gQuigs' View

Firefox 3.5 Most Popular Browser (Major Version) In The World

2009-12-21T01:04:00.000+05:30

According to StatCounter Global Statistics the most used browser version on the web is Firefox 3.5. Congrats to Mozilla (and the open web)!

But we can use this as a rallying call to do more. Let's Finish Off IE6 (remove the links to IE8 and Safari if you want, and maybe add one for Opera). And how many of you end up upgrading your family's browsers over the holidays? Good job keeping them safe, but bring everything you need this time on a USB stick, and then get back to enjoying the holidays.

Internal LAN, Package Distribution Quick Howto

2009-11-27T15:49:00.000+05:30

This guide simply mashes up two other guides, with just the parts needed to create simple packages and them to your own repository, all on the local network (no PPAs).

First you need to make packages (a more complete guide below [1]). My packages are very simple as I am using them just to distribute files around the local network. Let's pretend you want to include a simple bash backup script in a package.
Make a package

Make a folder mycompany-backup
Make two new folders in it: DEBIAN and opt
NOTE: pretend mycompany-backup is the / directory of whatever system you install it on, so everything in opt would go to /opt when installed, etc.
Make a new text file under DEBIAN called control
Add Some text to the file:
Package: mycompany-backup
Version: 0.1
Section: mycompany
Priority: optional
Architecture: i386 or amd64 or all (however all sadly doesn't work with the next part of this guide)
Essential: no
Installed-Size: 10
Maintainer: My Name
Add your content (in my case a backup script) to opt/backup.sh. Mine just backs up Documents to a place on our server. (NOTE: This isn't a complete backup solution as there is no automation)
#/bin/sh
SAMIAM=`whoami`
sleep 60

gvfs-mount mount smb://$SAMIAM@server/$SAMIAM #User must have saved password for share

rsync -rv /home/$SAMIAM/Documents "/home/$SAMIAM/.gvfs/$SAMIAM on server/BACKUP" --log-file="/home/$SAMIAM/.gvfs/$SAMIAM on server/BACKUP/latest"
Go one directory above where mycompany-backup is.
Run the command dpkg -b mycompany-backup/ mycompany.deb and you should have a new .deb file.

I got most of this from:
[1] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html

Distribute the Package in your own company repository

You need to already be running a simple web server (or not, you could just install apache)
Make a new directory on the server called apt (likely /var/www/apt)
Make two new folders in it: conf and incoming
Make a new file in conf called distributions - like this
Origin: Your Name
Label: Something here as well
Suite: karmic
Codename: karmic
Architectures: amd64 source (all would be ideal here but it doesn't work)
Components: mycompany
Description: Your description
Oh right, install reprepro
Add your deb to incoming
Then while in the apt directory, run sudo reprepro includedeb karmic incoming/mycompany.deb

Then just add the line to your other computers:
deb http://mycompanysServerOrIPAddress/apt karmic mycompany

Update apt, and then install the mycompany package like any normal package.

Again this website provided a great starting point for me, and has many more details.
[2] http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/286

Mostly did this for my own documentation, hope it was helpful for you as well.

If anyone wants to figure out why the "all" architecture doesn't work with reprepro it could be very helpful in making actually correct packages. The one in this example really should be all and not amd64.

Memory Requirements

2009-10-24T11:19:00.013+05:30

Mostly kicked off by this post (http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/ubuntus-minimum-requirements/)

OS	Required / Realistic
Ubuntu (full Gnome)	384 MB / 512 MB
Xubuntu	192 MB / 256 MB
Windows XP	64 MB / 128 MB
Windows Vista Home Basic	512 MB
Windows Vista (Other)	1 GB
Windows 7 32 bit	1 GB
Windows 7 64 bit	2 GB

Ubuntu is approaching Windows Vista Home's minimum memory specs, but is still a long way off our biggest competitor, Windows XP (70% market share and our only real competitor in netbooks). With netbooks usually having 512 - 1 GB of memory, it seems like XP would really let the user run many more applications (yes I am ignoring anti-virus and all the other random stuff OEMs load onto Windows to make it slower). So, I just have one question:

How hard would it be to reduce Ubuntu's memory usage from 9.10 to 10.04 by just 64 MB (oh, and does anyone want to make this an official goal for 10.04)?

I have knowledge of at least one school district where the majority of computers have only 128 MB of RAM. They are running XP and want to switch to Linux, but it was simply not an option due to memory. (And no if they don't have a big IT budget, read: no budget for LTSP)

Win 7 requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx
Win xp requirements http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
Ubuntu requirements https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements
Win Vista requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx

Exaile & Amarok. Because my original review of them...

2009-10-01T20:15:00.000+05:30

was not quite that good. Let's try this again...
Exaile and Amarok are very similar players as Exaile is a music player inspired from Amarok but designed for GNOME. Whereas Amarok is the premier music player on the KDE desktop.

(I'm also on Karmic now, so things might look a little different if you install on Jaunty and also look different from my original review)

Exaile in Depth
The above is the Exaile main window. On the left side it let's you navigate through your Collection, Radio, Files, and Playlists. Clicking on them only update the next area to the right (which is where I currently have right clicked on an album and am about to "Append to Current").
The next region (or main region) is a tabbed collection of playlists or music sources. The use of tabs always makes things more cool. Quite useful for going through your music once and separating into multiple playlists (for things that can't be done by smart/dynamic playlists).

The easiest way to just start playing random music, is to go the playlists tab where you will find several smart playlists. Among them are Random 100/300/500 songs, Entire Library, and Rating >3 / >4.

Blacklists, which let you exclude songs from being played, are one of the features Exaile has that I haven't seen elsewhere.

The Radio should provide you more than enough shoutcast streams to listen to, although it can be somewhat overwhelming with the number of stations. Karmic Xubuntu users will be enjoying music from Exaile out-of-the-box. For the rest of you, get it below.

Get Exaile

Amarok, Rediscover Your Music!

The Amarok motto is back! I swear it went missing when I did my first review this year. Since I first reviewed Amarok (and then upgraded to Karmic) they made some significant changes to the interface. For instance, the left hand vertical navigation is gone. The first area (going left to right) is the Local Collection (can be switched to Playlist/Internet/Files mode (sound familar?) This is pretty identical to the one in Exaile (or I really should say the Exaile one is the same as the Amarok one). However, after that things change :).

The next area with the nice "Discovery Blue" (I'm making up colors now), is the Discover your music area (I'm also making up names). You can customize this area with Wikipedia entries, Videos, Photos, etc, that will automatically update based on the artist you are currently listening to. You can mess with the layout as well, like I did below:
The last area is the Playlist section which allows you to sort and rearrange the playlist by (seemingly) every possible bit of metadata you have on your music.

Random in Amarok can be made to cheat. Which is awesome (who wants mathematically perfect random for music playing anyway). It can be made to favor Higher Ratings or songs that you haven't played in a while.

Amarok really rocks when it comes to finding music or audio online for you to listen to. Aside from the more standard ones (Magnatue, Jamendo, Last.fm) it also has access to Librivox recordings (books) and a Podcast Directory.

Ubuntu Users, Get Amarok Here

Read my old review of 2007 Amarok

India, 4th of July

2009-09-17T13:19:00.006+05:30

I went to the US Embassy for the 4th of July and got a beef cheeseburger and french fries... In the red circle is the US Ambassador to India. He gave a short and sweet speech.

This is during the pledge...There were fireworks as well! (btw, do we let embassy's in DC use fireworks?)
And then there was cake..

Note: Pictures not actually in chronological order.

India, the park

2009-09-17T12:32:00.005+05:30

I love this park and it is about a 2 minute walk from the office... these are pictures from a bit back...
Look "normal" park stuff:
The best part is this is a medium size park here :), and just walking around it you can usually find a....

Gecko! And sometimes discarded legacy stuff. :)

India, living and working

2009-09-06T20:58:00.008+05:30

About 2 months after it was requested I am finally providing a couple pictures....
This is the MIA office building we only have 1 floor, which also (luckily) happens to be the only floor with air conditioning.
And this is where I live.. (bottom right balcony is mine)
And last but actually interesting :), is the view from my office window when there is a bit of rain outside.

Flowcharts!

2009-09-05T23:45:00.000+05:30

Any now for something completely different.

Can flowcharts be scaled up to cover some of the more complex social interactions, we know it can cover Creating an AIM Profile.

http://www.okcupid.com/flowchart-to-my-heart?g=icDV86SY94A

Music Player Review: Heavyweights

2009-08-24T22:04:00.007+05:30

Exaile has some features I really like. Here is a screen shot to get you started

Some of the features which rock.

Blacklists - put a song/artist/album on the blacklist and have it not play while randomizing your whole collection
Dynamic playlists additions - adds new songs to playlists automagically
Has significant plug-in selection

Exaile also has an Equalizer, Radio support, Album Art Collector, smart playlists, and more. It can also bring your music collection together from multiple locations. Some plugins include Alarm Clock, Desktop Cover (Displays the current album cover on the desktop), and HTTP Server Control.

My previous post details why Exaile is being removed from ths review.

Ubuntu Users, Get Exaile

Exaile is inspired from Amarok. Amarok uses the most memory of those that remain by more than double, it's around 70 mb on my machine and it almost lost on my CPU review, so it gets to be in the heavy weight category with Exaile. It seems like every time I try Amarok, I end up wanting to try KDE again (I'll try in Karmic, KDE 4.3 should be stable, right?).

Amarok really rocks the "Internet" with Cool Streams, Jamendo, Librivox.org (free audio books), magnatune, Opml Directory, Shoutcast Directory. Also available are Ampache and mp3tunes.

It definitely has dynamic playlists but doesn't appear to have blacklists or plugins. It does however have Random that well.. let's you make it not Random. Random that favors tracks that have higher ratings, etc, which is honestly how most people would actually like "Random" to work.

The heavyweight champion of the music player review is..... well...
Amarok if you use Kubuntu (KDE)
Exaile if you use Ubuntu or Xubuntu (XFCE)

Of course depending on your needs this changes completely and I really can't tell if I like Blacklists more or Amarok's "Random".

Ubuntu Users, Get Amarok Here

Read my old review of 2007 Amarok

Who's left? Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Rhythmbox

Music Player Review: CPU Performance

2009-08-12T21:02:00.016+05:30

The task: playing 7 minutes of a FLAC file.
The tester: Phoronix test suite - specifically "MONITOR=cpu.usage phoronix-test-suite benchmark idle"
The tested: Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

This chart is neat, the indicator in the middle is where the average lies (out of 7 minutes) and the bottom of the line is where the low is, top is where the high is.

If you want to, you can look at their exact charts below. A bit about the results, followed by some possibly relevant tech details.

Amarok
It is the premier music player on the "heaviest" open source desktop KDE. Btw, I was using Xine. Qt.

Exaile
Being one of the most CPU intensive it is concerning to me that Xubuntu is considering moving to it. Python, gStreamer.

Banshee
4th Place but quite close to the lead. Mono, gStreamer.

gMusicBrowser
Low of 1.01%, High of 9.00%. Perl?, Direct to libs/mplayer for playback?

Quod Libet
Biggest range, but also lowest average. Odd. Gstreamer, Python.

Rhythmbox
Low and High tied with gMusicPlayer. .15 less average. Nice low usage for the default player. C, Gstreamer.

You should be able to use the phoronix test suite's idle and monitor mode to get similar results. So, the question is, am I kicking someone out for this? For now, Exaile is out.

(but I plan to look at this in more detail specific to Exaile and send my results to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Specifications/Karmic/DefaultMusicPlayer, as well as doing an indepth goodbye review like usual)

Amarok is close to the line as well, but it will stay in for now. Disagree? Please do comment.

Please do attempt to reproduce, preferably on low end hardware so the variations will be more pronounced (as soon as Jaunty is available on my OLPC, I will rerun these on it).

Music Player Review: VideoLAN - VLC Media Player

2009-08-09T00:15:00.007+05:30

VideoLAN Client (VLC) is quite an amazing and powerful program. You can play DVDs, stream things from here to there, do about 50,000 other advanced (and simple) things. In recent versions they added a media library.

To access the media library you actually have to go Playlists -> Show Playlists. Also any settings for randomness or repeating appear to disappear every time you close it.

Some more awesome VLC capabilities:

Shoutcast audio/video - Under Playlist -> Additional Sources
Streaming video from one source to another (or to a file)
Viewing your webcam (and streaming it elsewhere)
Playing DVDs
Playing practically any video/audio file

VLC although awesome, really doesn't belong in a music play review. I left it in just to test out the new features in the 1.0 series (or close enough). I'm going to be watching a lot of the shoutcast items in the near future. Also available for Windows and Mac. Yes I realize this is a very short review, but it shouldn't have been here anyway.
Get VLC Ubuntu Users.

Who's left? Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox
What's Next? Performance.

Music Player Review: Music Player Daemon Explored

2009-08-07T01:06:00.011+05:30

So, two Music Player Daemon (MPD) clients made it through my first review waves. Which was then followed by a "face off" or two. I generally try to make my reviews geared towards people who don't want to have to do technical things to make music play. Music Player Daemon likely requires editing 1 text file and possibly restarting a service or two. If that scares you, read at least the next two Q&As before running on your way.

What is a daemon?
A daemon is an application that runs without a user directly seeing it (in the background) but that other applicatins the user can see ask it to do things for them.

So... What is a Music Player Daemon?
An application that organizes and plays your music, that can be controlled through various applications that you can actually see and use. All MPD clients get to use the same music library and control what is currently playing (yes you can open more than one client at the same time!)

Wait.. What about the applications that I can see?
Sonata - "An elegant music client for MPD." Here is the info screen. It seems to follow a KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) philosophy. Sonata works (or should) out of the box if you have MPD locally set up and working.

Ario - "GTK Client for MPD" - Yes they have a technical tag line, bah! However it does win on features. Here is the Ario info screen:
The "Currently Playing" can always be shown in the bottom pane. Here is where Ario wins.. umm.. some cake:
As well Ario has a bunch of other cool features (more than Sonata).

Memory Usage (just so you saw wow compared to some others):
MPD - 11.1 MiB (which really should be added to the one you are using)
Sonata - 16.6 MiB (respectable - 27.7 in total)
Ario - 4.8 Mib (wow...)

Of course MPD clients require a bit more config. Let's get you installed and running Ario!
First install mpd
Then install Ario || or install Sonata

Hold ALT with F2. Then Copy in: gksudo gedit /etc/mpd.conf
Change the 8th line

music_directory "/var/lib/mpd/music/"

to point to wherever your music is stored, such as

music_directory "/home/your-username/Music"

Then save it. By default all users on the machine will get access to play music from the collection. (You can also enable remote access)

Then, hopefully just start up Ario and get playing :)

The music applet (add to your gnome panel) can also control MPD directly, so you can actually close all the other MPD clients after setting up a playlist and just control it through that!

But still, I'm not sure if MPD is ready for the non-technical user, so I am going to exclude it from the rest of the review, for now. Please do share your thoughts if you think otherwise. If you are a non-techie and love, I'd love to hear that.

Who's left? Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

Music Player Review: aTunes and Songbird

2009-07-31T23:22:00.016+05:30

Ok, this might be confusing:
aTunes beats Amarok at it's own motto "Rediscover Your Music"
Songbird is basically open source iTunes with the power of Firefox

aTunes!
aTunes looks how I remember Amarok the first time I reviewed it. As well as helping you organize your music it brings you a TON of information on it in the same interface:

This shows the bigger picture and similar artist view on the right side.

This shows song lyrics from lyricwiki.org. (Interesting site, btw)

This shows Artist infoThere is a good deal more to aTunes and it seems quite powerful. Memory usage seems to be in the 100 Mb to 170 Mb range, which I find completely insane. On a related note, it uses Java and has multiple installers available (Ubuntu/Debian deb, Windows Installer, Java App Installer).

Again, it can't win my Music Player Review because it is not in the Ubuntu repository, but still a music app to try (and if you like/liked amarok, try it). http://www.atunes.org/

Songbird!

Not much more to add. It's based on Firefox and looks similar to iTunes, in fact with an extension you can make it look like this:
If you miss iTunes or want to try to write music player extensions in javascript give it a try. Grab it at http://getsongbird.com/ Take a look at some of the add-ons at http://addons.songbirdnest.com/
(Don't get the wrong idea, it is *much* better than iTunes)

Again, I can't do the awesome one-click installer for these so they can't win my review. However, they might be perfect for you and definitely worth trying.

Who's left? Amarok, Ario, Banshee, Sonata, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod LIbet, Exaile, Rhythmbox
Read more of my reviews

Music Player Review: qmmp vs audacious

2009-07-28T11:00:00.008+05:30

These players have more in common then not. Audacious seems to have more options though and supports WinAmp skins. If you are looking for a linux app to replace (the look and feel of) WinAmp these are the two best options I've found, slight edge given to Audacious. Although, I personally like the qmmp default skin better. Other than options, they are practically the same program.

Look you can rearrange them in similar ways (and arbitrary)
And they both can become "1 Liners":
So Audacious "wins" cause they have more plug-ins, options, and skins by default. Also they have a voice removal pluging (a little bit buggy) but quite awesome if you want to get some karaoke going. I will definitely be looking for that feature in more music players. (Neither is continuing in my review, as they are competiting more with each other, than the others)

Both are very light weight and good players, Go give them a try, Ubuntu users click below.

Click here for qmmp ||||| Click here for Audacious

Who's left? Amarok, Ario, aTunes, Banshee, Sonata, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod LIbet, Exaile, Rhythmbox, Sondbird

Music Player Review '09 edition - Wave 1.5

2009-07-27T17:00:00.000+05:30

Adding Songbird and aTunes to the list, with the note that they can't actually "win" because they aren't in the Ubuntu repository.

Just to catch them up to where we are:
aTunes - available as a a deb that adds a menu icon, passes on all first wave items
Songbird - available as a tar.gz, extract and then run, no menu icon, passes all other first wave items

Wave 1.5 just asks two questions. Playing all the songs on shuffle. Generating a playlist is fine as long as I can select multiple (read all) folders. Who is out?

Alsaplayer - Playlist, no media library and doesn't let you select multiple folders to add them. Is still awesome because it let's you speed up (chipmunkify) or slow down a song.
Aqualung - It has a bunch of options that I don't quite understand but that an audio junkie might love.
KPlayer - A frontend to MPlayer, not designed to handle a music collection
Listen Music Player - looked good, GUI is very bad at being responsive, ends up crashing
Minirok - Can't shuffle, quite a simple player, simplest player with KDE theme that I have reviewed
Xfmpc - finally an MPD client fails, except for this one they have all been very consistent how you add the entire library, cause they share a database. Now if you add the entire database to the current playing in another MPD client, and then go Xfmpc it will work fine.
gxmms2 - All xmms2 clients are out. Now to be fair, there is a bug that is basially making most of the xmms2 clients not work, so maybe Karmic will have them fair better.

Internet Radio?

Decibel - Nope
Gimmix - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Glurp - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Gnome Music Player - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Juk - Nope
Muine - Nope
Pygmy - Nope
gbemol - Nope
gmusicplayer - Nope, but I'm keeping it just because I can :P.

These are all focused more on just the music you have, which if that's all you use, try these out!

Next up, I switch from waves to a VS match. Audacious and qmmp have very very similar interfaces., so I'm going to compare them until I find one I like more. (Quite similar to WinAmp, Coolplayer, Xmms, etc). Who will emerge victorious?

Music Player Review '09 edition - First Wave

2009-07-26T16:30:00.000+05:30

About a year and a half ago, I did a music player review, where I went through a lot of the music players in Ubuntu and reviewed them for functionality, etc. One of my finalists from last time, BMPx, has actually gone away, but all the others are still here. This time I want to do a more thorough review, so I am including all the MPD/XMMS2 clients (I will go more in depth on what they are in the future).

In this first wave I only looked at applications under Add and Remove Applications, in the Sound and Video section and they had to say something about being able to play music or audio. From that long list, I checked the following criteria (who fails, follows the criteria):

Does it appear in the menu and actually open (also is it designed for desktop use)?
Helix Player - crashes!
Xfmedia - crashes!
pympd - crashes!
Elisa - really designed for a TV
Freevo - really designed for a TV
Can it actually play music?
Jlgui - Java app that just wouldn't play music with OpenJDK or Sun Java, or with/without pulseaudio
Can I add items to the playlist/library and play them (from within the interface)?
(To include MPD in this review, I cheated for them, added 1 single line to MPD config file)
Abraca - couldn't get it to add items (it could play items added by other MPD clients thought)
Bluemindo - added items fine, but they were invisible in the interface
Esperanza - couldn't get it to add items (but it could play items added by other XMMS clients)
Potamus - A very simple client that you need to drag and drop items to. I want at least an add button.
MP3 Support?
Everyone passed.
FLAC Support?
Everyone passed.

This leaves me with:
Alsaplayer, Amarok, Aqualung, Ario, Audacious, Banshee, Decibel, Gimmix, Glurp, Gnome Music Player Client, Juk, Kplayer, Listen Music Player, Minirok, Muine, Pygmy, Qmmp, Sonata, Xfmpc, gbemol, gmusicbrowser, gxmms2, Videolan (which I added just for fun), Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

Have I missed any, or missing something obvious with the ones I left behind today? Suggestions for future criteria are also wanted.

Why do you like Free Software and Ubuntu?

2009-07-26T01:45:00.021+05:30

Why do you like Free Software and Ubuntu?

My Answer:
I consider software important. Really really important. Why?
Most people don't really understand just how much power software has over our current society. Let's pretend all the software in the world was really just one single person. What could that person do?

Change everyone's bank account balances (and change local records to match so noone notices!)
Choose many elected officials
Isolate individuals socially, make their emails go unanswered, etc (or worse make seem to send emails creating arguments)
In some places, arrest people
Ruin a credit score
Change the news
Change history
Nuke the world (or just provide bad information to leaders and let them do it)

Yes, quite skynetish, eh? Luckily software isn't just one individual, nor was it written by one person. But the power is still held by all of the software in the world (or really the people who created it).

I believe that an essential part of democracy is allowing those that are interested to have a hand in controlling the systems that have the power. How?

The (A)GPL ensure perpetually that the end user of the software will have the clear ability to take control of the software on their devices. The AGPL could also be used to force transparency, another democratic necessity, of the methods used in voting, banking, etc.

A world with just Free Software (let's just say all AGPL for simplicity) should be substantially closer to perfect competition. Why?

It lowers the barrier to entry, you can just pick up the source code to Gmail and make a new product. (Which Gmail can then copy from you).
More sellers. The more sellers, the more responsive a supplier needs to be to you cause you can switch.
Similar Products. They are mostly compatible with their specific value adds that will be likely incorporated into the next version of a competitor.

Perhaps this sounds a lot like Linux distros to you? :)

Well, Why Ubuntu?
We aren't there yet
Ubuntu makes some of the necessary compromises (proprietary drivers, etc) that give many more people, more of the freedom and control then they would have had without it. Right now, I feel Ubuntu has the best chance of getting us closer.

Community
People need help to get involved with politics; communities exist to help concerned citizens to help change their governments. The Ubuntu community is here to help new users and contributors get involved helping to shape their software. Which is critical, because even if you have the freedom or right, doesn't mean you have the knowledge to use it. Receptive communities, like Ubuntu's, help get the knowledge to you.

Where are you going with this?
I was actually trying to answer the question, Why do I hate Microsoft? (I mean, come on, I don't want Mono included on the default Ubuntu install, so I clearly hate Microsoft or Novell, or somebody)

I don't hate Microsoft. I don't consider myself anti Microsoft or anti Mono. I have actually set people up to use both Windows and Mono applications before, gasp! And I actually like Novell. (I'm also a MCSA)

I consider myself pro Free Software and pro community created and governed languages (as well as content, and much more).

We have a better way to create software, a more democratic control structure over what we do, and most importantly, we give users great software and a path (through the community) to help them be in control of their software and have a say in its future.

Related Posts, somewhat referenced:
SciAm Column on "Rational Atheism"; The Dangers of Being "Anti" Rather Than "Pro"
Why do you like Microsoft?

United4Iran.com July 25th

2009-07-25T01:49:00.004+05:30

Go to www.united4iran.org.
Find the city closest to you.
Support human rights.

Three random things....

2009-07-21T02:56:00.006+05:30

Microsoft adds code to Linux
Microsoft donates code directly to Linux kernel (although I can't find the actual code or LKML post, meh, I'll take their word for it). http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jul09/07-20LinuxQA.mspx

I find this to be quite a good development, it should make it easier for those places that only have MS setups to try out virtual Linux servers. But, most importantly, MS is playing our game by some of our rules now (at least partially). Although at the same time they have videos on the linked article only playable in SilverLight on Windows (and Intel Macs). (To be fair they link to Moonlight, which doesn't work)

We can also now say, "Even Microsoft has fully GPL Linux drivers, why don't you?"

Google Chrome for Linux - External Repository Dist-Upgrading
I tried out Google Chrome for Linux and noticed that it installs a cron job that will keep adding an apt sources line to get around the fact that during dist-upgrades we disable all non-Ubuntu repositories. That sucks for users and PPA/repository developers, can't we have a better update method for that? I don't particularly like Google's way either, though. Ideas?

Firefox 3.5 - Offlne Storage - Sites to try it on?
So Firefox 3.5 is out and one of the new features is the HTML5 Offline Application Storage stuff, similar to Google Gears. Has anyone found any sites that use the HTML5 Offline Storage stuff? I am hoping Gmail, etc will start working natively with 3.5 (without gears).

Community Council vs Technical Board

2009-07-14T21:13:00.019+05:30

So.. both the Community Council and Technical Board will be welcoming new members. I'm trying to determine if I want to run for one, the other, or neither. If you don't know these are two places where many decisions are made for Ubuntu.

I've decided to lay out my own pros/cons list of what I would be bringing to each and ask for the communities advice.

Community Council	Technical Board
Only a very general idea of how the community is really organized.	Generally good understanding of how all the technical pieces fit together.
Will likely make an Org Chart and increase the documentation on some Community Council pages.	Not a developer+
Can make policies to make decisions (of other boards) more transparent (hopefully to prevent some decision flamewars)	Follow technical developments (on X, sound, kernel, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gnome, and more) very closely
Could invite other corporate sponsors into contributing money and development efforts into the Ubuntu repository (including using CD creation facilities) Cough ChromeOS powered by Ubuntu?	My views on a certain language* may distract some (and the technical board decides default inclusion on CDs)

*Look at perceived conflict of interest (here)
? I'm not actually sure if I could do this.
+I'm not sure, but this might completely disqualify me

In either case (or the third do nothing) I plan on updating some certain pages with a bit more information.

I have internet!

2009-06-15T21:50:00.004+05:30

Hey. It's still internet.

Going to OpenOffice, Step 1 Unfreezing

2009-06-12T17:13:00.011+05:30

"Unfreezing" is a term I took out of a text book about organizational change. People have their ideas "frozen" about how things should work, so the first thing you should do to change them, is to do some "unfreezing".

How did I approach "unfreezing" with OpenOffice:
Communication:

Say the organization is going to change (gasp)
Email them with more information on WHY, and how they can learn more
Speak rationally and honestly, if it's money, say that. If it's more flexibility say that. If it's both, you get the idea...
Get feedback (I used a google docs form, somewhat ironically)

What should be in the feedback? Most will not just want to change, you should expect that. Feedback let's you identify what concerns they have and see if they are legitimate (or if you can easily explain them away). It's also essential to determine what different use cases are covered by different users.

Training: Take the feedback and engineer some training to cover the common 80% of users. (For the other 20 you can do advanced training later). A key part of training is to make sure the users have OOo installed on their machine, so they can follow along and get used to it. Another important training item is how to convert a .doc to .odt, etc (and redo any formatting that breaks).

Get more feedback on training and see if the users feel better about switching and also if you are doing a good job in training. When you think the
organization is ready, switch to OpenOffice opening all .docs, .xls, and .ppts (I haven't done that yet).

Oh right and make sure everyone gets this:
Internal docs: use .od* (ods,odt,odp)
External docs (and no external editing): use .pdf
External docs (and need to edit): use .doc, xls, ppt

So, Planet, what do you do differently?

Random Picture from India..

Banshee by default, C'mon not all of us have 4 GB of memory!

2009-06-02T16:01:00.004+05:30

I read this (http://mrooney.blogspot.com/2009/05/karmic-desktop-uds-run-down.html) and quite like almost everything I see.

Pidgin being replaced by Empathy is somewhat sad (I really like Pidgin), but the reasons are quite good.

Disclaimer: I am quite against any Mono (the technology beyond Banshee/F-Spot/Tomboy) applications being on the Ubuntu Desktop CD for other reasons. You can likely read why somewhere else :P. This isn't necessarily about Mono.

Banshee replacing Rhytmbox on the other hand, not so much.

However, it does seem to use 3-10x more memory than RB which is very troubling (60-300MB compared to RBs fairly consistent 25MB),

Please, Please think of those of us who only have 512 Mb of ram in a laptop, or even those with less.

But clearly Banshee will get better memory usage over time..?
I reviewed it's memory usage (and others) about 2 years ago (Banshee was in dead last, then). http://gquigs.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-players-out-in-memory-performance.html

And yes, I realize Rhytmbox isn't going away, but development seems to slow in applications that lose "default" standing in Ubuntu.

Other items I am curious about: replacing gnome-pilot with multisync? any screensaver (removing) discussions? Remote desktop viewer vs terminal server client?

I'm in India

2009-05-23T15:23:00.000+05:30

About a week ago I boarded a plane bound for Delhi, India (actually Dubai, but transferred) to begin my first out-of-college job. I am working for a non-profit that helps communities through microinsurance. [What is microinsurance]

I will be working on several projects but the primary project will be migrating this non-profit from a Windows platform to a Linux one (quite likely Ubuntu). This includes reviewing every application currently used and finding an alternate (or wine, virtualization, etc). The first thing we are doing is an OpenOffice switch.

I am currently writing up the Project Plan for OpenOffice and have already noticed a couple things. Upon importing a .doc Project Plan template:

Table Of Contents breaks
Header/Footer no longer covers the entire document

Fixing Table of Contents
It breaks because OpenOffice uses styles - Headings specifically to do a ToC. Most people who use Microsoft Office use numbering. So you need to go through the document turning off numbering, and assigning it to a Heading #.

Go through the document
For each line that is numbered and that you want to make part of the ToC
- Turn off numbering by clicking anywhere on the line
- Bullets and numbering should appear
- And then click Turn Off Numbering (third button from left)
Change that line to be on Heading #
- Based on the previous numbering scheme
- So for 3. You make it heading 1, For 3.8 you make it heading 2, For 1.3.8 you make it Heading 3.
- You select the style in the drop down box to the right of the font (or by using F11)

Styles are a much better way of doing things, and you should learn more about them.

Fixing Header/Footer
It doesn't matter what page you do this on, but don't you want different Headers/Footers on different series of pages!

Bring up "Styles and Formatting" by pressing F11
In Styles go from Paragraph to Page (fourth button on the top)
If you see any Convert 1, Convert 2, etc - Right click and delete them

That should be it. Oh and this is my street..

Hitslink confirms it, Linux is growing

2009-05-01T20:18:00.003+05:30

"Linux Breaks 1% on the client!"
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&sample=35