PCLinuxOS - the Big Daddy of all Desktop Linux Distributions

AMD Opensource Gallium is a PITA

2012-01-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

Last night I was reading an article comparing proprietary catalyst drivers with opensource gallium drivers. It was an eye-opener. Cases such as this shitty/shoddy performance of gallium drivers is the reason why people prefer proprietary blobs to FOSS bits and pieces. Here is just an example. For more, please visit http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_rv770_linux31&num=2

Did Linux Abandon Netbooks?

2012-01-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

Four years back when Asus EEE PC line surfaced with its 7" netbooks, it was told that Linux is reviving on home computing. The first EEE PC models came with a certain modified versions of Xandros, the then popular commercial desktop linux. Popularity of those tiny computers inspired almost every other hardware vendors to come up with comparable models. We saw followers in HP, Lenovo, Sony and Acer, among many others. Keeping pace with the hardware we also saw many customized Linux distributions that gave full support to Asus EEE PCs, Acer Aspire One PCs and HP Mini Notebooks.

The prominent distributions among them were eeebuntu, eedora, debian eee pc, Jolicloud and UNR. Suddenly, the trend reversed in favor of XP and Win7. Now I see most of those hobby projects abandoned, though there's no official statement regarding the same.

Here are the screenshots of EEE PC support projects from two prominent distributions, Fedora and Debian, taken today. The screenshots (click on them to see them at full resolution) speak a lot about their status.

First, Debian EEE PC. The screenshot is about the support models. As you can see, there's none of the most popular models that came last year.

Second, Fedora Netbook. It tauts of supporting entire EEE PC line (sadly on 2.6.35 kernel). I have tried with latest (ridiculously, that's 7 month's old) fedora notbook kernel and eee-control package, none of them work on modern EEE PC or Aspire One models.

Third, Eeebuntu, now Aurora, has not been updated for last one year. The release page reads "Aurora Gnome Edition will be the Primary Release from......" That "will be" kills the mood. Have a look at the screenshot.

Of course, you don't always need these customized distributions for your netbook. Many of the models work quite well on the current stock releases of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. But the tragedy is most often, the special features of these gadgets such as hotkeys and power control don't work on the official releases of these mainstream distributions. Funny but true, android works better on many of these models, though the lack of productivity apps turns off the users from deploying it on their netbooks.

No Rants Just Sincere Concerns for Linux at Home

2011-12-30T22:37:00.000-08:00

2012 is a few hours away. Thankfully, no one is claiming that "Year of the Linux Desktop" anymore across OSS fora or other social media on the web.

Linux Desktop is not going to die, but it won't win more home desktop users either. The present stack of servers will continue to work day and night in the racks, linux servers will power my office website, Android cell phones will probably gain more users, Windows 8 may go unnoticed on the mobile platform, million other appliances may definitely run on linux, more linux distributions will surface, some will die unmaintained, there will be hue and cry about the major improvements in some of the core and sub-core components of linux, four new kernel versions will be released, gnome shell will ride v. 3.6, we'll see some more forking of gnome and other desktop environments as well as distributions... so on and so forth. But the usershare will dwindle roughly at 1%.

There'll be arguments and counter-arguments - Windows comes preinstalled, Resistance to change, Lack of games on linux platform, Lack of drivers, Lack of marketing, Microsoft and Hardware vendors are partners in crime and on and on...

Are these arguments valid? If yes, how much? Moreover, are they going to bring any change? A big NO. Why?

I smell there are far more serious issues than the lack of application software, device drivers, games, lack of adverting/marketing or microsoft's ill practice. I've seen vast improvement in all these areas. Where Linux and the community lag behind is putting the basics of home computing right. In other words, the platform suffers from bad integration of components. How?

Gone are the days of dirty commands on a text console. In 2012 99% users are going to use computers as just other electronic appliances. They are not going to worry what's going under the hood as long as it works. I'm using Linux for more than a decade (two of my home PCs are linux - Debian and PCLinuxOS, 100's of my office workstations are linux - CentOS and Fedora), even administered some desktops for sometime. Here are my list of the basics that go wrong in Linux, always.

- Bad Workarounds
- Overlapping Packages/Procedures
- Problematic Sub-core Components
- Fast Moving Base and Major Components
- Ever Changing Desktop Metaphor

Bad Workarounds: For appliance-oriented present world, either it works or it doesn't. Anything in between is an annoyance. Device drivers in the kernel stagging area, especially for graphics and wifi, fall in the user annoyance category. Here're a couple of issues from my personal experience. Let's first talk about Radeon HD 6250 graphics that came with Asus Eee PC 1215B. AMD proclaimed it had opensource drivers (in kernel 2.6.38) ready for all the Fusion APUs (my graphics driver falls into this category), besides, it had proprietary binary linux drivers. Sadly, driver support in both the cases are workarounds, far from being comparable to their windows counterparts. Open source drivers were damn slow, lacked much of the features of windows catalyst drivers, even power management was shoddy. Installing proprietary driver was cryptic. It should confirm to a certain version of xorg, require libva and xvba-va-driver packages, require the mediaplayers to be set to xv or x11 or opengl (can't recall the exact one). After all these be prepared to see some conflicts with your desktop environment. I had similar experience with my Atheros wifi card. First, there was no opensource driver support, but it worked on ndiswrapper. Then one morning it broke, opensource b43 drivers superseded it. I had to blacklist it and then finally switched to windows drivers which would on/off on its own like a pain in the ass. Finally with Linux 3 kernel it worked as supposed. In my view the device maker or the community should not taut that "it works" or "it is supported", if it doesn't work the way manufacturer's specs claim. Users are not worried about whether it's opensource or closed. All they expect is not to see any ugly surprise. For your information, the opensource radeon hd 6250 driver performance is poorer than x3150 igp that comes with any atom pinetrail cpu.
Overlapping Packages/Procedures: Choice is good as long as the procedures don't multiply/overlap. Human life is too short to waste time reinventing the same wheel. All the distros are free, but the time involved to settle at one after a little bit of hopping is not. There is no benefit in learning multiple procedures for doing the same thing which should otherwise happen unnoticed. For example, take a look at the package management. In your distro-hopping you're likely to interface terms such as apt-get, yum, pacman, ppa, official repo, unofficial repo, free, non-free, restricted, local installation, remote installation, package pinning, compiling from source, so on... The other day, a linux guy at my office was dabbling yum commands on my debian squeeze (apparently none worked), he's just too used to yum in CentOS, no one to blame. Similarly, you'll see a bewildering multiplicity of commands/tools/packages for configuring your desktop, setting network and doing user administration. Overlapping packages is even funnier. Can't remember properly if it was on Ubuntu - after installing both KDE and Gnome I saw network-manager-kde and network-manager-gnome in my installed list of packages. But only network-manager-gnome would work on kde and gnome. There're a dozen other packages just to monitor/show/configure your network. It's not funny, it's ugly. You might see similar multiplicity in your desktop in sound components - alsa, pulse, oss, bla..bla.. bla... Multiplicity in application software such as office suites and graphics software is ok. They don't change across distributions.. But there should be certain degree of order in desktop configuration tools/packages. For now the situation is a mess.
Problematic Sub-core Components: Consider the subcore components such as sound, graphics, network devices, printers, etc., and their integration on top of linux. In Windows you need to install a certain driver (100% time it is supplied by the manufacturer). That's it. But in Linux proper sound is not just about something called drivers - it involves kernel, alsa, oss, pulse, and some packages to wrap those packages with each other. What's worse, even after all these packages talk to each other well, sometimes you can't hear any sound, send the output across hdmi, or the sound is too choppy. Then of course, you fiddle with setting sound channels, reconfigure alsa and what not! You are overwhelmed by the presence of six items in your application menu just for sound such as pulse-volume manager, alsa-mixer, audio-manager, sound, etc. Same thing with graphics, there's no such thing as just graphics drivers, it's a set of packages - kernel, xorg, proper modules, proper players, plugins, proper wrappers, etc. You take some time to figure it out, and put them together well. You're happy till an update breaks them all.
Fast Moving Base and Major Components: Frequent release of base and major components often wards off the prospective linux users. It's like world's fastest roller coaster that never stops, there's no option to ride it. Consider the desktop environments Gnome and KDE. There was an almost perfect KDE 3.5. Then came the disaster KDE 4.0 final (quite sometime after the official alpha, beta and rc releases). The final 4.0 was worse than industry standard alpha release of most software. And took roughly 3 years to bake further to be usable by all. Same thing can be said of Gnome 3. The point is linux community doesn't let a stable, good working major component stay for long enough to be used. Major percentage of the software timeline here is a kind of never-ending work-in-progress. Any major upgrade of software-stack in GNU/Linux world, even after it comes with usual alpha, beta and rc cycle, is far from being usable/stable/bugfree; bugs outweigh features. Compiz, pulseaudio and many other major packages have had similar buggy health long after they had been touted final versions.
Ever Changing Desktop Metaphor: Some ways it's similar to the previous issue. At some point in the Linux history KDE 3 was very popular. It kept on improving and became rock-stable by 2008 through its 3.5.9 iteration. Then came the unholy KDE 4 in Fedora 9, it smelled more pungent than Sulphur. Even some KDE fanboys, after getting stuck with KDE4 for couple of months, left the camp to saught refuge in good old Gnome 2. Sure, it was not way too much configurable as KDE3 but it worked. Alas! Gnome team gave a similar jerk with their 3.0 release in Fedora 15. Nobody always likes spending time configuring the desktop when it never gets quite right. You'd be at the neck of some urgent work and your system would fuck the hell out of you. The desktop environment design people should understand that users develop a workflow and keyboard/mouse habit, get used to certain tweaks/tricks and settle into an environment. Challenging the same for the heck of it, in my opinion, is the worst one can expect. Users will go away looking for their familiar working desktop metaphor.

I'm sure the situation is not going to change. I will still be using linux at home and office. 99% will be using Microsoft or Apple products, despite Linux being inherently more secure.

Debian Squeeze on Asus Eee PC 1215B

2011-11-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Device	Status	Workaround
Sound	Works	Need to change settings on alsamixer to get speakers/headphone jack and mic working
Graphics	Works	The default 2.6.32 squeeze kernel requires radeon.modeset=0 at the end of kernel line to boot properly. The resolution never maxes out 1024x768. Proper 1366x768 resolution and graphic acceleration is achieved after installing 2.6.39 kernel (http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/backports/squeeze/squeeze-custom-amd64-0808.iso) from backports repo and proprietary catalyst drivers (http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-10-x86.x86_64.run) from amd website.
Webcam	Works	Works out of box.
CPU	Works	Works out of box. Detects both the cores and steps up/down as per the load.
Network	Works	Atheros LAN card works well on 2.6.39 kernel. Broadcom 4313 WLAN card works well after installing firmware-brcm80211 (http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/all/firmware-brcm80211/download) from non-free repo.
Bluetooth	Works	Works out of the box. With gnome-sharing transferring files over bluetooth is absolutely painless.
Hotkeys	Don't work	Don't work even after installing eeepc-acpi-scripts (http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/all/eeepc-acpi-scripts/download) and adding acpi_osi=Linux to the kernel boot line. Eeepc-wmi may resolve this issue but it's not available yet for Debian Squeeze.

Here's lspci info you might like to see:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 14h Processor Root Complex
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9804
00:01.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Wrestler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6250/6310]
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 14h Processor Root Port
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 14h Processor Root Port
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:15.2 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a2
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 0 (rev 43)
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 6
00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 5
00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 7
01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)
07:00.0 USB Controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB Host Controller

Why Linux Sucks on Desktops and How to Save Your Ass

2011-09-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

In terms of pure resource usage, performance, stability and security Linux wins. Pick any distro (from Debian, Scientific, OpenSuse, Mint, Arch, PCLinuxOS...) and compare it with Windows 7, you'll know what I mean. Discard X-desktop and the stuff beyond, pure linux shell is perhaps the most powerful tool for computing. I've never been a Windows guy. But quite often I came back to it at odd times when I am almost pissed off by the so called direction (or lack of it) in the Linux world. So what're those minor glitches that sour the desktop experience.

Here's why Desktop Linux Sucks

Desktop Graphics Drivers

If you've a plain Intel IGP on your mobo and you are not a gamer, almost always you'll have a smoother experience. Similarly you'll have a painless experience with older realtek, atheros, huwei and many other devices. But if it's new, shiny and of non-standard (as per linux driver support) you're stuck. Take for example Nvidia optimus graphics technology related to switching between IGP and discreet graphics. It's been more than two years yet the graphics stack is half-baked. ATI/AMD side of the story, especially concerning the recent Fusion series APUs, is more grim. Though AMD was much vocal a year back regarding open source drivers for its fusion series APUs, the driver support for Linux is lame at best at the moment of writing this post.

I have an Asus 1215b EEE PC based on Fusion platform that sports a C-50 APU (AMD Ontario CPU + Radeon 6250 GPU). Windows 7 runs quite well and offers a thrilling graphics experience powered by UVD and DirectX 11. Linux? Fusion graphics is muddy with multiple wrappers, drivers and methods. When kernel 2.6.38 flaunted of having Fusion APU support through Gallium drivers it didn't disclose that it was limited to just decent graphics. You can't expect anything beyond, forget the support for UVD and 3D acceleration till next couple of years. For better graphics experience you're left with distro-specific fglrx drivers, xvba/vaapi wrappers and suitable xorg pieces. But the distro-specific drivers are generally dated, so, I pulled in the latest catalyst driver sources from AMD and compiled them for Debian Squeeze. I had a good-go, but the graphics performance was inferior to that of Windows 7.

Correct the Basics

Blue Screen of Death is history. Modern Windows OS (XP onwards) ensures you land at least on a basic vga mode if the install disk lacks proper display drivers. Then you're ready to install the proprietary drivers. But linux graphics problems sometimes slam you with a black screen (call it Black Screen of Death), and if you are unlucky you even can't enter to a rescue shell. Sure, there are dozen of cheat codes [(nomodeset, radeon.modeset=0, nvidia.modeset=zero, intel.modeset=0, if kms is messed up) or (vesa="numeric resolution value" for a vga screen or xforcevesa) or (some similar acpi cheat codes on the kernel line)] to put you on a workable shell. Who cares with these not-so-dirty but definitely-cryptic codes? Distributions should come up with fool-proof measures to land the users on a vga desktop without much fiddling around.

Desktop paradigm is gone. It's the time for mobile computing where sleep/suspend/hibernate/resume is very necessary. Linux world has been fighting with these features for years. These features work fine with standard distributions running on standard hardware. Sadly, they are far from being stable in case of very new or esoteric hardware.

Bewildering Choice vis-a-vis Rapid Development

Choice is good. But bewildering choice is very bad. Mass look for a few working applications, not a million shoddy clones. Situation is slowly improving in this regards. Thanks, the leading and serious flavors such as RHEL (and its clones), Debian, Arch and most recently Mandriva following frugality as far as choice of applications and desktop environments are concerned. Less configurations and less packages means less clutter. The bewildering choice and plurality in design philosophy decrease the mindshare. It also kills much of developers' hours in re-inventing the wheel. This coupled with rapid development worsens things further. Take the most popular distributions of our time, Ubuntu. Though it pulls packages from Debian testing/unstable it puts efforts in developing a few packages and polishing them. It follows a fully automated packaging and testing. However, given a 6-months release cycle, it must not be putting more than a month towards real development. Who'll expect fidelity from such a fleeting women!

Linux != Open Source. But the later is blamed for the plurality in Linux. For example, in Windows, if a certain version of package works it works. But in linux that's not always true. For example pidgin 2.7.3 on Windows, owing to the singularity of platform and API standards will be the same across XP, Vista and Win 7. But the pidgin on Fedora might behave differently than it does in Debian. The difference lies in how the particular software is packaged across various distributions. The same is true in case of some core components such as kernel. Kernel 2.6.38 in Debian backports repository is not 100% the same in Remi's repository meant for RHEL and its clones. The same trend is true in case Ubuntu, Mandriva, Arch and Slackware. Each original distribution has its peculiar set of patches for kernel, and particular build flags and dependencies for a particular software.

Features vs. Polish

Firefox undoubtedly has more options than Chrome, and OpenOffice is more versatile than any other proprietary office suite. Both are feature-rich, but both lack polish. Firefox is trying to catch up chrome on desktop. But still it lacks the philosophy of chrome, frugality. Firefox still caches aggressively like a hungry beast and sometimes forgets to flush. OpenOffice is jumping from Sun to Novel to Document Foundation. It's as slow as a sloth. Performance improvement is a long due for OpenOffice (now LibreOffice).

So, How to Save Your Ass?

Hardware and Distribution

1. Choose standard hardware. Save the output of your "lspci" commmand using any liveCD and post the text across popular forums to know which distribution fully supports your devices. Of the supported distributions choose a stable one from Ubuntu LTS, Debian stable, CentOS or Scientific Linux. If you're hardcore gamer, forget linux for a while.
2. Pin up the critical packages. If your current setup runs your devices well pin up the core packages such as xorg, kernel, sound-base packages and other device drivers so that future upgrades won't break your setup. I've faced sound problems, graphics hells and many booting problems related to upgrading core packages.
3. Don't tinker much. Choose your favorite distribution, customize it to your liking and forget. No need to always put newer bits and pieces. Newer is not always better. Even all new features may have nothing to do with you. Go by perceivable experience regarding performance, features and stability, not by numbers and benchmarks.

Personality and Distribution

1. If you really want to learn linux and expect a painfree experience for a longer future, choose Arch or Slackware. The things you learn here will last for ever. And a perfect Arch or Slackware setup will rarely go wrong.
2. If you want to make living out of Linux go with Scientific Linux. Because it's perhaps the most sincere clone of RHEL the present king in the enterprise world. Though it doesn't replicate RHEL in bug-for-bug philosophy, it's more predictable and open than its more popular cousin, CentOS.
3. If a great no-nonsense home desktop is all you want choose one from PCLinuxOS, Mepis or Mint. All three guarantee a superb desktop experience out of the box. PCLinuxOS gathers the best from across entire Linux distros, Mint does Ubuntu much better and Mepis polishes Debian to the extremes for a hasslefree desktop experience.
4. If you don't fall into any of the above and are apathetic to Windows. Choose FreeBSD, tame it with extra caution and make it your own. It's very very unix to the core and very systematically designed. If you don't want to shed that extra sweat choose OS X. Buy Apple hardware or assemble your Mac following insanelymac website and put OS X. OS X Mach kernel is heavily inspired by Unix. You will get many of the POSIX features including Bash shell.

That pretty well sums my two cents!

Why AMD Fails

2011-06-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

With the merger of ATi and AMD the new AMD Fusion platform offers far better value for money performance than Intel. However, AMD is still no more near Intel when it comes to mass adoption. Why? The reason is twofold:

1. Creates hype early but comes to party very late: Take for example the Fusion APU hoopla. AMD announced this groundbreaking technology 6 years back and kept on shelving for very long till Intel appropriated similar technology into Sandy Bridge. Sure, even now Fusion is a better proposition against any of Intel's Atom architecture. But sadly, Atom has become ubiquitous before Fusion knocks the door.

2. Great hardware but poor driver/software support: Creating new technology and throwing benchmarks of the same is not everything. AMD raved for its DirectX 11 and UVD support on the Fusion platform. It's great. But failed measurable in bringing out opensource drivers in a comparable time limit. Even today opensource Fusion driver support is bad at best. Be it gallium, catalyst or the inbuilt drivers of kernel 2.6.38, none work as well as they were tauted. The whole of device innovation trashed due to lack of proper software support. Whereas, Intel has promptly provided device drivers for Sandy Bridge. Intel's open-source VA-API implementation into graphics hardware is better off in many regards than AMD's XvBA under Linux. These days, VA-API works quite well and Intel even recently introduced support not only for video decoding, but also video encoding, using the VA-API library with the new Sandy Bridge hardware. Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge support should be the same way. The recent Intel SNA technology has boosted Sandy Bridge as well as earlier Intel IGP performance to a great extent. Here AMD lags.

Weird Dependency of Packages in Linux World

2011-06-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

Often, even today, I come across many problems related to package dependency in linux. Most of them suck while you are installing certain packages offline or building some packages from source. However, the worst still yet, as per my opinion is those weird packages that you can't remove. If you dare to remove them you're going to uninstall some key packages from the system. That may render your PC useless!

There are thousands of such cases. Here I will cite just four: fortune cookies, cowsay, libthai and libgweather.

Last night, I was trimming Linux Mint Julia on a friend's netbook. The netbook was running on a bare-and-basic intel N450 platform. I removed as much packages as possible. But while removing those weird four packages I got frightening warnings.

While removing libthai, I got a warning (click on the pic below to see it on true aspect/size) that it was going to remove alacarte, artha, bleachbit, avidemux and some 94 other packages. Damn, what libthai has to do with my computing life! I never browse Thai websites for work and/or fun. Why the heck it's dependency with some core/key packages? Why not libindic or libafrica (if they exist at all) is such a dependency?

Next weird dependency is the combination of fortune-cookies (fortune-min, fortune-mod, fortune-husse) and cowsay. Try to remove them you'll get a notification to remove ubuntu-minimal, mintsystem and some other core/key packages (click on the pic below to see it on true aspect/size). WTF? Why the gnome or mint (or whosoever) people have bundled these fancy programs as mandatory. Any fortune or cowsay message is a nag for many. Yet, they can't remove them. Sure, there are workarounds to stop fortune and/or cowsay. But... ?

Finally, why is that libgweather an integral part of gnome? Remove libgweather packages warns to remove gnome-panel and indicator applet as well (click on the pic below to see it on true aspect/size). What was wrong in making it as an optional package? I just like clock, vol applet and network monitor on my gnome systray; sane and usable.

As I said there are hundreds such weird packages that are built as key dependency with some other really important packages. Seems, the linux world is leaning more towards fancy than function.

Linux Kernel 3.0 is Not Far Away

2011-05-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Linux kernel 2.6.39 just released, much earlier than expected. Reasons?

It's coming of age after releasing 39 updates to kernel 2.6 line. The Linux 2.6 kernel series is now on its way to its 40th release in the past seven years of development. Linux 2.4 series had about 24 releases prior to Linux 2.6.0 being released and the 2.4 series as of today is up to Linux 2.4.39. And Linus (alongwith the community) is getting ready for the next gen kernel - 3.0. However, 2.6 series will still get patches and updates as still does 2.4 line.

Is it just a change in the versioning scheme or are there much under the hood? Well, Jump from 2.4 to 2.6 line had some striking features, the same will happen now. Most importantly, kernel 3.0 will remove some old cruft it gathered in its life of, say, roughly 20 years.

This jump in versioning won't reflect in the package list of enterprise linux distributions such as Red Hat (and its clones) who are adamant when it comes to security and stability. That means Red Hat, CentOS, Oracle and Scientific will stick to 2.6 series for roughly a decade, and will backport only some select features.

How to Get Rid of "Unlock Keyring" Message in Linux after You Changed Login Password

2011-05-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

I've been running Linux Mint Julia for a quite a long time now. Only yesterday I updated the entire system (including kernel, firefox, chromium, openoffice, pidgin and all that). Also changed my Login password due to some security reasons. No ugly surprises. No lag in performance. But everytime I started chromium browser it popped up a "Login keyring" message that read "Enter password to unlock your login keyring".

It seems Seahorse uses the login password as master password to unlock its passphrases. Sadly, when the user changes the password, it is not updated to Seahorse and that "Login keyring" popup comes up.

Visited both Mint and Ubuntu fora for a fix. All the solutions there from were pointing to Seahorse (two items in System >> Preferences: Passwords and Encryption Keys, and Encryption and Keyrings).

However, the easiest and unfailing fix to avoid this message it is to remove the ~/.gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring.

Preparing a Bootable USB to Install Windows 7 on Asus 1215B

2011-05-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Asus 1215B perhaps put the components together around Fusion APU the best way. Great design, brushed aluminum finish and quality components. However, with 12" form factor it could not house an optical drive. It's the typical problem of notebooks with sizes below 13". So, if the product ships without any OS preinstalled you are left with just two options - 1. try installing an OS using a borrowed/bought USB optical drive, and 2. prepare a bootable USB with the OS of your choice.

I don't have a USB optical drive, and none around me has the same. Bootable USB was the way to go. Had it been installing Linux I could have done that either using plain dd command or unetbootin tool. But from what I see this gadget still doesn't have out-of-the-box support in Linux land. I am sure things will improve with kernel 2.6.38. Meanwhile Windows 7 is the best OS for this notebook. But, creating a bootable Windows 7 usb on a linux machine demands you to get dirty with the commandline.

I did try packing Windows 7 iso image into a USB drive using dd (the most common disk copy method, what I did was "dd if=/home/msahu/Window7Ult.iso of=/dev/sdb1"). The installation started but got stuck mid-way. Then I followed the old tried/tested formula, and it worked like a charm. Here is the rundown of the same:

1. blanked the usb drive
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=446 count=1

2. ran fdisk
fdisk /dev/sdb1

3. removed all the partition of that usb drive, created just one primary partition and turned on the boot flag

4. converted the usb filesystem to ntfs
mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdb1

5. finally extracted the contents of Windows 7 iso image to the usb drive and booted Asus 1215B using that drive

Idiot Indian IT Sales Guys on Loose

2011-04-23T00:29:00.000-07:00

Goal: Getting an ultra-portable power-efficient notebook
Territory: Delhi's much hyped PC Hardware market, Nehru Place
Result: Meeting the dumbest of IT sales representatives

Indian IT force is growing, but the PC Hardware market is definitely not coping with that pace. It's still kind of mom-and-pop culture. I just came back from Nehru Place, tauted as the biggest market for IT products in India. Visited the outlets of big brands - Dell, HP, Lenovo, HCL, Acer, and a few shoddy brands such as Chirag Greenputers, eSys and Intex. Everywhere I found the representatives following the prospective customers and trying to throw their USPs, sometimes those USPs have nothing unique about them. Paradox!

Visit to Chirag computers (or greenputers, as the company calls it) was a laugh riot. A sales girl came up and handed me a brochure. Before she could start throwing tantrums I started catapulting her. "What's so green about your greenputers?", was my first question. She went on and on..."Our computers save energy. They come with Windows 7 pre-installed and integrated automatic sleep modes preconfigured. Hence, use less energy. Each of our products has got Energy Star certification. Our computers have much storage space to save your documents that you won't need to maintain hard copies, you'll save on paper....", and she was confident throughout.

My next reaction, "WTF! You are such a beautiful girl, but why are you throwing such dumb points. Automatic sleep mode is neither unique to your products, nor a unique feature of Windows 7. AFAIK, it's been there since Windows 2000 and the hardware of the that time, or before. Besides, computers generally never run out of space due to documents, it's the audio, video and graphics stuff that consume maximum bytes. Moreover, every other hardware manufacturer/assembler sells computers with Windows 7 and spacious hard drives comparable to yours, or sometimes even more. Are your products, in any ways, superior to, or different from, Dell, HP or Lenovo?"

She stood still and I went out.

Next I spotted a bunch of dumb representatives at Lenovo outlet. A suave gentleman told the features and prices of a dozen notebooks on display. "Do you have X120e, it's the one launched 4 months back, it sports an AMD Fusion e350 APU?" That gentleman moved to a group of his fellow representatives for an answer. After a few cross-questioning with that group he came back to me and told, "Lenovo doesn't have any notebook with that model number and there is nothing like such Fusion e350 APU, what's it, a graphics card, chipset, processor...?"

This time I did not uttered that "WTF", instead I browsed the official websites of Lenovo and AMD on my tablet. Showed him, not only does that model exist but it's a top seller also. Then, I told him at length about the Fusion series APUs. And also made him understand that world is not restricted to his showroom.

I had similar funny experiences with the guys at Dell, HP and HCL. Most of them knew only a few stock phrases such as: Dual Core, i3, i5, i7, Atom, Nvidia, ATi... nothing beyond. All of them are still in the believe that AMD processors produce much heat. Whereas AMD processors that came after Athlon Neo II run much cooler than any of the Intel chips. They looked quite puzzled when I told them that not just AMD and Intel make processors, there are VIA, Cyrix, Tegra and a dozen others...

None I found had the faintest idea about various processor families, chipsets, platforms and the upcoming products. None of them knew any difference between selling computers and potatoes.

This is the situation in Delhi, let's forget about the rest of the country.

BTW, I am going to buy Asus 1215B.

Is CentOS Dieing?

2011-03-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

There must be serious issues within the project though the core personnel don't acknowledge it!

RHEL 6 was released on 2010-11-10, RHEL 5.6 was released on 2011-01-13 and RHEL 6.1 Beta was released on 2011-03-22. Both Scientific Linux and OEL have released v. 5.6 and 6. CentOS counterparts are nowhere to be found. With every date slipping seems CentOS 6 will see the light of the day sometime in May 2011. Probably Redhat will push 6.1 through the door by then. The long delay (almost 5 months) in bringing out v.6 has triggered some black-comedy posts in the CentOS fora such as : "The 'C' in CEntOS means 'Closed'!" and "Things are getting from EL6 to HELL6.

I don't know why such annoying delay in rebuilding packages from a stable upstream. CentOS 6.0 development is not development proper, but the rebuilding of some hundreds of packages. CentOS has an easier job of doing a release. Projects such as Debian and FreeBSD do a heck of a lot more. It's multiple times more difficult to release a new FreeBSD or Debian than it is to do a rebuild. Wonder how long it would take to rebuild the system if CentOS base system would have the number of packages that Debian has. Both Oracle and Scientific Linux also do a lot more than just debranding and recompiling, but they don't slip the dates like CentOS, and if at all they do, there's due communication for the same.

CentOS now follows what? SL, OEL? Why this late-to-the-party strategy? What is the aim of CentOS? A simple technical satisfaction? If so, it should be out of the way and drop that Enterprise tag. The lack of communication regarding the state of development and this unprecedented delay in the major releases steadily turning it into a hobbyst's distribution. The lack of communication also seems like a deliberate decision to keep users in the dark. They should come up and say users that the project is closing and that they should look for alternatives, preferably Scientific Linux. CentOS had promised (though, of late some centos guys deny) regular updates within 72 hours, security errata with BugFix and Enhancement errata within 2 weeks after more rigorous testing. Now the delay is serious enough!

There's apprehension that Centos is probably not going to survive for long. The developer group is really too small and the method that they use to prepare and subsequently deploy Centos is too slow. Scientific Linux and OEL are infinitely superior in every way (paid developers, planned schedules, better communication, etc). IMO, Scientific Linux is no less stable, it's just that CentOS has gained the reputation for the earlier timely and good releases. And there's this inertia of change on the mindshare. However, the recent irregularity will definitely force a lot of CentOS user to move to Scientific Linux, and it's for good.

RHEL 6 has Nothing Noteworthy for Home Desktops

2010-11-13T06:35:00.000-08:00

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Final shows up on 10th November 2010, almost 44 months after its previous major release (RHEL 5 was released on 14th March 2007). But at the time it came, it's already bit obsolete for desktop use. Of course, desktop has never been a sweetpot for Red Hat. But was it really tarnishing it's rock-stability by riding a few versions up on some packages? What was holding RH back from appropriating KDE 4.5 series, or for that matter jumping to GNOME 2.32? Sure, it must have backported some goodies from Fedora 13 and 14, but they work underneath, the worry is that it'll put on these DEs till, say, 7 to 10 years. Moreover, KDE has undergone many improvements from its 4.3 to 4.5 versions. Same can be said of GNOME. Debian Squeeze's desktop-readyness (if you consider the DE, system utilities and application software) is more modern compared to Red Hat. Red Hat yet again, indirectly proved that it's not for desktops.

Some enterprise stuff are also bit obsolete. For example, the perl and python versions of this major release are at least a year old. The rock solid redhat stability also leans more towards servers. Though it aims at customers who don't care the version increments but a lot of bug fixes, it still cherry picks bug-fixes. So moving to a later point-release doesn't always solve a problem. For example the boot-delay bug (very important if you value desktops) that crept into RHEL 5.3 is still there in the latest 5.6 beta and it will probably remain in 5.8 (if it ever comes). You can expect similar glitches in RHEL 6.

Why I Prefer Debian to RHEL: Top 5 Reasons

2010-11-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

RHEL still remains the fodder for all those academicians and enterprises. For example, if you want pursue a course in Linux you are advised to do RHEL cos that's what enterprises care. Gradually they advise others to learn/use RHEL even for home desktops. Perhaps, that's why RHEL was synonymous with Linux some years back till Ubuntu made inroads with a bang.

Given desktop usage, I'd choose Debian over RHEL (I'd play dumb if you ask me about servers, I'm still learning), anytime. Why?

#1 Debian does not have those enterprise crap

Install any version of RHEL and it's contemporary Debian counterpart on dual-booted desktop. Maintain a comparable set of applications. Compare both the installations. You will wonder why RHEL includes those enterprise crap on a desktop installation.

#2 Debian cares for desktop users

Server people once make an installation and forget for years. But the story is different on desktops. It shows RHEL never really cared for desktops. It never makes any significant work to improve boot and performance of a desktop system. Generally, the bugs that matters to a home desktop is pushed down the priority list for years and years. Here is one such case.

#3 Debian though cares stability pushes updates more quickly than Red Hat

Most often Debian and RHEL will end up in a tie if they battle for stability. But Debian is very prompt when it comes to major releases. Look back, RHEL 5 was released in March 2007 around the same time of Debian 4 (Etch). Meanwhile, Debian has released Debian 5 (Lenny) and frozen Debian 6 (Squeeze) which may go gold later this year. Any answer from RHEL? It may take almost 4 years for RHEL to release the next major version. Though RHEL frequently churns point releases it shows enough aging compared to Debian.

#4 Package management is lot easier on Debian

Compare yum, pirut or yumex with aptitude, apt-get or synaptic, you will always find *apt* a lot faster/simpler and superior to the *yum*y stuff. Besides, kernel recompiling and compiling packages from source are a lot easier in Debian than in RHEL, though, with 30000 packages in debian repo you will probably never require it. RHEL is more of a closed source OS in an opensource ecosystem. Taming it to make desktop-friendly will force you to an error-land.

#5 Debian is definitely less of a resource-hog and much snappier than RHEL

I've tested the 2nd Beta of RHEL6 and compared it with the Debian testing (squeeze). Those looking for a proof can compare RHEL with Mintified Debian Squeeze. Needless to say, Debian revolves circles around RHEL when it comes to boot speed and system responsiveness, with less memory footprint.

Squeezing Linux Mint Debian Edition

2010-10-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is awesome! Based on Debian Testing it is a rolling distro. That means if you are running LMDE you will always have an up-to-date system running, and as the saying and experiences go, Debian testing base is more stable than the so called final/stable releases of most other distros. But if you are a stability freak like me, you can make your Linux Mint Debian stable by pointing the apt sources.lst to squeeze. This ways you won't have to install point updates of applications every now and then. You will always have the most stable and workable system for quite a long period, till squeeze becomes obsolete. Here is how I did it.

1. Download and install Linux Mint Debian Edition now. Why now? Because debian testing (on which the current LMDE is based) is now frozen. Who knows when squeeze will be redeemed stable and LMDE install will start receiving truck loads of updates from next testing base - wheezy . And once you are inside the next testing base it will be really tough to regress the packages to the stable. So it’s better to install LMDE before debian testing package base changes.

2. Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to "squeeze" instead of "testing" after the installation. Pointing to "lenny" or "stable" at this point of time will not work because apt can't downgrade packages. Click on the image below to have look at my sources.list. All you need to do is to replace all the instances of "testing" with "squeeze".

3. Upgrade your system to sync it with the upcoming Debian stable. Open a terminal and issue the following command as a root user.

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade -yd

4. Now you should be OK with the debian stable version of LMDE. If you are still paranoiac about system stability and sanity (to make LMDE as close to pure Debian Squeeze as possible) you can uninstall as much minty tools and/or replace them with their pure-debian counterparts as possible. But be cautious not to remove some critical packages. Click on the image below to have a look at the minty packages that my system still retains.

5. Roll out your own kernel. Don't panic, compiling your own kernel is not that difficult on a debian based system. Here is a short guide to do just that. Remember to give a custom version no. to your kernel-image while building the same. I have given a custom "z.1" suiting my fancy. My fresh build kernel package is linux-image-2.6.32_z.1_i386.deb. Custom versioning helps me avoid updating my kernel. Once I've a perfect kernel working I don't want it to update. Why fix a thing if it's not broken! Besides, like you, I as a desktop user, would like to customize my kernel suiting to desktop and my peculiar processor and other devices. Default debian kernel is good but it still leans more towards servers. Compiling your own kernel is necessary if you want to make the best of your desktop.

Have a look at my squeezed Linux Mint Debian edition. It's light as a feather - runs with 60MB memory footprint. It's rock solid and hell fast, and it will remain the same till I deliberately break it someday.

iBall NetTop 009 Cabinet - Flaw in the Design!

2010-10-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

For long I was in the opinion that iBall is a leader/pioneer in IT products. My last encounter with its NetTop 009 (for my Intel D410PT board) proved that false in many ways, most important ones among them are: shoddy product quality and dumb customer support.

Here are the specs:

5.25 Inch Bays : 1 x 5.25 Inch Normal DVD Writer / ODD Bay
3.5 Inch Bays : 1 x 3.5 Inch Normal Hard Disk Drive Bay
Motherboard Form Factors : ATOM based Mini-ITX Motherboards
Front USB Ports : 2 x USB 2.0 Ports
Front Audio Ports : HD Audio MIC and Speaker Out
Cooling Fans : 1 x 4cm Rear Cooling Fan
Extra Cooling Fan Provision : 1 x 4cm Front Cooling Fan Provision
Power Supply : iBall STX 180-153 (24pin-150W) SMPS
Chassis Type : Mini-ITX Chassis
Available Colours : Black Piano Finish
Dimensions : 102 x 316 x 278mm (HxWxD)

The company has launched first ever (in India) mini-ITX cabinet specifically for mini-ITX motherboards with integrated atom processors. This tiny cabinet was a godsend for the first generation of Intel essential boards (D945GCLF and D945GCLF2) with Atom Diamondville processors – Atom 230 (uni-core) and Atom 330 (dual-core). The marriage of those Intel essential boards with iBall nettop 009 is blissful because both were noisy. Intel was just making into low-power internet-oriented chips keeping price its major USP. The result was a combo of low on power-n-performance cpu (atom 230 and 330), high on power D945GC chipset and high on noise board fan. Then came this cabinet iBall NetTop 009.

Competition became fierce with VIA's venture with its nano series processors. Intel made head-on innovation on its atom platform. The result was the second generation (Pine View series) of atom processors (D410 and D510) and essential boards (D410PT and D510MU). This time the focus was for a cool-n-quieter experience (fanless and passive cooling support) and less power-usage (NM10 chipset). But iBall still kept on pushing its NetTop 009 cabinet with a noisy rear fan. This cabinet kills the Intel touted experience of quieter performance and low power consumption. Its rear and SMPS fans are enough to kill the show of quietness and power consumption. I doubt the rear fan and SMPS must be generating more power overhead than the board and processor. The company could have come up with a fanless PSU (something like picoPSU) and/or a quieter and better-quality rear fan.

Tragedy in Design:

SMPS makes the overall environment hotter than it would be with a fanless PSU.
Rear fan and SMPS fan create noise in the otherwise completely silent board and cpu.
While atom platform tries to save power watt by watt, the extra fan and traditional SMPS kill the attempt by actually consuming more power. Again, a fanless PSU and cabinet would have resulted in much lesser power consumption.
The SMPS draws cooler air from outside and throws hot air inside. The rear fan frantically likes to keep things cool and cries.

Dumb Service Center:

I don't want the Intel D410PT board inside iBall NetTop 009 to do any herculean task. Most probably it will lie on a rack as a headless file server powered by CentOS or Debian. However, in a full AC environment it would have been great if it created no noise. After doing some benchmarks on the board I wanted to make this Cabinet silent and drove to iBall service center at Ashok Bhavan, Nehru Place. But lo! They pretended to be dumb. All of them said that a cabinet can't be quieter. I told that there is a lot of difference in purpose between traditional fully-powered desktops and fanless low-powered nettops. They did not move either. Some at the center frowned to my question regarding a fanless PSU solution; according to them there is no such thing.

Wake up iBall, lest others will move their eye balls away from you.

PCLinuxOS Progresses Undeterred

2010-09-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

If computer is your hobby, you will, sooner or later, run into Linux. Cos only Linux (not Mac, Windows or any other OS) gives you that power to tweak/tinker, virtually every bit and piece of the OS. That's why there are so many distributions, so many forks, spins, respins, and multitude of application software for a single task. No surprise, many hobbyists come, wander in the linux world, but a few really stick to it, rest go. Cos? Not all the distributions are polished, stable, easy and powerful. Most often sticking to linux depends on hitting a good no-nonsense distribution (like PCLinuxOS, Mint or Mepis) at the first chance. IMO, PCLinuxOS tops the list of distros that care for new-converts.

PCLinuxOS is one that compelled me to stick to Linux. Of course, I'd been exposed to linux from RedHat 5, but that was a compulsion from the then employer. Putting Linux on my home desktop started with PCLinuxOS, way back in 2005. A lot has been changed ever since: numerous desktop wannabe distributions have come up, kernel/userland has gone through a sea change, GNU applications have seen many increments. Similarly, PCLinuxOS development and participation have undergone much changes. First mis-considered as a Mandriva fork, PCLinuxOS has developed a personality of its own. Some devs/projects (granular, pclosbe, intux, sam, unity) have forked away. Some alleged the way PCLinuxOS develops, saying it dictatorship managed, orthodox.. bla...bla... But seems all that have happened for good. It's become unique; taken the best pieces from the linux world and put them together like no one has done before.

My Linux love started with PCLinuxOS though these days I dabble more with Debian, CentOS and SuSe. It's official compulsion. But when it comes to recommending a distro to someone interested in Linux I utter "PCLinuxOS", it comes to my tongue as a reflex. I am so used to it!

Well, enough prophesy. Now onto something current with it. I have started liking PCLinuxOS ever more for a few reasons. They are:

#1 Multiple Flavors: KDE is the flagship and default desktop environment for PCLinuxOS. And I am happy to see that though it lags (for good) a few numbers back in kernel and userland, it keeps abreast with the KDE4 increments. The latest quarterly update was a joyride. Previously skeptic on KDE4 moves, I fell for it on its 4.5.1 iteration. What tremendous amount of efforts gone into making it! In addition to KDE, there are half a dozen of variants including gnome and lxde. Seems they are also getting enough polishing. If you like PCLinuxOS, desktop environment is not a matter of concern. Download a variant you like or pull in the meta package of that DE from pclinuxos repo. Either way you will have success. Rest assured, you won't face any glitches that you generally expect from a so called bleeding edge desktop.

#2 PCLinuxOS magazine: These days PCLinuxOS has bringing out its monthly magazine regularly religiously. I am sure it won't win a FOSS award for the literature. But it has a lot to make us mortals happy and engaged in Linux. The mag has a systematic approach to teach newbies essential commandline magic, use/management of popular desktop environments and developments specific to PCLinuxOS. It has those fun stuff elements also that you expect from a community or school magazine.

#3 Development Decisions and Friendly Forum: PCLinuxOS's sheer care for consumer desktop becomes evident from its development and discussions. Keeping close to kde4 development, choosing bfs over cfs, and listening to members' (at times packaging for them) queries are a few of the activities that prove it. It may not be the best FOSS distro.. It may not punch opensource nouvau... It may not jump to the nascent kernel, but it makes sure that your piece of graphics, sound, printer or wireless device work as painlessly as possible. It might never have shown off the reflected-glory of banning non-free bytes, but it makes sure that you won't waste your precious time fighting with your hardware.

Linux: How to Replace Grub2 with Grub Legacy

2010-09-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

RHEL 6 Beta 2 is still pushing grub legacy forward. No doubt it's going to stay with RHEL for some couple of years more. It somehow gives a little hint that grub2 is still little too complicated and experimental. However, if you are not that panicky Redhat/Centos person, you will get grub2 imposed upon you. Because the the rest of the distributions in Linux world has already been moved to grub2 land of boot configuration.

If you are one among those looking to replace grub2 with grub legacy, follow the few steps to achieve just that. The steps here pertain to Debian Testing, Ubuntu, Mint and other Debian/Ubuntu derivatives. You might have to change the steps as per your special distribution and its packaging system.

Open a terminal, be the super user - sudo su if you are using Ubuntu and the likes, su for pure debian and the rest
Remove grub2 - apt-get remove grub-pc
Instal grub legacy - apt-get install grub
Install grub in MBR or wherever you think appropriate for your condition - grub-install /dev/sdx (replace "x" with appropriate character as per your partition tree)
Update grub legacy - update-grub

Have a look at my menu.lst (click on the screenshot below) file in grub legacy on Ubuntu Lucid setup. Is not it simple and sane?

Red Hat Certification for RHEL 6

2010-09-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

Red Hat Hat has already rolled out two betas of its next major enterprise linux - RHEL6. It's been very late - almost twice the time (18-28 months) mentioned in RHEL 5 product document. It will still take considerably time pushing the release date to the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011. Because rolling out a release is not the only thing, the big "E" in RHEL demands for certification, and Red Hat is pursuing certification for its next major Linux OS and virtualization.

Red Hat is paving the way for government agencies and enterprises to use its new technology to create secure, virtualized IT environments (KVM) and private clouds. The company is also into an agreement with Atsec information security to certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 under Common Criteria at Evaluation Assurance Level 4. The certification covers the KVM hypervisor that enables an OS to run virtually without the need for a physical server, reducing the number of energy resources a data center requires. It also takes SELinux along with virtulization to ensure virtual resources run in separate containers.

Red Hat already has achieved Common Criteria certification 13 different times on four different Linux platforms. Alongside acquiring those certifications, Red Hat has also a lot to do in relation to RHEL 6 training, deployment and hardware compliance with many vendors and partners.

Linux, Google, Android and Mobile Devices

2010-09-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

Based on the Linux kernel and GNU software, Android is the most popular (33% of all units sold) mobile (smartphone) operating system of our time. developed by Google and is based on the Linux kernel and GNU software.

Under the Hood

Linux might still be a playground for hobbysts. But linux-drived software are going places. Deep inside Android software stack consists of Java applications on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Among others android has put together the surface manager, OpenCore, SQLite, OpenGL ES 2.0, WebKit, SGL, SSL and Bionic libc, very well. In all it consists of 12 million lines of code - 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.

The Reception

With a decent beginning 2007, Android has attracted maximum attention from users, mobile handset manufacturers and software developers. The reception of Android has been the warmest. Till date there are 70,000 apps approved for it and some 100,000 have been submitted. Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 78 companies (including Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corporation, Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Marvell Technology Group, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, PacketVideo, ARM Holdings, Atheros Communications, Asustek Computer Inc, Garmin Ltd, Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba Corp and Vodafone) is devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices through Android.

How to Install/Run Turbo C/C++ IDE on Linux

2010-09-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

Borland Turbo C/C++ IDE is not the best, not at all recommended on production floor. But it's still the mainstay in majority of schools and colleges, especially in India. GCC/G++ on linux is better for hardcore programming. However, from a beginner's perspective, it lacks those nice contextual buttons/menus and interface of Borland Turbo C/C++ IDE.

Thanks Dosbox! You can install/run Turbo C/C++ IDE on linux too. Just follow these steps.

#1 Install Dosbox

Installing dosbox is a child's play.
If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, open the terminal as a root user and enter:
apt-get install dosbox

If you are running Red Hat, Centos or Fedora, open the terminal as root user and enter:
yum install dosbox

#2 Download Turbo C/C++ IDE

Google a bit, and you will easily find Turbo C installers for Windows/DOS in a zipped archive format.

#3 Extract Turbo C/C++ Archive in your home (~) directory

#4 Run (Alt+F2) Dosbox or open dosbox from programs menu (it sits generally under Applications > Games)

#5 Mount your home (~) in root

Inside dosbox type:
mount c ~

#6 Move to the extracted "Turbo C" directory

Type:
c:
cd TURBOC~2

then:
install

It will start the setup. Follow the ncursed instructions to install as shown in the screenshots below.

Just press Enter to continue installation.

Enter C in the "Enter the source drive to use:" option.

Accept defaults and Press F9.

Press any key to continue with the installation

Turbo C/C++ IDE Installation is complete

#7 Running Turbo C/C++ on Linux

Run/open dosbox. Enter the following one by one in the dosbox terminal

mount c ~
c:
cd tc\bin
tc.exe

Turbo C is running on Linux

Low Cost Linux Netbooks - the Future of Mobile Computing

2010-09-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

The trend in technology is towards being ultraportable. Netbook is one such example. It is notebook made ultraportable suiting primarily to the mobile net-users. Many call these computers as subnotebooks as they retain the looks and features of notebooks, with some vital change done in hardware sections such as low powered CPU, energy efficient boards, less display size and lightweight. Owing to its scalability and open-source nature Linux is sitting almost all the major brands of netbooks. Of course, Windows is trying hard to catch up.

Right from the inception in 2007 to this date, linux has shipped on 32% of netbooks. Netbooks have sparked the development of several spins from major distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse. Examples include Ubuntu Netbook Edition, EasyPeasy, Jolicloud and Moblin.

Asus is the pioneer in introducing the Eee PC series netbooks and it has been reaping the benefits of an early-starter. Its success led other makes such as Acer, Intel, MSI, Dell and Samsung among others to build their versions of netbooks.

While some netbooks found their way into the lives of busy/mobile executives, others have been a student's pride possession for being cheap, rugged, highly power efficient and portable. OLPC and Intel Classmate PC are two such examples.

With Intel still innovating its Atom series of ultramobile processors and AMD keeping up the pace with its Nano series, netbook market has still a lot potential to show. However, Linux will find centerstage in this Intel-AMD fight for ultramobile dominance.

Speeding Up Debian GNU/Linux Desktop - Extreme Performance Tweaks

2010-09-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

Why does a desktop, be it Linux or Windows, feel slow?

Because it tries to satisfy all - the vast majority of hardware and the varied requirements of a thousand different users. Result - heavier and sometimes heavily patched kernel, always running and sometimes never used services, and the unperceivable eye-candy that you don't care. Ok, now let's get on to the just right, optimized linux desktop. In the last post we have already talked how to do it on Windows).

SITUATION

Desktop hardware: D945GCLF essential board with Intel Atom 230 CPU embedded. 1GB physical RAM.
Operating System: Fully updated Debian GNU/Linux Lenny 5.0.5 with custom recompiled kernel

Note: Click on the screenshots to see their real sizes.

STEPS

Boot

Change boot timeout in /boot/grub/menu.lst to "0" if you've only one OS installed. I've changed timout to "2" and set default to "1" because my wife needs Windows in autoboot mode. Also, you should add "noresume" (if you don't boot from a resume/rescue partition) in the boot options to speed up booting a little further.

Filesystem

The default filesystem parameters in Linux lean more towards security/stability sometimes hampering performance. You can set "data_writeback" option to all the partitions using tune2fs utility, and add "noatime" option in /etc/fstab. It will speedup the file system.

As you can see in the above screenshot there is no entry for "swap" in my fstab. I've deliberately removed swap partition after observing no use for it on my bare usage. You may also delete the swap, if you have enough RAM (more than 1GB) and you never notice it to run out. Removing swap and using only physical memory speeds up overall responsiveness to a great extent.

Services

The please-all attitude of linux distributions make a default install littered with lots of services. You can disable/delete a few to gain dual benefit - faster boot and snappier desktop experience. On a debian system you can install sysv-rc-conf and uncheck (with caution) unnecessary services.

As you see in the screenshot, my desktop has just 11 services enabled.

Startup Programs

Modern linux desktop starts almost a dozen of startup programs (including bluetooth service, network applet, OpenOffice quickstarter, volume manager, accessibility, Bug reporter, update manager and a lot lot more) to please you. However, you use only a few of them, but your system suffers the toll in terms of memory and cpu usage. You can remove any or all of them as per your requirement.

As you see in the screenshot I've removed all the startup programs. I am using static IP settings (no need of network manager), I rarely use external storage media (no need for gnome-volume-manager, when needed I manually mount the external media), I have set my volume level (no need for that volume applet, when needed I will change settings in the media player/browser volume button)... bla.. bla... bla...

Eye-candy

Don't know about you, but I really don't like gnome-compositing, compiz, beryl, emerald or whatsoever the desktop effects are. Classic XP like look-n-feel is good for me. Even I prefer a desktop with no wallpaper to a pimpified desktop. Solid royal blue fillings on the desktop is enough.

Run gconf-editor (or use gconftool-2 on a terminal and change the settings) to enable "reduced_resources" (/apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources) and "accessibility" (/desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility) to get XP-ish like minimize-maximize effects and a snappier experience.

Kernel

Kernel is getting heavier and heavier, day by day, owing to ever-emerging desktop hardware and kernel hacks. It's daunting, but you can recompile a kernel just-right for your particular hardware.

As you see in above screenshot, I have recompiled a 2.6.32 kernel for Lenny. The recompiled kernel package weighed only 8MB and took 23.2MB of space after installation, where as the default Lenny 2.6.26 kernel weighted some 20MB and installed some 75MB on my HDD. Besides, the recompiled kernel is bears right settings for a desktop (default lenny kernel is optimized for servers) that on intel atom 230 processor. Recompilation also gave me options to disable swap, virtulization, esoteric/unused filesystem entries, and tons of unnecessary devices from being built into it.

Extreme Performance Optimization for a Standalone Windows XP Pro SP3 Desktop

2010-08-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

First, apologies for posting Windows Tweaks on a Linux blog. Previously I had also attempted a few similar tweaks on Windows. But, this time the optimization tweaks are extremely paranoiac - only the strong at heart should attempt. Read on to know why ...

WHY

Because She had to do C
I was happy cruising on my good old Debian Lenny till my wify joined MCA. As a part of her 1st semester she has to do a lot of C. The University lab teaches C either on VC++ or TC on Windows. At home though my Debian desktop has a complete development tools and compilers, she is afraid to catch up with the batch, till she catches up with gcc and vi, other fellows might go ahead. That's why I thought it was better to put Windows XP Pro on another partition and install VC++ on top of it. But right after installation the greed for speed and security made me do these extreme optimization tweaks.

OBJECTIVE

My objective was a standalone XP Pro installation enough to do writing programs and compiling them on VC++, do some offline reading, enjoy some music/movies. No networks. No Internet. For networks and internet we (I and my wife) prefer Debian. (Who is going to put Windows and then search for a suitable antivirus, antispyware, and all that BS? Microsoft should make it explicit on every boxed Windows that "By buying Windows you've to make other payments towards Antivirus and antispyware, to some vendors". I don't like the shoddy security of M$.)

Your objective might be optimizing your XP just for Games, Jobworks, Desktop Publishing or Multimedia manipulation. Accordingly, your optimization may change a bit.

HOW

I wanted to squeeze every bit of juice (performance) from XP. That's why I started tinkering everything - from changing BIOS settings to tweaking Windows installation and choosing right kind of software.

BIOS

BIOS has some nitty options to set/control cpu/board fans, and reduce boot time. Also, you can disable all those unnecessary/unused devices and ports on bios further increasing your system responsiveness.

Windows Installation

A vanilla Windows Retail or OEM CD packs everything to satisfy the a vast diversity of machines and users. You can choose a Retail Windows copy and then use some third party tools like nlite to cut it for your requirements. Here, I used nlite to downsize XP. The result was a Tiny XP CD weighing only 150 MB, 1/4 byte size of the original XP.

User Profile and Permission

90% of users run Windows as a privileged user (administrator), because that's what Windows grants profile to the first default user. It's good for the dumb who doesn't like to do anything except point-and-click to install and configure devices and/or software. But default administrator mode brings the risk of security and reduced performance. What I believe every user should do is configure two accounts in Windows: 1st, the administrator account, and 2nd, a non-privileged user. Change the user settings (run "control userpasswords2") to make Windows boot non-privileged account by default. One can use administrator account for administrator tasks only, not for daily computing.

PERFORMANCE TWEAKS

Make a light installation of OS and Application Software

Strip down XP using nlite. Make a minimal installation. Then choose light-weight and custom installation of application software wherever possible. For example, if reading pdf files is what you all need, you should better install Foxit Reader. There's no need to go for a jumbo pack like Adobe Reader that drastically increases installation footprint plus takes toll on your CPU.

Similarly, make a custom installation. For example, don't push in Microsoft Office and do Click>>Click>>OK. Make a custom installation of just the necessary components. I had an enterprise copy of Microsoft Office 2007 that had all the bits and pieces of a productivity suite, but installed only Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Binder, Visio, Project, OneNote and Publisher are not my stuff.

For multimedia, I could have chosen a bunch of apps like Windows Media Player 11, RealPlayer Gold, VLC, WinAmp and bla.. bla.. bla.. But, here what I all did was to install the full version of K Lite Mega Codec Pack. It has all the necessary codecs under the sun plus a sober player interface – Media Player Classic.

Disable unnecessary devices

Disable unnecessary devices also from device manager, if you could not disable them in BIOS or you just could not find the options there. To make my windows installation standalone development/entertainment desktop I disabled all the USB ports plus network adapter. I could have done the same in BIOS, but I really need them on Debian installed on the same desktop. BTW, BIOS on a dual-booted PC is common to both the operating systems. Disabling these devices makes the system a little more responsive. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Hardware >> Device Manager, and disable all those devices that you don't need. Nothing to worry, you can enable them back when needed.

While on Windows those USB ports are still in use for charging my USB camera and mobile. Power still flows to them, but data transfer is blocked.

Compromise on Eye-Candy

Windows XP won't win a beauty pageant at the time of Windows 7, OS X Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Lucid. However, you can gain a little performance boost by changing the visual-effect settings. It won't affect the beauty of your XP. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced >> Performance >> Settings >> Visual Effects. And uncheck all effects except "Smooth edges of screen fonts" and "Use visual styles on windows and buttons".

Maintain a constant and moderate virtual memory

Windows XP service pack still thinks that you are running it on a 128MB physical memory, and be how much RAM your system really has it sets a dynamic virtual memory with a threshold of not less than 1GB and an upper limit of 2-3GB. If you are using a desktop pc for home use and have more than 1GB physical memory (RAM). You can set virtual memory to a fixed size. I've set it to 512MB only. It really helps your system to manage the memory better. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced >> Performance >> Settings >> Advanced, Select "Custom size" and put the same amount of memory for both initial and maximum size.

Disable Error reporting

I don't really see any benefit in keeping Error reporting enabled for a home computer. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Advanced >> Error reporting, select "Disable".

Turnoff System Restore

Don't panic! Disabling System Restore results in a big speed boost and frees up much memory from the restore points. As long as you have an XP CD, you can pop in that and run rescue in case of worst mishaps.

Disable Remote Assistance

I don't how many of the home users really use Remote Assistance. Do you want somebody to remotely access your pc to fix it? If not, it makes no sense to keep it enabled. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Remote, and uncheck both "Remote Assistance" and "Remote Desktop".

Turnoff Automatic Updates

Windows XP is almost out of Microsoft Support Cycle. M$ is aggressively pushing forward Windows 7. That means you won't get that valuable updates and patches. These days the only event you will experience is get a nagging WGA check message in case you are using a pirated XP with Automatic Updates on. So, better disable it altogether. It's good for you and your system. Visit My Computer >> Properties >> Automatic Updates, and select "Turnoff Automatic Updates"

Minimize the number of startup programs

If you really care of reduced boot times, low memory footprint and highly responsive system, minimize the number of startup services. I have let just one process "hkcmd" to run on startup. Run msconfig, click on the "startup" tab, and uncheck all that you think you don't need to run everytime on startup.

Disable unnecessary services

Search "Black Vipers Windows XP Service Configuration" on Google and visit the official site to have a thorough understanding of what the Windows XP services, and then decide on what you really need to keep enabled. Besides, the site also lists on what all services you need in three presets – Safe, Tweaked and Geek modes. You can safely choose the "Tweaked" mode of service list configurations. Below is the list of services that I keep enabled. It's perhaps the most effective of all the speed tweaks. It also reduces the memory foot print greatly. It's a must-do tweak for any speed-hungry user. Run services.msc and change your service settings after reading Black Viper's article.

Now the REAL MEAT

After doing all these performance/security tweaks. I experienced a perceivable boost in speed, reduced memory usage and always responsible system. Now, my system boots in just 10 secs and uses a bare 90MB of memory. That means after applying these tweaks you can run Windows XP in full throttle speed in an obsolete PIII PC with as low as 125MB RAM. What more do you expect!

HP Offers Linux Workstations

2010-08-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Configuring hardware perfectly with Linux sometimes involves fights. Most often linux sits well on modern hardware, but when it doesn't there are hacks and workarounds, but that doesn't always go well. Occasionally devices don't perform the way the manufacture designed it to. However, HP has made it easy by offering linux pre-installed workstations.

With over two decades of UNIX library and device driver focus, the company has become a leader in refining, enabling and testing linux on systems with latest releases and drivers. Plus, the company also leverages its partnership worth name brand hardware/software vendors such as Red Hat, Novell, AMD, Intel, nVidia, ATI and others.

By choosing HP personal desktops/notebooks with linux, you get a fully configured/optimized desktop with Suse (SLED) or Red Hat (RHEL), tested and certified by the respective Linux giants. With the workstation HP offers an HP Installer Kit for Linux, linux user manual, and enough literature (release notes, setup tips, faqs & more).

HP now has Hardware Support Matrix, a detailed online tool providing the latest support information to help you determine the minimum SLED or RHEL update versions required for perfect operation.

Why Linux Web Hosting?

2010-08-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

Let's get the hard facts first - as of July 2010, 5 out of the 10 most reliable internet hosting companies are powered by Linux. The rest 5 are run by others including Windows (just 1). So, what accounts for the success of Linux Web Hosting? Well, many things: history, philosophy, cost, versatility and stability. From the very beginning linux (owing to its unix legacy) is built grounds up for web server and and the Internet, whereas Windows had and keen focus on consumer desktop. That difference is apparent even today.

Linux web hosting wards off those typical susceptibility to viruses and malware that's way too common in a Windows environment. Moreover, LAMP (the stack consisting of Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and PHP) provides great options (easy to code, develop and deploy) to build a viable general purpose web server. On the hardware and software front, a Linux server beats Windows on multiple aspects. Linux servers stay up for years without a single reboot, reducing downtime to to minimum. For some security fixes, the tech-guy can apply patches using Ksplice without a reboot. Similarly, most of the libraries, services and applications can mostly be upgraded without restarting the running software. Presence of bonafide malware is very rare in Linux (less than 900 pieces compared to 2 million malware detected for Windows). Nevertheless, one can also deploy anti-malware tools such as ClamAV and Panda only to mitigate spread of Windows malware to windows environments, if they are connected in a linux network.

Also, Linux hosting in the context of Apache server, is very easy and common setup that enjoy a huge user base. The open-source philosophy behind it offers countless online and offline helps in the form of tutorials, forums, newsgroups, IRC channels and user groups. That means it's very easy to obtain assistance with any server issues that one might encounter. It is also quicker and easier to apply patches and updates on a Linux server. Finally, Linux hosting charges much less compared to other hosting options.

HP Linux Servers

2010-08-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

I never had a bad time configuring HP printers, scanners and computers on linux. The company has been keeping up closely with Linux to support its Linux Desktop and Server lines. Though there are a few linux desktop offerings (of course you put linux on any of its hardware), it has a considerable server line providing top performance, flexibility and reliability for the most demanding applications.

You get more when you choose an HP Server with a Linux operating system (preferably SLE, RHEL or CentOS). The company offered preinstalled servers or provides everything you customize your installation. Technical support for preinstalled SUSE Linux Enterprise or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on your HP Server is just a call away.

Most ProLiant & BladeSystem Servers (x86) are enabled on community (CentOS) and regional Linux distributions. HP provides management agents and drivers to simplify the operation and management of CentOS on HP ProLiant servers for free! Besides, HP hosts a Linux Forum where you can give and receive help, tips, and opinions.

Here is a list of HP ProLiant Server line on Linux

ML Servers:
HP ProLiant ML 300 Series (G5 & G6)

DL Servers:
HP ProLiant DL 300 Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant DL 500 Series (G5 & G6)

BL Servers:
HP ProLiant BL 200c Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant BL 400c Series (G5 & G6)
HP ProLiant BL 600c Series (G5 & G6)

How to Disable the Ugly Gnome Metacity Minimize Effect

2010-08-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

I love to make my Gnome DE as functional as possible rather than making it decorative. I detest the idea of putting those compiz, beryl, emerald or whatsoever they are called. The default metacity is good for me, except for its minimize/maximize effect - which is a real joke. Minimizing windows in Gnome (without compiz fusion) displays a kiddish (often annoying) style of showing a black border closing down into the windows list panel. And there has been no easy fix to avoid it. You can turn this minimization effect off by enabling reduced_resources option through gconftool-2 or gconf-editor, but there you will see a wireframe while dragging an application window, and sometimes you'll see really troubled look in restoring/maximizing a windows.

The real fix to avoid the silly gnome metacity minimize effect is a 2-step process:

#1
Press ALT+F2 and type "gconf-editor" without quotes.
Search for a value "Reduced Resources" (you'll find it at /apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources )without quotes, and check-select it as shown in the pic below.

#2
While you are still in gconf-editor, search for a value "accessibility". It will result in couple of results, check-select the one at /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility as shown in the pic below.

That's it! Now your gnome desktop will act quite responsive without those ugly minimize effects.

StarDict Dictionary - the Real Star!

2010-08-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

Whether on Windows, Mac or linux a word look-up application has been my priority from the very day I first started working on a computer. And on the way I have used OALD (soft copy of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary), Wordweb, Wordnet, Dict and many others, for some time. But it was Stardict where I finally settled. The greatest dictionary/encyclopedia lookup program ever created. The pro's of this program is that - it's very responsive, very very contextual, and supports tons of dictionaries. If you recognise the power of OSS by Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Linux Hosting, Jumla and many others, you should give Stardict a try!

What's So Great About it?

It's a Cross-Platform international dictionary Software that supports all the major international languages. It has powerful features such as Glob-style pattern matching, Scan selection word, Fuzzy query and contextual action. In combination with FreeDict it becomes a great translation software also. StarDict runs on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Tablet OS and Solaris.

The Interface

Where to Get StarDict?

You can get binaries of StartDict for Windows, Mac, BSD and various flavors of Linux at http://stardict.sourceforge.net/download.php. But the best way to go, if you are using a Linux Desktop is installing the packages from your distro's official repository. All the major/mainstream linux distributions have StarDict in their repos.

StarDict Packages for Debian Lenny

Supported Dictionaries

Dictionaries of your choice can be installed separately. User can visit http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries.php, download the packages and extract them at /usr/share/stardict/dic directory. That's it!

Rise of Linux Powered Devices

2010-08-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

Though linux still doesn't win consumer desktops sitting barely on 2% of the systems, it's surprisingly merging on the mobile devices, gadgets and various other small-form factor computers. Giving M$ a fight on the desktop market was tough owing to vendor indifferences, platform multiplicity and ever-changing linux base. However, it surely hits sweet-pots on smaller computer appliances. Linux operating kernel being minimalistic, easily portable and highly scalable, fits impeccably on those purpose-built devices. To manufacturers linux reduces the hassles of initial development and on-going support costs.

The gadget world (comprising of mini computers, network devices, multimedia consoles, gaming systems, electronic toys, mobile phones and a lot of embedded devices) is steadily turning to linux. Linux has become ubiquitous, many of us might be using it on our favorite devices even without being aware of it. Here is a list of the electronic devices on which Linux has made a prolific resurgence.

Aigo Mobile Internet Device: It's the talk of the town being the first Mobile Internet Device. Flaunting a 800x480 display powered by Atom Z500 Processor, it's a fully loaded internet device that weights just 352g and runs on a customized linux - Midinux 2.0.
Nokia N810: The popular tablet packs a lot of punches into a minismally small size. It has GPS, webcam, customized productivity and internet suites, and supports tons of third-party apps to keep you busy always. You can also install Android (again, it uses customized flavor of linux).
Asus Eee PC netbooks and nettops: Asus has jumped in like no one else, with its range of linux powered netbook and nettop series computers. Both its nettops and netbooks are equipped with Atom processors and a well-trimmed Linux. Of course, the company offers Windows variants at expensive prices.
OpenMoko Smartphone: It's a highly customizable mobile phone for everyone. It's suitable for students interested to lean how to program a phone with Linux, as well as for geeks who love to tinker their devices.
Garmin Nuvi880: Running on linux, this GPS receiver has all the goodies that you expect from a device of such type. It's a solid GPS navigation solution that is proven and reliable, and now poised to have even more going for it.
Motorola Ming A1600: Equipped with GPS, handwriting recognition, 3.2 MP camera and card reader, this smartphone has a quad-band GSM/GPRS Radio that supports Edge networks. It also has all the usual-suspects of a modern mobile phone. However, the real power lies in its linux OS that allows power-users to install tons of 3rd party apps which would be a dream on Windows CE, Symbian or Bru.
Archos 605 WiFi: Rival to iPod Touch, this entertainment device sports a large sharp display with an excellent web browser. It supports smooth full screen video playback.

Myths Surrounding PCLinuxOS 2010

2010-07-25T02:50:00.001-07:00

I had some good time with Red Hat. Then the KDE side of the world looked more appealing, and I had some off-and-on relationship with Mandrake (Mandriva) and Mepis. It was PCLinuxOS who finally won my heart; since 2005 it always sits on one of my PCs. I still do a lot of distro-hopping but never use my PCLinuxOS partition for that purpose. It feels home.

It was a pioneer desktop distribution in its early years, of course there was Mepis (Mepis still is my second choice for its out-of-box usability and Debian stability). Later many desktop wanna-be's merged in the Linux Desktop (Ubuntu and its clan, Fedora, OpenSuse, Sabayon and lot lot more) leading to great divisions in mindshare. Also came along thousands of OSS blogs, forums and websites that regularly register news, events and releases related to linux distributions. Now every average Joe wants to be a Susan Linton and posts his/her linux experience. It's become a kind of fashion to blog Linux/OSS, which, though helpful in promoting linux among the masses, sometimes spreads myths surrounding some distributions. Here's an honest attempt to clear the myths surrounding PCLinuxOS, my fav distro.

#1 PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva Spinoff

It was started with a Mandriva base, but over the years it has grown to a different personality. Except for the beloved Control Center none of the components are borrowed from Mandy. PCLinuxOS 2010 is built from the grounds up using the home grown repository. Tex and PCLOS devs have taken bits and pieces from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva, even some of the patches used are from Debian, PLD and Chakra. Would you call it a respin of all these distros?

The greatness of a modern linux desktop distribution lies in how well you integrate components (no matter from where they are taken) and how well you take decisions regarding choosing/upgrading the critical components and introducing new technologies. In this regards, PCLinuxOS is a tightly integrated, well-put-together, stable and out-of-the-box usable distribution. It's a respin of none!

#2 PCLinuxOS Lacks Roadmap

Yes, it lacks one, if rediscovering itself every six months and pushing untested packages forward is what you mean by a roadmap. Still, it's refreshingly modern, always (the latest release has KDE 4.4.5). Most often your hardware will love the latest PCLinxOS and the repository keeps refreshing the most popular packages. What's more, the new quarterly ISO releases bring you the latest in pclos pool - no need to upgrade hundreds of packages just after installation! It follows rolling-release, a philosophy. You may call it a roadmap.

#3 It's a KDE-Centric Distribution

To some extent it's KDE-centric. But it's not a KDE-only distribution. It has easy-installation options for several other desktop environments. The term "KDE-Centric" gives a feel of "KDE-only" to some newbies, which is bad. The community releases gnome, xfce, enlightenment, lxde and openbox flavours. These are also well-tested and modern.

#4 It Lacks a 64-Bit Version

We know modern PC hardware is 64-Bit-Ready. However, that doesn't mean software-world is also ready for the change. 64-Bit still doesn't make much of a sense for desktops (servers have a different story). Many of the productivity and web software are still 32-bit. Even in many other cases the performance difference between 32- and 64-bit is so negligible that you can't perceive it. 32-Bit is still the main-stay and there's no compelling reason to make the move. If at all you want to use more than 4Gb memory you can pull in a PAE kernel. The good news is pclos people have planned for a 64-bit version, and I am sure they will bring it out at the right time.

#5 One Man Calls the Shots, Undemocratic Decisions, Uncultured Community

It's an absolute myth. PCLinuxOS is driven by community. Tex and the devs listen keenly to its users and work carefully towards fulfilling their demands and wishes. Moving to KDE4 is one such example where Tex and the devs made a smart decision where they took the users' responses and waited long till it became feature-complete and stable to stand up to pclos standards. I am not sure, but pclos forum is the most friendly one. Some forum posts and threads might sound authoritative (not uncultured) because the person helping you is most often a pclos developer (at times Tex himself), and is confident of what he/she says. PCLinuxOS community is full with mature and wise people who provide real help. It's not like noob-helping-a-noob. In my early days with pclinuxos I've even got some apps packaged and sent to my mail by some generous forum members. Where else you'll expect this much help? As for leading the community and making crucial decisions (based on community mandate), I believe, Tex is the best man. Have you ever seen 100 captains sailing one ship or 5 presidents representing one country?

Red Hat Ignores Desktops - Consumer or Enterprise Whatsoever

2010-07-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

We had been running CentOS 5.2 on dozens of our office-desktops. They were boringly stable though little obsolete. Finally I wanted to upgrade my system to the latest v.5.5 so as to use some of the updated packages including Firefox 3.5 and OpenOffice 3. Skipping as much as 2 versions to CentOS 5.5 was smooth as a trademark of the enterprise desktop. There were some minor glitches pertaining to drivers which are documented earlier (CentOS 5.5 Left Me Clueless and CentOS 5.5 USB Device Mounting Annoyance). But there is a far more critical (purely on the basis of desktop experience) bug that's some way associated with nash and mkinitrd packages.

The latest and greatest CentOS 5.5 is a pig while it comes to booting on our office desktops. It stays almost 20 sec at "Red Hat nash version 5.1.96 starting". After booting the systems are very smooth and one could see the advancements of v. 5.5 over 5.2 in terms of updated applications, kernel and other goodies.

Around 20 sec wait is a definite annoyance for any desktop user. To get a fix or workaround I browsed through CentOS and Red Hat forums and bugzilla only to end up at nowherelands. I suspected that the problem was associated with raid or selinux but the problem persisted even after disabling them both. There is a thread in CentOS forum, the poster has exactly the same problem though in CentOS 5.3. Even the bug was there in RHEL 5.3 as reflected in RH bug ID 499955. Version 5.4 (of both CentOS and RHEL) retained the bug. Even, Red Hat did not bother to fix or suggest a workaround to stop this annoyance boot delay in its latest version. From the discussion at RH bug ID 499955 it's clear that the annoyance doesn't get any priority from Red Hat developers. Seems this open source giant ignores Desktops - consumer or enterprise whatsoever. The spotlight for RH has always been server where such delay doesn't make a huge difference... Who's going to boot a dedicated server everyday!

Liquorix Squeezes the Most Out of Your Linux Desktop

2010-07-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

Switching to Linux has many reasons - Security, Stability, Performance, and of course, Cost. Be whatever the reasons, performance becomes the eventual priority for desktop as the viruses, malwares and breakdowns don't come in the linux-users way.

How to get the most out of a Linux desktop? Well, there are so many tricks, tweaks and hacks such as using a just right, well customized kernel, removing unnecessary services, apps, packages, paralleling boot process, using a lightweight window manager and desktop environment....and a dozen others. A long time user often dabbles to do these things of which the first, and perhaps the most important is hacking the kernel fitting impeccably to his/her hardware and working requirements.

Right patches, schedulers and driver stacks readily come to the mind, when you think of compiling a custom kernel. Though this process is not that tedious, it can surely be cryptic and time-consuming. That's why some don't like to kill hours to get that small/big performance and boot enhancements. Fortunately, they can also have a good time with readily brewed performance kernels by a geek named - Damenz.

I hit Damenz's points on web at http://liquorix.net and http://zen-kernel.org in my search for readymade performance kernels. (However, as a hobby I kill my idle hours in rolling out my own kernel for sanity and speed's sake) . Both his websites are full of no-nonsense clean linux stuff where you are welcome with a "Why drive when you can fly?" slogan. I have tried Damenz's 2.6.34 kernel (2.6.34-0.dmz.17-liquorix-686) in Lucid Lynx and Debian Squeeze (testing). I am very pleased at the desktop responsiveness in both.

Damenz's Liquorix zen based kernel is built using a fine tuned desktop configuration and modified debian package scripts to retain non-free kernel blobs. Installing this kernel is very easy. All you need to do is to add:

deb http://liquorix.net/debian sid main

in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/liquorix.list

Then do apt-get update. If you get gpg errors during update install the liquorix keyring:

apt-get install '^liquorix-([^-]+-)?keyring.?'

Finally, fire up synaptic to browse and install Liquorix Damenz kernel.

You can also have fun in compiling your kernel from Damenz's kernel sources found at http://liquorix.net/sources

Also, if you are working on an rpm based distro such as Fedora or Suse, you have to compile on your own, Damenz rolls kernels only for Debian Sid and Testing which you can also install on the latest Ubuntu.

Rest assured, you will definitely have a "flying experience" if you have been using only the stock kernel of your favorite distro.

Scientific Linux 5.5 is Ready

2010-06-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

The best RHEL clone for Desktops, Scientific Linux 5.5 is released! Based on well-tested RHEL 5.5 source (plus some inhouse additions), it's perhaps the only RHEL child that works out of box. In fact, every thing including Wireless, Bluetooth, multimedia codecs, compiz, application programs, sharing, windows partition access (fat32 and ntfs) and other important stuff that any desktop user ever needs, is bundled with utmost care, without loosing RHEL stability.

Urs Beyerle announces "Scientific Linux Live CD/DVD 5.5 has been released for i386 and x86_64. Features: live CD can be installed to local hard disk; live CD runs from USB key; changes can be stored persistently on an external device; live CD can be mounted over NFS (diskless client). Software: Linux kernel 2.6.18, OpenAFS client 1.4.12, X.Org 7.1, ALSA sound libraries 1.0.17, GNOME 2.16.0, GIMP 2.2.13, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, Firefox 3.0.19, Thunderbird 2.0.0.24, KDE 3.5.4 and Evolution 2.12.3"

For more, read the release notes.

Here is a great review on its previous version.

Traditional Server Guy's Views on the Linux Desktop

2010-06-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

While Linux is growing leaps and bounds (by feature and performance; not deployment, Redmond still rules the race and will probably do the same for quite long), it's time we spread the same in the mass psyche, public mind share. So, where do we start? Noobs? New converts? Non-profit, governmental organizations? Or from the top, the busy Enterprise Linux server room managed by a traditional server guy? To me the latest seems a good starting point.

Now let's define who a "Traditional Server Guy" is? He is one who oversees all the server tasks, manages jobs, assigns works to the 2nds in commandment. He is a busy person who deployed Linux desktops couple of years back somewhere across some user desktops and has no time to either catchup with the recent advancements or to maintain the leftovers. He still believes CentOS 4 is the most stable desktop around and assumes ver.5 is still in beta (point to be noted, CentOS 6 beta might be brewing in devs' circles). Puns apart, he has been managing the business well, so he has a better command over all the departments.

Here is a few of his theories that coincides with traditional rules of Linux, that have long been challenged and changed.

Performance is squarely dependent on the proximity of hardware-software timeline. In other words, a dated software works better on a dated hardware. Conversely, a new and shiny hardware needs the latest software. Latter is 100% true. But not the former. In theory (and in reality) it was recommended that the user should install a contemporary linux OS in relation to the hardware, and it was really a good advice. But slowly the paradigm changed by many factors. In recent years there has been enough refinement on how linux handles drivers, manages system memory and prioritizes tasks on desktops; this ball game was changed to a great deals after kernel version 2.6.31. Of course, kernel alone is not solely responsible for this sweet change, there are tons of changes in userland and system scripts. I have seen the dated computers perform better on CentOS 5.5 and Fedora 12 than they did on Centos 4 or 5.2 or Fedora 10.
Age of software has nothing to do with performance, moreover newer packages require more memory and cpu cycles owing to the inclusion of more features and eye-candy. It's true in some cases, but not always. For example, OpenOffice 1.1.1 was a pig at its time, new features added, programs refined, but it was still a pig till ver. 2.0. Then the real changes seemed to show up... on the next point releases the focus was more on performance than features. And on reaching OO.0 3.2 we got a swift office suite that can revolve circles around the older office suites. The story is same with Firefox. First, it was slow, then slower, but later some dramatic changes and it became a faster and less resource hungry browser at ver. 3.6. This trend in software advancement is obvious. First, we punch the features, define libraries and dependencies. Then focus shifts to remove the dead-weight and do some refinement to squeeze more performance out of it.
CentOS is a great server and desktop. The statement is partially true. I've installed CentOS server only a few times. Since then it has been working well. It's steeped in the tradition of RHEL stability whose focus has always been the enterprise server. No doubt about it, CENTOS IS A GREAT SERVER. But the same is not true in case of desktops. It's more of a closed and almost a loser to catch up with the alway-merging diversity of desktop hardware. Taming it to meet your requirements is a Herculean task, though it can be done. CentOS is a fit-it and shut-it desktop where stability and security enjoy the most priority. Other linux poster-boys such as Ubuntu, Fedora and hundreds of Debian siblings still value stability (if not as paranoic as CentOS), but for them performance and feature-richness is all that counts the most. Needless to say, it's easy to customize them to your needs. Just do and compare the ease, success and benefits of compiling your kernel in Debian and CentOS. Dirty your hands at the package management tools of both the venerable distributions; add/remove programs, tweak them! You will know to the truth - RHEL clones are not as tamable as Debian siblings. The bottom line is: it's the best to deploy CentOS on servers, but you can find better alternatives for your desktops.

BOSS is Nobody's Boss!

2010-06-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

A few days back I was watching the much hyped "Life" series on Discovery Channel. The episode on that day was on Amphibians and Reptiles. It was interesting, but what caught my attention was an advertisement on Bharat Operating System Solutions, a.k.a. BOSS.

I was happy to know that Indian Government is waking up to such novel OSS initiatives. But that happiness faded away after a little combing of distrowatch and the project's own website. After all it is a Governmental project, and like other such projects - it's dated, ill-maintained, and never meant to be widely deployed.

Developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), it's yet another Debian fork with packages more dated than the current Debian stable, Lenny (Remember, Squeeze is close to freezing and is unofficially ready for mass consumption). BOSS' software stack has all the usual suspects such as - Web server, proxy server, Database server, Mail server, Network server, File and Print server, SMS server, LDAP server, plus all major Indian language packs. However, all these and the underlying kernel, desktop environments and userland is very old. Now, the latest, at version 3.0, it still sticks to linux 2.6.22, xorg 1.3, gnome 2.20, OOo 2.2 and FF 3.

I ran it on my test machine (Dell Optiplex 360 - Intel Dual Core, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Integrated Intel Graphics & Audio and Gigabit Ethernet). Looked sobre but worked poor. In comparison, Lenny was more responsive in almost every aspect - booting, program startup and overall stability.

To all users looking for an Indian Free Linux, I would strongly recommend a vanilla Lenny (or Squeeze) + the required Indian language pack from Debian repo.

I just wonder why India fosters such a distribution and drains big money into advertisements. Why anybody will ever choose BOSS over Debian, CentOS or Suse!

CentOS 5.5 Left Me Clueless

2010-06-01T01:52:00.000-07:00

CentOS is a venerable server OS, no doubt about it! But when it comes to desktop, the same OS is a pig - you can't tame it to your liking. I had mentioned a few of the centOS desktop annoyances here in my previous post. As the time goes on I keep on getting more and more problems. Who told it's a no-nonsense desktop!

The USB issue still persists. And I now encountered a new problem related to file-roller. CentOS 5.5 comes with file-roller-2.16.0-2.fc6. Yes, it's the versions that originally came with Gnome 2.16. It's been very long... the package has been hardened by Red Hat in each of its point releases. CentOS also packaged the same, may be after doing some QA. However, I found a weird (and critical) problem – file-roller is unable to roll at all in some cases, i.e., though it easily archives directories with a few homogeneous files (such as docs, spreadsheets and text files), it fails to archive directories with complex structures and varied file types (such as completely saved web pages including css, js, html and other files).

First, I thought it's a regression, and went on to downgrade the package with the stock CentOS 5.2 disk. Nothing to my avail. Then I came to know the problem is deep-rooted in something that went wrong while upgrading.

What Did I Learn? CentOS is not Debian, that means, you can't upgrade from one point release to another and be assured of a stable system.

CentOS desktop behaves well if you don't fiddle. As I told earlier, you can't tame it to your liking the way you can do with a Debian system. At CentOS, I am clueless about this problem. Steadily CentOS is losing all its glory before me - I can't strip its kernel to suit my fancy, I can't tinker the runlevels and boot processes the way I did with Debian, I can't play with all the system internals the way I did with Lenny. Compared to Debian it seems more of a closed system.

In short, if you want to deploy CentOS on desktops, don't fiddle. Better still, choose Lenny or Squeeze. They won't let you down. You can always use CentOS on servers. Here, server side is very much standardized.

Good Heavens! There are some nice CLI goodies like tar, bzip, gzip.... they do the job.

Edit: I got file-roller working the way it should after removing brasero (by mistake). But I still wonder why and how brasero messed up with the archiver.

CentOS 5.5 USB Device Mounting Annoyance

2010-05-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

What do you expect the next version of your favourite distribution to be? Better or worse. For me upgrading CentOS 5.2 to 5.5 became a worse experience. I was running CentOS 5.2 on my office workstation (Dell Optiplex 360) for long. Never really needed/worried to upgrade cos it was only a work station, I mean no play, only work. However, of late I wanted to pull in some multimedia stuff from rpmforge (that's not available in official CentOS repo). At the same time I thought of upgrading the system also. And I went ahead... Read below for the annoyances.

The fully upgraded system now has two kernels - kernel-2.6.18-92.el5 (original CentOS 5.2 kernel) and kernel-2.6.18-194.el5 (came with CentOS 5.5 upgradation), menu.lst points to the latest kernel as default boot options.

1. Annoyances with the new kernel: Running the new CentOS 5.5 kernel was fast, responsive... audio/video worked like a charm. But oddly enough I am unable to mount any USB drives (specially the ones with sdhc cards such as phones and cameras); lsusb does show make of the device and its id, but refuses to automount it. Even doesn't accept manual mounts.

2. Newly surfaced problem with the old kernel: After being unable to mount usb devices I rebooted the system to run the old kernel. To my surprise, the old kernel automounted all the usb drives that I threw at it. But, sadly, alsa sound server did not work the way it should. It was working fine before upgradation.

Solution: I wandered across dozens of forums for a solution and could not get any. Now I've to boot to the old kernel when I need to use USB drives, otherwise, the default 2.6.18-194.el5 kernel handles everything quite well.

Please comment to this post if you have a solution for this weird problem.

Debian + Backports is Better than the Latest Ubuntu

2010-05-16T04:34:00.000-07:00

Debian Stable has a bad reputation of being little obsolete. It's never able to catch up with time. For example, at the time of writing this post, Debian 5.0.4, Lenny is still sticking to the old Iceweasel 3, OpenOffice 2.4, 2.6.26 kernel line and some other vital packages, whereas the package versions are greatly updated in the so called popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse. Some critics even say that this late-to-party nature of Debian is the reason for Ubuntu to show up in the Linux crowd.

But I don't buy to the view that Debian Stable is outdated. If you are running a server this much older packages and slow updates are a blessing. Moreover, you can catchup to the latest and greatest packages even on desktop. All you need is to add debian-backports to your /etc/apt/sources.list. A mix of Debian stable and Debian Backports will bring you all the popular packages. Here is the content of my sources.list

manmath@debian:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ lenny main non-free
deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free

With the above repo list I am able to run Debian stable and work on OpenOffice 3.2, Iceweasel 3.5, Pidgin 2.6.6, Kernel 2.6.32 and many other packages. Besides, Debian stable is supported by Google Chrome, Skype and a majority of other linux software vendors such as Softmaker and Codeweavers. The only caution you should take is to pick out single backports which fits your needs, and not to use all the packages from backports repo.

For example, if you need to install the latest iceweasel from backports just enter:

apt-get -t lenny-backports install iceweasel

I've always found Debian Stable+Backports to be more stable than the latest Ubuntu. What's more, with backports configured you can get the latest versions of popular packages.

Airtel GPRS Internet on Your Linux PC through USB Cable

2010-04-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Internet through GPRS is not a joyride, but you might need it during some bad times when your ISP is down, broadband cabling in your area is messed up, or you are on the move. In such circumstances you may pair your mobile phone with your pc and easily get connected to the Internet. Here are some details on how to get internet working on your pc using GPRS in your Airtel Mobile Phone.

First, you need to active GPRS on your Airtel mobile phone. Dial *567*11# to activate gprs and dial *567*13# to get mobile internet. Usually Airtel (or any other mobile service provider) will send settings which you will have save/install on your mobile phone. After that you should recharge your prepaid Airtel mobile phone with Rs. 98/- (as of 27th April, 2010) to get unlimated GPRS internet access for one month.

Next, you need to install ppp and wvdial on your Linux PC. Then change your /etc/wvdial.conf file to read:

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","airtelgprs.com","",0,0
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
stupid mode = 1
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99#
Password = manmath
Username = manmath

(You might change the Username and Password the way you like, the above is just an example)

Additionally you should also consider adding the following few lines to your /etc/sysctl.conf as a root user. It will reduce packet transfer overhead considerably.

net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1

That's it! Now connect your Airtel Mobile phone to your PC through USB cable, and as a root user (su or sudo, whatever appropriate in your case) enter wvdial in a terminal. And lo! You are connected to the web. If you want to connect to web as a non-root user, follow this link for further instructions.

You can also use Airtel SIM in your USB modem and connect to the Internet. For this you will have to use "Modem=/dev/ttyUSB0" in place of "Modem = /dev/ttyACM0" in your /etc/wvdial.conf

At Last RHEL 6 Beta Shows Up

2010-04-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

Finally, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta is here. The Beta is a big transition from RHEL 5 in terms of core packages, desktop environments and applications. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 blurs the lines between virtual, physical, and cloud computing to address shifts taking place in the modern IT environment. Featuring updated core technology, from the kernel to the application infrastructure to the development toolchain, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is designed to meet the needs of the coming generations of hardware and software technologies......” However, if you consider the package version status of the RHEL 6 final (when it comes) with contemporary distributions, it will still be little orthodox, as always.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta is available on the following architectures: i386, AMD64/Intel64, System z, IBM Power (64-bit)." Read the release announcement and the press release for an overview of the most notable features.

Welcome PCLinuxOS 2010

2010-04-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

Good news for all who are looking for a Mature "Just-Works" Desktop. PCLinuxOS 2010 bandwagon is released. This time Tex and the Gang has offered 7 releases: Main KDE Desktop, KDE MiniMe Desktop, Gnome Desktop, Gnome ZenMini Desktop, LXDE Desktop, XFCE Desktop and Openbox Desktop.

PCLinuxOS 2010 Main KDE edition features Kernel 2.6.32.11-bfs kernel (for maximum desktop performance) and full KDE 4.4.2 Desktop. PCLinuxOS includes all of the latest popular applications such as Firefox 3.6.3, Thunderbird 3.0.4, Dropbox for online backup storage, Pidgin 2.6.6, Kymoney, Ktorrent, Gimp, Digikam, Amarok, Smplayer and much much more. In addition there are over 12,000+ additional packages available from our software repository.

As always there is support for Nvidia and ATI fglrx drivers. Many new wireless cards and printers are supported as well. Plus 2010 release is able to play the popular multimedia. Other versions (Gnome, Zen, LXDE...) have got the respective latest desktop environments and applications.

Download PCLinuxOS 2010

How to Make GTK Apps Look like KDE on a KDE-only Desktop

2010-04-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

KDE4 is eye-candy. But most of the distributions that bundle it are not that stable or usable. Here I don't talk about PCLinuxOS 2010 or Mepis 8.5. They have done a great job in their implementation of KDE 4. But there are a lot others.

Well, coming to the point.... Of late I planned to install a KDE-only Debian desktop on a custom-made system. It was meant for somebody very new to Linux. That's why I thought of good old KDE 3 and the most stable distro of our times - Debian Lenny. Lenny installed a fully-functional KDE desktop on that machine (PIV on Intel 945 mobo) quite well. Afterwards I made some tweaks on the system so that my friend could easy plug his ntfs external drive, web cam, use his stock DVDs, windows media files and so many other non-free stuff. Again after configuring debian-multimedia it was easy as always.

KDE 3.5.9 on Lenny worked like a charm - quite responsive while carrying a truck load of kde apps. But those gtk apps looked butt-ugly on a kde-only environment. Here is a screenshot of how a gtk app looks on a debian pure kde desktop.

As you see, the look of apps is not consistent. Thank God, there is gtk-qt-engine package in Lenny repo. I installed this package and configured in kcontrol (kde control center) as shown below. And Lo! Upon reboot I got consistent KDE look across kde and gtk.

If you are also a KDE-lover but can't do without some gtk apps gtk-qt-engine is the way to go.

Here is the screenshot of Avidemux after installing gtk-qt-engine.

Linux Desktop: Running WvDial without Root Permission

2010-03-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

WvDial in combination with PPP is the best dialup internet solution for any Linux Desktop. There are a couple of ppp-frontends such as gnome-ppp and kppp for dialup internet access, but none are as versatile, configurable and intelligent as WvDial. However, the biggest turndown in WvDial is - it asks for root permission (except Mepis, Warren has done wonders to Mepis wherein you just have to enter wvdial, no need to be root at all). Everytime you need to do su or sudo wvdial and enter root password, it's a pain for no perceivable gain. Fortunately, you can get rid of it following a few simple tweaks.

1. Install ppp and wvdial using your distribution's repository. Let the package manager pull-in all the dependencies.
2. Generate/configure valid wvdial.conf file in /etc
For my idea net setter edge-enabled Huawei wireless modem I had to customize my wvdial.conf as mentioned below.

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem=/dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 115200
Init 1 = AT+CGMM
Init 2 = AT+CMEE=1
Init 3 = ATE0
Init 4 = AT^HS=0,0
Init 5 = AT+CFUN?
Init 6 = AT+CLCK="SC",2
Init 7 = AT+CPIN?
Init 8 = AT+CLCK="SC",2
Modem Type = USB MODEM
Phone=*99#
Username = 9990146746
Password = 6746
New PPPD = yes
Dial Command=ATDT
Stupid Mode=1
ISDN=0

3. Open terminal, be a root user (su or sudo) and do:

adduser USERNAME dip
adduser USERNAME dialout

where USERNAME is your userlogin name.

4. Locate pppd (generally it's /usr/sbin/pppd) with root permission run the following commands in a terminal

chmod o+x pppd
chmod g+s pppd

5. Finally, change permissions of pap-secrets and chap-secrets

chown USERNAME /etc/ppp/pap-secrets
chown USERNAME /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

You're done!

Now open a terminal and run wvdial as a non-previleged (non-root) user.

PCLinuxOS 2010 Rocks Even in the Beta Stage

2010-03-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

The wait is over! Tex and the Rippers announced PCLinuxOS 2010 on 6th March, 2010. Final iso is very close.

PCLinuxOS-2010.beta1 has gathered all the goodies: latest 2.6.32.8 kernel with BFS scheduler, full ext4 support, KDE 4.4.1 SC and the latest applications. Besides, users having more than 4Gig of RAM can pull in a PAE kernel from the repo.

In many ways pclos 2010 is a big leap/rewrite for faster startup, better hardware detection/configuration and consistent/unified look across KDE/GTK2 themes. 2010 edition carries plymouth bootsplash and speedboot technology. Needless to say, it still bears the tex-stability and -usability, the halmarks of this distro.

I am using the beta for last 3 days and not experienced a bit of problem till now. You can use it too though the official suggestion is to use its final.

Please visit www.pclinuxos.com for more.
Some Download links:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/texstar/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/pclinuxos-2010-beta1.iso
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/pclinuxos-2010-beta1.iso
http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/pclinuxos-2010-beta1.iso
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/pclinuxos-2010-beta1.iso

Size: 693.91 mb
md5sum – c027f63d211304059b522433e2a48a16

Is RHEL5 the New XP of Linux World?

2010-02-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

If you blamed Redmond for the late release of Vista (almost 6 years after XP) then think again, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is the new XP of Linux World. And the same user-reaction is building towards it.

As per official documents Red Hat declares of following a 18-24 months release cycle. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 was released on 2007-03-14, and it's about 3 long years now, still there is no official announcement. The question here is how long will Red Hat possibly stick with 2.6.18 kernel line and the contemporary packages. The present status of Red Hat Desktop is a stable but obsolete distribution.

Of course, the server side story of big corporates is different. They would still stick to the standardized and stable base - RHEL5. Though Red Hat does not make it explicit, seems it only aims for servers in big corporates. Even its desktop offering is meant for biggies only. Had it at all aimed at a general desktop, we could have seen a major release sometime in 2009.

Linux desktop has made some great jumps over the past three years. There have been KMS, CFS, the new 2.6.31 desktop oriented kernel, virtualization and a lot more in terms of userspace and application program updates. Interestingly late-to-the-party Debain is catching up with these developments. But Red Hat...

1. Is Red Hat finding it difficult to maintain 4 releases at a time, that's why the delay in RHEL 6?
2. Has it changed its release plans (without making it public) and preferred a feature-based release to a time-based release.
3. Are the corporate clients too happy with RHEL 5 (like XP) and there would be no pleasant acceptance of a new release?
4. Or Red Hat aims only for Servers and RHEL 5.4 serves that purpose best and there is no need for a release?

Visitors, please post your comments on RHEL6 here.

Why Should You Compile Your Kernel and How

2010-02-16T06:50:00.000-08:00

If you are running Mepis, Mint, PCLinuxOS or other desktop oriented distribution, and your installation detects all your devices and works perfectly fine, you don't need to waste your time compiling you own kernel. That's what I had mentioned earlier in this blog.

But sometimes you may require to add/remove some features, drivers or change some settings, then you should go for compiling your own. Take my case for example. A week ago, I had to setup a home desktop for a total noob (doesn't know L of Linux). He was just interested in running a system that works after some initial configuration. He is not supposed to do updates, any sort of fixing and he is connected to web on his desktop through broadband. After much thought I settled on installing a customized Debian Lenny that would just work without any hitch or instability.

And I set on to recompile a kernel totally meant for boosting desktop performance. I prepared a .config file shedding every bit of unnecessary components and some setting changes. They are:

1. Changed kernel to "Low Latency Preemptible for Desktop" (Debian kernel is optimized for server, you can't change it even if you choose a desktop install), it's a must for desktop kernels
2. Changed Processor type to "Core2Duo or Newer" (my friend has a core2 machine)
3. Removed support for almost hundreds of drivers for old/legacy and modern devices, except for those which are built into that desktop
4. Removed support for unnecessary block-devices, esoteric filesystems, etc.
5. Changed memory settings
6. Removed ipv6 support
7. Tweaked CPU scaling features

How Did I Compile it

First I installed the following packages

#apt-get install kernel-package ncurses-dev bzip2 module-init-tools initramfs-tools procps fakeroot zlib1g-dev libgtk2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev libglade2-dev

Checked the kernel version using the following command

#uname -r

Downloaded linux source matching the version of installed kernel from Debian repository. The reason behind it is that you can modify the .config file and the recompiled kernel will integrate well with the existing set of userspace packages and applications. Of course you can put a newer or older kernel source for recompiling. But then, you should be more cautious while creating a .config file through "make menuconfig".

Whether newer or older kernel source, try to pull that from your distribution repository. It's will suit better and it may bear some patches specific to your distribution.

Copied source to newly created folder

#cp /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2 ~/newkernel/

Extracted the source and moved to the sources directory

#tar xjf linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2
#cd linux-source-2.6.26

Then copied a working template for the kernel .config to this directory. You should do this unless you want to drastically change the kernel .config file.

#cp /boot/config-$(uname -r) ./.config

Checked processor (it'll be useful in choosing cpu type and settings)

#cat /proc/cpuinfo

Configured kernel options (Don't change settings aggressively if you don't know what you are doing)

#make menuconfig

Now cleaned the bed for real work

#make-kpkg clean

Then started the real compilation

#make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot --initrd --revision=dev.1 kernel_image kernel_headers

Note:
1.You can change “dev.1” with yours.
2.You may skip building “kernel_headers” if you don't need to build kernel modules

Then moved to the directory where I had freshly cooked kernel images.

#cd ..

Installed .deb package using the following command

#dpkg -i *.deb

After installation, I checked the menu.lst and /boot directory to ensure the initrd, vmlinuz files are properly created and linked in the grub menu.

Benefits of this compilation:
1. My custom kernel weighed just 8MB.
2. It takes 8-10sec less to boot
3. The desktop feels snappier than the default Lenny Desktop install
4. It takes much less memory and resources.
5. The boot screen is quite neat even in verbose mode.

The above procedure works well on Debian Lenny and Mepis 8. You might have to google the web for more appropriate help relevant to your particular distribution.

PCLinuxOS 2010 is Shaping Up

2010-02-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

While browsing pclinuxos repos I came across "http://ftp.klid.dk/ftp/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2010/RPMS.main". The version label "2010" in that ftp URL caught my attention. Finally, PCLinuxOS is shaping up for a 2010 release!

Last time it was a great decision by Tex and the Gang to stick with KDE 3.5.10 on their 2009.2 release. They played safe for the welfare of the community and the users, while many desktop-wannabes plunged into KDE4 line. Now that KDE 4 has become a lot more stable and feature-complete, it's time for a release.

Seems PCLinuxOS has been following a feature-based (not time-based) release schedule (call it rolling release, it's ready when it's ready, or whatsoever). And it's good for all. In all guesses PCLinuxOS will ride on kernel 2.6.31 or above under the skin of KDE 4.4 (soon to be released). Of course, there are a lot of other goodies - tools, apps, and may be many overhauling of boot process, artwork and the overall integration.

Just my pinch of thought. Like before, there has been no announcement from pclos team. It's ready when it's ready.

How to Stop "Kinit: No Resume" Error Message in Debian Lenny

2010-01-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Suspend, Hibernate and Resume are great features in modern mobile computing. So, it's good to have them in your Operating System, be it Linux or OS X or Windows. However, these features require more resources in terms of physical/swap memory. And some people don't like it.

On user-level you can disable it by removing the userspace Suspend/Hibernate packages. But sometimes removing those packages don't do the job completely. You may still get an error message like the two lines I got during my Debian Lenny boot process:

kinit: Trying to resume from /dev/sda5
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot

I had removed suspend/hibernate packages quite earlier. Wondered why that message came till I knew it's a kernel feature these days. So, to disable resume, you have to tell the kernel not to seek for it. Just add noresume in the kernel line of /boot/grub/menu.lst file. See the example:

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet noresume
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

After adding noresume to the kernel line you will get rid of that "No resume...." error message, and may be, save a few seconds of boot time.

Restoring GRUB through PCLinuxOS LiveCD

2010-01-14T05:19:00.000-08:00

Distro-hopping or multi-OS-booting sometimes results in a non-booting grub. You can use PCLinuxOS (or any other) LiveCD to restore grub in a safe way. Here are the steps:

1. Boot system from PCLinuxOS LiveCD
2. Open a terminal and be root user - enter "su"
3. Enter command "grub" (it will put you on grub> prompt)
4. Then locate grub files by: "find /boot/grub/stage1"
5. It will return grub locations (it may be (hd0,0) or (sd0,0))
6. As per the location of grub enter "root (hd0,0)" or "root (sd0,0)" or some other.
7. Then issue "setup (hd0)" or "setup (sd0)" or some other.
8. Finally enter "quit"

Now reboot the computer without LiveCD.

Note: Use commands without quotes.

Looking for a Decent Office Suite in Linux?

2009-12-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

I used to prefer Microsoft Office (on top of Crossover Linux) to OpenOffice for two big benefits - performance and compatibility. OpenOffice is a jumbo of a office suite. It has many feature, and more being introduced in each release. But performance-wise it's slow. What's more, it eats memory like a pig!

For long I had been looking for a office suite for Linux that's light, feature-rich and fast. I tried KOffice - it's fast, but not as feature-complete as OpenOffice. Then switched to GnomeOffice. Sad! It lacks a presentation pack. The Agnubis has long been deserted. Last night I saw this Ashampoo Office 2008 on my friends Windows XP PC. It is just a tiny humble suite that consisted of a word processor (textmaker), a spreadsheet program (planmaker) and a presentation software (presentation). This suite takes just 39.77MB of install space, and 33.25MB of memory (when all the three programs are running)! Besides, it's not pricey - costs a fraction of what you pay for Microsoft Office. It has a Linux version too. Lastly, Ashampoo 2008 has bundled just planmaker, textmaker and presentation, the combo most of the people use frequently.

Finally, I would like to see OpenOffice shed some of its fat to be as slim, as uncluttered and as fast as Ashampoo. Or, better still, if somebody point me to a free Ashampoo Alternative in Linux. Till then I am using it.

Please click on the image below to see the memory footprint and install space usage of Ashampoo Office 2008.

BTW, Ashampoo (Softmaker) Office 2010 is already released.

Intel Atom 230 is a Great Deal for Home Users

2009-12-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

It's time for Nettops, after the success of netbooks. Acer Revo and Dell Inspiron Zino are making rounds for sometime now for some obvious reasons - mini form-factor, low power consumption, and the confidence/legacy of netbooks powered by Intel Atom (or VIA Nano).

These days Computer vendors are luring both types of users - power/performance hungry users with Intel core i5 and i7, and dedicated web-users with Intel Atom. I was also lured to Dell showroom to purchase a Zino that came for just Rs. 16000/-. However, the neighboring shop grabbed my attention for quite long with a hoarding "Intel D945GCFL motherboard with Intel Atom 230 embedded for just Rs. 2800". And I started assembling bits and pieces for this mobo. I assembled that mobo with a 160GB SATA HDD, 1GB RAM, LG 16X DVD Writer into a mini-ITX, plus purchased an AOC 16" TFT monitor, an Intex UPS, a Logitech Mouse+Keyboard Combo and a Creative subwoofer sound system. All this for just Rs. 14000/-. A great deal indeed!

First I was apprehensive about the performance of this low-power mini-pc. Blame it on the bad air on the web. There are dozens of forums and tech-sites that dump Intel Atom for its low-performance comparing it with Via Nano. But overall, it's not that bad. Intel Atom 230 nettop processor is 64-bit capable and supports hyperthreading. I tested my self-build pc with Debian and Vista. Performance was satisfactory in both the platforms. Debian Lenny autoconfigured all the devices (thanks the mobo was very mature and little old). Installing Vista Home Premium was also painless, though I had to install device drivers from the CD that came with Intel D945GCFL bundle. Installing device drivers was a one-click-and-go process. There was not a single hitch in running web browsers, office suite, IM clients and browsing local drives.

Of course, it becomes excrusiating slow if you recompile kernel on it or do some video editing. But then, this mobo is meant for everyday home computing. It is quite responsive with Firefox, Skype, Pidgin and OpenOffice running parallelly. If your usage is somewhat limited to these tasks then Intel D945GCFL+Atom 230 is a best buy.

Following are the specs of my mini-pc.

Mepis Plunges into KDE 4 with its 8.5 Alpha Release: Good News for All KDE Fans

2009-11-22T22:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Warren uploaded SimplyMEPIS 8.4.80, the alpha release of MEPIS 8.5 with KDE 4, commemorating the seventh anniversary of MEPIS Linux. However, Mepis will provide updates to Mepis 8. Warren says, "... a lot of users have asked that we support the KDE 4.3 desktop, yet other users have asked that we continue to support KDE 3.5.10. So in the spirit of our ongoing updates, we are building 8.5, not as a replacement for 8.0, but rather as an alternative for those users who want KDE 4.3. We will continue to support 8.0 with KDE 3.5.10 in parallel with 8.5 and KDE 4.3."

Mepis 8.4.80 alpha defaults to a 2.6.32.rc8 kernel and includes KDE 4.3.2 and QT 4.5.3.

This announcement makes it clear that KDE 4 is finally ready for mass consumption, cos Warren is one among the few distro makers who give maximum priority to stability and usability. Sure, there will be a lot of alphas and betas before Mepis 8.5 goes gold. But then, the wait will be worth it!

For more please read the release announcement.

Google Chrome OS Preview

2009-11-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Google raised curtains on its yet to come Chrome OS, the new OS based on Linux and the Chrome browser. Though Chrome OS final will reach users approx. after a year google threw some more hints on how it will look and work.

It's going to be Web OS - the entire system will run in the Chrome browser. The browser is the place that will show up your USB drive contents, Google Apps (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, and Google Docs among others). It will use an SSD to speed up the system, the rest everything will live in the cloud. So, it's clear that the Google Chrome OS is for those who primarily use the web.

Being a totally opensource project, it's clear that it can be made (by enthusiasts) to run on regular desktops and laptops. Well, wait and watch, there is still a year to go. For more info visit Google Blog.

Linux Kernel Recompilation: Is it Worth the Pain?

2009-11-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

With Linux Kernel 2.6.32 around the corners I see some gurus suggesting users to recompile their own kernels for a dozen of reasons: performance, fast booting, support of some esoteric drivers, bla... bla... What's more, the way some persuade for kernel recompilation seems the job is as easy as any point-n-click installation.

Dear users, kernel recompilation is not easy like that. Plus, you won't get that perceivable performance boost. May be after hours of toil you can cut down 2 secs from your boot time and some unnoticeable system responsiveness.

Except for some really weird situations, modern Linux distributions don't really need kernel recompilation. Here are the reasons:

Rise of Hardware: Gone are those days of Mega Hertz processors. Now when Quad Core processors have reached the shelves you won't find much performance difference between one of your custom (recompiled) kernels and the one that came with your favorite distribution. Of course, you will still see some point differences in actual benchmarks, but that's minismal enough to be ignored. The point here is modern hardware is really fast. For more speed you can just make some manual changes in your runlevels, services and desktop environment settings.
Intelligent Kernel: A modern linux kernel though multiple times heavier than its predecessors is also far more intelligent than them. It loads just the required stuff and cuts the clutter from beginning. So, no need to be panic looking at those hundreds of modules.
Can you Bell the Cat well: Recompiling a kernel is not just a make menuconfig >> make >> make modules, and a couple of such commands away. Even if you do it, you as a normal user (sorry, if you are a geek) can't do the job that good compared to hundreds of developers rolling kernel for your favorite distribution.
Most often you don't need to: Do you know that the upcoming linux kernel 2.6.32 has support for USB 3.0 drives? Just imagine when the hardware is not yet shipped to the vendors the device drivers are ready in linux kernel. The same thing may not be true for all your ultramodern devices. But, it's matter of time. Just wait for some time and next kernel will most probably have it. Else browse through linux forums you will certainly get a fix or workaround.
Does it Pay: Though recompiling a kernel really helped couple of years back. Today it doesn't really help you that much. You might take all the pains to roll your own kernel. But at the end just get unnoticeable performance boost.

So, is kernel recompilation all that futile? No! The only benefit lies in enhancing your knowledge. If you are intelligent/keen enough to know the system internals kernel recompilation is a great session. Never mind, if you break you system you can pop up a distro cd and go for clean install, always.

RHEL 6: Is Anything Brewing Up?

2009-11-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

This time it's really late for Red Hat. It's is going to defy its traditional release cycle pushing RHEL6 further back. People are just throwing guesses as to when the next Red Hat, i.e., Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 6 will come out.

There was a big buzz when Fedora 9 was released, that buzz moved across many Linux blogs and forums when Fedora 10 released. Alas! Now Fedora 12 is about to show up in 2 or 3 days. Still there has been no news of RHEL6's whereabouts - no betas, no feature lists, nothing!

Historically, Red Hat Releases do not seem to follow any schedule. But the releases get delayed over the years as the news releases come in. Let's have a look at the durations between major Red releases.

RHEL 3 -> RHEL 4: 16 months
RHEL 4 -> RHEL 5: 25 months
RHEL 5 -> RHEL 6: ? - 36 months (as of 14th March, 2010) and counting

Add your own guesses on RHEL6's features, put your own release speculations - it seems it will be released when it's ready.

Let me put my first guess: RHEL 6 will be based on Fedora 15, it'll have ext5, xorg 7.9 kernel 2.7.30.. Just joking. Plz post your speculations about RHEL's next big release in this blog based on facts.

Desktop Linux + Idea Net Setter Wireless Internet = A Good Idea

2009-11-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

Idea Cellular provides the lowest tariff for mobile internet access through its Net Setter devices. And it promises of plug-n-play zero-cd installation of the devices. However, in reality when you plugin the device on Windows it autoinstalls the modem (Huawei EG162G) drivers and a dialer application. Idea doesn't provides support for Linux. But you can still access internet through Net Setter with the following few steps.

1. Make sure you have ppp and wvdial installed. If not, install both these applications.
2. Add the following lines to your /etc/wvdial.conf file.

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem=/dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 115200
Init 1 = AT+CGMM
Init 2 = AT+CMEE=1
Init 3 = ATE0
Init 4 = AT^HS=0,0
Init 5 = AT+CFUN?
Init 6 = AT+CLCK="SC",2
Init 7 = AT+CPIN?
Init 8 = AT+CLCK="SC",2
Modem Type = USB MODEM
Phone=*99#
Username = phone number (in my case it was 9990146746)
Password = last 4 digits of phone number (in my case it was 6746)
New PPPD = yes
Dial Command=ATDT
Stupid Mode=1
ISDN=0

3. After making the above changes in wvdial.conf plugin Idea Net Setter device, wait for a few seconds, and then run wvdial in a terminal.

Bingo! You are done. You will see wvdial establish a ppp connection in a manner shown below.

But there is a show-stopping bug with the USB Idea Net Setter Stick Modem (Huawei EG162G). I am unable to boot/reboot/shutdown the system with this modem pluged in. I have to plugin this device after the system is booted and plugout the device before a shutdown/reboot.

I would solicit any suggestions to fix this bug.

Important Point:
That show-stopping bug is fixed after install experimental 2.6.32 linux kernel.

Linux is Great But How Does Windows Sit on 90% of Desktops?

2009-11-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Try the latest iterations of major Linux distributions you will know the platform Linux has come a long way. There have been immense development in kernel, desktop integration and opensource application software, all of which together make a Linux operating system that we know. But the big question here is "why do many people still love Windows", why is there such an hue and cry when the latest (and greatest, as they say) Windows 7 hits the stores? And why does Windows sit on more than 90% of desktops? Read on to know my interpretation. No rants or fanboyism!

Linux is not that geeky anymore, thanks to Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Mint and a host of other such desktop distributions! Install the latest PCLinuxOS 2009.2, Mepis 8 or Ubuntu 9.10. Most certainly you won't have any problem installing it. The good part is you will get a complete desktop: an office suite (OpenOffice), an Internet bundle (Firefox, Thunderbird plus an FTP Client, IM client & more), a decent multimedia apps set (Totem, Mplayer, VLC and the likes). So, as a home user you will have very less to look for outside your install disc. And all these are free. Whereas in Windows retail copy installation you have to buy an OS disc, device drivers and other application software. But why there is no such buzz when the latest *buntu reached mirrors? And the market is so up for MS Windows 7?

Simple. The Linux community fails to complement users with those MS comparable software that they have been working on for more than a decade. Take OpenOffice as an example. It's a complete office productivity suite by every aspect. On it you can create stunning presentations, draft elegant letters and resumes, work on spreadsheets. Enough to meet your home use. But it's not a replacement in certain enterprise/professional environments. It behaves like a snail while handling big/complex spreadsheets, macro-ridden large documents, and complex database. Feature-complete, but a poor performer!

Of course, there are some proprietary office suites for Linux such as Softmaker, ElOffice and Ashampoo that look/work like Redmond's. They cost very less compared to MS Office. But they are unknown to the Average Joe.

Likewise, there is no scarcity of apps. There are thousands. However, people are looking for a few solid counterparts of their favorite Windows applications. In this regards Firefox is a real heavy-weight that topples other browsers (IE, Safari....& other) down in all possible ways. Also K3B is very versatile as a CD/DVD burning software. Even it feels and works better than the proprietary NeroLINUX. There is no such case for OpenOffice.

Let's hope OO.org makes performance and polish its primary goal.

Speed Up Debian Linux KDE Desktop

2009-10-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

I still remember those days when RedHat 9 used to take almost two minutes to boot on my PIII PC. It was way too slow compared to Windows XP (that took roughly 40 sec) of that time. Thank God, these days Mepis 8 takes just 50 sec on my notebook. And the new OpenOffice.org 3 is a lot better than what it used to be 8 years back.

You too can achieve that speed by doing some easy tweaks.

Speed Up Booting

Boot directly from hard drive, make boot chooser timeout value to 0, and start parallel booting.

Default BIOS setting of modern PC has been set to seek Optical Discs and USB drives first, followed by hard drive and network. You can change it to seek hard drive first save some time. Besides you can set timeout value to 0 in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file so that Linux boot directly instead of waiting few seconds for you to choose a boot option. If yours is a multi-core processor you can still reduce boot time by setting parallel boot. Just edit your /etc/init.d/rc and change CONCURRENCY=none to CONCURRENCY=startpar.

Optimize Memory

Swapping is an important factor in system responsiveness. One important factor improve performance is to swap less and use RAM more. In case of a home desktop, you won't have to use swap if you have more than 1 GB of RAM. But for safety reasons you should have swap partition/file and change default swappiness value. In my system I have edited sysctl.conf file appending a line "vm.swappiness=10" (without quotes) to it.

Optimize KDE

Using auto-login and disabling some KDE eye-candy and services (disabling bootsplash (or splashy), ksplash, gui-effects and system startup check and using less items in Autostart) will further improve your desktop performance. Also you can change KDE options to start with an empty session. It will reduce the KDE-startup time.

Improve Filesystem Performance

Using "noatime" mount option and "data=writeback" mode will speedup your Linux desktop to a great extent.

Use "noatime" option. In my case it is:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
/dev/sda3 /home auto defaults,noatime 1 2
# Dynamic entries below
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0

Use data=writeback.

In a root terminal issue:

tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/hda1 (substitute hda1 with your partition name)

Disable IPv6

World will move towards IPv6. But not now. Most of the home desktops still access internet using IPv4. So you can disable IPv6 system-wide to save time (processing) that goes to translate between IPv4 and IPv6. Edit /etc/environment as root and append "KDE_NO_IPV6=True" to it. Also remove the ipv6 settings from sysctl.conf. You should also consider disabling IPv6 settings in Firefox. Open about:config in Firefox and change value of "network.dns.disableIPv6" to true.

Change Host Setting

Simply edit /etc/hosts files and change it something like

127.0.0.1 localhost
mepis 127.0.01 mepis

(change "mepis" with your hostname)

Optimise TCP Settings

As root user edit /etc/sysctl.conf add the following lines to it:

net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1

It will reduce packet transfer overhead and improve your internet speed.

Speedup Firefox

Create a new integer value "content.notify.backoffcount" in about:config and set its value to 5. Also create an integer "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to zero. Similarly create another New Integer, name it Network.dnsCacheExpiration and give its value as 3600. Create another integer ui.submenuDelay and then set its value to zero. Change the network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining values to "true".

Remove Java

You should also consider removing Java runtime and allied packages from your Linux desktop and uncheck "java" from OpenOffice.org and Firefox options. It will speed up loadtime of both the applications.

Home Users Don't Need to Update their Linux Frequently

2009-10-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

There are certain Linux distributions, those so called rolling distros, generally don't break after you update regularly. But some bleeding edge distributions (like Fedora) break or behave badly. Good thing is, if you are running Linux on a home desktop, you don't need to update it frequently.

You can update Linux same way as you did on Windows. Either you choose regular updates, or you pull in the bulk updates following the said distro's systematic instructions for update. But very often the later is recommended for desktops. Regular update (those related to security bug fixes, performance enhancements) is a must if you are running some critical applications on server.

Suppose, you installed PCLinuxOS 2009.2 which detected and configured all your hardware devices. You did a full update plus pulled in all the necessary apps of your choice. Period. You don't need to regularly upgrade it. Frequent updates don't bring about great improvements. They only kill bandwidth, your time, some extra power and memory. You don't need to keep that "Fetch Updates" (or something similar) apps running in your system tray. It just consumes some extra CPU and RAM. If your system works don't break it - don't pull in unnecessary upgrades!

Stick to your distro of choice and make a clean install when a mega release shows up.

Sify Broadband Annoyance on Linux

2009-10-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

Some Internet Service Providers don't grow with time. Needless to say they fall apart. Sify Broadband (in India) is one such ISP. Even it lags behind MTNL in terms of technological awareness. Please read on if you are interested in further rant about Sify.

Due to some compulsion I had to subscribe Sify Broadband. And I contacted the local Sify Internet Agency (Annoyance No.1: this ISP does not provide internet direct to the consumer, there is always an agent who takes a good amount of service charge every month, alas!). The Sify agent of my locality is a total noob. He had no idea about IP configuration on Linux. Well, I configured it as per his given details.

I got connected to Sify LAN. But could I browse the web? No. (Annoyance No.2: You have to install a certain Sify Connect app). Instead, every page were redirected to a Sify server page that prompted me to install a Sify dialer. I chose to download the linux dialer (from something like http://210.18.11.199:81/bbandclient/...1.3-bin.tar.gz). Extracted the tarball and ran an install.sh file. The dialer was installed successfully. But did that run? No. (Annoyance No.3: On running that dialer it prompted that libssl.so.4 was missing). Bullshit! It displayed some error message stating libssl.so.4 and libcrypto.so.4 were missing, whereas both were present though their version numbers were different. Not a big deal, I made symlinks to those required files from the versions that existed in my /usr/lib.

su
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libssl.so.0.9.8 libssl.so.4
ln -s libcrypto.so.0.9.8 libcrypto.so.4

After the above dirty commands I ran sifyconnect as a non-privileged user. It did not work. (Annoyance No. 4: you've to be root user in order to run that sifyconnect dialer). Then I again issued "su" followed by sifyconnect. It worked. Sify Sucks Big! Phie on the Sify Broadband dialer developers who think it is necessary to have admin/root privileges to run that BS TCP/IP sifyconnect dialer. Well, no relief thereafter. I never saw persistent connectivy in Sify. There have been frequent "invalid sessions" and "autologout". I had to login every now and then.

The last and biggest annoyance is that Sify charges much more than that of Airtel or MTNL for comparable bandwidth. No wonder, it has always been the last resort for consumers. Grow up Sify competition is getting stronger!

Anyways, I am switching to MTNL.

How to Play Real Media Files on Mplayer - Mepis 8

2009-09-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Kmplayer Playing Monster.rmvb

I have never been a fan of Real Player, but it was there in my every installation of Windows or Linux. Reason? Some of my old audio and video collections.

Before MP3 and XviD stuff became the mainstay of Web and standalone Players, there was Real Media. I still have have some ra, rm audio, and rm, rmvb video that I can't find in any other format. Nor can I convert them to today's popular formats, because they are already very much compressed and lossy.

Well, I used to play them in the Linux port of RealPlayer. But the latest debian package of RealPlayer couldn't play it on one of my beloved Mepis 8 installation. Don't know why. They somebody told me that you can play them on Mplayer (one of very popular native media players on linux) with alsa-oss and w32codecs. And Lo, it worked.

So, those of you who would like to play Real Media files, need not have to install RealPlayer, you can play them quite well on Mplayer (KMPlayer, SMPlayer & GMPlayer) with alsa-oss and w32codecs installed. Of Course, you can't stream audio and video from Real Networks.

It works for me on Mepis 8. Hope, it will work on your Linux Flavor too.

Linux Kernel vs. Desktop Performance

2009-09-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

If you have been using Linux for a decade, you must have come across many news stories/blogs/forums/release notes stating "the latest kernel version promising some performance enhancements".

I have read news of performance improvement at every new kernel release - starting from kernel 2.2 to this date (kernel 2.6.31). These days some blog posts state that the latest 2.6.31 kernel will improve desktop performance greatly (40%). But I have never really experienced performance improvement with new kernels. For example, the boringly stable Centos 4 with 2.6.8 kernel is way too fast on my aging PIV HP system than the later Fedora or PCLOS, or anything. Besides, on my cheap Compaq C702 Notebook PCLinuxOS 2008 (MiniMe) with Kernel 2.6.22 is faster than PCLinuxOS 2009.2 with Kernel 2.6.26. There are hundreds of such examples.

So, drawing from 8 years of my Linux computing, I have seen the skinny Linux growing fatter and fatter, keeping in pace with the upcoming devices and demands. Sorry, if I am too dumb, but I always try a lower version of kernel if it supports my hardware, and I have seen it works better.

For me, it really pays a lot if you install a kernel that’s contemporary of your hardware. Any big time difference forward or backward affects performance, very often, badly.

Well, let’s see, if Kernel 2.6.31 can defy my view.

Mepis 8.0.10 perfects KDE 3.5.10

2009-09-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

KDE 4.3 is Great but I would suggest all newbies to try the last, KDE 3.5.10 release of Mepis 8 (8.0.10) before it moves into KDE 4 world (cos i don't know what will happen then).

KDE 3.5.10 is still the most stable and feature-complete desktop environment, and Mepis 8.0.10 does KDE 3.5.10 the best. I have been keeping track of Mepis 8 - from Beta 1 to the latest 8.0.10. Every time it came with more polish. And the last 8.0.10 is the best distro with kde 3.5.10, because Mepis is also moving to KDE 4 zone.

After installing Mepis 8 I've tampered it every possible way. Did every possible work. And I bet say, it performs consistently on the everyday rigors of computing. No problems. It brims with all the commercial polish and user-centric approach. Yet, it's a free to download.

If you want a pain-free and stable KDE 3.5 desktop for everyday task, go for Mepis 8.0.10. It's rock solid as Linux and it understands users better than Microsoft.

Pain-Free Way to Delete Cell Contents in OpenOffice Calc

2009-09-16T21:23:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has come to fame making computing no-brainer for everyone at home and office. For example, its office suite (earlier than Office 2007) is so contextual and easy that it's ported to Mac. And many people prefer it to iWorks.

Its biggest opensource counterpart, Openoffice.org has come a long way, and its 3.1 iteration is a big leap forward. However, it still has some big annoyances. Sometimes OO.o people consider users too dumb. Here is one such instance related to OpenOffice Calc.

For last one week I had to edit many official spreadsheets. It involved deleted several cells, rows and columns across various sheets. Every time I selected certain cells/rows/columns and pressed delete button, OpenOffice Calc popped up a dialog box (see the screenshot below).

It's good to provide cautionary dialog boxes for some important tasks. But it's definitely an annoyance to every time interfere with the user in such mundane tasks as deleting a cell. Because, even if a user deletes certain cells, rows or columns, he/she can always Undo it.

I was really scared with this behavior of oocalc and looked for alternatives to Delete. Fortunately, OpenOffice has not binded this annoying dialog box with Backspare key. So all of you who use openoffice calc and are scared of this delete dialog box can use Backspare instead of Delete to clear contents of a spreadsheets. And don't panic, there is always the venerable Undo button in case you wrongly deleted something.

KDE4 - Hype & Reality

2009-09-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

It feels good to see KDE 4.3 mature. Again it feels good to see some of the major but conservative Linux distributions turning up to KDE 4. PCLinuxOS has set a complete KDE 4.3 repository ready for those interested in this new and much-hyped desktop environment. Slackware 13 is loaded with KDE 4.2. However, it feels very bad that KDE4 doesn't deliver the stuff hyped much earlier. Read on to know what I exactly mean by "hyped stuff" but don't start kde4-fanboyism.

The worst hype about KDE4 is that it's more responsive than KDE3. It's a complete false statement. I have tried OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, and sadly, Fedora, on top of KDE4 and 3. Sorry friends, I could not see any major difference in performance. On the contrary I have seen lack of performance while using KDE4. "KDE4 uses around 40% less resource than KDE3" is another biggest hype that moved across various OSS forums. It's again a false statement. True, KDE4 manages memory more intelligently, but not 40% less.

I am sure, KDE 4.3.1 is way more polished and advanced than KDE 3.5.10. It looks stunning. It's enviable to all - KDE 3.5.10, Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. But it is not as tightly integrated.

Good news is that Linux Kernel 2.6.31 has much possibility in terms of desktop performance improvement. And it seems, KDE 4 will stood up to its hype when it couples with this nice kernel. Till then I am sticking to KDE 3.5.10 on PCLinuxOS MiniMe.

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime Review

2009-08-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

pclinuxos 2009.1 minime default desktop

Macho Man

I am a copy writer/editor by profession who is deeply into Desktop Linux. Is not it machoistic? I love to make/break praise/rant Linux. To pursue this I try each release of popular distributions. But everytime I come back to PCLinuxOS. This time I am trying PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime - my personal favorite (read on, I will tell you why) from PCLinuxOS bandwagon.

Mean Machine

Hi there you techies who run after quad cores! I still believe a Celeron 530 1.73 chip is fast enough for a home desktop. And it's 64-Bit too. To me it's the meanest machine. It has tested some 200 distros and still running fine! Specs: 1 GB RAM, 1.73 GHz Celeron M 530 CPU, Intel GMA 965 Graphics, Intel HDA 8 Audio, Broadcom 4311 Rev.2 WLAN Card, 80 GB HDD.

Mini-Me

My personal favorite! Why? Because it's the best, the smallest and the most perfect distribution. What's more, it gives you complete freedom to add whatever you like and make it fit to you personality. That's why the name - Mini-Me. It gives a bloat-free linux experience.

The Review

I have tried them all - Fedoras and Ubuntus. Sometimes a release comes great but most of the time they are buggy. Even a better Fedora runs out of order after some odd updates. But here is PCLinuxOS that provides great releases every time and the nicest updates everyday. Now onto the review.

When I popped up PCLinuxOS 2009.1 MiniME the boot chooser seemed looked little different from its 2008 edition. Yes there is a copy2ram option. I tried it. But sadly it did not work. Except that it booted up quite well. It took some 2 minutes to boot the liveCD. Upon booting Minime 2009.1 gave one more surprise - the update notifier.

Like it's predecessor it has no extra frill (or bloat). Just configure your internet and pull in whatever you like (except openoffice) from synaptic. Kde menu >> Office section has a link GetOpenOffice to grab openoffice 3.1.

Without doing adding/removing packages I thought it better to install and went ahead. Installation took some 10 minutes only.

Here is the list of packages I pulled in from repo to fully load my MiniMe.

OpenOffice 3.1
Kchmviewer
Unrar
Karchiver
Kpdf
Kcalc
Artha
K3b
Kpowersave

Firefox 3.5.2
Skype
Kopete
Kget
Ktorrent
Ksirc

Smplayer
RealPlayer
Amarok
Gimp
Gwenview
Ksnapshot
avidemux-qt
qt-recordmydesktop
libdvdcss2
vcdimager
Krec

The above are a regular mix of applications that I install on Minime. This time Artha came as a surprise. It is a really great wordnet frontend that's Linux's answer to WordWeb.

If you are a regular home desktop user you too can pull in just the above packages onto your Minime and get a real mean slim fast kde home desktop.

The Surprises

Even after installing all these packages my Minime consumes only 2 GB of hard drive space, giving much space to do whatever I like. The freshly installed desktop took only 250 MB RAM! Another pleasant surprise of this minime release is its power management. Right after I installed kpowersave package I was surprised to see the system running cool like a cucumber by utilizing p4_clockmod settings under ondemand cpu governance. It's first time ever happened on this notebook. Previously I had to manually set up cpu-scaling to run this machine optimally cool.

resource consumption of pclinuxos 2009.1 minime on a freshly boot system

power management of my celeron m 530 cpu on pclinuxos 2009.1 minime

The Looks

PCLinuxOS is not a cosmetic distribution. No wonder, it sticks to those crystal icons which you can easily replace with better-looking ones from kde-looks.org. Besides that, the default wallpaper, bootsplash and kde-splash are simply marvelous. They look way better, polished and professional than the previous releases.

What I liked most in this distribution:

1. Inclusion of Update Notifier option.
2. Availability of OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5.2, Artha and many other useful packages in the repo.
3. Bloat-free attitude of Minime like its predecessors.
4. Adherence to KDE 3.5.10 + 2.6.26 kernel.
5. Stunning default wallpaper, bootsplash + ksplash.

Artha - WordWeb Knockoff for Desktop Linux

2009-08-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Till Artha showed up in OSS Linux was lacking a perfect dictionary/thesaurus for long. Yes, it has WordNet as the lexicon and some primitive front ends such as kthesaurus and the native wordnet gui. Clearly it was not as usable as its Windows counterpart - WordWeb.

Artha is a handy dictionary/thesaurus program for Linux that focuses on high usability. It makes the best utilization of WordNet database with highly usable Hotkeys, Regular Expressions, Notifications, Relative Senses, Suggestions and Much More!

So, if your looking for a wordweb knockoff in desktop linux, look no further. Go, get Artha.

Why Should You Love PCLinuxOS 2009.2?

2009-08-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

(pic courtesy pclinuxos.com)

I could have better set the title "What's so Great about PCLinuxOS 2009.2?" Be whatever the case, the good thing is that PCLinuxOS is here. Though little late, it's pouring goodies steadily.

After storming the Desktop world with PCLinuxOS Gnome 2009.2, PCLinuxOS KDE 2009.2, PCLinuxOS MiniME 2009.1, PCLinuxOS Zen Mini 2009.1, PCLinuxOS XFCE and PCLinuxOS LXDE 2009.4. And at last, the repo is ready with kde4. That means an Official PCLinuxOS with KDE 4.3 is not far away.

What I liked the most in PCLinuxOS 2009.2?

1.Cosmetics: This point release sports a better look-n-feel than 2009.1.
2.Updates: It endows tons of updates over 2009.1, making it a must for anyone doing a fresh install.
3.Stability: I don't know much about linux internals but this release seems well tested and polished.
4.CPU management: This release does a great job managing your CPU and power. After installation of 2009.2 when I set out to configure cpu-scaling, I was really surprised to see that pclos had already set proper cpu-scaling for my celeron chip.

Needless to say, this release also bears the testimony of tex standards - well chosen packages and better overall integration of all the components.

So, try it. You will fall in love!

Easy PCLinuxOS Solution to Weird HTTPS Annoyance in Centos 5.3

2009-08-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

Background:
Couple of months back I had installed PCLinuxOS 2009.1 in ONSIS, Noida. For almost 2 months after installation ONSISians had a joyride with PCLinuxOS. But slowly PCLinuxOS started to hang after some hours of working, and afterwards hangs became frequent. And finally we gave up on it and moved to Centos 5.3. We had to compromise on usability for the sake of stability.

The Problem:
Though Centos 5.3 worked like a charm it gave rise to some weird problems, the most annoying of which was the inability to open any HTTPS websites. On the same network Windows XP and PCLinuxOS had no problem opening https websites but Centos did not move. We scanned the firewall settings, browser setting; visited several forums (fedora, rhel, mandriva, pclinuxos, etc.) but to no avail. We checked for 443 port, there was no blockage there. We checked for konqueror and firefox setting, there was nothing wrong either.

The Solution:
Suddenly something brilliant stuck to your System Admin Tarun Pandey's mind. He tried to dig deep into the pclinuxos network settings (which opens https sites flawlessly) and came up with a big point – PCLinuxOS advanced network setting has disabled tcp_window_scaling. He did the same on Centos 5.3 by putting an extra line net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 at end of /etc/sysctl.conf file, and lo, after rebooting Centos opened up all the https websites.

The Question:
Though the problem was solved. I am interested to know how disabling tcp_window_scaling solved this weird https problem. So far, I have no cue.

KDE 3.5.10 - How to Stop Kwallet Annoyance

2009-07-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

On my home desktop I had been using Pidgin (formerly Gaim) and Thunderbird without any password phishing agents like Gnome-Keyring (and Kwallet which never showed up). There is no use of a password phishing agent on a home desktop where you are the only user. But the problem surfaced in PCLinuxOS 2009.2 on which I started using Kmail and Kopete. Overall I was happy at the growth of both these KDE apps, except that kwallet phisher.

I remember right after the fresh installation of pclos 2009.2 I had removed kwallet, but when I fired up kopete and kmail, the kwallet started buzzing me to give a password. And there was no escape, I removed all that hidden kwallet craps and config files from my /home as well as /root directory. Again gave kopete a try, but kwallet came up adamantly and asked for password. Perhaps some kwallet daemon is running all the time.

Thank God! I finally found a fix to disable kwallet at OpenSuse forum.

If you want to disable the use of kwallet, edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwalletrc (if there is no file as kwalletrc create one). Delete all the text from that file and paste:

[Wallet]
Enabled=false

Save the file and reboot your system. Henceforth, kwallet phishing agent won't show up.

Why Some People in India Try Linux and Then Go Back to Windows

2009-07-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

From the days of Red Hat 7 till now I have seen many people (windows users) try Linux. But most of them go back to Windows after time of playing around. Why?

Hang on. Before digging why people go back to windows, let's see why anybody looks for an alternative operating system such as Linux or BSD. Is it for the reason that windows is not free? Is it for the reason that Windows is closed-source? Or is it for the reason that Windows is prone to viruses and malware?

Here in India, maximum people are not worried about the price-tag attached with Windows. Because in many cases the PC comes preinstalled, and if not, installing a pirated copy of XP is not that difficult. You would be surprised that most people give a damn to software-piracy. Even many people think that cost of Windows XP is just Rs. 50 (that around 1$ - the approx. price of Windows XP in most parts of India). For them Windows XP costs the same amount as a PCLinuxOS or Mepis disk. Now on to the nature of operating system - they don't care whether it's open-source or closed source as long as it works.

Next is the issue of viruses, spyware and malware. According to me it's the only reason that attracts many people to linux, in India. They hear people talk - linux is very secure.

Then why do they quit? The reason is they expect exact counterparts of Windows application software in Linux. For example, a lay-user after switching to linux seeks for a MS Office alternative in Linux and hits at OpenOffice. Unfortunately he/she doesn't get the same productivity from it. OpenOffice is not that polished, fast or user-friendly as MS Office. OpenOffice is growing feature-wise, but every release leaves makes some edges rough. I have never seen a decent grammar checker in it. Of course, OpenOffice is free, but then, most users also don't pay for MS Office. Its pirated copy comes for around Rs. 50. There are many programs such as photoshop, corel, 3D designing and animation software, audio/video editing software, etc. that run on windows, and they are not ported to linux. Given the present condition of fragmented linux community, they probably will never be ported.

For many users viruses and malware are less annoying than substandard application software that's why windows is leading on the desktop.

We all know linux kernel is more advanced and way better than windows. Linux Gui (KDE and GNOME) has also come a long way to be as good as or better than explorer (in windows) and aqua (in mac). Driver support has also improved a lot. But everything is lost due to lack of proper application software.

PS: This post is about why linux is unable to make a mark on desktop. I know, Linux is the king on servers.

Google's Take on Consumer Desktop - Google Chrome OS

2009-07-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Chrome Browser was the first followed by Android, and Google Chrome OS is the latest buzz in Google camp. It's going to fill the void created sometime back by Red Hat's dropping its Global Desktop (RHGD)

As the Google personnel say, "it's a natural extension of Google Chrome - the Google Chrome
Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be."

The above proclamation says it all! It'll be nimble, fast and secure - meeting perfectly to average users' demand from a home desktop connected to the Web. Based on certain version of Linux Kernel it will ready in the second half of 2010. Google plans to bring it in a grand way, that means it will come preinstalled in many netbooks, notebooks and desktops.

Needless to say, it will have everything from Google bandwagon, plus moderate bundles of office productivity and multimedia applications.

Read Google Blog for more.

RIPLinuX and TestDisk Made My Day - Recovery was Possible

2009-07-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday something fateful happened. I laid my hands on my brother's refurbished notebook (an old Thinkpad R, the labels are worn away) to install PCLinuxOS 2009.2 MiniMe, and by mistake deleted all the partitions. It had Windows XP installed on its C: drive and all the data (including some serious financial notes, online banking passwords, etc.) were stored on D: and E: drive. I could have undone the "delete partition" thing, but to my bad luck, the laptop just died there due to power failure.

Then I began the disk recover hunt frantically and came across RIPLinuX and some of the recover tools it has, most importantly TeskDisk and Photorec (Later I came to know that PCLinuxOS repository also has both these tools. Had I known it earlier, it could have saved my time downloading around 100 MB). I just popped up the RIPLinuX 9.3 and within 1 minute got my old FAT32 partitions restored. Here is what I did.

RIPLinuX is very nimble when it comes to booting - quite fast and without much verbosity. I logged into RIP with Administrator privileges (root user) and issued "testdisk". It led me to an ncursed based interface.

The first step asked me to whether I would like to create a log file. I chose "CREATE".

The second step listed all the disk drives and prompted me to choose one.

The third step was about choosing the type of partition table. I chose the default (TeskDisk often highlights the right type for you).

The fourth step was the actual recovery procedure where I chose "ANALYSE" option followed by "QUICK SEARCH", and TestDisk displayed all the deleted partitions.

Finally, I had to "WRITE" the changes to the disk.

That's it!

Notes about RIPLinuX:

Recovery Is Possible (RIPLinuX) is a Slackware-based Mini distribution using which you can create a bootable CD or USB drive. It can recover partitions and files of a lot of filesystems including Reiserfs, Reiser4, ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS, UFS, HPFS, HFS, MINIX, MS DOS, NTFS, FAT32 and More).

A Non-fatal Boot Error in Mandriva 2009.1 and its Fix

2009-07-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

Mandriva 2009.1 seems me the best release so far. I have not faced a single problem from the day I installed on my work PC. Wireless, bluetooth and almost any device work flawlessly. But I used to see this error message during boot and shutdown.

Configuring wireless regulatory domain nl80211 not found. [FAILED]

All you Mandriva 2009.1 users, here is the fix to stop the above error message.

Comment out CRDA_DOMAIN=US in /etc/sysconfig/network and you won't see that error message on during booting or shutdown.

Here is what I did:

[root@localhost manmath]# nano /etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
#CRDA_DOMAIN=US

Caution: The error message may come live again if you update some packages (related to networking). But then nothing to worry, you can again put a # before CRDA_DOMAIN in /etc/sysconfig/network file.

PCLinuxOS Bandwagon Updated!

2009-06-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Good News! All you PCLinuxOS users. The community has released new quarterly updates of PCLinuxOS Main KDE (2009.2), Gnome Remaster (PCLinuxOS 2009.2 Gnome), two beautiful Mini Versions - PCLinuxOS 2009.1 MiniME and PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Zen Mini.

All these releases come with updated packages. Main KDE version sticks to 3.5.10 version, this time more baked and beautified.

This release also makes an announcement that KDE 4 will be added to the repo soon. And it will find a place in Next Quarterly Update.

Thanks Tex and PCLOS Team!

Looking for a 64-Bit Desktop Linux?

2009-06-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

It's been quite long since the 64-Bit processors came to limelight. However, they have been just marketing gimmick of hardware vendors for many reasons. Though most of the modern hardware are capable of supporting 64-Bit computing, the software is really not ready.

64-Bit-readyness is abject in Windows. You can install 64-Bit version of Vista, XP or Windows 7, but you can hardly get 64-bit application software from biggies like Adobe.

Good heavens! The move to 64-Bit computing is relatively faster in OpenSource and Linux. You can get 64-Bit distros from Mandriva, Fedora, Mepis, Debian, and now, Slackware. PCLinux has not taken the leap. I tried them all and got the pains ranging from instability to lack of proper codecs across all except one – Mepis 8.

Mepis 8 64-Bit is perhaps the best 64-Bit distribution if you are happy with KDE 3.5.10. For me it seemed the best tested and optimized distribution, so good that it runs on my entry level 64-Bit box with Intel 965 board and Celeron M 530 1.73 GHz processor.

I would highly recommend Mepis 8 64-Bit to all those ready to plunge into 64-Bit computing.

How to find out in Linux if yours is a 64-bit Processor?

2009-06-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

For sometime now I've been working on a low-cost Celeron M 530 1.73 GHz notebook by Compaq. I faintly remember the manual I got with this notebook mentioned somewhere that it's though economic, it's 64 bit processor.

Last night I wanted to try a Mepis 8 64-bit. But before that I started doubting if Intel just made a false proclaimation of this CPU cos it's just a Celeron chip.

In my search across several linux forums to find out if Celeron M 530 is a 64-bit chip I met with 4 commands that tell about the PC's architecture out of which 3 just talked about the architecture type of the installed OS, and only one told about the processor type.

First, I issued command arch

$ arch
i686

No clue about the CPU type, it returned architecture of the installed kernel.

Second, I tried uname

$ uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.26.8-tex3 #1 SMP Mon Apr 20 17:37:07 EDT 2009 i686 Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 530 @ 1.73GHz GNU/Linux

Again, it told about the installed kernel type, not the CPU.

Third, somebody told me to tray getconf

$ getconf WORD_BIT
32

This command also mentioned about the kernel type - 32 bit.

Finally, I came to know that /proc/cpuinfo only reflects about the Processor type. However, sometime the information is not explicit.

Here is the contents of my /proc/cpuinfo

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 530 @ 1.73GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 649.998
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm
bogomips : 3458.39
clflush size : 64

From the above type it's not crearly understood by the "model" or "model name" if the processor is 64-bit capable. However, the "flags" section of cpuinfo reveals it. Presence of the "lm" is only indicator of your CPU being 64-bit capable.

Thank God, I never knew this low-cost celeron m chip supports 64-bit computing. I am going to install Mepis 8 64-bit.

3 Desktop Tweaks on PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome Remaster

2009-06-20T04:24:00.000-07:00

1. Give your desktop an XP Look-n-Feel

Blame Redmond how much you can, but you can't deny the fact that XP has been the longest ruling (rules still, may be windows 7 will change the scenario) beast on desktops. That means the default XP theme is the most familiar interface to all. You can also change your Gnome Desktop to look like XP Luna. Download this package, extract it and run the shell script.

2. Lock the Gnome Desktop Panel

If you like simple computing and clean desktop, this tweak will help you. Open gconf-editor and check the box in /apps/panel/global/locked_down as mentioned in the screenshot. Now, your panel and panel icons are locked!

3. Keep the Application Title to the Left

By default application titles in Linux is aligned to middle of titlebar, but you can keep it to extreme left after removing the menu. Open gconf-editor and change the values of /apps/metacity/general/button_layout to ":minimize,maximize,close" (without quotes) as mentioned in the screenshot. Now your application windows have just two items - application title on extreme left and "minimize, maximize, close" buttons on the extreme right!

How Can I Change Gnome Panel Handle?

2009-06-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Some say gnome is not easily configurable. Some say many of the gnome elements are hard-coded. I never bought this until lately when I could not change the gnome panel handle.

Knowledgeable gnome gurus please guide me how to change gnome panel handle or tell me where that panel handle icon is located. I just could not hit where that panel handle png or svg file resides. If I get it I will replace it with a transparent image cos I don't like panel handles.

-------------------------

Good heavens! At last I found a fix to change the default gnome panel handle. It's like this:

create a text file ".gtkrc-2.0" (without quotes) in your /home/user (in my case it is /home/manmath) directory, and place the following text in it.

style "handle"
{
engine "pixmap"
{
image
{
function = HANDLE
file = ".pixel.png"
border = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }
stretch = TRUE
orientation = VERTICAL
}
image
{
function = HANDLE
file = ".pixel.png"
border = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }
stretch = TRUE
orientation = HORIZONTAL
}
}
}
class "PanelAppletFrame" style "handle"

The above configuration text replaces your panel handle with .pixel.png file. You can change the file name as you like. Here I have created a transparent hidden image file .pixel.png (to get rid of that ugly handle) in my /home/user directory.

Now I am happy with transparent gnome panel handle.

Mad Linux Reviews

2009-06-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Fedora 11 released today!

Less than a couple of hours passed reviews on Fedora 11 poured in, most in favour of this Red Hat sponsered distribution. But I am sure the reviewers themselves might not work on it for months. They will move on to review yet another Linux distribution and speak fair or foul after testing that a few hours.

Some of the reviews were like sacred-cow telling Fedora 11 to be a cutting edge, feature-rich and stable (is it?) distro, while some others spoke foul in every respects - from its look-n-feel through bootup process to overall system stability. Saying something for or against an OS is not so easy. Nobody should utter a word about stability of a distribution that bundles half-baked software into it, and what's worse, brings new releases twice a year. That much time is not enough even for testing a distribution if is meant for mass consumption.

It's a pity as well as a puzzle. How (and why) do those geek reviewers come to a conclusion just playing around the said distribution just a few hours!

What's Noteworthy in Linux, BSD, OS X & Windows in 2010?

2009-06-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

The forthcoming year will have much in store for all you tech-freaks. There will be Windows 7 (Yes, MS has learnt it's lesson and therefore polished its product so much that even Win7 Beta looked/worked great), OS X Snow Leopard (the same roaring leopard with more power and cunningness), and I suppose the next major releases of PCLinuxOS (may be PCLinuxOS 2010), Mepis (may be Mepis 9) and PCBSD (may be based on FreeBSD 8) with perfectly usable KDE4.

This time around I was happy trying the Beta version of Windows 7. MS has patched the loopholes and cleaned much of the clutters (you experienced on Vista). Next, Snow Leopard is ready to jump in. I am sure many will in love with this big cat. OS X Leopard is already a great OS, and as the Apple people say Snow Leopard will be an enhancement over Leopard. That means better performance, lesser memory footprint and tons of updates. Great!

The Loverboy of FreeBSD, PCBSD is a miracle in itself making the good-old FreeBSD truly usable in Home Desktops. I had liked all its versions with KDE3. Its current KDE4 version is somewhat not that good (my personal opinion). However, in a year KDE4 will certainly mature to stage comparable enough to the mature KDE 3.5.10 in terms of overall completeness. And most probably it will be time when PCLinuxOS and/or Mepis will appropriate this shiny (and over-ambitious) desktop environment onto themselves.

Did I forget anything? Yes, there might be a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (the movements in Fedora 11 somewhat suggests that), but there is no news of it in the Redhat camp.

Reclaim Linux Disk Space by Reducing Reserved Blocks

2009-06-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

In a default install Linux reserves 5% of the disk space for previleged processes. It is a precationary measure on part of Linux to keep up even after the filesystem is filled up, and about 5% reserved space was good idea when the hard drive were less than 40GB. Now, when the hdd have gone beyond 100 GB of capacity (hard drives with 1TB capacity have also reached the shelves).

In a 1 TB hard drive, the default 5% reserved blocks would mean 50 GB. So, it's better to reduce the reserved blocks to a reasonable count. 1% reserved block count is enough for home desktops with disk capacity more than 100GB.

You can use tune2fs utility to reduce reserved blocks in ext2, ext3 as well as ext4 filesystems. To reduce reserved blocks to 1% use the following command:

tune2fs -m1 /dev/sda1 (replace sda1 with your partition name)

In a 1 TB hard drive you can save upto 37GB of space after applying this tweak.

Tweaks to Boot Ext4 Filesystem Performance

2009-06-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

Though the current PCLinuxOS and Mepis support Ext3 filesystem by default, their next versions are going to include ext4. Other leading distributions such as Fedora, Mandriva and Ubuntu have already included ext4.

Like ext3, the default options in ext4 lean more towards security. As a home Linux user you can make a little tradeoff with security/stability to get upto 30% performance boost.

Caution: Please apply all this tricks using a livecd to avoid crashes and filesystem corruption.

Now, get ready for ext4 file system tuning.

1) Change your filesystem to load in writeback mode (default is journal).

Command: tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda1 (change sda1 with your harddrive partition)

2) Edit fstab to change ext4 mounting options.

Command: nano /etc/fstab (change nano with the text editor of your choice)

Change reltime (or whatever option is there) with noatime,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh
Here is how my fstab entry looks like. Change yours accordingly.

# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=d1419b8e-1dcc-4b5c-9ce7-182e58d1b1a5 / ext4 noatime,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh 1 1
# Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=d1a4bcee-a035-4b7c-81db-7129187d83e2 /home ext4 noatime,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=ee29d6ce-1a93-4412-b99b-cd25601c5607 swap swap defaults 0 0

Explanation of mount options:

The default reltime or atime options write readtimes everytimes. It's crazy! Noatime is better options for home desktops.

Default journal mode writes metadata after everytime a file is written. It's safe but demands more disk activity. writeback mode writes metadata lazily after the file is written. It is faster, but may cause the most recent changes to be lost if the system crashes.

Adding barrier=0 and nobh options to fstab entries is little more dangerous. barrier=0 disables the use of write barriers, and nobh tries to avoid associating buffer heads. You can avoid using barrier=0 and nobh options. It gives minor performance boost, the recommended tweak is to use data=writeback in association with noatime. It is the big one!

PCLinuxOS 2009 Zen Mini is Released!

2009-06-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last time PCLinuxOS has surprised us with its MiniME 2008 and Zen Mini (gnome) 2008, and here comes the PCLinuxOS Zen 2009 Mini. Flaunting kernel 2.6.26.8.tex and Gnome 2.26, it's a beast of a Linux Desktop - highly responsive and easily configurable. Within 330 MB of an ISO it has most of the apps you ever need in regular home computing. Of course, whenever you feel to add more apps, you can easily hook to pclinuxos repository through synaptic.

Read the Release Notes

Download PCLinuxOS 2009 Zen Mini

This release of Zen Mini is an indication that the official PCLinuxOS 2009 MiniME is around the corners - a great reason rejoice - for all us who like to customize PCLOS.

So What's the Real Problem in Desktop Linux?

2009-05-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's a peculiar world of computing where some say Linux is ready to replace Windows on the Desktop. They consider Linux is better than Windows by every possible way. Some others (including many Linux enthusiasts) are in the opinion that Linux is still not ready for mass consumption. So, what's holding the Tux back?

Hardware? Not a big problem anymore. With every release of kernel, the latest drivers find a place in the linux pool. It's only a matter of time. If your device is not supported by a current release, it will most probably be supported by the next.

Usability? I don't think so. Both Gnome 2.26 and KDE 3.5.10 (the most stable, KDE4 still needs some time in oven) desktop environments are able to give M$ a run for its money. Both are beautiful and usable. Compiz beats M$ Aero effects. What's more Linux Desktop Environments are frugal in resource consumption if you compare them with Windows Vista.

Performance? Not at all. Modern Linux kernel is very fast and stable. Modern Linux filesystem is also very versatile. If you doubt try copying GBs of data in a Linux system and do the same in a Windows System (with similar hardware configuration). You will see Linux is definitely faster. Of course, there are so many other speed tests.

What's left then? Application software?

Yes. Linux lags behind application software. All the Mac software works well in Mac. Same is true for Windows. In course of time applications in Windows (and Mac) get added features and enhancements. But in case of Linux application software, though there has more thrust in new features, stability has been often overlooked.

Here is an example of Brasero (2.26.1-1mdv2009.1). It is supposed to be a better replacement of nautilus-burner in gnome. It has many features and it's fast. I bought this feeling while using a previous version (on PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome Remaster). But the version 2.26.1 on Mandy is total disaster. It took forever to burn a dvd. Pathetically, it resulted in a bad burn. At last I used growisofs tool to burn using the correct options.

Another pathetic example is that of Evince 2.26.1 (that came with mandriva 2009.1). It always renders pages very slow like a snail. What's worse is that it scorches the cpu all the while.

There are thousand other such applications......

If you are using application software in Linux you don't know whether the next version will really work flawlessly on your system. In addition to it, the other critical problem is that a same version of application software may behave differently across various Linux distributions depending on how the same is packaged and how the dependencies are handled.

Are You Moving to KDE4?

2009-05-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

I have tried KDE4 spins by dozens of distros including those from biggies like Fedora, OpenSuse, Kubuntu and Mandriva, but found varying degree of annoyance and/or lack of completeness across all of them. So what? I am waiting for Tex and/or Warren to bake KDE4 for me. I am sure KDE4 will be ready for mass consumption when it makes way into PCLinuxOS or Mepis.

May be it will happen after KDE4 reaches big increments like 4.5 or above, may be it will ship in mepis 10, or may be after 1 year in PCLinuxOS. Till then happy computing with good old KDE3.

Do you think the same? If so, drop a line.

Puppy Linux 4.2.1 is not a Puppy, but a Poppa to Many!

2009-05-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Puppy has long been the posterboy for all those who needed a light distribution. However, I never really tried it before. I was happy in the crowd of biggies like Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Mepis and Ubuntu. This morning I downloaded Puppy Linux 4.2.1 (puppy-4.2.1-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso, the incremental .1 is a bugfix) just like that. And Lo! After popping it on my notebook, it a sort of stunned me for its beauty, simplicity, speed, usability, wealth of applications, and overall integration of the whole.

It is an independent distribution on diet by JWM and a careful selection of applications for almost any task you do on your home desktop.

It has around 170 odd ones including a word processor (Abiword), spreadsheet program (Gnumeric), batch renamer, download manager, torrent client, IM client, media player, vector and rastor graphics program, ftp client, archiver, copy disk tool, cd/dvd/brd burner, iso image editor, audio ripper, sticky note utility... and a lot lot more that it seemed more comprehensive than the complete Fedora 10 DVD. You name it, and it has a slimmed down version of it. All of them packed in just 100MB. God! Is it a miracle?

The most astounding part of this tiny distro is that all the tools, applications and utilities it has work flawlessly. No wonder, at #8 on the distrowatch ranking it is outdoing many heavyweights.

As for the beauty, Puppy does the best JWM. It is sure to allure you with a grey color theme and shiny orange icons.

It seems "Puppy is actually a Poppa" (Daddy). It has it all. It is a must for everybody, especially for those who want to breath new life into their rather old Desktops/Notebooks.

Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Gnome, a Perfect Desktop Linux

2009-05-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

Though I was happy with the Gnome One CD I could not resist trying the latest Mandriva 2009.1 KDE One CD. After two days I formatted my hdd and installed the Gnome One CD.

May be I am not that smart enough to use KDE 4.2. May be KDE 4.2 is still not as complete as KDE 3.5.10. I will try Mandy KDE versions when it will ship with KDE 4.5 or later.

Now that I installed the Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Gnome One again, I customized for my home desktop. I was surprised how the Mandy people have improved the whole distribution. Mandy's touch of beauty to Gnome Environment, Boot Optimization and System Responsiveness is simply surprising.

Best of all, Mandy installation has done a great job in removing unnecessary drivers. Here are some of the screenshots of my fully loaded Mandy 2009 Spring Gnome that prove that Mandriva 2009.1 Gnome desktop is a heavily optimized distribution for desktop computing.

Screenshot of list of services of my home desktop: 17 services in all.

Freshly booted Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Gnome desktop takes just 116 MB

Just 6 applications are running on my Mandriva 2009.1 Desktop

With the above list of applications it consumes only 2.2 GB of HDD space.

Hereunder is the list of packages that my Mandy 2009.1 Spring installation has.

acl-2.2.47-5mdv2009.1
acpi-0.09-6mdv2009.1
acpid-1.0.8-1.1mnb2
alacarte-0.11.10-1mdv2009.1
alsa-plugins-doc-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
alsa-plugins-pulse-config-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
alsa-utils-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
aoss-1.0.17-3mdv2009.1
aria2-1.2.0-0.20090201.2mdv2009.1
aspell-0.60.6-5mdv2009.1
aspell-en-6.0.0-7mdv2009.1
at-3.1.10.2-1mdv2009.1
atk1.0-common-1.26.0-1mdv2009.1
audacity-1.3.7-5mdv2009.1
aumix-text-2.8-19mdv2009.1
avahi-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
avidemux-2.4.4-2plf2009.1
avidemux-gtk-2.4.4-2plf2009.1
basesystem-2009.0-3mdv2009.1
basesystem-minimal-2009.0-3mdv2009.1
bash-3.2.48-3mdv2009.1
bc-1.06-25mdv2009.1
binutils-2.19.51.0.2-1mnb2
blender-2.48a-8mdv2009.1
bootloader-utils-1.15-3mdv2009.1
brasero-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
broadcom-wl-kernel-2.6.29.1-desktop586-4mnb-5.10.79.10-1mdv2009.1
bzip2-1.0.5-5mdv2009.1
canberra-gtk-0.11-4mdv2009.1
cdialog-1.1-1.20080316.1mdv2009.0
cdrkit-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1
cdrkit-genisoimage-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1
cdrkit-isotools-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1
chkconfig-1.3.37-3mdv2009.1
common-licenses-1.0-14mdv2009.1
compositing-server-common-2007-9mdv2009.1
consolekit-0.3.0-5mdv2009.1
consolekit-x11-0.3.0-5mdv2009.1
coreutils-7.1-2mdv2009.1
cpio-2.9-6mdv2009.1
cpufreq-1.0-31mdv2009.1
cracklib-dicts-2.8.13-3mdv2009.1
crda-1.0.1-1mdv2009.1
cronie-1.2-2mdv2009.1
crontabs-1.10-13mdv2009.1
cryptsetup-1.0.6-4mdv2009.1
dash-0.5.5.1-1mdv2009.1
dbus-1.2.4.4permissive-2mdv2009.1
dbus-x11-1.2.4.4permissive-2mdv2009.1
ddrescue-1.10-1mdv2009.1
desktop-common-data-2009.1-2mdv2009.1
desktop-file-utils-0.15-5mdv2009.1
devicekit-003-1mdv2009.1
devicekit-power-006-2mdv2009.1
dhcp-client-4.1.0-5mdv2009.1
dhcp-common-4.1.0-5mdv2009.1
dia-0.97-0.pre3.1mdv2009.1
diffutils-2.8.7-9mdv2009.1
dirmngr-1.0.2-1mdv2009.1
dkms-minimal-2.0.19-15mdv2009.1
dmidecode-2.10-1mdv2009.1
dmsetup-1.02.24-3mnb2
docbook-dtd412-xml-1.0-23mdv2009.1
docbook-dtd44-xml-1.0-8mdv2009.1
drak3d-1.25.2-1mdv2009.1
drakbackup-0.19.2-1mdv2009.1
drakconf-12.10.1-2mdv2009.1
drakconf-icons-12.10.1-2mdv2009.1
drakmenustyle-0.14.1-1mdv2009.1
drakx-kbd-mouse-x11-0.74-1mdv2009.1
drakx-net-0.75-1mdv2009.1
drakx-net-text-0.75-1mdv2009.1
drakxtools-12.33-1mdv2009.1
drakxtools-backend-12.33-1mdv2009.1
drakxtools-curses-12.33-1mdv2009.1
dvb-apps-1.1.1-6mdv2009.1
dvbsnoop-1.4.50-1mdv2009.1
dvbtune-0.5-9mdv2009.1
dvd+rw-tools-7.1-1mdv2009.1
dvdauthor-0.6.14-9mdv2009.1
dynamic-0.26.17-1mdv2009.1
e2fsprogs-1.41.4-1mnb2
ed-1.2-1mdv2009.1
eel-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
eject-2.1.5-6mdv2009.1
enchant-1.4.2-5mdv2009.1
espeak-1.40.02-3mdv2009.1
etcskel-1.63-24mdv2009.1
ethtool-6-4mdv2009.1
evince-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
evolution-data-server-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
fbgrab-1.0-6mdv2009.1
festival-1.96-11mdv2009.1
festlex-CMU-1.4.3-5mdv2009.1
festlex-POSLEX-1.4.3-5mdv2009.1
festvox-kallpc-common-1.4.3-5mdv2009.1
festvox-kallpc16k-1.4.3-5mdv2009.1
ffmpeg-0.5-1plf2009.1
file-5.00-1mdv2009.1
file-roller-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
filesystem-2.1.9-6mdv2009.1
findutils-4.4.0-3mdv2009.1
firefox-3.0.10-0.1mdv2009.1
firefox-en_GB-3.0.10-0.1mdv2009.1
flashplayer-plugin-10.0.22.87-1mdv2009.1
font-tools-0.1-18mdv2009.1
fontconfig-2.6.0-5mdv2009.1
fonts-ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10-8mdv2009.1
fonts-ttf-decoratives-1.3-20mdv2009.1
fonts-ttf-dejavu-2.29-1mdv2009.1
fonts-ttf-liberation-1.04-2mdv2009.1
fonts-ttf-west_european-1.3-20mdv2009.1
fonts-type1-greek-2.0-7mdv2009.1
fortune-mod-1.99.1-18mdv2009.1
freetype-1.3.1-30mdv2009.1
freetype-tools-1.3.1-30mdv2009.1
fribidi-0.19.1-2mdv2009.1
gamin-0.1.10-2mdv2009.1
gawk-3.1.6-4mdv2009.1
gcalctool-5.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gcc-cpp-4.3.2-5mnb2
gconf-editor-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
GConf2-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
GConf2-sanity-check-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gdk-pixbuf-loaders-0.22.0-14mdv2009.1
gdm-2.20.10-2mdv2009.1
gedit-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
genhdlist2-5.9-1mdv2009.1
gettext-0.17-4mdv2009.1
gettext-base-0.17-4mdv2009.1
ggz-client-libs-0.0.14.1-4mdv2009.1
ghostscript-8.64-65mdv2009.1
ghostscript-common-8.64-65mdv2009.1
ghostscript-fonts-8.11-11mdv2009.1
ghostscript-module-X-8.64-65mdv2009.1
gimp-2.6.6-2mdv2009.1
gimp-dbp-1.1.8-2mdv2009.0
gksu-2.0.2-1mdv2009.1
glib2.0-common-2.20.1-1mdv2009.1
glibc_lsb-2.4.7-4mdv2009.1
glibc-2.9-0.20081113.5mnb2
gnochm-0.9.11-3mdv2009.0
gnome-applets-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-audio-2.22.2-3mdv2009.1
gnome-control-center-2.26.0-3mdv2009.1
gnome-desktop-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-desktop-common-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-doc-utils-0.16.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-games-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-icon-theme-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gnome-keyring-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-media-2.26.0-2mdv2009.1
gnome-menus-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-mime-data-2.18.0-5mdv2009.1
gnome-mount-0.8-5mdv2009.1
gnome-mplayer-0.9.5-1mdv2009.1
gnome-panel-2.26.1-2mdv2009.1
gnome-power-manager-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-applet-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-bonobo-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-canvas-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-desktop-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-extras-2.25.3-3.1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-gconf-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-gnomeprint-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-gnomevfs-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-gtkhtml2-2.25.3-3.1mdv2009.1
gnome-python-gtkmozembed-2.25.3-3.1mdv2009.1
gnome-screensaver-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-session-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-settings-daemon-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-speech-0.4.25-1mdv2009.1
gnome-speech-driver-espeak-0.4.25-1mdv2009.1
gnome-speech-driver-festival-0.4.25-1mdv2009.1
gnome-system-monitor-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-terminal-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-themes-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-user-docs-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-utils-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
gnome-vfs2-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
gnome-volume-manager-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
gnucash-2.2.9-1mdv2009.1
gnupg-1.4.9-8mdv2009.1
gnupg2-2.0.11-1mdv2009.1
goffice-0.7.4-3mdv2009.1
gpg-pubkey-22458a98-3969e7de
gpg-pubkey-26752624-3fd74faa
gpg-pubkey-70771ff3-3c8f768f
gpg-pubkey-78d019f5-3fd7504d
gpg-pubkey-caba22ae-3cf2c469
grep-2.5.4-1mdv2009.1
grip-3.3.1-11mdv2009.1
groff-1.19.1-14mdv2009.1
groff-for-man-1.19.1-14mdv2009.1
grub-0.97-25mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-cdparanoia-0.10.22-3mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-flac-0.10.14-1mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs-0.10.22-3mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-0.10.11-3plf2009.1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-0.10.22-3mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good-0.10.14-1mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-0.10.11-1plf2009.1
gstreamer0.10-pulse-0.10.14-1mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-python-0.10.14-2mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-soup-0.10.14-1mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-speex-0.10.14-1mdv2009.1
gstreamer0.10-tools-0.10.22-2mdv2009.1
gthumb-2.10.11-1mdv2009.1
gtk-engines2-2.18.1-1mdv2009.1
gtk-recordmydesktop-0.3.8-2mdv2009.1
gtk+2.0-2.16.1-4mdv2009.1
gtkhtml-3.14-3.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
gtksourceview-2.6.1-1mdv2009.1
gtksourceview1-1.8.5-5mdv2009.1
gtkspell-2.0.15-1mdv2009.1
gtypist-2.8.1-1mdv2009.0
guile-1.8.6-3mdv2009.1
gurpmi-6.25.5-1mdv2009.1
gvfs-1.2.2-1mdv2009.1
gwget-1.0.1-3mdv2009.1
gzip-1.3.12-4mdv2009.1
hal-0.5.12-0.rc1.20090403.1mdv2009.1
hal-info-0.0-5.20090414.1mdv2009.1
harddrake-12.33-1mdv2009.1
harddrake-ui-12.33-1mdv2009.1
hcl-1.7.1-1mdv2009.1
hdparm-9.13-1mdv2009.1
hicolor-icon-theme-0.10-5mdv2009.1
hsqldb-1.8.0.10-0.0.2mdv2009.1
html2text-1.3.2a-6mdv2009.1
iceauth-1.0.2-5mdv2009.1
ifmetric-0.3-7mnb2
ifplugd-0.28-10mdv2009.1
indexhtml-2009.1-2mdv2009.1
info-4.13-4mdv2009.1
info-install-4.13-4mdv2009.1
initscripts-8.88-21mdv2009.1
inkscape-0.46-10mdv2009.1
iproute2-2.6.28-2mdv2009.1
iputils-20071127-6mdv2009.1
iso-codes-3.6-1mdv2009.1
iw-0.9.10-1mdv2009.1
jackit-0.116.2-2mdv2009.1
jpeg-progs-6b-44mdv2009.1
kbd-1.15-2mdv2009.1
kernel-desktop586-2.6.29.1-4mnb-1-1mnb2
kernel-firmware-20090111-3mnb2
keyutils-1.2-8mdv2009.1
kino-1.3.3-2mdv2009.1
krb5-1.6.3-9mdv2009.1
lame-3.98.2-1plf2009.0
laptop-mode-tools-1.47-1mdv2009.1
ldetect-0.8.3-1mdv2009.1
ldetect-lst-0.1.261-1mdv2009.1
less-418-6mdv2009.1
lftp-3.7.9-1mdv2009.1
liba52dec0-0.7.4-12mdv2009.1
libaa1-1.4.0-0.rc5.17mdv2009.1
libacl1-2.2.47-5mdv2009.1
libadns1-1.4-1mdv2009.1
libalsa-data-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
libalsa-oss0-1.0.17-3mdv2009.1
libalsa-plugins-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
libalsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
libalsa2-1.0.19-1mdv2009.1
libamrnb3-7.0.0.2-1plf2009.0
libamrwb3-7.0.0.3-1plf2009.0
libao2-0.8.8-8mdv2009.1
libapm1-3.2.2-17mdv2009.1
libarchive2-2.6.2-1mdv2009.1
libart_lgpl2-2.3.20-3mdv2009.1
libaspell15-0.60.6-5mdv2009.1
libatk1.0_0-1.26.0-1mdv2009.1
libatm1-2.5.0-6mdv2009.1
libattr1-2.4.43-2mdv2009.1
libaudiofile0-0.2.6-13mdv2009.1
libaudit0-1.7.12-3mdv2009.1
libavahi-client3-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-common3-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-compat-libdns_sd1-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-core6-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-glib1-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-gobject0-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavahi-ui1-0.6.24-2mdv2009.1
libavc1394_0-0.5.3-4mdv2009.1
libavformats52-0.5-1plf2009.1
libavutil49-0.5-1plf2009.1
libbabl0-0.0.22-1mdv2009.1
libbeagle1-0.3.9-1mdv2009.1
libbinutils2-2.19.51.0.2-1mnb2
libbluez3-4.33-3mdv2009.1
libbonobo-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
libbonobo2_0-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
libbonoboui-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
libbonoboui2_0-2.24.1-1mdv2009.1
libbrasero0-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
libbzip2_1-1.0.5-5mdv2009.1
libcaca0-0.99-0.beta16.2mdv2009.1
libcairo2-1.8.6-3mdv2009.1
libcairomm1.0_1-1.8.0-1mdv2009.1
libcamel14-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libcanberra-gtk0-0.11-4mdv2009.1
libcanberra0-0.11-4mdv2009.1
libcap2-2.16-2mdv2009.1
libcares2-1.6.0-1mdv2009.1
libcdaudio1-0.99.12-7mdv2009.1
libcdda0-10.2-2mdv2009.1
libcddb-slave2_0-2.26.0-2mdv2009.1
libcddb2-1.3.1-1mdv2009.1
libcdio_cdda0-0.81-3mdv2009.1
libcdio10-0.81-3mdv2009.1
libcdt4-2.22.2-3mdv2009.1
libcelt0-0.5.2-1mdv2009.1
libcfitsio3-3.140-1mdv2009.1
libcheck0-0.9.6-2mdv2009.1
libchm0-0.39-4mdv2009.1
libclutter-cairo0.8_0-0.8.2-3mdv2009.1
libclutter-gtk0.8_0-0.8.3-1mdv2009.1
libclutter0.8_0-0.8.8-1mdv2009.1
libconsolekit0-0.3.0-5mdv2009.1
libcpufreq0-005-2mdv2009.1
libcrack2-2.8.13-3mdv2009.1
libcroco0.6_3-0.6.2-1mdv2009.1
libcups2-1.3.10-2mdv2009.1
libcurl4-7.19.4-1mdv2009.1
libdaemon0-0.13-1mdv2009.1
libdatrie0-0.1.3-2mdv2009.1
libdb4.6-4.6.21-22mdv2009.1
libdb4.7-4.7.25-3mdv2009.1
libdbnss4.7-4.7.25-3mdv2009.1
libdbus-1_3-1.2.4.4permissive-2mdv2009.1
libdbus-glib-1_2-0.80-1mdv2009.1
libdca0-0.0.5-1plf2009.0
libdevkit-gobject0-003-1mdv2009.1
libdevmapper1.02-1.02.24-3mnb2
libdiffie1-0.10.49-13mdv2009.1
libdirac0.1-1.0.2-1mdv2009.1
libdirectfb1.2_0-1.2.7-2mdv2009.1
libdiscid0-0.2.2-1mdv2009.1
libdjvulibre21-3.5.21-3mdv2009.1
libdmx1-1.0.2-5mdv2009.1
libdrakx-net-0.75-1mdv2009.1
libdrm_intel1-2.4.9-2mdv2009.1
libdrm-common-2.4.9-2mdv2009.1
libdrm2-2.4.9-2mdv2009.1
libdv4-1.0.0-4mdv2009.1
libdvbpsi5-0.1.6-3mdv2009.0
libdvdcss2-1.2.10-1plf2009.0
libdvdread4-4.1.3-3mdv2009.1
libebackend0-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libebml0-0.7.8-3mdv2009.0
libebook9-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libecal7-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libedata-book2-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libedata-cal6-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libedataserver11-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libedataserverui8-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libeel2_2-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
libegroupwise13-2.26.1.1-1mdv2009.1
libelfutils1-0.140-1mdv2009.1
libenca0-1.9-7mdv2009.1
libenchant1-1.4.2-5mdv2009.1
libesound0-0.2.41-1mdv2009.1
libespeak1-1.40.02-3mdv2009.1
libevince1-2.26.1-1mdv2009.1
libexempi3-2.1.0-2mdv2009.1
libexif12-0.6.17-4mdv2009.1
libexif12-common-0.6.17-4mdv2009.1
libexiv2_5-0.18.1-1mdv2009.1
libexpat1-2.0.1-8mdv2009.1
libext2fs2-1.41.4-1mnb2
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openoffice.org-base-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-calc-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-common-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-core-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-draw-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-gnome-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-impress-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-style-tango-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
openoffice.org-writer-3.0.1-5mdv2009.1
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ORBit2-2.14.17-1mdv2009.1
pam_tcb-1.0.3-1mdv2009.1
pam-0.99.8.1-20mdv2009.1
pango-1.24.1-1mdv2009.1
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passwd-0.74-7mdv2009.1
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pciids-0.7-1.20090316mdv2009.1
pciutils-3.1.2-1mdv2009.1
pcmciautils-015-3mdv2009.1
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pygtk2.0-2.14.1-1mdv2009.1
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python-cairo-1.8.2-1mdv2009.1
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python-dbus-0.83.0-4mdv2009.1
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python-opengl-3.0.0-0.0.b8.1mdv2009.1
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python-psyco-1.6-3mdv2009.1
python-pycrypto-2.0.1-8mdv2009.1
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python-rhpl-0.212-4mdv2009.1
python-rpm-4.6.0-1mnb2
python-sexy-0.1.9-3mdv2009.1
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qt3-common-3.3.8b-14mdv2009.1
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sdparm-1.03-2mdv2009.1
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setup-2.7.17-1mdv2009.1
setxkbmap-1.0.4-5mdv2009.1
sgml-common-0.6.3-15mdv2009.1
shadow-utils-4.0.12-19mdv2009.1
shared-mime-info-0.60-2mdv2009.1
sharutils-4.7-5mdv2009.1
skype_static-2.0.0.72-2pclos2007
slib-3a4-3mdv2009.1
smilutils-0.3.2-20070731.3mdv2009.0
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sysklogd-1.5-3mdv2009.1
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t1utils-1.33-1mdv2009.1
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task-pulseaudio-2009.0-2mdv2009.1
task-x11-2009.0-4mdv2009.1
tcb-1.0.3-1mdv2009.1
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tcp_wrappers-7.6-39mdv2009.1
termcap-11.0.1-15mdv2009.1
thai-data-0.1.9-7mdv2009.1
time-1.7-33mdv2009.1
timezone-2009f-1mdv2009.1
tk-8.6-0.b1.2mdv2009.1
tkinter-2.6.1-6mdv2009.1
tmpwatch-2.9.13-4mdv2009.1
tomcat5-servlet-2.4-api-5.5.27-0.3.0mdv2009.1
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transfugdrake-1.9.1-1mdv2009.1
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ufraw-gimp-0.15-1mdv2009.1
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urw-fonts-2.0-23mdv2009.1
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vim-common-7.2.127-8mdv2009.1
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vlc-plugin-pulse-0.9.8a-5plf2009.1
vlc-plugin-theora-0.9.8a-5plf2009.1
vorbis-tools-1.2.0-5mdv2009.1
vte-0.20.1-1mdv2009.1
wget-1.11.4-2mdv2009.1
which-2.20-3mdv2009.1
win32-codecs-all-1.10-1pclos2007
wireless-regdb-20090309-1mdv2009.1
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wordnet-3.0-10mdv2009.1
wpa_supplicant-0.6.8-1mdv2009.1
wxgtk2.8-2.8.9-3mdv2009.1
x11-data-cursor-themes-1.0.1-8mdv2009.1
x11-data-xkbdata-1.5-3mdv2009.1
x11-driver-input-evdev-2.2.1-1mdv2009.1
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x11-driver-video-fbdev-0.4.0-4mdv2009.1
x11-driver-video-intel-2.7.0-1mdv2009.1
x11-driver-video-v4l-0.2.0-4mdv2009.1
x11-driver-video-vesa-2.2.0-1mdv2009.1
x11-font-adobe-75dpi-1.0.0-7mdv2009.1
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x11-font-alias-1.0.1-14mdv2009.1
x11-font-bh-75dpi-1.0.0-7mdv2009.1
x11-font-bh-lucidatypewriter-75dpi-1.0.0-7mdv2009.1
x11-font-bh-type1-1.0.0-7mdv2009.1
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x11-font-encodings-1.0.2-4mdv2009.1
x11-font-misc-cyrillic-1.0.0-7mdv2009.1
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x11-server-common-1.6.1-1mdv2009.1
x11-server-xorg-1.6.1-1mdv2009.1
xauth-1.0.3-3mdv2009.1
xchat-gnome-0.26.1-1mdv2009.1
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xdg-utils-1.0.2-12mdv2009.1
xdm-1.1.8-3mdv2009.1
xdpyinfo-1.0.3-3mdv2009.1
xev-1.0.3-4mdv2009.1
xhost-1.0.2-8mdv2009.1
xinit-1.1.0-3mdv2009.1
xinitrc-2.4.19-19mdv2009.1
xkbcomp-1.0.5-3mdv2009.1
xkill-1.0.1-7mdv2009.1
xlockmore-5.26.1-4mdv2009.1
xmodmap-1.0.3-5mdv2009.1
xorg-x11-75dpi-fonts-7.3-5mdv2009.1
xorg-x11-cyrillic-fonts-7.3-5mdv2009.1
xpad-2.14-4mdv2009.0
xprop-1.0.4-3mdv2009.1
xrandr-1.3.0-1mdv2009.1
xrdb-1.0.5-3mdv2009.1
xrefresh-1.0.2-6mdv2009.1
xsetroot-1.0.2-4mdv2009.1
xvinfo-1.0.2-3mdv2009.1
xz-4.999.8beta-0.2mdv2009.1
yafray-0.0.9-4mdv2009.1
yelp-2.26.0-2.1mdv2009.1
zcip-4-10mdv2009.1
zenity-2.26.0-1mdv2009.1
zip-3.0-2mdv2009.1
zlib1-1.2.3-13mdv2009.1

Mandriva Linux 2009.1 (Spring) – Steps Ahead in Linux Desktop War

2009-05-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

My Last tryst with Mandriva was the Powerpack version of 2008. It was good but not great. PClinuxOS 2008 MiniME seemed to me a better choice in terms of stability, wireless configuration and usability.

I had tried Mandriva 2009. It was full of promises (though there were some showstoppers). When a few days back Mandriva released the latest version of its operating system, Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring, I could not stop myself from downloading it.

What's So Great About It?

1. It has that extra polish (trademark of Mandriva Spring Release).
2. It has Kernel 2.6.29 (with many new drivers and support for ext4).
3. It has option to remove unnecessary drivers after installation.
4. It dwarfs many Linux distros in terms of boot-speed and overall system responsiveness.
5. It has packaged many latest (yet stable) applications such as OO.o 3.0.1, Firefox 3.0.8, Gimp 2.6 and More.
6. It has professional looking theme and style.
7. It is a very stable release!

What's Not So Good?

Only one - package management. The default package management frontend gurpmi seems somewhat not so polished. I also tried other alternatives such as smart and easy urpmi. None are for me. I am dreaming of a day when Mandriva will have a better package management frontend that is as good or better than apt-get (synaptic).

Mandriva Benchmarks on My Notebook (Celeron M 1.73GHz, 1GB RAM)

Boot time (from Grub to full Gnome Desktop): 35 sec
Shutdown time: 9 sec
Memory footprint on freshly booted desktop: 110 MB (gnome desktop with only 19 services running)

Hardware Detection and Configuration

It readily detected and configured my X3100 graphics, Broadcom 4311 wlan card, webcam and external bluetooth dongle. Like always, Mandriva 2009.1 is great when it comes to hardware detection and configuration.

Conclusion

Once the leader of desktop linux, Mandriva is all set to acquire its old glory. 2009 Spring release is great in many ways. The more you use it, the more you will like it.

Red Hat and Fedora are Poles Apart

2009-04-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

While Fedora is too bleeding edge, Red Hat (and Centos) is too conservative. Both are poles apart. Red Hat and its community bandwagon, Fedora don't offer anything in between. Of Course, there are Blag, Scientific Linux, StartCom, but the leading flavors of Red Hat Camp are still Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Centos) and Fedora.

While most of the people in Linux World know what to use, the rest of the world has no exact idea. For example seasoned Linux Administrators will never deploy Fedora as Server or Desktop, they will stick with RHEL or Centos. However, they might backport some packages from Fedora to get something done in RHEL or Centos.

There is nothing wrong if an enterprise distribution is somewhat conservative and its backed community distribution is bleeding edge. But the situation becomes grim if some people consider both to be somewhat same. I have witnessed many such unfortunate situations.

My previous employer wanted to replace the entire Windows platform with Linux. To ensure the transition smooth, he hired a Linux consultant. On his first day in office, the consultant configured on Web and Data Server Centos 5.2 (It is running seamlessly). Next day, after some discussion with the CEO, he installed Fedora 10 on the desktops. (Reason: The consultant convinced our CEO that Fedora is backed by Redhat, the most trusted name is corporate world) And here is where all the pleasure ended. For next 10 days the office was chaotic with heated Fedora bashing. That Consultant was again called in. This time he tried Centos on desktops but could not succeed. The new and shiny desktops and laptops just refused to Centos. Reason? Centos is really very old and our hardware is too new.

Blame it on the yesteryears and the popularity of Redhat, most of the people even today mean Linux by Redhat. Still worse, they equate Fedora with Redhat and proceed deploying Fedora as an alternative to Red Hat only to fall into trouble.

PS: We have installed PCLinuxOS 2007 and 2009.1 in our office desktops after the disappointing experience with Fedora. There has been no glitches so far.

Debian Lenny, Mighty Debian!

2009-04-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Blame it on me because I also thought Debian is not for newbies for use as a Desktop Linux. The latest from the Debian Project, Lenny changed me. Many are in the thought that Debian is a good server operating system, and many suggest its derivatives such as Ubuntu, Mepis, Pardus and Linspire for desktop usage. Pity! Debian has come of age since Potato and Woody, and now, as much I experienced, is perfect for desktop usage.

I found pure Debian to be better than its so called derivatives in many ways.

1. It's rock solid. I hope nobody will defy this statement.

2. It is easy and I mean it. Before installing I prepared myself for an uphill task for pulling non-free packages, configuring the closed-source wlan device, integrating codecs/plugins into browser and installing some proprietary applications. First of all, installation of the default Debian Lenny was as easy as installing any modern Desktop Linux. The plain pink installer was painfree. After installation I pulled in ndiswrapper module and got my wlan up and running. Finally setting up Debian-Multimedia repository was only as easy as placing an URL in the synaptic. And then all my favorite packages such as skype, unrar, w32codes, libdvdcss2, vlc, mplayer and firefox (remember Default Debian install has a pure opensource clone of Firefox, Iceweasel). With main, contribut, free, non-free and multimedia repositories active you are just a click away from around 25,000 packages!

3. It is a performer. Previously I thought it to be slow trying to appease a lot of criteria. But I was wrong, I found it to be as responsive as Mepis or Ubuntu.

4. It supports all. Many are in the wrong opinion that "Debian owing to its stable principle and delayed release cycle does not support modern hardware". Rest assured, with Xorg 7.4 and Kernel 2.6.26 Lenny is not outdated at all. Most probably it will support your desktop and laptop devices including some esoteric devices as well.

In conclusion I would suggest all of you who are using Ubuntu or other Debian Derivatives to try Lenny. It is worth the time!

Linux Desktop is not in the Menu of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

2009-04-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sometime back I had tried Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5.2. Well, I did not purchase it. My cousin, an RHCE aspirant got that for me. The interaction was short – First I installed RHEL 5.2 on his Desktop (specifications: Intel 845 motherboard, PIV 1.8 GHz processor and 1 GB RAM) then tried to installed the same on an HP DV notebook. Installing on the desktop was painless, but it could not install on the HP DV notebook. So, when the 5.3 release was announced I was really curious to try that. After all, version 5.3 has many updates, especially those about device drivers.

Having decided to try RHEL 5.3 I browsed the www.redhat.com. Registration was damn easy. After a short while I got mail with details of my account and activation for downloading the evaluation version of RHEL 5.3. Having those info with me I logged in to Red Hat Network (RHN) and reached at the download page. And that's exactly where all my enthusiasm ended. Actually I was looking for the Desktop version of RHEL, but to my despair Red Hat offers evaluation versions for Servers only. There is no option to download and try Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop. Sad! It made me think that RED HAT DOES NOT AIMS AT OR CARES FOR LINUX ON DESKTOP.

Despair and frustrated I browsed www.centos.org. After all, Centos is the free clone of Red Hat. Downloading Centos 5.3 was easy. I downloaded through the bin DVD. Installing Centos 5.3 on my Desktop was hassle-free. But again, Centos 5.3 was joke on the same HP DV notebook. Then I tried the same on my Compaq notebook. It failed again. It could not detect some of the devices and it could not configure (though detected) many others. Well nothing to blame Centos, it is just a recompilation of Red Hat source packages.

My search for Red Hat Linux Enterprise Desktop 5.3 and my hands-on experience with Centos 5.3 tought me a lesson. Both these distros are not meant for notebooks at all. Of course, you can use them if your notebook is more than one decade old. Well, you can use them on relative old and standard desktops.

I hope you know Novell has already released its SLE 11 with a new kernel and updated packages. Even Debian is shining and ready to sit on most of the notebooks and desktops with its relatively new 2.6.26 kernel and xorg 7.4, where as the RHEL 5.3 is still sticking to that 2.6.18 kernel and an age-old xorg, making it a big NO for notebooks. What's more, there is no sign of the plans for RHEL 6. May be, it will take another 2 years when the it hits markets.

It seems to me that Red Hat does not aim at the desktop/laptop markets.

PCLinuxOS - 4 Tweaks to Speed up Firefox3

2009-04-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Firefox3 is very feature-rich, secure and usable web browser. It is a testimony of the power of opensource software. But while going to please everybody and serve many functions it has become little heavy and seems sluggish, especially during startup and first connection. Fortunately, you can tweak its settings to make it blazingly fast.

Here are a few of them that will help speed up firefox3.

#1
Open about:config in firefox3, type network.http.pipelining in the filterbar, then double-click on this line and its value from false to true. Likewise search for network.http.proxy.pipelining, plugin.expose_full_path and network.dns.disableIPv6 and change their values to true.

#2
Search for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests in the filterbar of about:config page, double click on it and change the value anywhere from 10 to 20.

#3
Rightclick in the about:config page and select New followed by Integer. And in the new Integer value box type nglayout.initialpaint.delay and click ok. In the integer value box type 0 and click OK. Likewise create two Integers - one content.notify.backoffcount with value 5, and the other ui.submenuDelay with value 0. 1. Similarly, create a New Integer, name it Network.dnsCacheExpiration and give its value as 3600.

#4
The last tweak is about loosening one of the firefox3 security features for fast browsing, so be careful. Turn off these two security options under the Edit>>Preferences>>Security section of firefox:

Security -> Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected Attack site
Security -> Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected forgery

Close the preferences window, exit Firefox, and then delete urlclassifier3.sqlite file in .mozilla/firefox/*/, i.e, rm .mozilla/firefox/*/urlclassifier3.sqlite (checkout for *, in my case it is loela80g.default)

Computing on Gnome Desktop was never so easy before PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome

2009-04-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome Desktop

I am a KDE guy. I have loved KDE for its superior usability and availability of good KDE apps. I like Mandriva, PCLinuxOS and Mepis for many reasons, an important of them being they implement KDE better than any other distro. However, PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome made me think seriously over Gnome. I must recommend every Gnome enthusiast to try it.

It's beautiful Gnome Distro optimized to give you maximum performance. It comes with a good selection of multimedia apps, especially VLC, Mobile Media Converter and Kino. It dwarfs default Fedora Gnome desktop with its good selection of packages and stability.

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Gnome is the only Gnome Desktop that has such handy system tools such as PCLinuxOS Control Center. In addition to these, it seems me to be a pure Gnome Desktop, i.e., it does not have much stuff such as libraries and stuff of other desktop environments like KDE, Xfce. With the main KDE PCLinuxOS you have got some gnome stuff alongwith a customized and fine-tuned KDE desktop, but this gnome remaster has a somewhat pure gnome appeal.

Installing Roboform in Linux and integrating it with Firefox

2009-04-03T05:51:00.000-07:00

The last roadblock of our migration to Linux is over with the successful installation of roboform on PCLinuxOS 2009.1 in our SEO Company in India. Now we are happy that we accomplished it after a week-long toiling around. We searched various forums for a fix and none of those suggestions worked. Here is the detailed and ordered acount of what we did to get roboform work on top of firefox in PCLinuxOS.

First we installed "Crossoverlinux Pro 7"
Then we installed "Internet Explorer 6" through crossover linux.
Make the crossover bottle having internet explorer 6 default.
Install "firefox windows version 2" in the default bottle.
Finally, we installed Roboform Pro 6.9 in that default bottle too.

Important notes:

After please install "internet explorer 6" "firefox 2 windows version" and "roboform 6.9" in the same bottle of crossover linux.

That's it!