Black Panther-107

Beautiful distribution coming from Hungary with support for English and German.
It is pretty good even though it took a little more time to boot up.
Anyway all KDE distributions have this tendancy.
Onece booted it runs fast and connects to internet quikly.
It is well past midnight.
That is the reason for the shortness of the content.
Good one.
Thanks Guys and Girls in Hungary.

SuSe-Update

After over 7 days and nights of downloading, finally I manged to download 4GB of SuSe.
Fist time it broke at 3.3 and the second time it was O.K.
It took three days of downloading.

The day time downloading is at snail pace and I a trying to beat the pulse impulse of the computer (mind you we are experts in feeling the pulse of even a dead man or a imprisoned man-but not the pulse of the people-even Obama is failing in that), I am trying various methods to keep servers in Sr-Lanka not to go to sleep at night.

In true fact what I have done is buying a switch that stay alert and goes into sleep mode when power line or the server fails.The switch does a yeomen service of not closing the file but stay put having gone into sleep mode.

This has prevented me of interrupted sleep.

When power fails I have to get up and switch off multitudes of gadgets which are in different rooms.
My son also does a good job when power fails on a longer duration which is very common in Kandy and Gampola.

SuSe has KDE and Genome and LXDE and xfce and few more X-windows.

That is a good thing.

I did not bother to go ahead and test it since I am much happy with Live KDeE which I have in my system after my PCLinuxOS was infected with a scripts a few months ago which prevented me getting even to authorized sites. I have downloaded Gnome and both 32 bits and 64 bits versions of SuSe all of which are doing great.

This is where SuSe a nose ahead of PCLinux-2010 which also has a problem with non-English speaking audience.

Suse in that neck and a half ahead of PCLinux-2010.

In view of shorter time of downloading I still prefer CDs.

I love my sleep and I can even sleep standing (traveling by Public and Private buses when the need is there and getting up in the night to swith off is not a welcome practice in any normal household.

If you need everything go ahead and download the DVD.

I am now downloading Mandriva and hopefully I'll be with you in five or six days.

XO-Pup-106

After an year old development thread XO-pup is available for download for One Lap Top Per Child (O.L.P.S) platform.

It in tar.gz format only a Linux box can expand and extract it to a fat partition or U.S.B.
Thanks Guys and Girls.

I will soon be downloading it.

Quelitu-105

Another fantastic effect light weight based on Lubuntu.
It is in English. French and Garcian (hope I got the spelling right).
I give special points to light weight and multilingual capability.
Well done.
Good one.

MiniNo-104

Debian based distributions that would help one to use an old computer (new computers too) without dumping into attic or waste.
The idea is eco-friendly use of computers as long as the hardware are functioning.
One can second, third or 4th computer at home or office doing some useful function.
I have many at home networked only my laptop is brand new,

All of them are secondhand some (including a server) were thought to useless by secondhand vendor but doing useful work at home and my office.

The eco-friendly idea is catching fast in the West very soon we may not be able get secondhand computers for the price we paying now but that is beside the point. We must not waste of our resources.
Linux unlike Microsoft is helping the masses (comparatively poor but not intellectually).

This is a goo one.

I think developers are listening to some of my comments the idea of 100 Linux distributions should be in everybody's mind.
I never thought the response will be this good.
Imagine we have over 100 Live Cds to choose.
It is a wonderful feeling.

Fantastic Guys and Girls!

Puppy Studio-103

Even though I used PCLinux as my gold standard (it has some problem with its new partition tool-not recognizing some partition types) for live CDs for its versatility and the availability of many versions at disposal, the record for most number of CDs downloaded goes unquestionably to Puppy Linux (I have, more than 20).
Puppy Linux Studio is the latest I downloaded.
It has lite version which is 288MiBs.
The full version is 376 MiB.

It is pretty good and has taken most of the useful packages from TeenPup and LeagcyPup.

Both over 650MiBs.

Puppy less than 200 is always in my front pocket even when I travel abroad. Even though I carry a flash drive (pen drive) I rarely use it for any problem solving.
Puppy is enough and it is amazing in doing simple and complex things.
Why carry a laptop when one can avoid it.

Before I buy something I load Puppy and see whether everything works before paying in foreign currency.
If Puppy fails I do not buy that fir sure however much the market hype.

As far as I am concerned I categorize (like any other Live) Live CDs based on Puppy MiBs.
Is it less than 200 MiB?
I love the ones below 200.

NimbleX is one of them. NimbleX has bcome bit fatter recently but still less than 500.

The next category is 200 to 500 MiB (little less or more).
CRUX, Peppermint and many more out there now.
What annoys me is why try to compress into 700 which is impossible unless one use compression used by Knoppix.

If it goes beyond 700 MiB might as well double 500 to 1000 and go for a decent DVD like Mint rather than no man's land.
There is another problem with trying to compress into 700MiB.
Unless one has 1GB RAM, live session is slow and painful.
Many people do not have more than 512 RAM or DVD.
Many of the old machines can be revitalized with 500MiB input.
I am glad to see some are catering for these machines.

Having said that with or without your own machine all Puppies are adorable.

I will be with you on Pendrive Linux soon.

New Wave of Linux-Multibooting Capability and its Culpability

Most of the Linux distributions are making a culpable offense by not recognizing other Linux that come from various backgrounds.

In the beginning the LiLo had problems with booting other Linux distributions.

Then came GRUB it solved most of the booting problems by booting from any partition unlike windows which have to start from the first sector.

Linux guys have not put this weakness of Microsoft to light.

Now is the time to highlight why we give priority to Microsoft.

It is unfair in legal sense and open market economy.

It also should learn how to boot from any sector of choice other than Master Boot Record.

Nobody should give the copyright inheritance of the first sector to any Linux or Microsoft distribution.

It should be with the customer or the user.

It is a monopoly.

Why computer wizard did not expose this weakness to light is my grouse.

They only aggravate the situ by only recognizing windows and dos sometimes and invariably gave Microsoft the first place.

This is a culpable mistake Linux developers perpetuate by its taking the starting block.

Why give the head start to Microsoft?

I have found only three distributions doing it right
They are PCLinux (the new distributions now have a problem not including other format options - other types of disk formatting including DOS), Mephis, Debian, Suse, Mandriva, Redhat and Fedora.

Redhat had the best GRUB including RAIDs..

Still SuSe has the best partition tool, even though it restrict itself to 15 partitions.

Why I do not know?

All the other Live and installable CDs I checked had problem recognizing other Linux distributions.

But they invariable recognized Microsoft by default or is it fear induced by Microsoft by its global propaganda or is it both.

Why not recognize its sisters and brothers breathing over the neck to have a good start.

Most pertinent question is why Microsoft cannot see with their eyes open wide Linux or other partitions.

They are totally blind to independence an market forces.

Where is universal the brotherhood?

Where is universal the comradeship?

There are two reasons.

1. One is boot loader they use is LiLo.

2. The other is that they do not write a script (copy of the booting sequence in the header files of the root partition.

They all write on the M.B.R while giving priority to Microsoft almost by default or deceit.

Ubuntu do this, all Ubuntu derivatives including attractive Mint do this culpable offense.

It is time to wake up and put this right.

Suse recognizes only 15 partitions.

There used to be over 60 partitions those days before the RAID and volumes came into existence.

I used to have at least 8 (2 windows) distributions bootable on my hard disk barely 80 GB.

Those days Linux were not fat and heavy and some of them could stay on 2 GiB partition.

I used to modify boot sector by various means to get all running without a problem with GRUB as the boot loader.

Now the hard disks are over 300GB or 500GB we must go back to all traditions and have at least 30 partitions recognizable.

Then I can boot Microsoft, Apple Mac and Open Free BSD as part-timers with Linux preferably my own assembly called God Bless You All (G.B.Y.A) (thanks to all the guys including Puppy Linux) and I will throw a party even the all mighty God has directed me to the grave for rest after the party.

Recovery Is Possible or Impossible and cohabitation is a must in the coffin for all of us at the end.

Linux100-ArtistX-106

I have temporarily suspended testing Live CDs and thought of downloading a few heavy weight DVDs, just to satisfy some of the Linux fans who go for heavy weight fights without having fun with light weight guys.

After three days of downloading 2.4 GiB of Gravity and Weight and tested this Ubuntu derivative that come from Italy.

It has fantastic collections of artistic utilities including Blender, Adobe Flash and Wine.

The collection was fantastic but there are a few proprietary packages that might have problem in the West.

I must tell you I enjoyed watching CNN News with Adobe.
Once I was trying to download Adobe for Suse and their was a hitch and gave it up.
This is about the third time I had problem with Flash.
Genu should develop gFlash as soon as it is feasible lest I miss CNN News Flashes.

This is a good one for everybody.

There is something for everybody.

Thanks guys from Italy if you are inclined to read this in English.

Biophysics

 Biophysics

This is another word I would like to add to English, if it is not there already in existence, this time in Scientific World.

We had an Engineering Exhibition in the University, I do not know what was being exhibited there but what my gut feeling says is that they are all big events for public consumption and certainly not miniature exhibits of biological nature.

I am pretty sure they did not talk about biophysics and nano-technology.

I have been against the Coal Power Project form its inception.

I have many reasons including Acid Rain and I have stated that Coal Marketing Board will be as bad as the Paddy Marketing Board of yesteryear and its corruption scale will have to be estimated in time to come.

Suffice is to say that most of the Coal would wind up in undesirable places and the scale of corruption will be covered by black soot.

How black soot will effect our children's chest physiology and sporting outcomes are a different kettle of fish.

I have voiced these concerns with scientific data but they are under the carpet of power politics now.

One pertinent question our energy planners not addressed is that these coal power plants are operational 24 hours a day and the interruption of nocturnal terrestrial cooling effect that is necessary for air circulation and water condensation and the night rain pattern that we used enjoy that invariably purified the air of soot, dirt and chemicals is going to be disturbed due to constantly warm air that is not circulating.

The effect of this is going to be phenomenal.

As long as the rain is there even infrequently and with disturbed patterns then there is some reclamation.

But think of the scenario for some reason or the other if the rain fails for a period of two years with drought.

Then we have to be using more and more coal power to generate power, the conditions are conducive for catastrophic events.

The nocturnal cooling effect is negated for a prolonged period of time and the pollution it created is of clinical scale.

We see this pattern in Kandy even without the warming effect discussed above and that is why Kandy is the most polluted city of the country when rain fails the nocturnal cooling draft fails and the pollutants remain for considerable length of time in the lower atmosphere.

We have now cleared our rain forest to less (33% is the critical value) than the sustainable level for natural rain and ecological balance.

We can see the effect of acid rain in less than 5 years after a period of prolonged drought.

I will talk a little about the miniature life of biological nature that can mop up some of the CO2 created by the mega projects like Coal Power Plants.

But more than thousands of other chemicals that are emitted which cannot be made safe and some of them causing cancer (are the projects for future studies) in the air not diluted due to stagnation and failing air circulation.

These are mega events and banning cigarettes has no ameliorating effects once these chemicals are in air and in circulation and when we have to breath them 24 hours a day.

The algae I had been interested in are tiny but common in nature and their contribution can be very significant if properly harnessed but the experiments done on them are very few an far between.

I gather in Germany they are working on them to mop up CO2 emitted by coal power units.

What ever big or small engineering feats it may be whether it is motor car or a rocket no engineering feat can bring about more than 33% efficiency or throughput.

In biological system this is scaled down to less than 3 to 4% and even though the process is very slow by the shear numbers of biological beings and the multiplying cells the process of conversion is made good with eventually.

Problem with engineering feats is that they are not cost effective or efficient.

The rate of conversion is fast and the rate of production of pollutants and poisons are also fast.

This is what I used to argue with my fellow engineering students at the campus many moons ago and also asked why they used heavy metal to built cars (that also not stainless steel) that is subjected to resistance or impedance or inertia of motion and why not aluminum like in air crafts.

They will give some answers and I will give counter arguments while playing bridge (which I learnt from them) and this goes on with new themes added.

Years went by we parted and departed from ivory towers we built and went into real world and domestics. It is sad now I cannot find somebody to talk ten words in analytical English on a scientific topic or discussion.

Even, people like Prof. Carlo Fonseka talking and taking partisan in bizarre politics in their twilight years sadden me most.

I am not saying that he not entitled to it. With his reputation if he makes a mistake his ardent followers are left astray.

What has happened to their scientific inquiry and what has happened to their inbuilt instincts.

We were fed a good and healthy dose of inquiry and free discussion then and now there is paucity of inquiry and query, question or rationalistic views about world around us living and inanimate (Physics).

I dearly remember Prof. Osmond Jayaratne and his investigation into lightening.

There was Prof. Rnjith Ruberu with beautiful exposition of Botany and Biology.

I am not talking about Chintanaya Professors with mathematical talents.

I never talked about biophysics then since all medical stuff including biochemistry was boring for me.

Now that I am somewhat of an independent thinker my argument of biophysics start with a simple relationship (not Newton's equal and opposite reaction).

This is where I have element of disagreement with Buddhist practices, too.

Why only animals are sacred?

Why not other living things, the plants that all animals depend directly and indirectly?

To me plants are sacred too.

Without plant life the world cannot exist.

This is where my thinking is at variance with even Buddhist tenets.

Why there is only a law for animals?

Is it only animals with brains or nervous system that is important to Buddhists?

I have not found a answer for this in Buddhist scriptures.

So I am entitled to my own analysis in a biological sense.

So my simple theoretical aspect of biological relationships especially the biophysics is that there is infinite relationship one to one and one to many in every biological cell or biological system.

There is no distinction of pant life and animal life whatever the form it may be.

They are all life forms in a constant web of actions and reactions.

As far as we know they can be seen with definite evidence only on this planet.

This planet is the only planet we know of and I am not extrapolating to any other heavenly objects with life or without life in this universe.

Ever since the life began in this planet this biological or biophysical relationship continuously existed without a break.

There is either positive or negative relationship but this relationship is such that it was never to destroy or eliminate one or the other.

Continuity of life existed uninterrupted in spite of major physical catastrophes.

If this would not have being the case various new forms of life would not have emerged in evolution.

There was competition but never extermination by living thing by living things.

That is my bona fide or the compelling argument.

All life forms are important including mosquitoes whether they carry infectious agents or not.

We cannot argue that world should be without insects including mosquitoes.

There my argument and tent converge with Buddhism.

All life forms be happy!

It is the physical catastrophes that eliminated species lock stock and barrel but never simple biological competition.

This theoretical aspect had very interesting convergence when I saw my fish dying in the open including the Guppies.

First I thought it was the algal bloom and the lack of oxygen.

It is the very simple and straight forward plausible explanation I can give.

But when this happened again and when I checked with the internal digital temperature it was not strange coincidence that the temperature was above 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

It was the global warming (atmospheric temperature) that killed the fishes, other factors were contributory.

Interestingly high atmospheric temperature encourages mosquito breeding.

Every ton of coal (when it is burnt 24 hours a day) we burn will increase the number of mosquitoes by billions!

Single physical change, the temperature alone can kill animals.

Humans can die of heat stroke and why not fish.

There is a protein called heat shock protein even in bacteria and our cells also have it in a different form and all animals too have this protein to overcome stress.

Heat is a stress.

That system can easily be damaged.

Yes most of the fish who are kept indoors especially the mollies cannot live above 86 degrees.

It was only algal bloom and lack oxygen alone the some fish could come up and breath at the surface or produce young ones before dying but this did not happen.

The biological relationships I propose in theory could not keep pace with the adverse temperature which is partly man made.

There was no time for evolutionary adaptation.

The other relationship is human population expansion.

I believe we have come to the optimum population of 6 billions.

The earth cannot sustain 9 billions.

This extra 3 billion will upset the balance of biophysical relationship that come into equilibrium in the microscopic levels.

The mega level is man and his megalomaniac beahviour.

Earth cannot sustain its biophysical relationships with the rate at human population is expanding and consuming all the limited resources.

Biophysical barrier will break down soon.

Then calamities after calamities would occur.

Gloom, bloom and doom unless we arrest the population expansion and the rate of use of easily available energy resources.

First we have to arrest the population growth.

Second we have to have a food security.

Third we have to prevent the made made causes of global warming.

Even in this country the priority is on energy and its use and its expansion and not conservation.

We got our priorities wrong.

We will loose all the biodiversity and elephants in no time.

We do not have neither the master plan nor the vision.

We do not have philosophers.

We do not have scientist of international caliber.

We only have politicians of various shades and colours but without a distinction.

23rd September (Poya)

ElplcX-2.0-102

Electronic Linux Professional Licentiate in Linux (Elplx-2.0) is a very good distribution sitting in the archives and gathering dust in the shelves like books written in English in our universities (nobody to read them).

I was extremely disappointed that it is relegated to archives.

I downloaded it from Distromania archives.

It is a very good distribution not one actually two in one CD.

It has Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (long term support) as default Live as well as install.

It also has Fedora 9 KDE (I gave it up at core 3) Live and Install which is pretty good.

Both connects readily to the internet and elplcs (German and English).

Its lessons are pretty good for a newbie.
This distribution should wipe its dust and come out of the shelf sooner than late.

I was hesitant to download the 1.4 GB thinking that I will get an old (not live) installable CD and my decision to have a go after 100 was a gutsy attempt (I am getting bit fed up with Linux now) and my gut feeling were culinary satisfied.

There is another worthwhile point there which I gathered, like the CD / DVD of the Linux Bible from Christopher Naegus bundling number of Live and Installable CD versions in a DVD saves lot of time for us Sri-Lankans who has to spend over 24 hours to download one DVD.

Very few will go abroad like me and download a few to bring home on a holiday abroad.

This DVD with two distributions well tested, I recommend without any hesitation and I believe it should come out of the shelf (shelf life of of Linux is changing very fast) sooner than late.

Linux100-ALT-Desktop-update

Longtime ago when I knew only a little about Linux and learning it myself without a Guru I was looking for any Linux distribution I could lay hands on.

Then I had Debian (6 CDs and Redhat 8, DemoLinux and probably Mandriva 9).

There was nobody in my city of Kandy except Anuradha (I only knew him through others and by then he had left Kandy) and when I entered a KIOSK and asked a young guy whether he had Linux CDs (he was doing hardware work (installation and menial jobs) he showed me ALT Linux probably a Redhat derivative then installed in one of the computers.

I asked him a copy for money and he did not have (then a rewritable CD ROMs were rare to find) a CD writer to copy.

I had it at home though.

After months of delay he gave me one.

That did not work because it was written on Microsoft by Nero.

Later I found another clever guy in Colombo who used to go to Singapore to get CDs including Linux.

His copy also I could not mount and I was looking for a copy for a long time and gave it up since by that time I had host of Linux (and books which included Joy of Linux- written the style of Joy of Sex) to play with and learn.

This Colombo guy got it for me from Singapore.

The guy from Kandy went abroad and I gave him good reference and advice that included don't bother to send me an email and do not come back to Sri-Lanka.

He followed my advice to the letter and I have lost track of him.

If he happens to read this Hello, How are you in U.K?
Then next thing I knew about ALT Linux was that there is a Russian distribution.

I download a copy in Singapore and unfortunately that was also Russian,

Then they had 4 GB odd English version only which I could not download in Sri-Lanka.

Hear this, yesterday I downloaded two CDs (now three) from biblio.org and they are pretty good.

Military style clean and organized, KDE 3 with Flash plugging.

Unfortunately it cannot mount or read Ext 4 partitions.

I expected somethings like gcompris and the like but they were not there.

Today i tested the light version live and it is almost similar to the Desktop version and in my definition and criteria it is not at all light and over 650 MiB.

But it is sleeker than the the desktop version.

Anyway I am extremely happy and now onwards I am promoting this in Sri-Lanka

LiveCcdXen.3.2-101

This is another light weight live CD a derivative of Debian.
It is fast to boot and connect to Internet.
It a sleek attractive distribution that come with 64 bit edition too.

Updates on ALT Linux- English Version

With much trouble I finally found a Live CD in English.

Currently I am downloading it and I'll be with you soon.

This is a distribution that Russian Guys and Girls are using in schools.

I want to promote this in Sri-Lanka and in our schools.

I have been in touch with the Russian Webmaster too.

I am not an Old Communist Guard but I love Russia for the leadership it gave some decades ago.

Our old communists (Sri-Lankan politicians) are bum sucking here and impotent I may have to do it alone.

Only way the Russians can catch the old prestige is to master English and develop this distribution with scientific inputs and promote it in the third world.

I know Russian politicians with money are corrupt and I also know average Russian consumes a lot of Vodka but 99% of Russians are nice guys unlike Americans with or without money.

You still have lot responsibility to contribute to this world like protecting us from Hitler and Stalin.

We do not want leaders Like them in the third world emerging and eating the social fabric what we we proud of.

It is nice to see the English edition is coming from United Kingdom.

Well done Guys and Girls.
Desktop 4 is a good one and I will have a separate entry.

This CD iso I found in biblio.org.

Thanks Guys and Girls at biblio.og for keeping an Archive Copy.
I had trouble finding old copies of PCLinux.
Luckily a web Linux friend found me an alternative site.

I am a collector of old versions for posterity!

I saw some instructions coming from PCLinux not to download from biblio.org its packages.

Where else can we find an old copy to download from?

You are doing a great service.

French--NutyX-100

I am currently downloading NuTyX which is in French.
I can read and write little French (not speaking though).
Beauty of French is it has very little vulgar language unlike English.

Anyway the name Nutyx little nasty and vulgar as a name for Linux.

I hope they find an attractive name Enchanter!
I'll be with you soon after the download.
It is painfully slow in this country.
I am afraid this is not a Live CD but only installable.
I have to wait for it's Live CD,
If the French read English. this is for You.
Vous comprendez Vous?

ScentiLinux-Update

I thought i have made an entry for ScentLinux but I haven't.

I have been strict and you did not have a live CD (so you were not eligible) till lately.

May be you have seen my comments here and decided to make one before I pass the century.

It is a very good distribution coming from Switzerland with multi-language capability which is something I admire. Linux is an international phenomenon not an American Dream so language capability is a must.

It is known when one speaks one language (English) one does not use the important half of the brain necessary for creative activity and that is what Microsoft is about. When it introduced 42 languages with X.P it completely forgot about Sinhala (there are 2000 languages at present).

It took ages for them to rectify this.

High marks for language capability and also for blender included in 400 MiB distribution.

What I like most is the xfce with the mouse as a logo (not Mickey Mouse of Walter Disney) that brought me into live CD with PCLinix- SAM the man.

Booting, internet connection and the graphic appearance are great.

It comes from Paldo and I have an entry for Paldo too.

I have forgotten GoBo Linux and it is a big mistake.

GoBO Linux is the only except perhaps YOPER which is looking at Linux in a different point of view and perspective.

Breaking away from hierarchical architecture is difficult.

Now that Fedora is thinking of a change it is high time GoBo picks up the baton and run.

Wake up GoBo

it's new edition is long overdue.

That may be the reason I missed it.

Sorry Guys and Girls.

I am sorting out all the distributions and I will be writing on those missing entries.

I have multiple entries for Nimblex and R.I.P.

In fact you are within the hundred (100).

PureOS-Light-99

Very good light distribution of 366 MiB from Debian base.
Guest and root log in only when logged as root one can install the distribution.

Mouse based xfce x-windows and it is light on your RAM.

Has all the utilities.

I am currently downloading the standard 700 MiB distribution.

The standard one is Gnome and is even better than xfce with blue hue usually used by Debian.

PuppyBrowser-98

It is fitting to arrive at 100 with two Puppy editions.

One I am booted now is Puppy Browser. It is 5.1. and I started with 4.1 and I have a large collection of Puppies now.

The other that I downloaded few minutes ago was PupItUp, the music Puppy.
Both connects to the web instantaneously.
If not setup configures you in seconds.

I am afraid Microsoft pets cannot even bark.

Well done.

You cross the line at 100 with flying colours.

Don't worry Guys / Girls, I think I have made several entries for R.I.P and would add a few more than the 100 already in to remain not out till 2011.

I should now concentrate on Puppy to entertain me when big fat DVDs take a long time to download and test.

Guess, 4 more days of downloading for SuSe. then Mandriva before its metamorphosis.

I have got pass 3.3 yet.
That is artistX which has an erratic boot loader.

Trisquel-mini and Standard-97

Another Spanish Distribution based on Ubuntu with support for English language.

It seems that one my criteria for Live CD is language support and if English are not doing it others in the EU is doing it for us and US.

There are very good Linux distributions coming form Spain, Italy, France and most recently from Poland (Greene).

This is a very good one with all the utilities in 400 MiB.

If you boot in English it goes strait to web site in English.

If you boot in Spanish it goes to the the web in Spanish.

Well done Guys and Girls.
Your distribution is excellent,
Like PCLinux get some variety too.
I am impressed.

Standard edition has more options and Open Office.

Is my Selection of 100 Live CDs Scientific?

Before answering this questions I have to enumerate the limitations I had.

This was not a full time study and I had to to do this amidst lot of work and hardships.

To begin with I would not have done this if I had not gone abroad for a short but intensive stay abroad which included a Medical Examination Review.

When I started looking for Linux resources to take home there was nobody to guide me abroad.

I had to find my own way.

I thought people abroad are more clever and they really had a choice in their selections.

This was not true and that was my first scientific observation.

When I realize they are much stupider than me looking for an alternative operating system.

They thought I was stupid enough to ask such a question and me being not a local (foreign descent for them was a distinction of stupidity and not their own ignorance in scientific knowledge) they felt superior and comfortable selling a proprietary stuff.
The average Sri-Lankan feel very comfortable here but when abroad bend backwards including our M.P.s.

In fact I had to mount a fight to get what I wanted and there was only one Sri-Lankan guy standing beside me.

I had to say it is my money and I know how to spend that in my own way, not by market forces.

The difference was that I paid one third the price an average Guy / Girl pays for the stuff.

Vendors and O.E.M guys were worse off than the ordinary guys and girls.

Not knowing what to buy is a blessing for the vendors and the proprietary guys knows this very well well and brainwash the vendors first.

These guys in turn brainwash the average guy.

So what I state may look out of the blue and completely insane to the average but I believe there are lot of Guys / Girls who are more than average intelligence and their intelligence is always far superior to that of mine.

So I had to download the stuff myself and had few copies of Tiny Linux (including Puppy Linux) in my front shirt pocket to outsmart these gullible vendors.

When I displayed in few seconds what they take at least half an hour to display they had to stand back and watch (if not admiring) what I had in store.

Then I turned to the web browser and typed two words that included my Christian name and Linux what flowed out of the web page was a shock for them and my friend standing by,

My friend had been a computer guy and was building his own web page for publication but he had to have several key strokes to present and sell his name.

Finally we came to our room and I told him few Linux (he was not a Linux Guy anyway having been abroad very well brainwashed) tricks and started downloading distribution after distribution till it was three in the morning.

What it took six (6) months in Ceylon we did it in two days.

1. So my biggest handicap was the download speed and the throughput.

2. I had to shun DVDs to begin with due to this disability.

3. I had my own work to do and restrict my activity after midnight.

4. Testing could not be comprehensive due to time constraints.

5. Basically 386 testing but few of the 64 bits I tested in my laptop for fun.

6. My testing laptop only had a CD and no DVD and that also packed up (mounted a windows CD) not due to testing.

I managed to find a DVD (secondhand for a firsthand price) by that time I have passed 80.

7. Then last but not least I had to format and install new all the distribution s in my box four (4) times due to some of these said to nice and innocent LIVE CDs taking over my hard disk and erased (killer whales I call them and they think that there is only Microsoft there and not even DOS partition) everything (I only lost few Linux Images in the process).

This I took as and opportunity to test few of the distributions that had no Live CDs.

The list can go on.

Only silver lining in the sky was that we had two elections and I was bored to death and knew that this year nothing constructive would happen or emerge except me devoting full time to Linux and killing eavesdropping souls if there were any, especially election engineered.

Mind you I asked my former Dean to give me a desktop computer and leave it in a prominent place so that would be Linux guys can learn from me. He has gone now and a new one has come and because of my little pride left I decided not to offer or volunteer any teaching in Linux to the newcomer.

Instead I got permission to hold a mini workshop for my friends and students.

The theme of the workshop was Linux is not only Ubuntu.

But basically I displayed Ubuntu to the audience except for the last 15 minutes.

There are many more!

I believe some of my students will take the message across.

My other voluntary restrictions were

1. I downloaded only iso images.

2. Did not use torrent.

3. Did not use ZIP files.

4. Dis not use giz files.

5. I used only K3B for writing and only one Linux box (unlike old days windows and Nero) was used for downloading and it had only 76 GiB and only about 15 GiB for downloads. I had to save them in a U.S.B hard disk as well as on DVDs (USB DVD writer). So there were lot of little little inconveniences and I never lost an iso image except during the time the Killer Whaler Distributions went into panic mode (not me).

I do not recommend anybody to download them in Windows and Nero for writing.

High speed writing does cause damage to the isos.

Always should test the Media before booting if not done on Linux box.

Microsoft has found more than one way to kill these images when downloaded in a a Windows box. One lost file can be damaging and unlike Microsoft , the Images have to be 100%.

Nothing less nothing more.

To my surprise some of the commercial bent Linux distributions make sure that their images are slow to download and some with missing files.

This make the would be newbie to go to their site and buy from there ebay.

Unfortunately Mandriva (One of my favorites Mandake), Xandros and Linspire are culprits.

They have their hands tied down by Microsoft and they cannot do anything about these things happening.

They get caught pants down, though.

Mandravia is breaking up since insiders know very well these things are happening under their very nose and closed eyes.

It is a sad story for Mandrake and Mandriva fans.

Do not worry guys there are hundreds of alternatives distributions as I have listed.

Finally for those distros not included, my apologies,
I have used distros that updated from September 2009 to September 2010 but very few from Distromania archives for completeness sake and the variety, flavor and taste.

In future they should have iso in all formats.

Isos should be available in all formats.

Not only Torrent downloads but also HTTP.

ZIP for Linux guys.

Giz.biz for source and compiler guys.

Even Google Chrome has done this mistake.

So Guys and Girls enjoy the list in the Supper of Linux distributions in many flavors.

I have earned a welcome holiday and a vacation.

See you in 2011 with a Very Happy New year.

Please keep in touch if there are knew developments. in the meantime.