Eating like Romans - Christmas 2007

This Christmas was celebrated with friends.

Christmas during school years were spent at Valiammachi's place. 10 days of not going to school. 10 Days of being pampered, of absolute freedom. 10 Days spent lost in books. 10 Days of early morning bathes in the nearby river. 10 days spent sitting alone. Sometimes climbing on the top of the pulimaram , to touch the topmost branch , to feel the wind . Sometimes stretching out on the flat, square piece of rock that covered the empty well inside the rubber thottam , enjoying the hot sun. Days that are filed under the label “Funny and Lovely “ inside my mind.

Those days aren't coming back, are they :).

After school, Christmas was a day when everyone was home, the whole day spent in front of the TV watching the Christmas special movies. A break from exams and college, time spent curled up with a book, time spent playing a lot of games on the computer. I don't remember much about those days, everything revolved around The College. The rest of the days are blurred when i look back. Maybe i will remember those days when a year or two passes by.

It was all different this time. This time, Christmas was with friends - and you have to be incredibly lucky to have the likes of them as friends.

Christmas was one long eating session. There was wine there were cakes - both Kurian-made and Kurian's-mom-made. There was the Great Lunch of 2007 .Nothing fancy - fried rice, chicken ( i don't remeber the name of the preparation - i was busy eating you know), the experimental Meen Pollichathu , onion-tomato raita, chocolate pudding ( yum yum ) , gulab jamoons . Aaaaaah. It was a Good Thing (TM).

Then the sleepy trip to Shankhumugham, sunset, the spiciest of mulaku bajji ever, back to ICH -Statue and a mutton omlette + lemon juice.

And when i got home, the supper was waiting. The perfect supper. Rice, meen curry, maracheeni and poricha meen.Then the crash to bed and a nice dreamless sleep.

Christmas this year was 'finger licking good'.

Work ! I get to work !!!

Finally, I got a job. I can now spend time in an office - liberation dudes ! , this is liberation. From more than two months of self imposed mental and physical inactivity.

Well on a calmer note , I must now labor to earn bread . Its not all that liberating. The work i have to do is nothing big or exciting - well its definitely not like being part of a project that plodded on , surprising its creator at every turn and inspiring confidence in the team. But this is stability . You draw from a pool of knowledge that already has everything that will ever be needed. Innovations have been made. The technology on which the implementation rests is proven. It might be monotonous , i can take that. But i have a feeling that it is not going to kill me. I am no longer walking on the edge.

I now have time to think about stuff. Stuff= books, chicks,flicks,PS3 /XBOX 360 games i can;t play (coz i don't have a PS3/XBOX 360 , silly ) , trips to places, programs that i have to write , images that i have to capture, pr0n , WTH ! almost everything under the sun.

Its nearly time to make new year resolutions . Bu hu ha ha ha ! Here comes the list

1. Swim/Jog/Cycle at least on alternate days.
2. Make a reading list
   
3. Read the books from the reading list
   
4. Write.
5. Stop getting mad at people
6. Learn a language ( well i already know three , but i want more )
   
7. Start strumming the guitar regularly .
8. Write that Picasa clone - start work on it on the double.
   
9. Stick to Slackware ( I have to include at least one certain item in the list otherwise frustration will ensue )
10. Stop making stupid long to do lists that I won't ever stick to.

:P

How I got fed up with Gentoo, flushed it and went back to Slackware

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF SLACKWARE 12 NOR IS IT A PROPER SET OF INSTRUCTIONS TO INSTALL SLACKWARE - ANYBODY USING THIS IS AT THEIR OWN RISK. THOSE WHO WANT A GUIDE TO SETTING UP SLACKWARE 12 CAN LOOK HERE


So i got tired of Sabayon . I never believed it would happen , but it did . What did me in was a desire to go deep . Now Sabayon is a great distro for home use. Yeah you heard me right , a Gentoo based distro , good for home use. Well , before you all start making wry comments , go check out www.sabayonlinux.org , get the latest ( I think its 3.4f) . Sabayon is good when you are satisfied with the live DVD. Lot of software , so much so that people call it a bloated distro. But once you do a full install, you won't have to go look for software to do day to day stuff like web browsing, email , word processing , spreadsheets , music management , p2p , DVD viewing /ripping ( it contains libdvdcss !!) . Software management is a dream with portato / kuroo.

Now, i am not an optimization freak, but one day i decided that my system can be a wee bit more faster if i do some optimization - and i found myself digging through documentation . Pages of it . Tonnes. And all of it were portage specific . Lots of stuff to tweak. Mind you Gentoo tweaking is not for those without patience. Anyways i got fed up because i was learning a lot of Gentoo specific stuff ( For god's sake , USE flags !! mmmmmmmmmhhh !!)

So one day i got ktorrent to siphon off a copy of Slackware 12.0 - Ze old faithful. Never failed me . Ever (OK there was the first time when i was perplexed by the weird init style , lack of utils/config stuff and a very loose , abstract way of package management ). I went about reading the change log.

To my delight i discovered that i am going to get a 2.6 kernel by default . And a lot of other stuff. As usual no Gnome - it did worry me this time. Well , this time , I'd seen Gnome working on an Ubuntu and a Fedora . It was working like a charm. Everything appeared 'lite'. Whatever had they done to Gnome ?

Slackware install steps.

Its the easiest linux install i have ever done. I start out with a Windows machine and convert it into a dual boot one. Once the DVD boots , you are asked if you want to use a non -us keyboard map , i haven't had to use it ever. You press enter to until you get a root prompt and then do the following

1. run cfdisk to create linux and swap partitions as needed
2. type 'setup' to invoke the installer. No fancy gui. a simple ncurses interface. You don't need more . Trust me.
   
3. Installer comes up with ADDSWAP ( setting up swap partitions ) selected and pressing Enter will cause the installer to auto detect SWAP partitions and display them. One more dialogue will come up asking if you want to check them for bad blocks . After that the swap partitions are activated and added to fstab.
4. The next step involves setting up partitions. All detected linux partitions are displayed and you can setup your root partition. If you do setup your /usr/local and /home in different partitions , now is the time to do it. This step involves choosing your filesystem also. I go with Reiserfs ( i feel that its faster ).
5. Installer detects windows partitions and asks if you want to add them to fstab. i usually don't do it. ;) i will come to that in a moment .
6. Now the installer will want to select your installation source media. I press enter to choose CD/DVD.
7. This step involves pressing an enter to ask the installer to auto detect. This step is there to choose the media manually if needed. I have never had to do that
8. Now comes package category selection . This is different from individual package selection . It selects groups of packages like KDE , Program Development etc etc. I select everything except KDE (Internationalization) - oh wait , it is the default selection. All i do is press enter.
   
9. Next step decides whether or not you get to choose individual packages. I go by full installation option here ever since i got my current PC. Again pressing an enter is all i have to do.
   
10. Now i go read a book since its copy files time. It finishes in about 10-12 minutes.
11. Now the installer asks me if i want to create a USB Flash boot disk. It used to be a boot floppy in previous versions. Guess who is keeping up with times. I skip this step.
    
12. Next is modem config. I press enter here.
    
13. Next up is installing lilo ( OK Slackware still doesn't like grub for some reason - but lilo is enough ) This involves whether you want an expert mode or not ( Enter to select simple ) , adding parameters ( i don't add any so again its pressing an enter ) and choosing where to install. I always install it to superblock ( on the root partition)
14. Mouse configuration involves choosing your kind of mouse and pressing enter. Another dialogue asking whether to start gpm during init will pop up , again press enter :D.
15. Configuring network involves assigning IP , netmask , gateway , hostname , domain etc. silly matters. they are over in a jiffy. If i use DHCP i don't have to do all this.
    
16. Choosing which services to run at startup . Nothing much to it.
    
17. Then it asks me whether i'd like to try custom fonts for console. i always say no.
18. Time configuration involves telling the installer whether the hardware clock uses Universal time ( Choose NO ) , and then choosing the timezone.
19. Next up is choosing the desktop environ to run
    
20. Set root password
21. Done

Installation is over now. See it was a lot of Enter-keys and some essential information . Thats all.

Now i mount the windows partition corresponding to C:\ and copy the first 512 bytes of the root partition ( to which lilo was installed ) to it using

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd
dd if=/dev/sda9 of=/mnt/hd/lnx.boot bs=512 count=1

After that i boot to windows and add and an entry to boot.ini - "Linux"=C:\lnx.boot . This will let me load lilo with the NT boot-loader. I always go this way because of a bad experience ( which i cannot recall now - this is called addiction to process ).

Now i reboot to a fresh slackware . Login as root

Time to mount partitions. I don't go the /etc/fstab way. No siree. I head over to /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add as many mount commands as needed there , with all permissions. Easier this way.

Then i edit /etc/resolv.conf and add the opendns nameservers there.

Ha ! what ? No sound ? Run alsaconfig and alsamixer to enable sound and control volume etc.

I pray hard now and type startx. I am greeted with the KDE first time wizard. I thank god for letting xorg start without hitches.

Head over to nVidia and get the linux driver setup. Running it ensures a nice xorg conf. Muahaha I am good to go .

Well almost.

Konqueror shows the partitions alright , but clicking on it doesn't mount it. It coughs up a dialogue about no permissions and things like that.

A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to this recipient: see message bus configuration file (rejected message had
interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"
member "Mount" error name "(unset)"
destination "org.freedesktop.Hal")

Thats the error.

Solution ?

No problem , head over to linuxquestions.org and search for the error. Seems i need fuse and ntfs-3g. OK off we go to slackbuilds.org. Searching for ntfs points me to fuse and ntfs-3g.

Slackbuilds are an awesome way to look at packaging. Basically i get the source of the package and a script which builds a slackware tgz package with that source - from the same page. I get source for fuse and ntfs-3g and build the tgz by running their corresponding slackbuild scripts. Now if i ever need to re-install slack 12 , i won't have to go looking for the packages . :D . I install the packages and store them away for future use.

I start up 'kuser' and add the root user to the plugdev group. I add a regular user account while i am at it . The regular user also gets to be the member of plugdev group. Restarting the hal daemon ( /etc/rc.d/rc.hald restart ) fixes the unmountable/permission not set issue. Now i can just click-to-mount. :D

I get the following from Slackbuilds.org : Mplayer, Mplayer codecs, guarddog, Wine . i create my packages and install them .

I google for slapt-get and gslapt packages for slackware 12 and install them also. Now installing software is easy. just invoke gslapt and search for the packages. It looks like the synaptic package manager for Debian. I add http://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/slackware/addon/slacky/slackware-12.0/ to sources section of gslapt preferences. This is the Slacky.eu ( italian slackware users group ) repository. They are a good source for non - gui packages . GUI application packages might be italian , not always , but you never know.

Now for the Gnome part. Slackware doesn't come with Gnome . Maybe Pat likes KDE . maybe Gnome is unstable and baaaaad . I don't care either way. I point my browser to http://www.droplinegnome.org/ . I download their installer package and install it. Running it brings up a simple ui like the slack installer which offers to download and install the whole of Gnome for me. I say "Thanks much" and go to sleep while it downloads the gnome packages and installs them . When i get up in the morning, i see a message telling me that Gnome has finished installing and that i can reboot.

Then I remember. I edit /etc/inittab and edit it to boot to runlevel 4. ( change the line that says id:3:initdefault and replace that 3 with 4 ) . Thats it. I reboot and find the gdm (looking oh so nice ) waiting for me. I log in with the regular user account into Gnome and enjoy :D.

See ? Setting up slackware is easy . Takes about 40 minutes to have a running system ready for anything. Adding more ( the Gnome ) takes time , but doesn;t break the system. And those who waht 'package management' , you have slapt-get + gslapt. I don't see any need for it, because we don't install many extra packages . If you go the Gnome way , the dropline installer will take care of it. Whats so hard in saving all the packages you ever install to a separate backup directory ? If you stick to slackbuilds and use linuxpackages.net and slapt-get as last resorts, slackware package managent is nothing.

You just don't worry about managing packages when you are a slackware user :D .

And eerily , my system is now faster than it was with the sabayon installation. It feels like i am back home from a journey.

KDE 4.0 RC2 - Random screenshots

I got the KDE 4.0 RC2 live cd off the intertubes yesterday. Its an OpenSuSE based live cd , just to showcase the KDE 4 desktop.

This post is by no means a review , or for that matter doesn't represent the whole K - suite at all . These are some random shots i took while i was checking the RC2 , that is all .


Now there is one thing that got my attention immediately. Eye candy aside , its a snappier run than other kde live distro's i have run ( notably Sabayon ) .

Setup

I have an AMD Athlon 2800+ running on an ASUS motherboard with a GB of RAM. I didn't have a blank CD-R so i used Innotek VirtualBox ( It comes as a default install with my Sabayon 3.4e ).

There is something I must say about Virtualbox. It is as easy to use as VMWare and its open source to boot . So no pangs about using pirated software. I have used qemu , VMWare and Xen . But the one that appealed to me most was Virtualbox. I don't know about its performance as a production virtual environment . But this is enough for anyone who needs to run a virtual machine for their own use.

Back to KDE 4.0. I chose 362MB of RAM ( it was a random choice made long ago , I use the same setting for all distro's i have tried out on this virtual machine ). I chose a hard drive size of a GB and attached my USB drive to it ( since i didn't want to install a shared folder add on to the KDE4.0 distro )

I tried out a few things , and i must say that KDE 4.0, when it has smoothed out, is going to beat up a lot of desktop environs out there.

Here are the screenshots (click to enlarge )

Boot

These are not actually KDE4 but they do look nice










Desktop

The desktop :D .









The SuSE style KDE Menu ( I am addicted to it ) .













Plasmoids

The KDE Widgets ( SuperKaramba re incarnate ) are called plasmoids . These are altogether nice things . Even though they are total eye candy they didn't slow down the system as i expected , even with a rotating GL plasmoid running ( the one that looks slanted is actually a rotating Image/ text thing ). There are leaky plasmoids and they might slow you down.

You choose the plasmoids ( Add a Widget) by moving your mouse to the top right , clicking on that spanner image and then choosing "Add Widgets" , which will bring up a chooser window not much unlike SuperKaramba's chooser.















Control Center

Control center actually has become friendlier !! It is now eerily similar to OS X Preferences . You choose the module you want to play with and its loaded into the same window. Its good.

Normal Prefs











Advanced Prefs











A pref module ready to get configured












Dolphin

The new file manager !! Its what i always wanted my file-manager to be. Manage files conveniently. It takes a lot of cues from windows explorer and xfce's file-manager. I still like konqueror for its incredible flexibility and power. Nothing matches that. But this program does one task , and does it very well. Hats off to the Dolphin design team . Dolphin's review alone will easily take up a post. This post is meant to show off a bit of KDE4.0 as a whole and not dolphin. So just two screens :D.












Konqueror

My favorite KDE application is sill there. still the same. Its difficult to improve on konqueror because it is probably the most stable application from the K-suite - it does many things , and does them well. My favorite web browser , file manager , all-in-one previewer , ftp browser etc etc.. the list is long.

default profile is web browsing..











Google has somehow forgotten konqueror . One of the first things I do with konqueror is to browse to gmail and make it identify itself as Mozilla 1.7 :D.










Loading the file-management profile makes it the excellent file manager we all know. I didn't snag a screen-shot because there are no radical differences form the current version ( at least it looks like there are none ).


Other Applications

The rest of the suite are there , all updated with the new Oxygen theme . They all look good to go , here are a bunch of them.

Amarok , the excellent music manager.. It looks good , looks like it has gone and mated with WIndows Media Player.












Kword - Now , this is something that has changed. Its gotten better than ever, and someday soon its gonna kick OOO Writer's ass. Seriously.











The piracy application - a.k.a Ktorrent, the bittorrent client










My USB drive showed up like this on the system tray . Its eye candy all the way ...









I like it !!

Its getting better, there are a few rough edges, a few leaky plasmoids, places where the new Oxygen theme is not that complete .. it didn't crash for the three hours i spent checking it out !! . I like it already. But i think i will wait till the next Slackware iteration comes out.


In other news , i have returned to my "home" distro, Slackware 12.0, for its sheer simplicity. I am trying Gnome ( dropline Gnome ) after a long gap , and i hope its a killer .

Then and Now - Gadgetry

Year 2000 : The only "Gadget" i had with me at anytime was a watch ( my black "Q&Q" now dead and gone , courtesy yours truly who dissected it )

Year 2007 :

Let me put those in words :

Bluetooth Adapter.
Camera.
Mp3 Player- Memory Stick.
Watch.

And of course the mobile phone with which the pix where taken.

At anytime you'd find at least two of them on me.

Now the question : WHY ?

Moda aano ? atho fear of disconnection from the world / missing a moment of beauty / killing time ? The funny thing is most of my friends ask "Enthaada modaya ?" , when they see my headphones dangling from my pockets. And they have a mobile phone ( or two !!!) and a data stick with them most of the time.

What changed between 2000 and 2007 ?
I graduated from college and started working. The internetz went from 3KBps on a telephone line to 32 KBps over the same telephone line. Bluetooth /Wifi are no longer buzzwords. Mp3 players are available from Vaasukkuttan's murukkaan kada. Digicams are cheep.

Still , i don't get it. Why am I carrying these bits of tech around ?

I tried ditching my mp3 player for a day . It was awkward. I can no longer immerse myself in music and shut my eyes and completely zone out .

Having no mobile is a little more tolerable. ( Only , i wont receive calls from potential employers ) . But i miss playing tetris and snake while waiting for something/somebody.

Toting the camera around is sometimes awkward .But the thing is something interesting might happen and you will want to capture it ( something interesting has not occured yet . But it might !!! hmpf !! )

So next week is try-and-ditch-at-least-one-bit-of-tech-week.

[Edit]
Guess what ? I am ditching the BT adapter. :))