Friday, September 30, 2011

Naming the Linux Distributions (Categories)-My Way

Naming the Linux Distributions (Categories)-My WayNow that I have finished scoring cross section of the Linux Distributions, to render and make my future classification easy, I have decided to change from the Weight Category based on Apes Family, (simply to spare the abuse of this Family especially the common monkeys-who venture into the city looking for food and poisoned by some citizens) and used an alternative  method based on the distribution's functionality.
This will certainly create lot of flames (now that the war is over I do not mind the urban flames not forest fire) but I got to get on with my naming strategy.


1. NuKe Variety.
I wanted to name it nude but NuKe is OK since most of us  in this country pronounce NuKE as Nude anyway.
These are bare bone distributions almost stripped of all the attire but the skin is beautiful as in fish and birds, the nude or the NuKe is barely visible.
The core utilities based on Slackware is the PROTOTYPE.
They do not have X-Windows
Unity
Arch
Gentoo
Debian fall into this category.
These are for the developers and developers are generally invincible.

2. Second category is BiKi(Ni) and only clad and covered in G-string sized x-windows.
4mLinux
TinyCore
CoreLinux
Slitaz
They fit in a Mini CDs.
These are for the old school type of Linux users not worried about what others do, inherently lazy and nobody knows they do exist.
They are in the minority.

3. LyKe, another typical Sri-Lankan wrong pronunciation. 
Like NuKe it sounds Linux.
The name comes from the LyKa, the dog that was sacrificed in space by Russian.
These distributions are one's close friend like a dog and a work slave.
These are the workhorse type of of distributions and naming any one of them as a PROTOTYPE is gross injustice to ones not mentioned. 
Majority of the Linux distributions fall into this category.
These remain active as long as there are followers in the community and sometimes suddenly disappear after stint.

4. Fourth is the carnival type dressed in Ragtags (Ragtag Variety), as  seen dressed up in Brazilian street carnival from almost nothing to exotic.
Puppy
PCLinuxFullmonty
Knoppix
Ultimate Linux
Artistix
Uberstudent
Poseidon
Apodio
Musix
LiveLinuxGamers  and many more fall into this group.

They are very special that is why they dress differently in street or bazaar carnivals.
They are generally task based like games, arts or science.

5. Fifth, I call the King Con (con as in a lie) Type, almost non-existent in the Linux Community but when the King or the President of a country incarcerate a developer in a palace or presidential house requesting them for top security for the palace and their kith and kin to hide all the unpleasant  details.
But in actual fact it is something like SliTaz and lot of Cookies added as long as the developers is incarcerated and deprived from his normal developmental activity.

All kings thinks bigger is always better and their is no other thinking in them.

LPS that comes from DOD is one of them which can be loaded with security piping that no information either gets in or gets out.

This is a nightmare distribution for true Linux developers.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Microsoft Productivity Time (LMPT) and the Learning of it.

It was an awful and painful experience to use Word 2007.
It is supposed to be user friendly and not at all.
Not so sweet story today, I should share with.
I was preparing to do a survey on some penetration testing of computer utilities with my students.
I wanted to do this but kept postponing it.
I tabulated 101 items of Apple, Microsoft, Linux and third party software for testings.
I did this on Abiword and made a Microsoft version since I have run out of toner in my printer.
I may have done this in about 15 minutes and prepared the printer setting to my liking and copied it into mini re-writable CD.
Then at the office I opened the file and made a copy in Microsoft had a printer view and there were some ugly sections.
Wanted to break them into new table section and right clicked and looked at the menu to find table split.
Mind you I have worked extensively with Microsoft from Win 95 to XP 2003 and have series of books on Words which are in the attic (I do not like to donate or burn them, they are museum pieces anyway) and I knew the exact utility to use.

The Table split.
I could find cell split but not table split.
After 10 minutes of searching I asked our Secretary for help.
She could not find it.
I asked one of my colleagues.
She could not find it.
Unfortunately the technician I trained in computing was on leave.
Then the chief technician came and did a page break and broke the table in a place not desirable for my liking.

After one hour everything was in a mess and print preview was a disaster.

I do printing only twice to see typos and keep as my copy and the other for final copy.

Thankfully my chief technician showed me the step to page break.
PageLayout and then a another layout and hundred of bizarre arrangement of word utilities.
I could not delete the page break and accidentally clicked layout and found the table menu and somewhere there I saw table split function almost hidden in the clutter of many other utilities I will never use in my life time.

I need to get the page break out tried 10 minutes with View  Menu to see  the background layout lines and I could find any.
Simply I could not delete the page break.
Annoyed I started undoing one step at a time and also deleting corrections of typos and after another 5 to 10 minutes, I was back to where  I started and with another numerous clicks got to split table (mind you I was an addict of tables) and split it exactly where I wanted got the printer layout checked  and did the typos again and saved and got a print out after one an a half hours.
That is  90 minutes divided by 5 pages and 18 minutes per page to get print ready material.
Original typing with five typos (I do many typos now due to poor sight) took probably 15 minutes.
This is what I call Microsoft Productivity Time (MPT for short) which is amazingly long and when its windows 8 comes this productivity time will grow by leaps and bounds.

Then I have to call it Learning the Microsoft Productivity Time (LMPT) for Win 8 and reading it will take another two hours.

Every time a new product comes productivity time lengthens.

That is how Microsoft make writers life writer friendly but the writer should use Abiword for the final product even though he is a Microsoft user.
It was 4 years ago I used Microsoft Word and extra time I saved during these four years I use for blogging on my life free of Microsoft.
Thanks Microsoft for your hard work on Win 8 and I will copy all the web publishing currently published on the web to calculate what a lot of productivity time writers waste on non existent product.

Postscript
I managed to find the way to delete the page break.
Go View and then to Outline and select the line and press the delete button.

Amazon Silk the answer to Web Browsers that are Heavy (Weights)

I hate almost all the web browsers in current use except light weight Linux derivatives.

Linux derivatives are light on your computer and has utilities to block unnecessary cookies and erase the memory at the end of a web session.

All the web browsers have become bulky over the years and have left enough security holes.
I will list few of the Linux browsers, I like most before talking about the game-changer Amazon-Silk.
I hope it will not become bulky in time but have enough security patches since lot of young kids are going to use it on daily basis.
1.IceApe and its Suite
2. Dillo
3. SeaMonkey
4. IceWeasel
5. Midori
6.Abrowser

Mobile Web Kits
7. Opera Mobile (Mini)
8. Android WebKit
9. Safari
10. BlackBerry WebKit
11. Dolfin-Samsung
12. Nokia WebKit
13. Phantom
14. MicroB-Nokia
15. Firefox   Gecko in MeeGo
Note Gecko  is a FireFox Light derivative that comes from Linux origin, from good old days of Linux and unfortunately IE and FireFox have to do, quite a lot of work to get to Mobile Industry using them as default.

IE and FireFox are gorilla derivative of internet.

I believe Linux distributions should all have some alternative Lightweight web browsers included in their distributions.

It is interesting that SwiftLinux which has done a good job of it in its recent version. 

Actully the credit should go to AntiX.

These light weight stuff can be used in Mobile and Cloud Computing and now that Amzon has shown the way by splitting the resources we are going to have frantic activity in this arena with mobile to lure.
Amazon’s Silk approach is admirable and it is going to be a game-changer.
I think all the web browsers have to go on a diet soon or have at least two versions.
One for mobile and cloud and the other for the desktop.

Amazon and Kindle on Fire and the Game-changer

Within three years, Amazon and its Kindle derivative is going to rock the web with applications that none of us could say No.

At a time of credit and debt crisis Amazon's investment on knowledge on a slate (tablet) is going to rock the boat of many aspiring companies including Google.

Unlike the 'flame wars" in Linux community both these Linux derivatives Google Chrome Tab and Amazon's Kindle Tab going to shape the world for better.
Knowledge wise. 

It is not going to be iPods and Apple.
Apple is too expensive for poor debt ridden world including America.

(If only GOP and Democrats can get together and get US out of the war mongering American companies to begin with, the Real Dream  of the average American will come true.
We were a country infested with this disease for over 3 decades.
The War.
The biggest casualty of this war was the lowering of our educational standards and not training good teachers.
Most of the good teachers left us for better pastures.
We did not train teachers in English, Maths, Computer Science (IT) and Science in adequate numbers.
All the efforts were focused on the war and even afterward there is  still some bickering going on.
Successive generations of children were neglected (war-neglected) and unfortunately some children were recruited to war efforts).

The children born now should have a better future irrespective of where they are born.
This is where good American companies (not MacDonald, Kentucky or Coca COLA) like Amazon should stretch their arm here and into the third world with education utilities at an affordable price.
We do not want things like IBM Classmates. 

That is also only for the rich American children.

We do not want things free too.  

I do not believe in giving children free stuff and the same stuff like school uniforms and books not updated for 30 years.

Then they do not value them.
I have my own story.
We were not rich and most of my classmates were the same.
We used slate and slate pencils.
I had my  slate (only used 3 for the entire school years) and slate pencil till I entered the University.
Then in the second year (term 5) when I passed the first examination, I was very happy I wanted to donate my precious slate to a poor kid in my neighbourhood.
I found a kid and gave it to him stating that he should do well in school.
Three months later when I came on vacation, I visited his house to see he had broken it in no time.
Mind you keeping a slate for 15 odd years without breaking it is no mean task.
Knowing this my kids leave all their valuable stuff including some dolls in my room, knowing very well, they are in safe hands and my room is a junkyard full of computers and bizarre array of things.

This is of course after donating 95% of the stuff.
Their grandma who is no more was very good at disposing the stuff.

This was a kid of a different generation.
Consumerist and did not value it as a gift.
They do not conserve.
Had he used it properly I would have helped his entire schooling career.
It was not to be.
My father and I had the habit of donating my used books (I used to keep them in very good condition unlike children of today) once I have finished  using them.
I have never sold them, even secondhand (some very expensive books).

Our teachers were good and they feared School Inspector.
Teaching was a noble profession then.
Now our teachers do not teach in the class but have tuition classes for money in the afternoon.
(But our politicians came and ruined what was left of English system and  the number of schools (they are all Buddhist Schools) built by an American philanthropist colonel Sir Henry Olcott.
It is a common practice that principals  in these school takes bribes to admit children.
Not only that they ruined the schools built on the temple premises too, by elevating them to a very different status.
Our education system is in a mess.
We cannot resurrect them to good old days).

The system is incorrigible.
There is digital divide too.
City children fare better than village kids but due to the quota system bright city children (who have achieved the required standard) are deprived of getting into the University.

Some of them with money (having sold their ancestral homes to raise money) go abroad and never return.

Many of them do not succeed having gone out and do menial jobs.

What am getting at is the Kindle gadgets are in the affordable range even for the third world.

They are the game-changer.
They can replace what is lacking in most of our teachers.
Dependability, durability and the ability to update the knowledge base.
If we cannot change the manpower (attitude of the teachers) then we should change the fire power which Kindle will have.

They should be packed with educational materials.
Out parents will do the needful if not the teachers.

Amazon should divert 1% of their profits to education of children under 12.
They should reach them with Kindle and the Cloud.
They should do that in America first and show the world that they do care for their own kids.
I am sure Obama will be all ready to help.
Unlike previous presidents he has given the knowledge base a powerful kick and an uplift.
Whatever the failures in economic front if Obama does the ground work for changing dynamics of 21st century education his name will be written in gold.
The companies that back that impetus will last longer than the people who owned it.
Look for the longevity.
Amazon is  a Key Company.
Rest of the world will have to follow its footsteps.

UNICEF is dead now and U.N.O does not care.
What UNICEF and U.N.O unable to do Amazon can do better in education.

Amazon should never give this stuff free to the third world. 
The education system of  a particular country should deserve whatever they receive as educational tools (Amazon or Google) with proper outcome based plan.

Not simple doles.
Beauty  in the third world is that the parents do their best to make the life of their children better.

What is ruining their aspiration is the education system which is not prepared to change and take bold actions so that there is equitable distribution of education resources.

Cloud, the Kindle and the Google, the ChromeOS can do that with training and infrastructure improvement.
Unfortunately we do not have a satellite of our own.
Satellite systems should improve to take the cloud computing forward.
A lot of planning at global scale should happen.
Land based internet system want reach everybody.

That is why I say the education material should focus on under 12 for the next 10 years. 
A lot of things will change in this decade if not the end of the world as predicted.

We already have system for adults and older children.
They may have to pay for the services but that is how things are as at present.
Nobody should grumble paying for a good service especially education.

Universal education with poor quality (that is what we have now in our country) is no substitute for appropriate education at appropriate age and time.
It looks like our education system kills the interest of the kids.
They are arcane.

This is something I posted sometime ago.
I am thankful to Amazon for taking cognizant of what I stated.
I should have said bit of Kinder Kindle.
Amazon is kinder to the parent's pockets.
Thanks again.


It is sad we lost over 30 year a futile war and we are still spending more for defense budget. 
In the process we are cutting our budget for education. 
If that is not enough we got a Minister who instills fear on students who tend to disagree with his views.  

All this is enough for young ones to go abroad and see how education is done in the rest of the world.
 
If we take Singapore they have developed their own e-reader and over 900,000 books in the Library are converted to e-books and could be accessed free on the e-reader.

They do not boast that they give free textbooks but make available all the resources for young people to learn.
One can see young Singaporeans studying in the University (their accommodations are not as spacious like in our country) do their home work at the airport lounge.

The e-readers available there include Kinder 2 which is driven by Linux kernel (Amazon Device). 
That is the very reason I wanted to write about it. 
It is black and white and has wireless connectivity and a browser.

I believe all the other devices are also using Linux kernel.

Then there is another called Nook which is available in both colour and black and white.

I would like to see our kids also get a chance to use them.

This in only a wishful thinking.

Our educators go on holiday just before their retirement wasting out resources.
I wonder how many of them have at least seen a e-reader at least in the airport.
Mind you one need not go there, just browsing the web is enough to see an array of devices.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Top 25 Linux Distributions

Top 25 Linux Distributions
I have analyzed over 50 Linux distributions both qualitatively and quantitatively and following is a summary according to points scored of the top 10.
Rest are listed according to the points awarded without a comment.
Top Rank
1. Debian scoring 3005 points
Coming to IT industry where there are very few heroes Debian is the clear winner which gyrates and spins at the correct orbit.
It was no surprise.
Score of above 3000 and well above the Gold Standard of 2500 for the standard CD/DVD.
For the heavy weight category it is within the Gold Mark where no other distribution has all the components at disposal with over 30,000 package well tested and stable. 
It has gParted which is around 100 MiB with partition tool and security features.
It has Blender, Scribus and Inkscape.
Only missing component was O.E.M. component.
Ranking Second with  2620 points is Untimate Linux
2. Ultimate Linux/ArtistX
This is taking whopping 2620 points, simply because it’s a games DVD based on Ubuntu and it has graphic features including Inkscape and Blender.
Apart from that it is basically a Ubuntu distribution.
Even though it gets lot of points due to inclusion of many packages it should be used as  a games DVD rather than a general purpose distribution.
This warning is due to the changes in Ubuntu Unity and the attendant repository changes that may come as a result of that change.
Rank Number 3
3. UberStudent  with 2610 points
This is one of the very good Ubuntu derivative packed with utilities and only utilities I could not find were gparted and blender.
It’s on the fat side with a 2.7 GiB image.
This is one of the Linux distributions I could not download due to download problem but with some difficulty I managed to download both the CD and the DVD versions.
There were not enough seeders but I used point to point download.
It’s Ubuntu based and excellent for students in the higher grades and in the University. It has many utilities that student would like to use in literature search albeit web based.
I have no hesitation in recommending it.
It has almost everything one needs.
Why blender was not included is a bit of a mystery.
4. Knoppix fourth with 2410 / (GnuArtist 2445)
Knoppix stands tall and scores 2410 which is well above Ubuntu and Unity on the threshold of becoming a Gold Standard on its own.
It is 4th in the my list of 50 and only three others above.
Debian comes first.
Ultimate Linux comes second.
UberStudent comes third. Packed with utilities except Blender and gParted..
Good old days when it was difficult to find a distribution and DEMO CDs were hard to come by Knoppix started the revolution of Live CDs.
I have used it from its 3.1 versions and up and it was available even in Sri-Lanka.
It’s significant features apart from Live CD running on RAM are
1. Good hardware detection
2. Sound configuration and unique start up with sound effects.
3. Ability to compress lot of programs into a CD/DVD.
4. Enormous number of packages
5. Partition tool and many more
6. ORCAs that is fun for visually handicapped user and is as good as Vinux.
It was way ahead until Puppy Linux came into the scene and took another twist by making Live CD under 100 MiB.
Soon I became a convert of Puppy that comes inherently for my love of the canine species.

Its weakness was it could not be installed into the hard disk and I found a way to mount it on a FAT partition. I always had a copy mounted on my hard disk when the LXDE came into the scene.

Then came the 10th anniversary release which was  big hit by itself both CD and DVD versions.

Now it can be installed and administrative right can be restored after installing.
There is Knoppix for Kids and Games DVD which was something lacking in 95% of the Linux Distributions.
If you do not use any other Linux distributions this is the one one should always have.
I cannot find anything wrong with this distribution when I format my hard disk once a year towards December, it is the first one that goes into the hard disk as the flag bearer of Linux and other distributions are installed afterward.
5. Poseidon with 2390 points comes fifth
Poseidon Linux
Poseidon Linux not Scientific Linux (actually this name is misleading and does not have any scientific packages in this distribution) takes a big spot in my scale by a wide margin for packaging productive utilities for scientific (including statistics) and business purposes and for schools.
Its score is 2390 which is close to PCLinux but have more packages than PCLinux.
They are inkscape, blender, statistic and plotting packages but it is on the heavyweight category and downloading is slow mainly due to not having a torrent facility.
But it has CD version too and again it is a Debian/Ubuntu derivative.
In spite of its FATTY layer I like it very much and one has almost everything one needs in one shoe.
6. Pinguy/Pin Eee comes sixth with 2385
Pinguy and Ping Eee
For the time being Pinguy and Ping Eee are the best innovative Ubuntu derivative which is in the market and the score is 2385 which is very close to the Gold Standard and well above Unity.
Out of the Ubuntu derivatives this is the most eye catching feature filled derivative to entice Linux newbies as well as savvy guys / girls.
It has Cloud Utilities, Light Scribe and it almost look like apple Mac for one who has never seen a Apple Mac.
I have the feeling Ubuntu's Unity has taken a leaf out of Pinguy and Ping Eee for netbooks and laptops.
Its grub file could not figure out my other distributions and that was why it was not in my box up till now.
The new version has now ironed out this minor glitch and I have installed it with 5 other distributions in my laptop which I upgraded to 500 GiB recently.
Interestingly enough this is the one I boot first since I am getting attached to it day by day.
It now does a good job with GRUB and recognize all the other Linux derivatives.

It will certainly take the tablets not by surprise but by its own imagination.
7. Dynabolic comes seventh with 2290
Dynabolic 3.0.0 beta is currently available at www.linuxtracker.com.org torrent and this was one of the oldest Linux music distributions. It was created by Denis Rogo an Italian musician. It was in hibernation (version 2) but lately has created the version 3 for download.
I call him the Bob Marley of computer music.
It is feature packed but cannot be installed as yet.
It scores thumping 2290 points was not a surprise for me.
PCLinux comes 8th with 2255
My favorite distribution gets 2255 points which is well below the 2500 points which I have for my Hypothetical Gold Standard but a future candidate for that award. It has promised to introduce bit 64 from the current version onward.
Even though it has no special features it sticks to Linux base with administrative functions and very stable once properly configured.

It gets lot of points for it’s web site and the digital magazine which it maintains.

The package management is excellent and lets you install all the packages easily from repository. To be on record this is the only distribution which has a usable Skype (except perhaps Linvo). It also does not bother one with updates unlike Suse. It is a KDE desktop and has two Mini versions, one LXDE and the standard KDE. Once installed there is very little maintenance if firewall is correctly configured and easy with downloads and remove redundant files at boot time and if it is run on 24/7 schedule it does a good cron job too.
No wonder it is my favorite and may be so for others too (once 64 bit version is introduced it will become more popular).
Ubuntu’s departure from traditional base would be another reason.

It is bit slow at boot time and K-torrent is good (it may be bit slow because of my heavy daily work and downloads) and if one is using it for light work, one may not find the slow boot up a problem. Even one is a light user of the computer it is a good practice for the distribution to run 24 hours at least once a week for maintenance which it does automatically well past midnight.
My reason for choosing it
It is very stable and stands 8th in the ranks.
9. Puppy comes 9th with 1910
It is Small and Beautiful size ~100MB!
It is Live booting from CD and USB flash drive.
It runs from RAM, making it unusually fast even in old PCs and in netbooks with solid state storage media.
Includes a wide range of applications: word processors, spreadsheets, Internet browsers, games, image editors and many utilities.
Puppy is easy to use and little technical knowledge is assumed. Most hardware is automatically detected.
Who is the founder?
Barry Kauler from Australia.

10. Simply Mepis with AntiX ranks 10th

Simply Mepis is high in my honour's list with its stable KDE desktop, K3B, the CD/DVD burning utility with a cleaning utility called sweeper included to delete redundant files.
It also has AntiX for older computers. Taylor Swift which has taken roots from AntiX is still not yet mature enough to be recommended as a general purpose distribution but AntiX is light weight and robust. Mepis does a overall good job of covering new and old computers which is somewhat mandatory now with lot of changes happening in the IT market and some proprietary Operating Systems abandoning their customer base and luring them to go for newer versions without substantial benefits for the average user except the eye catching cosmetic changes and that also at the expense of overheads which include battery usage and additional expenses for the RAM etc.
Newer version has Libre Office and all the utilities one needs in a CD or DVD which is less than 1 GiB and save the time of download.

It scores 1880 in my scoring scale which is value for money.

Its ranks 10th in my ranking scale.
 
11. Ubuntu Dream Studio comes 11th with 1775
Ubuntu's Unity-Dream Studio
Is it a dream come true for newbies?
I think so and thumbs up for this distribution which I could download overnight with 2.1 GiB.
There were only four seeders but it was pretty fast. Go and download it and increase the number of seeders in proportion to leechers and enjoy the Unity experience.
It is a new experience for old hand of Linux like me who never used Ubuntu on regular basis except for demonstrations.
Regular Ubuntu users will grumble but I will tell you what to do. Go ahead and have both old version and new version in the same box and enjoy the difference.
Sinhala capability was there which I did not test but probably needs some smooth ironing out which is another plus point.
It has Libre Office and Blender a new version (Maya replacement).
Please do not call it Apple like but call it this is Unity Linux Desktop.
Sure it is a winner at the time of debt and cash crisis.
For good effects find a good compatible graphic card. That may be the only thing one may have to change in one’s computer.
My old computer’s graphic card was not enough to take advantage of Unity.
The few glitches I had with the Unity CD with workplaces has been reasonably taken care of and I could load all the workplaces with a running program and with a mouse click it goes into full screen image.
Play with it and enjoy the experience.
I do not know how far one can configure it to one's own needs but it is good as it is why configure and make a mess out of it?
It score is 1775.

Rest with Only points scored.
11. Dream Studio Ubuntu    1755
12. Trisquel                            1660
13. Suse                                  1560
14. Sabayon                           1430
15. Swift Linux                      1415
16. Ubuntu-Unity                  1405
17. PureOs                              1385
18. Salix                                  1380
19. Kubuntu                           1355
20. Fedora                              1325
21. Berry                                1275
22. Linux Mint                      1260
23. CloudUSB                      1240
24. Apodio                           1165
25. Vinux                             1130

Incognito comes 26th and it for anonymous web browsing and cannot be installed.

I have missed ArtistX which would score around 2600 and could be in place of Ultimate Linux (If you do not like games Linux DVD).
It is also Ubuntu/Debian derivative and for Audio/Video and artistic work.
I can report to you now it got 2610 points.
GnuArtist got 2445 points, less points scored, indeed due to not incorporating proprietary software and keeping itself to Gnome base.

I have made some correction here. Simply Mepis comes 10th.
Other versions not included was the result of inability to download or incompatibility with my old graphic cards.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Hanthana Linux-Sinhala Edition

I have some good news to report.

Finally I managed to download Hanthana Linux Version11.1 from iBiblio.
It was 2009 December edition probably comes from Fedora 11.
It took almost the weekend to download and it finished before mid night and I am writing this well past midnight.
Before writing this I did another search to see from where it can be downloaded.

Three sites.
1. Ibiblio has  old and latest versions.
2. Sourceforge has up to 14.2 version
3. Sri-Lankan LEARN.net for latest version

Both Sourceforge and iBiblio have torrent downloads too.

I have to thank, those who were involved in doing the hard work.
I have been downloading various Linux distributions and once after about 40 attempts I managed to download SwiftLinux (Point to point download breaks without any warning).
Their web site could not handle the downloads and decided to place a limited number of iso images at sourceforge and now even the point to point download is OK.
All these problems I have highlighted here in my blogspot.
I had a particular liking for Taylor Swift (Taylor is a singer) and somehow managed to download it after many tries before they shifted to Sourceforge.
SwiftLinux is a derivative of AntiX which is a Mini version of Mepis which I  am fond of, coming from Debian base.
SwiftLinux comes form America and their vision is to produce a light weight distribution for old machines with low RAM.
It's philosophy is to even beat Puppy Linux (latest Puppy cannot be run on old machines but Puppy 4.1 can) in the light weight Linux game.
AntiX of course is a good distribution and SwiftLinux still has teething problems.
What I said is relevant to Hanthana Linux too.

We have lot of old computers and many buy secondhand ones because they cannot afford expensive dual core machines.

Light weight version is easy to download and easy on old computers with low RAM.

The simple fact is that I could not download the Hanthana Linux in spite of trying on torrent download.

I hope new torrents would be better.
In the mean time, I have downloaded gorilla sized PCLINuxFullMonty (many seeders) and Knoppix 4.7.1 without a problem.
Even downloaded Ultimate Linux (point to point) with some difficulty.
It took me 10 days to download Absolute Linux (Slackware derivative) CD which is very good and one is not fixed to one desktop (KDE or Gnome).
It took 14 days for me to download Fedora 13 (from Fedora 13 there is Sinhala Unicode Support) and when I finally tested it there was no Sinhala in it.

Debian started supporting Sinhala Linux from version 6.0.0 (current version).

It is also merging with LinuxMint and making Debian Mint version. 

This is due to Ubuntu becoming Unity and Ubuntu does not support Sinhala.

I am currently downloading them and testing to see where Sinhala script is there. In the live session or when attempting to install (I have not installed) Sinhala can be selected but font does not appear.

So Fedora is still ahead because of Hanthana Linux and I hope a Light Weight version will seal it's position well ahead of others.
This is specially so because Redhat is moving fast to Btrs file system and it does not bother about desktops (that was a terrible mistake in the past and Redhat still continue to follow that policy).
What happened to Linux Mint is a case in point and they realized the folly  of piggybacking on one distribution and quickly went back to Debian base.
Once, one is with the Debian fold, there is no update cycle (at least for Debian Mint for the time being) and this leaves Developers free to address new frontiers.
With cloud computing on the horizon (general and global picture  changing) there going to be lot of changes including hardware.
O.E.M guys will stop supporting Linux and get a big thumb up from windows 8. In that scenario, the ability to support old computers is mandatory.
Linux can continue to do that for another 10 years.

Unfortunately Linux developers are also changing the course anticipating changes and Ubuntu and Linux distributions (CloudUSB, JoliCloud) that support cloud computing (Redhat included) are taking a calculated risk.

I hope these changes might not affect Hanthana Linux in the long run.
It is better to be ready with the challenge and the changes. 

By the way the CD is pretty impressive.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Suse or Trisequel or Mandriva

I looked at my blog posts and discovered that I have no entry for Suse.
This is to rectify that omission.
Unfortunately I am bit explicit here.
Suse or Trisequel or Mandriva
Suse Linux had a special place in my choices before it went commercial. I left Fedora and embraced Suse Linux and had been using it from Suse 8. Till Suse 10.1 there was no problem and when it was taken by Novel I had lot of expectations. Novel concentrated on server but I believe like Redhat neglected the desktop version. By Suse 11.1, I was changing my allegiance. Mainly due to it’s failure in commercial support of the desktop version.
It was less than ideal.
Then it’s alliance with Microsoft was not a favorable enterprise.
I will talk about the plus points first.
It had one of the best installation script even though unlike Redhat sometimes tends to miss some of my other Linux distributions already installed in the box. It also had a very good partition utility when compared to other Linux distributions except Mandrake, Debian and Redhat. It’s YAST was a very good configuration utility. Its KDE was bulky but very attractive. Then it introduced the Suse Studio where one can Mix and Match utilities and make one’s own Live distribution. In fact, I made one distribution myself. ChromeOs is one of those distributions a that took root from Suse Studio. From then onwards I shifted my allegiance totally and it’s Milestone releases are “pain in the neck” and worse than the Fedora experience for me.
I stopped downloading and testing them after the last version 11.2. When I saw many innovations in other Live CD/DVDs it was easy for me to ditch it in favour of PClinux.
Now few of my reason for ditching it.
It is bulky and consumes lot of RAM.
It is slow in boot up.
Its downloading of Linux images was bad.
It tends to pile up all the junk temporary files and what really annoyed me was it did not have a way of cleaning up and deleting large files. With time file corruption ensued. At that stage to save time I had to dump it and never used it again.
It stopped reading partitions above 15 and with me having 5 to 6 distributions in one box it was restricting my freedom. With disks of 500 GiB coming to the market restricting to 15 partition was a stupid idea. Only Microsoft would have done it that way. New Windows 8 not allowing alternative operations to boot is a case in point.
It also take the belief and shoot that belief out of window that commercial ventures do add value and complementary and better than community work.
Suse desktop was a commercial failure for the happy faces of Microsoft and Apple CEOs.
I wanted to write about Trisequel here instead of Suse but took the decision if I do not write little bit of Suse and its history, justice is not done to those developers who created Suse.
Trisequel
I will be brief in here writing about Trisequel. Suse and Mandrake took Open Software theme to the extreme and in their early releases excluded all packages which had slightest taint of commercial tags and did not include things like Flash and the like limiting the functionality for those who migrating from Microsoft background. They then bundled them in their commercial counterpart to lure them to buy their distributions. This was not a healthy ploy, and the clever customer like me can see the commercial intent. I have personal experience with Suse the details which I decline to state here.
XandosOS is another good commercial product which apply this principle.
I should close this entry with why I have not included Mandrake. Many reasons as stated above an it’s split recently into two. Mandrake has been acquired by a Russian company and it is applying rigid and regimental style, somewhat akin to military. The breakaway Mageia is not yet mature. I wish both of these endevours success but hesitate to recommend them just for now.
Coming back to Trisequel if one wants a pure Linux derivative and beautiful and clean distribution too, I have no hesitation of recommending Trisequel that come from Spain and has English version too.
It has everything except cloud utilities.
That shoots two birds with one go.
1. No commercial involvement or enticements.
2. True to it’s Linux base.
So if any Linux distribution goes commercial like Redhat focus that commercial aspect and give customer due care which Suse failed in desktop range. I am not stating that Redhat customer service good. It is far from it but it knows it’s obligation and working towards that goal at least in the server section.
Redhat is well known for failing the desktop clients.

XBMC Linux and Media Center

XBMC Linux and Media Center
This is a Live CD that specializes on Multi-Media applications. It runs on Flushbox X-windows and has XBMC as its major package.This is a mouse happy distribution and when one right clicks the application menu comes to life.
One interesting feature about this distribution is the distribution is only tine but its application XBMC takes a large portion of it’s MiB.
If one has an old computer with a good graphic utility one can use that computer as a home media center and store all your videos and audios in one place. Not only that t can store pictures to. Once it is connected to the internet one can get the local weather too.
This is something one should have one’s bedroom and program it to wake you up with music and morning weather. Of course one has to write a tiny script to wake you up at 6 A.M or 7 A.M.
I am told early risers are healthy and manage stress better. Music and cup of tea (not coffee) is healthy start up for one who has cash strapped duty debt crisis.
What better way other than rise up XBMC on a old computer.
XBMC is under the menu video when you right click and get the applications into life. It has lot of other little applications.

Incognito Linux and the Visually handicapped

Incognito Linux and the Visually handicapped


This is something one should take cognizant of. I was looking for a post in the name of incognito in my blogspot but I have posted it as Webbo Amnesia. Amnesia is a medical term and I had gone to the town with that word and has completely forgotten to highlight the Linux distribution in my post. My apologies to the guys and girls at Incognito. 

The error of commission and omission should be put right here.

1. It is a Live CD if one wants to browse anonymously and without leaving any traces to detect.

2. It has vidalia which gives a list of guys logged in at the time of one's current browsing. 

3. It has ORCAs which is something I should highlight here. 
Even a blind person can browse the web without any intrusion or obstruction.

4. Web browser is light and no cookies or attempting to remember all one's actions. 

5. It does not feed back your browsing habit to commercial interests. It is fast because of that fact and i was immediately on my blog entry and reading its first few lines.

I am happy even a blind person can read this entry if he/she accidentally visit my site. There are lot of nice Linux guys/girls out there doing things that are commendable. Helping visually handicapped to be independent is one such thing. Thanks a lot to all ORCAs developers out there.

Incognito is an amazing utility which all the aspiring politicians and power hungry ones should worry about. It can boot and erase all the traces of memory in the browser and the computer of use after posting a message out of the country which some dictators like what you find in China may not like it, and the true state of affairs are known to the rest of the world.

Tor is a small utility one can carry in a floppy disk and it will send chills in the spines of some politicians!

Linux can do it and www is for all not for a few powerful and wealthy.
It makes the ground rules simple and open. Be transparent in all public (not private) affairs.

What I gather is that this utility is used by teenagers in the West to hoodwink their parents and reach unwanted sites. Well, teens are two steps ahead of their parents and old folks should fast learn "tricks of the trade".
Use of this utility in bad hands can be deplorable but I will use it only when their is a dire necessity political-wise.


 

1. Number one feature one I want all the Linux distribution to have is UnetBootIn.
2. Number two is ORCAs.

3.Number three is gParted and partition image.

Incognito has it.

Knoppix has it.

Most of the Ubuntu derivatives VinuX have it.

Dynabolic should have it and it has it.
The  visually handicapped will enjoy Music with Dynabolic.

In other words all audio visual Linux CD/DVDs should have ORCAs and UnetBootIn.
So he/she can wear the distribution around the neck wherever they go.

Who knows I am in my twilight years and I may go blind due to old age and I will have to carry one with me.

Thanks young guys and girls for your wonderful communal spirit.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Demo Linux and the Nostalgia

Demo Linux and the Nostalgia
It was a very pleasant experience to boo the Demo Linux that I downloaded 2 days ago.
It did not boot up with my ThinkCentre but did boot up with the NetVista without a problem an even detected the USB ports and the paraphernalia attached to the computer.
It had KDE, Gnome and surprisingly StarOffice 2 (which I had never used before).
Most of the utilities were Debian based and it did not have office package not even AbiWord but there were 10 or more text editors including LyX, Latex derivative and Quanta 2 the web editor too.
There were hundred of utilities and games and demo did not need a password to boot.
It was very quick to boot and had all the text stating what was happenings behind the scene.
With tablets coming to scene, the humble beginning of Linux and now almost 95% of utilities including Androids using Linux is an amazing feat of the last 20 years.
But thank goes to Live CD List web site for keeping an archive CD there for downloading.
Now I am going to download version 2 too.
I used version 3 for testing.
Now that distromania is defunct I hope LiveCD List keep some copies of old Linux for the future generation to see as a historical fact.
Without history mankind does not exist even in the digital age!
 
It reminded me of the Live Suse CD I used before I migrated from Redhat and Debian to Suse.

The Live CD List Web Site

This is a comment I posted at the site of the Live CD List.
I have used that site nearly over 18 months and for me it is one of the best neatly organized site without advertisement.
There may be lapses in part when I write about Linux distributions which are coming thick and fast but keeping them available for downloading is the best service one can offer a newbie or a savvy.

My Comment
I have been downloading Linux images for testing for a long time.
Your site and layout is excellent..
Unfortunately distromania suddenly went defunct and there is no site other than you site where old images (or redirection to home site) archived and kept for downloading..
I was looking for pocketwriter a Slackware derivative but got redirected to GoDaddy site.
Failed after several attempts.
Similarly I could not find an image of Musix 64 bits.
There is some problem with Porteus too (portable Linux).
What I want to thank you very much is for keeping the very old demoLinux (currently downloading version 3) with you.
i have had lot of problem with point to point downloads which get disconnected abruptly.
Now I use linxtracker and try to seed as much as possible..
It took 14 days to download absolute Linux (old version) and 10 days to download Fedora 13 even at Linux Tracker due to no seeders.
Keep up the good work.
We greatly appreciate your work for the Linux community and the rest.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Linux Updates-Dynabolic and Knoppix DVD

Dynabolic has revitalized itself and come up with it's 3.0.0. beta version.
It has almost everything what I want except installation.
It is at beta stage and that may be the reason it has not yet included the install script which I am eagerly waiting.
It is a DVD just over 2 GiB and packed everything apart from Music and DVD stuff.
It has Scribus, Blender and Inkscape.
It has Orcas too.
What more one needs.
I have not given my score but it will top 2000 and possibly 2500 if they include the install script when ready.
I do not discuss two distribution in the same blog page but today I am going to do that to save time
I should say few words about Knoppix 6.7.1 DVD.
It is excellent and now can be used for 64 bit computers too.

If you type adriane at boot time everything is in audio mode for visually handicapped and this must be the first time somebody who is blind has given a chance and full control of using a computer including going to to the web.
Mindfully it has put installation as the last option.
This is something Linux community can do to a blind but computer literate guy or girl to be independent.
Blind people love music and Knoppix and Dynabloic if they join hands will be coming out as an easy winner.
I must tell you once booted using orcas has some glitches which needed to be sorted out soon.
Dynabolic is also of the same class for me as Knoppix.
Talking about both in the same line of thinking I think is not inappropriate, when I come to think about it.
We will join hand with you a better product comes out of Unity in Diversity.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

What can go wrong for Android Tablets?

Lot can go wrong with Android tablets.
Long period elapsed from the concept to execution and most of it was tested on high end of the market.
The average user was not involved in the decision making.
It was probably an effort of a small team which worked hard (dedicated to the task at hand).

To begin with it was the development of the browser.
Then the tiny OS without security enhancements.
It was a new browser not a time tested one.
There were many suitable candidates for this new browser in the  Linux community and none of them were considered or compared with the Chrome. 
Now take FireFox.
It has lot of loop holes when used in the Microsoft Environment.
It originated from Linux but then arched its way out to embrace Microsoft community.
With that it lost the security features.
It is possible to customize it in the Linux environment and even in that environment some cookies till lately (penetrated even my computer) do some undesirable things.
I was doing lot of downloads without a firewall and hacker (most likely windows guy from India-that is far as I went in search of the guy) installed a script in the browser.
Fortunately I detected it in matter of hours and took necessary steps.
Instead of point to point I went for Torrents which has a way of of using the port and testing the threads.
Even torrents can be attacked and it happened to LinuxTracker and lately Linux foundation is affected by a similar attack.
If Linux could be attacked it is going to be chicken feed for attackers in Microsoft environment.
Chrome will have to deal with this threat.
It has no human resource to deal with like in the Linux Community.
In a commercial environment Linux does not prosper as was shown in Fedora Project.
Fedora's contribution was marginal when compared to Debian.
It was today I (rather PCLinux) detected something fishy.
I was using point to point download overnight (two files) and one of them (either Zenwalk or Absolute Linux let in a cookie in between the download streams disrupting my download (point to point) today.

Equally it could have happened after the downloads were finished and I did not terminate the download as usual and left the computer running.
If I had the torrent running this would not have happened which I usually do.

I removed all the Google Cookies (including useful ones) to get some sanity back and system running smoothly.
Any browser is vulnerable and not foolhardy.
So Google gadgets are also vulnerable.
In any case I do not use Chrome.
I am into Cloud computing I have to and I will be using the browsers.
I think Linux has to develop a utility like torrent to deal with this problem and Google with its limited staff cannot do that.

For cloud to succeed something better than the browser has to take the  tiny  computing moments and events into control.
I believe the browser is not the best vehicle for Cloud computing.

Time will tell whether my apprehensions are true or false.

Google cannot do it alone.

The stakes are high if they fail. 

Like viruses for Microsoft viruses it will be Cookies for Google that set in a bad omen (for Chrome and Google).

It has to forge a friendship with Linux Community for it to be successful.

The mistake it did was to declare it's kernel is pure and original.
It is not and it is vulnerable.

Linux has to look forward to the challenge and take a giant stride now  (before it is too late) in Cloud Computing.
Linux can do it with or without Google's help.
That is my belief.