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Items by carthik

Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu

Posted: September 17th, 2007, 2:57am MYT by Carthik

Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts for Vista are great. The fonts include Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara and Consolas. Getting them installed in Ubuntu is a breeze, thanks to a script I found. To install the Vista ClearType fonts in Ubuntu, you need to install cabextract first. Cabextract is a utility found in the universe repository, [...]

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Bring Jorge’s Blog Back, Please.

Posted: September 14th, 2007, 2:43am MYT by Carthik

So Jorge Castro is now a Canonical employee! Jorge, I for one, would love to see your mug again on Planet Ubuntu. I would love to see whiprush.org up and about again. Jorge’s disappearance from the interwebs was followed by pleas for his return, about 9 months ago (you can find his last post here [...]

End of a Love Affair with Acer

Posted: September 13th, 2007, 2:13am MYT by Carthik

I was in love with Acer laptops. I bought my first one, an Acer Travelmate 290 LMi in my second year of grad school. I did pay ~ $1200 for it, but it was awesome, right until the moment there were errors with the hard disk controllers about 3 years later. When I sold it [...]

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What’s Common to Ubuntu and CircuitCity’s Firedog?

Posted: September 9th, 2007, 1:43pm MYT by Carthik

Ans: A guy in a pic…. Trivial, I know, and not too original either, since I got it from LiveJournal, but I couldn’t resist posting this

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Ubuntu’s Audience Defined

Posted: August 21st, 2007, 2:31pm MYT by carthik

I read the impressive growth and traffic details for WordPress.com at Matt’s Blog. WordPress has always been very dear to me, and it makes me happy to note that the WordPress team grows from strength to strength, without compromising on values, and while keeping things open, almost entirely so. However, the stat freak in me [...]

SSH Menu - Save and Open SSH Connections from the Panel

Posted: August 18th, 2007, 8:08am MYT by carthik

I was looking for a replacement for SecureCRT in Ubuntu. Something that would let me save all my SSH connections and make it possible to open a connection with the least effort. As is often the case, I found something better than SecureCRT – a panel applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list [...]

Thoughts that make me go hmmm!

Posted: August 14th, 2007, 2:01pm MYT by carthik

This thought just struck me: the GNOME “save file” icon is still an image of a floppy (or it is at least in Gnumeric). How many people still remember what a floppy looks like? Should the save icon be replaced by something else (a picture of a cd/usb drive)? Or should floppy discs be “icon”ized [...]

Alright you drooling idiots!

Posted: August 4th, 2007, 12:59am MYT by carthik

Jem Matzan thinks we technical writers treat you as stupid drooling idiots. Do I? I can honestly say I don’t. I write for the competent computer user who has switched to Ubuntu. Anything that 90-95% of the people who formerly used Windows or Macs, and are competent enough to help others won’t be published here. [...]

I ran into that video-posting librarian again

Posted: July 26th, 2007, 8:37am MYT by carthik

You guys must remember Jessamyn, the librarian who posted a video about installing Ubuntu at, where else, the library. Well, by some strange coincidence, which cannot be explained rationally, I ran into her again on the tubes. I followed the user profile link at this comment on Ask MetaFilter to end up at her profile [...]

Typing Break and WorkRave: Keep RSI at Bay

Posted: June 4th, 2007, 10:29pm MYT by carthik

I woke up on Thursday with a left arm more painful than a 100 episodes of Wheel of Fortune. I had almost pulled an all-nighter the night before to finish reviewing/correcting a paper. I went to the doctor, fearing the worst. My left wrist was aching, and no change of position or angle would suppress [...]

300+ Easily Installed Free Fonts for Ubuntu

Posted: May 22nd, 2007, 1:07am MYT by carthik

Ubuntu offers a lot of fonts, in addition to the defaults installed, and the MicroSoft msttcorefonts package, in its repositories. All these fonts mentioned here are provided as packages, which can easily installed using command line tools like apt-get or using Synaptic. These fonts will come in handy for designing flyers, or for designing headers and graphics for the web using the Gimp. Also, some of these fonts are pretty commonly used to render pages, like Lucida.

I will save the packages with the biggest collection of fonts for the end here. Since I have included screenshots of most of the fonts, and this article is sorta long, please read on by clicking the “More” link below.

(more…)

Preserve Threaded View in Thunderbird

Posted: May 21st, 2007, 10:36am MYT by carthik

Via Chris Ilias’ Blog comes this gem of a tip.

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, and love the threaded view, but hate losing the threaded view whenever you click on “Sender” or “Date” to sort the messages, then this is the tip for you. This helps you keep the threaded view regardless of how you sort the messages.

Go to Tools–>Options–>Advanced–>General, and select the Config Editor option.

In the Config Editor, search for “mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads” by typing it in at the top. When you see the preference, change the value from “True” to “False” by double-clicking on it, or by right clicking and changing the value. This will help you keep the threaded view stuck across the different sorting methods.

I find the threaded view useful when browsing the list of bug-related emails, for one. Of course, I use the Claws GTK email client much more than I do Thunderbird, but I have Thunderbird setup on an infrequently used office computer, and I thought many of you might be using Thunderbird anyways.

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Using “tee” to write to files and the terminal

Posted: May 18th, 2007, 2:58am MYT by carthik

The utility “tee” is very useful for plumbing on the command line. Curiously enough, it gets its name from the T-splitter used in plumbing, shown below:

Say you want to run a command, and be able to see the output and errors on the screen, and be able to save them to a file. That’s where tee comes in, so you could do a:
$sudo apt-get upgrade 2>&1 | tee ~/apt-get.log
…to run apt-get upgrade and save the output and errors to the file apt-get.log in your home directory.

Purists please excuse the following explanation The “2″ refers to the “tap” from which the errors pour out (called stderr). The “1″ refers to the tap from which the output pours out. The 2>&1 makes the errors to also pour out of the output tap. So then stderr goes to stdout. The pipe “|” redirects the output to tee. Now tee splits the output of the previous command two ways, and puts it both in ~/apt-get.log and in the standard output, which happens to be your screen/terminal.

tee is also handy when you have a small permissions problem. Say you want to write some text to a file “filename.txt” owned by the “root” user - you would just use something like:
$sudo vim filename.txt
and then change the file, right?

Now suppose you want to echo what you write, and write the file, all in one command, you then can use tee thusly:
$echo "localhost 127.0.0.1" | sudo tee filename.txt > /dev/null

This would write the text “localhost 127.0.0.1″ to the file filename.txt which is not owned by you. The output of tee itself will go to /dev/null (nothingness) instead of the standard output, which is your terminal.

Don’t lose sleep over this, but someday it will come handy, and when you can figure out why the “sudo” does not apply after the “>” in your command, remember tee and come back here.

For all your command line redirecting needs, and to learn to wield pipes and tees like nunchakus read this excellent page.

Installing Ubuntu in a Library

Posted: May 11th, 2007, 9:13pm MYT by carthik

I installed no software, except for the Operating System, and look - it works!

Jessamyn is a librarian with 3 donated PCs and no legitimate OS. She installs Ubuntu and shows us why she loves it.

I woke and saw this. Today will be a good great day!

I hope she posts a follow-up of how people in her library use it.

Ubuntu Partners with Intel for Mobile Device Support

Posted: May 9th, 2007, 5:08am MYT by carthik

From BBC, we get to learn that Ubuntu and Intel are working together to get to the point were Ubuntu-powered mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs. They talk about the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project which hopes to have its first release in October 2007.

Pervasive Ubuntu - oh yeah!

It’s really cool to see Intel pushing the envelope with Open Source friendliness. Maybe AMD needs to catch up and brush up the ATI drivers - open source them and have a fighting chance in the newly growing desktop Linux market.

By the way, I came to know of the BBC article via Ercan, a reader, who adds:

I enjoy your ubuntu blog. I like the general updates on ubuntu but don’t forget the tips and tricks.

Tips, hmm, yes… it is hard to come by good ones everyday - and it becomes harder as Ubuntu gets better. I will work harder or it, Ercan.

Dell to Offer Ubuntu to Consumers

Posted: May 2nd, 2007, 11:20am MYT by carthik

So Dell did not get caught in the storm of it’s making - it swept the storm off its feet! This is the day the scales started tipping.

Dell will start offering consumers PCs with Ubuntu 7.04 (aka Feisty Fawn) on its PCs for interested customers. The Dell Ideas in Action Blog announced as much earlier today, stating very clearly that Ubuntu was their distribution of choice, and that they have worked out the specifics of the deal with Canonical, the entity that support Ubuntu’s development. Read Canonical’s brief announcement here. According to Canonical’s Jane Silber, the timing couldn’t be better:

“The market is ready,” Silber said. “We think the combination of the timing, the technology and the partner are aligned to make it happen.”

There is a video interview with Mark Shuttleworth over at the Direct2Dell blog in which he talks about how the deal came about, and how this will make wide Linux adoption a much easier goal to achieve. He’s right when he says that this will increase Linux’s visibility across the board, and draw out closet Linux technologists who will now see some commercial benefit to advertising the Linux expertise they had, but never really talked about before.

I think this is a big step forward - hell, I look forward to answering, “what’s that Ubuntu-thing on your laptop?” with “Haven’t you heard, it comes pre-installed on some Dell PCs?”

Kudos to Dell for following up on their promise to listen to customers. My voted counted, for once. Depending on how many Ubuntu laptops get sold, Dell might just be the trailblazer in making and selling computers - once again. The interesting thing is, I wonder if Dell sees the future, can the others be far behind. Also, going by the example Mark states in the interview about how Linux adoption on servers led to hardware manufacturers ensuring that their stuff was up to snuff on servers, this can only mean better support for Ubuntu from the hardware component and peripheral manufacturers.

Congratulations Ubuntu - stand up and be recognized now!

Free Ubuntu Magazine: Full Circle

Posted: April 28th, 2007, 10:59pm MYT by carthik

The zeroth issue of the Ubuntu Full Circle Magazine has been out for a while now. You can download it in your chosen language here. If it is not available in your chosen language, then maybe you can help translate it the next time for others like you.

full circle logo
The magazine is a community effort - I think it was kickstarted on this Ubuntu forum post by the forum user ronniet. “Development” of issues revolves around the wiki. The Ubuntu Magazine page lists what you can do to contribute articles and columns.

Maybe I should contribute an article or a regular column in the magazine - after all it is a volunteer effort and the magazine is provided free-of-cost.

The Ubuntu Community Interviews Mark Shuttleworth

Posted: April 26th, 2007, 2:13am MYT by carthik

As part of the Ubuntu Open Week, everyone interested had a chance to ask Mark Shuttleworth, the SABDFL, their questions.

Thanks to the volunteer efforts of the wiki gardeners, you can read the entire interview online. I was intending to post the entire interview here, after formatting it, but since the interview at the wiki is formatted, and ready, I will just share the salient points.

Regarding requesting ISVs to port their applications to Linux, Mark says that unless Linux users decide to pay for software like AutoCAD and Photoshop on Linux, the ISVs won’t migrate their apps so easily - since there are two things that drive ISVs to explore new oppurtunities - the raw size of the users in a market, and their willingness to pay for software - Mark says Linux is doing well on the number-of-users front, but the second factor is critical. I think one of the ISVs have to take the plunge, and try selling software to Linux users, and serve as a case study for the others to follow.
Regarding the $3 MS OS initiative, Mark says this guy gets it. Basically, there are lots of reasons why, despite the MS OS being only $3, Linux makes a better choice. Interesting.
The inevitable question of why Launchpad is not open-sourced yet was raised. This time, I think I understand the reasons behind it being closed, thanks to Mark’s answer. Basically, launchpad might remain closed till launchpad.net is established as the pivot of bug-tracking and as a general software development support system. Releasing the source now might mean that there will be many “launchpads” like the many bugzillas, thus compounding the problem launchpad is trying to address - that of not having a central issue tracking system that tracks the same unique issue across multiple bug trackers.
Canonical will not go public anytime in the near future, and will also not accept funding from venture capital firms. Mark’s reasoning is that accepting any sort of external financial support will shift Canonical’s focus to a short-term profit/finance driven strategy. Canonical wants to take the long-term view and focus on building a better Linux desktop, among other things.
Here’s the most inspiring part of the interview - Mark says the goals with Ubuntu are to be the best desktop linux distribution and to create a self-sustaining platform for Ubuntu, one that does not rely on license fees. He admits it has never been done before, but believes it can be done.

There is a lot more where these points came from. Read it. The interview seems to suggest there will be another Q&A session with Mark on Firday, April 27th, but the the Open Week Schedule does not have such a session listed. So I am not too sure if there will be another of these sessions. If there is one, I hope I can find it possible to be there for it, live.

Gutsy Gibbon Archives Open

Posted: April 22nd, 2007, 7:39pm MYT by carthik

Sure as clockwork, work on the next version of Ubuntu has started.

I was wondering what the collective noun used for the testing releases would be. We’ve had an “Array” of Hedgehogs, a “Herd” of Fawns, a “Knot” of Efts, a “Sounder” of Warthogs, a “Colony” of Badgers, a “Flight” of Drakes. I was hoping they would choose a “Machination” of Gibbons (”a machination of monkeys” exists), but no, we have the simpler, more functional “tribe”. So the testing releases will be called Tribe 1, Tribe 2 etc…

^txt2regex$: Regular Expression Tool To Create Regex from Description

Posted: April 22nd, 2007, 4:02am MYT by carthik

^txt2regex$ is a lifesaver. It helps you create regular expression strings in a step by step process, by describing what your regex pattern should do in English (or your own language). The tool can create RegExes for use with 23 different programs, including sed, vim, mysql, and procmail. When you start the program, it will ask you a series of questions like “1. do you want to start matching at the beginning of lines? or 2. search anywhere?” and “this is followed by…. 1. A specific character…” etc… download it and run it and you will see.

Anyone who has worked with regular expressions for searching and optionally replacing stuff in files knows what a godsend then can be if you get the regex down pat - but they would also know what a time sink they can be if you can’t whip up exactly what you want. In the past, when faced with this kind of a situation, I would read man pages, books, experiment, fail and then, finally, succeed after a good half hour or so. txt2regex is a tool that eliminates the confusion. Totally.

You can install txt2regex on Ubuntu by doing a:
$sudo apt-get install txt2regex

Among its features include the ability to print a list of characteristics of the regular expression syntax for various tools, a history tool which keeps track of you past regexes, and some pre-built regexes that are often used - for dates, times and numbers.

For example,
$txt2regex --all --make number3
will create the regex for all supported tools. The regex will match a number of the form “34,412,069.90″

Here’s the output:

carthik@milan:~$ txt2regex --all --make number3

### number LEVEL 3: level 2 plus optional commas, like: 34,412,069.90

 RegEx awk       : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx ed        : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx egrep     : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx emacs     : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx expect    : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx find      : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx gawk      : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx grep      : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx javascript: [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx lex       : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx lisp      : [+-]?[0-9]!!\(,[0-9]!!\)*\(\.[0-9]!!\)?
 RegEx mawk      : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx mysql     : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(\.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx ooo       : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx perl      : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx php       : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx postgres  : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(\.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx procmail  : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx python    : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx sed       : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx tcl       : [+-]?[0-9]!!(,[0-9]!!)*(.[0-9]!!)?
 RegEx vbscript  : [+-]?[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})?
 RegEx vi        : [+-]{0,1}[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2}){0,1}
 RegEx vim       : [+-]=[0-9]{1,3}(,[0-9]{3})*(.[0-9]{2})=

$txt2regex --help
prints out a short help message

and

man txt2regex
gives some more info.

What would be handy is if txt2regex had an extension that allowed one to deconstruct a regex - give it a regex and it tells you what it does in plain English. Also, I cannot seem to create regexes for the mod_rewrite module in apache. I suspect that since mod_rewrite supports POSIX regexes, I could just run with one or the other of the regexes created by txt2regex. Since I haven’t tried it, I can’t say which one of the 23, just yet.

Ubuntu Open Week: Get Your Questions Answered

Posted: April 20th, 2007, 11:45pm MYT by carthik

…by, among others, Mark Shuttleworth.

The Ubuntu Open Week is a week of sessions on the IRC chat channel #ubuntu-classroom where you can learn more about Ubuntu. You have sessions about getting involved with translating, patching, packaging, bug fixing, getting involved with communities, the desktop team and much, much more. The open week runs from Monday 23rd April through Saturday, 28th April.

Melissa has an additional request — that you help spread the word!

Behind MOTU: Meet the Masters of the Universe

Posted: April 20th, 2007, 10:41pm MYT by carthik

You might already know about Behind Ubuntu, a website that features profiles of the people behind Ubuntu - the ones who contribute their time and effort to making Ubuntu what it is.

Behind MOTU is a similar effort to bring to the fore members of the MOTU. The MOTU are an elite squad of mostly volunteer developers who keep the 10,000+ packages in the Universe component of the Ubuntu repository in shape. Yes, that is a whole lot of packages to keep track of, and without the MOTU, the task would be impossible. The MOTU team on launchpad currently has 65 members. #ubuntu-motu is their online hangout.

I wish Behind MOTU posts had pictures of the Masters. It helps me greatly to put a human face to the awesome people I am thankful to. Also, it would be nice if they had a “Page” with links to the profiles of each MOTU. So far, Michael Bienia, Scott Kitterman, and Barry deFreese have been profiled. I look forward to more interviews in the future.

Download or Upgrade to Feisty Fawn (7.04)

Posted: April 19th, 2007, 11:41pm MYT by carthik

Feisty Fawn is here! Here’s the Press Release.

The Release Notes contain things you should watch out for when installing or upgrading, including the most common installer bugs and other issues. Read it before you install or upgrade.

The 7.04 tour guides you through what’s new. Phil Bull’s 41-item list of what’s new in Feisty is an awesome collection of the new bling.

You can download Feisty by bittorrent, or you can download the cd images. Using bittorrent would be right thing to do.

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from Edgy, read the upgrade notes. Please note that the graphical method using the Update Manager is recommended over the command line method using APT. For 22x faster upgrades, read my earlier post

Thank you, Ubuntu developers, MOTUs, Documenters, Bug Fixers, Forum members, IRC chatters, and Ubuntu users. Let us not take predictable, regular, ultra-cool releases for granted. My heart is so big right now, it might just explode. Thank you for this release, and for the release from the mundane, the bloated, the untrustworthy, and the unstable!

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Mark’s Interview at DerStandard.At

Posted: April 19th, 2007, 6:21am MYT by carthik

Mark talks candidly about Ubuntu. Turn to page 4 for where Mark describes who Linux is good for, and what makes him think Linux is not ready for commercial pre-installed computer sales. Sensible, rational, and very lucid.

The rsync Download Post is Gone

Posted: April 18th, 2007, 11:17pm MYT by carthik

The rsync download/update cdimage article I wrote is no more. Both Jonathan Riddell and Matt Zimmerman left a comment on the post to say that the excessive load caused by rsyncing users would kill the rsync server. So while this might have worked for one or two people, it won’t work if everyone tries it. I believed the best thing to do was to make the article “private” so as not to cause undue stress on the servers - I love servers and won’t have them thinking bad of me. I like humans too, and am sorry for posting a “solution” that was flawed.

The right thing to do would be to download the image through bittorrent the day Feisty is released. We have to be patient.

Start Downloading Feisty Now - and Get it Faster on Release Day

Posted: April 18th, 2007, 10:29am MYT by carthik

Less that 48 hours for Feisty Fawn to be released! I thought I should write about how to go about getting your image the fastest way possible on release day. Ubuntu’s download servers are fast - and I mean really fast - but you still can save a lot of time if you start downloading now. You can avoid the traffic on release day, or the day after - when you are dying to get the latest image, and every minute seems like eternity. Enough with the hyperbole - lets get down to the method, shall we?

The secret to the recipe is rsync. How it works is, you download the latest testing release using rsync today or tomorrow, and then when Feisty is released, you update the cd image using rsync. Only changes to the files will be downloaded - and you couldn’t be wiser!

Download the current “Daily” testing image using rsync:
$cd ~ $rsync -vPz rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/daily-live/current/feisty-desktop-i386.iso .
(Notice the “.” (dot) at the end - you need it)

Since the above is not displaying too well in the page, here is how the command is made up:
There is “rsync” at the beginning with the options “-vPz”. Then there is the url:
” rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/daily-live/current/feisty-desktop-i386.iso”, and
then there is a “.” at the end.

You should be able to copy all of that from up above, and paste it in a text editor to see copying it got everything.

The above will download the Daily testing image and put it in your home directory. The options to rsync ask it to be verbose, to show the progress and to use compression.

Now, after Feisty is released, do:
$cd ~ $mv feisty-desktop-i386.iso ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso $rsync -vPz rsync://releases.ubuntu.com/feisty/ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso .

Again, the rsync URL is
“rsync://releases.ubuntu.com/feisty/ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso”

The above will first rename the file you previously downloaded to match the name of the release image and then update the image.

Some miscellany:

I got this idea primarily from an old email Simon Law sent out, extended using this tutorial for Debian(which is not directly applicable to Ubuntu - I might add)
You can use a list of CD Image Mirrors to find one closer to you - look for an “rsync://” url
I figure this method will work - if you have any ways of improving this, please let me know in the comments

An Interview with Mark Shuttleworth on Talk Radio 702

Posted: April 14th, 2007, 2:32am MYT by carthik

There have been quite a few podcasts featuring Mark Shuttleworth recently.

First there was the interview conducted by Questions Please with questions from ordinary decent people solicited on the Fridge. Then there was the Linux Action Show podcast.

But there is one other interview that seems to have missed all the radars so far. South Africa’s 702 Talk Radio has a podcast in two parts of Mark being interviewed by Aki Anastasiou. Since it is a little difficult to find the links to the mp3 files on the page with the podcasts, here they are: Part 1 and Part 2. Unlike the other podcasts, this one is hosted by a professional radio host. I believe 702 Talk Radio is a regular full-service radio station. I enjoyed listening to the interview last night, where talk ranges from space travel to Ubuntu on the desktop to philanthropy.

I learnt that Da Vinci said what he did about flight, as featured on the wonderful quote on Mark’s homepage before any man had flown. It is obvious once you realize that there were no flying machines in Da Vinci’s time. I love it when I realize something that is obvious and go “D’oh” mentally Mark’s expectations for Ubuntu are so rational, it amazes me - I love it that he does not “oversell” Ubuntu as something it is, in his view, not. I find this a welcome change from the normal “My foobar is the best thing that has happened to the planet, evar!” kind of marketing talk.

Two readers commented - and I even received one email - saying more frequent posts of the kind that I have written recently are welcome - that I should not limit myself to writing only helpful tips. That is what encouraged me to write about this interview.

Enjoy the interviews!

Ad or Not?

Posted: April 13th, 2007, 10:31am MYT by carthik

Well, it turns out, the logo misuse may have been the magazine’s fault. I received emails from the institution that we thought was advertising in the magazine, and someone at the magazine. It was not an ad for an institution. I just got a couple of emails, and so, since I have no intention of getting someone a bad name without reason, I edited the post and removed some links. I would publish the emails I received but after some thought, since the senders had no clue they would be published, I won’t publish them.
Sorry for the interruption in your regular planet programming
End of Transmission.

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Ubuntu’s Logo Copied By ReviewIt Mag

Posted: April 13th, 2007, 1:49am MYT by carthik

The latest edition of Reviewit Magazine features the Ubuntu Logo on the 37th page. (via Digg). Also, as Jeff points out, they also use imagery from the Fedora stable(the bubbles), and so it is twice lame. Thanks for pointing these out, Jeff.

Earlier there was that offending MSN Spaces Logo which looked close but wasn’t a 100% copy. That logo is not being used by spaces now, which is now called Windows Live Spaces.

So what do we do about blatant trademark violations? Somehow, the idea of a corporation that aggressively pursues copyright and trademark violation does not fit in with Open Culture. That said, it is essential to maintain the integrity of Ubuntu’s branding. I suppose since the magazine in question is not so popular, and since it is a one-off violation, nothing will be done about this (then again, I might be wrong).

By the way, I have been blogging here at a crazy rate over the past day or two. Most of the posts have been news or opinion items. This is so unlike me This is the last of them, I promise. It is tempting to blog about every little Ubuntu related thing that I think is interesting, but doing that takes me a little farther from the blog’s stated goal.

Update: Earlier I had implied that the logo appeared in an advertisement. It was not an ad - it was an article in the magazine. So, since it is no fault of the institution featured in the magazine, I have removed references to the institution in the article above. I apologize if I misled/misinformed anyone temporarily. I have also edited some comments below to remove references to the institution mentioned upon request. I received two emails - one each from the institution and from the magazine that seem to confirm that the logo appeared in an article, not an advertisement. Thank you!

Permalink for 'Ubuntu_Blog/2007/04/13/Ubuntu_Is_Not_6_Years_Old%e2%80%a6_Yet'

Ubuntu Is Not 6 Years Old… Yet

Posted: April 13th, 2007, 1:00am MYT by carthik

I read this article on how IBM’s DB2 database is supported on Ubuntu at CRN.

The article states:

Six-year-old Ubuntu is seen as an up-and-coming Linux distribution. Some industry observers call it the fastest-growing Linux in the enterprise.

Hmm, well, Ubuntu hasn’t turned three yet, so I wonder where they got the “6 year old” detail from, and am I the only one who finds the second sentence above vague and wishy-washy?

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“Gutsy Gibbon” to Replace “Feisty Fawn”

Posted: April 12th, 2007, 10:57pm MYT by carthik

As Ubuntu tries to increase its reach, and manage all the branches that are springing forth from it, the next development codename “Gutsy Gibbon” seems to be perfect. Mark Shuttleworth declared as much in announcing Gutsy Gibbon to be the chosen name for the developmental release that is expected to be released in October 18, 2007 (so this will be Ubuntu 7.10).

Gibbon
Gibbons are small apes found in South East Asia

Highlights from the announcement:

The Gibbon defeated the “Glossy Gnu” to the finish
This next version will also feature a brand new ultra-free, no-nonfree flavor of Ubuntu for the purists
Glossiness in the form of Beryl/Compiz enabled by default might hit the Gibbon
Any “monkey” should be able to install Gibbon - with new improvements to the installer to allow network-managed upgrades
Agility of deployment, together with integrated management will be a focus for the Ubuntu server team - leading to leaner, meaner and faster server version of Ubuntu
GNOME 2.20.0 will definitely be in Gutsy Gibbon, with GNOME 2.20.1 being a distinct possibility

You can view the Release Schedule for Gutsy Gibbon at the wiki.
Like Mark says, “Go Ape!” and celebrate the arrival of the new Gibbon. I love how he pushes the animal metaphor and displays a sense of humor in making these new release name announcements.

Request Feisty (7.04) CDs Now

Posted: April 12th, 2007, 12:29am MYT by carthik

Shipit is now accepting advance orders for Feisty CDs.

“

You can also request Kubuntu and Edubuntu CDs. I wish there were Xubuntu CDs for those that like their toast lightweight.

You can request 10 or less CDs using shipit. For mass orders (for your LUG, class, or country) try the special request form after you login.

Of course, the responsible thing to do is to download the CD image and burn it when it becomes available. Remember the CDs are shipped free of cost, and there is always someone else without a stable and fast internet connection who could use these shipped cds.

Ubuntu-tan Wallpapers Make Up for Missing Ubuntu Mascot

Posted: April 11th, 2007, 11:31pm MYT by carthik

There is some small talk about the need for an Ubuntu Mascot at the Ubuntu-sounder mailing list. Though there are suggestions for a space-helmet sporting penguin, the idea hasn’t come to anything so far. In an email in the thread, there was link to some OS-tans to temporarily make up for the lack of a mascot. Its about time Ubuntu got a chweet-overloaded mascot,for the kids if not for us, don’t you think?

Without much further ado, here’s a couple of OS-tans for you to love, and to optionally invite to reside on your desktop

Ubuntu tan 1

To avoid flooding the planet with pictures, there are two more pics, and some more details below.
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Convert/Import from PDF and Keep the Formatting

Posted: April 10th, 2007, 10:13pm MYT by carthik

I have often wanted to convert a PDF file to a MS Word (.doc) file or an openoffice.org file. Usually I just copy the text from the PDF file and paste it in the new word document. Soon, this gets pretty tiring.

Recently I found a way to convert a pdf file to other formats, including .doc and .odt which preserves the formatting of the text pretty well. It is not perfect preserved but it is way better than having no formatting at all.

The secret goes by the name KWord. KWord is a KDE application that has a pdf “import” feature which lets you import either entire pdf documents or just a few pages from a pdf document while preserving the formatting! Of course - this only works for pdf documents which are not scanned images of pages. I tried it out on files created using $\LaTeX$ , MS Word and OpenOffice. The font sizes in the imported document are larger than they need to be, but at least the headings are heading, the normal text is normal text, and the bullets are bullets!

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Getting Details about My Laptop Battery - and Taking Care of it

Posted: April 9th, 2007, 7:30am MYT by carthik

Recently I have noticed that the “stamina” of my Acer notebook’s battery has been getting progressively worse. The laptop is hardly a year old and yet I get only 3/4ths of the time I used to get with it when I bought it. I wanted to know more details about how my battery’s doing.

Laptop Battery
(img credit: Sean Dreilinger on Flickr)

To find out all the details you would want to know about you battery, browse to the directory
/proc/acpi/battery/ and then to the directory that has your battery in it.

Once there, see the contents of the files to learn more about your battery. Here’s what my files tell me:

So, as you can see, my battery does not charge to its full design capacity of 4400 mAh. It only charges to 3134 mAh, which is almost 3/4ths of the original capacity. Looks like my battery is on the downhill slide.

Since it is a Lithium Ion battery, I went looking for details on how to take good care of it. It is a good thing I did, because it demystified me - Letting your battery drain to “dead” before recharging it is not good. I really thought it was, but it is not. Wish I had known this earlier! I found an excellent page online with details of what factors affect the performance and lifespan on Lithium Ion batteries. The page includes graphs to show stored charge levels, temperature, discharge load etc affect battery longevity. In case you don’t have the time to read the page, here’s some points for you to remember to ensure a long life for your LiON battery:

Avoid frequent discharges to 0% stored charge.
- Several partial discharges with frequent recharges is better, since Lithium-Ion batteries have no “memory”
- You still have to allow it to go from full charge to near-empty charge once in 30 charge cycles to make sure that the battery charge monitor is properly calibrated
Avoid Heat
- Don’t leave the laptop in the car
- If you are going to use the laptop connected to power for a week or more continuously, take the battery out. This will save it from the heat and from the charge-discharge problems
The batteries deteriorate even when they are stored cool!
- Don’t buy a replacement battery or a spare battery until the time when you really need it!
- If you have to store a Lithium Ion battery - store it at 40% charge and store it in a refrigerator

Take care of your battery, because there is no way to restore capacity to failed batteries. Also, an average battery is good for 300-500 charge/discharge cycles, or about 1-2 years. The main physical reason for the degradation of performance seems to be increased internal resistance, which causes the battery to be unable to deliver the charge stored in it to the outside world (the internal resistance eats it up ). Chemical decomposition of components also reduces the charge delivery capacity over time. So it is best to do the most you can to slow down the degradation by following the tips above.

Permalink for 'Ubuntu_Blog/2007/04/05/Beryl___Compiz_Reunite_to_Form_%e2%80%9cComposite_Community%e2%80%9d'

Beryl & Compiz Reunite to Form “Composite Community”

Posted: April 5th, 2007, 6:46pm MYT by carthik

Beryl and Compiz come together again. There is talk of a Compiz-Core with Compiz-Extra being where the main action will be.

- The Compiz-Extra division (what we think of as Compiz) will merge with the
Beryl project to form a new community with the temporary name of “Composite
Community”.

- The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins,
decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz
communities. We will create a code review panel consisting of the best
developers from each community who will see that any code included in a
release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution
in an officially supported package. Support for existing packages will be
continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.

Here’s the announcement from the Beryl Dev Blog

Congratulations to all involved!

Feisty CDs to be Available Through Shipit

Posted: April 5th, 2007, 10:00am MYT by carthik

Unlike Edgy, which was not available through shipit, free cds of Feisty Fawn, the upcoming release may be available for free shipping.

I logged into the shipit website and was greeted by this:

Yippee!!

Update: You can now pre-order the CDs

Encrypt GMail using GPG Keys

Posted: April 4th, 2007, 1:52pm MYT by carthik

FireGPG is the firefox plugin you need to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails in Gmail using your trusty GPG keys. The installation instructions are heavy on sentence ending exclamations, but they let us know that you can use this extension in Linux.

Linux is Mainstream, Paul.

Posted: April 4th, 2007, 12:20pm MYT by carthik

Paul Thurrott writes at internet-nexus about the previous post I’d written about how more people “want” to use Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux.

First off, it’s great to have Paul’s attention. Paul is an opinion leader in the Windows-centered world.

I would like to point out some small misconceptions he seems to have:

I never said that most people want to use Linux, or that most people use Windows since they have to. The word I used was more, and in this case, I meant it to mean that the numbers seem to be increasing - which is a good sign, as far as I am concerned.

That aside, the following is what worries me most, Paul says:

The truth is, for most people–like, 99.99 percent of the computing using public–a computer is a tool. What they “want” isn’t a particular OS. What they want is a solution to a problem, or an answer to a need. They want email. They want the Web. They want Office. Games. Digital photos and music.

Paul, we Ubuntu users belong in the 99.99% you mention, too. Have you used Ubuntu lately, and have you been able to compare how easy it is to use Ubuntu on a day to day basis? Heck, it installs much faster and easier than Windows, and if you support open-source friendly hardware providers, like Intel, then everything works great - much faster than you can say “install windows driver”.

Then again, he says:

Anyone who stays up at night worrying about OS platforms just isn’t part of the mainstream. That’s not good or bad, it’s just reality.

We Linux users are part of the mainstream now, Paul. Linux is not just for geeks. For one, governments the world over are adapting to change, and thus driving it faster. In a few years, entire cities/states/countries will see vastly increased number of Linux users. People who use them in offices/schools will tell the others. I trust them to. Good news can’t be stopped from spreading. Oh, and Bill Gates’ (or Microsoft’s) first clients were geek hobbyists(a minority that was not part of the mainstream), and computers used to be a hobby back then. Look at where we are now.

While no amount of personal examples from me, or from other Linux users can convince someone that this is the case, it cannot hurt to have a list of “normal” “mainstream” people who use Ubuntu — how they do, why etc. I just checked and there seems to be no such list. If you read this blog, and don’t do programming/computer related stuff for a living, please drop us a comment here, saying you use Ubuntu. Let’s see where this goes.

Our world view is inclusive, Paul - anyone who has the hardware for a computer should be able to use the computer for free. We will get there. Ubuntu is amazingy easy to setup and use. GNOME, even KDE, are much much more intuitive and easy to use (from the usability point of view) than Windows. Of course, this is a subjective statement. I wish there was a study report I could point to. Could Canonical sponsor an Ubuntu Usability Study, comparing it to OSX and Windows? Just so that we have something to point at?

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“Want to” Vs. “Have to”

Posted: April 1st, 2007, 2:48pm MYT by carthik

So what is this ground-shattering revelation that forced me to write at 2:45 AM?

It is one of those things that literally make you sit up, and think for a moment. When you are done thinking, you want to write it down - such thoughts don’t happen too often, you see. So here it is:

More people use Windows not because they want to, but because they have to.
More people use Linux not because they have to, but because they want to.

The balance is tipping. Soon, there will be fewer people who will be willing to do what they have to at a high price, and more more people willing to change things so they can use the platform they want to use.

I’ll probably regret writing this a few years from now. It is, after all, so obvious.
What I won’t regret is writing this down before I go to sleep tonight.

Feisty Feedback - Free For All

Posted: March 30th, 2007, 5:22am MYT by carthik

I installed Feisty Beta on my main laptop and I must say it is very impressive. In fact, I am more impressed with Feisty than any other release so far, especially when it comes to making life easier for new linux users and non-geek users. More than once, I was pleasantly surprised by the detail that seems to have gone into making life easier for regular desktop users, and this includes the documentation. Another thing I noticed was that on the IRC channels, there seem to be a lot less people complaining about random problems with Feisty. I still remember how busy #ubuntu+1 used to be after a beta release in the past. Since I don’t have any quantitative information, this has to remain a subjective observation for now.

Oh and yes, the rule that states that the busy-ness of a blogger’s life is inversely proportional to the frequency of blog posts is true I have ideas for a couple of posts, and an interview, on my mind for about 2 weeks now. Wish I had the time and peace-of-mind to share it with all of you.

I am maintaining a log of the features in Feisty that impressed me most. I decided to completely reinstall Feisty on the laptop, since upgrading never gives one a very good view of what life is like for someone who is installing Ubuntu from a specific release. I will try and summarize what others like about Feisty too. To help me with that, please let me know what your experiences have been with Feisty so far.

What do you love about it?
and more importantly,
What do you dislike most?

Extra points for originality, and for not repeating what other commenters have said
Watch this space for more. See you in a day or two!

Freedom Is the Addiction, Ubuntu the Gateway Drug

Posted: March 21st, 2007, 3:09pm MYT by carthik

It’s Ubuntu’s fault, really. If I hadn’t gotten started on the free software ride, I wouldn’t have any compunctions about stolen music. What’s 300 stolen albums when you’ve collected $2000+ in stolen software?

–K Mandla.

After using Ubuntu long enough, I too don’t see the need to use pirated software on Windows. I still use Windows XP at work/school. I get it for free, legally, from school. When that stops I will have to stop using it. On XP, I use The GIMP, VLC media player, and a host of other free alternatives. Life is good, light and joyful with free software.

Saving Sound Volume Levels Across Reboots

Posted: March 20th, 2007, 9:13pm MYT by carthik

I have a weird problem with a desktop where the volume settings for PCM, Microphone etc are all set to mute when I restart the machine. I then have to use the alsamixer command line tool to set the volumes to desired levels. This annoyed the hell out of me.

Finally I found a solution to this problem. So, if your computer has a volume memory problem, the following might be useful.

To set the volume and other sound settings to your desired level and save the settings, do the following:

Delete the /etc/asound.conf file if it exists - Read Daniel’s Comment Below
Use the alsamixer command to set the various volume levels etc
Save the settings by using the command: $sudo alsactl store

And that is it!

Another tip I read on lifehacker: This works to suppress the volume when you boot up a laptop in a place where it is not supposed to annoy others — think library, seminar, conference…. Take an old, non-usable headphone, and snip off the wire just above the jack that plugs in to the speaker output of the computer. Plug this into your laptop before you boot up to prevent annoying people with the startup sounds as the computer boots up! It is a simple solution to a serious problem.

Permalink for 'Ubuntu_Blog/2007/03/18/Ubuntu%e2%80%99s_New_Website'

Ubuntu’s New Website

Posted: March 18th, 2007, 6:33am MYT by carthik

Ubuntu’s new website is the talk of the town.
Color me impressed!

To read more about the creation of the new design, visit Matt Nuzum’s article on the redesign of the website.

The decision was difficult. We finally chose Drupal. They have excellent documentation, the cms is easy to extend through modules, they have a responsive security team and it’s easy to learn to edit and add content…each server can now handling(sic) 5,000 to 6,000 simul connections.

Congrats to Matt, the sysadmins and Canonical for a job well done!

Also, interestingly enough, I found that ubuntusucks.com redirects one to ubuntu.com. Talk about pre-emptive measures!

Daylight Savings Time & Linux Boxes

Posted: March 11th, 2007, 9:43am MYT by carthik

Sort of late, but since its never too late, head over to Daniel’s blog for the lowdown on how to make sure your linux box knows that we humans have decided to change the length of days.

Daniel’s Blog is a must-read for me. He’s also one of the leading motors behind the fridge - he seems to sniff out Ubuntu-related news much better than anyone else.

When you are at his blog, make sure you whine a little about Ubuntu/Linux. I wonder if Daniel intends to produce a summary of all the whines. If he is, then he better be prepared to spend some time on it. I remember creating the List of Ubuntu Blogs - especially how freaking long it took.

Using sshfs to Access Remote Directories in Windows

Posted: March 6th, 2007, 6:50am MYT by carthik

I had a tough time deciding on a title for this post/article (”in” Windows or “on” Windows? I give up!).

J Wynia writes in to share a method to how to access remote directories, such as those on your web server through sshfs on Windows. Actually that’s not the full story.

The full story is:
1) Install Ubuntu in a virtual machine in Windows
2) Setup sshfs and use that mount your remote directory
3) Setup the sshfs-mount as a Samba share
4) Access said Samba share from Windows

Tin foil hat people keep away! Also, the author mentions troubles with his Ensim server administration software (which he worked around). Folks who use cPanel or some other server control panel might have some trouble too.

So head over to the article already!

My old article on mounting remote directories using sshfs is what prompted J Wynia to write it.

Sylpheed-Claws is Claws Mail

Posted: March 4th, 2007, 9:40am MYT by carthik

Sylpheed-Claws, the email client for Linux has a new name - Claws Mail.

Though this is not exactly news (the earliest “official” announcement I can find is from December 04, 2006), I just came across the news today.

I have been a sylpheed-claws Claws Mail user ever since I tried it for the first time. There is no email client that fit my needs the way Claws did. Claws’ beauty lies in its speed — of start up, synchornizing and in general, of all operations. The sensibility of the software surprised me, since it provided those features that I wanted most and felt the lack of earlier. You can “harvest” email addresses from a folder full of emails, and so many other small things that I forget. Never, ever has it crashed on me, which is more than I can say of other clients.

In fact, many times over the last few months, I have thought of writing down what exactly makes Claws superior, in my opinion. I held back since it could be some work to make notes, now that I am used to Claws. I still use Thunderbird on a Windows XP machine occasionally. It has been ages since I used Evolution, which I found heavy, slow and sometimes unresponsive. If you guys are interested, I can start keeping notes and publish an article introducing claws(though it really needs no introduction. )

Ian Murdock Uses Ubuntu Too

Posted: February 27th, 2007, 9:20pm MYT by carthik

Ian Murdock - the “ian” in “Debian”, founder of the Debian distribution likes to use Ubuntu on his desktop. At least one of his desktops.

Image Credit: Ian Murdock

Ian’s latest blog entry had this screenshot. You can spy Ubuntu’s logo in the top left. Ian confirms that this is indeed an Ubuntu desktop in the comments. I was glad to see it, and thought I’d share it with you.

We have heard from Ian before, talking about Debian-Ubuntu compatibility.

(lets try the new digg this feature at wordpress.com)

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