Self confessed distro junkie's random writings

Thou shall not die

2007-06-13T17:12:00.000+05:30

I am referring to this blog which seemed as good as dead. For the past 5 months I have been predominantly a windows user with 1 month spent in the USA for official work where only Windows is used.
My pc self assembled (by my brother) crashed on me in Feb 07. I tried my level best with whatever knowledge I had to somehow start it but to no avail. I was not able to get any display on my monitor and the green light on the CPU stayed on continuously. My first suspicion was it was due to one of the harddisk which had developed bad sectors. Finally I gave up and took help from the local computer dealer. By current standards (considering the cutting edge technology) my box should be called outdated but on a conservative comparison it was a healthy system.

Alas the motherboard had conked. The monitor was working fine. Now i had 2 options, dig out the warranty which is for 2 years or buy a brand new PC. The local shop whom I had approached coaxed me into building new PC. Now I was spoilt for choice as there options galore. Should I go in for a AMD or an Intel a AMD X2 or a Intel C2D(Core 2 Duo), the options and the permutation and combinations were unlimited from the high end to the minimalistic home computer.
I researched extensively on the internet and posted in various forums especially the Digit magazine forum. I also consulted friends who had bought a computer within the last 6 months. 6 months is a long time for electronic and computer hardware, prices had dropped considerably and a pc with a basic Core2Duo processor looked tempting and affordable. Finally my research ended in more of a confused state of mind and I gave in to buy the C2d.
I learnt a lesson though in this process, that with the extensive info found from the internet I could have myself bought these hardware parts and got it assembled from a local guy.
So now I have a spanking new Pc a Intel C2D E6300@1.86ghz 1gig of RAM, 2 SATA HDD of 80gigs each, DVD writer, and a Intel DG965ry mobo.
Alas after using it for 2 days I was enlightened that Linux kernel did not support the DG965ry chipset. Yes , you could make it work with many workarounds or wait for 2 months for the new kernel with this chipset supported. Luckily I was out of station for a month and was not using my computer. In the meantime I waited for new versions of the Linux kernel to be bundled with some distro.
With much trepidation after almost 3 months without Linux I decided to try Ubuntu (the most popular distro according to Distrowatch). I downloaded the desktop cd through torrent and booted with it.
Everything went fine and Ubuntu booted to the desktop. So I had regained confidence and was sure that Ubuntu supported the DG965ry chipset. But this was a live run and now I needed to install it. Here came the question of bootloader. The most widely used bootloader for Linux GRUB was surely there, but I wanted to boot Ubuntu in a alternate way i.e not installing it to the Master Boot Record(MBR) as is the most preferred way.
Now here is where the beauty of open source and free software is, you have options for everything and you are spoilt for choice. After lot of exploring and spending the weekend and trying out many tools, I found GRUB4DOS.
Lo and behold I could boot into Ubuntu without touching the MBR
Right now I am just booting and exploring Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn (although I have used linux off and on since 2000) and I will write another post on bootloaders in detail.
This post will hopefully keep my blog alive however trivial it may be in the blogosphere.
I am also using a brand new laptop provided by my office a Dell D820 customized with 4 gb RAM and a 80g HDD. My earlier laptop IBM T41 lies as a standby.

Windows XP autochk problems and solution

2006-12-31T21:53:00.000+05:30

This is the last post for 2006.
I did not want to write anything today but somehow dragged myself into writing this. It has been a blockbuster year for me personally. Lots of personal chores completed this year which had been postponed year after year lazily. Work and hobby wise it was not a very good year. Did not concentrate on 1 distro or one language. Working on linux only still remains a mirage.

Since I had been to the USA for a month, my PC had been in the hands of my kid and all others and sundry who just know the basics of operating a PC.
As such when I came back I could see many games downloaded from the internet and installed wherever the setup defaulted. No uninstallation was done if the game/program did not work or was not used.
The major problem was that whenever my PC booted chkdsk or autochk(as it is called in XP) would start and after checkimg uptoa certain % the pc rebooted. The quickest solution to this was cancelling disk check and proceeding to boot in to XP. This cancelling had to be done everytime whenever the XP booted.
I decided to find a solution to this. Obviously the first stop was google. Google gave some very good links but many were ambiguous.
I booted from a bootable XP installation cd and went into the recovery console. Starting autochk I came across the same problem and the PC rebooted.
I then booted my pc off a Win98 cd. I ran the old Scandisk program and did a thorough check of drive C. Unfortunately scandisk reported 6 bad sectors. Now when I rebooted into XP autochk started but this time it did the complete check resolving errors and booted cleanly into windows.
The error is resolved and everything is just working fine.
Maybe somebody should tell Microsoft that its older products are more stable than its newer versions.

Indian screenshot in linux

2006-12-21T17:55:00.000+05:30

Whenever I browse through various distribution home pages and their screenshot I see screenshots uploaded by users across the world with their country specific contents. I was surprised to see a Indian screenshot with a Hindi song Jhalak Dikhlaja in the XMMS playlist and the map of India in the background. I found this screenshot on the Zenwalk distro page

Out of hibernation and kernel panics

2006-11-30T08:48:00.000+05:30

After a long time really thought that I have been neglecting my blog and ahsould post some crap.
Things to do
Need to upgrade to all new versions of Linux distros---I am way behind
Slackware, Ubuntu, Debian
Have to open up my pc and clean off the dust.
Now that I have a office provided laptop (IBM T41) ---need to use it more effectively.
Del.icio.us cleaning continues but again need to speed it up else it looks like a mess.

I have not had a kernel panic in the last year, mainly because I use tried and tested distros and the standard hardware. It was wonderful to see people posting images of kernel panics in Linux and Freebsd and there are many of these. Surprisingly there is only 1 image found on google for kernel panic in Solaris ?????. I remember having kernel panics when I first tried linux in 2000 and did not know what to do to resolve it.

Del.icio.us cleaning spree

2006-09-08T10:16:00.000+05:30

I am on a del.icio.us cleaning spree. The links are piling and are saved to tags which I feel are relevant at that point of time. Yes, and there is duplication also. It seems a mammoth task as it is sometimes confusing where a link is to be tagged or whether the link needs to be saved or not.
On the del.icio.us topic this post sums up how to become a del.icio.us power user.
My links can be viewed from the links column on my blog.

Finally installed Ubuntu-with some errors

2006-07-18T10:01:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu has been topping almost every linux site and therefore I had to install anyways. I faced some problems though.

Halfway through while trying to install it from the alternate cd, my monitor went into sleep mode and I could not do anything. This means I did not know what was happening as there was no display. There was continuous cd and hdd activity to warrant that the installation was in process. I tried to reboot from the keyboard and tried everything but in vain. Finally I had to reset the pc. Assuming something went wrong during install I installed it again, this time deciding to be careful to press only the ENTER key and not reboot. The same problem was faced and it was a blind install in the last leg of install.
This caused some errors like on first boot the human.xml theme could not be loaded. The login screen also was not activated by default i.e I had to press the buttons Enter to enable the username and password screen.
one solution to (2) I found that the standard Gnome greeting screen worked correctly.
Need to investigate the screen blanking problem as nobody has faced this issue when I posted into lists

Installing Ubuntu Dapper drake

2006-07-04T09:16:00.000+05:30

Downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06 iso. It has become a sleek product. But after booting to the desktop and clicking on install the problems started. My pc hung when the installation asked for time zone.
I restarted it and tried to install again and this time it was taking infinity to proceed to the next screen and there was continuous disk activity of both the hdd and the cd rom drive.
A post to the lists gave an answer that this install is buggy and with RAM<300mb it does not work
My pc has 256mb of RAM.
The solution was another cd named alternate cd which had the old debian style installer.
Now i need to download this which means another day.
Ubuntu is topping all distro sites and hence I wanted to try it. I already have installed 5.10 but not used it much.

irc logs for freenode channels,Lisp,emacs etc

2006-07-04T08:53:00.000+05:30

I remembered once I had seen a page with irc logs for Ubuntu. I had not paid much attention then.
After the release of Dapper 6.06 of Ubuntu I wanted to view these logs and could not recollect the url. A search on google went in vain, maybe i did not enter the proper search words. Finally I found it. I searched if there were logs available for all other channels but only some channels are logged.
In turn i found this cool site which keeps logs some of the irc channels.
Also these
Ubuntu/Edubuntu/Kubuntu/Ubuntu-dev------>http://people.ubuntu.com/~fabbione/irclogs/
Selected channels------------------------------->http://www.irclogs.net

Irc logs can be useful as a searchable faq and also may provide answers to many questions.
Recently Lisp and Emacs have been the flavor of the month for me and I browse through the lisp irc logs frequently, although I do not use both.

Gnuradio

2006-06-08T19:49:00.000+05:30

Found a link to gnuradio. Radio through software and i never knew such a thing existed. Would surely like to try it out when I have time.

Have started reading "Learning Python" in earnest. Have read very little, not even upto chapter 1. I had started earlier with python and had almost read 3 chapters but had left it due to lack of time. Now I am not worrying about time. I have decided on a target of 1 chapter per week, and even if this is not achievable consistently then "read whenever I have time".

Installed SUSE 10.1 from the LFY magazine cd. Did not have much time to work on it but the installation screens are superb.

Playing games with my kid from old CHIP CD's. All are demo versions. Played Superbike 2001,
NFS Hot pursuit, Road rash. Trying to run NFS porsche unleashed on XP.

Emacs and lisp week

2006-05-16T17:42:00.000+05:30

The perennial dilemma of "which editor" vi/vim or emacs finally got resolved atleast for me.
Emacs came out as the winner. Both of them have their merits and demerits but I thought emacs has that geek feeling as an all in one customisable and extensible editor. One reason for some amount of bias is that I have bought the Learning Gnu Emacs -OReilly book. This inspite of reading on O'Reilly itself that they sell the vi book twice as much as emacs. Actually I have found emacs very difficult to learn with all the odd key combinations instead of the regular ones which we are used to.
The turning point for my decision was the number of new information resources I could find on the internet. It all began when I started a search for IRC in google. This was just for the heck of it, just wanted to follow the links in the search result of google. This lead me to a number of links related to IRC and to other information. For e.g the developer of MIRC a IRC client's homepage listed some physics and virtual life links. Normally I only see the first 5 pages of the google listing. This time I thought to delve deeper and went beyond page 20 and found a link to the Emacswiki with the EmacsIRC client.
To my astonishment Emacs could also be used as an irc client. I also am an avid LISP follower i.e I am fascinated by Lisp although know nothing about it except that it is a language very few use. I got a link to the Road to LISP survey and this consisted of simple questions of how lisp users came to use lisp and what have they learned so far, what do they feel about lisp in general etc. The answers were mind boggling and I came to know that Lisp can be used for hardcore programming and each one had had a great learning experience and were still learning. I knew all the way that Emacs has been programmed in Elisp a Lisp dialect. Many of the users in the survey said that they had encountered Lisp through Emacs/Elisp. For the whole week and more thereafter I was engrossed in reading the survey and anything and everything about emacs and lisp. I knew that I had to learn emacs atleast.
Also I found that the emacs mailing list was also very active and development was still on. Many users were using emacs as a PIM also.
I also came to know a lot of other terms and books about lisp from the RTL survey which I was not aware of. I had read Eric Raymonds "How to become a hacker" and he mentions that you should know all the 5 languages (C,C++,Java,Python and Lisp). He says learning Lisp will give profound enlightenment even though one may not use it practically. I am ready to be enlightened.
Having written all this I have not even started at anything. The usual reasons of lack of time due to work pressures(not currently) and meeting social obligations(family and friends).

Lets see atleast I am not letting my blog die.

I will not let my blog die

2006-04-26T10:59:00.000+05:30

Well, It has become boring to write a blog to keep it active. But I wont let it die. I will still update it as and when I get time. The latest resolve I have made i snot to buy any new books (techie) but to read it after downloading it from the net and yes all of them are available is some format or other.
Currently my pc has been plagued with adware and pop-sites which come very often. I have tried several of the free spyware programs but to no avail.
I am trying other alternatives.
Another problem has arisen because my ISP has changed some settings and I connect in WinXp through a dial-up icon but through my network card. On observation I found out that the winxp dial up setup states connect using ISDN channel of network card.
Now how do I do this in Linux???????????
After all the dilemma of which text editor emacs or vim I have finally decided to use emacs. It is surely criticised a lot but it has fabulous things which can be done. Now I have just decide but havent had the time to use it.
I hope I do not let my blog die. Will post soon or rather daily

Nothing much

2006-01-30T12:38:00.000+05:30

Its the end of the 1st month of the new year. Nothing new to write. I was very much busy on my job at office. Implementation was in full swing. Had good exposure on Fixed Assets and FSG reports on Oracle.
Started to write a daily journal in Oo writer on FC3
Configured my ADSL connection on slack 10.2, FC3 (already working and stable) and Ubuntu
Found that Ubuntu was a bit sluggish and was suprised how I was addicted to Slackware console with mc as the file explorer.
Wrote programs in c in emacs,vim, kate on gui and vi on console.
I found vi/vim more popular and also more easier and convenient to learn. Emacs has a steep learning curve.
I have bought "Learning Gnu Emacs" last year.
Searched google for vi vs. emacs links and got some whopping 39000+ links.
Yum is giving some problems and stops in between.
I want to download Oracle 10gexpress database on linux.
Windows XP has started giving errors. Applications like Firefox and Azureus are giving errors when I open them although they run smoothly thereafter.
Win Xp shows the filesystem as RAW and I cannot run chkdsk on RAW filesystem.
Could not get any plausible solution to this problem.
I need to format my C drive and reinstall Win XP and also Office 2000.
Do not have much time as lot of household work needs to be done as my brother is getting married in March 06.
I think I will take up this project of writing a journal/diary as I wish for 2006.
Another project is appearing for OCA and OCP examinations in 2006.

Wikipedia-Fund raising appeal

2006-01-03T12:00:00.000+05:30

A post on slashdot describes Wikipedia founder making a personal appeal for donations.
Wikipedia is a very useful source of information and is of course free. I always search google for any specific term and many times the first link is Wikipedia. It is unending, bottomless free information.
I go not know whether wikipedia needs these funds to be online, but surely hope that it does not shutdown or go into oblivion remaining unupdated.
Maybe some big companies like google,yahoo,IBM donate a huge amount andd keep it alive. Cannot imagine internet without wikipedia.
Is there any other encyclopedia equivalent to wikipedia?
Wish I could donate in Rupees.
Off topic
Suddenly I wondered that if blogspot(this site)or del.icio.usor any other site became non free and started charging money or shutdown due to unavoidable circumstances, where would I blog, where will my blog posts till today go. Thinking of this I have started to search for a tool that will archive all my blog posts from all blogs to my HDD.

Synopsis 2005

2006-01-01T16:31:00.000+05:30

My first post for 2006

2005-Adieu

Concentrated more on Linux and opensource in general
Installed additional Hdd in my pc and this is devoted for free os.
Remained faithful with at least 1 distro FC3. I think I used this more than any other distro.
Lost a little bit of faith in Slack but cannot give up. this was because of the elimination of Gnome from slack 10.2
My hdd read somewhat like this as on 31/12/05

hda (Win XP,Slack 10.1,10.2, FC3)
hdb(Ubuntu and Kanotix and balance is empty)

2006-to be done

Try as many distros as possible.
Do geeky things like using the old pc lying idle in a very imaginative way
LFS and gentoo are 2 projects for me in 2006 should try them
OpenSolaris and FreeBSD install them together with linux
Concentrate on one programmimg language, be it c,python, lisp anything and continue that for the whole year. Keep in mind that you can only learn 1 topic at a time.
Do some open source writing just for the satisfaction it gives and maybe try to get it published in the magazines or on the net
Try to think of something innovative taking inspiration from distrowatch
Do some ethical hacking at home only.
Do some preofessional course (OCA/OCP/CISA/ISA) etc
continue blogging even though my blog is ranked above 10lacs in technorati.
Do not lose heart and concentrate and focus.
Try to contibute to some project/distro anything (although difficult for non programmer like me).

Cheers and Happy New Year

Status quo

2005-12-21T11:10:00.000+05:30

Nothing new. It is status quo on every front. I was busy with work official and personal. I keep browsing and surfing the net,finding new links but never ever concentrate or focus on one. Last month I was just learning Oracl Apps(drink Oracle,eat Oracle,sleep oracle).
Again the same dilemma,From where to start? I decided on Python and now I am trying to learn C because I am finding learning C more interesting than python.
I have updated my blog after almost 2 months.
will keep updating I hope or it will die like another diary.

Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger installed

2005-10-21T14:57:00.000+05:30

Today I installed Ubuntu 5.10 breezy badger on my home PC.
I did not fiddle around with it much. One observation I made was that the menu was slightly modified. I wanted to setup pppoeconfig to browse the net and I could not find the menu item for Terminal. It was in the accessories menu. Maybe this change is universal due to Gnome 2.10.1.
I was happy that all the drives were mounted by default and I could open a powerpoint presentation by just double clicking on the file in Linux.
I was not even aware that Oo could import the Powerpoint presentation in Impress.
Surely linux has come a long way. However I could not play a .wmv file in Totem.
Things to to do on Ubuntu
Play mp3 in XMMS (mp3 are not supported and are non free)
Play movies in totem and any other movie player
Open .rar files
Install Aureus
Run DOS emulation to play DOS games like (Digger,Paratruper,pacman etc)
play Games without emulation on linux

News
Flock the social browser has been launched. It integrates RSS and delicious into it.
Still in the beta stage I will download and try it

XP up and running again

2005-10-16T01:17:00.000+05:30

The problem i faced as mentioned in my earlier post did not need any research although I went about searching google and got loads of info.
It was just simple. I had tried the PC-BSD cd which I got with a magazine
It changed the partition type of /dev/hda1 (where windows is installed) to freebsd type. I logged into slack 10.1 and ran cfdisk which showd me this problem.
This is the reason Win XP was not able to read from the partition and gave an error.
I immediately changed it back to FAT32 wrote it to the disk and XP booted normally.
I am writing this from Ubuntu Hoary in mozilla firefox.
My plan is instead of downloading the Breezy iso from Win Xp I would like to do it from Hoary after doing all configs installing azureus etc..............
This will also be a good exposure to linux

Win XP halted, Researching problem

2005-10-14T05:19:00.000+05:30

Today morning as usual I logged into my quadruple boot PC in Win XP.
(Oh to be open source truly. When will I log on to linux by default instead of Win XP for my daily activities???).
My son wanted to hear his songs (a daily ritual) for which I always go to Win XP and start winamp and play those randomly. He has 16 film songs in his own playlist mede by me. Well ran the same for an hour or so and shut it down.
When I was free for some time I again connected to the net thru Win XP browsed my usual sites
(e-mail,trading some porn) etc and then thought of tring out PC-BSD CD which came with the monthly Linux magazine. PC-BSD is still in beta stage. I just wanted to boot from the CD and see how it looked like and quit when asked for installation.
I found that PC-BSD was not perfect and the mouse seem to disappear. Clicking cancel on some dialog boxes did not have the desired effect and the dialog box remained on the screen.
So I quit and wanted to check my bank account online which I had forgotten before.
I rebooted and lo and behold after the initial Windows logo the blue screen with a message came up on the screen.
STOP:c000021a {Fatal system error} The session manager initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000003a

Now I can boot into all other Linux distros but not in to XP. Yeh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Google my friend listed some 689 results for this error but really no solution to the problem.
Everyone explains a different solution based on the error codes. So I am left to research on my own and to find a solution.
Even a boot into the safe mode gave a different STOP error IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Researching..............

Slackware 10.2 installed

2005-10-10T21:47:00.000+05:30

Downloaded Slackware 10.2 and installed it on the partition which had Debian earlier.
I made it a full install. Slackware has abandoned Gnome so I have to use KDE.
Not experimented with it much.
Instead of Debian I thought of using Ubuntu which is a direct variant of Debian.
I have already installed Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04 on /dev/hdb5. Also downloaded a cool Slack wallpaper.

Waiting for the Ubuntu Breezy Badger release on 13/10/05. The same is already available as RC1 candidate.
Thinking of trying out Open SUSE.
Ubuntu seems to have clear directions and great support and also a great community.
So I have 2 distros (one with KDE only and one with Gnome only) -a unique combination.

No progress on the programming front

2005-10-05T12:12:00.000+05:30

Slackware 10.2 has been released. I downloaded the disk1 through torrent and currently am downloading the 2nd.
In my last post I had thought finally on concentrating on one topic of interest rather than flirting with multiple topics and zeroed in on Python. There is no progress after that.
Trying to find the ever evasive time. Although I get some time(2-3 hours daily) I have to utilise the same in household activities which are of utmost importance. Also those activities cannot be skipped permanently. Remaining time is spent with my kid who is just 2 years old.
Will try my level best to progress on this.
I am still writing this on Win Xp through Firefox 1.0.6 with the Noia theme and listening to Music on Winamp. Oh!! to be open source and use Linux.

I had an opportunity to use the laptop for a week in my office. It is a pretty old laptop but ran very well. Dell Lattitude C500 (800mhz,256mb RAM etc). I transferred images from my Nokia 3200 to the laptop through the infrared port and I was amazed at how fast it worked.
Dream of owning my own laptop running free os. It is a dream a laptops are very expensive in India than in any other country.
I observed that the top 10 distros listed of distrowatch based on the number of hits per day remain the same only changing positions and Ubuntu is the top distro overtaking Mandriva for a long time. The 10 distros are
Ubuntu,Mandriva,Suse,Debian,Slackware,Damn Small,Fedora,Koppix, Gentoo and Mepis

Links I frequent as of today
slashdot - really gives some great comments and news
del.icio.us
distrowatch
ubuntu forums -more recently

I have also subscribed to Ubuntu/Fedora/ Mumbai lug and Pune Lug in my Gmail for the past 6 months and sometimes there are interesting discussions aand also sometimes a question by me registers more than 25 replies.

Finally for a link to post on my blog Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu has clarified many aspects of Ubuntu and yes Breezy Badger will be released by 15th October.

Ubuntu status and clarifications

Adios Amigos

Nth attempt to learn programming

2005-09-14T12:25:00.000+05:30

I am making the 'nth' (dont know how many times I started and left it in between due to various circumstances viz lack of time, social and family obligations) attempt to learn programming seriously. After buying many books of various programming languages and also after reading many mailing list posts discussing which language first I have zeroed on Python.
After all this I havent started yet so to speak.
Meanwhile I took a debian quiz
I answered only 14 out of the 42 questions correctly, not bad for a non techie like me I feel.

Another link
What would you put in a Computer Science Curriculum
echoed my thoughts about education curriculum and the practical scenario. I hardly use the technicalities learnt while I was studying for my Chartered Accountancy course. It is just a degree for entering the job market. What we study is pure theory and book knowledge and the actual scenario while working is different.

Who am I?

2005-09-12T17:59:00.000+05:30

Which character do I represent
I am John Sheridan
John is a character in the Babylon 5 universe. You can read his biography at the Worlds of JMS fansite

Kanotix update,broadband connection thru linux

2005-08-29T00:20:00.000+05:30

I did proceed with the kanotix install on HDD. It was a smooth install. Also was able to login tried connecting to the internet through the same but failed. I was searching for some information on the same but could not any relevant info.
Actually setting up the broad band connection is very easy and I did it on FC3 and slackware.
Y0u have to run the following commands
adsl-setup-----------------To setup
adsl-start------------------To start the connection
adsl-stop-------------------To stop the connection

If your distro does not contain these commands you may need to install these from the roaring penguin site.
Here give the username and password and enter thePrimary& alternate DNS ip addresses and everything works fine.
Only problem was that I could do it only as root.
Now I could try out yum for updating packages. First I updated Firefox to 1.06 and then installed the XMMS Mp3 plugin.
I was not much impressed at what I saw in Kanotix.
I dont know, but I do not like KDE much because of its bloat and also since I have used command line and Slackware only from the time I got hooked to linux.
I got an errorin Kanotix and the KDE desktop crashed and it partially worked when I logged in as a normal user.
I have Slackware 10.1 installed without KDE/GNOME but only Xfce and it seems to look great.
Need to do some research on blogs and how to add other's blog links to my blog etc....
I have added a counter on my blog and blocked my home ip and office ip (the only places from where I will update/post) so that visits from these ip's get excluded.
The counter has not moved since then and is at 7 which includes 6 visits by me (till the time I dicovered how to block IP's) and 1 outside visitor.
It seems that the first distro you ever use always retains you back as is in my case.
I have used slackware since 8.0 and I still prefer Slackware with its default CLI login.

Broadband internet !!!!!! Uh oh --Hi-speed internet & Kanotix

2005-08-20T09:41:00.000+05:30

Finally I got a so called Broadband connection(correctly speaking it is a hi-speed connection) on my home PC. This was after trying my local cable operator 2 times without any response and even Sify who responded after 12 days. I got a connection from Exatt (through a local dealer). The speed is good. I was connected on 11/8/05.

Well the first thing I wanted to do was surf to check the surfing speed and download some large file to check the download speed. I surfed some random sites and I was getting a good speed the same which I get at my workplace and also very very fast than dial-up.
I tried to some files(3-4mb) and I could download at an average of 9 to 10KBps. This was very good. On an average I am getting a speed of 15-16KBps
I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and Azureus the Bittorrent client and downloaded the Kanotix Distro iso file. Now I browse with firefox.
It took me at least 4-5 days with 4hrs of continuous downloading (2hrs each in the morning and evening). I also wrote the ISO to a cd.
I downloaded this based on some reviews. I need to freeze on one Distro as my default os another step towards being truly open source.
I tried the live cd and it worked great but i need to try the HD Install

Some links to Kanotix
KANOTIX - Putting the Pizzazz on Debian
My workstation OS-Kanotix

Will update soon with my Kanotix experience

/dev/hda and /dev/hdb on new PC

2005-08-10T07:46:00.000+05:30

I had bought a 40g HDD and installed it on my old PC a IBM PC300gl Celeron 500 64mb RAM
I wanted to try out networking. This requires lot of time and also lot of experimenting. Also the old PC does not support booting from CD and there lay the problem. I have to disconnect the drive connect it to my mew pc install what I want and again install it back in the old pc.
This was not happenning. So i decided to remove the HD from the old pc and attach it to the new pc as primary slave.
I was partly successful. Bios detected the HD but after 2 tries. It was detecting as 32 gb instead of 40gb. After lot of fiddling and changing the jumper settings and finally removing all jumpers except one I got what I wanted. Still I am unclear on the jumper settings and what I did to make it work.
There is a hidden burning desire in me to try those first 50 or maybe 100 distros mentioned on distrowatch for e.g.ike Kanotix/DSL and of course freebsd and LFS even though the principles are the same.(based on RH/Deb/Slack) This desire erupted one fine day and I made the above changes.

Now I have 80g and with 20g gone for Win XP and assuming I keep 2 to 3 gb free space and on an average 4.5g for each distro(it may vary) I can have 12 distros on my PC(this may include one bsd). Wow!!!!!!
Now I have FC3(full)/Debian 3.1(25/04/05)-only base and mc,Slackware without KDE and Gnome on /dev/hda and Ubuntu on /dev/hdb

Worst part is my landline is dead for the past 1 month and hence no net connection
I am searching for a broadband(so called) subscription and no one is appraoching me. Finally I will have to rely on MTNL's ADSL.

Need to seriously devote some time in learning open source programming, well it could be any thing maybe just learning bash/emacs/vim anything.

I forgot my Debian root password and have messed up trying to recover it. I think i will have to reinstall it again.
Suse has become opensuse. I was never attracted to try SUSE basically because it was preconfigured and there was not effort required and yes it was not free. But many people in the world use SUSE and now I am getting interested in trying it also.

Some of the Distros I wish to use but do not have copies
DSL(have an old one),Kanotix,Slax,Minislack,Arch,Scientific

Will write about my progress on programming etc

Forgot to mention

2005-06-13T18:38:00.000+05:30

Well I forgot to mention Debian 3.1 was released last week

Even after all the hype of a late release it is the top distro

Also FC4 released
Now I have FC3-Almost Full installation
Debian Sarge(25/4/05) Build only base and midnight commander added
Slacware 10.1 without GNOME or KDE but with fluxbox (stiil not booted)

Delicious=del.icio.us

2005-06-10T07:51:00.000+05:30

Social Bookmarking the new in thing. I am constantly visiting this site http://del.icio.us
It spells delicious. I had found about this in Feb 05 but was not much interested. The interest arose again this month

You can add your bookmarks and share it with others. Super Duper Fundu stuff.

I have reinstalled FC3 and now Debian Sarge with only base and mc
installed mc with apt-get and just got a taste of apt-get

Will update soon hopefully

Linux Bazar shuts down!!!!!!!!:(

2005-05-24T23:53:00.000+05:30

In my lsat post i mentioned that I had found a site from where I could get my Linux cd requirements and was professional enough and fast www.linuxbazar.com
The same site shutdown 2 days back. Very sad
The reasons for the closure as sited were
lack of time on there side and
the availability of fast broadband connections in india
well the first one seems true but the second is a myth.
I erased Ubuntu and installed Debian Sarge on my new PC.
I just wanted to try debian with all the debian buzz around and I had to make space on the PC.
It has 40G but 20g is for Win.
After the installation I found that the GDM screen was grainy just like safe mode in Windows.
Posted on mailing lists for possible solutions but did not have time to even switch on my PC.

Grounded! The meaning of this word come to the mind and actually I experience it what with
a family with a kid to take care of
a workplace where I have to work to earn my daily bread
other social obligations

Found some loads of information about social bookmarking
http://del.icio.us

Still on FC3

2005-05-17T07:59:00.000+05:30

Still on FC3 and am using it the most. I log in and browse with Firefox
and chat with Xchat.
I found a new site for my Linux cds requirement in Bangalore and also very professional enough(www.linuxbazar.com)
I ordered 23 cds of various distros including Slack 10.1 and debian Sarge and 3.0r5.
Also included some distros which i had never tried like Mepis and Xandros.
Also ordered the latest Ubuntu release (Hoary Hedgehog 5.04).
I am really interested in trying BSD(Free BSD etc but am reluctant and afraid.
PC-BSD a BSD flavor for desktops has been released.
Now Distrowatch has become my favorite site. Last week it asked the readers to comment on whether there were too many distros.
It was a great discussion in the Distrowatch weekly with various arguments.
I came to know there were people in the world who were crazy like me and tried many distros like scientific linux,dynebolic etc.
I always think of having my home page with information on linux just for the satisfaction it gives and not for money.
It is really difficult to take time out to learn Linux when you have a family to look after, workplace where I spend 12 hours of the whole day and also social obligations.
Lets C!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yum

2005-04-27T03:22:00.000+05:30

Logged in many times in FC3. Infact now I browse through Firefox, Chat on IRC with Xchat
and on yahoo with GAIM.

Looked up information on yum and could not start yum.
Crazed about trying all other distros mentioned on distrowatch.
tried my old computer also Ubuntu is very slow on 64mb and Celeron 500mhz
I will try Damn small Linux now. Thought of trying Mandrake 10.1 but gave up.
I need something that should make me learn something not a distro which starts up everything for the user.

Ubuntu the top distro

2005-04-21T03:03:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary has been released. I cannot download it but have registered for those free cd's.
Ubuntu seems to be in the news. Atleast on Distrowatch it has become the top distro on the basis of number of hits.
I have begun visiting Distrowatch everyday and its weekly newsletter is simply great giving a synopsis of all the distros released.
There are some 400 distros around according to Distrowatch. Wonder how many people are using the least known of them.
When I installed FC3 it did not configure GRUB for Ubuntu. I couldnt run Ubuntu.
Today resolved that issue and now I am triple booting. XP/FC3/Ubuntu 4.10
My old Pc is loaded with Ubuntu and will be a Pc with free OS only. One problem I face here is that i have one keyboard, mouse and Monitor.
Well first I will try networking both these computers and then maybe sharing keyboard ,monitor and mouse.
Atleast I wish to try the major distributions nd understand the different methods of implementing the same Os.(Slackware,Gentoo,knoppix...............)
The success of Ubuntu is mainly due to the non release of a stable version of Debian for the last 2 years.
But still on IRC Debian tops the list and is only next to Gentoo(#1).
Books which I bought this year worth Rs.3500/- are lying as its is w/o being read.
Today atleast in a fit of rage I prepared draft CV with the Oracle Financials implementation part.
I was planning this since last 3 months and was successful in only writing 2 lines. Today I happen to write it in full.
I hope with this I may soon find a job.

FC3 finally great distro

2005-04-07T07:44:00.000+05:30

It is the revision/incerement time in our company and as always the increment is always less than what you expect.
Basically the problem I face is that in comparison to friends and relatives(maybe) I work for a dirt cheap CTC. Getting a job is also always difficult in my case.The same happened and I was disappointed with my salary hike a meagre 10-15%.
The salary recd by me is not commensurate with the amount of work done that too selflessly.
I was frustrated last night with the state of my affairs and helplessness I faced.I worked till late and hence slept late.
I got up early today and thought that I could atleast use this time to do what I love most "Running Linux"Yesterday night when I reached home my brother was struggling to resolve a GRUB error.
I new that I could resolve it but was tired and did not think about it at night.
Morning I got the chance and I booted my new FC3 installation.FC3 is superb. I havent seen anything like this in Linux. Even better than Ubuntu.Guess what I did today
1>Ran Kppp and it detected my modem's chipset without any probs
2>Connected to the net and browsed with Firefox.I had little time as i had to reach office and hence visited google and spreadfirefox.com
3>connected to irc with Xchat
4>logged in to GAIM added my list of friends obviously no one was online.

ALL THIS FOR THE FIRST TIME THROUGH LINUX
getting near to becoming truly open source

Up and running pc's

2005-03-29T10:36:00.000+05:30

I have 2 pc's new and old. Managed to load something on the old pc.
Combo drive installed and finally installed FC3.
It was superb. I was surprised when it asked me to test sound and literally some music came out from the speakers. I have never seen this any of the Linux distros I have used.
Am working hard in office trying to complete the complicated work in a better and faster way.
It is month end time and also year end time.
Worked on Sunday also i.e 27/3/05
Last week when I was working in the office past 8pm and listening to songs while working I heard one of my all time fav ghazal by Jagjit Singh "tera chehra kitna suhana.........".
Memories flooded my mind when I use to listen to the same song out of my limited collection of mp3's way back in 2000(when I was a bachelor :)
Guess what I use to hear this in Linux playing it in mpg123. I was a total newbie then and the linux intoxication had caught me. I was using a small linux distro(floppy based) called mulinux due to PC constraints.
News!!!!!!!!!
Slackware removes GNOME?????????
Gentoo 2005 released
Ubuntu and userlinux to combine

I had a P100 with 16mb RAM and 4.3G HDD.

Information overload

2005-03-19T07:40:00.000+05:30

KDE 3.4 released
Knoppix 3.8 released

Linux Device drivers 3rd edition (covering 2.6 kernel ) is out. i just bought the 2nd edition in Bglore on 29/1/05 hope only changes will be with ref to 2.6 kernel!. I downloaded it from lwn.net.

There is a info overload. So much info available so little time to concentrate. Whatever u search on google there is load of information.

looked up info on bit torrent. Whether this also requires a broadband connection.
Yesterday tried some old cd's of Knoppix. Still waiting for the combo drive.
Taking a off tomorrow may do some prodcutive work.

New knowledge

2005-03-18T05:18:00.000+05:30

What is iiimf???????????
Internet Intranet Input Method Framework Project

I did not know this. Read this on kartiks blog and searched google.

This for the i18n (internationalization) project.
I realised that I was nowhere near the latest in technology. I see myself as a primitive.
I have ordered a combo drive cd r/w and dvd reader. Hope to get it by the weekend.
Want to install Freebsd which I have on DVD.
Dont know why I am getting interested more and more in freebsd.
Also need those good old slack cd's 10 or 10.1

First post-Gentoo blogs

2005-03-17T05:30:00.000+05:30

I read this blog kartikm@blogspot.com everyday. Nothing in particular but I happened to visit it once and found this to be a young linux developers blog.
In turn I found many useful links from here. Someday I will mail him.

Just like the above today I found a link to planet.gentoo.org. Oof!!!!!!!
this site has blogs of gentoo developers wth some additional links. Someday I plan to run Gentoo compiled from stage1 as my distro

Currently dual booting with Win XP and Ubuntu Warty(4.10).
I frequently visit www.distrowatch.com for latest updates on distros. There are 393 active distros as on 14/3/05 acording to this site. Wondered how many of these were used.
An interview of Ladislav Bodnar was posted on a site. It was a great read.
Nowadays whenever I start my Pc I log on to IRC through MIRC.
Yesterday night had 414 users online for Ubuntu.
I have bought some Rs.3500/- worth of computer books mostly related to open source.
Do not know when I will read them.
It is getting increasingly difficult to indulge in hobbies like linux and open source with a full time job and kid to look after.
Will keep posting daily I hope

New blog-only for Linux,Open source and computers in general

2005-03-16T23:56:00.000+05:30

Starting a new blog just to write about my Linux experience. Also it will contain general posts in relation to software/hardware etc but more about open source.

Hope to keep it updated regularly.
My other blog is for general topics life and the universe.
Actually I was pondering for quiet a few days whether to create another blog and finally did it.