Technology Blog

Samsung Galaxy ACE S5830

2011-02-27T18:13:00.065+05:30

My first android phone – Samsung Galaxy ACE S5830

I hope my review of Samsung galaxy ace will be helpful for many people. I bough this phone from ebay india and got the delivery very fast in Pune from Udaipur vendor. (He took only 2 days to ship the mobile and 1 day by the Blue Dart courier).

I went through lot of web sites before finalizing this phone. It's a new budget phone from Samsung. I took this phone after comparing it with Motorola DEFY, LG Optimus One (waited for LG Chic for almost 3+ months) and compared it with HTC wildfire. Please remember this is not a highend phone and do not expect a premium features/hardware from this phones. I had a decent budget cap of indian Rs 15-16K (max $350 USD) and inside that budget cap I was looking for maximum features/facilities.

Phone came with headphones, battery, additional white color plastic back, a charger and USB cable to connect it to computer, 2 GB MicroSD card, leather pouch and manual CD's. I was wondering if I need to take a backup of my contacts from SIM, but after inserting my SIM android software quickly integrated everything. I installed facebook, twitter app and android identified correct people there numbers, facebook details and twitter details under one name!

On most of the web sites incorrect information has been reported about memory. This phone has 278 MB of RAM and 181 MB of storage. Phones graphics quality is very neat, clean and crysp. The touch response is very smooth and fast as well. You don't need to hard press to generate the required touch. Phone auto rotates the screen if you hold it horizontally. Phone really surprised me at first when the entire battery drained out in just 6 hrs. However googleing on how to improve the battery life of android phones and I found good links improve the same. I turned off the other GSM network search and only limited it to 2G. I have Idea sim card. I also installed a widget to enable/disable wifi, gprs, sync features in one tap. Reduced the brightness of the screen and in last 6 hrs I have only lost one battery bar! So I can assume it worked well.

I installed following apps: (Updated on 6 March 2011)

1. Opera browser - Far Better than default browser + Sync all bookmarks with desktop
2. Adobe acrobat reader - PDF file reader ( Better than ThinkOffice PDF reader)
3. barcode scanner - Scan any barcode and get info instantly
4. compass - Incase if you are lost
5. Google sky map - Visit universe from your mobile
6. twitter - For twitting from mobile
7. facebook - !!!
8. ASTRO file manager - Browser enter mobile file system
9. ConvertPad - Convert various formats to other formats
10. Air control light - I'm addicted to this game, land all airplanes on airstrip safely
11. skype - Call anyone over internet for free! ( Via wifi, your other contact needs to be on skype too!)
12. talking tom - My daughter loves playing with Tom
13. SeamanPlayer - Default player is good but this plays any format thrown at it!
14. Solitaire (With FreeCell) - Card games, just to kill time
15. Dropbox - Sync all files between desktop, laptop with mobile
16. Goggles - Identify/Search any product by just taking a photo of it!
17. xPiano - Play a piano on your mobile
18. KeePassDroid - I use this on desktop, laptop to store all passwords, works on linux, windows, mac and android one file on all platforms!
19. SoundHound - Search any song, details of it by just allowing it to listen for 15 sec!!!
20. GuitarTuner - Tune your guitar in case you have one!
21. Samsung IM - GTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo under one roof
22. Samsung EMail - Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, MS Exchange email under on app
23. Raging Thunder - Car racing game
24. Weather Widgets - This shows weather of my home town (Pune)
25. Instant Heartbeat - Gives your current heartbeat
26. Solo Lite: Again a Guitar tuner and Chord position helper
27. Stopwatch & Timer
28. AndroidVNC - To remotely control my home computers from my mobile.
29. World Atlas - Gives information of country.
30. Sky.fm radio - Awesome radio with lot of English music from various Geners
31. Lookout - To secure my phone from viruses and to locate it in case it is lost/stolen

all the mentioned apps are free. I also noticed that I can edit doc,xls, ppt files in ThinkFree office suite that came pre installed with the phone. Phone supports multi touch, phone supports youtube but not the flash that is embedded into websites. Headphone are optimized for better voice quality during call so they dont give great quality sound when you are listining songs, however when I plugged in my creative earphones sound quality was amazing.

Samsung also has provided a software that converted various video formats into mp4 that can be easily played on mobile.

Over all I'm very happy with this phone, considering the budget cap I had.

Here are couple of external links:

Gorilla glass video demo of Ace: http://tinyurl.com/3d9kdxg
Gaming performance of Ace : http://tinyurl.com/3ny39bg
Details of hardware: http://tinyurl.com/4xo72tw

Update [7-Mar-2011]

Based on request some more apps:
1. Smooth Calendar: - Calendar widget that syncs with google calendar
2. Aaj Tak Live - Live news on your android phone
3. Aldiko - eBook reader, manager
4. Angry Birds Rio - Full version of angry birds rio game
5. Android Status - Shows details of your android phone
6. Android Assistant - Shows details of process, cpu, memory, battery info with graphs
7. Blogger and Wordpress - Blog directly from your android phone
8. ESPNF1 and F1.com 2011 - Formula 1 racing news, live updates
9. Wapedia - Much better looking Wikipedia for android phone
10. Pulse - Coolest news reader I've used
11. Dictionary - Dictionary and Thesaurus access from dictionary.com
12. Flashlight - Use your camera flash as a torch in emergency
13. LED Flash - A bright bulb that glows on screen so that it can be used in emergency
14. Smart Battery Monitor - Monitor the battery health
15. 3GWatchDog - Monitor your GPRS data download's if you have limit on your plan (I have 2 Gb limit per month)

Update: 11-April-2011
Just upgraded my phone with the latest firmware. My earlier attempt failed when I did it from home. (Rather I should say I canceled it cause it was taking too much time and for my 64KB connection it was too much. so I did my firmware upgrade from office internet which is 12MB/s connection just took 15 min for entire process. )
First I updated my kies (Also imp I did the upgrade from my admin account as normal user failed to fetch and upgrade firmware) Connected the phone via USB and allowed kies to do the firmware upgrade. Attaching the couple of screenshots for everyone reference. At the moment I've no clue as to what new changes/fixes have been updated but I'll update my blog once I've noticed it.
Unfortunately I forgot to note down my earlier firmware version number, however the new firmware version is now PDA:KC1 / PHONE:KC1 / CSC:KC1 (INU)
To check your current firmware version dial *#1234#

Before upgrade: (Make sure you have Kies 2.x updated and not 1.5)
Click Image To Zoom

Right after upgrade was complete:
Now Kies shows the updated firmware version on my phone:

Update: 12 April 2011
After the new firmware update so far I have noticed that
1. Earlier my phone used to occupy 191-195 MB of memory that has gone down to 171 MB.
2. Battery life seems slightly improved.
3. Not sure if GUI speed has improved... my GUI was very fast from first day

Update: 22 April 2011Gingerbread update 2.3.3 is coming to Galaxy ACE and the ROM just leaked here is the newshttp://tinyurl.com/3vv8rhl

Added few more packages
1. SMS Backup+ - It back's up your SMS on gmail account with label as SMS and can restore it back if you factory reset your mobile
2. Fontomizer - I changed default font of the phone to Ubuntu looks great and more attractive now!
3. CallTrack: Track all your call history to google calendar.

Update: 3 May 2011

Improving Battery life:
Since everyone is concern about battery life let me update the blog for the same.
To improve battery do following
1. Always charge 100% and discharge fully all the way upto 10% - if you are not sure how much battery is left use some decent battery monitoring tool like "Smart Battery Monitor" Do not rely on default battery indicator as it does not give exact value
2. Turn off GPS and wifi when you are not using it, to do so click on option button when at home screen then notification and quickly disable the wifi and gps
3. Turn off network discovery like 3G if you are using 2G network. To do so click on option button at home screen then click on settings then "Wireless and networks" then "Mobile networks" then check the "Use only 2G networks"
4. Reduce the screen brightness to do so click on option button at home screen then click on settings then "Display" then "Brightness", set it to minimum as per your comfort.
5. Reduce running too many widgets on home screens they run in background all the time and can drain your battery
6. If you are using Facebook, Twitter, Skype or various email services, increase the time delay between the syncs like once in a day or twice in a day. Or in some cases do not run the auto sync instead rely on manual syncing.
7. Hold the center button for 3-4 seconds and start the task manager and close the running app if it is not in use ( ex: browser/radio/music player) tend to remain running even when you have stopped using it.

It'll be good practice to always carry the USB cable with you that came with the box, you can charge your mobile by simply connecting it to music system in you car if your music system has USB port! Also you can charge your mobile via computer/laptop by connecting the same cable.

I guess this should drastically improve the battery life. My battery is now lasting for more than day inspite of moderate use of browser,email and phone calls. Remember one thing android phones tend to drain battery bit quicker but its our fault as well, as we tend to use it more or less like a computer!



	Ace uptime

Update 15-May-2011:

Screenshot:
To take screenshot of your phone simply hold on back button and then click middle button, your screenshots will be stored into SD card under folder called screencapture

You always need not have to goto Market from your android phone, if your phone has wifi, 3G or GPRS connection on then simply goto http://market.android.com from your computer and make sure you are logged in with your gmail account. Select/Search application and click on install. App will get installed on your android phone!

Here is a cool apps that I found:
If you have always on internet connection and have a large music collection that you would like to access from your android phone simply goto your PC and signup to audiogalaxy.com and install the audiogalaxy app from market to your android phone. Now access your entire music collection from your android phone over wifi, 3G or GPRS.

Here is a very interesting article on New Android users and Battery complain:
http://cnet.co/jZZxvp

Update 2-Sep-2011: Gingerbread

Finally Gingerbread upgrade is available via Kies in India. I just upgraded my phones firmware to Gingerbread via Kies from Froyo. Not a major noticeable change. Found a new default wallpaper, new ringtones. More input method. Samsung EMail and IM is now not available via Samsung apps. However default Email program in ACE can now be configured for Microsoft Exchange/BPOS, Calendar.
NOTE: If you have taken 2G (GPRS) plan and not 3G then you should now select GSM in mobile networks, if you have taken 3G then select WCDMA. Those who have taken both can select Auto mode so that as per area and network mobile will switch between 2G and 3G.
Lot of people asked me that their upgrades have failed in past with low disk space error. Just stumble on a link that clearly says that in order to perform upgrade you must have 3 GB disk space on computer.
Also found one puzzling thing:
Kernel Version: 2.6.35.7-pref-CL518855
root@DELL142#1
Build number:
GINGERBREAD.DDKQ5
Don't know why it says DELL142!!!!

Here are detail steps available on this blog that you can refer to upgrade your phone from Froyo to Gingerbread. Click here to goto the detail steps.

Click the image to enlarger it:

Update 18-Oct-2011: A new update on gingerbread is now available via Kies. Please update your phones firmware. It is not known what changes/fixes are gone in this update.

Android verion: 2.3.4
Kernel Vesrion: 2.6.35.7-pref-CL561540
root@DELL148 #1
Build Number: GINGERBREAD.DDKQ6

Update: 16-Dec-2011: I flashed custom ROM on my ACE a month ago but I was pretty busy to even update my blog. Here are some screenshots.
Custom ROM's: FirstUA

Please find below images of my newly flashed CustomROM (FirstUA) on Samsung Galaxy Ace. Lot of people asked me if internal storage can be expanded. I've rooted my Galaxy ACE and have flashed custom rom on it. Also I have truly moved all apps, data on SDCard by formatting a small 2 GB ext4 partition on my SDCard.

Update 22-Jan-2012: Android 2.3.6 will be soon released for Galaxy ACE which is further optimized to give more free memory. Also people have reported that exchange mail client now donot leak memory anymore. Update your phones as soon as update is released via Kies.

Debian Squeeze

2011-02-06T23:25:00.007+05:30

Debian GNU/Linux

Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. Debian project has released it's version 6 today on 6th feb 2011.

Highlights of Debian 6.0:
Linux kernel 2.6.32;
· X.Org 7.5;
· KDE Software Compilation 4.4.5;
· GNOME 2.30;
· Xfce 4.6;
· LXDE 0.5.0;
· OpenOffice.org 3.2.1;
· GIMP 2.6.11;
· Iceweasel 3.5.16;
· Icedove 3.0.11;
· PostgreSQL 8.4.6;
· MySQL 5.1.49;
· GCC 4.4.5;
· Apache 2.2.16;
· Samba 3.5.6;
· Python 2.6.6, 2.5.5 and 3.1.3;
· Perl 5.10.1;
· PHP 5.3.3;
· Asterisk 1.6.2.9;
· Nagios 3.2.3;
· Xen Hypervisor 4.0.1 (with support for dom0 and domU);
· OpenJDK 6b18;
· Tomcat 6.0.18;
· and more than 29,000 various applications, built from about 15,000 source packages and all this on 9 architectures!

What makes debian amazing distro is:
Total nine architectures are supported by Debian GNU/Linux: 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Sun/Oracle SPARC (sparc), MIPS (mips (big-endian) and mipsel (little-endian)), Intel Itanium (ia64), IBM S/390 (s390), and ARM EABI (armel).

Here is a link to download debian:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/
Mirror list
http://www.debian.org/mirror/list

Here are debian wiki links:
http://wiki.debian.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian

To access packages here is link:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

The debian FAQ link:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/index.en.html#contents

Debian support/help links:
http://www.debian.org/support
http://www.debianhelp.org/

Some external sites for debian:

Debian arts:
http://www.debianart.org/cchost/

Debian tutorials:
http://www.debiantutorials.org/

Debian Administration site:
http://www.debian-administration.org/

Debian forums:
http://forums.debian.net/
http://www.debianhelp.org/forum/1
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/

KDE 4 is getting ready to conquer

2010-11-06T14:20:00.015+05:30

Exactly one year before I said KDE 4.5 is the one that will be hopefully lot stable feature rich that we can consider it on our desktop,laptops. I did not like the recent changes made on Ubuntu like dark themes, reversing the buttons and now the announcement of moving to Unity desktop. Although every thing can be changed back, its an extra effort and not the out of the box experience. Also I was a KDE user for a long period and never liked GNome much but had to use it as KDE 3.5.x series could not please me beyond a point.

Here are some customizations on top of KDE 4.5.2, some applications that I felt are really cool and useful. Some work around to the common problems faced. I'm using KUbuntu 10.10, 64bit and would like to say bye bye to Ubuntu forever for sure now. My past posts were criticized by many Fedora fan boys for using and praising Ubuntu, however I've to say Fedora is not my type of distro however Fedora users can also use this blog for reference for some package installations with little change in commands. Like instead of apt-get they can use yum and they may have to add some external repositories before doing anything else as the default repositories may not contain the package I've mentioned.

Recently I came across a very good blog that explained why Fedora do not have feature rich repositories and I kind of liked it. Fedora do not want to get into trouble by including proprietary packages and thats the reason they do not even mention them on their websites. Fedora site do not mentions the extra repositories that user may have to install after the basic installation. Fedora want to keep a pure clean open source repositories something that debian do. However Ubuntu, Kubuntu, XUbuntu offer people a wizard that puts the license in front of people and asks user to agree to it and use it on their own risk. While there are many varients based on Debian, Fedora that ships the out of box packages for supporting flash, mp3 and many more proprietary packages and formats.

If you are by any chance re-installing your ubuntu, debian based system then following step can save your lot of bandwidth and time.

First select the nearest apt mirror for you. If you are not sure you can also leave it to default. Also there is one more option that is provided by synaptick or kpackagekit itself.

Since I'm on KDE 4 I'll show the kpackagekit steps here.
Backup your /var/cache/apt/archives folder to your external disk:

Default KPackageKit:

KPackageKit select Best Server:

KPackageKit software sources:

Select the best nearest server to your country or KPackageKit it self will check with every server and find the fastest server for your destination. Make sure you update your package list. After that copy back your *.deb files from your backup to the /var/cache/apt-get/archives folder after fresh installation and after selecting the above mentioned method.

Now for all the packages you will install if the same version of *.deb is already available in your cache folder it will not download it again. You will save bandwidth and time to download the package.

Now here are the packages that I recommend, I've tried to use as many QT based packages as possible to keep the system as clean as possible:

All your video requirements will be taken care by one package:
sudo apt-get install vlc

Install any OS inside the this software:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox

Day-to-day finance tracking software:
sudo apt-get install kmymoney

Manage hard disk partitioning with this software:
sudo apt-get install partitionmanager

System notification because the default one is annoying one:
sudo apt-get install colibri

Micro blogging to twitter or identica:
sudo apt-get install choqok

Some cool font set similar to Verdana in Microsoft world:
sudo apt-get install ttf-bitstream-vera

Enhance version of vi editor, also if you know vi well it is said that you know *unix systems well!
sudo apt-get install vim

Default browser that has fantastic collection of extensions, pluggins. Unfortunately it is little bit over shadowed by chrome due to chromes fast startup time.
sudo apt-get install firefox

Under firefox I'll recommend following extensions, themes

1. Download statusbar
2. Easy youtube video downloader
3. Fission
4. flashblock
5. KDE wallet password integrations
6. Speed dial
7. Oxygen KDE theme
8. Hide Menubar

I've removed the firefox search box and have updated address bar to do a google search. Here are quick steps to do the same

Type about:config into your address bar.
In the filter box, type keyword.URL.
Double click the the keyword.URL value and paste the following string into the same
http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=

I still dont use KMail, KContact as the google integration is still not complete, However thunderbird does excellent job
sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Here is cross platform passwork manager that works on MS-Windows, Linux, Apple OS
sudo apt-get install keepassx

Monitor your disk usage with filelight program
sudo apt-get install filelight

I stumbed accross fantastic ID3 tag editor for mp3 colletion:
sudo dpkg -i puddletag

If you face dependencies issue just type following command after the above one.
sudo apt-get -f install

Gwenview is a good photo manager however when you install the plugins for the same it becomes awesome manager:
You can directly upload images to facebook, flicker, scan images from scanner.
sudo apt-get install kipi-plugins

One more very cool application called BasKet Note Pad, that allows you to take notes pretty similar to Microsoft One Note ( Not as good as OneNote but idea is pretty similar )
sudo apt-get install basket

To improve over all KDE fonts and mainly in Openoffice.org I did following changes
System Settings → Application Appearance → Fonts → Use Anti Alising → Enabled → Configure → Use Sub-pixel Rendering → RGB → Hinting Style → Slight

Now OpenOffice.org from menu select Tools → Options → View → Check Anti-Alising → Screen Font alising from 4 pixels

In my openoffice.org these settings were already enabled however I unchecked and saved and again did the checking also changed Screen font alising value to 4 pixel from 1.

Now my openoffice fonts look quite crispy.
In recent time I have noticed one thing that Linux fonts on screen are looking way to good and crispy than on Mac OS X.

I also updated the display driver package for my laptop to xserver-xorg-video-intel-2.13
I've Intel i3 HD card and the performance of intel under linux is not that good compared to ATI or NVidia.

Here is how my final desktop looks like. I've changed the login screen, splash screen and the desktop wallpaper.

Click image to enlarge:

Various Open Source Advertisements

2010-11-01T09:20:00.002+05:30

Various Open Source Advertisements:

Ubuntu:

Create Multiple Copies of HP Recovery Disks

2010-07-30T23:09:00.005+05:30

IMPORTANT: Please follow this hack on your own risk. I do not guaranty it will work or do not take any responsibility of any data loss or damage occurred by this hack.

I came across a post that describes how to create multiple recovery disk for the HP laptop owners and I'm sharing the same here with you. By default HP only allows users to create 1 recovery disk. However with this hack you can create multiple copies of recovery disk. The following hack only works if you have already create one set of recovery disks and want to create more. Those who are creating recovery disk for the first time this is not required by them.

You will need to download FreeCommander. It's a Windows Explorer like file manager.

On HP Pavilion dv6-2150us laptop
search for hpdrcu.prc on C drive and on D drive.
I found my files in
C:\ProgramData\Hewlett-Packard\Recovery\hpdrcu.prc
C:\Users\All Users\Hewlett-Packard\Recovery\hpdrcu.prc
D:\hpdrcu.prc

And deleted these files! Started the Recovery disk creation program again! It works!!

NOTE: This hack works on HP Windows XP laptops as well the file name is hpcd.sys instead of hpdrcu.prc.

Access Google Mail, Calendar, Contacts via Thunderbird

2010-06-30T09:11:00.016+05:30

Accessing your gmail in offline mode or from your disk is easily achieved with the help of Thunderbird email client. The good part is google offers POP, IMAP both access type for their emails.
There are handful extensions of Thunderbird to manage/sync with google services. Google contacts can be sync with Thunderbird contacts using "Google Contacts" extension and Google Calendar can be synced with the Thunderbird extension Lightning.

Surprisingly I'm still using Windows 7 OS and the configuration below mentioned is done on the MS Windows 7. I'm using Antivirus by Avast Personal edition that has email shield and for gmail configuration you need to tweak that as well.

You can setup the Google Mail, Contact, Calendar using following steps.
1. Download Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client
2. Install Thunderbird
3. Install the above mentioned Calendar & Contact plugins
4. Mail Settings >> Open the avast antivirus main window -> Real time shield -> Mail Shield -> Expert settings -> SSL Accounts ->
Add following entries
imap.googlemail.com IMAP 993 SSL
smtp.googlemail.com SMTP 465 SSL
gmail.com IMAP 993 SSL

5. In Thunderbird imap.gmail.com port 143
Connection security -> None
Authentication method -> Password, transmitted insecurely
6. smtp settings are same as shown in antivirus settings
7. Address settings -> The extension will ask for username/password
8. Calendar -> Along with lightning extension you also need to install extension "Provider for google calendar"
Now just goto google calender and copy the XML address of your calendar from setting menu and paste it in extension setup in Thunderbird! All your calendars will be synchronized!
If you are planning to buy an Google Android Phone, your contacts, email & calendar will be directly synced on the phone with google account. With the help of Thunderbird and its extension you can re-organize the emails, contacts.

Finally Microsoft has right OS formula to Win

2010-03-27T22:23:00.003+05:30

I was a great fan of Windows 3.11 OS after that I never like any of the Microsoft OS. For my luck the company in which I was working also had inclination towards Open Source products and Linux. So I did dive into Linux for many years. Of course I did use Windows 98 on my old desktop and it was nightmare to maintain that OS and also keeping it fast and clean. Same goes for my earlier laptop which was shipped with Windows XP media center edition. No matter what the OS used to slow down and if I install more than 20-30 programs it used to show signs on over load and slow corruption. I stayed away from Vista as I was able to see on every laptop I migrated from Vista to Ubuntu why people were shifting. God known why Vista used spin hard disk all the time. The light never used to stop slowing down every application it started. Recently I purchased a new laptop that came with Preinstalled Windows 7. Yes I went for Windows 7 laptop over Linux based because it was way to expensive! Of course I had full plan to install Linux on my laptop as soon as I get it. To my bad luck the hardware was pretty new for Ubuntu and Fedora. There were issues in Display, Sound drivers. I decided to use Windows 7 till the time Linux is ready. To my surprise I have installed more than heavy 30+ applications and Windows 7 is still running as peak speed. (I do not have any data to show but its solely on my experience) The laptop still boots very quickly. It starts many programs at the boot time without affecting speed. Also I have not seen any blue screens, registry errors in my 2 months usage, that's really impressive. Also file copying speed in Windows 7 is far fast between USB and laptop or between laptop and network PC than I used to get it on Linux ( I get speed of 25 Mb/Sec in Windows 7 while in Linux I used to get 12-15 MB/Sec) However I have not tested the same data transfer on Linux on the same hardware. I may be wrong cause the new Intel hardware of my laptop is super fast. Intel i3 2.16Ghz with Dual Cores and 4 thread support with 4 GB of RAM and 3 MB cache! Also with 7200 RPM hard disk drive. All in all I'm happy with Windows 7 and its pretty fast and error free OS as of today. The downside of running windows at present is only one that you need to be very careful of viruses, Malware and Windows 7 is no exception to that. I'm running Avast under personal user license with A-Square malware removal both apps are free for personal use.
All the Windows and Microsoft people who are still running XP can move to Windows 7. You wont be disappointed like Vista. Of course do check if your favorite app can run on Windows 7.

My new laptop HP Pavilion dv6-2150us

2010-02-08T06:21:00.010+05:30

After 3+ years I purchased a new laptop selling my old one. The model of new laptop is HP Pavilion dv6-2150us and configuration is
Intel i3-330M 2.16 Ghz with 3 MB Cache, 4 thread support and VT enabled processor
4 GB RAM
320 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
15.6" Bright Wide LED display
8x DVD/CD dual layer Burner with light scribe
3 USB ports
1 eSATA port
1 HDMI port
3.30 Hrs of battery backup
Full keyboard with num pad
5-in-1 media card reader
Integrated web camera, mic
1 Gig supported network card
802.1x b,g,n supported wireless network card
Bluetooth
Remote control
2 Head phone sockets and 1 mic socket

All in all I compared all the available model with my budget of $700 and I found this configuration a best deal.
Before buying the laptop I considered laptops from Toshiba, Gateway, Dell and Lenovo.
However in almost all models something or other was missing. I specially wanted to make sure I get Bluetooth, HDMI port and eSATA port in selected model.

Laptop came pre installed Windows 7 and with tones of HP crapware. Surprisingly the Windows 7 on this laptop is very fast inspite of tones of crapware. The first thing I did after getting laptop was to create a recovery disks. After that I tried to install KUbuntu 9.10 but I found lot of hardware is not supported, so I tried Fedora 12 but found same problem. I searched on net for the issues and discovered lot of people with new hardware have the same problems. The major problems in Linux were

Sound card is not yet supported KUbuntu and Fedora
Intel HD graphic is not supported in KUbuntu and Fedora
Wireless & ethernet card worked in KUbuntu and Fedora
Web camera I did not checked.

I tried various solution discussed in Fedora & Ubuntu forum but realized the processor family has been launched by intel on 7 Jan 2010. So the hardware is relatively new and the Linux distros I tried were released in 2009. I decided wait till I see hardware support is integrated into Linux kernel and drivers are written.
So i used my recovery disk and moved back to Windows 7. So far I must say Microsoft has managed to get a good OS except the Windows Media Player 12 which simply stops working if you ask player to organize your music! I found so many people complaining about WMP 12. After trying multiple solutions to fix the problem I gave up on WMP 12. It was taking days to arrange my music folders. I moved to MediaMonkey which is very decent media player who can play music, tag music and arranged my 14 GB music in 3-4 minutes!

My current laptop hardware is as follows
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Arrandale DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Arrandale Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4357 (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2d12 (rev 02)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2d13 (rev 02)

UPDATE: Lucid version of Ubuntu and KUbuntu 10.04 has a complete support for Intel HD Video and Sound. I tested the alpha release and my wireless, video and sound worked out of the box!

Linux Desktop and Gazets - Time To Integrate

2009-12-17T08:26:00.010+05:30

There are now too many equipments that are using linux OS as the primary OS. There are many more users now than before who are using linux. I feel there is one thing that is keeping lot of users away.
We have seen enough Linux/Android phones, what is really important is now to sync my mobile contacts, calendar with either KMail,KOrganizer or Thunderbird or Evolution from these phones over the USB or bluetooth or wifi.
We also need a MP3 player like iPod or Creative Zen that will have out of the box support to sync music with Amarok or Rhythmbox or Banshee or Songbird. The current implementation is pretty hacked one. I.e. Songs are not placed in appropriate folders, playlists are kept on different folder. My tagging from music organizers needs to sync with player, my rating should be maintained, the playcount on both should be synced. Also i dont see much of the players supporting ogg file format this player must support mp3, wma and ogg all three formats.
The server side of linux needs one solution that can be quickly configured as replacement for MS exchange. Rather the way Linux Server Disk ship LAMP same way these exchange alternatives should be shipped on the disk. I have seen couple of MS Exchange alternatives but still they are far from replacement. Also they need to be free and easy to integrate with Evolution, KOrganizer, Thunderbird. The admin has to take minimum efforts to install the server.
We have seen in the past how iPod helped Apple to boost the sales of Apple computers, infact it worked like a saviour for them and later iPhone did the killing impact. Making itself a de-facto in phone industry. On the same line I expect linux community to go.
In the end I'll say we need lot of gazets that has linux and are happily working well with linux based tools and apps. Equally important some company really need to focus on these gazets and market them well.

Fedora 11 serving for Debian/Ubuntu user

2009-10-16T16:29:00.021+05:30

Day 1 in Fedora 11:

I was a hard core Redhat and Fedora fan till I discover the Debian and Ubuntu. My last long term used Fedora version was FC5 (Core 5) after that I did try many times to use and install fedora on my laptop/desktop but I never used it for more than 3-4 days, Yum disappointed me everytime I used it. First it used to show some message "waiting for other process to finish" and that used to take ages to finish. Then actual searching and install package was nightmare. I started using linux on Redhat 5 in 1998 and till now I have used Redhat 6,7,8,9 RHEL 3,4,5. Fedora 1,2,3,4,5
Because of this long association with Redhat & Fedora I keep visiting back to to this distro.

This is my one more attempt of using Fedora 11. I logged in to on the fedoraforum.org site to solve my first problem after install FC 11 on my HP Pavilion dv8305 Laptop. I have installed FC11 with KDE 4.2.

Now First thing I'm doing is to upgrade KDE 4.2 to 4.3 and when searched on KDE site I found a link for KDE 4.3 in Fedora 11 but I couldnt understand how to upgrade. So I search on www.fedoraforums.org and found following link in discussion http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/ I followed that and here is what the site says

yum
Download
Fedora: kde.repo
RedHat Enterprise (and compatibles: CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc...) kde.repo
and drop it in /etc/yum.repos.d/
Note to x86_64 users: You may have to enable both x86_64 and i386 repos.
To install, a simple
yum groupupdate kde-desktop
yum update
ought to fetch and install the packages for you.
To keep up to date, you can periodically run
yum update
on your system as well.

Well I followed the exact instructions and viola! I have KDE 4.3.2 on Fedora 11.

Soon I discovered that, The important step for almost all Fedora users is to install http://rpmfusion.org
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

KDE 4.3 is really nice Window Manager however I personally feel that It will be really ready to take on GNome again when it reaches 4.5 version and not before that!
Also during installation in Fedora 11 when I selected KDE 4 as my Desktop I was expecting that all the rest of the packages will be automatically selected that are designed for KDE. However it was disappointing to discover that I found all GNome based packages were selected and I had to unselect all of them one by one select the KDE/QT based packages. That's bad on Fedora's side.

Day 2:
Somehow for last 2 days I'm experiencing freezing issue in Fedora. I noticed it happened when I started Firefox. I repeatedly removed .mozilla profile from my Home directory but no luck. Seems some other issue is there. The bad part is when it freezes it also freezes my OS forcing me to press power off button. Surprisingly I never saw fedora starting the fsck for my file system even when i have shutdown my laptop by pressing power button.

I ran into problem with my external USB HDD which has ntfs file system. This drives works without a issue in debian/ubuntu not sure why it is not working in Fedora 11
Here are log messages:

Oct 18 01:11:25 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:11:26 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6391
Oct 18 01:11:26 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Oct 18 01:11:26 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: Product: USB TO IDE Bridge
Oct 18 01:11:26 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Generic
Oct 18 01:11:26 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Oct 18 01:11:29 localhost kernel: scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Oct 18 01:11:42 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:11:55 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:12:14 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:12:17 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:12:30 localhost kernel: usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
Oct 18 01:12:33 localhost kernel: scsi 6:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

Its been a day since I posted my problem on www.fedoraforum.org however I still have not found a solution to it. All though I did receive a reply to my post but didnot receive a solution.

After week:
After waiting for solution from various forums and trying everything possible I had to give up on Fedora 11 as my all data is on 500GB external disk.

I decided to install Beta KUbuntu 9.10, inorder to stick with KDE 4.3.2 and it detected my Disk very well. Also now I have updated it on daily basis and now I have 9.10 KUbuntu working very well. However I'm not happy with KPackagekit at all. I hope it will improve in near future.

Free Apps for your Windows and Linux

2009-10-06T08:31:00.000+05:30

There are good alternatives to Paid Software on Windows Some are freeware and some are from Open Source community.

Package Name	Description	Location
KeePassX	These days every web site you go we have to maintain username and passwords, including bank accounts, credit card info. KeePassX makes life lot easier. Also it is a cross platform tool. Means one can use it on MS-Windows - Linux - MacOS Windows users use KeePass	http://keepassx.sourceforge.net/ http://keepass.info
OpenOffice	This is a complete office suite. In most of the Linux distros it is already shipped. It is also download able for windows users. Its Open Source and Free. It supports MS file formats as well. Open office runs on MS-Windows - Linux and MacOS platorms.	http://www.openoffice.org
Firefox	One of the most secure and reliable browser. It has many features like plugin supports, has tons of add ons and many themes to fit your taste. It runs on MS-Windows - Linux and MacOS platform. Firefox is also less prone for virus attacks. This browser is also Open sourced and Free!	http://www.mozilla.org
Thunderbird	Feature reach Email client that is slick and gives a homely feel. It is also lot secure then Outlook mail client. It supports addons and theme support. Runs on MS-Windows, Linux and MacOS. Its Open Source and Free email client.	http://www.mozilla.org
Nvu	Html editor for MS-Windows, Linux and MacOS platform. This site I have created using NVU and OpenOffice html editor. Unfortunately the development of this editor has stopped yet its really good free editor.	http://www.nvu.com
VLC	VLC is a cross platform video player that runs on MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS, BSD, BEOS and even on mobile devices. VLC can play almost all the media formats. It can play Video CD's, DVD's and also provides plugins for the browsers.	http://www.videolan.org/
IZArc	This is a archive utility that supports many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. This utility runs on MS-Windows platform. Unlike the popular WinZip utility which is not free, IZArc is completly free utility.	http://www.izarc.org/
PDFCreator	Create PDF files from almost any Windows program. This tool works as printer to your system and creates PDF files on fly. This tool is free and runs only on Windows.	http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
MyLib	If you have lot of CD's DVD's and remembering what you keep where is a big task for you then you should use this software. This package creates offline images of media directory structure and allows you to search any packages,files in these media database. Ofcourse in order to run any application you need to install the actual CD/DVD but this package reduces searching to great extent.	http://linesoft.org
OpenProj	If you want Microsoft Project and want a free alternative to the same then OpenProj is perfect alternative to the same. It can effortsly open/edit the MSProject files (mpp). OpenProj is developed in java and requires a jre installed on your machine. It runs on Windows / Linux / MacOSX	http://openproj.org or http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/
PDF Viewer	I hate the memory hogger Acrobat Reader from Adobe. I always prefer lightweight tools and PDF viewer by docu-track is very light on memory and is very fast to open pdf files. Also it never installs any extra startup services like Adobe do. This reader is Free and runs only on Windows platform.	http://www.docu-track.com/
Chat / Messengers	Again I cannot stand memory hogger Yahoo messenger, also most of the people use yahoo messenger, msn messenger and google talk, So people end up installing 3 applications when a application like Pidgin can help you chat to MSN,Yahoo and Google Talk people at the same time and complete your basic chatting need. Yes there are limitations to the Pidgin you cannot do the voice and video chat. There are some hacks/plugins but I don't think they are easy for a common man. Point here is if your need is limited to chat and want to save system resources then Pidgin is made for you. Pidgin runs on Windows and Linux platform.	http://www.pidgin.im/
Windows Maintenance	Glary is a freeware system optimization tool. It keep your system fine tuned all the time - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Helps you to undelete files deleted accidently. Also has registry optimizer.	http://www.glaryutilities.com/

Speed up the OpenOffice in Windows and Linux

2009-10-06T08:28:00.004+05:30

You need to goto Tools-> Options –> memory from menu

We need to reduce the number of Undo steps from 100 to 30 steps.
We need to increase the Graphics cache from 6 MB to 128 MB
We need to Set Memory per object to 20MB from the default of 5MB
We also need to Set the number of objects under Cache for inserted objects at 20.

and finally we need to Check OpenOffice.org Quickstarter. This option is available under Windows and Ubuntu Open office for sure but for other OS and distro it may or may not be available.

Now start the Openoffice and notice the blistering startup speed of all apps.

This entire hack has been provided by www.zolved.com

Music ID3 Tagging and Music Organizers

2009-10-06T08:23:00.005+05:30

ID3 Tagging for International Music
If you are a music lover with large music collection on your hard drive, I’m sure organizing huge music is a tough task. There are so many music players and organizers but honestly speaking after trying many of them I could not find any one that really works. Every music organizer had some or other limitation or something that did not clicked my need. I have Creative Zen Vision M 30GB player and I wanted something that will manage my music player too.

Features I want in player:

1. It should update ID3tags including international languages. Somehow ID3tags are all English centric. If you want to only listen to Hindi songs of Rock Gener there should be way to tackle that cause when you are listening to Hindi songs you don’t want suddenly English song to be played. Same goes for other languages like German, French and so on…
2. Tagging of music is not accurate. I have tried tagging music from MusicBrainz, Amazon but they are accurate for 60% cases on English music but not on Hindi, Marathi songs. Also I found in lot of cases they destroyed the music that I had tagged.
3. Some players do not give full flexibility of organizing music in folder – file structure and naming the files as per the users wish.
4. I wanted to maintain and create auto play lists using the tags – Ex: Hindi songs – Can contain songs by Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle mainly songs from 70’s & 80’s while I need playlist of New Hindi with songs from Udit Narayan, Shreya Ghosal, mainly songs from year 90’s and 2000.
5. I also have “Natya sageet”, “Classical vocal”, “Classical instrumental”, “Dramas" by V.P.Kale, P.L.Deshpande its hard to tag such music for existing music organizers and players.
6. I also wanted album art to be properly placed
7. Finally I wanted to manage my Creative Zen with the same program that can place music in correct folder, transfer music, create folder structure, put the album art, maintain my music rating and also report music that I’m playing on player and on my PC to last.fm

I have seen these all requirements on so many forums and it seems nobody has found a accurate player. All they get in answer is how other users are maintaining music using multiple programs and having own way of tagging. People with 5000+ music its a nightmare to manage the music.

I tried following players:

On Windows I tried: iTunes, WinAmp, MediaMonkey Freeware, JetAudio, CreativeMedia Source, Window Media Player, Songbird and non of them give accurate data.

On Linux I tried: Amarok, Banshee they lack many of the basic features I want.

1. Songbird 1.2.0:
Dis-adv: MTP Sync issues with Creative Zen, In many cases I received blank auto playlist with only numbers in playlist and with some XML errors ( Bug no: 15324 http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15324 )
Adv: Organizes the Files and Folder as per your wish. Ex: I sorted my folders as Genre/Album/Artist-Title.extension, inbuilt last.fm song scrobbling, means you don't need to run any external last.fm external scrobbling.

2. Windows Media Player 11:
Dis-adv: File-Folder organization has limitations. Cannot organize as per your wish. Auto tagging feature destroyed many of my correct ID3 tags
Adv: Sync well to MTP device, Fetches Album art, By default available with Windows OS

3. Winamp 5.56:
Dis-adv: Do not offer media organizer, you cannot ask winamp to restructure your files on drive.
Adv: One of the best ID3 tagger that comes closer to 70% accurate in identifying songs. Also quite accurate in tagging Marathi and Hindi language songs.

4. iTunes 8:
Dis-adv: Do not offer sync option for Creative Zen only limited to apple devices, Do not offer File naming option
Adv: Offers good Folder organizer however do not offer File naming option. Fetches album art.

5. MediaMonkey Freeware:
Dis-adv: Last.fm scrobbling seems buggy. Do not offer auto File-Folder organization in Freeware version
Adv: The features required for good media organizer seems to be present but only in Paid version
Correction Feb 2010: MediaMonkey last.fm scrobbling is working fine. Also I figured out how to use auto music arrange feature in MediaMonkey. Seems MediaMonkey is the best media player on Windows Platform.

6. Amarok:
Amarok 2 is still under development and new interface is quite confusing. Also you need to be on Linux to use this program.

7. Banshee:
Banshee is developed using Mono on Linux and for Macs. Offers good File-Folder management but do not offer auto ID3 tagger also is not available on Windows OS.

8. Creative Media Source:
Dis-adv: Do not offer File-Folder Organizer. Do not offer auto id3 tagger. Do not find duplicate Files. Has a very very confusing interface. Dont have last.fm scrobbling option or plugin.

Ubuntu 9.04 - A Complete OS

2009-05-05T00:59:00.019+05:30

New Ubuntu 9.04: I installed a fresh Ubuntu 9.04 on my HP dv8305us notebook. To my surprise my ATI display card was configured out of the box! Later on I found that all though it has configured my ATI Readon XPress 200M display card out of the box it has S-Video issue and I cannot attach my laptop to TV. Well the new Ubuntu is quote slick and boots really fast. All credit goes to Debian developers. I also took this opportunity for rearrange my Creative Zen. I gathered all my data into one single folder [Documents/Music/Movies/PDFs/Pictures]. I decided to remove one of the hard disk from my old PC, that has 400 GB size. So I brought a IDE to USB case to fitted my disk inside the same.

Formatting external USB Disk: I installed a GParted from synaptic and created 4 ext3 primary partitions on the drive. Ubuntu instantly detected them and loaded all the partitions. When I tried to copy data from my backup folder on the drive it failed due to permission issue. These drives are mounted by root user and by root group so user tushar cannot have permission to write to these drives. Well I created the required folder called Movies on one of the drive with “sudo mkdir Movies” command and then I changed the permissions on the folder with “sudo chmod 777 Movies” that all! I repeated the same procedure for all three drives and copied the data. Installation of Ubuntu on my laptop was very fast, took around 15-20 minutes. I created following layout “/” partition with 8 GB size, swap partition with 1 GB size and remaining all for my /home partition. I feel this way of partitioning can help a lot if I decided to upgrade Ubuntu to next version by making a clean installation. During next installations all I need to make sure is to format the “/” partition while making sure NOT TO FORMAT /home

The next thing I did was install all updates reported by the update manager, followed by “Hardware Drivers” wizard from System->Administration and installed the Wireless drivers for Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g. Well I did not do anything other than clicking on Activate button! Ubuntu[Linux] has made drastic improvements in recent years.

I tweaked my Firefox - I started by installing flash plugin for my Firefox. Followed by aeroMp3 and Album-Cover-Art search plugin and I made my default search engine as “Zuula”. Zuula provides Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live and many more on single page. Now it was time to install KeePassX to manage all my passwords, I always prefer KeePassX over any other password manger due to its ability to run on Windows and Linux with the same password file.

Major advantage of being Free and using Microsoft Windows: I installed Virtualbox so that I can install my licensed Windows XP inside Ubuntu. Just in case If I need Windows. Here I encounter one major problem! Windows XP denied to activate, because I have activated the same Windows xp copy on my laptop 30 times! Ofcourse it is right cause I was playing with my OS for quite some time in 3 years. I was experimenting with Linux and Windows and every time I remove Linux I installed Windows back and activated it. To resolved the issue I called Microsoft support for the first time and I was asked multiple questions from support person on - where I'm installing this XP? Why I activated the same copy for 30 times? They matched my hardware and gave me a new unique number and told me that hence forth everytime I reinstall Windows XP I need to call them and get the new number. I did not like this Idea but I don't have choice! I also asked them If they can reset my installation/activation count but the support person said it is not possible! That's the major difference between free software and proprietary software. Even when you have purchased a licensed OS and when you are reinstalling the software on same machine you have restriction of 30 activation.... after which you have to call everytime to Microsoft for activation on same PC! Too bad Microsoft!!

Music: Creative Zen Vision : M 30GB and Ubuntu 9.04 I formatted my creative zen after 3 years! I also reset all the settings to factory defaults. The good news for Creative Zen Vision owners is now you can manage your zen really well in Ubuntu 9.04. I used following applications/tools to manage the zen and I use last.fm to discover new songs and I scrobble songs all the time to last.fm from synaptic installed following plugins/tools/applications

1.Ubuntu-restricted-extra for playing encrypted dvd's, windows fonts, mp3, flash and many more
2. I use Banshee media player that manages creative Zen really well. After checking 3 features from preference
a.“Copy files to media folder when importing”
b.“Write meta data to files”
c.“Update file and folder names”
During my music import it organized all my music folders based on Album names and inside them with Artist – Title. This was really helpful as I continued to modify the id3tags in these files it actually organized/moved files to appropriate folders and renamed files!
3.Everytime I modified my files on local machine it also updated my Zen with the same! Yes it deleted the tracks from Zen if I remove same from local PC, truly kept my Zen in sync. I use Banshee to scrobble songs to last.fm The best part of Banshee is it suggested me really nice songs bashed on my music taste using last.fm.
4.I also installed “MusicBrainz Picard” to tag my mp3 files. Initially I was not clear how to use this tool but I found a beautiful link http://musicbrainz.org/doc/HowToTagFilesWithPicard specially designed for impatient people like me!
5.I installed 2 more players to support my video needs – VLC and Mplayer
6.Until now songs I listen on my Creative Zen were never scrobbled to the last.fm but now I can! Thanks to the tool called “mtp-lastfm”.
Following are the links to download the same.
1. http://github.com/woodenbrick/mtp-lastfm/tree/master
2. https://launchpad.net/~wodemoneke/+archive/ppa

Apart from the above I installed following into Gnome
a. Netspeed Gnome applet
b. Polycarbonate theme to improve the look and feel of controls
c. Unofficial Tango Icons
d. ClearlooksWithACherryOnTop Window decoration
e. Gparted
f. Pidgin Guification pluggin
g. Samba to share files

Ubuntu 8.04 HP Pavilion a Perfect match

2009-03-23T08:36:00.011+05:30

Ubuntu 8.04 HP Pavilion dv8305

Before I begin my writing on "Ubuntu 8.04 on HP Pavilion dv8305 laptop" let me put the output of lspci command that gives detail information of hardware present on my laptop. So that the people who may not have exact laptop model but exact hardware may able to refer to this post to solve the issues.

One of the key hardware blockers in past were Display card [ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M] and Broadcom BCM 4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless card.

Ubuntu 8.04 is one of the finest Ubuntu release made by Canonical. Install it and most of your hardware is detected! Yes all you need to do is from menu goto "System -> Hardware Driver"
and Check the boxes for ATI display card and Broadcom card. After you check the Boradcom card wait for couple of minutes a window will be shown that may ask you whether to fetch firmware. Just check the same and wait for download. Internet connection is must for both these drivers.
Thats it! your ATI card & Broadcom wireless will work like a charm! Yes 8.10 has been released however users who would like to stick one release for longer period should install 8.04.2 instead of 8.10. I found 8.10 quite buggy and decided to skip it instead I'll directly jump from 8.04 to 9.04.
Add following application to make life easier on linux
1. VLC & Mplayer to play video formats
2. Banshee 1.4.3 for all your Mp3, Last.fm needs
3. KeePassX for your week memory and password needs
4. FrostWire for all your P2P needs
5. I removed OpenOffice 2.4 and replaced it with 3.0.1
6. MusicBrainz PICard and EasyTAG for mp3 tagging
7. GNomad 2 for my Creative Zen 30 player
8. Acrobat reader 8
9. DFO for Flickr Photo management
10. Pidgin with Guification plugin for all my MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk needs
11. GIP as my IP calculator

I'm sure there are tonns of application that people will suggest but above listed one satisfy most of my needs.

KDE 4.2

Mean time I also tried the Kubuntu with KDE 4.2 on my other desktop. I must say KDE is gonna catch GNome napping! With every KDE release its getting stronger and stronger. I was KDE fan for long time on Fedora. I used KDE from Redhat 6 to Fedora 5 release it was nice journey of KDE 2 to KDE 3. However KDE 4.2 is still not ready to take on GNome. However KDE 4.3 onwards it will slowly but surely take the battel with GNome. I moved to GNome due to Ubuntu 6.06 release.
If you wish to try KDE 4.2 I wont recommend KUbuntu to be distro! Yes! There are really nice alternatives that give KDE a better value than KUbuntu. Like: PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Knopix, Fedora.
Looking at the KDE progress I wont be surprise If I move to KDE 4.3 on my HP Laptop by year end. GNome needs to do some major improvements in order to fight back. The new GNome 2.26 update has Horizontal volume meter!!!! I wont call it exciting improvement so its better GNome check its feature box again.

Intel 845 Freezing issue with Ubuntu 8.10

2008-11-04T00:50:00.004+05:30

People with Intel 845 motherboards and onboard video drivers may face a issue if they login into system on Ubuntu 8.10. Also people running live CD may not able to actually run Ubuntu 8.10 as it will freeze in live CD mode. So people who wants to install Ubuntu 8.10 on Intel 845 must select the "install Ubuntu" option when booted from live CD instead of "Try and Install Ubuntu" option.
Once Ubuntu is installed on boot try to login if your login freezes then press reset button and wait again for login screen. At login screen select the "Fail safe Terminal" from session section from your lower left corner and login. Now type "gconf-editor" and once the editor is launched select the "desktop->gnome->application->window_manager" now from right side of window edit the values for current and default by removing "/usr/bin/compiz" with "/usr/bin/metacity" and then reboot.
Now from login screen again select the GNome session instead of "Fail Safe Terminal" and now login with your username and password.

Why I like Ubuntu over Fedora!

2008-09-16T23:32:00.020+05:30

I run Ubuntu on my Laptop. On my desktop I decided to give a try with a Fedora 9. Just to know what all has changed. I started my Linux usage with Redhat 5, back in 1998. I was a great fan of Redhat and moved my entire company from Windows to Linux back in 2001. Redhat 9 was one of the supreme stable system I saw from Redhat. Things suddenly changed when I received Fedora core 1 in my hand. As a system admin of growing company I found it hard to deal with suddenly growing crashes and dependencies thrown by the Fedora. I had no choice but to continue using Fedora cause Debian was not keeping its self updated with the latest packages. I continued to use Fedora Cores with every update. Fedora Core 3, 4, 5. It became even complicated for me to maintain multiple versions of Fedora. It was hard to first identify which Fedora version I'm using. Fedora core 5 really checked my patience. It took me 2 complete days to install Asterisk PBX system by resolving all dependencies because Asterisk PBX was not available in yum! By now my organization had around 50+ desktops running Linux on desktops and test machines.
It was during 2004-2005, I came across a link of Ubuntu during that period I ordered Free Ubuntu CD's... tried it but was not convinced of jumping on to the same. The release of Ubuntu 6.06 I tried again and was really impressed with its slick packaging. The most important thing was I install the Ubuntu on one of my test machine and opened the Synaptic... searched for Asterisk ... found the same ... marked it .. install ! It took Ubuntu 6.06 around 6-7 minutes to resolve all the dependencies and install a package on Ubuntu 6.06 with latest packages!!! I was pleased to the limit. I tried more packages with Ubuntu install/uninstall it was breeze. I also tried apt-get system and it was super fast when I compared it with the yum. On most of the occasions I had terrible experience with yum. Example: Every time I type "yum install asterisk" it used to take 2-3 minutes doing some updates and at the end used to display "Nothing to do!" As against on ubuntu I rarelly came accross package not found issue!
Well update manager in Fedora was also mess... it used to take hours to update the system. After using Ubuntu on one system I was fully convinced that this is the distro I want to go with, if I have to reduce the administrative task. One day I installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my senior's laptop. First he had demanded Fedora 5 but I told him give a Ubuntu try! He agreed!! He used it... and came jumping to me that his Wireless card of laptop is working in this Ubuntu after following the Forum steps. He was hardcore icewm fan he asked me how can I install icewm on this Ubuntu? I said lets try following command.

sudo apt-get install icewm

It worked! He was watching all the time... it took hardely 2 minutes for Ubuntu to install icewm, update the gdm login manager to include icewm into sessions. After that day that engineer always insisted to me that he wants Ubuntu on his all test machines. Also when his junior folks saw him using Ubuntu it became trend of removing Fedora and install Ubuntu. There were more discussion of Ubuntu and people started waiting for Ubuntu release!
All I needed was to convince one senior user to use Ubuntu and entire company started to sing Ubuntu! There were few servers I had configured back in 2001-2002 that were still running Redhat 9. It was time to retire them. I naturally went for only 2 choices on server side.
1. CentOS
2. Ubuntu server edition.

After that I saw news of Fedora 6, 7, 8 releasing but I never looked at them. Today I thought of checking Fedora 9 to see how its doing after 3 long years. Installation on my Pentium 2 GHz PC went pretty well. I have 40 GB HDD with 512 MB of RAM. I selected the GNome as my desktop on Fedora 9. Logged in system. Gnome on both system looks and behaves same so there was not much to complain!
During the installation I skipped OpenOffice installation on my Fedora system to complete the installation quickly. Now I'm trying everything to install Openoffice using my Fedora DVD. If I try to install using rpm command there are hell lot of dependency packages to be install. If I try yum localinstall openoffice.org-core-xxxx.rpm then it takes only that package from the DVD repo directory but rest of the packages from internet! I checked "Software source" menu from System->Administration but I didnot find any way of adding my DVD into sources there.
The good thing I noticed in Fedora 9, it also has "Add/Remove Software". Although it is extremely slow in searching and fetching packages compared to Ubuntu.
System update runs very slowly and never shown what exactly its updating and searching. It runs a scrollbar for 15-20 minutes and at the end comes up with message 65 new updates 2xx security updates are available! Since the Fedora 9 is shipped with Firefox 3.0 beta it was freezing all the times. To install the latest Firefox I may had to deal with 200+ packages. I did not find any option of de selecting packages from the update. Even though i have checked updates 5 minutes ago, if you try to check again then it takes 10-15 minutes again to tell you the update number available!
Because of Freezing Firefox beta version I decided to download and install Seamonkey. To my surprise I faced problem with libstdc++5 and I could not find the required "compat-libstdc++" package in yum. I had to download the same from web. I remember this same package in Ubuntu I was able to install using apt-get.
My experience with Fedora 9 was not so good after 3 years! I was quite disappointed with the package management handled by the yum. On the same desktop I felt that Fedora 9 was not as fast as Ubuntu 8.04. One of the Major blocker in Fedora adoption is its package management system. Today I'm running more than 120+ desktop, laptop, test systems and Servers on 32 bit and 64 bit Ubuntu!
I'm naturally complaining about yum. Fedora's out of the box experience with package management is hampering due to the same. I really wonder why Fedora is sticking with yum.
Only good thing I'm missing in Ubuntu is that Fedora offers is Kickstart system for installations over http, nfs.

Looking at the received comments I decided to update my blog page to show how easy it is to add required packages in the repositories and make end users life easy and enhance experience. The trick has been successful on ubuntu, check the simple dialog shown in the screenshot. These small small changes has made Ubuntu very successful.

Here is a cool link that covers the packages available in Fedora and Ubuntu
http://www.go2linux.org/debian-ubuntu-centos-fedora-comparison

Fedora.- (Repositories enabled are: core, extras, updates, livna)

The number of packages reported by yum list all command
is: 7334

CentOS.- (Repositories enabled are: kbs-CentOS-Extras, update, rpmforge, base, contrib, addons, extras)

The number of packages reported by yum list all command is: 5785

Ubuntu.- (Repositories enabled are: main, restricted, security, universe, multiverse)

The number of packages reported by apt-cache stats command
is: 24088

Debian.- (Repositories enabled are: main, security)

The number of packages reported by apt-cache stats command
is: 23851

Here is a link that proves yum is a garbage software as of Fedora 10

Follow the link for "apt-get / synaptic having fedora's yum for breakfast...!"

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7382/1.html

Looking at the Fedora's idot fanboys comments, I decided I'll block the comments for this post. Fedora boys dont understand the basic principle of "freedom to choose" and they are trying to convience me to use Fedora! Good luck with their Fedora effort.

Btw: I've moved on to KUbuntu now since KDE is now nicely shaping up.

On my desktop I'm using debian, and on my laptop I'm using Kubuntu's latest offering.

Debian installation with icewm window manager

2008-05-28T01:16:00.019+05:30

Follow these steps if you wish to install debian with minimum apps and with icewm window manager.

Debian installation

Steps:
Insert the Debian DVD 1 and boot the machine from DVD.
Follow the screne instructions and create the required disk setup
During installation debian will ask for mirror to select, select the nearest mirror.
It may update the apt and fetch the security updates.
When it will ask for package selection, only select the Laptop and Base System modules, deselecting the Desktop enviornment.
After the instalaltion is over boot in to debian. You will boot into text mode.

Login as root and create a copy of the sources.lst from /etc/apt folder.
cp sources.list sources.list_ORIGINAL

comment the web resources from sources.list file. Incase if you are on low network bandwidth. [ We will tell debian to install all packges from DVD ]
insert the DVD1 into drive

apt-get update

apt-get install xserver-xorg mdetect xfonts-base xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfs xresprobe xserver-xorg-core discover

apt-get install icewm esound menu esound-clients aterm xterm firefox xutils xfonts-cyrillic fontconfig libmyspell3c2 sudo

Configure network interface
vim /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Add apt reposository
apt-get install netselect netselect-apt

execute following command to identify the fastest mirror to you
netselect ftp.debian.org http.us.debian.org ftp.iitm.ac.in
using the fastest mirror lets update the /etc/apt/source.list

vim /etc/apt/source.list
deb http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib

save the file

apt-get update

For AMD Turion & Intel Centrino processors
Amd Turion 64 bit basically runs in 3 modes. I've AMD 1.8 GHz processor that runs in 3 modes. By default processor always runs in 800MHz when running application hits the 800MHz boundry it jumps to 1.6 GHz and when even that boundry is hit, it jumps to 1.8 GHz. The advantage is huge power saving with this type if cpu speed change and eventually giving more battery life on laptops.
I'm running debian Linux that doesn't install the package required to do this CPU speed shift.
Running following command to install the required package.

apt-get install powersaved

To install the grub-splashimage in debian

cd /boot/grub/
mkdir splashimages
apt-get install grub-splashimages
ln -s splashimages/dunes.xpm.gz splash.xpm.gz
update-grub

Incase if you want USB devices to be detected automatically
apt-get install hotplug
NOTE: Debian may upgrade your kernel, after installation of the kernel make sure you reboot immediately.

How to install KeePass X in debian
apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-gui libpng3
Get the debian package from http://www.keepassx.org/downloads
dpkg -i KeePassX-0.2.2.deb

Install BUM to control your services
apt-get install bum

Ubuntu tips - No Splash

2008-03-06T18:38:00.007+05:30

No Bootsplash at the boot time in Ubuntu 7.10 ?

Hardware: ATI Readon XPress 200M
Ubuntu: 7.10 Gutsy

Here is the solution... this worked for me on HP dv8000z laptop may work for you

1. sudo vim /etc/usplash.conf
# Usplash configuration file
#xres=1280
#yres=1024
xres=1024
yres=768

2. Add vga=791 to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
OLD Line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=20d06cf5-60a8-4cf3-b9ef-ce5204fcdc86 ro quiet splash

NEW Line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=20d06cf5-60a8-4cf3-b9ef-ce5204fcdc86 ro quiet splash vga=791

3. sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r` # In my case 2.6.22-14-generic

4. Reboot the machine !

How to install Atheros wireless card on CentOS 5

2008-02-22T18:19:00.004+05:30

How to install Atheros wireless card on CentOS 5

1. Execute lspci command and check for the Atheros card is listed in the list
2. Install the ATrpms signature first from http://atrpms.net/install.html
a. rpm –import http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
3. Update the /etc/yum.conf file as per the instructions on the page http://atrpms.net/install.html

[atrpms]
name=CentOS $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1
4. Install madwifi using yum
a. yum install madwifi
5. Reboot the machine
6. Execute the iwconfig to check if the card has been detected
7. Crate the /etc/wap_supplicant.conf file
Network={
ssid=”NETWORK_SSID”
psk=”password”
}
8. Start the wpa_supplicant
"wpa_supplicant –c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf –iath0 -Dmadwifi -B"
9. Start the dhclient with the command "dhclient ath0"

Customising Firefox with themes and extensions

2007-11-20T08:34:00.009+05:30

Firefox offers a great customizing capability. Once you download the browser all you need is extensions to match your requirement.

Following extensions I suggest

1. Flashblock - Block the annoying flash advertisements, a button will replace the blocked flash component. If you wish to play it just click on the button.

2. Download Statusbar - I hate the window that is opened by the Firefox when we download something. Cause we then have to clear that window and close that window. So a solution is Download Statusbar! it shows a small bar at the bottom of the browser and you can monitor the download. It also shows the download speed, time remaining.
String you need to add to this extension once rebooted your firefox:
jpg, jpeg, png, gif, exe, zip, bin, com, doc, pdf, arj, lha, bat, tar, tgz, wal, wmv

3. Foxmarks Bookmark - Keep on bookmarking the sites you like and with this extension you will never have to worry to carry them in office or home. Just make sure you have installed this extension. It will mainly bookmark the sites. You can also access the bookmarks from the foxmarks web site. Unlike its competitors you dont need to install any toolbar for this.

4. Fasterfox - Yah... its a performance enhancement for firefox... it will speed up our browser a bit. Also it shows the time required to fetch the web page.

5. Fission - This extension will give your firefox a progress bar in addressbar... Yes! its a copy of safari from MacOS. You can install it from here...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1951

Themes:
1. iAqua - I just love this firefox theme you can get the theme here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5327

2. Macfox II - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3174

Configuring Bsnl broadband with Netgear DG834G

2007-09-07T00:34:00.002+05:30

Configuring Bsnl broadband with Netgear DG834G

I recently purchased NETGEAR ADSL wireless router. I had terrible time in configuring the same because I was not aware what exact values BSNL broadband requires. This blog should help users to configure the connection irrespective of what router they use at home.

1. Configure your machine to fetch IP address via dhcp. Once IP is received point your browser to 192.168.0.1.
2. Login to the device with user name as "admin" and password as "password" [ This is the default on Netgear ]
3. Goto "Basic settings" and select the PPPoE
4. In login details supply user name as "username@dataone"
5. Your Password
6. Keep the service name empty
7. Check the appropriate radio buttons to get the IP and DNS values from ISP and check the NATTING
8. Now click on left panel for the "ADSL settings"
9.

Multiplexing Method
VPI
VCI
DSL Mode

10. Apply the changes and you are ready to browse over the wired internet

Mounting Windows drives in Linux

2007-03-15T07:07:00.001+05:30

How to mount windows partition in Linux

As root user execute the following commands on shell
If you are Ubuntu user, you can use sudo word before each command instead of login as root

Step 1

Command: fdisk -l
output:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 5099 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 5165 9729 36668362+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 5100 5164 522112+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Note: NTFS partition shown is windows drive, same way you may see FAT32 or VFAT in list if you have more drives with FAT32 partition.

Step 2

Command: mkdir /mnt/cdrive
Command: mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/cdrive

Step 3

Command: cd /mnt/cdrive
Command: ls -l

You should see the windows drive listing, repeat the same procedure for other drives with different directories

Wireless broadcom card on HP Pavilion dv8305z

2006-11-07T20:21:00.001+05:30

*Follow this doc on your own risk. I've installed the Ubuntu on HP Pavilion dv8305us notebook.

Create backup and restore for Windows OS
First of all create the recovery disk of your HP Pavilion dv8000z notebook. You will need 4 blank dvd's. Boot into Media center and goto HP program items and create the dvd's. Remember it is going to take lot of time to create 4 dvd's be patient. Once you have created the 4 dvd's keep them in safe place.

Getting Ubuntu
Download the Ubuntu 6.10 CD iso image from http://www.ubuntu.com and burn it on CD or if you already have Ubuntu CD keep the disk ready. Insert the disk into drive and boot the notebook.

Installing Ubuntu
Ubuntu should start :) from CD. Now click on install icon from Ubuntu desktop to install Ubuntu. Remove the additional/extra partition created by HP for rescue purpose... noting to worry we have already created rescue disk. During the installation process you will get the option of drive to install Ubuntu... there remove the rescue partition and create the swap space double or atleast the same size of RAM and remaining as file system ext3. Now follow the screens to install Ubuntu. Remove the CD when asked by installer and you are ready to go!

How Configure Internet
1. If you are in corporate network all you need to do is plug in you network cable to your notebook and you should be able to access Internet if your company is running dhcp server.
2. If you need pppoe connection the run the following command to configure the pppoe service.
sudo pppoeconf
and follow the instructions.
Once done you can connect using sudo pon dsl-provider command

Remember: How to add new applications
Goto Menu Applicaions -> Add/Remove Applications
If the application is not listed [Inside Synaptic settings you can enable more repositories]
Goto Menu System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

Configuring your Broadcom 802.11b/g wireless Wifi Network card
1. On edgy ndiswrapper-utils is broken, so goto shell and type or from Synaptic search following:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.8
sudo mv /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper_BACKUP
sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper-1.8 /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper

2. Lets remove the existing mess
sudo apt-get remove ndiswrapper-utils
sudo rm -r /etc/ndiswrapper/
sudo rm -r /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

3. Untar the bcm4318-nm.tar.gz script in one folder you can get it by clicking here
mkdir x
cd x
tar xvfz ../bcm4318-nm.tar.gz

4.Remove the wifidrivers.tar.gz file and copy the drivers from your Windows partition which you specified at the Ubuntu installation time. In my case it was /media/hda1/SWSETUP/WLAN/bcmwl5.sys and inf I copied these files to Desktop

cd x
rm wifidrivers.tar.gz
mkdir drivers
cp ~/Desktop/bcmwl5.inf drivers
cp ~/Desktop/bcmwl5.sys drivers
tar cvfz wifidrivers.tar.gz drivers

5. sudo ./ndiswrapper_setup
Now your wireless light will glow :)

6. Steps to create wpa_supplicant if you are using WPA, RSN authentication
On shell type the following
wpa_passphrase SSID PASSWORD
Copy the out put to file
sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
and paste the output. Comment the encrypted passkey with # and now add following lines
network={
ssid="SSID"
scan_ssid=1
proto=WPA RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk=PASSWORD
}

7. Now add the following lines into interfaces
sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
pre-up wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dndiwrapper -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

8. Now use the GUI tool to configure
Goto Menu System -> Administration -> Networking
Now again configure the eth1 interface with ESSID and Passkey and check the box to start.

Congratulations! If everything goes well... then your Wireless Broadcom card is working on HP Pavilion dv8000z.

Configuring ATI Display card with DRI support
My ATI card was working well with Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper drake) but after I have moved to Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy eft) I still have not managed to configure the Display to DRI.

HP Pavilion dv8305us, dv8000z has following hardware:
Processor: Turion 64 1.8 GHz
Hard Disk: 80 GB
Wireless card: Broadcom - BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g
Network card: Realtec RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
Display: ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)