TPM, UEFI, and Microsof Monopoly

Microsoft's strategy is to interfere with your freedom of choice.

Having failed with UEFI, Microsoft is bringing in another ploy to hoodwink gullible customers.

Do not get caught.

Within weeks I found a way to scuttle UEFI.

Simple.

Go to BIOS and activate It.

Better still use Gpt and use only Linux partitions and install Linux a d say Good Bye to Windows.

The latest ploy that will misfire is TPM.

Trusted Program Module.

The P stands for PAY to PLAY.

If you have money pay by all means but if you're a pensioner stick with Windows till 2025 and kick the bucket thereafter.

Microsoft want only your money and not your wellbeing.

People are just recovering from the pandemic and money you saved should not be spent on a gadget to upgrade your computer with a hardware module and service charge to go with It, to get latest Windows 11.

It is not a brand new operating system but a glossy front end advertisement campaign.

If you have money go and buy Apple computer but if short of cash go for Lenova with Linux 15 kernel.

Even Google's Chromebook is expensive but it does not need TOM upgrade.

If you are lucky and your PC or Laptop supports it, go to BIOS and change to, TPM mode if you really want Windows.

Microsoft Windows is like an Uppish Aristocratic Woman dressed in a glamorous Sari

I forgot a few points that makes Linux stand out in space on zero gravity or one gravity on earth, is its scalability and it's different tool kits to suit the desktop environment.

The desktop can be heavy like in KDE plasma and is always limited by the RAM and hardware of the cellphone concerned.

The bloated desktop in Windows consume precious memory and little is left for functionality. That is why it's development is staggered till a new kit or new kid comes to town with new skates.

Mind you, old keyboard cellphones ran on Java.

Now that new hardware and chips are coming out thick and fast, Linux also can show its prowess and that is what Emmabsntus has done with xfs and lxtq (a brilliant upgrade to front end).

Linux has enough backend stuff unlike Windows (lot put to front end nothing left for backend and that also one has to buy the bloat ware).

Having said that Goggle series 11 is more than adequate for daily use and going for a new cellphone with version 12 and above is a waste.

My favourite of course is Nokia and my old flame GreenTel I have not tested for many years.

Now this 5G connectivity is not going to have any effect in Ceylon due to poor infrastructure development by All Services local and foreign.

We are cash struck for another 50 years and ban-omics is the order of the day and do not throw away your old gadgets.

I cannot think of a better description than the above comparison to a Sari.

Sari may look beautiful but the lady behind is still old without innovations.

Instead of writing about Windows, this piece is about Linux Kernel 15 and a bit of politics at the end.

The distribution used in explaining new stuff is Emmabantus.

After a long period of hibernation Emmanantus team from France had done a credible job.

Linux is 30 years old and I have been using it over 20 years and exclusively over the past 5 years or more.

I am more critical of Linux than Microsoft.

That is how Linux improves leaps and bounds.

A swipe at Windows is due to my satire dying a natural death which is coming to surface unhindered and nothing more.

I have no intention of converting a guy entangled in Windows, except saying God Bless them for using a weak element.

Humans are not infallible and let them be.

But I get annoyed by guys who have used Linux over a year during the pandemic and writing a glossy scathing overviews.

These guys come from Window's background and unable to master 10 Linux commands or had not read the Linux Bible or the very big "Linux in a Nutshell" book.

Yes Linux in a nutshell.is a very big reference book for developers.

Linux did not come into existence by chance.

It is a simple guy's challenge to his professor which the professor took it offensively and the young guy split his hairs (I mean professor's hairs) and went his own way without crowd funding to begin with but a bunch of community guys with similar interests, added market value to it's products globally.

I am not saying crowd funding is the best way.

It can fail and Ubuntu currently is an example.

But Linus Torvalds kept his kernel business as his priority and the distribution development is left to focus groups and Debian keeping the repositories updated and also depreciating some dysfunctional applications.

I use AbiWord for my work for a very long time and it is not in Debian Store but Ubuntu has it in it's symantic store.

In that scenario if Ubuntu is not there I have to go back to an old Puppy Linux to work on AbiWord.

With difficulty I got it installed in Ubuntu 20-4.

What I mean here, is one cannot satisfy everybody but that is the name of the game.

Coming to Emmabantus, it has AbiWord.

Besides it has LibreOffice 7 version.

As I said earlier its kernel is 15 and kernel 15 supports version 7 of LibreOffice and no AbiWord.

LibreOffice has a kid's version and Emmabantus has it.

Emmabantus has three boot up options.

1. One for kids.

2. Two for new comers to Linux.

3. The third, the classic for guys like me who wants all the packages including old ones.

The Gimp new version which I did not test is there for your photo editing.

VML is there for my videos.

It has MultiSystem Utilitu to make bootable USB with multiple portable Linux distributions with xfs (not with Debian with enormous packages to boot in one go) capability.

Having said that I now use Plasma KDE of Debian for my regular work.

Debian has 7 or 8 other desktops for my light work.

Emmabantus use only xfce and lxtq to prevent memory over surge.

No hard feelings, though.

Then Ubuntu is in a new mode to take Google face up with it's Web Development Kit.

I support it whole heartedly since Google is trying the "Microsoft Strategy" of putting glossy stuff to lure gullible customers, since Fdroid (? Is it Linear OS) guys or JinglyOS guys from China (is crowd funding for a new OS and gadgets).

The Coronavirus has made explosion of technology and airlines going bankrupt has made people having money in their hands for spending (not efficiency in governments like UK and EU but people realising all governments are useless unless they spend money not for high rising compact buildings or 5S capability but  good solid infrastructure for hospitals and social welfare for the vulnerable).

My only problem is I have stopped travelling not due to Coronavirus but due to cash shortage but I had been economising long before Coronavirus (Telecom bills, electricity bills but not on water bills to keep plants from wilting in dry weather), knowing very well the Ceylonese Government is in global debts will introduce ban-omics and ban even Western Digital new external hard disk to try kernel 15 stuff in my spare time.

I am now short of USBs and I will discard all my 32 bit Linux distributions on DVDs by burning them in spite of the environmental pollution it entails.

No option, I am short of space, too.

Books I will keep without burning since buying old books from JUNK book sales, I believe will contribute to spread of Coronavirus.

I do not go to book shops now and that also saves money.

There is a guy in Ceylon who runs a TV station built by transporting hospital refuse from Europe and dumping them in unsuspecting countries and I believe he is responsible for spreading Coronavirus in Ceylon.

Hospital mattresses from Europe wrapped in a new lining was one of his promotions not innovation.

A crafty guy whose brother was in prison for murder and dealing with illegal drugs.

There is another  guy who is a minister now murdered two university undergraduates, in my time as a young assistant lecturer (he became rich by similar drug dealings).

The Grama Niladhari tells me drugs are smuggled into the University through a small access road leading o the Engineering Faculty.

I am happy it is closed (not the road but the university) for a very long time and many of those future graduates would not find a job anyway due to economic downturn (our neighbourhood is free of drug peddlers but there are lot of exotic birds visiting).

Unfortunately stray dogs are finding it hard and some domesticated ones, too are chased out from homes due to food shortages and today I woke up with the noise of  a big Dog Fight in our neighbourhood.

That is how life is progressing.

Slugs, Snails and Squirrels

I want to write about slugs and snails but little squirrel took my interest and attention for a solid one hour.

Let me finish that first.

I knew there was a batch of new squirrels on the roof under the ceiling and the mother feeding them.

I could hear suckling young ones.

I encourage squirrels since they invariably chase the mice.

One of the young ones today sensed the ripe palm seeds and with some trial and error found it and started feeding.

He came to a point where he could see me while feeding.

Having noticed that there was no danger from me it continued feeding but made sure that he is behind the tree trunk and only the head peeping at intervals to see my actions and movements.

I just stay absolutely still.

After about 15 minutes he got enough courage to feed with the head down and only the legs holding on to the branch.

I thought of taking a photo but decided not to BUT to count how many seeds it eats.

Well it was more than 10 and stop.counting and I let it enjoy the feast.

I was thinking (I am not a yogi), If I try eating upside down like a squirrel, what my physiological reactions would be to prevent my morning tea coming down my nose.

I think that was the first physiological (eating in upside down posture with a full tommy) balance we lost having become an erect man.

So he finished the feast and could not find his way back especially because the rain has washed away his urine marks on the tree.

After several attempts he jumped to the mulberry tree that had only few fruits.

Even the jam-pera tree has no fruits.

Usually in July the tree is full of fruits and the fruits came two months early and the rain interrupted, causing the yield to be poor.

Bright sun shine is necessary for the full field and to impart sweetness to the fruits.

My analysis the global warming is creating havoc to plants and thereby food supply to the birds and other animals who are not carnivorous like man.

Now coming to slugs and snails I encourage them on our roof top garden so birds will come and feed them.

It is the supplementary food them.

The spiders they eat do not have much food value.

80 to 90% of the exotic plants I have up there had been brought thete by birds and one of those Havari Nuga trees was the tallest and that is where twitter made a nest.

Over last 15 years the rooftop garden has a natural ecosystem (except the water plants I carefully collected including beautiful lilies).

Coming to snails I saw a garden piece in the web, how to destroy them.

Apart from birds there are many simple things one can do to prevent population explosion but those common sense tips I would not elaborate here.

Now my experience with snails is they never eat young leaves or normal leaves.

They only eat rotten leaves and I do not have to bother removing rotten leaves of water plants and lilies.

It is a myth that snails and slugs do damage to plants.

I do not think so.

They do not have teeth.

Additionally they do not have advanced enzyme systems to digest them.

All healthy leaves except some vegetables which are commercially raised or selected for commercial raising, have chemical stuff poisonous to animals.

It is the bacteria that breakdown the cellulose to sugar that slugs and emails consume with other basic elements including amino acids.

They are very useful.scsvenger and do not hate these slimy guys.

They are part of our ecosystem.

Only thing I know is they are slimy and never pick them by hand and that slime will not leave your fingers even with a strong detergent.

That is their protective sheath.

It makes it easy for the birds, especially the greater coucal to swallow them in one go.

They hate water and squirt some water they move away quickly.
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For ages I have not seen the big shelled snails.

They have vanished and it is the delicacy of the greater coucal.

Now while I was doing this at least 6 varieties of birds came to feed on the palm seeds since I know them by their calls even without watching at them.

Birds hate eye contact and one should hear them rather than watch them.

Bird watching is a wrong connotation, in the scientific world.

Bird listening or hearing them should be the right way if you love them.

Do not interrupt their feeding.

They fly away.

Just plant a few fruit plants and do not look for them.

They simply form "the flying ecosystem" by themselves given about five years.

I think we live in their migration pathway.

Believe me or not Korawakka had built a nest on the Kithul Tree in front of our house and I can hear the mum feeding the young ones, now.

They are like kiwis, ground birds that lay eggs on paddy fields during dry season.

The paddy fields are filled up by developers and road masters and they have no place to lay eggs.

In another 10 years I will see their extinction from out neighbourhood like what happened to kiwis in New Zealand.

My Global Vision for Computers and Gagematics

Now that I have expressed my global views, in general, if I do not write few lines on computer world, it is unfair by my standards.

This whole world is taken over by few companies and President Putin cannot overview the impact, only the Linux World can keep it's head up.

We cannot trust China and it has it's own Kline OP system I will never try.

A waste of my precise time.

Having said that Ubuntu has abrogated it's responsibility and that VOID is filled by Emmabantus in style.

I have just made two bootable USBs one on Emmabantus and the other on Ubuntu.

I have multiple copies of MultSystem with multiple Linux distributions run on 64GB USB sticks, the standard not USB-3s.

Now Emmabantus took twice the time of Ubuntu and it shows the paucity of software in Ubuntu.

Now Emmabantus DID NOT USE a single copyrighted application.

That is my bone of contention in Ceylon where Pseudo- Buddhists who use pirated copies.

Unfortunately the USB made by Ubuntu software did not boot. That is why I did copying it with Emmabantus and it boots quickly unlike the DVD on the ROM.

Emmabantus has everything I need including USB writer and USB image writer which works perfectly well in Emmabantus including MultiSystem software (one need not waste a DVD).

Mind you I hate the noise of DVD ROMs.

If Laptop makers are sensible they should discontinue the inbuilt DVD and dish out a detached DVD ROM with each Laptop if the customer needs.

That saves space for my Vision that will come later in this piece.

Not only noise it consume lot of energy.

That job can be done easily with a USB Stick and 4MB RAM.

If any of your gadgets has less than 4GB RAM either dish it out or upgrade to 4GB RAM.

If you are not a game player 4GB RAM is more than enough.

In Linux one need lot of RAM only in installing but they always reserve 1 GB for system and hardware and in, installation Linux use 3 GB by default.

There is no crash like in Windows.

Windows take all the RAM and that is why it crashes often ad hoc.

TPM or total Play or Pay module or is it something else that expects minimum of 4GB RAM.

That is the only SWIPE I will make at the expense of stupid Window Users.

Now coming to my Vision.

I hate a big computer either desktop or a standalone mode.

It takes space.

What I need is a solid input device (modified keyboard) and a big monitor.

Only one company has taken this to heart and working on it and I wish them success but I won't buy one since I have my computers working only on Linux.

This keyboard probably will only support Windows and I hope they make Linux one to save on the cost to begin with.

This keyboard should put the motherboard under it's keys.

One reference to Linux Developers and they use keyboard shortcuts day in and day out.

The function keys  F-1 to F-12 can be accommodated for their use in principle.

I use Ctr, Alt, Del and F2 only and other function keys are literally a waste.

My proposed  Keyboard Computer can use them for good use.

As I said earlier DVD should be dispensed with and all booting should be done with bootable USBs and quality of USBs should go up but the price should come down.

USB port should be in front not in side like in Laptops and I hate fiddling to find a port in my old age.
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Some words about gender.

All these gadgets are made by male guys who want money and a yacht to sail at sea.

They do not care a damn except for cellphones that are made for women only and a man with a big finger cannot use a tiny phone in hand.

Whereas Keyboard with Motherboard enclosed can be used by a man with big hands and big fingers.

Hang, the virtual keyboards which interfere with typing perpetually.

I forgot to mention the key should have a bay in the middle to mount the cellphone or tablet  in a mobile mode.

That's all one need a cellphone and a flexible rubber keyboard that one can wrap round the head with a side cap as a portable helmet on a rainy day.

I hope you got the image or the vision and keyboard should come out of age and incorporate more ports for microphone head sets, cameras, various USB sticks and WiFi DVD ROMs.

Combining digital software and analogue gadgets might cause little problems but make one bigger in size for the man to stay on the table top typing and a small one for me and ladies to carry to the pantry.

Ladies are the ones good at thrashing light weight ones and who knows if one spills coffee on it one can use it as a doormat.

Even though, I use some scepticism and satire a lot here, what I say, I mean in my heart of hearts.

Again no plastics for environmental reason and rubber is a plant product and it will support our rubber industry directly.

All what I need is a flexible rubber keyboard in my hand and a big monitor at the foot end of my bed which I can see at age of 80 without a problem.

If I get annoyed I can thrash it on the floor to see how it works (good or bad) and if not working use it as a doormat.

My Global Predictions

Even though, I have decommissioned myself over 20 years form medical profession on my own volution and if I kick the bucket during this pandemic and labelled (to avoid that labelling) as an imbecile posthumously, it is bad for my friends and my descendants.

Hold on!

If you have a weak heart politically do not read beyond this point.

The greatest casualty of this pandemic is medical profession and I have some advice for them, to get their house in order later.

The next biggest casually will be the Army, Navy and Air Force unless they get their dormitory in order in double quick time, 50% of their trainees will succumb to Coronavirus in the future.

1. My '"First Prediction" in 2020 September was that this pandemic will last for a decade (now revised to 2 decades with data coming out thick and fast and new variants emerging) and the first cabinet casualty is British Health Minister for lying to his cabinet and the general public.

2. The "Second Prediction"is that the economic impact will last for 50 years, if not more.

There are no casualties here due to prolong effect on economy unless you are a Finance Minister who got a brand new printing machine and printing money (to put his/her name on paper as a political advertisement) at a hectic pace.

Mind you, China created the printing machine and they probably never envisioned this scenario, then.

3. Third is my attempt to predict how to overcome this pandemic with a distant vision and "Safe Distance Protocol.

That vision comes from an unlikely business section of the economy.

This cute little concept of Premadasa housing is taken to task.

The high rising house industry will collapse in no time.

With a cough or a sneeze the virus travels minimum of 30 feet and a mask will hold only 10% from an infected person (rest 90% is out in the fresh air) and the first casualty is Andrew Fauci of America holding the highest paid post in medicine or rather Public Health.

I am surprised he is still holding this post.

My gut feeling is President Biden knows he came to power due to this "Pandemic Effect" and sacrificing him is improper at this juncture, let it happen under next administration.

My gut feeling is he will contest again having felt the purse and the perks.

In a different perspective, in Ceylon the Big casualty is SLPP for not curtailing the death rate, if not the spread of the disease.

Every family who voted for SLPP will have lost one or two of its members by four years (most of them due to natural causes but lumped into Coronavirus) when the next election is due.

In any case the vote bank is reduced due to death rate and most of the elderly voted SLPP.

By the way, due to food price hike the current popularity of it is down by 20% to 49%.

The popularity falls at the rate of dollar depreciation rate.

Very easy analysis and Basil Raja is not needed now for population analysis.

Coming to my solution to curtail spread of infection within and inside a family, the average dimension of a room should be 30 by 30 feet with an attached bathroom for every member.

I suppose only rich Americans can afford it and in UK compact houses, housing mainly Asians have to be demolished straightaway to curtail the pandemic not by improving immunization protocol.

Now this has to be modified if you have a dog in house.

I will revise that cellphone is the biggest vehicle of transmission, since it is abiotic and the dog who is very biotic is the biggest contributor to spread of infection, since it loves licking.

The risk is same as kissing.

So no new dogs and let the puppies go astray but look after the current one for 15 years.

Ideally a room and a toilet for the dog.

The housing and construction laws should be amended to fit 30 by 30 Minimum Law and all the new hotels and restaurants should follow my new law on construction.

I kept the hotel industry and air industry to be discussed last since none of them can afford to follow 30 by 30 Law except some 5 Star hotels in Ceylon.

The tourist industry will never recover.

In Air industry even the big birds or Air Buses cannot run on 30 by 30 space seats by any imagination and air industry is the one which will recover the last.

Less seats and jacking the ticket price are not the solutions but everyone who is rich enough should have a private plane, like our politician in Ceylon.

Not a helicopter by the way.

Why travel when one can do video conferencing at ease with cellphones?

Now coming to hospitals especially private nursing homes, they should invest in new building construction protocols to curtail spread of infection to doctors, nurses and health care personnel.

All the private hospitals built in Ceylon we're to accommodate the maximum number of patients in the minimum space available.

Hospital industry never considered hospitality protocols of restaurants.

Now that the hospitals are almost empty they should start refurbishing in earnest, with the largest serviceable space for best care for suffering patients, if not spread of infection.

After all they are paying for service.

Public hospitals stop diverting to the next nearest big hospital but improve local hospitals to capacity building, as an immediate need of the community, that they are serving.

Unless one does that, recruitment especially nurses will nose dive and no mum or dad wants the daughter to be graduated as a nurse.

In my opinion hospitals are the worst buildings in the world.

They are built to accommodate vagrants and not poor patients.

WHO had abrogated all responsibilities of health care over a century and they let the market forces determine the outcome.

This is true of China where the pandemic started and they are building structures all over the world and in Africa and one should not let China determines house sizes, house planning and hotel buildings worldwide.

Having been a sportsman, if I do not pen my thoughts on how sports' should reorganize laws, stadiums and Olympics I have failed, the budding spokesmen and women.

Sorry to hear that the Olympics in Japan is the biggest casualty.

The stadiums because of their big size can accommodate less spectators at higher priced tickets but they won't be able to sustain big margin of profits.

Rugged contact sports like rugger should be banned by WHO.

Basket ball is out on second count.

For Cricket and Soccer I apply 5 feet rule not 30ft.

The slips should be at 5ft apart that Mr.Khole should have adequate room for his deft taps.

The Wicket Keeper should stand at the wicket 5ft behind.

Stumping should be abolished only run puts.

As for soccer, only defenders are allowed to tackle at close range and rest of the players should stand five feet apart and follow the deft "Brazilian First Pass Method" as the defacto mode of play.

Touching an opposing player is banned in toto.

Long range passes as played by David Beckum, the English captain of the past would elevate the game, to a new high level.

More goals and not "no goals" should be the motto and punters can bet on goals, goal difference and timing of the goal first half, second half instead of a win or a lose or a draw which is boring for me.

It should have three phases (30 minutes each) and odd number of three phases is good for punters in the long run.

Polypoly to Tripoly to Monopoly

It looks like we are moving from global multinational collaboration to monopoly in trade and transactions.

The Coronavirus should have made us to be liberal and expansive (not exploitive) in trade but it seems like we are becoming duopoly in all our deals.

We have come from poly+poly in the past to monopoly of China or duopoly with India.

China is very good at using duopoly to their advantage without much effort.

They have encroached the African continent with lot of natural resources that include minerals used in monitors and cellphones.

Ceylon has not able to use silica like in silica valley and our titanium is exploited both by China and India.

I think we will become experts in making poisonous lead paints.

When country lacks scientists and visionary  this is what happens.

We become a monopoly of only Theravada Buddhism.

Even Buddhism has become duopoly in practice not Unipolar or Uniting all streams of life forms.

Dual Booting BSD with Linux

I have not yet figured out how to do this.
BSD needs ZFS partitions.

Latest Debian should be able to recognises ZFS partition.

It all depends if the GRUB boot loader can configure it.

I will Mount BSD first leaving behind space for Linux to install later.

Problem with BSD is it takes over the whole of the hard disk and one cannot resize it.

ESP partition is where GRUB is recorded and somewhat large ESP partition may do the trick.

Ubuntu 21-04 has got All Wrong

As anticipated Ubuntu destroyed my GRUB boot menu, even though it was installed in a USB stick.

Luckily I did not try it on the Hard Disk.

Had I done that I have to redo all installation afresh.

I made an ESP partition but it did not mount.

In good old days if you boot a Live Linux Distribution, one can make a bootable USB.
I tried start up USB and it failed to recognized the formatted USB.

Ubuntu let you make a startup disk but that utility does not work..

My guy feeling was it will not boot with the UEFI interference?

With the introduction of UEFI by coercion of Microsoft the BIOS magic was lost.

I have found a way to bypass this ploy.

I make bootable  ESP partition.

I have never made a ESP on a 16 GB USB.

Let us see how it works.

It is not my nature to write about Ubuntu.

I use Debian as my workhorse.

Ubuntu is actually Debian based.

For fun I try Puppy Linux.

For critical testing I use Knoppix.

I just installed Knoppix on a USB stick using MultiSystem.

Knoppix also can do it on it's own but MultiSystem let you have several distribution in one USB stick.

I have collected large number of USB sticks and over the past two decades and they still work after erasing  data.

With 64 bits in vogue keeping them idling is not my intention.

Nothing else to do I just booted Ununtu 21-04 to install it but last half an hour it is trying to figure out what is in my Laptop and failed.

I tried live booting and that also failed.

To save my data I disconnect my Internet while installing.

I think and believe Ubuntu cannot mount a live session without Internet.

How can one see what is in it?

How can one we enjoy a live session?

This is why I recommend Emmabantus Debian 4.

It is actually Debian 11 derivative and has enormous amount of applications.

I will stop Ubuntu and install Emmabantus on my spare USB.

Well after nearly 45 minutes it booted live.

I will try to install it on a USB.

This time I will make a bootable ESP partition.

My PC on WiFi Mode

I had some problem connecting my PC to Internet once I pulled out the Ethernet Wire.

It is a Linux box and NO Windows.

I was running Debian 9 for the last 4 years and I did not want to lose my data by installing Debian 10.

However, I decided to install Debian 10.10 without touching my home partition.

It's primary partition is 125 SSD and 100 reserved for the operating system.

I do not use it daily but run the Laptop for my heavy work.

Today I stuck the Dongle and Debian 10.10 detected it effortlessly.

I have depleted Data by downloading Linux images through the WiFi Broadband and I think when I upload some data and I stick the Ethernet wire, it probably will connect to the Internet.

I am.getting stingy on Data.

Routers and WiFi Connections

Now my first warning.

There is WiFi Mesh in the market.

Do not fall prey and you need minimum two or more gadgets which will not work in a hill country like ours.

Do not believe any Service.Provider in Ceylon.

They are all Suckers.

If you have a Ethernet Connection keep it as your sovereign belt of gold.

They (Ethernet) are the fastest and the most reliable.

Do not be deceived into subscribing to FiberOptics.

The Service Providers neither do have the technology not kits not trained personal.

They are paying their staff by skyrocketing your bills.

If the Service Provider does not have service capability or credibility in Budulla or NuweraEliya, if you have FiberOptics inside your house or restaurant there is no meaning of this wire.

I have learned my lesson by pulling of the Ethernet Wire.

I am paying (1000s) thousands in a few hours to download a Linux image for fun testing.

That is buy using WiFi broadband from Dialog (details in another blog piece).

But if you Google, there are plethora of new WiFi gadgets every company  is selling and competing with opposing companies.

None of them is cheap and will never be available in Ceylon for a foreseeable future with a Debt Trap.

With new gadgets coming to the market and surplus in the market abroad, old Cheap Chinese stuff not selling those countries will flood our market

This is so with Conservatives in UK and BT putting a lot of their cash (before the pandemic) in a very competitive market.

Do not buy BT stuff discarded in UK and they won't work anyway in Ceylon.

With Dollar going up even cellphones will go up in price.

Buying a Laptop now or Chromebook is a big liability.

There is surplus in the market and the Coranavirus loss of revenue is added to your bill invariably.

No country has found a solution and each country is trying it's own gimmick to fool the masses addicted by Video Conferencing.

Now is not the time or bargaining time.

My belief is that it will take minimum of 5 years for recovery in Ceylon, well past the next election.

Do not think of contesting the next local or general election.

Even if you win you won't be able to recover your money spent in campaigning.

If you lose swallow a bitter pill or think of taking some local poison.

MaKfee guy's suicide in prison is a case in point.

He made millions with able connivance with Microsoft and none of that would help him in prison with litigations pending.

Lot of people will try this method in Ceylon but unlike the rich in other countries DO NOT dump the hard saved money on Telecoms or failing ventures.

LibreOffice has Come of Age

LibreOffice has come of Age.

Mind you I have not used an office package for two solid years and had been addicted to Android cellphones typefaces and typically Grammerly.

I had been detecting for Linux distributions that supports AbiWord for simplicity and found Emmabuntus and Ubuntu 20.10 accommodate AbiWord and Debian does not.
Even Knoppix bit shy of Abi Word because of popularity of LibreOffice.

It is in version 7 and has remarkable good character.

I work with AbiWord and finer tuning is done in LibreOffice before publishing.

It is a viable for Window based operating system in addition to Linux.

It has chapter promotion or demotion and layout up and down schemes.

For Android users there is also WPS Office and Polaris Office equally good but they are falling behind due to rapid onward match of LibreOffice.

There is LibreOffice reader for Android cellphones.

Who needs Microsoft Office suite?

And why pay?

Is it due to glamour or stupidity?

Emmabantus Debian 4 Edition

I am currently installing Emmanantus Debian 11(named Deb4 due to Emma edition 4) kernel in a single partition in my Laptop.

It had shed bit of its Ubuntu installation pathway but installation Is smooth.

It is 64 bit version and detected the ESP partition automatically.

I have downloaded Knoppix 9.1 and it is in an external SSD.

But Ubuntu 21.4 was very painful in writing to a DVD and writing and reading it in live mode was very rough and noisy.

It is probably loaded with eye catching graphic but did not have 5% of the software Emmabantus has.

It is nothing but simple Gnome desktop.

Emmanuntus has 1GB of extra software compared to Ubuntu.

It is time we migrate from Ubuntu to Emma for productive work.

Emma has in addition Gcompris for Children and a school version of LibreOffice 7 which is very attractive.

Ubuntu has not come out of it's mystic ways.

After all it came from Africa for African children but Emma is serving the African continent which Ubuntu currently had abrogated.

Sorry for saying that but I have Ubuntu 20.10 in my Laptop with AbiWotd.

Emma has MultiSystem and AbiWord, two of my favourites.

I hope with 22 version Ubuntu will match up with Emmabuntus and remove it's bulky graphic intensive glare and gloat and bring out more productive suite.

I have never used Ubuntu and my using it's 20.10 is mainly  due to AbiWord.

I used all my tactics to.get AbiWord to Debian 10 BUT miserably failed.

LXDE, KDE and Plasma do not support AniWord.

Incidentally, LibreOffice can read AbiWord and in future it should convert it's word file to AniWord and pdf for quick transfer through the Internet.

If for some reason an amazingly new Linux Distribution come into vogue I do not have any space in my Laptop.

But I am happy a version of Debian 11 is already there.

I was looking for Debian 11 but could not find a torrent file.

Linus Torvalds would not release it to the torrent base unless he is 100% satisfied.

He is a master of Japanese 5S technology.

This is about Sri-Lanka Telecom, My Data and Knoppix 9.1

I pulled out the Ethernet (faulty by the way) wire and I was without fast Internet for three months.

Sri-Lankan Telecom is hopeless, to say the least, it disconnected my Knoppix download without informing me by Telephone twice at 3 GB point twice (direct).

I lost 6GB of paid data.

This is not Netflix or Porn data but solid Linux program data.

I lost all my data except data in one of my cellphones which had two small iso images of Puppy Linux which I cannot transfer to the Linux PC.

After the Coronavirus I decided not to go out for three months (not the 3 weeks of Government's arbitrary lock or block down).

Rather it was total shut down of my PC and Laptop (I only had one BSD CD which needed Internet connection for erasing Windows Hegemony).

Ultimately I found a TrueOS DVD I downloaded in 2018 and got the Laptop running Debian 10.

One I downloaded in March we'll before Coronavirus restrictions needed Internet connection.

I was fed up and one day I walked two Kilometers to the Bank where there is an Internet Till, but to my bad luck the server was not booted on that day.

Yesterday I went to Dialog and upgraded all my cards including the Dialog Broadband WiFi.

Today I downloaded Knoppox 9.1, Ubuntu 21.10 and currently Downloading Debian Emmabantus 4.

I have configured an external SSD disk  with three running Knoppix versions (with fabulous collection of utilities which even Debian cannot boast in one DVD).

And SSD is mobile or portable.

Windows will never be able to beat Knoppox for another century and I will be long gone by then.

Good Bye Windows and Good Morning to Knoppox and his team of developers in Germany.

Make sure you use torrent for download and click English version if you are not German

Now MultiSysyem DVD comes from France by pressing F2 you can get to English.

I use both English and French MultiSystem as a way of refreshing my poor French competence.

Linux is always multi language capable.

I think torrent download is finishing without Telecoms.

Thank YOU Dialog.

By the way I have given only two calls by the wired connection for the last 7 weeks.

That is a record and I do not pay TAXES by default.

10 GB (3 distributions) in 3 hours and I have never had such a throughput in all my life.

All of them are in a USB in about half an hour and who says Linux is not efficient in an external USB Disk.

Getting AbiWord to Work for Me, Using Ubuntu

 I was without Internet for 3 months and could not use Abiword with Debian Plasma.

Ultimately I managed to download AbiWord for Ubuntu 20.10, after a lot of trouble.

The Dialog WiFi broadband  won't let me sign up with broadband WiFi.

I got Debian Plasma to configure it automatically but with Ubuntu it won't sign.

I think Dialog broadband let you sign up only  once with KDE Plasma but won't configure with Ubuntu, in the same Laptop.

It won't sign up, in spite of typing the correct password.

Luckily I used my spare Dialog Dongle to sign up with Ubuntu and downloaded AbiWord.

It is only 1.6 MB package.and what a hastle,

What trouble to get a package I used for many years.

Thank Ubuntu for not removint it from the repository.

Even FATPup does not support AbiWord and it supports only LibreOffice.

I am currently downloading WPS suite for use in my Laptop.

Rough Sketch to Evolution

Thankfully I never had a good teacher all my life.

If not for the British Council Library I would have concentrated on Physics and Mathematics.

For some unknown reason biology aroused my curiosity.

I collected large number of books on this topic, thanks again to withdrawal sale every year when new batch of books arrived from UK.

This Library is no more thanks to wrong policies of SLFP. (basically Anti-British for no valid reason).

I tried to become a member of the Kandy Municipal Council Library and they even did not give me an application form stating that I am not a municipal tax payer.

I became a tax payer later and filed a case against the municipality and won it.

As a token of their defeat they reduced my tax by one (1) ruppee.

I left the municipality limits for good and there is no good library except in the University, a British contribution of colossal scale.

All the books I have starts with a big massive all encompassing concept but without any valid proof.

So I gave up reading but did not lose track of my enquiry.

1. The transfer from abiotic to biotic was not dramatic but a series of small steps.

2. Symbiosis was a fact of biotic life.

3. Parasitism was a very late development.

4. Sexual development was an accident in nature.

5. Plant life was the beginning.

6. Animal life or actively moving life was much later development.

7. Virus contribution except for human devastation is an aberration!

Now I start at a point of Oxygen Generation.

Chlorophyll was the beginning.

It's derivative the haemoglobin was the engine for animal life.

Cytochrome system and  transfer of electrons in a series of steps was a miracle.

Their assembly into mitochondria was a significant step.

Mitochondria are probably prokaryotes who became symbiotic (that was my own theory collaborated by Marie Maguire).

How cell membrane formed is a mystery.

Formation of various sugars and sugar cell wall formation predated cell membrane formation.

Formation of fatty acids with even number chain is a significant step.

Universal Citric Acid Cycle is a mystery.

Ribosome formation was a very late development leave alone protein synthesis.

RNA to DNA was much contested arena.

Viruses are very late bystander vestiges but important in the current context of laboratory made biological.weapons.

Putting all these into a coherent system is extremely difficult.

I leave it at that point.

Failure of Android Ecosystem

I was a late follower of Android from Kit Kat 4.2.

It was not a happy start using a Chinese made tablet with low RAM.

Then I skipped 5 and entered 6 with a GreenTel cellphone which I used only on travel abroad and my adaptation of the Singaporean Sekin was a total disaster.

Next version of GreenTel I gave free to a guy who had never used a touch phone.

GreenTel tablet I sold at 20% to another guy who was using an arcane Java phone.

I wanted to give it free but he declined and I said 20% and he agreed.

He could not use it even a day a nephew of him grabbed it and made it dysfunctional.

I had few Java and gave them to domestic aids free.

So you could see how dissatisfied I was.

Coming from Linux background I needed and expected a solid operating system that runs 5 years uninterrupted.

None of it.

Then I knew the dollar will go up 2 years in advance and bought 3 Nokia phones at cut rate price before the next shipment was due.

All for testing and it's smallest one I added 200 applications and tested each one of those applications and I only love the Pencil Sketch.

I needed a Writer Application and none I tested did what I wanted it to do.

Blogger piece which I am blogging here is the only one I use regularly except opening the few emails I have.

Why I say Android is total failure is applied to the last three and that are in current use.

Even the Android with basic application is very slow to boot.

If you add a few more it becomes painfully slow.

All the applications consume lot of battery leave alone camera application and images.

It is all due to it's poor resource management.

1. It is not a fully fledged operating system.

2. It is rather a service system which sits on top of the service providers SIM and sucks pennies every second.

3. System calls are not organized or prioritized and like Windows boots up everything at boot time.
That is why it is slow.

4. It has no virus protection or malware protection protocol.

5. It has no hash or junk file deletion technique.
It keeps on piling up junk.

6. It cannot transfer a file from it to my Linux computer.
I do not have any Windows to test anyway.

7. All in all in three months it is chocker blocked.

8. It cannot retain a password file in the background while you enter it on the authorization page.
I have to use the other cellphone to memorise the 8 character password.

I have lived with all this and I am getting fed up.

9. Added to that battery has to be charged daily.

10. It cannot be shared and the moment you do that it starts carrying the Coronavirus free of charge.

It carries other nasty bugs, too.

I have a theory that if 67% of the population stop using cellphones the reduction of Coronavirus virus spread will be more than the effect of all the detergents used in the world.

All cellphones should be banned in hospitals not necessarily due to interference with electronic equipment but due to fast spread of all types of infections.

Only way to disinfect a cellphone is to put it in a incinerator.

The list can go on.

It is time to say good bye to all cellphones and tablets.

Toilet paper one can flush it or burn but cellphone becomes an extended interfering appendage.

BEWARE!

Final Verdict, Cellphone is the biggest hindrance to Creativity

Except for ordering a Pizza and having a Calendar and an appointment list upfront (or daily routine), the cellphone is a big hindrance to creativity.

I wanted to have an year break from productive work and Coronavirus extended it to two years thankfully.

All what I did was using the cellphone to read the emails and looking at whatever the news that the cellphone, rather Google is dishing out and highlighting.

I consider using the PC to read an email as a collosal waste of electricity.

Mind you, I did some work, too.

Organized the rooftop garden and thrown away 70% of the unattractive plants and selected few a beautiful lilies.

Organized my PC, Laptop and all the external hard disks and USB as a preparation for destroying all the unnecessary CDs and DVDs.

Mastered BSD for destroying any trace of Windows Operating System.

All these are my normal routines and natural things but nothing touching the creative side of the brain.

I looked for a suitable writing application for Android and found nothing that is not asking for a subscription or not interfering with my thought processes.

So I am dishing out all the cellphones (in any case I have no data) and going back to the keyboard and start a book on Puppy Linux.

I won't dish out the creative secrets of Puppy Linux but one has to read my book that will be available on digital form soon.

To highlight the thinking behind BSD or TrueOS instead of Puppy philosophy;

There are only a very few things that one needs in a computer or cellphone.

Number one is 1.Connectivity.

Number 2. A Simple Browser.

Number 3. An Email (people rarely use this simple utility except forewarding)

Number 4. Productivity Suite, really means a Word Processor and an Accounting Package.

Number 5 is Firewall for protection against cyber attacks.

Number 6 is dedicated Individual User Space (input out and put devices).

Number 7 is the Ability to modify the above utilities according to one's need in the Free Software tradition and remove Bloat Ware one never uses.

I say Puppy has all that and a few more additional utilities.

It is STUPID to waste a lot of money on proprietary stuff while we are recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Every penny saved should go to the kitty.

I forgot say, I used the cellphone as a "Play Console".

I think many use it to finger fiddle or "Angili Gahanava Annunge Vadeta".

The cellphones make you to become one finger editors.

Then one becomes a one sided brain individual like a British Conservative.

The creative brain is on the opposite side and one becomes one sided FIXED Brexiter.

No other creative plans enter the mind and like a dog the party followers wag their tails.

Now coming to Puppy Linux, all puppy derivatives should encourage the use of standard keyboard to type using both hands at the same time.

One gradually trains the mind to be creative again without any effort.

The keyboard should be modified to become the brain or the motherboard.

Its sides should be broadened to stretch the top of the table and free movement of both hands.

It's center should hold the console or the graphic monitor to see what is been typed instead of printing a copy for perusal.

Alternatively, the broader tablet or slate should sit on the centre, connected by WiFi, (instead a tiny one finger model of cheap Chinese cellphone).

With this ploy, the creativity improves by leaps and bounds, since the brain is now not dictated by the cellphone.

Additionally Keyboard should have lots of ports of type 3 to 4 to 5 US's connecting various devices with inputs when fatigue or thought blocks intervene.

Already a computer motherboard, designed in the framework of the keyboard is available and more creative designs to this model should be applied by Puppy Linux enthusiasts.

If I was young I would have done all that but that is my creative brain working for others to tap onto.

I am currently using the Laptop with cramped keyboard and track pad I never use.

The track pad should accommodate the graphic area instead and let the mouse do the talking.

The folder or the flap with monitor or graphic area of the Laptop should be scraped (that saves money) and one clean flat keyboard with a wider graphic front in the middle should be created instead.

In other words use the mouse in one's hand instead of one finger mode of cellphone.

If you are angry or bored you can squeeze the mouse to your heart content.

One can only wriggle or point the finger or poke into the nose.

Jump

Only 4 feet at a time.
Ready.

Froggy Sketch

I am photogenic not a sketch!

Friendly Visitor

I think when massive roads are built there should be corridors built under them for these and other creatures to move freely.

The road is the most devastating creature of man.

He is supposed to walk erect but not to race on the earth surface.

Road racing is a madness created for his ego and nothing but.

He could never match an elegance of a cheetahs.

This Tree Frog is an annual visitor.

It is the best indicator of quality of water.

It's eggs cannot survive a few hours of water contaminated by man.

The decline of it's variety and population is directly related to water pollution.

These are simple facts of nature.

Chinese eating them add to their decline and the world pollution is directly related to Chinese population expansion.

So the Coronavirus has come as an answer and who knows China created this menace to curtail it's population without political communist rhetoric.

They are well known for single child per family and infanticide in the past.

He/she is lazy to cover the last 10 feet to my fish tank at the top most level.

Generally a late night visitor but block or lockdown with Coronavirus and no vehicles on thee road it is bold enough of to come out in day time.

This one recognises me and won't move an inch until it is ceremoniously taken to it's final destination.

It has come a long way and probably is dead tired.

Millions of them die crossing the road every day.

Our most ancient relative is threatened by the Chinese guys who eat them as a delicacy.

Please boycott Chines restaurants as a default strategy.

Ubuntu as a Last Resort, Did not Work

I have never used Ubuntu as a distribution and used occasionally as a demonstration but my love was Mandriva, SuSe and Debian.

I could not install both Peppermint 10 and PCLinux side by side with Debian and finally decided to install Ubuntu 20.10 and as a preparation installed it on my PC on the second drive to boot from the second drive leaving my workhorse Debian in the SSD.

SSD does not have a MBR or master boot record.

I could have written the GRUB to boot from a USB with so many USB around I would forget.

Installation went all right it picked up all the distribution already installer including PinGuy.

I am pretty sure it will not pick the ESP boot partition.

As anticipated it crash landed and could not figure out the ESP boot partition.

I booted FATPup installed in the Laptop  and found a home partition in my name in one of the partitioned used and over 5GB written in the other, assuming it's Ubuntu distribution files.

What I am now going to do is to reinstall the second Debian installation having prepared space by deleting few partitions not used

I know Debian will figure out if Ubuntu could be written to the GRUB file.

I have gone through this routines 1000 times and while it is being booted I will sip a cup of tea.

In good old days in BIOS fstab boot record I would write the booting sequence and mount the partition in question.

I have forgotten those details and ESP partition can possibly be edited likewise.

But I let Debian automation to do the job.

Yes Debian did the job and Ubuntu was booted from ESP partition.

Now I can display Ubuntu to a guy new to Linux who has no knowledge of Debian.

I think going after various new distributions is a waste of time and Debian 11 is already out for one to try.

I am dry of Data and Internet access currently.

I will try it when the lockdown is eased.

Universal Drink Alcohol or Water?

This is a very easy question to answer.

It is certainly not water.

It is definitely alcohol.

I could not find an accurate figure for requirement of water for a day for an adult.

Nobody except some guys who are told by folklore that one should drink certain number of glasses of water, no adult has a clue or taught correct physiology in their Huentire life of intake of the water requirement.

We drink a substitute instead, tea or coffee or a beverage that has caffeine in it for central nervous system stimulation by habit.

Not for water requirement at all.

The water is the basis of cellular life.

Fortunately all food we eat has some water and their combustion produce water of metabolism and our kidney has the capacity to conserve when we are not drinking and when we sleep.

But I find man always (this applies to a certain percentage of women) have few liters of alcohol down diluted with some water.

What I find interesting is the minimum even in Bangladesh (country with lowest intake) is one liter of pure alcohol per person.

Which is a colossal.amount when multiplied by the total population.

I find it interesting Iranians drink as much as Russians.

It is said Belarusians drink the most but their officials figures are scaled down.

Maldiwians drink more simply due to lack of water supply.

Come to Ceylonese they drink about 15 times as Bangladeshis and only about 5 times less than Russians.

I expected the Africans to drink more but it is true of only a few countries  like Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa.

Myanmar tops India and Indians drink (unlike in Tamilnadu films)  far less amount than Ceylonese.

My gut feeling was that rich and relatively happy countries consume more but they are less than Muslim countries put together and Malaysia is an exception.

I guessed Singaporean drinks more but I was wrong.

They have no time to drink.

Except New Zealand most of the Western counties drink an average more than Asians.

The Australians are heavy drinkers but it is coming down unlike in UK and USA.

My analysis is where there are dictators running the countries affairs, the alcohol consumption is high.

Myanmar is a classic example and some Latin American countries with dictators running the affairs are close allies of alcohol.

A point what our Buddhist monks have failed to grasp is when there is a dictator running, the alcohol consumption goes up significantly and rapidly.

So if we want to drop alcohol consumption democracy should go hand in hand not other way round.

If our alcohol consumption goes up by the next election do not blame the drinker but the ruler or rulers.

The corollary is for a dictator to succeed the country should streamline and jack up alcohol production at an affordable price, the variety does not matter but the production rate.

I gather Americans are drinking more after the election since the enthusiasm and the steam have run down and furloughing is through.

President Biden has to make sure alcohol production goes unhampered during his term office and he will be remembered for life if he cuts down taxes on alcohol in spite of medical advice and fail to keep 90% of the promises.

That also make Republicans to drink more and lose track of elections and for his successor to have a smooth riding.

If he follows doctors advice on alcohol and the numerous medical legislatures brought in front of him for approval, he is bound fail.

Just pretend you are absorbing them in good spirit.

See what happened to Donald Trump, mainly due to Anthony Fauci's insinuations.

Writing Space

This is to highlight the features of Writing Space Writer.

Since I see nobody helping AbiWotd to come out of the woods with a new life or rebirth, I was looking for a Writer package and I found a match.

I am busy finishing the first 10 chapters on Puppy Linux but I should write a piece here to give the credits to where it belongs.

Long time ago a writer developed a Writer Linux Live CD and I still have a copy of it's 32 bit version.

It worked only a Live Session and could not save a copy of the document one was working with.

In any case it went defunct and this is long before I started  writing as a habit.

Nevertheless, I was put off.

I downloaded several writer applications and before I could finish a page the guys asking me for hefty subscription.

I am a writer who works on a low budget both in time and money.

I am on a long holiday extended by Coronavirus incarceration.

I am not new to writing and I have already found a good ally by the way of Grammerly typeface.

Finding a Writer application not intrusive was illusive, till I found Writing Space.

1. It gives you a neat clean and open slate to thumb down.

In my case Index Down.

2. It is not intrusive.

3. It gives you 10 or more chapters to work with.

4. It has an Android Application front.

5. It let's you share.

6. It let's you publish immediately.

7. Editing the typos can be done at any time.

8. Remove or up or down the chapters as you wish.

What else a writer needs.

I think I will come out of slumber and finish my Puppy Linux (before I get on with the jobs being outstanding and halted by my self intentions).

I have used another writer and I have to use another application to read a list of Puppy derivatives, I made.

Then I got a guy from ClickUp application sending me daily emails reminding me of a job I never started, which I delete without reading.

Mind you, I start the day with Spark which does a good house cleaning job upfront.

Then Spike which integrate my emails and send junk to thrash without archiving.

I have looked at my emails and found my first attempt to hold a Linux Forum or gathering in Kandy which became a mighty flop due to interference by Guys paid by Microsoft.

If not for that sloppy job by Microsoft, I would NOT have taken Linux to heart and would have been VERY happy with Puppy Linux alone.

Always remember business can backfire on it's own.

Example is Windows.

Why Linux Distributions fear each other?

Brand new Debian 11 is out.
Unfortunately I do not have the Data nor the Ethernet wire (dismantled) to download it and test it.

By the way, my Debian 10 is running smoothly why bother.

Traditionally I download and test Debian and it will.be soon when the lockdown is eased.

I have got my Laptop and PC ready for its testing.

It is strange that Linux distributions while cohabiting peacefully with Windows, fear alternative Linux distributions.

I tried Peppermint and Pinguy Linux to sandwiched between two Debian distributions in my Laptop devoid of Windows and both failed even before starting.

I think they look for Windows to be already installed and not seeing any sign of Windows give up.

This is after preparing the Partition Table with Gpt, perfectly synchronised.

This is the ploy UEFI has craftily employed to scuttle pairing of Linux booting in a PC or Laptop prepared with a ESP boot partition (using BSD of course).

I noticed this and used a FAT partition of  255 MB (with nothing in it) in the front of the  USB stick and then booting the Linux distribution of my choice, in the partition left in the USB stick.

All 32 bit Puppy Linux distributions need this leeway but FATPup does not care.

So I have FATPup installed in a tiny partition of the Laptop and then install the second Debian installation to gather all installed distributions in the Laptop in the grand GRUB boot loader.

Only Debian has the temerity to bypass UEFI having erased Windows using BSD.

In fact, I used TrueOS DVD I downloaded in 2018.

I think Linux Torvalds should look into this spy ploy and reserve a tiny 1 MB FAT (is void and cannot be used by Windows to eavesdrop) reservation and scuttle the desired objective of Microsoft.

New Windows struggling to give birth may have subtle insinuations but DO NOT fear it is going to fail like 10 within six months.

I would not have had time or the inclination to go into these subtle annoyances, if not for the Coronavirus incarceration.

I thank the pandemic for my divergence.

Usually once I get my PC or Laptop in running order by December, I have a long holiday in January and empty the wines.

I have given up wines to preserve my memory and sanctity, if Puppy Linux (dog is also gone) is not there I would have gone bonkers.

I am aware that a lot of guys including politicians have gone bonkers during the pandemic and Ceylon is a good example.

It is not due to the virus but due to the boredom brought on by lockdown.

An unhappy lockdown.

Lilly Flower

Natural colour is much warmer.

Pencil Sketch of a Lillie Flower

Twitter Nest

The beauty of a sketch.

England, the Labour Stalwarts and the Decline of Principles

Before I forget I have to not down three names.

Not in order of preference or priorities.

Mind you I was a Labour sympathiser, then.

Not any longer.
No politics of conviction.
No religious affiliation not even academic conviction having not registered as a practitioner in Ceylon over 20 years.

1. Arthur Scargill was a coal miner who became the Labour Union Leader.

He was personally persecuted by Mrs.Thather whom I disliked very much.

He disappeared from the scene with the money and came back to fight legal battles
both within and outside the labour party.

He lives in recluse now rarely appearing in public.

He is in his eighties.

2. Ken Livingstone was a labour union leader who became the Mayor of London.

He started as a Council Member of Greater London and became the Mayor of London when that institution was formed.

3. Tony Benn was a labour activist and an excellent orator who imparted some religious favour to his convictions.

4. In this category Neil Kinnock was almost a total failure and lost 4 times to conservatives and remained as an amiable opposition leader to the liking of the conservatives.

5. Tony Blair who remained as a PM for 10 years tried to modernize the party and his *look like conservative party* has ruined it to the core.

6. Jerome Corbyn who inherited this legacy could not reform it to the current needs of the middle class and shifted towards the left and immigrants instead of the British Base.
Less I talk about current Mayor of London Khan is better for British Labour enthusiasts.

He is hanging on doing nothing of substance but he be ousted by a real Labour guy (like what Ken Livingstone did decades ago).

7. Keir Starmer is the ideal choice for the labour party to come out of the wood and lead a possible victory within a short time.

He is smart.
He is intelligent.
He is eloquent (unlike the oratory of the past without tangible actions).

He has the first hand experience in prosecution and should expose (no need to prosecute and an average intelligent British citizen would do that for him when the time is right)  the current wheeler dealer goons around the Conservative Party.

In fact, Conservative party members are already doing that for him.

Why waste energy but activate the young grass root level enthusiasts.

He has to extract the intent, purpose and  how the corruption insinuate even at health institutions dealing with Coronavirus.

Be patient but onslaught should be targeted and the conservative are corrupt to the core by nature unlike real labour activists.

I do not like the word socialists.

People are not equal but different at all levels but bringing them together with a common bond (every life young or old deserves dignity of it's own) is what an astute politician should do.

He should shun the paedophiliacs and sexually disoriented guys hiding behind the political garbs.

One caveat here in this country people appoint the most corrupt to the highest office and the parliament and they scratch their backs within 24 of declaration of the poll.

There are lot of Asians including Ceylonese who have come to UK with their trade marks of "absolute corruption is the only way forward".

That will be the path (absolute corruption) for UK if Conservatives remain any longer.

Do not take this as a wishful political thinking but a common sense approach to any human endeavour including mitigating the pandemic and it's effect on an average guy.

They have no money in their hands and living on "hand to mouth existence'.

I saw this in 1970s in Ceylon and history repeats itself with only a little difference, democracy is shutdown totally and a dictatorship has come to stay with the blessing of corrupt Sangha, for 5 years at least.

He is not answerable even to Almighty.

People are STUPID after all, all the time!

FATPup 64 bit Version

FATPup is an outstanding piece of Puppy work.
It has done another first for me.

After I erased Windows I could not use the SD Card slot to mount a bootable Linux distribution.

I just mounted FATPup on a SD card.

The two USB slots are now available for file transfer, mainly photos.

I do not have to stick a bootable USB.

But puppy is shy to install on a partition, I especially made for it.

Does not matter one does not have to use a terabyte of a hard disk for Puppy Linux.

I am installing another copy of Debian 10.9.0.

I found something interesting, afterward.

I made a special partition in the hard disk for Puppy and installed it but it did not boot from it on it's own.

Then I installed it on SD card and from it FATPup booted.

Well and good.

Then after I installed the second copy of Debian it recognized the Hard Disk installed Puppy and installed it on the ESP partition made using BSD.

Now I can boot Puppy without the SD card mounted.

The Xenialpup (Ubuntu based 64 bit) that is installed in a USB also can be booted from the same Menu.

Everything in one place but after several rounds of trying.

You may ask why two copies of Debian?

Debian has several Desktops and I try all with a different user.

The user name is either a dog or a monkey.

Yes, I am monkeying with you.

I would not have done any of these fancy stuff, if not for the Coronavirus, lockdown.

I am informed Debian 11 is on it's way.

That distribution is for gadgets that come after Coronavirus recovery.

I have over 100 Puppy CDs most of them under 200 MB mini CDs and Never on a single DVD (booting Puppy Linux).

FATDad trophy should go to Windows.

None of Windows could be booted with 100 MB.

They are all bloat ware.

FATPup started with 325 and went up by another 100 or about to 450MB.

I am talking about less than 500MB and getting my work done.

FATPup has LibreOffice and I want AbiWord as my roll master.

Having said that I could have downloaded AbiWord and remastered my FATPup but I have no DATA and I cannot go out or if I go out I want get a reload.

They are all closed due to total Lockdown, except for food stalls.

The plus point of FATPup are many.

1. One can make a boot USB under 4GB.

2. Once installed in a USB one can boot either in BIOS or UEFI.

I have one USB made for my BIOS PC.

The other USB is in UEFI.

I had been struggling to erase the Windows boot Menu in my Laptop and used TrueOS to do that with lot of preemptive precautions and steps.

None of that with Fat Puppy.

Download Fat Puppy.
Write a bootable CD.
Then boot the CD.

Make a UEFI USB and go to hell with Windows boot Menu.

Alternatively if you in old BIOS make a BIOS USB.

Now it seems ridiculously to boot the Laptop having a terabyte SATA Disk with only Puppy Linux.

I have already installed two copies of Debian, (I deleted one of them to install FATPup internally) in my Laptop, so I need not try FATPup any way.

I have four other Puppy derivatives that can be booted from the Laptop/PC but it took lot of thinking and reserving a 255 MB for a non existing Microsoft Windows in my Laptop.

FATPup did not care it prepared a UEFI bootable USB.

I think all Linux Distributions including Debian fear Microsoft.

It was BSD that erased the UEFI with its ESP partition which Debian used subsequently to prepare the boot Menu.

I thank Coronavirus if not for the forced incarceration I would have been doing something else.

Any way Puppy Linux came to rescue  and it is not a pure Linux Clone but an entirely different booting and operating system.

It came from Australia.

Barry Kauler is the first developer and he is retired but others have moved Puppy Linux forward.

Puppy Quirky 64 bit 7.2 Series

This is just to day I found another 64 bit Puppy derivative.
It did not have Gparted but let me use fdisk to partition a Micro SD card which I could not do with Gparted.

DD to delete
O to open a partition table and
N for a new partition
1 for number of partitions.
That it.
4 letters and one numerical character my the Micro SD back to life.
I am using it to instal Multiple Linux distributions including Knoppix 8.2 with a persistent volume and MultiSystem and Gparted included.
Debian does not let you Install in a USB or SD card (simply its volume is overwhelming) but get the files in and with a Debian DVD-1 in hand for reference one can install it using the USB.

Thanks Quirky but you were considerate not to erase my 16GB saying it only readable but not writable (overwrite).

This is also all time fame one can save to RW DVD.
I did not have a writable CD to test it.
I tried to ease the RW DVDs with 1999 cricket.
I could not.
I have made them once writable permanent copies.
Without Windows (off for 5 years) I cannot watch them.
Nothing to lose and save time to do something valuable.
I do not watch Ceylon or Indian Cricket at all.
The Coronavirus is the end for IPL.
In a way it is good for cricket in general.

Why I say we can run our affairs without Parliament and its Impotent Members

The Coranavirus has exposed the fallacy that we need a parliament to run our affairs.

In fact, current president has muted the parliament for his ad hoc method of governance.

I will go bit further, that we do not even need, a president with pompous.

This has been shown over and over in World history. All have failed if not first in the second round and they were ousted and went into exile or oblivion.

At the moment the country is run by intelligent and smart citizens doing their part without any supervision.

There is no MaC Mafia or Pathale or underground network operating now.

There are no third party dealers.

Ordinary vendor is coming out with his goods and bring them to the doorstep and no added charges asked.

What a turnaround?

The third party dealers are the ones that hoards good when prices are low and dish out the last season rice when price is artificially jacked up.

This mode of operation is supposed to be run by government goons and politicians with power.

This same ploy is applied to the vegetables, fish and any other perishable item.

Now producers have taken an initiative to deliver the good to the doorstep.

Marvellous idea at a critical time.

No need to go to the nearest city or township except liquor.

I think the liquor may have come down in price with dealers marginalized.

The price may be cheaper, even lower than the production cost.

We do not need government servants supervising these activities.

What we need is the Village Headman or the Grama Sevaka only to certify the guy we ho is doing business is local.

We do not need police investigating irregularities in transport except checking the driving and vehicle licences.

Things have simplified for better and the cost has come down.

We do not need Vasudeava to use P letter words and drive the people engine.

Without them people can run affairs efficiently.
It is said in business less control the better the outcome.

More control more problems.

In fact, Tamils in the North managed their affairs both during and after the War with minimum of Government.

I is happening in the South by default thanks to Coronavirus.

It is sugar, flour and Parippu or dhal the government need to worry and import, if they have money in the Central Bank.

It is empty by the way.

They have spent money on useless projects.

The road development that had been dragging for years in out neighbourhood is completed with less supervision by the government.

That is something outstanding.

It is the local astute business men who can do the needful, having removed the goons of government in power (it does not matter who is in power).

ClickUp Entanglement

I got this ClickUp utility through Google.

Not that I wanted even to Test with payment basis.

It  was an enterprise based software and tries to be comprehensive from the outset.

In my analysis it was a complete entanglement without escape route.

Within a few minutes I was overwhelmed and I gave up.

I have done work in large scale management in private sector and developed my own simplicity solution without getting bogged down.

It is called delegating responsibility and my job was to concentrate on bottlenecks throttling the output.

In a workplace there is flow of work and not every where is chocker blocked with activity by design.

This program assume that scenario and network is always live even with no activity in some areas.

Workplace is not set of desks, decks and boxes and this programme unfortunately had boxed them all tight.

I lost interest and the application is sitting in my Android to be deleted as and when necessary.

I am not a busy man but I do not want to be boxed in like the cat in and cat out dilemma.

I decided to be the cat out not in.

.

Word Processing, why they have become bulky?

Computers work on input and output basis.

If you put garbage in garbage comes out.

This principle applies to word processing, in general.

I downloaded a simple word processor to test in Android.

It did type all right, I could not transfer the three lines to my email to be sent to my blog site.

This is the third time I have come across this problem.

Sending to an email is like sending to the printer.

The document that sits in your Android, computer or an old typewriter is a useless as a dropped leaf (it is called apoptosis).

I do not want the three word lines to sit in my Android or become apoptotic.

Those three word processes I deleted or uninstalled immediately.

No surprise.

Except AbiWord I have not found a single LIGHT WEIGHT word processor that does super efficient word processing and page formatting.

NONE.

They have Macros sitting in them and try to accomplish multiple instructions in One Go.

That is why one has to redo the document even after checking the draft print.

Every paper typed or printed does create to trees being felled and in that sense digital typing should be precise and each instruction should be precise, so that the output is going to be crisp.

If you take LibreOffice, it has to cater for a large number of languages and put all that languages, in the initial installation of the Linux distribution and then delete unnecessary ones at the end of the installation.

A waste of time.

The right way about should be to give the light weight basic construction code to the particular country using the particular language and the country then  develop the big final structure with their team.

With Coronavirus hampering large international gatherings, in one place, a smaller team in individual the country can do the bulk of the work.

Scaling is necessary and mandatory.

The One for All is a Failure.

Google doing transliteration even though practical  is not the way about addressing this universal problem.

I do not like patch work but that is what is happening.

For my part I stick to AbiWord for my work.

If I do some typing in French for instance. I will take back that document to AbiWord in early stage and reduce it's bulk and send it by email, if I wish.

Browsers and Privacy

There are plenty of browsers out there.
I use Dicky Duck which is coming from Linux base.
I was addicted to FireFox browser for my computer and never used Chrome.
But having used Firefix mini for a while, I went back to Ducky Duck which is fast and not at all intrusive in behaviour.

If you are paranoid one can use Incognito Browser or Brave.
I have all these in my Android but even Ducky Duck I only use as a single user every time.
Just using my common sense.

There is no browser history to begin with.
It is smooth and fast.

I do many things at once.

I do not one one interesting with other or simply snoozing.
This is why had written a very bad comment on Application Manager III which was doing nothing but sticking in my phone.

After my comments and relating for the 4th time it did not haunt me, but let you know if it does.
I do not want browsers to haunt me but by default Google does it.
I hope in future it behaves better.

Plant can Sense

I am not talking about touch sensitive mimosa pudica but all the plants I care for.

They sense me on daily basis if not hourly.

The interruption by rain made me to be indoors and a welcome respite for me, without watering.

If I do not water they wither away in no time and removing the weeds is a must.

All these make me to touch them and I often remove the leaves wilting away to reduce unnecessary transpiration.

Well they have flowers to greet me and insects.

Only the Wesak Orchid refuses to bloom for nearly 30 years now.

I have added a few more orchids to entice.

Might work?

Never a bee seen nowadays.

They just know that I am around but cannot say it in words.

If I am not around for 10 days most of them in the rooftop garden wither away.

So it is similar to a dog left alone and not cared for.

Unlike wild plants the plant you cared from seed level totally depend on you.

So do not take gardening lightly.

Take it to your heart and it is good for your heart unlike the pet fish.

Regarding the guppy fish the magpie comes and gobble them in the morning.

I have no way to prevent this crafty bird doing it's bird round daily.

They are short of food, I guess.

But it's sweet music is to divert your attention and moment you are not around they gobble the guppies.

The guppies are in plenty they have enough leaf cover but the stupid ones come out of shading and are the targets of magpie.

The honey birds spent their hold day sucking honey but they are always hungry flying for feeding but some have learnt to rest on branches and feed.

This is when you are not watching them.

Otherwise they retreat but lately won't care when I am around BUT not gazing.

The daily wild crow is there whenever I feed the fish.

They are looking for bread crumbs.

There is always plenty left.

Majestic Touch

Even Booting Puppy Linux is Painful due to UEFI

Even booting Puppy Linux is painful under UEFI.
It was a very easy BIOS days.

I have over 100 Puppy Linux CDs I tested a decade ago.
They were loaded in cases with puppy photographs for easy identification.

Most of the 3 and 4 series cannot be booted in 64 bit computers.

I selected two of the 5 series to install in two spare USB one 4GB and other 8GB.

They both have AbiWord my favourite and many other utilities including Gparted.
Unlike present Gpart application it lets one select one drive instead of all.
Then easy to partition in a Flash.

I installed both in a usual universal installation setup.

Installation went right but it won't boot.

Then I tried the old Flash Boot method and it won't boot after installation.

Then I examined the USB to see 255 MB reserved part of the USB for windows boot up.

Not UEFI partition but a similar reservation.

UEFI was not in existence when these Puppy Linux derivatives were popular.

The UEFI strategy was to kill Linux installation at boot up time.

I am still not using UEFI but still using BIOS option but  have to give Microsoft Windows, "You Go First " type of a push up.

This is why I hate Windows.

I am not using Windows for about 10 years and the last in the Laptop which came up with Windows was erased using BSD, 5 years ago..

How to erase Windows for good is illustrated here in this blog space using TrueOS CD.

Usually one need to have an Internet connection.

I had to have two partitions even in the USB.

One doing nothing at all.

I tried even Ex-4 partitions and they cannot boot without first 255 MB reserved for Microsoft.

I do not know how France and EU deal with this direct interference.

I had to try for 7 days and I figured it out at the end but many cannot see this business ploy.

Application Migration III

This is a very nasty application.
It gets your permission and stays like a snake under the grass.
It reinstall itself without your permission.
It pretend to transfer an application and FREEZES at 90&.

I have removed it's installation for the 4th time today.

I am sure it will come again from the backdoor I have opened but I will Unstall it again and again.

I do not need it.

I have been using Application II to bring down 200 applications I was using.
I have deleted 35 totally and still had 165 left.
I took off the 4GB Micro SD card and put 16  GB card and tried this application III update.
It is running very very badly.
First of all it secretly hang around even after removing it's installation it go on boast about it's application performance showing  it's promise in sort of a video display.

In other words virtual memory but does not do a thing.

It is very very slow with frequent advertisement freezes.

For the third time I had installed it and after two applications transferred to SD taking hours it practically disappeared from my phone.

Thank you for your flight and I will never use it again or recommend anybody to use it.

All this tactics is to lure you to paid the paid subscription.

Not worth a subscription at all.

If you PAY you are stuck with this application.
It will be like a hungry leech having a meal after one year.

Utility Value of Linux

Utility value of CD/DVD Linux is unparalleled but value of a Unix book written by a panel of experts cannot be overridden by a single utility displayed in the Web.

This is what has happened to The Web and it's Education potential.

A guy or girl in early educational level having learned few tricks posts as Gurus to gullible web users.

I believe they have never red a book from cover to cover including related references.

In fact Web has become a hindrance.

I used to write a piece in the blog site when ever I encountered misrepresentation by rivals and I will continue to do that as a teacher for adults for a lsignificant part of my life.

The teachers job is not to spoon fed or make DIY at every turning corner but to guide him through the MAZE of misinformation and come out unhurt or broken down in soul but enrichment.

The Grand Web has failed miserably.

It is politically FAKED news

But academically it is the misrepresentation of facts in a statistical sense or a forum.

I have over 4000 books including about birds gone into extinction in Ceylon.

I have over 400 CD/DVDs which I have used at least once.

But I move on, not to the next best thing but to a utility that is light weight.

In the days of Windows, I used Open Office for productivity and to remove Macros.

Moved onto LibreOffice but my workhorse still is AbiWord which takes about few MB of RAM (I have a piece here about it in this blog post).

The pdf or the portable document with only a few KBs does my job.

Coming to png or portable network graphic, I use GIMP for editing my photos and when sending out through the Web it is converted png.

Microsoft till recently did not have pdf or png facilities but millions use it and clutter the Internet traffic.

Thank God the Android another Linux derivative but commercial one, came into squeeze  Microsoft by it's bulky neck, if not it's trunk.

One company cannot rule this world.

Unfortunately China and it's OS and cellphones trying the same spoilt exploits.

It can do it within it's borders with an iron fist but not in the democratic world exploited by big companies including Facebook and Twitter.

Linux Desktops and Productivity

This is to disagree with some of the comments circulating in the Web by paid pro microsoft (rather micro shaft) guys and girls.

The simple letter signify my intent not to dignify the business trend and money.

It comes from two philosophies.

1. Small is beautiful!

2. Software ought to be FREE with ability to tamper with the CODE.BASE, so that there is no final product but an evolving ecosystem.

Linux does both with front end desktop's commanding status and backend rigid style of organisation.

I mean command output from a black terminal.

I never configured a server in Linux and let the router with Linux Samaba like utility to do me honours with 13 computers at home at different levels (all dismantled now).

I always hated black terminal but my output sky rocketed when X-system was adopted for user friendliness in desktops.

My current love is Plasma Desktop coming from Mandriva and SuSe KDE desktops background.

I did not like the rigid commercial Redhat default desktop.

Now coming to Desktops if you install Debian 10 in your computer you have all the desktops in one go in one installation.

When you boot up with a user logging you can pick and choose your own favorite desktop.

Coming from Puppy base, I use dogs names or monkey names as user logging.

Bono or monkey is my favourite user name with Gnome Desktop.

Other users will have a different desktops.

Our dog Zimba has his own desktop and all it's photos and few videos in that home folder.

I did not have a good video camera 10 years ago and Zimba passed in away 2016.

Then two years of relative hibernation and now coming back in style with Puppy in USB stick and AbiWord (removing all Macros from LibreOffice) doing the page formatting effortlessly for publishing.

So do not listen to these command guys and others struggling with micro shaft word processing.

There are over 60,000 utilities in Linux and pick only the 10 you use frequently.

This piece unfortunately coming from an Android Nokia.

The Lineage OS is not popular yet and standalone cellphone production is stifled by Chinese mass production and trying to entice with their own OP system is ridiculous attempt.

I DO NOT use cheap Chinese products including magazines with short chain fatty acids that destroy your liver (not alcohol by the way).

They break down in less than a year of warranty and my intention is to boycott Chines products at all cost.

Puppy Linux

This is a short note on Puppy Linux.

With 64 bit computers ruling the world, unless one has a 64 bit compatible Puppy image, one will find booting from a CD or USB impossible.

I am testing all my Puppy CDs and I will report here what is working and what is not.

Basically series 3 and 4 do not mount on 64 bit computers.

Out of Series 5 some boot.

Precise, Racy, Rocor and Slako and others do not.

Slako has a beautiful desktop.

Old Puppy images Emulate KDE, LXDE, GNOME and MATE desktops.

Some have their own desktops.

I have over 100 Puppy CDs and I am going to have several of my favourites, booting from USB.

New ones have bulky LibreOffice, especially, FATPup.

I want only AbiWord.

I believe in "small is beautifu*";philosophy and Puppy started like that before FATPup came into existence.

It actually started for accessing Internet on the go using a USB without any other utilities.
Basically a light weight browser and a XML reader.

Then the puppy grew to and dog.

I use Knoppix for big work with a persistent volume but I use Puppy for light weight jobs often not saving any additional files.

I have one USB right protected by me using a strange sh script which I have all forgotten now.

I cannot erase the USB and reuse it.

I do not think I used a root password.

I was trying to erase it and there was no way I could accomplish it.

Linux has a way of respecting ownership.

I have own to disown the files in it (mostly MultiSystem boot images)

USB are meant to be erasable and reusable.

Not in this particular USB that I have fiddled with

Same thing (basically a corrupted partition table) has happened to a 64 bit Micro SD.

Please do not by USBs with over 32 GB.
It is far better to have a bigger capacity SATA external disk.

I am just erasing all unnecessary files.

My PC has enough storage space.

When I was working I use to have portable rewritable CD/DVD since USB was known to carry Microsoft viruses.

I never had any problem with viruses.
I once erased my entire hard disk while booting TrueOS of BSD origin.
I had fallen sleep (I used to do this well past midnight) and after waiting a while it erased and installed TrieOS on my 120 SSD primary disk.

Fortunately all my data were in the secondary disk.

I have once erased an external SATA disk with data.

I always keep two copies of important data and some in DVDs and having started using Linux never lost a file.

I do not have a single Microsoft or Windows file.

I erased the last copy of Windows in my Laptop 5 years ago.

It has now two copies of Debian 10.