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 By current standards (considering the cutting edge technology) my box should be called outdated but on a conservative comparison it was a healthy system.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.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Windows XP autochk problems and solution
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.
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.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Indian screenshot in linux
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
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Out of hibernation and kernel panics
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.
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.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Del.icio.us cleaning spree
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Finally installed Ubuntu-with some errors
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
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Installing Ubuntu Dapper drake
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.
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
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.
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.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Gnuradio
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Emacs and lisp week
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
I will not let my blog die
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
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
Monday, January 30, 2006
Nothing much
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Wikipedia-Fund raising appeal
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.
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.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Synopsis 2005
My first post for 2006
2005-Adieu
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)
- 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).
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Status quo
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.
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.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger installed
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
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
Sunday, October 16, 2005
XP up and running again
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
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
Friday, October 14, 2005
Win XP halted, Researching problem
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..............
(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..............
Monday, October 10, 2005
Slackware 10.2 installed
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
No progress on the programming front
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
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
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