The Move

Now I am on the verge of moving to Ubuntu from Windows. I spend 90% of my time on Ubuntu in my dual boot system. Still I'm testing the OS and so far it has being great. I can do most of the things I did in windows without any problem and sometimes better than in windows. Browse using FireFox, Email via Thunderbird, Chat using Gaim, Documentation using OpenOffice etc. And I managed to get most of the third party software to burn CDs, media players, mp3 players and popular codecs to watch dvds and divx movies. Printing, File sharing, SSH, connecting to Remote Desktops and vmware clients are also possible without any glitch. What I missed was .Net & Delphi. I don't do much development work these days and I keep my windows partition for that type of work.

Two days back, I received Ubuntu & Kubuntu CDs which I ordered from Ubuntu web site. They are shipping 3 types of Ubuntu variants for the lates release 6.06 Dapper Drake.
1. Ubuntu - The normal distribution wiht Gnome desktop
2. Kubuntu - Ubuntu with KDE (K-Desktop Environment)
3. Edubuntu - Ubuntu for the entire Family - This has lot of educational programmes for kids.

(I forgot to order Edubuntu but I managed to download it from the site.)

P.S.
I downloaded Ubuntu from a mirror site even before they officially release it :-) I did a kernel upgrade to suit my PIV Hyper Threading PC. Now it recognises two CPUs. Actually there aren't two CPUs but Hyper Threading simulates two CPUs. I installed a customised version of Firefox called SwiftFox which is optimised for PIVs. It loads and runs faster than the normal FireFox.

Camera Mouse...!

Yeah.. no kidding... there is a camera inside the optical mouse. This is not a very comprehensive one. It is just a CMOS sensor (CMOS sensors are actually being used in inexpensive(?) cameras) which sends images to digital signal processor (DSP) for analysis. This DSP then analyses the image and identifies the patterns in the image to compare it with previous images. Based on the change in patterns, the DSP determines how far the mouse has moved and sends the corresponding coordinates to the computer. Pretty cool huh...

UPDATE!!!!

I'm back after about more than three months! My studies kept me away from most of my enthusiastic activities including blogging. (but I always managed to read other's blogs) I post this, not because it is over, still I'm in the middle of it, to tell you that I'm still alive :-)

Apart from my studies (its a two year MBA), following things kept me busy all the time. I'll post separate entries for each one when I take my mind out of the busy schedule.

1. We were asked to statndardise our software development process introducing version controlling, process tracking, project management, code tesing etc. We thought of trying open source products rather than pumping money on commecial products. I saw CVS has been used by many people to keep the different versions of codes in a repositary. When I was meddling with it, I found a better one called subversion (SVN). I tested it in the windows environment but the results were poor. Then I turned towards Ubuntu (my personal preference) Linux and it was very successfull. Installing and confuguring (i'll post a separate blog entry on this later) svn was really enjoying and it bahave as it is intended to be.

2. Then we wanted to have a project management system and immediately we found that "trac" is a good option. Not only it integrate with svn but also it has other advantages like fully web based, has wiki facility and bug ticket issuing feature. It also get installed without much trouble. (I'll post the steps later)

3. All these (svn and trac) were installed in a temporary machine which was the only one I could find. The specs of the machine are not that appealing, it's a PIII 500MHz, 128MB machine but thanks to Ubuntu, everything went smoothly. All of a sudden we got new PCs, PIV 3GHz with HT, 1GB RAM, 80 GB SATA HD and luckily, I could reserve one PC as a permanent server. We've got one server but got so many requirements. We should have a SQL Server, Apache Tomcat, svn, trac, and many more to come. SQL Server must be running on windows platform and svn & trac must be run on linux. We've got one PC. The only solution I had was to go for PC virtualization. I installed Vmware on top of windows 2003 Server host and installed Ubuntu as a guest. I managed to transfer all the repositories from the previous PC to the new server. (I hope to post a blog entry on this as well). Installation of guest OSs didn't stop there. I installed XP with office 2007 beta, Ubuntu Dapper Drake (ver 6.06) RC. When all these guest OSs are running, the performance degraded a liitle bit but thanks to Hyper Threading, processor managed to keep it in acceptable level.

Father & Son

I copied the following conversation from a blog which I used to read. The person who writes the blog has a six year old son living with his ex-wife. He sees his son once per week. This time, they met in a restaurant;


"Are you eating healthy today, dad?"

"Yeah."

"Do you like eating healthy?"

"Not really. I like hot dogs most."

"Yeah, and you eat a LOT of them."

"I love taking you to lunch. Someday you'll have a little boy that you can take to lunch too."

"Yep. And if you eat healthy you'll get to meet him."

iPod shuffle

The latest addition to my gadget collection, the iPod shuffle, arrived yesterday. Its a cool device in every aspect; size, design, quality,... everything is perfect. It may hold more than 100 songs I assume (its a 512MB) and the battery may last 12 hours according to the manual. Re-charging is possible only when it is connected to a PC via the USB. It supports a wide variety of music formats including mp3, aac, wav etc. Sound quality is good but lacking Bass Power. Its really light weight, not even an ounce. I am braining these days to find a method to connect it to my car audio.

Microsoft using FireFox Icon!

Microsoft is planning to use the FireFox RSS icon in IE7 and OutLook 12.

What is great about this news is that Microsoft actually asked the community in the first place, and then worked with the Firefox team to make it happen.

The best Linux Desktop for Business: UBUNTU

ZDNet has been testing Linux for business, trying to work out what the best distro for small businesses. After testing Mandriva, Novell Linux, Red Hat Desktop, SUSE Linux and Ubuntu Linux, Ubuntu came out as the winner.

BreezyBadger

Finally, the waiting is over... I received 5 copies of the newest version of Ubuntu (v 5.10) a couple of days ago. I tried the Live CD first and decided to install it in my home PC. The installation is same as I explained in my previous post. It comes with the latest versions of OpenOffice and FireFox which is great. Other than that, it is more or less the same thing as before...

My Blog Visitors....

more than 60% of visitors are from Asia...

My Desktop Thermo

I made this cool desktop thermo using DS1820 which is plugged into DS9097U – DB9 Com Port adapter. I got these samples from Maxim Dallas Semiconductors a long time ago but couldn’t find enough time to play around. The program is done using C# after so many trial and error efforts. It is based on the OneWireAPI.dll which can be downloaded here. The program nicely sits inside the system tray and displays the temperature when the mouse pointer hovered on to the icon. (the icon is made by me which is not in great shape…).


I have two units of DS1820s at home which are plugged into the same port, one is on the CRT (it heats up a lot; so that I can turn on the fan) and the other one lying on the desk monitoring the room temperature. The one shown in the picture is the unit in my office. (otherwise, how could I be at 23.94 Celsius; normally it’s 28-30 Celsius outside). If anyone interested about this, I am willing to share my knowledge. (even the software).

I am .mp3

Which File Extension are You?

Ubuntu wins best Distribution Award.

At the UK Linux & Open Source Awards dinner held on October 5th, Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best distribution. Debian and Red Hat were also on the short list.

Ubuntu was also nominated in the embedded/mobile solution category (with HP for the custom Ubuntu/HP work) and the corporate contribution category.

Not only that, it was among the best 100 products of 2005.

My Search Engine...!

Search...

Ubuntu Linux

I think most of the people are now tired of using Microsoft products specially their lousy OS and IE. That's why everybody jumps into other products when they get a chance. A very good example is FireFox. I think now it's the turn of OS. Linux is there for some time but is still limited to enthusiasts and Pros. I could remember how I installed Linux in my 486 in 1999. It took more than a week to get the job done compiling some of the drivers manually. The monitor gave me the greatest headache since the X windows system didn't recognize it. I couldn't play around much since my knowledge was limited and the applications were rare. After that, I have used random versions of RedHat Linux in couple of times but it didn't hit the spot.

I heard about Ubuntu Linux by accident when I was searching for Debian Linux. I read a couple of reviews about Ubuntu and thought of giving it a try. So I downloaded the version 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) and installed it in my home PC which already has two windows versions; Windows XP (for gaming) and Windows 2003 Server (for development). The installation process was quiet and took around 30 minutes. It recognized all my hardware including AC97 surround sound card, GeForce 440MX video card and on board LAN which was a bit surprise.

Ubuntu really impressed me. It's very very simple. Good for a beginner who is shifting towards Linux from Windows. This installation comes with several applications like Open Office 1.1, several games, multimedia applications and networking tools. But it didn't recognize my existing NTFS partitions which was sad. I had to mount them manually and are read only which is a downfall. Overall, I am happy about Ubuntu and waiting to see the next stable version 5.10 (BreezyBadger) in October.

Happy B'day...!

Google's official Birthday is September 7, 1998. Amazing, it's my wife's birthday too. Happy Birthday to both of you.

GoogleNet

Google is planning to develop a parallel internet called GoogleNet.
Google already knows enough to blackmail enyone through it's programmes.

1) Knows what we think -- through Blogspot.
2) Knows what's on our hard drives -- through Desktop Search.
3) Knows who we talk to and what we say -- through GMail and Google Talk
4) Knows where we are or where we plan to go -- through Google Earth
5) Knows what we're interested in -- through Google Search

The list will complete when they develop a web browser and an OS.

Lazy and Dumb programmers...

If you want to be a GOOD programmer, you must be dumb and lazy. Here is the reason.

10th Anniversary

Yes, today is the 10th anniversary of Windows 95, the first version to include a START button. Hereis a list of Start buttons from Windows 95 to Windows Vista to commemorate this date.

Google Wildcard Search.

Another Google thing...! Wildcard search...

A wildcard in a Google search query can be indicated by an asterisk and will match one or more entire words of text so that the query matches a contiguous sequence of words.
For example, a search for [ cooking * classes ] will match the phrases "cooking school classes" and "cooking and wine tasting classes."
One common use of the asterisk is to fill in the blanks for a query that corresponds to a question: [the parachute was invented by *].
Also, more than one asterisk can be used, such as [vitamin * is good for *].

Longhorn -> Windows Vista

The official new name for the Longhorn OS is going to be Windows Vista but the path seems to be not yet cleared.