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NO SCALE’ing effect for me

February 21, 2010 in Linux | No comments

For the first time in some years, I missed one of the best Linux shows on the earth. I have always enjoyed the quality location, the quality of the papers, and being able to “rub elbows” with the IBMs, HPs, and others in a true community setting. I hope the show was great and the folks got the usual high quality mix of fun, education, entertainment, and drinking a few beers with the various and sundry attendees.

Hope that Gareth and Ilan had a great show this year and that all my buddies attending had the usual great mix of fun and education.

Were there any T-shirts this year?

Adobe Air plus Ubuntu 9.10 equals fun

February 2, 2010 in Linux | No comments

I procrastinated getting to installing and initially downloading adobe air on ubuntu. On my 32bit laptop, it was quite easy. On my AMD64 Ubuntu desktop, it took just a bit of work with this handy utility called getlibs. For a 64 bit processor, you do these additional little tasks:

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6 lib32z1 libc6 libc6-i386 lib32nss-mdns

sudo getlibs -l libnss3.so.1d libnssutil3.so.1d libsmime3.so.1d libssl3.so.1d libnspr4.so.0d libplc4.so.0d \
libplds4.so.0d libgnome-keyring.so libgnome-keyring.so.0 libgnome-keyring.so.0.1.1

sudo cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32

Then finally do a “sudo ldconfig” and you should be done after downloading and installing the air binary using this site as a reference…

And why would you want to do that you may ask? Well, there is a dearth of decent twitter desktop applications on Linux that I can see. The air applications have a wondrous quality in their design screen UI. On ubuntu karmic, it all just works very well. Synaptic can be used to install the package if you want. Very cool candy!

Lenovo G550 Value Laptop

January 25, 2010 in Linux | No comments

I lost my beloved T60 a few days ago and decided to not replace it with another. I wanted a wide screen laptop and I like Thinkpads. Same time I did not want to spend a lot so started hunting around. The Lenovo G550 looked like a great value and I found a few success stories like here with it. It came with Windows 7 something on it which never even booted. I installed Karmic on it right after unboxing it. Here are some basic field notes about the experience.

Installation – graphical installation works quite well on this laptop. Just run the installer, set the options, off it goes.
Configuration of X, networking, wifi, wired – All just works but wifi you have to add proprietary drivers. The display is beautiful and the screen aspect ratio is a thing of wonder to someone that had square screens for a long time.
Mouse, ports, keyboard – I don’t like the touchpad much. Not sensitive enough to the touch and it drags. There are not enough usb ports. C’mon Lenovo give us some more here!
Webcam – Works with Linux and skype. No problem. Just install “cheese” with an apt-get install.
Suspend to RAM or Hibernation – So this works out of the box for me. Before had to upgrade BIOS revisions. Now it just works.

The laptop is a nice value-line type of beast. It has a nice finish. Not glossy or shiny. I like the “dull finish”. If you want a $500.00 US laptop that runs Ubuntu, has decent hardware, and seems to be built decently; take a look at my link to the amazon page. It performs well enough with the default cpu and memory to not need additional. I run VirtualBox and have a Windows7 guest that I use with outlook primarily. All works fine.

New Vmware Player

January 20, 2010 in Linux, News | 1 comment

I’m a dedicated Virtualbox kinda guy so when I read the press around VMware Player 3.0, had to give it a try. Its a marked change from earlier ones in that you can create new guests without workstation installed at all. I installed a Ubuntu 9.04 server install for some minor bit of work I need to do. It works just fine. I always end up having both Virtualbox and VMware on systems these days. Virtualbox does the day-to-day stuff like running my Windows 7 guest that does Outlook for email. VMware makes it easier to share disk images.

If you want a light-weight VMware Workstation, check out Player. Do I see a change in the strategy around these things now with VMWare? Will Player start becoming more than just a player? Hint… It already has. VirtualBox is nicer but some things don’t work too well. I have had problems with any kind of microphone in my Windows guests so end up hauling my little EEEpc with me running Windows 7. I still use the virtual image though for the regular work. It does well with outlook, word, and visio.

Back Home Blogpost

December 10, 2009 in Current Events, Linux | No comments

Well, got back home last Friday and been kinda busy with work and family stuff. Its really good to get back. I had to purchase a new phone since my HTC Magic which was running a very nice Hero ROM just stopped working while I was in Chennai. I purchased a new HTC Hero in Singapore at the Changi airport and it came with a non-rooted ROM. As I posted before, you don’t need to really change the SPL on the Hero or anything like the Hboot. You can still use flashrec on phones bought from Newegg and Amazon. I just did this for a friend’s phone and it works fine. Basically download flashrec, install the recovery image, and reflash the new rooted ROM-ware. All done. Takes all of 15 minutes to take a factory default Hero to a custom MoDaCo ROM which is much nicer and rooted as well.

Always seems like there is something new with the Android OS devices which is cool to figure out, hack on, make it work. Ubuntu Karmic has turned out to be a very nice operating system on my laptops and desktops. No real problems on my x64 desktops and my thinkpad T60 laptops. This whole ubuntu thing is getting really good. Windows on the other hand; is only marginal. I don’t think that Windows 7 is that much better than anything else that MS has ever done. Its just another in the long line of consumer OS’es built for a large market share of less than demanding users. I think the problem really is that everyone using Windows are consumers of Windows and not really users. With Ubuntu Karmic its too easy to boot Windows in VirtualBox, run Outlook 2007 when I need to; but leave it all when I travel and just have a much more robust and stable system running Linux. Linux is just better and always will be.

Finally, all the travel still leaves me a bit jet-lagged. I get tired earlier and wake up at strange hours. Hopefully that ends soon. I’ll be leaving for Singapore and Chennai again in February for 2 weeks. Maybe do a r&r trip to Thailand this time. Have to wait and see. Was also thinking of going to Kyoto for a few days. I love Japan.

The Android Apparatus

December 2, 2009 in Ideas, Linux | No comments

Philosophically, I view Android as more oriented toward success in business, development and hacking, and use for a few reasons:

Reason 1. Active, vibrant development community like at XDA. This means that people have a home to find new chef cooking and ROMs. This creates a meeting place for developers, documentarians, themers, and users to actively promote and discuss the platform and the applications and their use.
Reason 2. Forums like Phandroid and Modaco that bring the users together into a viable base. Fora (or ums) are also gathering places for users to promote their use, report issues, and actually interface with the elusive developer or two
Reason 3. Google and their choices around the platform, its open sourced-ness, and even with some bumps releasing new code goodness to the world at large. We need google to provide the tools. We can modify them, make them do more and different. The world needs an open standard for phones. iPhone and Apple could do so much more; but they tie their own hands. Too bad. There are the forest and there are the trees. The iPhone cannot see either.
Reason 4. The users. An operating system, application, tool, technology is nothing without the users. Linux is made for users and always has been. Its answered issues around device driver support, graphics, networking. When I first started way back when, we only had support for a single sound card. Imagine that . Android users must use their one weapon to promote the system. Money and choosing to purchase quality and open tools over closed source and silo tools. Users become Android Users!
Reason 5. Take all this and pour it into a big pot. Stir it up and let it simmer until 2012 or so and most likely earlier if apple does not change. Stir in liberal amounts of developer, user, and themers to the mix. The parts grow larger and soon the sum total is enriched by the choices all the community uses.

We are a community of users folks. We’re not just customers like with apple devices. We can make informed choices of how we use, what we use, what it looks like. There is a dark side to this whole thing and its not a bad choice. Its the absence of choice.

Thanks for reading this!

Changing Locales

November 22, 2009 in Linux | No comments

I just got back from a nice weekend trip to Singapore. Worked out of the Singapore office for a few days and then had Saturday to just rummage around where my hotel was. That was fun. Last night, I was kinda noodled, chickened, fished out. So did pizza and a great salad for dinner. I watched a College Football game on ESPN last night as well. That was an added benefit. I love College Football and have not seen a game since being over here. That’s an entire season I have missed this year. Drats .

While at the airport, this guy running a laptop with Windows 7 was having an interesting problem. It would come out of hibernation or “sleep” but just go right back to sleep again. He was getting frustrated and irritated. He had to do email. He has a wifi account in Singapore. I loaned him a Ubuntu live CD which he booted and was able to do email, download a document, put it in a flash drive for later, read some news. He asked to keep the CD. I told him he would have to pay to get it activated online because it was for a different machine than what it was intended for. We both laughed because of course that is not true. He was impressed that he could boot a live CD, do real work, be productive, and basically have some unknown issue with his laptop’s OS. He said he would repartition his laptop drive and install Ubuntu or just boot it live in more places if the laptop continued to have problems. I told him that he should just use it as he saw fit. Many people I remember like Seth S. never worked with a real system. They would boot this live rescue CD called the BBC we developed at Linuxcare and do all their work of consequence. This meant that no footprint was left on the system being used. Seth would ssh, do web, write scripts, do meaningful and productive stuff. Nowadays the live CDs have full sets of productivity tools on them as well. Why even have a real OS installed on the hardware. In airports or other public places, just use da Linux.

Linux is a great choice for travelers I have found too. Its stable, forgiving of network changes, deals well with stability and the new Ubuntu Karmic has the full monte of tools. All my devices work including a cheapo camera, my android phone, my mp3 player. All goodness!

So, it was fun helping someone bitten by Windows 7 and letting him experience Ubuntu Linux in a way that made him productive. It was a different locale for him. He was used to this other way of working and seeing things happening from a OS not even installed was rather enlightening for him. Consider what you really need to be a tool user. Tools are designed for uses and users. We are the users. Now put them to uses.

Monsoonal Thoughts – Ubuntu, Android, Droid, etc

November 7, 2009 in Current Events, Linux | No comments

Well, yesterday was another “rain day” here. Today is starting out as hopefully a break from the never-ending rain showers we have had for 2 days and which simply drenched lower parts of Chennai proper. I am heading out for a bit of a break to Chennai Citi Centre today to go look at the Landmark Store, perhaps grab lunch at KFC there, etc. The KFC is one of those must see/go places if not for the food for the scenery. You know in the states how the younger crowds go to basically scope out the other younger crowds? Same thing here. Weekends are fun days at the Centre.

The Monsoon produces a hibernation-like facility in me where I am content to sit in my room at the New Woodlands, watch TV, screw with my phone, read about Ubuntu stuff, and play games on my PSP. I’m also reading a very good book about the American West and Kit Carson’s role in the westward destiny called Blood and Thunder. Its an excellent read. History should always be this richly entertaining. Hampton Sides brings alive the whole panoramic view of Carson, his amazing triumps, tragedies, treks. This man was a true hero who had those nagging human doubts, was modest, did great things, and downplayed them all. He also had this wanderlust and went with Fremont to California, fought in revolutions, and did generally amazing things. Hampton speaks with such great authority and vividness; its like a time machine descends on me whether I am in the Krishna restaurant at the New Woodlands or in my room. I am whisked away to those days and times.

In other news the Droid ™ is now out on the CDMA Verizon network. I’ve resisted the urge after reading the droid forums at Phandroid because of issues with sync’ing exchange email and some other things which need to get evened out. All of these things are so fixable and they do not dilute the value of the droid as a technology which will disrupt the amazing status quo. It just means I will wait or use another Exchange tool that is out there to sync my stuff like TouchDown. I am gonna get a Droid but it most likely will be the GSM version called the Milestone and it will be unlocked.

Another bit o news is that there is finally a way to discombobulate the ipod Touch 3GS and the new iPhones it appears. By discombobulate I mean jailbreak. You can then make the 3GS entries do other evil and dark things than what Apple intended. The way to get there is here. Its too late for me though. I already gave up on the latest iteration of the crap stuff that Apple sells and gave away the ipod Touch 64gb to someone. Now I believe I could actually make the Touch sync with ubuntu through some new fuse based tools. But this is all way too much work and I have to ask one of the big “W” questions. Why? Why make people do all this crap to simply have choice? C’mon Apple. You can do better. I think every iphone should have an app called “iJailbreak” installed by default and “iUnlock” as well. You spend the money on a phone, you make the commitment; why share it with ATT? Then there is the whole iTunes thing which generally annoys the Hell out of me. Simply put iTunes sucks it big time.

The whole thing is yet another reason to use an open platform, open tools, open SDK.

Finally, Ubuntu 9.10 seems to be a decent entry and I like its boot time. I just wish they would get the damned radeon driver thing fixed for the T60 Thinkpads. What is the deal here guys? If I turn off effects it flashes and annoys me. I have to run with basic effects? The no auto-mounting of external devices has me applauding. I hated always having the damned things mount. Now I control that completely. I have to admit to not understanding what exactly grub2 does and I think personally its a mistake to fiddle with something as personal as a boot loader. Grub2 should have been a choice. EXT4 file systems are probably okay. But the boot loader? Guys this needed some extra thought I think.

Sense UI, Android, Evolution

October 26, 2009 in Ideas, Linux | No comments

I’m really digging the whole Android Scene and reading over on XDA-developers Sapphire Development almost every day. Combine that with trying to keep updated on what’s the deal with Karmic on the Ubuntu dev forum; and I have been doing a bunch of reading and studying. Today I found a moment though to flash a new ROM which is based on the official Sense UI from HTC. It takes a bit of work. The Magic is like a little Linux computer; in fact is a little Linux computer. You can enable swap on it, you can make the system mount a swap partition at boot time. Its a developer’s paradise I think. Its also one of the most geeky playtoys masquerading as a phone I have ever owned.

As it happens, its easier to use the Android SDK tools on Linux and Ubuntu seems particularly suited for it. Karmic added in one additional wrinkle that I had to figure out about the USB devices but still got it all figured out.

The Sense UI is just cool beans and the ability to change the entire UI, the framework, tools, move to a different look and feel is just awesome. This is the platform of the future. I see more and more devices emerging which will tap the potential of this platform. By 2012, this platform will rule the smartphone and converging device market. The simple fact of being able to change the cards that make up the deck make this more reachable and usable than platforms which are silos. I won’t mention any names but think of an apple with a byte taken out. I forecast that major platform changes will come with these devices. We will see more combination devices which will tap the potential of an open platform and support any host OS for sync’ing. We will see more in the way of devices that converge and meet the needs of business, enterprise, personal. Finally, we will see the market respond to these devices and host new methods of making markets shine with applications, utilities, tools.

Just wait and watch and see.

Ubuntu 9.10 Nears

October 19, 2009 in Current Events, Linux | No comments

For some reason, perhaps because I am running the beta; I’m getting excited with this release. It brings brand new things into the mix, things we as users need to learn about if we are to get better. Grub2 is brand new and its ingredients are sufficiently different, albeit more complex from the old legacy grub. It installs ext4 file systems by default it appears. Also the old ways of Xorg are gone. There is no xorg.conf any more. You can create one if need be. I think some folks will definitely need one.

Its 9 days to go but there are challenges to this release still. This release challenges us with its differences and innovations. We must be canny Linux users and learn those differences if we are to be good users. This ain’t Windows. Windows does not challenge us to learn much IMO. You just slip the installer in and it does a thing. Linux requires learning. I personally think that’s a good thing. This release does not let down on that area. As I mentioned, there are many new things to grok.

Finally, its the next step in the evolving platform and applications. The interface really has not changed much for a few releases. I think what’s changing now is the plumbing, the ease of use, the integration. Windows 7 was a change and things look different. Different good or bad? Not sure. I only use Windows 7 when I have to which is for work gotomeeting calls. Ubuntu though provides a different set of plumbing which I fear some new users will decide to not avail themselves of.

Its a cool new release. The beta is production quality. Almost. There are buglets and things which don’t work quite right and things you have to apply fixes for. You have to be willing to do updates. But running the beta means actually running 9.10 gold is just a “apt-get dist-upgrade” away. When the time comes, the beta simply becomes the release candidate which then becomes the gold version. It reminds me of my debian days when I would track testing until testing became real. Then automatically because of how the sources.list file was done, testing became testing again. The cosmic point of divergence was set and we all made our decisions.

One other bit of news, Eclair or Android 2.0 is looking mighty cool. The big pastry was dropped off. The new interface will brings lots of changes and goodness to the platform. Sense UI is one thing which is a beautiful use of the phone tool. But Android 2 will bring new sets of tools. Thanks to Google and the team for doing this work. ROM cookery is sure to get more exciting as the chefs bring new tastes to XDA and other sites which provide developer’s arenas for us all to download and apply.