My Way of Naming the Linux Distributions

Friday, September 30, 2011
My Way of Naming the Linux Distributions
 

Now 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
Tiny Core
Core Linux
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. LaiKa, another typical Sri-Lankan wrong pronunciation. 
Like NuKe it sounds Linux.
The name comes from the LaiKa, 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
Live Linux Gamers  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 think 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. 

Making Customized Linux Distributions "On the Go" and "In the Cloud"

 Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Making Customized Linux Distributions "On the Go" and "In the Cloud"
 

The idea I am proposing is not anything original.
It is something done before on a trial basis.
 

At least for the record Suse has done it by way of Suse Studio.
My idea is to support the concept but not Suse.

My concept is not bound to one Unix/Linux derivative.
It is the point where all the Linux Utilities could handshake (UBUNTU LOGO).
If one is a commercial Linux Enterprise like Redhat or Suse  they cannot enact what I am going to state.

This is the only way we can give our due respect to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvald.

This is an extension of FOSS philosophy and to save Developers who come from various background to unite in force and specially to save their precious time.
Like O.L.P.S, the commercial enterprises like Oracle who has a head start in database warehousing might try to kill this idea.
As a side effect my blogsite may be attacked.
The visitors who were less than 24 per day have gone up suddenly and it looks like some zombie type of attack was engineered by somebody  out there but until now it did not materialize.
There are Cyber-terrorist, I cal them, out there.

Concept is simple
1. Linux Kernel/s is/are housed in the cloud with on house bug fixing.

2. Live Script is hosted on another cloud with various way to enhance its versatility. 
For example language support for particular language.
It should evolve like the Universal GRUB.

3. X-windows are housed as cloud utilities from Fluxbox to LXDE to Unity to New Gnome.

4. All repositories need to take the tags out of their own distributions (their tagging can be kept in their own clouds) and host them in clouds of package utilities.
A Universal Package Manager (U.P.M for short) should evolve

5. Script to reach the above  four (4) on a step wise manner should be designed.
I call it the plugger.
One can call it the Universal Connector (like the electricity plugs of various countries) and it is virtually wired to the utilities through cloud.

6. Once all the required components are assembled an automated procedure should make a customized ISO-CD/DVD for testing on a virtual machine in the cloud.
All stages up to this should be virtualized.

7. Any developer community could then use the product to customize more if necessary and put it out with a Linux Brand name of their choice and maintain it for that community and the customer base.

By this way it won't kill the community with over 300 active and 300 inactive distributions.

The reason for the inactivity is often due to one developer does the main work and rest follow his or her footsteps and when the chief retires due to domestic reasons there is nobody to step in and succeed.
This is the difference in the Linux customer architecture which become dormant.
Whereas a failing commercial venture like HP, there is somebody to step in till complete bankruptcy is claimed.
Linux do not go bankrupt it goes into hibernation like some animals.
My idea is to wake up these beautiful animals from sleep.
The cloud can be the place for them to hibernate till some metamorphosis of this animal can occur in its sleep mode unlike in real animal world.
This metamorphosis is good for Linux.
There a lot of steps missing in my concept but I firmly believe that it can be done and accomplished if the right steps are taken before commercial clouds invade us and blacken the sky like a rain cloud.
As a beneficiary I would be able to make my customized Linux in the cloud once a year.
My plannings are yearly basis to the grave and not for a century.
But the above concept should outlast me by at least a century with cloud computing on the horizon.

I bet USA/Russia/China cannot do this alone.
U.N.O cannot do it.It even won't try.
But Linux can do it since Linux Guys/Girls do not have racial or national boundaries.
We are all together.
All will be benefited.
Any commercial company can hijack this concept of mine provided they acknowledge that it is coming from a small country called Ceylon (not Sri-Lanka) which is trying to recover from 30 odd years of war which  the Commonwealth (it is not common anymore than it used to be) is hell-bent to destroy.
They company also should not send the product Free to Ceylon or on IMF Loan to us as long as I am alive and well.
They may try to kill my idea after investing the money but not me.
Even they kill my idea there are lot of nice guys/girls out their with brains and community spirit.

It will be reborn again in some far corner of this planet/globe.
With cloud computing we are going to be truly global.

Gecko and his territory and FAT Browsers needing Diet Cola

 Friday, October 7, 2011

Gecko and his territory and FAT Browsers needing Diet Cola 

Gecko and his territory

I wanted to write about the Gecko, the Firefoxe's background engine thinking it is a little browser.

It is not.

It is a layout engine for multiple browsers that originated in the fold of Linux background.

It takes the content and formatting information and displays on the browsers bland screen.

Gecko has been known previously by the code names "Raptor"

I have decided to support the lightest browser in the line of Abiword as the lightest but a very powerful word processor.

I faintly remembered about its Linux origin.

Currently I favour Midori, IceApe, Dillo and SeaMonkey and not Firefox.

FireFox is light on its own but easily get bloated over 100 MiB with cookies.

IceApe

• Download size: 10,27 MB
• Installed size: 29,44 MB
• Package filename: iceape-browser_2.0.11-5_i386.deb
• Source package: iceape

SeaMonkey

• Download size: 19,65 MB
• Installed size: 48,37 MB
• Package filename: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
• Source package: seamonkey-2.4-1.el6.src.rpm

Dillo

• Download size: 441,81 KB
• Installed size: 1,04 MB
• Package filename: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.i386.rpm
• Source package: dillo-2.1.1-1.ssl.src.rpm

wget

• Download size: 480,73 KB
• Installed size: 1,79 MB
• Package filename: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.i686.rpm
• Source package: wget-1.12-1.4.el6.src.rpm

Lynx

• Download size: 1,38 MB
• Installed size: 5,15 MB
• Package filename: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.x86_64.rpm
• Source package: lynx-2.8.7-7.fc16.src.rpm

Links

• Download size: 1,81 MB
• Installed size: 2,87 MB
• Package filename: links-2.2-13.fc15.i686.rpm
• Source package: links-2.2-13.fc15.src.rpm

Midori

• Download size: 53,20 KB
• Installed size: 599,80 KB
• Package filename: midori-devel-0.3.6-1.fc15.x86_64.rpm
• Source package: midori-0.3.6-1.fc15.src.rpm

I could not find a single article in the web stating their download size (compressed) and installed size.

This information is mandatory when new releases are made and they should also give a breakdown of the size of the cookies allowed when fully integrated.

 

 Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Why I hate Nosy, Bulky Browsers?
 

I will list them first for easy browsing and relate an incident that happened only yesterday.

1. They are FAT.

2. The have what are called cookies. These cookies are very oily full of Cholesterol.

3. They are Lazy as a result of eating FAT Cookies.

4. All of these I can excuse.
To be fat is no crime. To be Lazy is  a Sri-Lankan pastime and I can excuse that too.

5. But I cannot tolerate FAT person being nosy. 
All these browsers are Nosy. 
In fact, like  FBI and KGB they are paranoid and watch every move you make out there in the web.
There is nothing called privacy.

6. You may say I have a password when I read my mail. 
It is just a joke. 
Your password is remembered for posterity. 
You might or yeah, it saves me typing a cryptic password.

But if the search engine remembers it how can it be a password?
Coming from Linux background this is violation number one.
Who gives permission to the browser.
Nobody but like a school principal the browser assumes the authority.

7. Some cookies do eavesdropping for advertisers especially porn.

8. Where does one end up with?
Your boss is angry with you.
Try to find an excuse to sack you.
You inadvertently forget to log off and close the browser and pretend to be doing some mundane work.
He excuses for a minute and sit in.
Goes through the history.
Copy the history and sends an email to himself with a date tag. 
He does this for a month or so and asks you for an interview.
Some paranoid bosses may have even surreptitiously opened your email (DID NOT LOG OFF BUT ONLY CLOSED THE BROWSER) and BROWSE YOUR PRIVATE MAIL TOO.
You have no defense and fired.
Whom to blame not your boss but the BIG FAT BROWSER?

What is the end result.
Your boss is paranoid and you too are paranoid and the productivity comes down drastically.

9. Same scenario can be in your home unless you have a little network like what I have at home.
Everyone has a computer terminal (Linux not Microsoft) and the guests also has a terminal for an emergency.
Even if one does not have anything to hide like a simple Buddhist monk every individual deserve some space of privacy.
Breaking that is violation of a fundamental right.

10. What can one do?
If you use Linux you can have a Pendrive with your favorite distribution to boot up.
That is the cheapest way.
Otherwise have your own netbook or laptop which is bulky to say the least.
With tablets coming the weight might come down a little.
Apart from other reasons, this is one reason I strongly support tablets with variety of android clones and in time to come Anti-Android from Singapore.

Story
I wanted to show JoliCloud to a young guy.
I logged in his computer with my password.
Browser Chrome.
Operating system Microsoft Win 7.
I tried to log off the cookie wasn't there.

Tried several times, searched every godforsaken little menu but could not log off.

I log on to JoliCloud, it starts again to my cloud space without asking for the password.
No logging off dialog box.

Finally he had to erase the one hour of our activity to erase the cookies remembering my password for future sessions.
Had I left without logging off he would have had the access to my data and if he devised (he was a nice guy and I was pretty sure he would not do that) a method to change my password I will lose my ability to log in next time.

The story is different if the guy is like your paranoid boss.
I signed off saying there is no privacy in the web.
He agreed without reservation.

Why I am writing about Xournal?

 Xournal

Why I am writing about Xournal?
 

Xournal is a GTK+ application for notetaking, sketching and keeping a journal using a stylus. 
It can also be used to add annotations to PDF files.
It is because when tablets come small utilities become very useful and they will be the mainstay.

    Repository: Debian Main
    Download size: 259,69 KB
    Installed size: 892,00 KB
    Package filename: xournal_0.4.5-2_i386.deb
    Source package: xournal

ROBIN says this.

It’s a kid-friendly pdf annotator that will make your pdf forms look snappy and professional!
Here is a really fun, kid-friendly application that is not only great for taking notes in class, but it’s also an easy pdf annotator for filling out those fancy forms (college or employment applications) that expect you to fill in tiny little spaces with legible writing. Now when the teacher draws a diagram on the chalkboard and you need to copy it down, you can do it on your laptop or netbook instead of a piece of paper that can blow away when you drop your books (I’m clumsy and lose a lot of stuff that way, lol) or get lost among all the other stuff you have to carry around in your backpack.

The default is Sans 12, but in this example I selected size 9 for this college application with the teensy weensie boxes they want filled out LEGIBLY. Ha, not with my big loopy handwriting! That’s another way that Xournal is so helpful! Now just place the cursor in the space and type away. Cursor placement is a little tricky at first, but once you get it in your mind that the letters go on top of an imaginary baseline determined by where you click the cursor, it’s effortless. Just think vertically instead of horizontally and put the cursor where an underline would go: “I want the letters on this line. Now you’re ready to start filling out the form.
And you can sign the form using the pencil option. You can choose the thickness! Ball-point pen thin or Sharpie-like thick, and in whatever color you like. For this you need a stylus (or a closed inkpen on a laptop touchpad). But just for fun you can even do it with a mouse!
 
 Danny Stieben says this (posted on April 14, 2011) 
Xournal, simply put, is a note-taking Linux application. However, instead of getting a blank box to enter information into, you get a blank piece of “paper” every time you open it up. And that’s all it does, aside from giving you all the tools you could possibly need to pour your heart out on that virtual piece of paper.

And surprisingly, Xournal is a lightweight application, even with the large range of options. 
With a barely marked page open, Xournal takes less than 5MB from your RAM!

Tablet owners will have even more pleasure while using Xournal. 
With the right hardware, it can literally become your virtual paper that you can write on without any issues. Xournal even goes down to subpixels instead of just pixels to create the cleanest, smoothest, and most accurate lines that, when using a tablet, will make up your legible handwriting.
 
Thanks you, young guys, keep us informed, the old guys like me with your discoveries.

Pear-OS

 Friday, December 16, 2011
Pear-OS

Linux-

Panther-Sinhala Install Capability
Pear-OS-Linux-Panther
Pear Os is a Ubuntu derivative which tries to simulate Apple Like features with with dock utility.
It is Debian based looks nice.
It has both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
Reason for my entry here is, it can be installed in Sinhala.
Lately Ubuntu derivatives are trying it hard to get multi-language capability and Ubuntu's Unity experience has hindered this.
Currently only Debian has Sinhala capability and Fedora is also lagging behind because of its rapid changes.
Thank for trying hard on Sinhala.

Grave Digging and Cloning Maha Brahma

Grave Digging and Cloning Maha Brahma

Well, it is long time since I had a good dream to send to Maha Brahma (assistant in charge) for interpretation.

This time it is down to earth.

Unlike few decades ago it was going for birth day parties and wedding, now the trend is different. I happen to go for funerals more often than not.

I do not know that the dream has any relationship to the funeral I went last but the dream was about two grave diggers who were twins.

They were employed by the Kandy municipality. Now that most of the bodies are cremated, they have very little  digging to do and the ash left is only less than 4Kg, many of it can be sprayed under the remaining trees round the Kanatta (Mahaiyyawa) but that is also taken away for rituals by the relatives, their income was getting lower by the day.

One day they decided to go and do a different type of digging. Dig some ancient treasures in the Paduwas Nuwara. They set foot from Kandy to Kurunegala and stayed in a place for preparation. One of them went out to get all the necessary items including jasmine flowers, lemon and chicken etc leaving the other to look after the grave digging equipment they treasured very much. Even grave digging equipment is not safe nowadays.

When he returned to the resting place he found a guy looked similar to him in his bed and his twin in the other bed. So when he entered the room all three were looking at each other puzzled as if they (all three) had seen a ghost and there was some commotion and I was woken up before the dream finished.

Maha Brahmawas bit puzzled that I did not send him an email earlier than this.

What is the problem with you.

You are not sleeping well?

No Sir.

I sleep very well because of the industrial action and get up late too and forget most of the dreams by the time i get up.

So when you do academic work you dream a lot?

Yes

Shall I settle the dispute?

No Sir.

If you do that I don't have time even to send an email.

On the contrary, our politician sleep a lot in between the elections and it is good for them to have a wake up call now and then, now that the honeymoon is over.

Now then how did the dream end?

Actually there were four of them.

What you saw was exact isotopes of the twin brothers.

One brother who remained was under the bed and he was frightened when those two guys walked into the room.

Were they ghosts.

No.

How come?

They had gone for a medical check up and doctors cloned them in case any one of them (normal guys) come for heart transplant or organ transplant.

Why?

Now that the war is over and refuges are not there price of transplant organs have gone up like the fish.

The nurses by mistake had given an overdose of hormones and they have rapidly grown up to full size and escaped from the hospital and ended up at the resting place.

I can understand logic now that stem cells experiments are going on at hectic pace but what is the interpretation?

I cannot give a time schedule lest you get into trouble.

Interpretation

If I say in future, politicians who go for higher posts clone themselves before the election. In case if they die during the campaign, the clone will come and represent the dead one. While in office they keep them as a safety valve in case something happens during the term of office.

But the real reason is, now that the term of re-election time is indefinite cloning is essential for self propagation and continuation of development policies.

Doc is it really possible to clone Gods.

Why not?

That is why gods live for aeons and your bossMaha Brahma has many clones, in case something happens.

Have you clone yourself?

No.

You better do that soon.

There are many dogs here aspiring to take up your post.

Is it costly?

No

We need only a few stem cells.

OK, I will seriously consider that possibility but I have to ask my bossMaha Brahma.

I got to go do you have any more questions.

I hear Mr. Praba also had a look a like clone in case something happens to him.

Is it true?

Did he clone himself?

No, No.

It was only a rumour he never wanted him cloned less the clone will kill him.

Can that happen?

Yes

All clones have to be kept in secret location and a weekly dose of amnesia injection (treatment) should be given to maintain them in good shape.

Then when the real one dies an antidote of anti-amnesia injection is given by the panel of advisers surrounding the boss and the advisers take him to task and do what they please most.

If the first clone does not listen to the advisers, they dispose him or her and get another clone.

If they escape from interment he or she will certainly get rid of the real one.

Didn't I tell you your dreams are always futuristic.

Dream well and I will see you soon.

Don't forget to clone yourself but in heaven they do not kill each other unlike on earth.

Do they?

Nope, see you soon.

Casual look at the interpretation of this dream is bizarre but if one applies modern scientific tenant, something radical is emerging with genome project well in advance now.