So don’t forget to set them.
[123000070540] |Hope it helps somebody!
[123000070550] |Good luck, mates!
[123000080010] |<title>Funny aptitude trick in Ubuntu and Debian…</title>
[123000090010] |<title>How to create custom linux ISO image?</title>
[123000090020] |It’s rather trivial task to make some changes into already burned installation or live CD.
[123000090030] |It may be performed to add some files to this CD or edit files on it.
[123000090040] |In any case it’s impossible to loop mount .iso file and then save it as iso9660 filesystem is read-only.
[123000090050] |So, just mount your CD or iso image to some directory by commands:
[123000090060] |<em>sudo mkdir /mnt/image</em>
[123000090070] |<em>sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/image</em>
[123000090080] |or
[123000090090] |<em>sudo mount /path/to/your.iso /mnt/image -o loop</em>
[123000090100] |then copy it’s contents to some directory:
[123000090110] |<em>mkdir /tmp/newiso</em>
[123000090120] |<em>cp -r /mnt/image /tmp/newiso</em>
[123000090130] |After this you can modify any files in /tmp/newiso, add files, delete them.
[123000090140] |After modifications are done, create new ISO image to be burned onto CD (or kept somewhere for a rainy day):
[123000090150] |<em>cd /tmp/newiso</em>
[123000090160] |and
[123000090170] |<em>sudo mkisofs -o /tmp/new.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -R -V “new iso name” .</em>
[123000090180] |After mkisofs is finished new ISO file will be created at /tmp directory.
[123000090190] |It works in any Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora.
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