Pendrive Linux, Textbooks and Gambling

Even though I spent nearly 9 months investigating (could have been 3 months if our Telecoms provided Express Highway- 3 distributions a day in 3 hours) Live CDs my single interest was carrying a Flash Drive in my pocket (not more than 4-8 GiB) in my retirement and that is the only thing I can afford then with the government expecting me to kick the bucket sooner than late.

How can a pensioner who spent over 40 years serving the average masses could have his or her head above water with cost of living showing an upward spiral?

I do not know.

My old professor in sick bed could not afford the expenses having served over 40 years service.

I used to bring him medicine from abroad and he could not afford a good English detective novel (that is the only thing he wanted me to bring from abroad).

Thank god he is no more suffering but he taught me a few lessons which I carry to this day.

Honesty, integrity and above all outspoken and confident in all what he did.

I hope he is in heaven for the way he changed my outlook, in life and matters of importance and integrity.

The bonus offered to lure the old cronies is no more and many old guys did not know how to get the 2%.

So, Pendrive not a Laptop that I carry in my old age and to my grave and they should be sealed,

for a century for historians to study our way of life if human race could last that long

It was over one year I prepared number of Pendrives with various Linux distributions but unfortunately I cannot use then in the University since none of the computers can be booted from a Pendrive (they are pretty old and some of them we purchased just before the bomb blast at Katunayake.

We have not had an upgrade since then.

We could not afford to network the rooms and the cost was prohibitive.

What we did was get some help from Lion's and bought all the equipment for networking and trained few of the guys in networking and got the work done.

We only paid them over time and that was also stopped abruptly.

This is the way the University functions.

This job would have cost us 2 millions.

I knew the price very well. Just before joining the University I was in private sector and we wired the entire hospital and we had to get some things from Singapore since our IT industry was not even considered existing, then.

All the rooms were networked except my room.

You may wonder Why?
I was fed up.
I did my own network at home (very simple one-climbed the roof and wired myself) and my network is faster than the University.

Even now I cannot download a Linux distribution in the University even at night.

So why bother leave the University if one want to upgrade oneself.

That was what I did I left the University in my youth and I was earning my professor's salary on a weekend locum in London, England.

Unfortunately. things have not changed much for the younger generation.

Now that the Government has legalized betting it is imperative the internet access should be fast and open to everybody.

I saw an Indian betting gentleman was inquiring from Indian Express whether online service is available, in Sri_Lanka.

Come Cricket World Cup, everybody will be betting except watching and enjoying cricket.

My impression is that this is going to be the Worst Cricket World Cup.

You wait and see.

Weather, grounds, umpiring and betting going to be diabolical.

Now that I was off the target a lot but not without any reason.

Instead of me talking about Pendrive Linux please visit the home of Pendrive Linux and see it for yourself.

I have copied part of the page of introduction of their website below.

But my last comment is that if I am the Minister of Education, I will have a distribution of Linux on a Pendrive with all the dictionaries and and texts for then the children do not have to carry a gunny load of old outdated government text books on their back.

Not worth reading with the fast changing and expanding universe of knowledge.

Copied from Pendrive Linux

Easily install your favorite Linux operating system on a flash drive or USB key no larger than your thumb (Thumb Drive). Your Portable Linux operating system can then be taken with you, and run from any computer that can boot from the Pendrive device. Bring your entire operating system, desktop, applications, files, email, personal settings, favorites, games and more with you. It’s your own personal operating system you can carry in your pocket.

The Pendrivelinux focus is to provide simplified portable Linux flash drive installation tutorials and custom USB Linux installers, making is easy for anyone to install, boot, and run their favorite Linux from a flash drive

!

Linux Activator and Linux-100

My approach to Linux 100 was purely academic but I never thought that lot of guys. especially the guys developing Linux would care to listen to my comments with any enthusiasm and would take them with good spirit and add utilities that I tend to like the most.

One of the utilities was PHP / MySQL Admin. since in my age and time I am tired of working on a terminal with poor eyesight and trying to work only on command line.

It is imperative that to encourage newbies that come from Microsoft background to get a hang of (good example is myself- having worked with SPSS and Access especially for my research work and trying to do some work only on terminal was anathema by itself) Linux before delving into commend line and scripts.

This is especially so when admirable utilities with graphic front has or being developed are available for wider use.

When these are incorporated in a distribution that make life easy for lot of users who are not full time administrators but have to get involved in administrative functions, especially database management ( for example in Medical Practice).

I thought only a few Linux guys especially the newbies would be interested in my comments as a way of grumbling and wining especially coming from the windows background like a spoiled brat.

Judging by the Linux outputs recently my reservation was ill founded.

There are lot of guys /girls with a global picture with lot of dynamism.

Another reservation is for us in the countries where download speed is hopelessly inadequate downloading a DVD is a nightmare and lot of little CDs are much better than a FAT DVD distribution with lot of utilities rarely used.

This where PCLinux was a trend setter on its own right.

It is nice to see even Fedora 14 has taken a leaf out of PCLinux history and following its foot paths.

Sabayon is doing it (of course they have been doing it independently).

Salix is introducing Live KDE.

I never thought this will happen in my life time.

There is lot of convergence in spite of the diversity.

That is the beauty of Linux.

I hope I never made a comment to hurt any guy / girl doing hard work for Linux with shear dedication.

All my comments were in good spirit since I am a Linux fanatic by choice and not by descent.

If I had made any comments sharp, they were to tone the commercial trends and subtle insinuation by rival distributions to undermine the advance of Linux.

This is happening everyday.

Beware!

I believe in small is beautiful and small (bet on the strength of the hand but not what others have-re-rival companies) is powerful when chips are down and the stock market is tumbling.

It is nice to see UK stock market is following the footsteps of US stock market even 3 years later (US probably anticipated the crisis 2 years before the event, I guess!)

Linux on a low budget and RAM

I was somewhat obsessed with the variety of live CD distributions on offer that I have overlooked the Linux on a low budget and computers both old and new with little and inadequate RAM.

There are many to list but I will mention a handful of them to conclude my investigation of user friendly tiny vinny distributions that I have come across.

1. Geebox come to my mind that is similar to gamebox or media player with needing 0nly 25 MiBs.

2. My favorite is Puppy which is 90 to 120 MiBs and there are over 30 varieties.
The last of which I downloaded was EliteOS (with a commercial presentation included).
It is pretty good.
In the Puppy 5 series, the lupu is another celebrity.

3. Damn Small Linux (the one I use when I am in trouble booting and partitioning) is a beauty on its own with only 50 MiB.

4. Astrumi (120 MiB) is another good one. I think it is a Polish distribution.
The older version cannot recognize LCD monitors.

New ones are coming by the dozens.

5. 4MLinux-Gamer is only 11 MiB and and the standard is 25 MIB.

6. Voyage is only 45 MiB.

7. xPUD a web browser and media player is 65 MiB.

8. The xin-v1 is only 52MiB

9. SliTas

10. Tiny Me

11. Finnix is another

12. WiFiWay small 285 MiB and Standard 408 (Spanish).

13. Minix is 385 MiB.

14. CRUX is 220 MiBs.

15. NimbleX was less than 200 but now is bit fatty and has doubled itself to 400 MiB.

16. Feather Linux is also another flag bearer (like DSL) of small and beautiful Linux.

Then come to the the partition tools, there are many and one does not need a proprietary software to do partitioning (I have dropped MS partition magic for good but it was the one that saved many hours of sleep (sleepless nights before that) in the early days of Linux experience)

17. gparted

18. partmagic

19. pmagic

20. R.I.P. Linux

20 is a magic number for me. In studies of evolution (my personal work) if there are 20 related species in a locality that 20 would circumvent any adverse climatic change at least temporarily but if that figure is 3 the species is critically endangered.

With the same context in time to come Microsoft is an endangered commercial species. may be catering for other planetary systems in space.

The host of Ubuntu derivatives that come as TURNKEY should be the fitting end to my list.

The list is endless and my favorites are Puppy. DSL and Feather Linux.

They are the ones I have used comfortably and on a regular basis and have used in demonstrations to show my prowess.

Sorry guys and girls that I have only mentioned your names only and they are much better than my GoGo.F.O.F. Linux which is still under construction with my workforce on extended Christmas holidays enjoying other Linux for relaxation.
They are allowed to copy any good idea free of charge or copyrights.

It is an understatement when I say that they are the most useful when one (I am in trouble) is in trouble or on low in RAM to do the tit bits (not bits and bytes).

Bye till new year!

Linux and the RAM

It is not so long ago with 4 MB on board VG and RAM 64 I was able to boot Redhat 8. Mandrihe, Debian, Xandros (no live CDs except Knoppix, I had not yet discovered the Damn Small Linux) with some difficulty SuSe in my desktop.

The Linux is somewhat bloated now.

Without at least 512 RAM one is not able to boot and install Linux now.

This is not a good recipe for average Sri-lankan who cannot afford to eat rice with Pol Sambol now (due to surging RAM on Pol Pol Arrakku and Pol -Coconuts).

If anybody makes a Linux distribution called Pol Sambol Linux. nobody will care to try it even if it is given free of charge (nothing is free in this country liberated except daily headaches).

So RAM is important for a low budget person like me.

Let me talk about the type of RAMs before relating my story.

I started with 100 BUS SDR RAM.

Those days finding two 128 RAMs was extremely difficult especially 100 BUS speed.

I had to wait for years and hacked them out of junk computers imported to Sri-Lanka.

Then came the SDR 133 (BUS) speed RAM and somehow I could find 256 of RAM with an assortment of 128's and 64's.

This was just enough for me to boot all Linux distributions without a hassle.

Then came DDR 1, 2 and 3 and the RAMs were hefty in size.

The other day my daughter's computer with Linux installed was out (the reason is the usual overl0ad and with 20 GB hard disk -over the last one year she had collected junk files (no viruses) and she does not want me to clean the junk files and she does not do it herself and one or two years of IDE hard disk is good throughput, anyway).

I dismantled the hard disk and put a new 80 GB hard disk that I have kept for future use.

I was trying to partition (not with dos now) the new hard disk with PCLinux-2010 and I could not.

Then I tried LXDE and could not.

Finally I had to go back to DSL and later to Linux partmagic to get the new disk prepared.

I did not enjoy all this at late night and gave her the computer with Sata 20 GiB and 80 GiB IDE (dual) with newly installed PClinux 2010-10 and downloaded, few of the softwares she needed for her work.

This was also bought from a junk deal and of course I added 512 graphic card to get it in prime condition.

I asked her whether we buy a new one and she was not that keen on a new one (now that she is very much comfortable with Linux without viruses and dropping her bad Microsoft habits was a welcome change for me).

The new Linux (PCLinux 2010) distributions are cravy on RAM and use the full 256 RAM and after that could not do anything useful including install.

This is why I call KDE the Gorilla Linux with some affection for Gorilla and the KDE (I am a KDE fan now except when I do repair work on old computers),

So if you are using Live CDs have at least 1 GB of RAM if you are thinking of installing the same.

Otherwise it will freeze down the installation process. This is true of Ubuntu 10.10 and SuperOs (DVD) too

SuSe needs minimum of 512 (but ideally 1 GiB) and that is also with CD and not DVD.

SuSe of course can be installed (very good feature) from the live CD without loading into RAM which most of the Linux Live distributions do not include or offer including PCLiniux.

Ultimately I decided to use the computer as a TV box in addition to using it as a web outlet with 1 GB RAM added.

Unlike those days there are plenty of unused second hand SDR RAMs in the market without buyers.

For Linux newbies and savvy this can be a Treasure House or Goldmine.

The Linux is far behind in configuring variety of TV cards now on the market and I hope developers will be looking to this aspect since it is cheaper to use a computer as a TV box instead of an expensive and flashy LCD TVS now in the market.

OH-GOD-Linux-112

If you a Christian newbie this is for you.

Now that I have secured an iso for myself and the full copyright of that iso's name as Go.Go-F.O.F. Linux I am thankful to God and all Linux Developers for providing me with the download facility of AOGOS Linux.

This is a Christian Slackware Linux which is fantastic to learn Linux Tricks.

It is a version that you can carry your Linux Distribution and the Bible in a Pendrive or a DVD.

I was bit unhappy that this was a zip image especially thinking that I have to learn the Bible to perform Linux tricks.

Being a Buddhist I was more than irritated.

Even though it was three (3 AM) in the morning I did not want to go to sleep without burning an iso.

I am safe doing this since all the other Buddhists are fast asleep now.


I went to Softpedia.

Looked at the page description.

This is a good web page and I could find the way to do it / make an iso.

1. Extract the zip file to a folder named AOGOS.

2. Then go to the boot folder and open it.

3. Find the make-iso.sh file.

4. Open a terminal window in Linux

5. Drop the make-iso.sh into the terminal window and hit enter.

6. Find the iso and make a boot CD in K3B.

Presto!
It writes an image in the download folder as a boot.iso.
It gives an option for you to give a name for the iso.

Please do not do that. just for now.

It took ages for me to find the name of the new iso (name is boot.iso) but I knew it was there since my download folder was almost full.

Eventually I booted up the DVD.

It is good as gold.

It is new NFlux box.

right click not writeclique and go to Firefox and then you are at FreeBible web site.

Well done Boys and Girls (Good Christians) who developed this iso.

Only downside is even the Christians in this country are poor in money affairs but not in virtues, they cannot afford a DVD drive and DVD (twice the price of CD).

I hope a CD iso can be made since nFlux is not heavy in its armaments (sorry, for my terminology this is a post military country now, habits are too ingrained and diehard).

Now let me tell you why I did not want you to name the iso file.

I renamed it as the Oh-GoD-Linux and saved it in my archives for any Christian friend of mine who asks for it will have it free if he or she gives me a blank DVD.

Or I can rename it as Do-Do Linux and give it to any friend of mine.

The most interesting part of this CD/DVD is that it has Laminin as a logo (in its desktop image ) that binds all the cells to basement membrane as an anchor) which is almost a replica of the Cross.

Unlike Buddhists who are deeply divided with all the Laminins broken this DVD and the Laminin will bind all the Christians of this country together.

It is a good Christmas Gift for kids.

P.S. (5-11-20100)
Sorry for the glaring mistakes in English which I think were corrected today (5th November).
Who cares for Queen's English in this country especially 3 A.M in the morning, me half awake and trying to burn an iso and run it to see its virtues.
Even the Telecom and the kids who say I am Sri-Lanka would be proud of my English.
When we begin to say "We are Sri-Lankans" but not "I am Sri-Lankan"

God save the Queen and her English!

Clockwork Precision

Clockwork precision is something lacking in this country in workman's skills as well as in time management.

I leaned it from my father and the colleague principal who taught me the basics of it and the value of it which I perfected it in the Western World.

In the Labour Era (not the current one that ended recently) which ended with Mr. Arther Scargill, Mr. Tony Ben, Mr.Ken Livingston and many other names that I forget workers were well organized and down to earth and work to precision in London and suburbs (with the inflow foreign migrants including Eastern Block this tradition of working according to clock and round the clock has slowly and surely disappeared, with conservative's sweeping role of market reforms and greed instead of welfare society eroded to an extent that I decided coming back home was better option than of becoming a Senior Citizen there shivering in cold winter expecting the summer to sooner than late) and maintained the British economy vibrant.

It is no better here for a Senior Citizen except for politicians with clout.
The time and time management was ingrained in the minds of workers then.

Then came the goals, finishing targets and profits that ended up in stock market crisis.

Strangely now Americans are talking about social welfare and they cannot achieve the targets of their choice in time frame before elderly succumbs in ill fate.

What I am writing is not about the time management mentioned above but about the clock itself.

That itself is not the grandfather clock but the tiny digital wrist watch of mine which I used for the the last 16 years.

Before that I must write a few of the stupidest things I have done.

The things I did before going abroad was more ridiculous.

When ever I go abroad the first thing I used to do is to buy the most expensive wrist watch I could afford somewhat like a status symbol (I once lost one of them but was able to claim insurance-that was the only time I had claimed insurance in spite of heavy premiums I paid) and when I leave again buy something bit expensive.

This has become a liability when I come home.

I used to hire a taxi from Kandy to Colombo for Rupees 600 those days and I had several favorite and good drivers to take me all round the country (I was true tourist not the stingy white skinned ones that come here for boys now) and when ever I leave the drivers ask me,

"Sir Mata Oya Wage Orolosuwak Denna Badida; Sir Can you give me a wristwatch like what you have".

One fine day I was in a good mood I gave it to the driver and told him it is expensive and take care.

This is the guy who used to take a famous films star around the country and he never got any presents for the film star guy.

He was happy and I was bit unhappy, to tell you the truth but overcame that attachment in good time.

When I came the next time he was very unhappy. the reason being his lodging was ransacked within a few months and he lost most of the valuables including the wrist watch I gave him.

This incident changed my outlook completely and from then onwards I used to buy the most inexpensive (sometimes children's ones) for daily use and disposed all my other comparatively expensive wrist watches whoever who had some liking for them (mostly relatives).

This change (buying the cheapest and not looking at it) was consolidated when Ms. Chandrika was the President and her clock work activity was in direct competition with that of mine for 11 years.

The story about my clock is very simple.

One of my cheap (not the cheapest -I had brought from abroad) watches stopped working.

I went to a watchmaker in Kandy who was very good and showed him the watch.

He looked at it and said nothing can be done.

I walked in, to buy a new one and he called me back and said he can put a circuit for Rupees 240.

I asked him how long will it last and does it keep the time correct.

Ten years without a problem and it is Korean one he said.

I obliged and it was working for the last 16 years except for the brief period of one month.

I was busy and yesterday I went to another shop to change the battery.

The inexperienced girl there checked the battery and said it is OK but the circuit was faulty.

I could not believe it.

I asked her to check it with a new battery.

Result was the same.

She fiddled with the contact points then called an older lady to help and she fiddled with it some more and put some anti-corrosion oil and said, nothing doing.

After all this I told them for 16 years this worked all right and I paid only rupees 240 and I cannot find my favorite watchmaker and I left saying that my eyesight is weak, otherwise I would have found what was wrong.
All in all I now made my own diagnosis.

It is mechanical and nothing but.

I came home late and I left the watch in the drawer but only after a little fiddling and thinking that I would attend to it sometime later.

So. did I find the time and fiddled with it and it is working now perfectly.

This how Sri-Lanka operates.

Either the workman / work woman was / were not properly trained or they were trained to cheat.

I will not pass the judgment on this issue but only state that honesty has no place in this country.

The man who ran the shop with the honest watchmaker vanished within five years.

The owner raised the rental and I never so him after that not even in the pavement.

This is the status of life in this Serendib.

I am almost in my retirement I want the clock to stop lest I get older than now.

Tea and Cookies

It is time for me talk and Tea and Cookies, now that I am well above my target of 100 Linux derivatives with lot of cookies in them.
This is not about the cookies that are behind one's browser or cookies that Linux developers put out almost everyday but real cookies we love at tea time.

But unfortunately Sri-Lankan cookies are getting expensive by the day with American flour is up roosting on top of the roof and coconuts are hitting the ceiling in prices, I am bound by duty to talk about cookies the kids love.

If not my grandpa role is of no use.

If I talk about baby rusks it is beyond the reach of our average citizen mother and father.

The ordinary cookies are also expensive and their quality is getting poorer. If a packet is above rupees fifty (which is the price of bread now) we Sri-Lankan prefer bread and sambol to American cookies.
The reason for the cookies getting poor in quality is probably due to the companies cutting corners with all the ingredients making cookies going up in price to save expenses and maintaining the profit margins within their target range.

I am now down two or three varieties that maintain the quality but with the price well above what it used to be. If the price keeps going up perhaps I have to give up eating them.

As regard to tea, it actually sky rocketed well before the budget and with milk is up in price we have to cut down our habit of drinking tea.
In the office now it is black tea and I have stopped drinking it by default.

With this all gloom, there is a silver lining in the sky.
Reason for writing this is to highlight that fact.

One of our Sri-Lankan companies just celebrated its 20 years in existence.

It produces an excellent ice tea priced little above Coca Cola.
Coca Cola is the number one company in America and this Sri-Lankan company can beat it if they do a good market adventure and aggressively promote the tea here in Sri-Lanka and abroad in Middle east and then slowly hit the markets in America.

Coca Cola is junk.
Nescafe is bad for your heart.

  Ceylon Tea is healthy and protects our hearts should be the motto.

FeatherLinux-111

Strangely enough this is 111 in my Linux List.

Like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux the Feather Linux is a Beauty.

I always believed the concept "Small is Beautiful".
This is and example in addition to DSL.

I was DSL fan to begin with.

When I was new to Linux and when I first bought the Linux Bible by Christopher Naegus (I have three different editions now, latest one I bought few months ago after a 6 year Gap), and in those boot from Floppy Disk days, there were only a few Live CDs (Knoppix was there but I did not know about Puppy then-Puppy is one of my favorites now with over 25 varieties in my possession) that I copied form one of the CD/DVDs that came with the book.

I booted up live and enjoyed Linux and its utilities.

Just little over 100 MiB can do wonders which 1000 MiBs or GBs cannot.
It is a Knoppix derivative by the way!

One thing they did best was if you are unable to get to the Internet they did it in double quick time (with a router easily but with with Sri-Lankan Telecom modems with some difficulty).

Today I used Dillo and I could not sign up with Google (that was basic test based browser without cookies) and bit fiddly with my keyboard too but I managed to post this in Firefox (that I did not see at first glance).

Abiword is there xPDF is there, Xmms is there and many more.

Pretty fast to boot too.

Today just for testing downloaded 700 MiB of STUX (which STUCK) after half an hour of struggling it could not configure my NV Graphic Card and configured non existent devs and I was scared it will bust my Graphic Card all because it was trying to mount all its compressed files into RAM.

It could not give me a console (or consolation prize) to exit or a killall command.

I had to switch off the computer by getting into a null state (I call it null state) a non existent command in Linux (just wait a while and switch off the computer with the hand on your chest with gospel words in my mouth-but beware the graphic card and RAM-which I burnt those days and also mid night oil learning Linux all by myself with no Guru to help).

Thanks a lot the Guys and Girls at Feather Linux.
Keep up the good work.

It is long time since I booted Feather Linux.
You will have lot of feathers in your caps.
Thanks again!

Biophysics-02 and Biodiversity

Biological live agents has the capacity to duplicate themselves either by sexual or asexual means. In mathematical sense this is easy to comprehend but what goes behind the scene is very complex.

Man is very good at converting and producing by products from animal material and it is emerging there are over 184 pig products in the market.

This is same for cow too but cell division and its organization into about 600 to 1000 cell derivatives has taken billions of years of duplications and organizations. That is where the biophysics operate and man can never duplicate that sequence however much he tries.

Biophysics unlike simple physics and chemistry works at a rigid thermal atmosphere since bio-molecules especially proteins cannot stand high temperature.

High temperature and curing that include tanning make these biological materials commercially useful. Gelatin and fibrin are two of them used for making texture of food attractive but have no food value at all.

This short article highlight some of the mathematical concepts involved in biophysics and not their modifications in the commercial world.

It is binary mathematics of duplication somewhat similar to binary computer mathematics. How 256 characters and 0 and 1 are used for modules in computing, in the biological world about 2500 to 25.000 large biological molecules (not-nanoparticles) give the diversity around biological structure.

It is said that genetic code doubles itself every 3 to 5 million year cycles and this event why it happens we do not know but heralds new species on this planet.

For example the change that occurred from chimpanzee to human occurred when this cycle of duplication occurred last time on this planet.

In about 65 million years ago we so dinosaurs disappeared but the cockroaches who remained would have told us the story in detail if they had computerized brains in their possession.

But we have to surmise what went on and what went wrong then.

This is written in the same conceptual framework what we know is little what we do not is enormous.

What will become of this planet we do not know in way the biodiversity is changing in every nick and corner of this planet from deep sea to mount Everest.

Coming back to my mathematics 2 is the base.

The other base is 10 the log base and log normal.

In biology there is a tendency for log normal behaviour in time scale.

Put these figures together I derive 20..

The figure 20 is my figure for looking at the available species and make some deductions.

For example take a plant (an animal) from a site (area should be defined) and see whether there are 20 similar pants not interbreeding (definition of species difference) at the same site.

If we see a site with that number it is a biological hotspot.

I wonder whether we have any to fit this description or anybody has done this calculation before. (we can argue about the veracity of the number 20 till the cows come home with a pipe and arm chair critics) in an observational manner but the point I am arriving at is that we look at a whole country and say (for example Sri-Lanka) we a re bio-rich is a total misconception.

I have arrive at a figure by simple observation of my neighbourhood for every three plants I see in my garden we have lost another 17 in the last 100 years or so.

It is said that the anaconda (Ana conda is a Sri-Lankan name) type of snake had been sited in Sri-lanka by foreign invaders about 200 years ago.

Where are they now?

The corollary to my argument is that if we can collect 20 similar species in an environment that environment is conducive for biodiversity.

I can give two examples of my childhood.

We could have identified at least 10 varieties of tortoises and 100 varieties of butterflies less than 50 years ago.

Bizarre use of insecticides in agriculture and DDT in particular (thanks to WHO - Sinhalen who) by ill conceived pundits in the health sector has done irrevocable damage to our biodiversity.

Final nail will come when the two Coal Power plants are operational.

Problem in my argument is that there are no true scientist left in this country to take my argument forward with observational data in spite of 40 years of free education in mother tongue.

We have not produced a single biological scientist that we can say were nominated for Nobel Prize in 40 years of free education,.leave alone winning it.

By producing private universities this cannot be remedied since they are profit oriented.

We lack Think Tanks in power and also in opposition..

Think tanks are there when they are in opposition!

We have thin tanks how to get to power and remain there for ever.

We need to produce outstanding thinkers.

We are sadly lacking in that endeavour.!

WiFiWay-2-01-110

Very beautiful KDE 3.5 Linux distribution that comes from Spain is cute, functional and fast boot up.
I am not sure it has English version but with or without English it an amazing Little distribution.
The server connection broke at least 10 times and i had to download many a times without a success but the wait and my perseverance was worth the trouble.

I hope English version should come sooner than late.
Good one!.
Thanks guys and girls at WiFIWay.

ZeveonOS-Neptune-Final-109

21-102010

New generation new concept with science students (with Eclipse) in mind is a USB stick installed and persistent Linux distribution to carry as a Pendrive.
 ZevenOS

Web site: zevenos.com
Origin: Germany
Category: Desktop
Desktop environment: Xfce
Architecture: x86
Based on: Xubuntu
Wikipedia:
Media: Live DVD
The last version | Released: 6 | January 1, 2015
Zobacz po polsku Zobacz po polsku: ZevenOS

ZevenOS – an Ubuntu based Linux distribution with BeOS like user interface, and targeted to old computers.

ZevenOS includes a large set of popular open-source applications for different task and full support for popular multimedia formats. It also includes a home made tool for managing the system, called MAGI.
The system uses a customized Xfce desktop environment, which reminds the BeOS system’s desktop.

ZevenOS is available as a 32 bit iso image only.
The system developer is Leszek Lesner.

It has brand new KDE and very attractive front face. ZevenOS and Neptune OS are KDE based.

 

Zeven OS is defunct but a has given way to Neptune OS.

This is something we should give Sri-Lankan students who carry a lorry load of books in their back. It has multimedia capability and In proper hand carry all the science books in e-format.

Even though, I talk much about Linux, Pendrive Linux is my future and in retirement.
I do not carry much to my grave apart from few Flash drives with some information for grave diggers to identify me.
I could not get it to install in the hard rive but that is a miner matter.
It comes from Germany with English as a second language.
I hope this will spawn a new wave of Pendrive Linux.
That is my ultimate dream.
In 10 years time I may not be able to buy a computer from the paltry subsistence I will have.
I hope by then the Flash drive will have some music capability with Radio stations live too with ear phones attached since I may need hearing aids too if I live that long.