Project Cloud Tab

This is my idea of next generation tablet please excuse me for my bad english.

I was imagining how much tablet could be cheaper. Of course the cheapest conventional tablet is Akash Tab. But the problem is that it has the software that is heavy on its processor. To overcome this problem I thought of the sitution where a low end computer do a heavy job . So I could thought of OPERA MINI mobile browser and thin clients.
Now, Opera mini preformats the pages in their servers before displaying it in the browser . The result is you could view the web pages properly that would have not been possible in a conventional way secondly, it lowers the data usage.
Similary, thin clients have a little processing power of their own they depend on the server to which they are connected.
So, A Cloud Tab should be like a thin client and running opEra mini like software. Therefore it should have a processor and RAM similar to Akash or can be little inferior. We dont need any local memory for storage data all we need is a BIOS/ROM chip that would just start the device and connect it to main server. But the tab should have good Wifi/3G/4G connection so that it could boot wirlessly from the main server. We also dont need any bluetooth for file sharing locally it can be done in cloud from the interface. The OS should be like a browser and the the main server will responsible for processing and everything else. As far choice of software only free software wll be used.
The Tab part over There should be bunch of servers from where tab will boot. There will be an account for an user on starting and logging in the device it will give that users his/her personalised settings and interface. Another advantage of this system is a single tab could be shared or leased . Now if a person wants to save anything in the tab it will just be copied to server account of the user thats not something new.
The main disadvantage of this device that the service provider have to set up additional servers and good connection in order of a few Mbps that will be huge inital investment but the tablet will cost very less to end user in order of few thousand rupees or the service provider even could lease the device for a few hundred rupees and could charge for network and servers. But, if cloudTab is mass produced it will be eventually become cheaper than Akash. But to for cloud tab to be commercially successful it should also have good security and data encryption also it should tightly integrate with some social network that will respect users privacy yet functionall. Also there is a need of many apps.
Thus, this tablet is not only about developing cheap tab but also cheap yet fast net connection , application and thus a whole GNU TAB ecosystem that will empower the education and digital freedom of many.

Potential uses

It could be used in college campus or educational institutes and teachers and parents could control how and what should the student read write or access over the net.
Army could issue to each soldier to help him navigate, send commands and better situational awarness but if the device is lost it cannot be used ny enemy because doesnt have any local data or so and beside the device was cheap.
As a cheap ebook reader.
Now my biggest question how could i make this device ? I don know where to start from . Every suggestion will be welcomed.

Xubuntu 12.04 LTS After 6 months

I have been using Xubuntu 12.04 ever since it was released this april. Now its October and the newer version of Xubuntu is going to be released sooner. Now since Xubuntu is an long term support release therefore  I have to see how its performing

My OS information is

When I recently installed  Xubuntu on a friend’s computer it straight give 321 updates which are basically security and bugs fixes , Mozilla suite upgrade and here there some library upgrades.
But still Gimp is at 2.6 and XFCE at 4.8 which is little bit old.

 

Stability wise the system is absolutely stable and responsive. Therefore for those who needs a stable and modern operating system without much fuss Xubuntu 12.04 is highly recommended.

Thunar File Manager

Firefox 15

Gmusicbrowser

PCLinuxOS - So cool ice cubes are jealous

PCLinuxOS 2012.06 another member of GNU/Linux family but people who really care about free software shouldn't read this further because its contain many of non-free software and drivers.
So, people who are still here, PCLinuxOS is mandrake based distro and its a rolling release. It comes in KDE, XFCE, LXDE and Full Monty Desktop(KDE with lots of software and nice themeing). I have tested the LXDE  edition and till now I am having fantastic experience.
The iso is 641 MB the installation is fairly simple, boring and a hiccup(I have to restart installer once after selecting the drive). Then get into default desktop which is at 800x600 resolution then I have to manually set it to 1024x768

One thing I liked about PCLinuxOS is the  PCLinuxOS control center is like something you find in windoes .

As you cam see from the screenshot it has nicely categorized menus its much convenient. There is also a button on task bar called Configure your Desktop to configure desktop look and feel.

As far the choice of application comes it comes with a decent selection of apps the media codecs and flash worked out of the box. DeaDBeeF is the music player UMplayer is the default media player. There is also a format convertor.
In office you get Abiword, calibre, Evince ,Foxit(non-free), and libreoffice manger(to download and install libreoffice).
In Internet you get usual Firefox 13 pidgin sylpheed(email client), XChat and gFTP.
In graphics it has GIMP v2.6, gpic, ImageMagick, Xsane(scanning) and LRF viewer.
As far package management is concerned don't ask me its little bit complicated . There is synaptic package manger and installing software from other than official repos is not recommended (Apple like policy ...) although you can install .rpm packages check this.
For Nvidia user there is proprietary drivers and for ATI user there is fglrx drivers also I got realtek Ethernet drivers. One major problem I ran into is connecting through USB 3G modem. I first failed to connect via my NOKIA X6-00 but Huawei modem worked but still there is no Ubuntu like configuration Wizard and I have to figure everything manually.

Conclusion : PCLinuxOS gives you good out of the box experience and you can easily customize it easily. It looks great and also works great. If there is something like Software center it would be better but still everything works fine

PCLinuxOS Homepage

Fedora 17 XFCE

Fedora 17 XFCE is a rather nice GNU/Linux Operating System. For all of you who misses the classic look, feel work flow GNOME 2,  XFCE is a good choice. The Live session was smooth and then I clicked Install on Hard Drive and then Anaconda fired up and installtion was smooth yet boring.

The default wallpaper is the fireworks wallpaper that you are familiar with. The XFCE themeing is vanila but after a few minutes tweaking it was looking great. Stability wise rock solid stable. But it rather contain a rather boring set of applications. Music Player is Pragha and Media Player is Parole which will play none of your mp3 because it doesn't contain any propietary codecs. In Internet you get Firefox but you also get Midori which is yet another avatar chromium(I guess). You also  Claws mail , Remmina , Pidgin, transmission etc. In office application you get Abiword and Gnumeric.

Overall the system is stable with some rough edges

Adventures To XFCE

I have tested so much on myn computer that it has began to show symptoms of slowing down. So, I decided to get an GNU/Linux with an light weight desktop environment to suite my old PC. Now my PC is an 2005 LG MyPC with 2.66 GHz single core Celeron processor, 512Mb of  DDR RAM and 40Gb HDD I also have a partially working LG DVD RW therefore I have to boot using a pendrive thats, pretty old but running OK. I have also MS XP SP3 installed on it .

The choice of light weight desktop environments I have narrowed down to Lubuntu, Bodhi Linux, Sabayon 9 XFCE, Fedora 17 XFCE and Xubuntu 12.04 . Except Xubuntu and Fedora I have to download the OS es. My previous installation was Xubuntu 12.04 which liked very much but if I reinstalled it will give me straight 200MB download therfore I skiped it next is Fedora 17  Beefy Miracle but the XFCE edition I would like to say “The beef is half cooked”. From my previous installtion of Lubuntu-desktop on top of Xubuntu has made me feel that it is fast and
light, proprietary audio and video codecs are installed by default but it somewhat feels like old Ms 98 days so left it also. Bodhi Linux is good choice with E17 DE but but......... My Last choice is Sabayon 9 XFCE it is based on Gentoo its modular and simple(It is what I have read in Internet). It will be nice expedition to Sabayon because its different to what I have used before plus all the good internet reviews .Therefore I decided to download 1.48 GB iso.

One thing I must tell you what I fear is downloading OS from Internet because my Internet connection TATA GSM 2G gives me average 12KBps and that takes really long for an OS to be downloaded. So, I thought to upgrade to 3G . Now when it comes to choice of 3G we do not have to many choice especially when we are in tight budget. Thus I picked up Reliance 3G for Rs 450 which give me 2Gb X 3Months data dowloading and uploading . I started downloading uusing direct http download using Firefox’s download manager it was downloading at a rate of near abou 200KBps near about 60 MB Firefox notified Download completed. Ugh! it Failed Now I grabbed a torrent file and opened it using Transmission and if by magic it Shifted the Gears and picked up where firefox left with an average speed of 350KBps.

The Download completed now I prepared a bootable USB thumb drive using Unetbootin. The USB drive is an old 4Gb Moaserbaer drive. Next I rebooted and setiup the BIOS to boot from pendrive first and then I selected the ‘Default’ from unetbootin menu and it took me to a nice and sober desktop with a sabayon logo. It has full Libre-office suite,Midori web browser, but no email client( are you kidding 1.48 GB and no mail client ). then I clicked on the Disk logo called install it on a hard drive. The installer which some of you might be familiar is Fedora’s Anaconda installer but at the end installer hanged up and I have to reset and finally
Grub rescue>
I again booted the pendrive and choose ‘installer’ from the Unetbootin menu and this time the same Anaconda conquering the whole screen started  up and successfully completing the installation. Now when I rebooted  setting the bios there was GRUB with sabayon background booted up in login screen there  entered username and password and Whoos.  STOP!!
NOTHING HAPPENED no error or whatsoever the same login screen. I again entered username and password this time also nothing happened , I tried several times without success then I entered  user:root
password:*********
and set desktop from default to XFCE
and this time I entered into vanilla XFCE session and then again I booted the pendrive and this time I booted live CD and then clicked many times installer without any success I rebooted and choose text based installer and it started a semi-graphical installer almost same as Anaconda installer and I successfully logged in as sourav but without any ‘GRAPHICAL DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT’ only BASH. Frustrated I went to my MS XP and created USB bootable drive with a new pendrive  and This time everything went smooth and sccessfully logged into xfce the default themeing is nice and smooth.

Exploring the Sabayon it looked like Gnome2 or MATE  although it was XFCE 4.10 the latest and greatest. The mp3 and Videos played smooth like never before on any Linux I have tested.
Then the problems started I clicked the mail icon a small window popped up and asked me to choose the default mail client but sadly no mail client was there. Midori is a light browser somewhat trying to look like chromium and crashed a lot . Therefore I went to ‘RIGO’ application browser and downloaded Chromium straight from Italy. Rigo gave some funny notifications 'All the applications are updated, cool.’ when i accidental tried to stop it said 'HEY, HEY, HEY, Rigo is installing. The first run was OK but 2nd time it refused to launch. then I tried something terminalish I typed
emerge firefox
error no file found for “firefox”

Then I referred the Docs it was documentation of its eternal papa the Gentoo on which Sabayon is based and it was enormously long and techie and seemed like enormous mountain  neither I have the courage nor time to read it all . Therefore I grabbed the new USB drive and loaded it with Xubuntu 12.04 and  fired it up after installation i updated and with my new 3G connection in only 20 min  I got ready to run I also installed  XFCE 4.10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade






And After a few minutes of tweaking I got my favourite looking Desktop.

Lessons I learnt

Whenever upgrading or trying  a new distro always backup data and keeping a reliable booting media.
Sometime bad pendrives or CDs can break things into frustration.
Sabayon 9 XFCE is a  good distro but not at all for average users.

Note:

I concluded that my pendrive is faulty by retesting with fedora and ubuntu. Once in ubuntu a funny error popped out “Installer Crashed: The Hard disk is old or keep it in a cooler place.”
Sabayon 9 XFCE is good but Rigo is not upto mark thats not a problem an average user is not going to use it and Experienced user don’t need it

Disclaimer

I dont guarantee corectness of the data because I am also an average user.

Copyright

This doucument is in public domain is free to modify or redistribute for any purpose.

Fedora 17 vs Ubuntu 12.04

This article is a comparison between Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 17 and has been divided into six sections.

Installation
Installation process in ubuntu 12.04 is a breeze with ease and Fedora's Anaconda installer is also very easy.

Desktop Environment
Ubuntu 12.04 features Unity as default interface which looks absolutely cool and the lightdm login manager is also very nice. On the other hand Fedora 17 has Gnome 3.4 which gives macish look and feel. Both Ubuntu and fedora also have KDE, XFCE and LXDE although in ubuntu KDE distribution is known as Kbuntu, XFCE distro as Xubuntu and LXDE as Lubuntu.

Usability
Ubuntu has a number of usability enhancements and is fairly easy to use the new HUD enables us to search through nested menus, files etc. the dash contains lenses which easily lets us to search through music, video and other content both locally and online. On the other hand fedora has vanilla gnome 3.4 and doesn't give attention to usability and therefore bit hard to use for newbies.

Software
Ubuntu contains decently updated software and the famous Ubuntu software centre and 'apt' . Ubuntu one is included which gives you 5gb of online space. You can choose to install and mp3 and other codecs at the time of installation. Ubuntu 12.04 is very stable. While on fedora the software is more updated than ubuntu but there is no software centre you have just plain add remove software the software can also be installed through 'yum'. There are a number of enterprise level tools such as jboss, openstack, boxes etc are included. Fedora 16 & 17 is rock solid stable. Fedora don't contains any mono packages and propietary softwares.

Support
Though both ubuntu and fedora are community distro but are backed by Cannonical and Red Hat respectively. Ubuntu nonLTS version such as 11.10, 11.04, 12.10 are supported for 18 months while LTS edition such as 12.04 will be supported for 5 years. Fedora is supported for 13 months and the community support is also good.

Conclusion
Ubuntu and fedora are both nice distribution and worth trying . Ubuntu is best for new users and those who want a system for a long go . While Fedora is best for who have intermediate knowledge of linux and those who live bleeding edge and try out new tools.

Gimp 2.8 overview

GNU image manupulation program or GIMP is the open source and free spftware for editing, free-form drawing and liitle animation. It has relased its new version recently 2.8. I am not going in depth of feature it can be found here.
  Gimp 2.8 has come out after three years of hard work and its really worth waiting. Fotoshop which is another major propietary software has released the cs6 for all operting system except GNU/Linux. thanks to gimp 2.8 we no futher need to run fotoshop via wine.
  So, If you are using illeagal copy of fotoshop its right time to switch to GIMP and it will be great if you use gimp on a GNU/Linux distribution.

FREE SOFTWARE and WHY USE IT?

Those software which complies with the four laws are known as free software, they are as follows:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

 

Using Free Software has many benifits they are as follows:

• Free Software respects your freedom and privacy:  Free Software doesn't contain any spyware, trojans, viruses or adwares because anyone can see and edit the code therfore no single company or person has monopoly in it and hence cannot add anything wrong to it.
• Free Software is free of costs or costs very little:  Free software is available free of charge to anyone or available for liitle charge but making a software and hosting on internet costs, so always try donating some bucks.

Visit www.gnu.org for more information

SolusOS quick overview

SolusOS is a recently released linux distribution based on debian. Since it is debian based I thought it may be old enough but I was wrong inside the SolusOS it contains the newer linux kernel 3.3.6. The User Inerface or Desktop Environment is the old faithful Gnome one of my favourite and the menu is also nice and all the other gnome stuff is Ok. One thing I noticed is applications are also absolutely new and this is possible because of debian backports repos. All in all this is nice distro with mix of old and new. try out now.

BOSS LINUX

BOSS stands for Bharat operating system solution . It is an Indian linux distribution sponsered by government of India. It is made by Indians for the Indians. BOSS is based on debian stable. It is meant to lessen the digital divide of India.

Latest version of BOSS is 4.0 codenamed ''Savir'' it is made on top of Debian 6 squeeze. Therefore it features Gnome 2.30.2, KDE 4.4.5 and Linux Kernel 2.6.32. The office suite is Bharteeyaoo which is Indian version of OpenOffice and natively supports Indian languages. Apart from main edition there are also Educational, server edition, netbook edition are also available.

All in all BOSS is a nice distribution for Indian. It is meant to be used in Govt. Office and education institutions but they still use old xp.

Linux DEEPIN quick review

                                
Linux deepin is a chinese distribution based on ubuntu. Previously it was known as hiweed.
It features Gnome 3 but the customizing is quite eye catching with transparent panel. It has all usual gnome stuff the music player is dead beef. The software center is best in linux world .
Deepin linux is a nice operating system if you know chinese then you must try if you don't still you should give it a try.

Knoppix 7 quick review

KNOPPIX is a linux distribution based on debian. It is made to run through live CD/DVD but it can also be installed on hard drive. The latest version 7.0.1 features LXDE. There are nearly 1000 application in cd and 2600 in dvd, the applications are present as compressed mode which is loaded in ram. All in all Knoppix is a nice distribution.

Fedora 17

Fedora is an open source linux distribution sponsered by Red Hat enterprise. Fedora is the test bed for Red Hat enterprise Linux. Fedora is great distribution but with introduction with gnome 3 many have left it. The latest release is !7 codenamed '' Beefy Miracle" . Lets move around it and see how it behaves this time.

The installation process is like breeze with ease with anaconda installer. The default desktop wallpaper is blue bankground with fireworks. The gnome 3.4 is absolutely silky smooth to use and is absolutely rock solid. Although fedora has now become geeky with addition of JBoss 7, D-progamming language, open stack cloud, GCC 4.7 etc etc. One of the most important change that fedora brings with this release is getting rid of the separation of /bin and /usr/bin, as well as /sbin and /usr/sbin, /lib and /usr/lib, and /lib64 and /usr/lib64. All files from the directories in / will be merged into their respective counterparts in /usr, and symlinks for the old directories will be created instead.'' although solaris has done this 15 years back and most people will not even recognise it.

Hence recommended audience for fedora are those who wants to live bleeding edge and try new technologies. Fedora download

Sabayon 8

Sabayon is an Italian linux distribution amed after an Italian dessert, zabaione. Sabayon is based on Gentoo linux and therefore it is a rolling release. Sabayon believes in out of the box philosophy and works silky smooth. Lets have look around it

Sabyon supports several cpu architectures and is available in every desktop environment and by the way there is a gamming edition though.

The package management is done through either portege(inherited from gentoo) and Entropy . Entropy is very nice package manager . The GUI version is called Rigo which is not so great its like add and remove software centre.

All in all, Sabayon works out of the box wine is preinstalled for your windows apps and mp3 works dandy. It works without any lag. So, it is powerful distribution which is able to satisfy most of the needs so its recomended to everyone esp. the XFCE edition.

Open your wings with Flightgear

Flight gear is an open source flight simulator. You can actually fly different kinds of aircraft starting from Airbus A380 to Wright Flyer.

The system requirments are a 2-3ghz cpu, a OpenGl 2.1 compatible card with 1gb memory, 1-2 gb ram and 8-10 gb harddisk space

The latest version is 2.6 . You can fly small gliders, commercial airliners, warbirds, helicopters, fighters, fictional planes, and airships , there is also an Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

In my opinion its an wonderful application/game and is available for Linux, BSD, MAC and Windows.

Overview: Fedora 17 beta

Fedora as all of you know is community project sponsered by Red Hat. The last stable release was 16 verne it was extremely stable. The downside of the last release is gnome 3.2 . Gnome 3.2 requires 3D acceleration. Experienced users do not like the interface. Now with latest gnome 3.4 fedora has tried to address those issuses now there is no need of 3D acceleration. Gnome 3.4 user experience is better than 3.2.The Ext4 now supports upto 16TB. Awaiting for the final release.

Mageia 2

Mageia is an awesome linux distribution. Mageia 2 have been released. Mageia is a fork of Mandriva 2010 since then the devlopers of Mageia put a lot of hardwork to put up this release. Mageia is currently available in KDE, GNOME, LXDE, XFCE Razor-qt and E17 other lightweight window mangers such as IceWM, WindowMaker etc are also available.

The installation process is bit difficult but not a great deal. There is good selection of software available by defalt. The GUI package manager is rpmdrake. There are three sets of repositrys availavble ::
Core: For free software and drivers
Non free: This includes nonfree proprietary drivers and free of charge proprietary software this is not enabled by default
Tainted: The Tainted repository includes packages released under a free license. The main criteria for placing packages in this repository is that they may infringe on patents and copyright laws in some countries, this repo is also not enabled by default.

Mageia 2 is bit laggy to run but all in all its very nice operting system to try out for everyone.

LINUX MINT 13 MAYA

Linux mint 13 codenamed maya has been released. Linux mint as all of you know is based on ubuntu and maya is no exception it is based on ubuntu 12.04 precise pangolin which was released last month. Linux Mint 13 will also be long term release and will be supported till april 2017.

The installation process is easy but took a little long than ubuntu. The login screen is MDM which is based on GDM 2.20 and its very functional and linux mint team says it is the best display manager available. Now for desktop environment you have two options Mate and Cinnamon.

The Mate desktop is fork of gnome 2. Mate picked up things where gnome 2 left and is evolving since then and there is mintmenu which is the best menu in my opinion, which was absent in last release. Mate is currently 1.2 the software available with mate is of gtk and is forked and renamed. As linux mint team says Mate is the best desktop environment available.

Cinnamon is based on gnome 3 and uses gtk3 libraries. Cinnamon is currently at 1.4 and is under heavy devlopment. Cinnamon has many functionalites like gnome2 in which gnome3 falls short. Cinnamon can be easily be tweaked using cinnamon settings. As far the look and feel its looks very modern with mint -z dark theme. The scale and expo effects are quite smooth and handy. The menu is functional and you can actually drop drag icons here and there but, I am little bit dissapointed because its not anything like mintmenu in mate.

The software centre is also functional and there is synaptic . The software available are essentially the same that of ubuntu. The mint is absolutly stable but, it takes a while to startup ; its not a major issue. Otherwise, it runs silky smooth.

Mint has already topped the distrowatch ranking. Cinnamon and Mate is not as functional as unity in ubuntu but with active devlopment I am sure mint will outsmart unity. Its definately worth checking and good replacement for proprietary software esp. Mikros0ft windeos .

My new blog

I have created a new blog jetlinux.wordpress.com please visit, read and comment

Parabola: free your arch

Arch linux as all of you know is simple yet most advanced linux operating system. It has taken a new avatar(fork) Parabola linux .Parabola is essentially arch it just excludes non free software. Parabola is a free software. Free software means software that you can use, share, modify and redistribute.