“The time has come…to talk of many [technologies].” –Lewis Carroll(‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’)
GNU/Linux
Asia Catches Up with GNU/Linux Distributions – A Distrowatch Report
0Distrowatch Weekly Newsletter notes in its 13th August 2007 issue that Asia is fast catching up with the readership of Distrowatch.com website, which roughly translates to a keen interest in keeping in touch with, and downloading, various GNU/Linux and BSD distributions. The following table should shed some light on this development:
| Rank | Country/Territory | 2006 | 2007 | % Change |
| 1 | Japan (JP) |
328,336 | 347,879 | +6.0% |
| 2 | China (CN) |
151,915 | 209,203 | +37.7% |
| 3 | India (IN) |
80,889 | 137,702 | +70.2% |
| 4 | Indonesia (ID) |
72,668 | 112,998 | +55.5% |
| 5 | Turkey (TR) |
67,465 | 101,789 | +50.9% |
Number of visits from Japan were very high even in 2006 but the increase in visits from India over just seven months since then is remarkable. The above four countries(other than Japan) have registered around 50% increase in the same period, India leading the table by a big margin. This is what Distrowatch has to say about it:
While Japan has been maintaining the top position since the beginning of this web site, it’s interesting to note the dramatic growth of readership in the two most populous countries in the world – China and India. With a handful of exceptions, the number of readers visiting DistroWatch has been on the increase and a total number of Asian-based readers have grown by more than 20% since a year ago.
Source: Distrowatch
Linux Bible 2007 Edition: Install/Run 10+ GNU/Linux Distributions(Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo etc)
3The Wiley book, Linux Bible – 2007 Edition, by Christopher Negus, the author of popular book Red Hat Linux Bible, got at least one thing right: it gives the reader an option to select one of many GNU/Linux distributions available today according to his or her requirements/taste. The necessity of sticking to a distribution just because it happened to come with the a “Red Hat Linux Bible,” “Debian GNU/Linux Bible,” “The Official Ubuntu Book”, “Linux Made Easy” and plenty of other such GNU/Linux books that the user happened to buy in search of a ‘linux book’ is present no more. This book covers the installations of over a dozen GNU/Linux distributions and includes all of those distributions on the DVD & CD that come with the book. The distributions covered by the book include:
- Fedora Core
- Debian GNU/Linux
- openSUSE Linux
- KNOPPIX
- Yellow Dog Linux
- Gentoo Linux
- Slackware Linux
- Freespire
- Mandriva Linux
- Ubuntu Linux
- Coyote Linux Firewall
I am particularly happy with the inclusion of Slackware and Gentoo Linux.
The book also points out small yet useful distributions like Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, BackTrack Suite, System Rescue CD, MoviX, GeeXboX, KnoppMyth(TV), Dyne:boli(multimedia)c and more.
The book comes with a DVD and a CD-ROM, details of the contents of which are provided in an appendix in the book. The DVD that comes with the book contains the following distributions/images.
- Fedora Core 6(installs directly from the DVD)
- Slackware 11(installs directly from the DVD)
- Live CDs of KNOPPIX 5.0.1 and BackTrack (boots directly from the DVD)
- Ubuntu 6.10(boots directly from the DVD)
- Gentoo Linux((boots directly from the DVD)
- Mandriva One 2007(boots directly from the DVD)
- Freespire 1.0.13 ISO image
The CD contains the following distributions:
- Live CDs of Damn Small Linux, INSERT, SLAX, System Rescue CD, Puppy Linux and Coyote Linux.
- Minimal install CDs of Debian, SUSE and Gentoo. Need a working Internet connection to complete the installation.
All of these can be booted right from the CD-ROM.
The book covers much more than just how to install or run the above mentioned distributions of course. The first two parts provide a general introduction to all aspects of GNU/Linux operating system – shell commands, GUI desktop, basic administration, Internet, and security.
The penultimate two parts discuss audio and video playback, word processors and image manipulators, email and web clients, gaming(could’ve been avoided), server software like web(Apache), database(MySQL), PHP, EMail(Exim), Print(CUPS) and File(NFS and Samba) servers.
The last part contains two chapters on programming under GNU/Linux.
More information on the product website and Amazon.
Installing Solaris Express Developer Edition(5/07) on PC/VMWare
1Sun released the second version of Solaris Express Developer Edition(SXDE) in June this year. It was made available to the users in one of the two ways:
- Download the CD/DVD images from Sun’s website.
- Place an electronic order for a free DVD Kit containing SXDE. Completely free of cost including international shipping(limited time offer).
- Insert the Solaris DVD into the DVD-ROM drive and boot the computer. Alternatively, create a new virtual machine with at least 8GB hard disk space and 768MB RAM, more is highly recommended. Start the virtual machine with its CD-ROM drive mounted on the physical drive.
- You will see the boot menu. Keep “Solaris Express, Developer Edition” menu entry selected and press ENTER.
- Solaris is booting into the installer.
- Select your keyboard layout.
- Solaris installer tests if it has detected the graphics hardware properly or not. If you can read the text, then click within the text area window with the mouse and press ENTER. The installation will proceed.
- Select a language and press “Next”.
- Select your country.
- The current date and time according to the country selected will be shown next. Correct it if it is wrong and press “Next”.
- Select a root password and enter it twice in the provided text boxes and press “Next”.
- The SXDE license agreement, read carefully. Press the “Next” button if you want to continue with the installation.
- Select additional localisations to install. English will be installed by default.
- Partitioning has to be done carefully if installing on a real drive containing other operating systems and data. First select the drive which contains free/unallocated space, create the needed partitions(/, /export/home, swap etc) etc. The following screenshots should give you an idea if you have ever created partitions while installing a GNU/Linux OS.
- The installation will now begin.
- The developer tools are installed after the operating system is installed.
- The installation is finished. Press “Reboot Now” to reboot the computer/virtual machine. The first time you boot into the Solaris system, some configuration steps need to be performed.
- Solaris installer doesn’t provide the option to create a non-privileged user account, so you have to login the first time as root.
- Choose a desktop, I prefer GNOME.
- As soon as the desktop is loaded, create a new user account. “Users and Groups” window will be opened automatically; Press “Add User” button and fill out the details. Logout and re-login as non-privileged user as soon as possible.
- Complete the registration if you wish, otherwise click “Cancel”.
- You need a Sun Online Account to finish the registration process. You can create it from the registration window.
After registration is finished, hopefully you will have a working Sun Update Manager configuration from where you can install all the updates released for SXDE.
- The desktop. Have fun.
I received my Solaris Express Developer Edition 5/07 DVD a week ago and wanted to try it out in VMWare. I will eventually install it on a real machine to find out its hardware compatibility. Below is a screenshot guided tour of the procedure to install SXDE in VMWare; the procedure would be the same for a PC too, except for the things like the risks involved in partitioning the hard disk where more care will be needed.
Sun Express Developer Edition is the easiest to way to start developing Java applications on a *nix platform.
More information:
Sun Express Developer Edition Home
Sun Express Developer Edition FAQ
Installing Apache, MySQL, PHP(AMP) Stack on SXDE
Upgrade SXDE 2/07 to 5/07
Why Nokia N800 Is An Ideal Device For Me
6
The reason I had decided to buy Nokia N800 Internet Tablet the very first week it was released, even before I could read decent reviews about the product, was that it is based on the highly customisable/extensible GNU/Linux platform. Also its predecessor Nokia N770 had already tasted reasonable success. Few things that could’ve been expected were that N800 might smooth-out some of the complaints that the early N770 users had(also fixed in N770 through updates) but it might not support as many applications in the first quarter of 2007 as N770 did. But I had trust in the Free software developer community that within an year or so, N800 can boast of more applications than any other device in its category. Less than six months since its release, I am already enjoying a number of applications ported to N800 platform(Skype is still missing! Not anymore).
I used the device for the first few months deliberately not installing any of the applications available in Nokia or third-party repositories to see how useful the device would be in its default state. I must say that most of the functionality I was looking for was already available in the device. One thing needs to be stressed here though: Nokia N800 is not a phone, it’s also not a wannabe phone. It’s just an Internet Tablet that allows voice based communication over Internet through applications like Google Talk(comes pre-installed in the device). If being able to call a traditional phone is high on the wish list, even though it might just be possible with N800 when Skype will be is ported to it, still I would say that it is definitely not the device for you. Nokia N800 vs iPhone just doesn’t make any sense to me(though it is fun mocking the Apple/Microsoft products :) ).
Now coming to why N800 is so perfect for me:
- Browse Internet from anywhere in the house/office/etc. It’s better than a laptop because it is such a small device, it is so easy to carry it around the whole house, and even a bit farther too, if my access point can throw the signal that far. Thankfully it doesn’t come with some crappy old web browser that can’t handle anything beyond WML/HTML – N800 comes with full-blown Opera 8 web browser with good support for even Web 2.0/Ajaxified websites. The web pages can be zoomed in and out to increase/decrease font size etc of a page with a simple button press. The wireless connectivity is easy to set up(when I powered the device on, it searched and showed all my three access points, and after I selected one of them, it has been connecting to it without I having to repeat the selection process) and it has never dropped the connection. I can lay down on a couch while doing casual web browsing, download files, save or bookmark pages. Before going to shop for electronic items, I browse through all the products at home, and instead of taking notes, I just save the pages on the device and carry it with me to the shops. This would’ve been unnecessary if the shopping complexes in my area had WiFi access points or if Webaroo kind of application were supported for N800.
- Audio and Video Player. I have never bought an MP3 player in my life. I have seen and ignored people around me buying iPods, Creative players etc but I never could see how a 5″x3″ sized device that didn’t also play video could be useful to me. iPod Video and Creative Zen Vision:M now support video too, but their screen size is like a joke to me. I was considering buying Creative Zen Vision:W(after disappointing experience with Creative Portable Media Center) which has a dream screen-size. N800 made it unnecessary as it plays MPEG, DivX, XviD, FLV etc. formats and I can copy the video files like copying any other file on a PC: no cumbersome synchronisation process using a tailor-made software is required. I am not completely happy with the video playback capability of N800 though. Without installing additional software, it plays only MPEG files. With proper codec support, it plays a lot more video formats. I wish that as long as the video is in a resolution compatible with the device, it should play most of the popular formats without additional software(just a single additional application like MPlayer is fine; most of us are going to install it anyway). The bass in audio playback is non-existent with the headphones that come with the device. I exchanged them with Creative E880 earphones and MP3 playback is nearly as good as iPod – with a better user interface.
-
Voice/Video Chat. Google Talk is pre-installed in Nokia N800 and N800 comes with built-in microphone and a video/web camera, so it’s at least as effective as chatting on a PC using a Web Camera, only a lot more convenient. The web camera especially can be rotated 360 degrees but is useful only while video chatting. It can not be used as a stand-alone camera either to take pictures or to record video. An application is available through Nokia repository that enables N800 to take pictures through this camera but I found the quality of the pictures to be too bad. You can’t imagine how bad. Google Talk is more than sufficient for my needs as I don’t carry N800 around the town to take pictures with it. - EBook Reader with FBReader. N800 may not be a dream device for the regular ebook readers but for a casual reader like me, it has enough features(except support for bookmarks) to make me happy. FBReader doesn’t come with N800 pre-installed but installing it from the “Application Manager” is a trivial task. It supports plenty of ebook formats and allows switching to portrait or landscape mode. N800 supports increasing/decreasing font size and full-screen reading mode.
- FM Radio. When I get bored listening to all the MP3s present on the device, I tune into the local FM channels for variety. Earphones are needed to act as antenna for FM tuning. A small application also needs to be installed.
-
Support for more than 8GB memory! The device officially supports only 2GB cards but even that means 4GB in total as the device comes with two memory slots. 4GB SD cards come very cheap these days and work just fine with N800 – I have 2 x 4GB = 8GB memory. 8GB SDHC cards can also be used(so the total becomes 16GB of memory!) but a modified kernelan official update (2007) needs to be installed which though is straightforward but not a trivial task. - Terminal! I wouldn’t have bought the device if the terminal was not supported on it. The device can run ssh server, vnc server too so that it can be accessed from another computer.
- Acts as USB storage device, doesn’t need a memory card reader or custom software. Most of the devices require a custom software to talk to the device even for simple file transfers. Some devices allow the memory cards to be removed from the device and attached to the computers through memory card readers. N800 connects to the computer through a USB cable and acts as a regular USB storage device(just like iPods do – for file transfers. For audio/video transfers, iTunes is needed). The big plus point of this feature, apart from the fact that a software doesn’t have to be installed before connecting the device to a computer and a memory card reader is not needed, is that it can be accessed from a gnu/linux system too. This may seem an insignificant feature who haven’t struggled and failed to connect 9 out of 10 devices to their primary operating system.
So that’s my list though I can add a few more features to it easily.
If you are looking for a balanced review of the product, inquirer has a good one:
Nokia’s cheap UMPC alternative is future-proof
Google for more info.
‘wget -c’ Bug in Download Script Generated by Synaptic in Ubuntu 7.10(Feisty Fawn)
1Update: This bug(bug #107925 at launchpad.net) has been fixed in the source code and the changes should make it to the next binary release of Synaptic Package Manager. (A deb package has since been built and made available on the launchpad website as synaptic 0.60ubuntu4 but I haven’t tested it yet. It should make to the Gutsy Gibbon final release, and will also be back-ported to Feisty in all certainty.)
Ubuntu Edgy Eft was the first version to introduce this feature to Ubuntu users: Those who can’t download large packages on, say, a home machine can just mark the packages to be installed in Synaptic Package Manager and then let it generate a download script. This script can be carried to a machine with good Internet connection and executed there to download all the required files. The download files can then be carried back to the home machine to complete the installation of selected packages through Synaptic Package Manager. I have explained the complete procedure in an earlier post:
Simple Way to Update Ubuntu Edgy With Slow/No Internet Connection
The download script generated by Synaptic Package Manager in Edgy contained simple wget commands, one for each file needed to be downloaded. Here is one example:
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cvs/cvs_1.12.13-5build1_i386.deb
Elias brought to my notice in a comment post that Synaptic Package Manager in Feisty generates a slightly different command in the download script than in Edgy:
wget -chttp://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cvs/cvs_1.12.13-5build1_i386.deb
The ‘-c’ option added to the command continues/resumes partially downloaded package files if the download was interrupted earlier. There is a bug in the generated command i.e. lack of space between the ‘-c’ option and the download URL. It is a confirmed bug #107925 on bugs.launchpad.net(filed way back in April).
Here are some of the ways to fix it:
- Add a space manually after ‘-c’ option in each wget command in the download script.
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/c/cvs/cvs_1.12.13-5build1_i386.deb
Tedious if the script has hundreds of wget commands in it.
- Write a script to parse the download script and automatically add a space in every command. One such script is available from the bug page on launchpad: fix-download-script
Or save the following text in a file(say ‘fix.sh’):#!/bin/sh
sed -i ‘s/-chttp/-c http/’ $1Then run it like this:
# sh fix.sh buggy-download-script - Patch the buggy source file and rebuild the packages. Not for the typical users! Here is a diff file from the same launchpad page: synaptic.debdiff
It’s a simple edit of synaptic-0.57.11.1ubuntu/gtk/rgmainwindow.cc file.
This line:
[cpp]
out << "wget -c" << uris[i] << endl;
[/cpp]
should be:
[cpp]
out << "wget -c " << uris[i] << endl;
[/cpp] - Wait for the patch to be applied by Ubuntu developers/volunteers and then apply the updates in your Ubuntu to fix the bug. The importance of the bug is set to ‘medium’ so it may take some time to get fixed. (The source code is fixed now; the next released binary of SPM application should have these changes in it.)
This bug was reported on April 20, 2007 and it is such a trivial fix, I totally fail to understand what is stopping anyone from applying this fix. I will update this post if it ever gets fixed.
Recent Comments