LinuxExtras-JollyCloudOS-09

Cloud computing and Os had been one of my interests for some time.
To begin with I started with Dropbox which is a nice way to share ones data with friends especially those who are away and abroad.
I use it to deposit Linux images in the shared folder.
Similarly friends from abroad can have their folders shared with me.
Idea was to promote Linux.
But cloud computing is of a different order altogether.
When one is on travel and does not have a netbook or laptop (which is an added burden when on the move) Cloud Os come to your service.
One has to carry the OS in a CD or Pendrive (I have not tried this with a Pendrive yet).
The Cloud OS (Joli OS and Jolly Cloud are its other names) let you do this.

I downloaded version 1.0 and for one reason or the other I could not run it even though I registered with their web site.

Then I downloaded Joli Os version 1.1 (Live CD) and booted it up but I could not get the link with the Cloud Service, even though I tried to register with them.
Disappointed I gave up.
Today I downloaded version 1.2 from Linux tracker. It was a quick download with many seeders all over the world.
Booted it up and (I could not boot up with my previous email) I registered with another email address after some considerable delay I was up an running and was in link with world wide web.
There were lot of applications but I could not find the Dropbox.
So after some fiddling (It lets you add other cloud applications) I added dropbox and could sign up with Dropbox and open my folders.

These two applications One a Live OS on a CD, the other Dropbox registration make you travel light and even if you forget your laptop instantly get in touch with the outside world (with four current data in the cloud) if the friend you stay with let you boot your Joli OS 1.2.
Joli OS let you the guest booting by request of the users.
I have no hesitiation of using these two for my work and recommend anybody to try it.
The learning curve is the only limitation.

Cricket and the Change of Face

Cricket is getting a big face lift.
I do not agree with the behavior of some fans in the Asian subcontinent even the events of off the field actions are brushed off as minor incidents.

Severe deterrent actions are necessary on the filed and outside the field what ever the outcome of a match.

Host country need not have to win by hook or crook.

Let the players inspire and umpires in the middle take the center stage not arm chair pundits.

In our country in the past during elections violence is brushed off as minor incidents and it metamorphosed to ethnic violence and after the war ceased nobody except the parties and candidates are interested. Last election, like in the west 42% did not turn up and it will be 50% this time around by fixing the elections at a time of Cricket World Cup and coming new year festive season.

But we are sure with voter apathy malpractices will be rampant on the day of the actual voting with opposition disorganized as it is now.

In a democracy it is the opposition that matters.

Similarly what ever the fan's behaviour that is not acceptable in human interactions should be dealt with with severe punishment like not hosting an international events in that country for 10 years or so.

We lost Bob Woolmer last time.

There was antecedent Pakistani match fixing incidents.

And similar pressure can be brought when crunch games are played.

At least to save goodwill and ambassadorial work done by Imran Khan and his perseverance for neutral umpires, unlike other games, cricket has got a tremendous face lift.

It is true and I see even the not usually interested females are taking some interest in Sri-Lanka now.

If they are to come and watch games there should be absolutely no violence on or off the field.

We must maintain that.

In election violence also females take a step back and withdraw.

It is the host government's responsibility to take all deterrent actions.

In Sri-Lanka it is the ticket sale and there is a black market issue here.

It is the government's role to take action and minimize the inconvenience to the fans who actually do come to the ground and put their money in the coffers of the administration.

Otherwise blacklist and do not hold events in that country.

Sports should be taken out of politics and religious fanaticism, if we are to make them viable and active engagements both the actors and the spectators in film parlance.

We do not burn down film halls and that principle applies to cricket too and crowd control must be proactive and not after the event.

Most of the umpiring decisions and revisions are making an acceptable change to the game.

Umpires also given some credibility and it was at stake when reviews were not allowed.

It is the players who make the requests at critical junctures and reviews should be balanced and credible.

By doing that we make less importance to the daily papers who report them 24 hours late.

Television commentators are also adding some spice to the game and all these are good for the future of the game.

Now it is the time for the players to add some spice and the lift the game up.

Players should have the courage to walk out if they feel they genuinely had a touch or believe they grassed the ball instead of waiting for the reviewers to make the decision.
It will help the TV umpires and cut down the delay in making the decisions.

Coming back to actions in the field, the birthday boys heroics in New Zealand against Pakistan match make me to revise my decisions of not supporting a team.

After the earth quake damage to South Island and Christchurch, it was something for the New Zealanders to take note and smile.

It may be a little boost to ones who lost their loved ones and property and if they can take the Trophy home, now that they are on top of the table, it will really rejuvenate the rebuild efforts for those who lost almost everything.

With Daniel Vittory in the injury list it may be a treat and farewell for him with his retirement from one day cricket announced.

On the field they are the best guys and good luck with your game with Australia.
Weather did not allow an outcome at Premadasa and I hope you will end their victory streak, like what you generally do in rugger field.

Linux Extras-Debian-6.0-08

In between World Cup Cricket, my work and students examinations, I found time to install Debian 6.0 KDE CD version, in one of my old IBM computer with 512 RAM.
Unlike in the good old days new Linux distributions especially the KDE craves on RAM do not ever think of trying it less than 512 RAM and ideally 1 GiB is necessary now.
This computer I fiddled with it to add some muscle (but could not find a SCSI hard disk) and it did not boot up (20 GiB SCSI ans 20 IDE). I installed latest PCLinux KDE and it took ages to install.
This the one that gives me headache in hard disk detection. One distribution does not recognize the nomenclature (a becomes b and b becomes a scenario) of the other distribution and only Debian figure out the architecture and the type of disks.
Sure enough it did a good job of recognizing two other distributions and partition table was edited correctly since Debian was the one I used last.

In distrowatch forum there was so much animosity towards this distribution which follow Free Software principles and for that principle I call it the God Father of Linux (I did not get involved in the flame war).
I now have a special liking for it since for the first time a Sinhala Linux version has come in to being (it can be installed in Sinhala Graphic format) and that is Debian 6.

I went through Sinhala graphic installer and it selected Sri-Lanka as the location, correctly. I stopped at that point and installed it in English (My Sinhala computer vocabulary is next to nothing) and I could not Sri-Lanka as a location.
Now Sri-Lanka is reserved for Sinhala only.
This I found strange since we have Tamils and Muslims in this country and many of them do not work in Sinhala.
In defense of the Tamils Linux can be installed in Tamil but then they cannot select Sri-Lanka as a the location.
I decided to use Singapore as the location since Singapore uses English as their language operation.
I think Debian should allow Tamils and English installers the ability to select the location as Colombo.
This can be corrected after installation but this I found annoying to say the least.

It installs the basic (kernel) system and then let you select the installation type that include laptop and desktop.
Unlike PCLinux installation is fast and user and root passwords are selected in the first time round.

I can understand why many were against its installation mode.
It's partition tool is not in graphic mode and only in writing mode (old habits die hard).
The instructions are clearly written for any sane person to follow.
1.Create a partition.
2.Format a partition.
3. Mount a partition with or without boot flag and the job is done.
The procedure has to be repeated for root, home, var and user partition.
There is nothing more to it.
Another point of importance is that it always assume that you are connected to the internet.
Missing packges can be installed with apt get and there are over 60, 000 to select.
Mind you if you do not understand partitioning it does it automatically for you.
Why bother1

Its GRUB automatically select what is to boot and the boot splash is very simple and not graphic intensive.
Because it does things in an organized and simple manner once configured it boots and runs program fast unlike other KDE counterparts, say SuSe.

It has no K3B (one of my favorite CD/ DVD writing tool), or openoffice (mind you there is a limit to what can be put in a CD with 700 MiB).

All these are simple routines to me which I learned 12 years ago without any Guru but by trial and error.
If you want to learn nuts and bolts of Linux one has to use learn Debian and in its write mode.
Mind you best graphic partition tool is gParted and it is Debian and it is very reliable and even better than that of Knoppix or Puppy.
Whatever criticism Debian will outlast all its other distributions since its resource base is over 60,000 and may grow up to 100,000.
That is why it had 4o odd CDs and now 8 to 10 DVDs.
One DVD will do the work for you and they are available in 32 and 64 bits.
I am currently downloading the first DVD and it will take two sold Sri-Lankan days for it and I will be back with you soon.

Cricket taking Center Stage

In spite of bad weather and poorly prepared wickets, cricket is taking center stage over the weekend and last few days.
Ireland's win over England was best that could have happened to cricket.
If a tiny Island like Sri-Lanka can produce tiny but skillful players it was an irony that Ireland could not do that until now.
Now they have proved beyond doubt if it is taken to heart it also can produce players of high quality and big hitters at that.
Now England should lure them to play cricket and produce more players.
They do not have to go down to play test cricket in Australia.
Let New Zealand take the place of England and in any case they have healthy rivalry in cricket and rugger.
Now the time to build a healthy rivalry across the Irish sea and promote cricket there.
England loss was a big win for cricket since we cannot get French to play cricket for another century.
Then come the South Africa's loss to England. They were writing off England after loss to Ireland and had a vague feeling that with their experience in Australia, Strauss will pull a rabbit out the hat.
Sure they did that and they have five points and leading the table.
Now onwards they have to play cricket with ferocious intensity and it is good for cricket and the cricket fans.
With hind sight, I feel my decision not to be partisan and be neutral ( if at all it is possible) was a good decision and I can enjoy watching cricket which was fast getting commercialized and sadly politicized in this country.
Instead of players CEOs in UK and India are making major decisions spoiling it in the long run and it is time to revisit the future strategies.

SuSe-Community and Making an Image for the Archive

 SuSe-Community and Making an Image for the Archive

Edited on the 14th, March, 2011

I am not sure whether the comments I have made below is correct, since I have found the same problem with Debian 6. DVD. 

Unable to copy the DVD image. It is 4.3 GB (same size as SuSe) and Linux unable deal with a file size above 4 GB in one file and has to be broken into two which can be done only with torrent.

PCLinuxfullMonty has restricted itself to 4 GB and Gentoo with 4.4 GB has probably divided the file into two (32 bit and 64 bits ) and by doing that has accommodated above 4 GB.

I hope since the SuSe DVD has Gnome KDE, LXDE and Xfce by dropping one of the latter two SuSe should be able to reduce the DVD to 4GB in future so that image can be saved for posterity.

I hope somebody enlighten me on this issue.

SuSe community has the peculiar habit which they have acquired form Novel and Microsoft annoys me a lot, to say the least.
They let you download (which takes more than 36 hours or more from K-torrent in Sri-Lanka) a single copy of the image and and won't let you copy the image as an archive. In the final seconds of the copying it has a script to abort copying which only commercial companies can use as a ploy to protect the copyright (which I am in total support).
This is not a Linux Tradition even if they are commercially operational.
In fact violates the principles of FOSS and true spirit of open software and OS systems.
When it happened for first time I deleted the image and kept the DVD for installation. If I want I can copy the DVD but always have two copies one for use other one for safe keeping.
Mind you DVD cannot be kept indefinitely and if the image is copied to a external hard drive, a CD/DVD can be written if the DVD in use is damaged.
For example for an emergency but not for re-sale. I am not interested in copying and selling it to a third party.
My intentions are are academic and only for archival and retrieval purposes..

Unfortunately most of the old distributions are not in any archives or servers. The servers and linuxtracker included have the habit of deleting not used (frequently) distributions from the sever to accommodate space in the server for new distributions.

They write automatic script to do this house cleaning job without archiving them.

The point I am raising is relevant now. Currently LinuxTracker is down but gradually adding the images to it's servers and it cannot retrieve even the most recently used distributions quickly enough to get the system running in double quick time and it is a headache and lot of heart burns for many system administrators.

There should be a way of transferring the infrequently used into a system category away from the main stream and thereafter after a lapse of a period if still not used can be transferred to an archival medium. All these cost time and money.

I was once downloading BigDaddy (my favorite PCLinux's original successful version) from a server. If I remember right it was softpedia. Half way through my download (which takes ages from Sri-Lanka) it was no longer available and I was heart broken. I could not finish the downloading.

I made a humble request at PCLinux forum and one nice gentleman let me directed to a server and I quickly downloaded it for archiving. It is live and cannot be installed but I use it for demonstrating the humble beginning of very successful distribution.

Similar incident happened with Pendrive Linux. These was a defect (I got it downloaded from a Microsoft machine with Nero) in the image.

This was the first time I got a bootable Linux Image in a Pendrive. Now even Pendrive site does not have a copy of the Original Image and I cannot get it from distromania or from Linuxtracker.

It is like collecting old stamps and coins.

It has become a hobby and a pastime for me keeping the archives.

Coming from an academic (not commercial) background, simple thing like these matter a lot in the long run.

Commercial investors when they want to introduce a new system they begin by not supporting and then destroying the old system by default making the user vulnerable. Microsoft does this very well.

I cannot understand why Linux does this and good example is SuSe who has got under the fold of commercial CEOs.

Coming back to my story what I did was to make a copy of the image (this is something I used to do for old Distributions without an image but only a CD/ DVD for archiving) with K3B and saved it instead of deleting after the image is written to the CD/DVD.

When I tried and used the saved image for writing to a DVD it gives an annoying warning that the Image " file size is different from the declared volume".

Linux (K3B) checks the file size before writing and gives a warning before it writes to prevent one from copying a bad image and wasting a CD or DVD.

This warning or the deterrent cannot be true since the file image property goes as 4 GB.

These are some of the nuances of SuSe and Mandriva which are driving Linux fans or uses away from them. I cannot simply agree with this ploy and that is why I am moving away from Oracle, SuSe and Mandriva. A CEO with commercial interest makes these decisions and my concern is why can't they openly say DO NOT COPY but use these underhand methods.

Linux Extras-Sabayon -5.5

The new editions of Sabayon 5.5 are pretty good.
Their speciality latest XMBC is good too.
For the first time I was able to get XMBC running in my old IBM computer with inbuilt graphic card meager 1 GiB RAM without freezing of mouse or the videos.

It is the best available Media and Graphic centre.
The audio and graphic can be installed separately.
Live (for testing) and installation DVD.
It has no blender but lack of that is adequately compensated by graphic capabilities.
If I was not hooked to PCLinux and the PCLinuxfullMonty, this is the distribution that I will be having in my box in addition to other Linux distributions.
This time I am going to install (I have more than 150 distributions collected over 18 month period and going for the best 10 for me is an extremely difficult preposition) it and use it for graphic and audio collection.
Unlike PCLinux, Sabayon has 32 and 64 bit versions and I am happy that it follows the PCLinux tradition of having multiple distributions (all of which are light weight except fullMonty).
I have no hesitation of recommending it provided you have latest graphic cards and adequate RAM.
All above applies to CDs and DVD version of Gnome.
I was unable to test the KDE version which uses touchpad screen.
I do not have a monitor with that facility and if you have one this is the Linux distribution to try.
Good work and thanks to the guys and Girls at Sabayon.
The dream that we all believe.

Cricket and Sri-Lankan Weather

One of my predictions for the Cricket World Cup is coming good.

That prediction is weather is going to be a spoiler.

Another prediction is that the ground preparation is going to be a key factor.

What ever the inspections done prior the commencement of the tournament and whatever reports may suggest and what ever the officials in charge may say we have prepared poor wickets in Colombo.

It is obvious even Kumar and Mahela are finding difficult to bat in home conditions in Colombo.

Because of their shear skills, cricketing knowledge and determination we are surviving the hiccups.

Please do not blame the players.

They are a good lot and determined it is our politicians and officials who are killing the game.

These fellows who have no understanding of the game and the ground situation are waiting for the kickbacks to pocket which the players deserve and should get.

It is obvious that because of the political will more money was channeled to Hambantota and less money was spent on Colombo and Kandy.

These grandiose dreams of politicians are killing the game and in the long run real cricket lover's dreams and players welfare.

Coming back to weather playing Day and Night Cricket in Sri-Lanka was an extremely bad decision going by the prevailing weather conditions.

The team playing second is always at a distinct disadvantage and the history speaks itself.

I cannot agree with the argument more crowd will come for the Day and Night game (it may not be true for poorly attended games, too. Nobody will come for those games in any case).

In any case tickets are sold well in advance and a real cricket lovers have to buy tickets in the black market.

The Day and Night games are for the arm chair pundits who engage in their daily activities and return home bit early and after shower sit in front of the TV.

They are not the real cricket fans.

Poor people cannot come anyway. Tickets are priced to discourage them. Even if they come there is no way to return home after the day and night game. There isn't a proper public bus service at night in the entire country.

Politicking's should know it better.
We see them prior to elections and never see them till the next round comes.
They go to Colombo or to the nearest city and make money for them and their kith and kin.
That is the name of the game and cricket and other games included.

The sports administration has been worse than political administration over the past 15 years and especially during the last decade.

Please do not blame sportsmen and sportswomen for their poor performance.
The Common Wealth games were the best example.

We get a kick out of demoralizing the players but never the politicians who have got into sports!

I have written about weather pattern, global warming and how weather men keep bogus records (one month record is done in 2 to 3 days-cooked up records) elsewhere and the reader can refer them at leisure.

Many of them do not know how to make a weather balloon and if they have relevant data, they do not know how to report or interpret them.

Most of the seniors in administration are arts graduates who have done geography (without science subjects or background) and have a cushy job in Colombo without the will to run the affairs.

If the Cricket Administration got reports from them (Weather Men) and decided (I do not think-there aren't any brainy ones there but crooks in Cricket Administration) and decided the time and venues, they are in for run.

The fact of the matter is with global warming, the weather pattern has drastically changed over time. Unless we keep accurate record for the next decade or so we won't be able to predict the trends.

The blunder is we gave not kept accurate records for the last two to three decades

I will illustrate few points that are my personal observation in Kandy.

1. Kandy weather is like Kurunahgla (when I was a kid we briefly stayed near Kurunagala) now.

2. Kurunegala must be like Pollonnaruwa now.

3. Inter monsoon rain that used to come in 10-14 day interval on a regular basis does not come.

4. When it comes the amount of precipitation is 3 to 4 times and the volume has increased.

5. That is why we have earth slips in the hill country.

6. Temperature hits 90 to 95 Fahrenheits in between rains.

7. Rain only brings cooling to Kandy.

8. If I do not water plants for three days, they whittle away.

9. Plants that never able to germinate in Kandy are germinating.

10. Mosquito menace is no different to Colombo.

11. Monsoon rain comes at odd times of the day and there is a mixture of Monsoon and inter-monsoon rain.

12. The precipitation that comes around full moon day consistently fails

The list can go on.
All valid indicators of all environmental changes are obviously present and evident.
What we do is go and built two mega Coal Power Plants to enhance the destruction.
In any case poor man in the villages will not be able to afford the electricity bill.
What is worse will be he won't able to grow food for subsistence leave alone for commercial purposes.
All the evidence points to food scarcity, famine and catastrophe like in 1973 (oil crisis) even without oil crisis.
Nobody is ready for the crisis but Mega Mela and mega cricket fixtures will temporarily take the minds away from the realities and the hardships of the average citizen.

There is no way one can predict weather without accurate data.
Do not believe our weather men. They are like any other government servants, stooge to politicians and survive.
Only thing they never become a laughing lot like our politicians in sports.

What I am raising here is there is no place for Day and Night game in this Island unless we are able to predict the weather accurately in advance.

It is a disservice to foreign team visiting us.
We did that to West Indies.
Now we are doing it to Australians and out team.

There is a strong case against Day and Night Cricket in Sri-Lanka.
The amount of electricity wasted due power usage at the grounds and the uncomfortable temperature the players and the spectators experience are other minor points.
These Mega events are good for our and Indian celluloid stars and not for a average cricket fan or lover.

Vising teams take a note of what I say before agreeing on the time and schedules in future.

Cricket is your life and you are paid for that.
Do not say yes to our administrators without studying the pros and cons.

Thousand (1000) hits, LinuxTracker and Linux Action

Thousand (1000) hits in less than 3 months at Wordpress and 3 thousand (3000) hits at Google after 2 years was not the outcome I was expecting for Linux and never looked at the statistics till recently.
It was not a popularity contest any way.

 
Promoting something not taken roots in the market is not easy.
Intention was to promote even less fashionable Linux Distributions other than the top 10 to 20 distributions that are used.

 
The catch phrase was "Linux is not only Ubuntu".
 

Idea was to hit 100 (a century in cricketing terms and beat Sanath in his game and age and remain not out) and remain not out.
 

I am not out and would like to remain so unlike Sanath.

100 was achieved in less than six months in spite of the slow download speed in Sri-Lanka and mainly CDs and very few DVDs.

Having achieved the milestone I continued (lot of sleepless nights) and it passed 150 and may be 200 now and I lost count of the number.

Idea was not to achieve number milestone but to bring out less popular Linux Distributions into limelight.

It seems to be working now after I migrated to Wordpress.

Having 24 hits for Knoppix was a major milestone.

Good that I mix the Linux writing (lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes) with other topics and that also has contributed to the increase in the number of hits.

People who browse other topics are free to browse what is available on Linux

The categorization feature and tags are an excellent to way to attract traffic.

In the meantime the download speed in Sri-Lanka went down to 5 to 10 KB per second with the introduction of PEOTV and I had to go to K-Torrent and Linuxtracker.

Last weekend the LinuxTracker was out of action and that is the only weekend I did not have a distribution to test.

I hope LinuxTracker will bounce back with new vigour and vitality.

I will be totally handicapped.

Because of the Cricket World Cup, a minor disruption to my download habit is not unwelcome change.
I can take a respite and watch cricket.
I hope it is not a long respite with Mageia, Mandriva and Suse are putting their acts together and there will be lot to download and test.

In the meantime you are free to visit parafox and asokaplus at Wordpress (categorized topics with Linux given some prominence).
Keep blogging and browsing.
It is the only way to popularize excellent but less popular Linux distributions.

Thank you for hitting thousand hits.

My intention was only 100 and one.

Lack of Standards

It is sad to hear one pilots seriously hurt and other lost his life in mid air.

It was a coincidence for me to introduce 5 S principles to my students, I use as an example pilots training and the need for precision in taking off and landing skills that have to be 100% in every outing, come what weather it may be.

Any drill that involves precision needs to be perfect and 5S applies that principle.
Doing the right thing every time right.

I also use a standard statement "some time back our air force won the Quality Award and within six months lost most of air crafts".

The emphasis there is, it is not the winning of an Award that matters but on the ability to sustain (5th of the 5S others are Sort, Set, Shine and Standard regimented procedure) and maintain the standard necessary for operational needs.

The same principles applies to cricket too.

We did not sustain the efforts due to politics and corruption in Sri-Lankan Cricket Office, after 1996 win.

I am a cricket fanatic and this time round decided to be a neutral and enjoy cricket without any bias to the country of origin of the cricketers.

My 5S standard applies to all good cricket and cricketers including umpiring. We do not want some gear under the glove to enhance performance that was used in the final by some Australians, in the Final in 2007.

We do not want drugs to enhance performance like in Olympics and Football.

On the field it is the umpires who should set the standard but many fail in that job and hide behind the phrase human error.

In any good sport human error must be minimal and should be none at all if possible.

Our own Malinga's hat trick, West Indian Rooch's hat trick, Andrew Strauss 150 and O'Brien's fastest ( I missed it unfortunately) century, 100 in 50 balls and Afridis 5 wickets hauls get my untainted admiration and weightage, unlike our ITN pundits and their prevarication and vilification's.

What I want to highlight is none of those.

I have estimated that many people including young children die on the road daily and it is more than the lives lost in a single tsunami that comes once in 50 to 100 years.

We have no road standards.

I put the blame on the teachers, police, parents and ultimately the government running these public institutions culpable.

We do not want the excuse "if our pilots cannot achieve it on mid air after the war we cannot achieve on the roads", excuse.

Now there is election campaigning who are the people who are violating these rules, election rules included and the road traffic rules.

It is an absolute disgrace to see convoys of drunk and vociferous supporters.

Do not think our voters are stupid.

They may have made mistakes in the past but when the crunch time comes if there is no violation of voter right, they know how to exercise their franchise.

It is politicians and their stooges who break these rules.

It is often the people in power who violates and overuse their power.

By the end of the campaign we may have lost few more of lives and more injuries and the ruling party is culpable for not maintaining the law and order.

There is no war now and there cannot be any lame excuses too.

We are fed up of not having simple standards leave alone 5S.

This is a country without traffic and road standards but lot of rhetoric and I am made to understand there is a vehicle for every 6 to 7 persons.

We have too many vehicles and painfully slow flow of vehicles on public roads.
We will never achieve those mega goals if we ignore the simple rules on the road.
Safety first is the golden rule.

Mageia-01-Alpha

Mageia Team has kept its promise and the 32 bit and 64 bit alpha version is out. It took 37 hours of downloading of 1.9 GiB with 2 seeders and I am installing the 64 bit currently.

It is sleek and has Gnome and KDE as base desktops. Custom option is active and it has LXDE and Openbox there which is welcome.

I prefer the light weight window mangers to get the speed up at boot time and run time.

It looks like it is going to install in less than 20 minutes with KDE only but 30 minutes for all Window managers.
It has done up the Mandriva a face lift in its graphic installation but features are almost similar.

I am making a running commentary and post installation configuration is fast but unable to detect hardware at boot timeguration.

Boot loader took some time and has similarity to PCLinux and it detected the other distributions in my system. Unlike PCLinux it lets you add more users but there are no language options. I was bit particular since Sinhala Linux is out and Debian is the only distribution globally supporting this facility.

It has no French which was unusual since Mandrake is based in France.

It looks as it is finding difficult to configure my USB keyboard and i will be back with you after testing after PS/2 keyboard.
I am right it could not detect the USB Keyboard but found Knoppix in a reiserfs partition which neither SuSe nor PClinux boot simce there is confusion of SATA and IDE detection and naming.
It uses uDev instead of HAL which is a trend nowadays.
Well it has problem with configuring at boot time and it is not customer ready and still a tool for testing.
Thanks Guy and Girls for trying hard.
Please include Sinhala and French too.

Linux-100-Extras-Knoppix-6.4-Update

In spite of work, Cricket World Cup, I found time to test Knoppix 6.4 CD/DVD and both are equally good and can be installed into the hard disk.

In the past after various tricks I managed to install Knoppix in a FAT partition of my laptop.

Since I have number of distributions in all my computers getting any new distribution installed is a bit of a hassle.No wonder the developers cannot keep pace with my finicky behaviour.

This is equally true when I have two hard disks.
I am yet to find a distribution except perhaps Debian which can detect multiple distributions in the same computer and the correct boot record.
Each distribution has its own way to figure out and configure the boot record. Distribution counts hard disks a and b , c for hard disks and in one distribution a become b and b become a and another a is a and b is b at boot time.

This is confusing for me and I have to figure out how to sort it and edit boot message. I do not like this happening.

If you have no distribution in your hard disk the installation is straight forward but my installation are very complicated since I have to figure out how the distribution configure thing and sometime try trial an error method.

I never give up but after many trials I get the distributions to behave in the way I want them to be.

New Knoppix was no different I had several failures but finally I got it in my hard disk cohabiting with various other distributions this time in a native Linux partition not FAT.

It is derivative of Debian squeeze and is pretty good.

Who says Debain is bad.

It has no administrative constrains, like Puppy can do anything without root permission sometimes with superuser status. Please do not get angry with me these are Linux vocabulary.

So be careful (it gives a brief warning every time it does something drastic).

It needs a swap partition and at least one reiserfs partition (big enough to accommodate the wast resources it has). Small partition for CD but a very big one for the DVD.
It need at least 1 GiB swap in the first partition, but I gave 2 instead.
It's partition tool Gparted sometime find it difficult to partition the hard disk.

So I booted Debian's Gparted and did the changes and booted Knoppix.

Its actions are almost automatic and instantaneous and moment you press ENTER it gets down to work so if you have data in your hard disk please take special care.

It's compiz is excellent and I will install it in every one of my computers when they are undergoing major changes. I went down for a cup of tea and when I returned the monitor was going berserk with scintillating graphic and thought the graphic card has gone. Not so its graphics are pretty good.

It has lot of games too.

Pingus is excellent. I kept playing it while it was being installed which one can never can do when windows are being installed.

Who says one day cricket is dull?

We had a fascinating game of cricket today.

The match was between cricketing fanatic India and the game's originator England.

It was nice to see England captain Strauss take man of the match award beating, the legend of India, Sachin Tandukar.

There is is no match for the young blood of England and it was no fun for Sachin and his weary legs.

I suppose when time comes one has to retire and there were guys in this side of the Palk Straight who wanted to join the team and we were wise enough to spare him the agony. Trying to entertain your fan base is not good for your physique and health our Sachin also will retire and become a sporting ambassador to the Asian continent who are keen on betting and bringing bad name to the game.

I hope Indian spectator would be nice to him the day he fails and retire.

Anyway cricket was the winner taking the game to the wire and making a tie was a big achievement and neither side deserved to lose this match.

It was a good stater for the tournament.

A star was born and that is Andrew Strauss and English fans should be proud of him.

Not only he brought ashes home (team game) but brought the 50 over game to its heights.

But you boys must make sure you beat Australia in this tournament.

We will be cheering for England all the way.

We are fed of Australian arrogance and I saw somewhere England was written off.

I predict a final with England and South Africa and it does not matter who wins if you make it into that point even though I favour South Africa.

Blessing in Disguise-Linux Games

I have avoided using games as a plus point or a weakness of Linux.

You may wonder why?

Whether we like it or not games are essential for life.

Too much of any game or demanding sports may break a marriage.

Similarly lack of games can terminate a marriage.

So when I talk about games, I always start with that advantage point which is neutral to begin with.

We tend to associate games with children and young adults and as a growing up process.

But I would like to disagree.

Even animals love games as young ones and they start playing with the mum and the litter and not only that process teaches them cooperation and learning to avoid dangers when the leave they adults as solitary animals.

Dogs digs the earth when they are bored.

For them this process is essential and leaving some stuff dug up and hidden and getting the dog to discover the bones is a standard game.

That takes the boredom out of their system.

The very same pattern of boredom sets into adults if we do not occupy with some gaming activity.

The Cricket World Cup is now in full swing and every body who is somebody is now slowly making their entry into the fray.

If you cannot play at least watch the game.

It is good for your health if you are not gambling with the outcome of the game.

Regarding Linux of course one of the weak points as I saw in the early stages was its lack of games. For me who had by that time almost addicted to DOS and Windows was a blessing in disguise.

That made me to delve deep into Linux and I am now almost daily writing something or teaching somebody its virtues or doing some activity with Linux (in dropbox) and the 24 hours of the day not is not enough for me.

Similarly if one is introducing computer science to a young one not having games is an advantage. So the child can concentrate on learning nitty gritty points of computing.

In the same tone in very young child, the games can be a vehicle for introducing learning techniques.

What is important is that the games should be age appropriate and should be of short duration and easy to perform.

There are lot of little games in Linux but but there is paucity of very advanced games.

The context is so bad I bought a book that dealt with Linux games thinking one day when I have time I will start making an attempt to produce at least some elementary games for kids.

Mind you making games for very young kids is difficult. There attention span is short unlike the bigger children. In the bigger children their attention span is so intense and they get absorbed so much gradually game becomes an addition.

I have a very simple solution for that.

When we played it was a habit that the entire extended family get involved in the game and the computer games that we played were of the group category. We used to take turns, those watching will help with the clues.

Most of the Waltz Disney games come under this category.

Tarzan, Lion King and Zero to Hero were few of them and gradually migrated to Italian Job, Raider of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones.

Mind you all of them were windows based and none of that intensity was found in Linux.

Then I discovered Tux Racer, Pinguy and a few others in Linux.

There are big Linux game packs.

I have not seen a single yet.

It takes at least two weeks to download them. When I have finished addressing the Linux 100 and Linux Extras, I may consider downloading.

I have eventually decided to download the big game pack even if it takes a month to do so.

Or else if I happen to go abroad I will keep two days for that activity.

I have tried few friends outside.

Unfortunately the are not versed with Linux.

Ten (10) plus nuances that annoys the desktop user

From its origin Linux was developed by developers for the developers.

Its architecture and file hierarchy is archaic and resistant to change.

I have been using it long enough, it is stable, robust and I do not need to worry about it except running it 24 /7 schedule in spite of electricity bills going up to get its maximum. Since I am doing regular download of Linux distributions for testing (a hobby of some sort) this rigmarole is OK. All the CRON jobs are (regular maintenance) done for me and I do not need to worry about configuring it to suit my needs.

Since I am not a Server Master but only a Desktops User (perhaps as workstation) how the developer can figure out what I do with my computer in the 24 hour schedule is something I ponder.

I would like the computer to be my slave rather than it masters things for me.

1.That is one of the weaknesses. Linux is a work horse but my horse is very finicky in its behaviour what he eats and what schedule he follows .

He follows the developers schedule and not my finicky behaviour schedule. One can say in that case you configure it yourself. That is a good argument but with file architecture being streamlined, rigid and resistant to change, one cannot change a cabinet and put it in an less obtrusive place for me. If I do that whole file system crashes and even with the root permission when the system boots next time it goes back to its preferred protocol.

I need to know like a developer every bit of file structure and of scheduling routine. I love to do that but I am a professional in another field not computer field. My field needs and structures are completely different form automatic response of a computer.

2. My needs are customer based. That is the second nuance. The file hierarchy and resources are good for a Server but not an ordinary human being like me.

I do not want to go to the loo exactly at the same time and same place and void exact amount of void. In other words I need some personality to my voiding or consumption habits that vary from day to day.

Not the way the developer voids and eats.

The file hierarchy is stable and is not customizable.

3. The sames goes with programs. I cannot change a system program and go for a more flexible program. In that case I have to go for a different distribution or for a different desktop (Gnome or KDE or LXDE).

I cannot interchange desktop experience. It can be done by installing Gnome and KDE versions in the same computer separately but one can use only one session at a time. They do not speak to each others library systems and GTKs are different. That is the third.

4.The real disadvantage is its package management system. One has to be satisfied with one grand package version and and cannot go back to old or new one without radical change to the system and install procedure. One has to wait for the rolling system or to a new radically changed system. For example I have been using Redhat for years (not really I cut my teeth with it and changed with Fedora evolution and migrated to PCLinux) and the company changes its protocol from Fedora 13 to 14 with sea of changes (like Microsoft) and file formats. The other distributions resident in the same computer cannot mount them or effect changes to the files in the home partitions. This is ridiculous change for the user who had being doing something as a routine is changed without his feed back.

It is a corporate decision not a community decision or request.

I am not resistant to change. I am for it but uses are not scape goats or made vulnerable like what Microsoft or Apple does to its customer base.

This is the change that make Microsoft user looking for other avenues like Linux. If Linux distributions also on commercial bent use that strategy it will certainly misfire.

GoBo Linux had been trying to address this issue by radically changing the file architecture and ability to use old and new in versions (say Open Office and Libre Office libraries are organized in a structurally different architecture with sharing (common) and not sharing independent (Java Suite).

This can be done but this distribution has not received the backing of the rest of the community. In fact I have been waiting for its new release over last three years and it does not seem to be coming. It is long overdue.

I hope Libre Office coming it to its existence they should attempt to reorganize the library system (at archive level and user level) and make innovations.

It is hard work but worth a try.

Then we can have long term (LTS) support for 10-15 years instead of the present 3 to 5 years instead.

5. Other nuance is the release cycles. It is at its extreme from months to years to decades. There is no agreed protocol and they have this rolling system also. It is OK for distro-hoppers but not for old people like us. I of course hopped distributions at a regular interval and I have 5 to 8 distributions in my laptop, that does not mean that I use them regularly.

They are for a particular purpose.

I keep GoBo Linux and Yoper because of their original approach and I love their changes and that gives me some opportunity for research material to engage in.

Then I can give perhaps some visionary advice.

GoBo thinks of the file architecture and its rearrangement.

YOPER thinks of truncating file extensions and throughput.

Linux is a visionary approach.

It needs new vision and dimensions for the current century.

Live CDs was a vision (demo to begin with) but now it is a universal approach.

Try it before you use it.

Then speed of booting is another vision.

6. With big hard disk coming we must make not 15 to 60 partitions but 1000 or more partitions.

Linux can handle it but not Microsoft. The number of partition a distribution uses (the minimum and the maximum) changes constantly.

7. Hardware compatibility is a major issue. This is not due to the fault of Linux. It is the manufacturers and vendors ploy to support one particular operating system over the other. It is time we should have legislature to regularize this at least in the European community if not America and UK.

8. Cloud Computing is taking a corporate stand now with Google taking a bigger bite. Linux User must be ready for dual purpose. One is browsing, the other is using Linux utilities like Gimp, Sribus and Inkcape and Blender for personal use. We must not let these excellent utilities disappear with Cloud Computing.

9. There are over 300 very good distributions and reviewers review only a few and the reviews are also not balanced, They do not do it at a research level. They do it at the level of blogging not professional to say the least. Gut feeling like in politics and daily papers.

Review means reviews (pros and cons and neutrals) and not shoddy hasty writing. There is professionality attached to this word.

Nothing more nothing less.

10. Last but not least. many distributions do not have a multilanguage capability. Only recently Sinhala has two distributions supporting it. This is essential for children programs doudoulinusx is attempting it.

Others should follow..

There are many other minor matters but this is to highlight no operating system is perfect. We only have to know the good and the bad and drop all the ugly ones.

LinuX Discussions and Forums

I Love this Lovely Discussion going on at the beginning of the year, unfortunately Cricket World Cup is on, hence, my contribution is mild and muted.
Being a medical man I look at problems in a practical way.

Poor patients need simple solutions not elaborate diagnosis and surgery.

This applies to Linux community and computer users too.

I feel Linux community's service to it user base is better than what the WHO offers to medical fraternity.
There (WHO) contribution, I feel us very, very poor.
Because there is no scrutiny.
We are experts and "nobody can contribute better" is their attitude.

When it comes to Linux (not Microsoft) everybody is an expert in one sense or the other as a user who has some good and some very very bad experience (pain and suffering of medical patients).
Unless Linux Guys and Girls voice their frank opinion (if patients do not tell us their difficulty we cannot help them) we cannot improve.

We should not pretend we are the best.

If we assume that scenario like WHO we are going to be doomed.

One voice had opined that Linux biggest strength is its wide variety of choice. And he turns round and say its biggest weakness is also that.

That is a professorial comment but taking a cue from Professor De Bono it is Lateral Thinking at its best! (Read his books Lateral Thinking, Beautiful Mind).

Linux Guys and Girls have beautiful minds (not like Microsoft) and Ideas.

That is why I love this forums and lively arguments (for and against).

Some people are not good at Lateral Thinking but I think these "flame wars" are part and parcel of Linux Evolution. I am of the opinion it is essential for the generation of new ideas. It is the Live (Love / Hate) Wire as long as nobody takes it personally (keep the evolved opinion "floating" for some time, till it finds a suitable land to settle).

That is why we have over 300 Live distributions.

There are over 200 inactive ones where discussions have ceased or died a natural death and new directions are not sort for.

That is where I come in and promote Live Linux 100 (like the 100 fortune companies).

MYAH, MORPHIX, TAOS, Video Linux and ADIOS are examples of good distributions that have gone inactive.

I push young ones to go to the dormant repository and have a good look at them and jump start them with new direction or fork them to new offspring.

They are too good to be in the archives.

My vision for future Linux is every one should be customized to individual (like medicine is tailored to young, old and the pregnant) needs,

We were going in that direction and unfortunately Cloud Computing is making a definite twist and turn to this need with corporate (not community) influence.

Keep on "bashing a bit" we are going to be none the wiser at the end of the exercise.

I work with young people and their enthusiasm lasts (unlike old ones like us) only a brief period. If we do not tap them at the right moment they are lost for ever.

In my case I go to the grave with a several inactive distributions in a sealed PENDRIVE (somebody could discover their potential a century later like Myahs of old Americas.

Good luck with your future discussions.

Linux in Sinhala-Hanthana Linux included-Debain Update

Reproduction from Distrowatch
(by Dr.Asoka Dissanayake (Medical) on 2011-02-22 22:52:30 GMT from Sri Lanka)


I have to confess now I support Light Weight Distributions and PCLinux is my my favourite,

But I love its Gorilla (dearly) Edition PClinuxfullmonty too.

I use it (PCLinux) as a Gold standard (not bench mark) for 32 bit hardware and Texstar is about to release the 64 bit version but he is keeping it close to his heart.

Coming back to Sinhala Linux Debian is the winner by neck and half length (horse racing terminology). I downloaded all of the CD and DVD and had a trial run of them and they are pretty good and elegant especially the KDE.

Again I confess I am a KDE fan especially because of its looks and the K3B burner which does not harm the hardware. Before I started using it I used to lose a CD/DVD writers almost every two to three months.

Both PClinucx and SuSe are KDE based. Suse is damn slow like windows but PCLinux is pretty fast.

Unlike you guts I have about 8 distributions in my laptop and I use them in rotation to get best out of them.

I have Debian also and I will tell you now why I use Debian.

It is the only distribution which can cohabit with all the others distributions and arrange the partition table so nicely in the GRUB and boot all the others.

Unlike Windows and Ubuntu, Debian does not fear other distributions.

SuSe cannot read more than 15 partitions and in the beginning they used to have over 60 (I stand to correction) partitions. PClinux some time cannot read FAT partitions and its partition formats are limited.

So I install Debian one before the last distribution and to get a nice boot flash I use PCLinux the last.

Debian make it easy for the PCLinusx to read the partition table.

There are many other strong points about the Debian that is why we use it in the Server Level in the University.

Regarding the downloading of Hanthana Linux I just checked it a few minutes ago with only two seeders it takes 3 days plus.

Fedora 13 (the 6 CDs) version with many seeders it takes little over one day. I will download Hanthana Linux after the Cricket World Cup which is my preoccupation currently.

Following is a summary of download times for your perusal.

Last there (3 days)
1. Bodhi 3 hours
2. Kubuntu 7 hours
3. EB4 9 hours
4. Pinguy 4 and a half days
5. Monty 2 days
and fastest was ArtistX one day and probably Fedora 13 too (also little over one day (according to estimate).
These are facts and not gut feelings,
I am struggling with pixie which has taken one day but still not finished.

Feeling the Temperature-01

by S.B.Asoka Dissanayake Visit www.writeclique.net

There is a bizarre (somewhat insane) discussion going on local English Papers. This is something .I penned down many moons ago. Reproduced here for any sane person's perusal.

Finding a suitable Thermometer

I lost my email connection due to no fault of mine but that was a blessing in disguise. It was a painful experience and I could not gain access to my writings at www.writeclique.net It forced me to have an alternate email which was useful in any case and I registered myself again dropping my professional designation.

So all my relatively scientific writing would be at this alternative space from now onwards. This would be one of my opening writings that would be posted there.

I had some interest in temperature ever since the indoor temperature of my room hit 90 degrees (90º F) and when I could not sleep. Since then I kept a record of the indoor temperature at random and it has became almost an obsession.

The other reason is that I should have a record of Kandy temperature for future perusal when the coal power plant is operational in three years time. My record for the next three years if I am alive and well by that time would be an eye opener to our future energy planners.

My gut feeling is that there would be drastic and erratic changes in temperature even though Kandy is far away from that site.

I do not want to delegate this responsibility of recording the temperature to the meteorology department since I am told some of the filed officers never take any interest in recording accurate data. I am also told some of them look at old data and send a doctored report to head office and they are like our foresters who are never found in the forest where lot of illegal felling of trees and gem mining is going on.


After the tsunami the little respect I had for them also evaporated with the waves.


I had two red alcohol thermometers which bought for less than two pounds a piece at Woolworth Stores. One of them stopped working but the other one is still in working order and accurate (to 0.25º F) for domestic purposes.

My intention is not to write about it but to write about how I found a new one.

After surveying the entire Kandy city I found one Jumbo Size thermometer at a supermarket (Chinese made) but its recording got stuck at 78 º F and during the period it was recording the temperature it had an error of 2º F.

There supposed to be more than five Super Grade Schools teaching science in Kandy and I wonder how many of them have a thermometer in their laboratory.

I went to all the reputed pharmacies and only a few of them had clinical thermometers but none had an ordinary thermometer.

THAT WAS A REVEALATION.

When I asked few of the shop assistant I need a thermometer and not a clinical thermometer one of them sent me to an electrical shop thinking it is some sort (form) of a meter that record electricity.

That brings me to a point of an anecdote and the standard of English as it is taught (I come to that point later in an article) today in our schools.


I was barely fifteen years old still wearing shorts (those days one starts wearing a trouser when one is competent enough to speak in English and not before. Now when I come to think about it some of them are wearing it inside the mother's womb) and a young bloke (wearing lounge) came to me and asked me "what is your chronometer?

I was not amused and I told him the time and asked him why you can't speak in simple English. This bloke never gave me eye contact again and I never saw him in any academic circles too, thereafter. This was the way some city boys took Mickey out of those who could not speak English (and were not wearing lounge suit) and if the same yardstick is raised again how many of our English Teachers would pass this acid teat I wonder and wonder.

I have become chronic and teach my students acute and chronic inflammation to begin with and any word with meter aliased with electricity is a reminder how science is taught in our schools.

However, with some soul searching I managed to find a digital thermometer with two sensors and a clock and by January first I started recording the temperature both at home and my room in the faculty.

By the way the university is also not without blame. When I joined the university after long lapse I wanted to find a digital balance for some research purpose and I could not find one in our university (faculty).

It took three years for me to get one that is also from "Japanese Aid".

By that time I had finished my data collection.

I paid my own money to buy a suitable electronic balance that also after six months of searching in Colombo.

This is the way we do research in our universities. So we (higher education) are no better than the education department.

This is where I have a "hearty laugh" when people in Colombo are talking about nanotechnology.