Linux Experience in a Nutshell

 
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Linux Experience in a Nutshell

My first Tamil and Sinhala New year Resolution is to have a long sleep after posting this.
My next new year resolution is related to the incident I discovered today.
Just today I went to drop a friend of mine to the airport and being new year we arrived at the friend's place in good time. Since I did not have a good night sleep yesterday (I was looking for various Linux gamers to download for the new year) I had a bath and had a little snooze on the arm chair.
I usually carry a book and gossip is not my pastime

I forgot the wine making book I fished out from a secondhand bookshop, unfortunately.
We had lunch and tea and all that but my friend and wife were taking an unusually long time getting ready and I was bit bored dropped into their daughters room to say hello, and found a computer and sat in front of it.
There was a glaring message saying that the hard disk is at risk and blah, blah.
Then she came in with another cup of tea before leaving and she told me that it is giving trouble and could not connect it to Internet.
 

I Looked at the router it was OK looking form outside (no evidence of hit by lightening) but not blinking properly and the outer panels were open pulled out the hard disk and the cable and she had another hard disk and fixed it as the slave and booted a Linux live CD (Peppermint with Google utilities) I had given him earlier.
It took a little time to configure first but in less than ten minutes with 256 RAM, I was up and running the Chromium browser and typed asokaplus and parafox.
 

So router part is OK and my friend was still not ready, I decided to boot the computer (XP, I believe a pirated copy vendor had installed) without the Internet cable not plugged in and I could not find any (I had given her Medi Linux disk, too but did not use it for virus check) problem and it was running well.
I booted again with Peppermint, to show how to use it, this time it quickly configured and it was up and running.
My diagnosis Microsoft secretly spying on pirated copies and infecting the hard disk and giving instructions not to recognize the router with the message I did not care to read.
Router is above the operating system and Microsoft has no right to fiddle it at that level but they are doing it on unsuspecting Sri-Lankans who are using pirated copies.
So my solution is get hold of a Linux live CD and boot it with it and go to Internet.
When using XP (pirated copies of course pull the Internet wire out, a very simple remedy).
I prefer DSL (Damn Small Linux-that is what I have given my wife) with less than 50 MB which boots fast.
If you have enough RAM go for any Live CD I have listed in Linux 100.
 

The second message is to say do not use Microsoft for Internet.
Third resolution is to promote Sinhala Linux for the next 3 months and go into full hibernation so that Microsoft would not be be able to find a trace of me or my old testicles which are still producing enough testosterone to fight any villain against Linux.
 

If you have any brain take a few (5 enough) minutes a day and learn bit of Linux from a Live CD. It does not do any harm to your computer since it is running on RAM and there are enough forums to guide you through the early phase.

Down below is a note I sent to a Young newbie.
2 GB is enough (not for graphic intensive windows games) for Linux except for games.
I have only one (1) GB (4 GIB in my laptop which I use only for testing occasionally).
It is a waste of money going for more RAM with very slow Internet in Sri-Lanka.
I only use K-Torrents now and it is currently downloading at less than 5 KB/sec .
Solution is for having at least two computers.
 

1. For games and videos
 

2. Simple secondhand computer with Linux for Internet (can share with your sister or brother and family members).
 

3. Netbook with Android when you enter University (not now).
I have fallen out with Newtbooks and Tablets now.
Except my laptop and my daughters netbook all the computers at home are very good secondhand IBM computers (cost less than 20,000 with few updates with RAM but not graphic cards).
Secondhand desktops are good buys if you understand the hardware and look at inside before buying.
I test them with my Linux CD/DVDs before buying and there are lot of Linux utilities to test and Linux will work day and night for 10 years.
None of my computers broke down after I started using Linux (before that 3 new ones on Windows were ruined) except few graphic cards and RAM in the learning stage.
They work 24/7 schedule and the UPS battery is very important.
 

This is one reason I promote Linux and I do not fear viruses now.
Only down side is Games with Linux which I will probably concentrate when I retire and nothing else to do.
 

I have two game DVDs but I will not give it to anybody since Linux is for real and serious computing and not for games and leisure!
Never buy a secondhand laptop or netbook (I have written about secondhand laptops in my blog site).
 

Wait till new models come and with long battery life and you need it in the university and the government is unable to pay dons and do not expect them to help you with computers (not in Singapore though) when you eventually enter University.
Learning Linux is easy if you take one step at a time.
When I started there was nobody to guide me.
I used to read books (This is where English is important) and fast.
That is a technique (reading fast and also digesting the material) I developed on my own.
Give me any big book I will read (not from cover to cover) only what I want to solve a problem (in this case installing Linux) and pick up the important things in 3 to 4 days.

This is something essential in higher studies. One does not read for the sake of reading in science (reading in other fields including philosophy is different).

One focus on why one reads this or that and make one's own personal assessment in the course of the reading.
Early days I used to get bogged down in two or three days without any progress.
Then I take a break and think about the problem deep and somehow get to the point (D.I.Y- Do It Yourself) where I want to make progress.
It naturally comes.
We all have this natural ability but examinations do not make us better but show where we are weak.
After every examination we have to go for a higher level and a more difficult level.
Even though A Level is difficult we make life easy after the 1st year Examination.
Unfortunately 1st year examination is the most difficult for all and problem with English compounding the disability.
This is especially so in maths and IT.
Maths is difficult if one is not in it.
I was very good in my maths including applied mathematics and used to beat all in my class.
Then one day I decided to go for biology in particular (with my reading talent and the fast speed was a bonus) and without any help covered the syllabus myself (D.I.Y).
Rest was history and I never felt big but looked for the next challenge.
When you get bogged down in a mathematical problem do not try to solve it by somehow.
Think, analyze and look at the problem in a different way.
There is always several ways of solving problems and try to grasp the concept.
What I find in my teaching in the University is students struggle to grasp key points an concepts.
Not like our time.
I do not know why?
Other problem is they cannot read a manual and follow instructions according to the manual and instructions.
This is where reading is important.
So concentrate on your mathematics and English.
Rest will follow.
Linux take as a problem and a hobby to take a break from your studies.
Do not make it your first interest.
But keep trying and look at where you go wrong.
This talent is essential in IT.
There is something called fixing bugs.
This is where both mathematical concepts and programming merge.
Even though I do not write programs, I am good looking at bugs.
That probably has come from my analytical skills learnt from pathology.
Try to be a problem analyst.
The term in IT is system analyst.
If a server breaks down one has to find where and when and what has gone wrong?
Without trying to spoon feed I have given you a list or methods that I have used to solve my problem with Linux.
You try all and decide what is good for you.
One is enough at an examination but in teaching (as a teacher I have to cater for different type of students) one has to look at the global picture and focus on different aspects of a problem.
That is the difference between a student and a teacher.
It is sometimes very hard to become a good teacher.
If am given a chance I prefer to be a student.
That is where I always enjoyed.
But having to teach a brighter student is a blessing.
Linus Torvalds, I like him the most because he showed that his professor was wrong.
There are many ways to solve a given problem.
Not one professor given me amethod.
This is how the business world operate and there are Teams and not Lords.

E-Linux

 Wednesday, September 25, 2019
E-Linux
This piece is dedicated to Ian Murdock Debian Developer who is no more
Debian changed my outlook in life in computing.
E-Linux
Before that let me tell you that after two hours of searching, I managed to find find the first Linux Demo-CD which I have kept as a precious souvenir.
I could find  it because I am very well organized even though my memory is failing, now.
It was the very first Live CD (Liuoris is one among a few) difficult to find one in early days.
The first book in print form in Linux came 20 years later.
That is the Joy of Linux.
Years later Linux Bible came in.
Mandraker 7.1 was one CD I used and went I went up to 10.1 (did not boot) and got strangely hitched to PCLinux (only in English and no other language capabilities) KDE (very well organized desktop environment).
 

It (Mandrake- it changed names due to litigation problems and is Mageia now) did not have books but Redhat produces a book from version 7.0.
But there was enormous e-documentation and that is the success of Linux. 
I used to come to Narahenpita to meet a guy who had worked in Singapore who was selling CDs.
Apart from Metta Vihari with whom I could no connect really, this guy was the one who got me Linux CDs (no DVDs then).
I kept all these for my reference and for teaching purposes, if anybody requested me.
Having said that I collected images to create a server for images to dish out freely but could not due to big overhead on me.
But I gave up that idea since Linux penetration was very slow. 
 

Years later www.distrowatch.com was formed and functioning very well now.
 

Below is a html page from a E-Book in Linux.
I get very silly questions from newbies but now have the patient to respond in kindness.
Remember Linux is sharing on an often slow Internet connection with Samba running. 
Sharing Time
Sharing Knowledge
Sharing  Resources
Sharing Space
Sharing in Person and in groups
So do not waste time of others for tutorials.
So before asking any question;
First organize yourself.
Read in depth of the topic one is trying
Before going into terminal and command line probing ask yourself what is the problem YOU try to solve?
Linux is developed on trillions of hours of community spirit.
Do not take it for granted but give respect to others.
See below each new user gives credit to the previous author.
That is how Linux penetrate the NASA and the entire world including talking dolls.
Try to use Linux before trying the command line prompting.
Administration
and Privileged
Commands

Page 1258

intro

intro—Introduction to administration and privileged commands.

DESCRIPTION

This chapter describes commands that either can be or are only used by the superuser, such as daemons and machine or hardware-related commands.

AUTHORS

Look at the header of the manual page for the authors and copyright conditions. Note that these can be different from page to page.

Linux, 24 July 1993

adduser, addgroup

adduser, addgroup—Add a user or group to the system.

SYNOPSIS

adduser [--system [--home directory] [--group]] [--quiet]

 [--force-badname] [--help] [--version] [--debug] username

adduser [--quiet] [--force-badname] [--help] [--version]

[--debug] username group

adduser [--group] [--quiet] [--force-badname] [--help]

[--version] [--debug] group

DESCRIPTION

adduser and addgroup add users and groups to the system according to information provided in the configuration file /etc/adduser.conf. adduser and addgroup automatically determine the UID or GID and place the entity in the password or group file as appropriate.

If necessary, adduser creates a home directory for the new user, copies "skeletal" user files to it from /etc/skel, and allows the system administrator to set an initial password and finger information for the user.

Because it needs to be able to write to such files as /etc/passwd, adduser can only be run as root.

Generally, there are two types of users and groups on a system: those users that log into the system and those "non-user" accounts and groups that exist for various system tasks and projects. Henceforth, user will refer to the login type and system user or group will refer to the type used for system maintenance and projects.

By default, each user in Debian GNU/Linux is given a corresponding group with the same name and ID, allowing people easily to give access to their home directories to others. This option can be turned off in the configuration file, in which case each user is, by default, added to a group called users.

Under Debian GNU/Linux, IDs less than or equal to 100 are allocated by the base system maintainer for various purposes. IDs from 101 to the value specified in the configuration file (1000, by default) are used for system users and groups. IDs greater than 1000 are reserved for users and their corresponding groups.

When invoked with a single name, adduser creates a user with that name. When given two names, adduser assumes that the first name represents an existing user and that the second name represents an existing group. In this case, the user is added to the group.

Page 1259

OPTIONS

--system     Create a system user. This user will be assigned the shell /bin/false and have an asterisk in the password field. Unless otherwise specified, the user will be placed in the group nogroup. Skeletal configuration files will not be copied into the user's home directory.
--home directory     When used with --system, this uses directory as the user's home directory, rather than the default specified in the configuration file. If the directory does not exist, it is created.
--group     When combined with —system, a group with the same name and ID as the system user is created. If not combined with --system, a group with the given name is created. This is the default action if the program is invoked as addgroup.
--quiet     Suppress progress messages.
--force-badname     By default, user and group names are required to consist of a lowercase letter followed by one or more lowercase letters or numbers. This option forces adduser or addgroup to be more lenient.
--help     Display brief instructions.
--version     Display version and copyright information.
--debug     Display a large quantity of debugging information.

SEE ALSO

adduser.conf(5)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright(c) 1995, Ted Hajek, with a great deal borrowed from the original Debian adduser, copyright(c) 1994, Ian Murdock. adduser is free software; see the GNU General Public License version two or later for copying conditions. There is no warranty.

Debian GNU/Linux version 1.94

agetty

agetty—Alternative Linux getty.

SYNOPSIS

agetty [-ihL] [-l login_program] [-m] [-t timeout] port baud_rate,... [term]

agetty [-ihL] [-l login_program] [-m] [-t timeout] baud_rate,... port [term]

DESCRIPTION

agetty opens a tty port, prompts for a login name, and invokes the /bin/login command. It is usually invoked by init(8).

agetty has several non-standard features that are useful for hard-wired and for dial-in lines:

    Adapts the tty settings to parity bits and to erase, kill, end-of-line, and uppercase characters when it reads a login name. The program can handle 7-bit characters with even, odd, none, or space parity and 8-bit characters with no parity. The following special characters are recognized: @ and Control+U (kill); #, Del and Backspace (erase); carriage return and line feed (end of line).

    Optionally deduces the baud rate from the CONNECT messages produced by Hayes-compatible modems.

    Optionally does not hang up when it is given an already opened line (useful for call-back applications).

    Optionally does not display the contents of the /etc/issue file (System V only).

Page 1260

    Optionally invokes a non-standard login program instead of /bin/login.

    Optionally turns on hardware flow control.

    Optionally forces the line to be local with no need for carrier detect.

This program does not use the /etc/gettydefs (System V) or /etc/gettytab (SunOS 4) files.

ARGUMENTS

port     A path name relative to the /dev directory. If a _ is specified, agetty assumes that its standard input is already connected to a tty port and that a connection to a remote user has already been established. Under System V, a _ port argument should be preceded by a _.
baud rate,...     A comma-separated list of one or more baud rates. Each time agetty receives a break character, it advances through the list, which is treated as if it were circular. Baud rates should be specified in descending order, so that the null character (Ctrl+@) can also be used for baud rate switching.
term     The value to be used for the TERM environment variable. This overrides whatever init(8) may have set and is inherited by login and the shell.

OPTIONS

-h     Enable hardware (RTS/CTS) flow control. It is left up to the application to disable software (XON/XOFF) flow protocol where appropriate.
-i     Do not display the contents of /etc/issue before writing the login prompt. Terminals or communications hardware might become confused when receiving lots of text at the wrong baud rate; dial-up scripts might fail if the login prompt is preceded by too much text.
-l login_program     Invoke the specified login program instead of /bin/login. This allows the use of a non-standard login program (for example, one that asks for a dial-up password or that uses a different password file).
-m     Try to extract the baud rate the connect status message produced by some Hayes-compatible modems. These status messages are of the form: "". agetty assumes that the modem emits its status message at the same speed as specified with (the first) baud rate value on the command line.

    Because the -m feature might fail on heavily loaded systems, you still should enable break processing by enumerating all expected baud rates on the command line.
-t timeout     Terminate if no username could be read within timeout seconds. This option should probably not be used with hard-wired lines.
-L     Force the line to be a local line with no need for carrier detect. This can be useful when you have a locally attached terminal where the serial line does not set the carrier detect signal.

EXAMPLES

This section shows sample entries for the /etc/inittab file.

For a hard-wired line:

tty1:con80x60:/sbin/agetty   9600   tty1

For a dial-in line with a 9600/2400/1200 baud modem:

ttyS1:dumb:/sbin/agetty      -mt60 ttyS1 9600,2400,1200

Well who can boast of 10 flowers on the rooftop garden and five and more in the tiny outdoor garden?

 Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Well who can boast of 10 flowers on the rooftop garden and five and more in the tiny outdoor garden?

Well who can boast of 10 flowers on the rooftop and five and more in the tiny outdoor garden?
Well who can boast of 10 or more butterflies on the rooftop garden and five and more in the tiny outdoor garden?
Well who can boast of 3 pairs of Nectar or Honey birds on the rooftop and five and more pairs of Munia or Battihchas and Suticchas in the tiny outdoor garden?
The Suttichas with a needle like beaks are ferocious if interfered with (tiny but ferocious) and pair of them chased me out of the rooftop garden.
One was feeding on tiny spiders and tiny insects.
The other was searching for a plants (taller than me) with branches spreading under the asbestos roofing for place for nest.
I frightened them since cats are always there to prey on them.
I have a beautiful photo of a tiny nest with our dogs hair as a padding they made when I was away for  six weeks (rooftop garden gone to wilderness).
Our dog is no more but every time when I see these tiny birds they remind me of the good times and bad times.
Well we can have all these even on a rainy day.
That is only if you care for them tenderly.
Not with the idea of selling it to a guy/girl who does not understand plant biology.
It is just like giving a scholarly political book published in academic cycles in the West to a Ceylonese politician?
The ideas won’t filter into actions but only to rhetoric.
Where is liberty, equality and fraternity?
It is only books published after Carl Marx, the greatest critic of capitalism not socialism.

A cooperative society is an antithesis to corporate organizations big or small.
Avant Garden is a good local example.

Singing Birds
I wake up to the sound of singing birds.
I have now faced with a problem.
I try to identify them by their chirpy, chippy, churns but cannot.
Let me list the ones I can identify.
Crows caw, quacks of duck, cock-a-doodle-doo of cocks and few more.
But I hate the whine of mosquitoes.
They keep me up all night.
So, when I am up early with a nasty bite of a mosquito, with raging anger, to calm me and get to Metta Mode, I listen to the early birds.

Probably our domesticated fowl is the first to crack and wake up.
Then the jungle fowl and little later and afterward, there are many more birds whistling which I cannot identify but worth recording on a sonogram.
I can identify the Polkhicha that come and gobble my guppies.
Then the babblers, bul bul and last the Ceylon Oriole and the parrots and musical coucal.
 

I cannot count ten (ducks are not in my neighbourhood but are in frozen state in a deep freezer) and I give up.

Birds in Paradise Lost and the Juvenile Delinquent
This piece was long overdue.
Ceylon used to be a paradise for birds.
Not anymore.
It has many reason as I see them as a bird lover and a bird watcher but I have to highlight some recent developments ornithologist has not studied adequately.
I wrote a piece 2 years ago about a an Indian Oriole pair who did not migrate back for long period of time.
This coincided with the full operation of the Coal Power Plants.
I was obsessed to point out that the wind currents were effected by the commission of the Coal Power Plant and the it probably affected their detection of thermal range and the decision to migrate back to beyond Afghanistan.
They did remain for a prolong period and finally disappeared for good and never returned for the subsequent two years.
I was predicting that they would breed here but that prediction has no credible evidence to support by way of young ones.
Instead more of the local Oriole who prefers jungle habitat started vising our small garden.
Their was an unusual increase of local bird visiting our neighborhood for two reason.
1. Water.
2. The fruit tree they love to visit and partake its fruits (Ambul Pera and Mulberry).
During this period the remaining Bread fruit tree and another jack tree was consumed but they still have limited tree cover.
The other reason was that in the name of development and Eco-tours two remaining Kurulu Kales are being vandalized driving them to move out looking for safer places. (Kurulu Kale-Jungle reserved for local habitat both fauna and flora, in fact what is left of, in and around Kandy city.)
This development is going at full pace and they are even removing an overhead pass probably to make room for the Night Races which I will never watch.
Today story is more to do with the Buttichacha, the tiny bird that has made a point to take over our fruit tree for his delinquent acts.
For his size he is a hero of mine.
One day I was watching he was pecking a young bat who had lost his way and resting on another tree upside down on broad day light, like our politicians.
Their view about nature, coal power and anything scientific to me looks like upside down anyway.
Politics is not a science but a way of life and those guys/girls will never understand science in correct perspective anyway.
Those who cannot understand the value of live and let live and reconciliation won’t understand, science in their day to day life.
The next episode was this little guy has such a macho that he dare attack like a live bullet on the Ceylon Oriole whom I have now an special attraction after the episode with Indian Oriole.
Moment a Oriole comes he is airborne like a bullet and hit the big guy on the tummy with his long beak and the big guy won’t attack in return but shy away like a timid little boy and fly away without partaking any fruits.
When this happened, I went into my investigating gear to see whether he was protecting the young ones or the nest.
My investigation were negative.
He was a loner.
He has not found a bride but his instinct is to wait their for a good match and when he finds one to built a nest for his lover.
He is neurotic without a lover.
His pitch is belligerent and delinquent.
Now the Oriole expects the attack and cleverly avoid and direct hit and he was a peaceful guy and never retaliate.
The Butichcha now goes into pitch of defense (as if protecting the young ones) and as long as the big one is their makes a racketty noise in alarm mode. 
The big guy picks a fruits from the tree and quickly flies away.
The little one goes behind chasing the big guy but unfortunately it cannot catch up the flight of the Airbus body of the Oriole in comparison to the pocket size bird.
It reminds me of the rhetoric of our guys blasting the American.
I can remember in years gone by China used to have rhetoric against USA when its air space is violated by American spy planes.
They go to thousands of warning but the big guy the USA won’t stop the surveillance.
In the world of bird when paradise is lost and a partner is not available for mating what else a little bird can do?
Yelling in high pitch (like our politicians).
This one I am going to send to Maha Brahma asking him to intervene and produce one more (extra) female for this delinquent and boisterous BOY to pair with,
It just need one more egg.
Let him not make it a Buddhist Egg and unfertilized.
When I asked a favor Maha Brahma promptly addressed my call for the lonely cuckoos and I have many pairs visiting the garden now.
THANK YOU.
If you oblige this time, the rackety noise will disappear in no time and his delinquency will be gone for good.
I am not sure our Butchittas come under Swifts or Cuckoos.
Either way he is a personality good enough to enter our parliament and make a big noise without substance like the Hela Urumaya or Hela Karumaya.

Birds birds and birds, where the hell they come from?
This is my comment below a paper article about unusual bird activity
There is something radically wrong for them to come out.
I have been observing this for a while.
I have not nailed it down but In Kandy it is due to clearing of their habitat on the Hantana foothills by guys with political patronage.
They move from East to West which is not normal.
They are now nesting in few trees near our house.
Never seen before except Blue Kobeeyahs (Ash Parrots).
Second reason is they need lot of water (not food) due to unusually warm weather.
Global warming to be precise.
In our case we have a water purification plant and they come there to bathe and drink water.
Leave lot of water for them to drink if not bathe.
They die without water.
Mind you we had two full moons without rain in Kandy.
Third reason is our mulberry tree is full of fruits due to warm weather.
I am trying to make few sapling (very difficult in this warm weather) of mulberry and give it to my friends to encourage their visits.
If not Jam Trees would do.
My guess is without visiting the hinterland, a baaaaaxxxxD with political backing and in the name of development must be destroying the last vestige of their natural habitat.
Pass this message and this news by email to all bird lovers and start investigating without delay.
I have few sketches devoted in my blog-post-Linux 100 and parafox to alert bird lovers of this country.
Try your email in the meantime.
Thanks for highlighting 

Bits & Bytes' of a Journey along the Digital Highway

 Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Bits & Bytes' of a Journey along the Digital Highway

I come from a much older age and I was in UK and the UK government was considering use of the American made Cellphones and was thinking of changing from wired connections to wireless with a higher pay.
I resisted violently for User Pays Strategy and the Caller Pays Strategy should be introduced and we were using bleeper for hospital communication which I hated.
I still use the land phone (read my piece on algorithm) and use cellphone for playing games when I am bored.
Reproduction
Bits & Bytes' of a Journey along the Digital Highway
March 28, 2018, 10:16 pm 
I went through the same but in UK and in New Zealand. 
 

New Zealand had a primitive system and American bought it outright. 
 

The bottom line is those days it was cheap and now it is very costly.
I am in Australia and I have not given a call for over 18 months.
Nobody use emails nowadays.
 
By Nalaka Devendra
I ask: "Alexa, What's my Flash Briefing?"
Alexa - is not human. Rather, it is a small disc-shaped, talking computer, connected to the Internet, wirelessly.
I am not hallucinating; I am not under the influence of any mind-altering drug. I am not even watching a re-run of Arthur C. Clarke’s "2001: Space Odyssey", imagining that I am talking to HAL 9000. 
It is 2018 and I am sitting in my home/office.
Never in my wildest dreams did I foresee myself communicating with a talking computer!
The disc-shaped gizmo is the Echo-Dot 2, and Alexa is the voice activated service. Together, it can search the Internet and read to me, today's weather, headline news, play the BBC World Service radio, solve maths questions and a whole lot more, which I am yet to explore. 
It is a gift from a friend in the US.
In the beginning
Born in 1964, I lived the first five-years of my life, in Trincomalee. I also completed my Montessori education and started proper school, there. 
It was there that I was taught the most basic of communication skills - to talk, read and write.
My father made me a small, shallow box or tray, with dark-blue varnish paper at the bottom covered with a thin layer of sea sand. It became the first writing surface I used. My parents guided my small fingers to form letters, both English and Sinhala. Later, when I started school proper in Grade 1, I wrote on a slate (gal-laella) with a stylus made of slate (gal-koora) to write letters and form words. Writing on paper and books, came later. Little did I realise that I would be using those fingers and stylus half-a-century later, on my Smartphone and Digital Tablet!
A luxury called a telephone
When we lived in the Naval Dockyard (Trincomalee), we had a telephone in each of the houses where we lived. But they were connected to a private exchange (PABX) which belonged to the Sri Lanka Navy. When we needed to call someone within the Dockyard, you lifted the receiver and asked the operator to connect us with the other party. It was the same, when we wanted to call an outside party, in Colombo. Long distance calls were commonly known as 'trunk-calls'. Direct dialing was non-existent. 
The phone instruments themselves were large, heavy and made of Bakelite, an early form of plastic.
We moved back to Colombo, during the latter part of 1970. None of the houses that we lived in, had a telephone. Owning a telephone was a great luxury. Perhaps the owners didn't quite think so, as the entire neighbourhood did not think twice about knocking on the door, asking permission to make a call! 
Whenever we moved into a new neighbourhood, the first thing we did was find out which house owned a telephone and get friendly with them. We need a point of contact, in case of an emergency. We finally got our own telephone in 1978/79, after we moved to Dehiwela. It was then that we experienced the full impact of owning a phone. We had the entire neighbourhood knocking on our door, irrespective of the time of day, wanting to make a call!
After all these years, we no longer need the 'operator at the exchange' to connect us to anyone. Our phones are no longer bulky. So it is ironic that no one even asks me for my home phone number anymore! 
Instead, they want my mobile number, my Skype ID and my Email Address. The new phones are slim and aesthetically pleasing. They fit into your pocket. There are 'hands-free' gizmos which means you don't even have to take out the phone from your pocket to answer it. The next time you see a person seemingly talking to himself, the chances are he is using his hands-free gizmo. Some people have more than one mobile phone - why, I do not know..
International Direct Dialing (IDD) is a basic feature today. It was not so, back then. Not even in the early '90s. I used to go to a 'communication centre' in Liberty Plaza to call my sister (studying in India) and my parents (living in Sharjah). I used to call them at night as charges were low. Even then, I paid Rs. 300 per minute and my wallet was much lighter, at the end of the exercise.
Technology blurred the lines
Thanks to the advancement of telecommunication technology, we don't even have to use conventional methods of talking to one another. We can talk (voice), video chat (live video) with people both within and outside the country, through the Internet. The cost is negligible when compared to the 300/- per minute I used to pay. In fact, you don't even need a telephone to talk to one another - just use your computer. 
My Smartphone, is in fact, a computer!
Today, the line between a computer and a phone is so blurred that it’s mind boggling. In fact, your average Smartphone is both. It's 'computer' component is a thousand times more powerful than the first general purpose computers I cut my teeth on, way back in the mid-1980s.
 My first (proper) job was working at a Government Corporation, where I was the sole employee of the Information Technology (IT) Department. Back then, it was simply called the 'computer department'. This was in 1985. The first computer there did not have a hard disk. All it had was a bank of 8-inch floppy disks. The computer itself, had a random access memory (RAM) of 64KB! The printer I had was a dot-matrix, 132-column printer. But we got a lot of productive work done with the limited resources at our disposal: on reflection, we probably used those computers to its full potential. I seriously doubt, if people use their present computers (including the ones inside smart-phones) for more than 30% of its potential.
Back then, when we wrote computer programmes (lines of instructions to get a computer to do our biding), we did not simply sit in front of a terminal and type away. We had to first plan and draw up a "flow-chart". Then, we had to plan our programme by writing a pseudo-code. It was only then, that we got down to the bare-knuckle typing of the actual code. But that was not the end: then came the programme compilation - a process of converting our typed instructions into a form which the computer could comprehend. All of this took time and planning. There were no short cuts or magic solutions. There were no 'apps and applets' to make life easy. Each and every mundane task had to be clearly spelt out.
My second job was at a company where we designed, developed and implemented turn-key (mostly bespoke) computer solutions for our customers. Although we had a large team of programmers, we had a limited number of computer terminals. As a result, we got very limited 'terminal time'. There was a time-table posted on the door, giving 30-minute slots for terminal-time. No one was allowed to book more than two slots consecutively. Each morning, there was a rush to book time-slots and much begging and horse trading among us to get as much terminal time as possible. For the balance of the day, it was back to paper, writing our code and checking and re-checking the same. Never did I visualize an era when we would have a computer on our tables, at homes or carry it around with you.
Pre 'Internet' days
My third job (also in the '80s) was with an IBM Business Partner. 
By this time, Personal Computers (PCs) were making its presence felt in the corporate world in Sri Lanka: not the sleek and ergonomic ones seen today but large, solidly built and heavy. It was also the era when we came face-to-face with graphical user interface (GUI) and the wonderful mouse! 
We, more or less, kissed goodbye to the 'command prompt' and text-commands.
Some of our customers needed specific and specialised licensed software, for their work. These specialised applications such as CAD/CAM, Statistical Analysis, GIS, Communication Software, etc. None of these were readily available in the local market. We had to place orders with overseas suppliers and wait (often quite a while) for the goods to arrive. 
As always, our customers expected the goods to be delivered, yesterday!
 
As the customer is 'always right', we had to find ways and means of getting the software to them, in the shortest possible time. Our office was located on the top-floor of a three-story building. The Internet was yet to come to our part of the world. The only practical way to obtain these applications was to connect to the supplier's system and 'download' it. Our office did not have an IDD facility. However, luckily for us, there was a 'communication centre' located on the ground-floor of our building. We rigged up a long (very long) telephone cable from our office to the communication centre and connected their telephone (with IDD) to our office and to one computer in our office. The IDD connection to our overseas supplier was not great and the line got disconnected several times. But we always managed to download the software and satisfy the customer. 
All this took place late at night. 
Needless to say we never got much sleep. Today, thanks to the Internet, all what we did, could be done in a matter of minutes. But back then, we had limited resources. But we were more innovative and found solutions in the most unexpected ways. Necessity is, indeed the mother of inventions.
And then, the 'Internet' came
I was there, at the official launch of the Internet in Sri Lanka. Yes, now I sound like a dinosaur. 
There were no dedicated lines (ADSL or Fibre) back then. 
We used a Modem to connect to our ISP. 
It made a god-awful racket while establishing the connection and the speeds were slow. But, we had access to a whole new world! At that time, my wife and I lived in a small flat. We shared a telephone line with our landlord. Before I went on-line', I would inform them, so that my Internet connection would not be interrupted.
Gradually Internet speeds increased and so did the technology. Today, you get high speed connections to your door-step. 
The latest is fibre-optic lines to your home. 
The all important MODEM is now a museum piece.
Soon we also had email and what a wonderful tool it was! We were able to communicate (and share pictures) with our friends and families all over the world. We thought that we had finally arrived. That we were now in par with the rest of the developed world. Boy, were we wrong ! 
Little did we know that a juggernaut called Social Media was barrelling its way towards us.
To my generation I say "We have come a long way baby !"
(The writer can be contacted at nalakadevendra@gmail.com)