Yes, it is related to the latest release of Ubuntu. Called Lucid Lynx.

This Long Term Release (meaning it will be supported for a longer duration), was very promising.

But I faced lot of problems initially. The problems were because Ubuntu isn’t very cool with proprietary drivers, and I have Nvidia cards on my Compaq.

Also though on most other computers like Dell and Acer, the boot up and shut down time been shaved, but on Compaq it takes close to 1 minute. It takes about 20 seconds for Grub to show up!!!

My woes didn’t end there. Wireless didn’t work out of the box. And after installing Graphics drivers, boot splash screens became low resolution.

Hash Mismatch!

So I thought, I’ll reinstall and after that when I try to update, it complains about Hash Mismatch. First I thought it was because of my internet connection which through a proxy and behind a villainous firewall. But soon I discovered that there were some serious issues with the repository servers and that the Netherlands server didn’t have any problems.

Switching my server in System > Administration > Software Sources to a Netherlands connection saved me from more trouble. Phew! (By the time I found this out, I had done about 6 reinstalls, jumping between 32 and 64 bits thinking sometimes that the CD was corrupt!)

Thanks to Netherlands server, All iz Well now!

Now busy with new customizations. OMG! Docky has become so cool!

Technorati Tags: lucid, ubuntu

History is a wonderful way to keep track of what we did or where we went. Sometimes, we aren’t interested in having the history logged so that we can maintain some sort of secret activity. But trust me, at times it is very very useful.

But what use is history without the time when the activity took place! Time and Place play very important role. In bash history, the Time can be of great use to know, when a particular command was run.

This get extremely handy, when on a server and you need to find out when a particular command was run.

I guess you have figured out what I am getting to! Yes, time stamps in Bash History.

In shell set this environment variable

$ HISTTIMEFORMAT=”$d-%m-%y %T “

and then run history!

$ history

You will get the time stamp of when the command in your history was run!

Cool huh?

Technorati Tags: history, Linux, time stamp

First, let me tell you what let me to find this out. About what this is, you’ll soon know.

My friend borrowed my laptop, to try out OS codes for her OS lab examination. When she returned the laptop after a couple of days, I noticed that, my Desktop had moved! Yes, instead of the normal /home/jithinkr/Desktop/ it was now pointing to /home/jithinkr/Codes/Desktop/!

I tried moving the Desktop back to where it was supposed to be, but in my attempts, I ended up deleting all the files I had on my Desktop! Well, that indeed was a big loss, because I had forgotten what all files were there on my desktop. (Though the shell and the locate command came in handy to remind me what those files where. Wish I knew some way to recover them.  ).

Now my Desktop was pointing to /home/jithinkr and hence all the Documents, Pictures and Videos folders were being displayed on the Desktop.

This was something I never expected to happen .

After some surfing, I came to know of the file, where all these paths are configured. It’s here :

/home/<username>/.config/user-dirs.dirs

The content of this files was :

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update

# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you’re

# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run

# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR=”$HOME/yyy”, where yyy is a shell-escaped

# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR=”/yyy”, where /yyy is an

# absolute path. No other format is supported.

#

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR=”$HOME”

XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR=”$HOME/Downloads”

XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR=”$HOME/Templates”

XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR=”$HOME/Public”

XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR=”$HOME/Documents”

XDG_MUSIC_DIR=”$HOME/Music”

XDG_PICTURES_DIR=”$HOME/Pictures”

XDG_VIDEOS_DIR=”$HOME/Videos”

Technorati Tags: config, desktop, home, Linux

Howdy!

So am back after a really long time, dusting my blog out of the dust. Glad to see, there have been visitors to Open Thoughts, even though I wasn’t updating. Well, can’t be lazy anymore, and I am back. Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Every now and then I post something like this saying that this blog has returned, and then I go back to hibernation. So something solid this time.

I was seeking something new to blog about, something I am doing actively. I wasn’t blogging very active, nor was I keeping up with Online developments and news. Blogging about stuff I wasn’t sure about is a bad idea.

So I come now, with Python, which I find really a cool way to learn programing. It is just easy, like Plain English! (Python is a programming language like C/C++)

And django. For web developing fanatics, Django saves time. For the curious, Django is a web development framework, that lets you develop apps really fast!

See ya around!

Technorati Tags: django, python

2009 saw lot of new, useful and innovative products that resulted out of simple human dreams. The creators saw what the present [and the future] generation needed the most and put their ideas on the design table. We saw the release of several OSes by computing giants this year. Includes Windows 7, Google Chrome OS and Mac Snow Leopard. I am not including Ubuntu 9.10, because I believe that the October 2010 release  of Ubuntu shall defy all standards.

Because Google has been foraying into several new fields and many of my friends are Google fanatics, they asked me if it is OK to switch to Google Chrome OS.

My answer, “It ain’t the time”.

What the cloud has to offer as is software and even hardware as a service and over the internet. It offers to provide software and hardware as a pay by use model rather than permanently investing on it.

Yes, for people in countries like India it is not the right time to move onto Google Chrome OS. The most important reason for this belief of mine is the fact that Chrome OS is dependent on the cloud.

Cloud computing is the new talk of the town. Everyone wants to know about it and wants to use it.

Google Trends for "Cloud Computing"

See how people have searched for cloud computing on google? It started somewhere around October 2007, and kept rising with occasional peaks and falls. But I can observe a fall by the end of 2009. We will have to wait and see if the term continues to generate interest in 2010. Also, the largest number of searches were from India, especially from Bangalore [source: Google Trends]

From what I have understood, Chrome stores your data on the cloud. Your computers hard disk, stores the Operating System alone. Every other thing from software to storage space is provided over the internet. (Google Services cater to the softwares of the cloud and your data will be stored in your Google Account Space).

Though the term generated so much of interest in India, yet it is dependent on Internet speeds in India to become a feasible facility in Indian households. Till then we will have to buy our own Hardware, and Software (if you aren’t exactly an open source fan).

So we will have to wait for internet speeds to catch up for Google Chrome OS to become a plausible replacement. Even then the existing drawbacks of Cloud Computing (later on this), might just leave people with the option to use non cloud Operating Systems.

Technorati Tags: 2010, chrome, cloud, google, os, trends