Note sent to a newbie in Linux

Down below is a note I sent to a Young newbie.

2 GiB is enough (not for graphic intensive windows games) for Linux except for games.
I have only one (1) GiB (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).

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) 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.

Another Killer Punch by Microsoft-Owns Skype now!

Skype was platform independent and it had paid service and free service.
When things were getting bad during winter with snow and flights were delayed, Skype was the thing available for communication and twitter for the savvy.
Now that Microsoft acquired Skype, it will terminate it's free service and especially to Linux base.
Linux base Skype was pain in the neck and version 2 while Microsoft version was 5 or above.
So we cannot say it was any loss to solely Linux users.
It was the only vehicle available for Linux guys to communicate VOIP with windows users.
Microsoft will close this window fearing somebody like me talked to a window guy and telling the virtues of Linux.

Oracle did the same thing with OpenOffice but LibreOffice has emerged strongly and implementing Office Work excellently.
I wonder it is possible to rid of all Skype contents form the Linux version and develop a video competent VOIP now.
I think we name it a PingoM.
Pingo Man is the name coined by Sri-Lankan for men who carry a load on his shoulder on a pole. I still have not found a good word in English but will continue to use this name Pingo Man until I find a suitable alternative for the above purpose.
Now the Skype Linux is dead I want to revive the dead man with a heavy load on shoulder to bring open source telephony for windows users.

Ping we cannot use.
Pingus we cannot use, even though I like that name and the game very much.

Anybody can use PingoM for this venture as long as they can say that was my contribution to Linux and free telephony.

There are enough Linux VOIP for free telephony but there ought to be one that can communicate (Linux based) with windows machines now that Skype is dead.
So we need to strip Skype Linux of any Skype credentials and name it by the name I have given Pingo-M.

Alpine is VOIP based distribution which is minimalistic.
I think Alpine should put some flesh and add some office utility (minimum Abiword) and mature into Linux distribution with VOIP and develop a executive file for windows users.
AsteristNOW is another Free Telephony based on Linux distribution from CentOS-5.3- 2.009.

Asterist is a company which manufacture cards for telephony and uses open source telephony with thier hardware. They also can now contribute to the evolution of cross platform Telephony before Microsoft strangle users with their copyright issues.
Other ploy for Microsoft is to compete with Google Talk.

I hope unlike Android which Google use to curry favour with other appliance makers, VOIP should be a platform independent and above all operating system levels.
I do not think human beings are born with integrated circuits to talk and their vocal cords are analogue in operation.

This applies to animals and birds who sing for pleasure.

Penultimate Linux

It is difficult for me to give an ultimatum as far as Linux is concerned.

The innovations that come by every minute of the day prevents me from announcing an ultimatum to Linux way forward and next distribution that will come out of the blue.
enough is said about the Linux 100 and i have gone beyond the hundred by many a mile.
It is time for me to concentrate on Mobile Linux form Mobilin to MeeGo to Android to Unity derivative that might come soon.
Naming my top 10 will cause lot of injustice to that are not mentioned.
Life is making choices, prejudices and making decision at a given point of time which only lasts for that moment of time.
What not mentioned is not deliberate exclusion but a subjective statement with some value added judgment.

I have to go by the gut feelings but not with culinary delights.

1. Number one for me is 10th anniversary Knoppix

2. Number two is Puppy (lupu, quirky and wary). If not for Puppy i would not have come this far.

3. Number three is PCLinux including FullMonty which opened me to Live CD world.

4. Number 4 is Mepis and AntiX (including Taylor Swift) for looking after old computers.

5. Debian is my Number 5

6. Gparted, Pmagic, RIP

7. Peppermint

8. Imagine-OS

9. Incognito and Polippix are new derivatives with a strong political statement.

10. Last but not least Ubuntu, Mint and Unity and all Ubuntu derivatives making the feel of Linux universally available for the ordinary folks (not the Developers) who are taken for granted by the multinational companies hell bent on making money out of a poor product since the other choices are discredited by false propaganda.

If I miss any it is due to personal circumstances for me to use a particular distribution.

To rectify that anomaly I always talk about Linux 100 and not top 10 like a Video / Audio Chart.
Linux 100 and more going to stay like Dalmatians 101 in the web and IT world.
You have lot of choices now.
Go and select your own 10.
Please note I have excluded Games and XBMC due to their craving on graphic intensive hardware requirement and environment which many poor people cannot afford at this point of time.
In 10 years time the story may be quite different.

Phoenix born of ashes-Is it a reality?

When Linuxtracker Organization was attacked by the hackers and was emerging from the catastrophe they used this expression from rising from the ashes of Phoenix "to say they are reborn again" with vigor.

I have pasted the mythological story from Wikipedia below but to me fire was not a major concern till I started recording indoor temperatures.

In that period I have seen guppy fish die due to high temperature and saw flowering of some plants never seen in Kandy and its suburbs.

I have not been to the Botanical garden for some time and I am sure some plants there are dieing due to warm weather.

The Kandy City was known for mild weather for centuries and it was where many come to escape from warm weather of Colombo.

Not any more.

My discovery is that we cannot even make wine in Kandy city now since the yeast the major ingredient in wine and alcohol die above the temperature of 38 degrees C.

And we hit this temperature regularly for the last five years of my recording.

I decided to take a stock of fire hazard in our living rooms, especially because there is a guy who live below our house who habitually set fire to whatever he gets hold of, almost on daily basis and I see ashes in my room and bed room if I keep them open for ventilation.

Besides I fear sometimes my dog's fur would catch fire if he is let out of the house.

My fire hazard registry goes like this.

1. Cloths
2. Bedding
3. Books
4. CD/ DVD and their cases
5. Plastic containers (to avoid dust and ashes) buckets
6. Furniture including the bed and tables
7. All the wires that are connected to internet
8. My shoes
9. Computer utilities, keyboard, mouse and wires connected
10. Empty Cardboard boxes and last year's (remaining) Wesak lanterns.

In actual fact I have nothing except three items that would stand a minor fire.

My inventory was compiled when I was half asleep and the moment I got up I decided to collected all the items not useful and would catch fire to their final destiny, the fire itself.

So I took a leaf out of the guy who does it as a habit.

Set fire to them one by one and it took three hours to finish the lot and I stayed close to the fire till it was safe for the dog.

It was simmering even at midnight and I am pretty sure no Phoenix will emerge from the ashes.

Our electric switch board caught fire three times during the last six months once due to lightening and twice due to sudden surge of Electricity from the Board.

The guys come and say the supply is OK and do nothing inside as far as the checking is concerned and leave us to our own devices even at night.

Thank god we do not have little ones in our house except the dog who does not understand electricity, thunder and fire crackers.

So my obsession to fire is well founded.

Not only that I was very happy we lost the Cricket World Cup and I wish we will never win another world Cup till the Global Warming is taken care by our Buddhist Monks seriously.

Had we won it our guys would have burnt down (fire crackers to begging with and deliberate later) the remaining forest in no time by accident or by design to have free entry into CROWN Land and now the President's Land.

I have made a resolution not to light a lantern for Wesak this time round and I am sure nobody with sane mind would join me in my effort to highlight the global warming and its toll this small country is experiencing now. This does not mean one cannot light electric bulbs instead (with less hazard) but without overloading the system with many bulbs.

I hope if their are Buddhists out there who love this land should think of joining me as a gesture worth portraying without causing any harm to the principles laid down in Buddhism and its spirit of universal brotherhood.

Just think of the wastage I.P.L is making during the 20/20 games when some Indians are not having a square meal.
Make it a point to switch off the TV set during Wesak and think of the poor Indians who are struggling to make ends meet.
After all they are our neighbours (poor Indians) in need of spiritual guidance if rich Indians are neglecting them for a song and cricket.

We owe India the rich heritage of Buddhism and giving them something to ponder about is value added contribution on our part to the poor Indians who need not be poor in wisdom by default.

Fire Risk is there in this country but we do not have a proper fire brigade to cover the entire country and they come many hours after the fire without water and we have to provide them the water.

Fire wins and we lose everything and that is the name of the game.

Mythology
A phoenix is a mythical bird that is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet.

It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.

The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self.

In some stories, the new phoenix embalms the ashes of its old self in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (literally "sun-city" in Greek). It is said that the bird's cry is that of a beautiful song.


The Phoenix's ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one.

In very few stories they are able to change into people (who set fire to the entire world).

Mabuntux-Going to be Number One?

Mabantux score is much higher than Ubuntu Unity and it is much easier than Unity itself.
It does a good emulation of Apple.

Score is 1930 more than 600 points above Unity.

This is an indication with some tweaks Ubuntu's Unity will become more popular.

For the time being Pinguy and Ping Eee are the best innovative Ubuntu derivative which is in the market and its score is 2385.

I am going to make a prediction that everybody in IT industry should take good note of.

First of all I am not a fan of Ubuntu and I use it only for demonstrating its versatility (in other words versatility of Linux).

I think Mark Shuttleworth, the visionary in Linux promotion and of Canonical has made a smart move to make Unity Desktop and make the progress of Ubuntu as the number one in computer world.

Time will tell the story.

His critics may not agree with me, especially Linux Old Guard but in the commercial world people who make smart moves at the correct time will succeed what ever the market conditions that may exist at the time of the move or moves.

Unity Desktop was a smart move.

If he introduces a tablets it will be even smarter.

I think he should move fast and go ahead and use a light weight unity derivative for a universal tablet.

Tablets with phone accessory would be something kids would love to have it at home and in school.

I think Canonical can even take Google's Android into second place.

It will be number one in another five (5) years.

May be even early.

That is my prediction and nobody can stop it and the average user with smarter brain would be the accessory of the Canonical.

The community should extend all the help needed to the new converts and the newbies.

Ubuntu's global popularity will serge with the version 11.04 and it is a matter of time, that the rivals will be talking about it in the reverse gear.

I had a live session with it only for five minutes and that five minutes was enough to make it versatility universal.

Yes, it does not have Dropbox, Skype and K-Torrent but that has been rectified by the emerging Mabuntux.

The DVD with XAMPP, EyeOS and PhPMyAdmin will rock the IT world in no time.

Thanks guys / girls for the PhpMyAdmin.

I have been waiting for it to appear in a formidable distribution for ages.

Its Password Universal will have a Universal appeal.

I was about to say good bye to my Linux 100.
You Guys / Girls have sprung a big surprise on me.

I will be watching your success and progress of course from a distance but you have to work hard to get it there and believe that it can be the to Number One, not only in Linux World but in IT world too.

I may have to wait for two or three days (already downloaded Ubuntu and Lubuntu) and I hope lot of seeders will help the download speed of the poor guys and girls in the third world.
Me included.

I am also happy you are not posting any CDs free now.

People should join the community of seeders instead of waiting for a free CD from Canonical.

Go to Linux-Tracker and start downloading it for yourself.

Active participation is essential and I am going to keep two of my computers on as seeders even though I for my own reasons (minor issues not worth elaborating) use many other Linux distributions.

I hope Sinhala Capability also creep in as a byproduct.

Political Statement In Linux-Polippix

I like the idea of Polippix where in the 21st century freedom (not fanaticism) of speech is curtailed in the name or guise of religion, race, beliefs and practices.
IT guys with political vision in Denmark has produced a Ubuntu based distribution in the style of Knoppix but with TOR(but lacking in most of the innovative packages of Knoppix) for anonymous access of the internet.
It wants to set standards for
1. Freedom
2. Privacy
3.Standards for IT with political vision.

What like most is the TOR is not activated by default but can activate once the CD is booted up and running and when one needs it only.
It has telephone access with IP protocol which can be configured and is a very good ploy to access a friend in a different soil (country).

Only down side is it is slow (KDE desktop consumes lot of RAM) to boot and consumes lot of RAM.

I hope they make a lighter version on XFce or Openbox for the third world where people use archaic and ancient gadgets to assess the Internet, usually secondhand computers with low RAM.
With it booted up I could not get all the features of www,wordpress.com to write a comment on Polipix in WordPress blog of mine.

Indian Premier League-Is it killing Cricket in infancy?

Indian Premier League-Is it killing Cricket in infancy?
Cricket Lovers will be happy if the answer to that question is no but I think that the answer to that question is emphatic yes.

Yes it is killing cricket and young cricketers in its formative years.

Cricket is an institution in the Indian Subcontinent and making money is a good objective but not at the expense of serious cricket.
It is not the correct way about it.

It might pull crowd to the grounds and not so serious spectators to the fold as cricket commentators.

I think ICC should look at seriously how it affects the smaller nation like Ceylon and New Zealand.

It has already caused fractures in our cricket mainly due to corrupt administrators on this side of the Palk Strait.

That does not mean cricket administrators on the other side of the Palk Straight are straight and are not blameworthy.

They too are to be blamed and rightly so.

Betting as a industry is well established in India and Pakistan.

In our setup too it has become a cancer with white collar (or is it blue collar) guys in the fray.

Players are hesitant to come out with the truth since moment they come out the gambit they are penalized not the corrupt officials.

Like getting children into big national school even getting a place in the school cricket team and selection process is stained with corruption.

Whole institution stinks now.

Cricket has now become a corrupt institution like politics.
ICC and it's CEOs are also not clean and they are also hell bent on getting money into their coffers.

Money corrupts politicians and so do the cricketers and their administrators.

Cricket has become politics in Sri-Lanka and my opinion is that we won't be able to recover from this corrupt influence for many decades and that is why I call I.P.L is killing cricket in its infancy.

I am not ready to put the blame on the cricketers alone.

They know it better than the arm chair pundits.

It is sad I have to pen down this scathing remarks instead of watching cricketers playing cricket in normal day light with temperatures that are conducive not at a time of the year even living inside a living room we get a heat stroke in Ceylon in Kandy.

No need to talk about India which is going through the effects of global warming.

They could not produce onions for barjii!

It is better we go for a tree planting campaign instead of 20 / 20 cricket.

It is better for the health of the nations in the Indian subcontinent.

Supreme Super Gamer-Big Failure of Linux Games

I am afraid I have to make two negative reports on the trot (not mission critical this time, unlike Dropbox) and this time on Supreme Super Gamer.

After 7 days of download time finally I got this Live DVD in my hand eager to boot up enjoy.
This was on May Day Holiday, quite appropriate for me to enjoy the games when real workers are bashing Bunki Moon on the main high streets of Colombo.

Bunki Moon has become a Punchbag for Political Punchers, I wish somebody make a game of U.N.O on the web with Bunki Moon as the main man of action and I can assure you we will give you 20 million people to both for and against playing the game.

This was quite contrary to the Foreign Minister's assertion.
In my case I took his advise in good stead and want to play some games pass midnight. That was the time the download was over (really on the day after May Holiday) and I could not boot the CD on both computers having less than 100 graphic capability.
It was pass midnight and I had to attend to some work on Monday morning, I went to sleep.
Toady after an evening nap I took the DVD (first double layer gamer in my hand) and booted up with my laptop with 4 GiB RAM but relatively reasonable graphic card capability (IBM).
It booted up but failed to configure X-Windos on root permission.

The kernel in the DVD has two problems.

1. It cannot identify various types of file format of Linux including reserfs.
2. It does not have modules for old and new graphic cards.
3. X-windows even though kernel is new fails.

This is where Linux Developers failed their users (rather customers).
Do not blame Windows for this lapse and I do not think I will download a gamer till next May Day.
I am a professional who has other important work than playing games.
Unfortunately Linux is my home base where I cannot play games with my grandchildren in the backyard, till next Christmas.
Thanks guys ' girls for your interest in Linux games!

Update on Dropbox

I do not like negative comments especially in regard to new enterprises taking effect from the ashes of Phoenix.

This comment is a negative one but it does not belong to the enterprise concerned, the Dropbox.

Dropbox is doing an excellent job to make cloud computing a worthwhile endeavour.

Even if the the service provided is good but the infrastructure below its level of competence is poor like in the third world where download speed of the telecoms are in snail pace activity, I find it difficult to expand on virtues of cloud computing.

I do not have a single photo or any videos in my folders but the Linux Iso image is taking ages to come back to it's home compartment.

I grabbed the idea of cloud computing to exchange Linux images especially new versions to share with my friends all over the globe but it looks like that experiment is going to have a natural but premature death.

All this happened because I formatted my home compartment to install new version of Linux.

I do this annually but this time delayed it for few months due toother important activities related to computing.

Even though I copied everything in the Dropbox to a DVD (again except Linux images) I forgot (deliberate action of mine) to put my files back where they should be.

Once I activated the Dropbox I did not have any control over synchronization.

The Linux image is trying its best to come to its home but the telecoms and its speed is the stumbling block to rapid synchronization.

In future I would delete all the heavy files and let synchronization to take effect and format my home partition if I decide to do so.

If I leave the home partition intact this problem might not happen but formatting home partition to get rid of all junk files is a routine that I use to bypass the failed CRON jobs.

I hope Dropbox gives me some control over hopelessly slow downloads (If I can arrest this automatic synchronization after 24 hours, it will help the Dropbox team too).

Mind you uploads are even slower, so putting a Linux image back into its place is also not an option left for me.

I vaguely remember the Linux image but that is also blessing in disguise.

Point to point download or upload is not an option but something in the make of Torrents is the way forward for Dropbox.

For that to be effective Dropbox needs to have more split servers all over the globe with split images of large files. At least they should offer that service for premium customers who paid for the extra payload in space (I mean cloud space which takes physical space of a server).

Will they go for it, only a wishful thinking of mine, I do not know.

Finding a Sound Driver for Windows-It is real pain in the neck.

I did a little search on windows drivers for posterity.
It is done automatically by most of the well known Linux distribution in which ALSA does a good job of doing the background check and then install it at live as well as install time.
So I did not bother about drivers for some time.
The other ally was Knoppix which does automatic scan and writes it at live session and I often use it to detect unknown drivers for unknown hardware (secondhand stuff and the owner often has no clue ).
In this scenario I went up with SuSe and YAST and from it got the details.
Then typed all the details at Google and I could not get anywhere close to the source of a free download.
After several tries and I only get to the users comments and asking for help (tired and fed of trying to get at the web forums and find a solution).
No helpful hints.
Failing which I typed autoscan on Google for drivers and I get handful of exe files which I cannot use.
Then I found a site which specializes in drives called Drivers Guide.
It was the only site which gave some helpful instruction but you have to register with them.
With several tries with lot of other advertisement all over the page I managed to hone down to the probable driver and click download (lot of distraction by Microsoft guys).
It was only 14 MiB and the link broke down and went back to the site then get the latest download from the site but the one I wanted not in the list.
So I went back to my history tree (history tree is helpful when a link is broken) in the web browser and clicked where the link broke and re-did all the steps to download.
Now it says it takes 32 minutes to download and all these took one hour and more and thank god it is May Day Holiday and I had time to spare.
This just to illustrate what a pain a windows guy / girl goes through to get his sound working.
I am not going to use the driver now but put it in my archive in case one day a guy who is using a similar IBM computer and was stuck with driver installation.
In any case I have decided to charge him or her for asking my help and for the driver or chase him away telling either you get me to install Linux or go and do it yourself without any instructions from me.
Or tell him visit my blogspot for help with no charges of course.

My Selection of Linux utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Archives

My Selection of Linux Utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Archives-08

Archiving is essential if one is downloading images like me.
I use CD/ DVD and and external hard drives for that purpose.
If one is archiving music and video then the requirements are different.
Real archiving is into different electronic media like good old dates mechanical tapes.
Amanda was Linux utility that are used storing huge amount of data including server output.
I am not referring to that.
RAIDs and other methods are for industrial needs and mission critical 24/7 services but what I am referring here is for an ordinary desktop user who has files that can be managed easily.

If the hard disk size is a problem one does not have lot of partitions ARK is a compression utility one can use I am not personally in favour compression and encryption (if you forget the password, you are in for trouble) and if one wants to open a file in Windows setup you are in for a big headache.
The list can be very simple.
1. K3b is my favorite
2. Light Scribe if you have a similar DVD ROM
3. LaCe
4. AcetoneISO for images
5. K9copy
6. QPxTool is comprehensive and covers all types of data (I have not used it, since my requirement are simple enough to cover with K3B and a external hard drive)

What if I format my hard disk with Dropbox in it?

What if I format my hard disk with Dropbox in it?

It is my habit to format my hard disk leaving sometimes home partition intact towards the end of the year but this year I waited till March to do that since some of the Linux Distribution new versions are released around that time.
What would happen to my Dropbox content if I format my hard disk.
I did not have a clue?
What I did was to save all the contents (Copy them to a DVD) in my Dropbox (which was little over 2GiB) except the 2 Linux images I have saved there.
Then I completely forgot about restoring my Dropbox to its original content.

Then just to see what is up there I logged into Dropbox but I could see nothing in my folder.

So disappointed I went on with my work and later hovered over Dropbox icon on my desktop panel to see it is downloading the files back to the Dropbox folder.
With over 1700 files it indicated it might takes 7 days to download the entire content.
Well it was not a shock of the day for me.
It took 7 days, 7 hours and 7 minutes to download Debian Multi DVD and my Dropbox folder took 7 days I can take it sitting upright not lying down.
My only worry was I was downloading the last 1.4 GiB of Supreme Super Gamer (0f 8 GiB in total) and it would adversely effect the completion of the download.
Mind you I was downloading Pollipix which was at snail pace.
Quickly stopped other Torrents downloads from the queue and went to sleep.
It was not something I am going to worry except I have to keep my computer running overnight (not day time, which is even slower).

Got up early in the morning the My DAY Holiday (unlike workers who are never on work on working days in this country but fully worked up today) doing something or finishing something not finished intellectually was my intention and I looked at the Dropbox to see it had downloaded all except two images.

While I was typing this Puppy (Wary) was completed and the other Linux image which is over 1 GiB would be downloaded in its own time.

But to my surprise the net effect on my Torrent download was about 250 MiB (usually 1.0 GiB overnight but today 750 MiB).

That I can live with it with painfully slow download speed in this country and I am not going to pay enormous amount in addition to Peo TV and the ADSL (which they fail to keep optimum contractual obligations) for a little bit of extra pace on download speed.

If politicians are slow here especially after holidays so can I be!

So synchronization does work but that depends on the download speed of the link you have.

Whole idea of having the Dropbox was to keep some live images there for my friends to share but I am reconsidering my wisdom on this issue and thinking on having a Light Weight Dropbox Folder or delete all the heavy files before formatting the hard disk.
Even the problem here is I have several computers and in which computer I keep my Dropbox Folder active.
Certainly not in my laptop.
In any case i believe the Dropbox has a way of synchronizing like in Torrents to the last second and start at the point I switched off the computer.
This is a question I post to all the Cloud Hosting Companies out there.
Have you got the correct solution without compromising my downloads.
In my case I was smart enough to give a rest to the Dropbox when I was doing (mission critical activity-the catch phrase of the corporate complainers) my last few downloads that is also the games and not mission critical in any sense but me have to wait few ours more to play a game or two on my Weekend or the May DAY Holiday!

Sinhala Linux-Ubuntu 11.04

It is encouraging to note that Ubuntu 11.04 that I downloaded today has limited capacity of Sinhala installation among mainly English terminology.

I am happy there are some Sinhala translators in the fold of Canonical and it is a matter of time for a team of Sihhala capable developers to sit along with the Unity (new desktop) Team to unite together to bring out more Sinhala capability.

Desktop is attractive but lot of omissions to my liking.

Omissions are
1. No dropbox
2. No torrents
3. No cheese

I am very happy LibreOffice is there and Ubuntu is always (even though I do not use it on a daily basis but use it for demonstrations of Linux functionality) up front in Linux and its community and commercial efforts are well advanced.

Helping visually handicapped is a remarkable feature of Ubuntu.

I wish them success with their new endeavour with Unity.

King Cobra-Naja naja

This is not something to alarm you but to point out how man has neglected the use of cobra venom for therapeutic use.
In addition there is a paucity of knowledge how venom evolved in animals and how some animals are resistant the smaller doses of venom.
I teach that it is the venom that is produced in our body after the bite that kills us not the cobra venom (to illustrate the fact that cytotoxins have multitude of actions).
For example bradykinin that causes pain is the product of our own tissues.

Snake venom is a modified saliva and we really do not know whether these are produced in evolution for digestion of the prey or to immobilize or anesthetize (humane to the dying prey). None of the points I have raised have been addressed conclusively and potential for the use of the modified venom molecule for treatment of leukaemia or cancer cells or as antithrombotic activity have not been discussed in scientific journal adequately..
Why?
The answer is simple.
Once they discovered that antivenom as a cure, everybody forgot about the biological role and what system they act and why, when where and how they modify the homoeostatic mechanisms.
Moment the commercial activity of preparation of antivenom starts the scientific investigation of biological nature takes a back stage.
That is very unfortunate.
There lot we can learn from these cytotoxins.

Coming back to cobra (baby cobra-are as poisonous as the adult), I killed a young cobra with a ruler when I was as young as the tiny cobra who was under my bed.

When that little fellow made his hood and kissed the death I fell heroic and also very sad.
Then in another incident when I jumped over huge cobra in a big compound and looked around to see he was as frighted as I was and showed his hood with a warning and quietly slipped away to his safety, I wondered why fear an animal who is on his routine search of his food or prey.

I still say the jumped I made that day worth an Olympic record if somebody made an accurate measure on that day. Unfortunately I missed an Olympic record since officials were not there to record it. That would have changed my life completely but the day that completely changed my mind was another ordinary day.
I was walking along a stream with the intention of catching guppies and I had a stone in my hand (we used to play marbles those days unlike today's kids) and I saw a water snake (harmless creature) quickly swimming across in fear.

I took an aim in a moment of irresponsible stroke of mind of ill will and thought, threw the stone at the poor creature and it landed right on his neck.

It was like a bulls eye shot but the agony of the creature who succumbed in a long drawn out 5 minutes of death dance made an impact in my mind never to hurt (reflecting my killing in fear of the young cobra) an animal in either fear or sport.

Then on one night (2 am in the morning) in darkness a Ceylon krait landed on my right shoulder and I brushed it with my left hand gently and put the light in a flash to see creature landing on cement flow with a thud and my dog charging at it, I was man thinking of three lives my dog, myself and the poor creature who ventured at night.
Mind you Ceylon krait is the deadliest of Sri-Lankan venomous snakes.

I watched the creature and it quickly disappeared into crevice wide open due to rotten timber of the bathroom door.

I did not have any cement to seal and went to the kitchen an took some American flour (who says American flour has no place in this country) and sealed the hole with the dough hastily made since the price of flour was very cheap (cheaper than the cement) then.

Suffice is to say I flushed the hole with water before I did that and slept on the settee fearing few more in my bedroom.

After three days it emerged (none elsewhere) from the kitchen floor cracked and we caught it and released it to safety.

Of course I had to cement both holes in the bathroom end and the kitchen end.

The key point here is that animals fear us more than we fear them in this modern world where are we are encroaching on their habitat with blatant disregard to biodiversity.

What if one loses a Pendrive or a U.S.B Hard Disk?

What if one loses a Pendrive or a U.S.B Hard Disk?

Nothing much you can do about it if you are a Microsoft user.

If you are paranoid and buy some expensive stuff with password protection and or use encryption before saving, you can say alright I lost it but there is no use for the petty thief.

In a world where everybody is getting very selfish and living in self contained compartments, if you accidentally lose it the one who finds the gadget may not go all out to find the owner.

Best way to protect your data is to not to carry in a portable medium.

Cloud Linux and saving in a cloud is a good option and that is why I used to support it very enthusiastically but even there are some problems when hackers attack servers.

So there is no full proof method to save data.

Other option is to be somebody like me who make life principles very simple and have very little substance to hide or boast about except my Linux Images stored all over the place.

If I lose them no problem the Linux tracker will have almost all my Images except the very old ones and it is a matter of sitting down and painfully downloading them again on a portal which is painfully slow in the 3rd world.

When I come to think about it it is time for people with common interests to get together form Citizens Bureaus and possess servers of their own and maintain them on a voluntary basis with trust as the bond and friendship.

This is a wishful thinking of the futuristic world I am dreaming of but may not live long to see this in actual fact emerging as a force in need.

Everybody getting paranoid and everybody has something to hide or use the knowledge he or she possesses for capital gain in this present world of greed and profit but no common decency.


WiKiLeaks was something that had to emerge and I only saw the good side of WiKiLeaks and we saw the panic of so called good or is it bad Americans diplomacy and duplicity.

We see a similar round of duplicity when BunKi Moon decides to make his own world of wisdom, just to make sure his job is secure for another two years but throw the U.N.O. credentials and caution to the wind.

Transparency is only a word but not a practice proclaimed at high level.

We cannot expect it to get better or established at grass root level.

In this this context looking after ones data is one's own purgative.

If for common decency if one wants to save your family photos and a paltry sum of privacy you have from hacker at large, I have a solution for you.

Go Linux.

You can have a Linux distribution in a Pendrive or in your USB hard disk with boot time protection with password one can save one's common decency.

I have not tested this as a possible scenario in my live CD/DVD encounter and in future this is something I am going to promote or test as a virtue of Linux.

So I expect the Linux developers to think seriously about it including UNetBooIn Developers.

Even Knoppix has now introduced root password facility not as a default but one can enforce it after installing it in a hard disk. That is a good thing that is emerging for simple guys like us who sometime has to make political statement of some sort in a country where democracy is owned by only one party, one race or religion an government is enforcing some scrutiny on dissenters.

If these political guys or police get hold of a tiny statement in a Pendrive or a hard disk they have misplaced and produce it /them in a court of law they have no defense.

This is where even Polippix and Incognito has a place when police states emerge in the pretext of law and order an disciplined society where simple justice and common sense and decency may disappear forever.

I think Linux Developers should give us the utilities to protect common decency to if not the political will to change bad practices of all kinds.

My Selection of Linux utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Office

Office packages are the ones that are generally used by almost all the users.
before getting to the standard office utilities PDF editors are the ones that one has to pay (Adobe to get some real work done) pay attention.
PDF
1. Xjournel come to my mind first.
2. PDFedit.
3. PDF chain

Then for visually handicapped user
4. Okular

For Experts text editors

5. LateX for the experts. We should not forget this utility which did all the hard work before office packages emerged.

General user
6. Abiword is my favorite because of its simplicity
7. LibreOffice for OpenOffice (It is huge resource drainer like a gorilla in a dinner party)

Page Layouts

8. Scribus

Productivity

9.Gnucash
10.Gnemeric

11. And any that I may have missed.

At this point I must make a reference to FM Setup in FullMonty.
It is a refine way of presenting utilities in an organized workplace that user in mind.
If they add some user editing capabilities and customization it is going to be a top hit in desktops.
I hope everybody should (developer and the user) look at this nice utility and make some improvements to it without adding bulk that may slow down the boot up time.

My Selection of Linux Utilities that Should make a Standard Distribution-Internet

I was off the track of Linux for some time since Bunki Moon was playing Pandu and Chuckgudu with 20 million peace loving people not knowing whether he is moving forward or backwards in time. He is a confused man like a CEO who is waiting for his removal or extension in office with so much anxiety created within himself which he is trying to divert into body politics of U.N.O.

Time will tell his strategy of securing his job first and then think of 20 million people and their welfare second would work.

Probably not.

Coming back to Linux distributions and essential utilities, I am a believer in time to come all O.E.M products should have Linux Internet utilities as default (no cost to them0 even without installing any OS one should be able to browse Internet by default.
In that context, Debian's Iceweasel (or even Dilo) should be the one that should be ported with the O.E.M with all the unnecessary cookies removed and probably Dropbox (or a cloud entity) also accompanied with the basic (minimal) kernel.

till then the list of Internet utilities should be as follows with no intention of giving any merit to any but despising all the utilities that track the uses interests and feed them back to commercial entities to make inroads by way of subtle advertisements.
I believe user is now mature enough to chose what s/he wishes to have in his system.
Without any intended recommendations or of any perceived benefits to me or the user are as follows.

1. Putty.
2. Kget
3.KTorrent
4. Transmission bit torrent
5. FilZilla
6. Kmail
7.Thunderbird
8. Opera
9. Firefox
10. Chromium Browser
11. Skype
12. Vodafone
13. Dropbox
14. Pidgin
15. Web Editor- Bluefish editor

I personally go for Iceweasel or Dilo since that do not have intrusion utilities embedded in them for tracking the user unnecessarily.

Why one should not buy a seondhand Laptop even if the deal is cheap

Postscript

If one wants to save time one could have uesd an external dirve to do the job and I have several (DVD witers) of them but thay are not used for odd jobs but only image writing.

I recommend netbook for laptop which can be easily booted up with a USB Key.

I hate heavy luggage to do simple jobs.

One should check the battery before any of these and if the battery is not chargin it is not worth the try.

Secondhand Laptops

I had a very bad experince over the weekend trying to resurrect an old Toshiba laptop.

It was the time of resurrection of Jesus and I took the challenge not knowing what a lot of time it would take.

in my case it was the longest time I spent in doing a similar thing and in that time I would have resurrected three old IBM desktops.

Anyway to cut the story short and to keep my reputation intact, I went down to work with serious intent.

Japanese and Korean Laptops are the worse in this context since they have finicky hardware and finding drives especially in Linux is difficult if not impossible.

Problems I encountered were
1. the RAM which was 512 was not enough to boot even 2010-2011 versions of Linux (even xFce and LXDE).

2. Combo drive was not working properly and the first thing I detected was that the DVD was not working. Even the CD ROM was painfully slow moving. Could not read high speed data written Linux CDs

3. I did not have the USB boot up but Floppy disk boot up and I did not want to waste checking the Floppy Drive.

4. Processor was 2.0 Hertz which was faster than most of my old computers and graphic was working OK.

5. Could mount a CD and connect to the Internet instantly so I decided that it is worth at least as a spare computer to access Internet and post an email.

6. Sound was difficult to configure but one can plug in a USB sound card and the two USB ports were bit rusty of use but working OK.


I fished out some of my old Linux CDs and it booted up well with PCLinux (SAM-the Mouse)-2007 (has Skype, Open Office and many light weight games) which was the only distribution that could run the CD ROM on its optimum speed. Did not try Puppy since with the poorly working CD (combo with DVD not working) repeated CD run was not an option.


Booted up with 10th Anniversary Knoppix CD (not DVD) and it booted well,
Used its gparted and deleted all the old Microsoft partitions and make one NTFS partition and 4 other partitions (1 rersefs, two Ext 4 and 1 SWAP with 2 GiB) and installed Knoppix and browsed Internet.

Mounting the second Linux was the most difficult part all new Linux distributions I tried either froze due to CD Rom freezing or the RAM freezing.
I was about to give up when I realize that peppermint would of 450 odd MiB was worth a try.

I booted it up with normal mode but it also froze but as a final try I tried it with compatible mode which is for old computers.
It really did the trick and this old laptop without Microsoft is now running with two Linux distributions.

Knoppix takes the crown (CD version) and it was the only one which did not freeze.Its file compression is extremely good and now can it be installed with root permission granted if you decide to do so after initial installation.

Peppermint comes close second and thanks to all the guys and girls for producing light weight versions.

Peppermint of course have all the Google application, gParted and Dropbox too.

Those are the two Linux distributions I recommend if one is prepared to spend time to resurrect any old laptop..
After that I told my friend he has to buy at least another 512 and DVD ROM which is very difficult to find even secondhand.

I told my friend do not use the CD and sealed it with a tape (in case I need to reinstall Linux-rarely happens, though) and it is good as gold to browse the Internet for another five years.

The bottom line is do not buy secondhand laptops even if they are pretty cheap and especially if there is no boot facility for USB booting.

None of my Flash Drives with UNetBootIn did work with this laptop.
Do not get caught to gullible secondhand vendors.