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Potential Names for Ubuntu after Karmic Koala

October 16, 2009 in Ideas, Linux | No comments

I’m sure that Mr. Shuttleworth reads this unworthy blog… Here is my characterization of the next names for ubuntu after our charming koala hits the press:

L should be called Leaping lizard
M should be called Modest Monkey
N should be called Nubby Nightingale
O should be called Ornery Ocelot
P should be called Prickly Porcupine
Q should be called Qurious Quetazalcoatlus (hmm)
R should be called Rocky Raccoon (unless it infringes on another character)
S should be called Slashing Squirrel
T should be called Tremendous Tiger
U could very well become Undulating Umbrette
V could be vital velociraptor
W should be called Wascally Wabbit (unless again, one of the characters says no. Come on Elmer; let us do it. Please?).
X could be Xtreme Xerus (sorry…)
Y could be Yammering Yaffle
Z should be called Zesty Zebra

Now what you may ask prompts me to come up with the names so far ahead of time. Well, sitting in my room in Chennai, India; after a good breakfast and filtered coffee, it just felt right. Of course, Mr. Shuttleworth, you can simply ignore all these and come up with the usual wonderful names you do.

I could come up with some names for new MAC OS’es too if I felt like looking at all the possible permutations. I’d have to charge you 3k US for each one though since that’s about the ridiculous price that I see for those GOO’ey mess things. As my friend Gbro says, “forget about it”.

Editor’s note for the purist.

I slightly edited this blog post because I got energetic and found that WikiAnswers helped me quite a bit

When is a beta not a beta

October 13, 2009 in Linux | No comments

I am a ubuntu lover at so many layers and levels. Deepak and a few others in the Celestix India office talked me into installing the Karmic Beta but instead of upgrading an existing system; I did a fresh install. Whenever did a beta ever get so damned good? Sure there are a lot of updates. New kernels, new video drivers, new applications and tools. Bu tthis thing is slick. From the first boot into the new desktop, to the polished look of the applications. What is it about Ubuntu that is so much better in almost every way than those stuffy legacy OS’es? Windows 7 is oh so okay. Not much more. I’d rather run Windows as a virtual OS and Linux as a real OS any ole day. I get more done sooner. Here is an example. I know its small but it matters:

I have a TataIndicom Plug2Surf CDMA Modem for my evenings and weekends. Wifi in Chennai is “interesting” and sometimes plain old non-existant. Here at the New Woodlands; it costs Rs 500 for 3 hours. I cannot afford that on a regular basis. So I plug the usb modem into my Windows 7 laptop. It says USB driver not installed; your hardware may not operate correctly. Say what? What in heck does that mean? That means, dear friends, that this thing will not work out of the box. I need to download the dialer and install it. So I do that. The dialer launches but it says it cannot find the USB driver. It says, “install it now”. So what’s next? I search the web and finally, after about 2 days of trying I find an answer. I must set the drvinstall program to run in compatibility mode but as Windows XP SP2. I do that and run the Device Mangler again. Voila! It works!
Now the same case on Ubuntu 9.10 beta. I insert the modem and it won’t work. Not because of the driver being absent though. I have to edit the connection it setup and type in a user name and password which is absurdly simple. Its the same thing for both. So that whole process took me about 10 minutes and I’m connected at the blazing fast speed of my CDMA enhanced dial-up connection.

Done and done. So what’s the different user experience there? I won’t say that Windows 7 sucks because it doesn’t. It just does not give you tools that make basic use easier. Tools I take for granted like a command shell, like rsync, like ssh. Hell; like a smtp server I can lock down and do authenticated smtp to a postfix server I own out there on a slicehost slice. How do Windows users get productive I wonder? What do they install first? On my ubuntu systems, I have this one liner bash shell script I run. It does it all for me. It sets up the system and then downloads about 200mb of stuff i always need. Takes about 30 minutes in the office or less. On the beta I must do updates every so often.

Still done and done. It took me days to get productive with Windows 7 and minutes with Ubuntu. Geez. Motto of the story:

Run Linux on real iron and Windows on virtual iron. Works for me! Thanks to Deepak and Jayaraman for being there and suggesting I give it a try. Works fine!

The Nokia Pudgy Phoneroo

October 1, 2009 in Linux, News | No comments

This looks kinda cool. It runs Maemo and it crosses a few limitations that the earlier N97 had. I just pre-ordered one on Amazon. We’ll see when anythingbutipod has a review of it It comes with 32gb of memory and you can add a expansion card. If this had a 100gb drive the entire world would collapse and we would converge into multiple separate realities all at the same time. As it is, it does more than previous incarnations.

We’ll see how cool it is. The one I ordered is completely unlocked so I’ll plug it in and try it when it gets shipped over to me in Chennai. It also does full exchange sync. This ain’t saying I’m giving up on android; but choice is nice. When the phone plan don’t matter, the phones can be played with.

Goodbye Ipod Video

September 15, 2009 in Current Events, Linux | No comments

I have my trusty old ipod 80g video which runs rockbox because it can. Rockbox is clearly superior in most regards to the crummy apple ipod firmware with basic things like being able to rsync music, mounting the ipod drive as a USB drive on linux, running custom scripts for moving music files, and the theming and other support Rockbox has. Then this thing comes along…

Archos_5itb_x460

And I’m ruined. My ipod has become less than worthy and for some reason a weak desire to get an ipod touch 64g has dwindled down to an insignificant level. The archos will hold all my music for some time to come and it runs android! I’m putting in my Santa Claus order today for this thing. It appears I can plug this into my ubuntu laptop and simply rsync to it as well.

Me want one. Oh Santa…

Traveling with Ubuntu

September 8, 2009 in Linux | No comments

I wanted to blog about this before but it started coming to me after a few trips to Singapore and India. A few of the things you need to plan when traveling include clothing, any medications, electrical doodads (plugs, adaptors, etc) and a variety of those little pesky USB cables which never inter-changeable. Why? I don’t know. Its the way it is. But when it comes to charging a device like a IPOD, phone, or IPAQ PocketPC; the best thing is a little USB charger which plugs into a wall plug that can take a USB cable. There are lots of these out there; but its very handy. There is one that will do two at a time you can find; I just have one that does a single device.

But the main thing I have found is that you need a stable, secure, and decent computer OS to travel with. The needs are one that will provide a quality computing experience, allow you to connect to a variety of networks, be secure, and also take any peripherals you need to plug in with little or no “futzing”. This last trip for me it was Ubuntu Jaunty on my beloved and nicely appointed Lenovo T60. Everything I brought with me worked. My Android phone, my Ipod, my 260g external drive; my cheapo digital camera; even my PocketPC IPAQ device. You need something which you can trust to just work day after day; that does not require rebooting or suffers from strange slowdowns or lethargic letdowns. Exit Vista .

Ubuntu left me with a very positive user experience and I’d like to thank the guys there. Jaunty just plain did what i asked; never crashed or caused problems; performed its appointed tasks admirably. Just in case though, I had a Virtualbox guest running Windows 7 RC. I may have fired it up twice.

Linux makes a great traveling companion on a laptop. Its easy to update and manage the network settings. I think its more forgiving than the delicate windows stuff. As I’ve said, Windows is only really suited for virtual iron these days. That way I can manage its state, ensure that its backed up by using snapshots. Only use it when completely necessary. That being said, I’ve moved completely away from Vista on virtual iron. Vista is like syrupy slowness glue. Windows 7 is decent in VMWare or Virtualbox.

Next time you travel; consider all the things you need to take. Then consider how important your laptop is to getting your appointed rounds done. For me, ubuntu just works.

Me want a 15n

June 27, 2009 in Ideas, Linux | No comments

Me want one of these. Oh Santa? Can you please get me a extra special present if I’m really a good boy? I want one all tricked out with more memory and stuff. This thing looks plenty cool. I think I will add six and n to my mini 9. This thing will run Ubuntu too and it comes with Dell’s kinda weird ubuntu 8.10 which can be safely removed and refactored into the netbook remix.

Perfect OS to Host Other OS

June 21, 2009 in Ideas, Linux | No comments

At work, I have a few choices about doing email. I can use Thunderbird and just do IMAP with our exchange server. I don’t get the calendar stuff that way. I can do OWA which is okay but it requires me to have a browser open. I can do Outlook Anywhere (or RPC over HTTPs). This means I run Outlook natively or in a emulation environment. There are choices for this:

Codeweavers Pro – Codeweavers has released version 8.0 which may work with Outlook. It has IE 7 integrated so it may work. In the past, it never worked and I tried for hours/days to get it working. It would mean that Outlook would show up in a true seamless mode on the desktop (Ubuntu desktop).

VMware – Player, Workstation only here. I want the unity mode which allows the windows applications to show in their own window and not have the desktop showing through. The desktop means I lose the window really and there is this coolness factor.

VirtualBox – My choice for a few reasons for this task. The seamless mode of VMware seems to mess up and it wants some heavy duty system to run it on. My T43 Thinkpad will not handle Unity mode. Moreover I don’t think its well worked out. Virtualbox OTOH, is quite suited for light weight systems and its seamless mode seems more developed.

Now down to what the ideal underlying OS is for all this. I approach this at a tool user level so it could be Windows Server 2008 or 2003. It could be Ubuntu AMD64 Jaunty. What works the best for me given my needs to run a single application? Windows seems to be a lot of OS to just run stuff. I would probably not use much of the underlying Windows goodness since I tend to veer away from Windows stuff in favor of Linux. So I think either Debian or Ubuntu make the best underlying OS. Perhaps that underlying OS is never really seen and you run the emulation full-screen. I just trust Linux more as a real system and Windows more as a virtual one. Whatever I run on top, be it VMWare, Codeweavers, or Virtualbox will thrive with Linux under there. If it misbehaves, I have the command line and SSH and “PS ax” to resort to. What do I use on Windows? There is no real command-line mode to shell into.

So, my selection is to run Windows virtually and Linux on the hardware. Its a “duh” factor type of thing. I just don’t trust Windows on real hardware. Not enough command and control. Windows does just fine when it can be killed by process controllers in Linux and rebooted safely. I can snapshot it, roll it back, make it sane again.

Lets face it. Windows 7 is a nicer cousin even undone. Still, I’ll choose to run it in a virtual space in a seamless mode with Linux underneath.

You all need to decide if Virtualization can work for you. If the answer is yes; ask yourself what you need from the guest at a tool level. One tool or ten? It may form what choice you make for the host OS. If its games you are after, this analysis does not really apply. I don’t do games. For me, its a dash of word, excel, and powerpoint on occasion; but mostly talking to our exchange 2007 server. Seems the best tool for that is outlook 2007. But it does not equate that I need to run it in real space…

VirtualBox and Making the vdi larger

June 8, 2009 in Linux | 2 comments

I’ve read a thousand forum threads for how to do this so I wanted a way which I could replicate for some Windows guests and make it so easy even I could do it. Here is my step by step process. You will need two tools first. One is Clonezilla and the other is the freeware partitioning tool called EASEUS Home. I did this with XP only so your mileage may vary with Vista.

Here are the steps to taking a small guest image and blowing it up:

Create a new virtual disk using the media manager in Virtualbox. I create a dynamically expanding one because its quicker. Add it as a primary slave using the disk media manager. Don’t worry about formatting it or anything.
Now download the two tools and mount the clonezilla ISO image in virtualbox so it boots when you power up the guest. Clonezilla will run and you will take the disk to disk copy and make a copy from the first disk to the second disk. The first disk was my 10g smallish XP partition. The second disk was the nicely larger 60g slave partition I had just created.
It will take about 15 minutes or at least it did for me. When done, power down the clonezilla ISO image. Now using the media mangler in Virtualbox remove the measly partition and add the new one as the primary image.
Boot the new image and its still only 10g or whatever in size. You need to run the easeus disk partitioning tool, resize the partition all the way, and the tool will want a reboot. It will reboot to its system console, run the ntfs resize and then reboot again. When it reboots, it will check things again and pronounce success!
Boot into the XP installation and I had to redo the OS validation with Microsoft HQ. That’s okay for me since I own it from Technet. Now if you check the disk size in Windows XP, it says that I have a 60G disk drive. Yay!

All done folks! BTW, this worked for me 4 times without an error so I can say that its replicable and works without an issue on XP. Don’t know about the Vista beast. I’m staying away from Vista. Next MS OS I play with will be in October when 7 rears up.
That would be it.

How Long Does it Take?

March 27, 2009 in Linux | No comments

I started a Ubuntu Desktop install this evening. The install part took about 20 minutes on a AMD64 Shuttle system. First stop was updating almost 300 packages. Then adding medibuntu and virtualbox’s sources to my /etc/apt/sources.list.

Then I started customizing and adding stuff like OpenOffice 3, additional packages I want, the printer, some nifty tools and utilities like SSHfs. I added VirtualBox 2.1.4 and some other stuff. I scp’ed a whole bunch of images for my desktop background. I brought up a Windows 7 beta VDI I have.

I think all this took me about 2.5 hours and I have an updated 8.10 system which can do company mail using outlook 2007 and do my GTD stuff as well. I’m set and just about productive.

Whoops I forgot to add ubuntu-restricted-extras it appears and build-essential so I can build essential things.

Now its getting done. I need to touch and shine. More on it later

Random Technology in the Geek Zone

March 14, 2009 in Current Events, Linux | No comments

Random strivings here and there these days… I’ve been playing with VirtualBox and enlarging vdi images. Been doing a platform product for work around demo environments using Ubuntu and VMware Server 1.x. I don’t much care for VMware Server 2.x because its some bastardized web thing and some things which made it easy don’t work any longer like the Console Monitor in VMware 1.x.

I’m now building an automation tool which will copy and bring up VMware guest images, use some VMware automation like the “vmrun” command that allows one to do a variety of operations. I’ve built a basic web page, written some PHP scripts which call shell scripts, and created some status monitoring which will allow us to generically create new platforms pretty easily. I really enjoy this kind of work and it really demonstrates the power and flexibility of my chosen platform for the host which is Ubuntu 8.10 Server. I also am building out a ESXi based VMware server to run clients for a new QA environment at work which will take a different twist to things.

All of these things are rather randomly tied to my continuing goals to not boot a real windows system when I can help it these days. Seems that Vista is really nice when its virtual only and I have a Windows 7 beta running which is decent. Its really nice when it gets unhappy and cycling its power does not mean losing everything. I can just take it my own way with a “kill -9″ on that process and get it all back. As I blogged before, the greatest prodcutivity enhancement for me is the seamless mode for Windows applications where I get the best of both worlds. Now if I could have truly embedded applications which would have the OS behind each one but not show the desktop or taskbar at all. That would be cool; but I have as much as I need now. I can taste the windows world but not be subjected to its random disconnects.

I could say more; but the zone is claiming me today. Wanted to tell Ian thanks for the work at the Big T and teaching me more plus writing one of the best weblogs out there! Hope your tomorrows all come along the way you want. Take care.