Blogs

Last month (nov '06) i tried RHWS and Open Suse with HCL and Compaq new machines. That was a horrible experience. Either they will not install or display will not come. If you ask the supplier or the support people immediate reply is "we dont support linux" as such it is a virus.
I donot know what support they will give for MS (' do a through format and install sir! if it still persists repeat the process!')

Finally i installed ubuntu from DVD
Atlast i was able to install an OS without difficult. There are some issues but it doesn't affect the operation.

Long time, no blog :-)

I've been busy lately with parallel corporate training assignments
over the weekdays and internal training sessions over the weekends. Oh well, its been quite a while since I've had a "vacation" weekend.

Going by the current trends/requirements in software outsource/development that I'm experiencing from the IT sector, it seems that there would be an immensely growing demand/requirement for UNIX/Linux scripting gurus (Korn/Bourne shell, awk+sed, Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl). Its a good sign and time for the "real" programmers to wake up and stay tuned to the employment news.

On the professional side, after a long time, I got myself to dip my hands into dirty waters called "Java" and "J2EE". Things have changed and it seems that the Java beanies are trying to catch up with the current trend of pragmatic development. But I must say that it was (and still is) a horrible experience to write a line (well, a bunch of lines) of code in Java after walking the long mile with Perl and Ruby. It looks/feels/smells so much like COBOL, albeit with resemblence to C.

My frustration with Java makes me yell in my mind: "All those who promote static-typing should be hung by their toes". Static typing isn't for the real programmers - its like walking with a crutch. For those who think I'm mad, yes I really am, for a good reason!

What seemed more horrendous to me was the all new JSP which simply wont work the first time, with minimal knowledge. It was not until I dug my head through the entire Servlet 2.4 API specs and the JSP 2.0 specs that I learnt how to get a simple Login/Authentication sample code to work. It simply isn't designed to be pragmatic. It wont work the first time, unless you crossed your fingers, offered prayers and bowed at the "Sun" logo of course. All these unnecessary complication is used as an excuse to be Enterprise ready. I would any day harp on Perl/PHP/Python for all serious website-development while Ruby On Rails holds more promise.

So why am I haemorrhaging my mind with Java ? Just because I had to promote FOSS to an organization by training on GNU/Linux and web development. Unfortunately, the client stuck to Java for all web development needs for a valid management reason (there is not one good Perl/PHP/Python guru available when you need them) and I was left with no choice than to preach Java on Linux platform.

On the personal side, I fell sick again two days back and recovered today. Chennai rains and my health never get along so well perhaps. The rains here have created a havoc just like they did last year. The water has flooded the roads and the park close to my house has turned into a water pond. I feel a little relieved that my health recovered faster this time unlike last year when I had been on bed-rest for 48 days.

Phew, there's so much to be done and there's so little time...

After spending the last 3 months on a hectic work schedule (corporate training sessions and few consulting contracts), I managed to take a break to give a guest lecture at St. Joseph's College of Engineering today.

I firstly thank Mr. Sathish for making the right move in getting the whole event organized at his college campus. I also thank Mr. Manoj, Mr. Saravanan, and the entire staff of the I.T. department for their firm support.

While the topic for the seminar/guest lecture (whatever people call it) was about Linux, I spent three hours taking the participants on a whirl-wind tour on various aspects of Free Software, UNIX methodologies, Linux distributions, programming concepts, perils of proprietary software and vendor lock-in, features and benefits of Linux. The first half of the session (which involved history and terminologies) would have bored a couple of participants. The second half of the session, however caught many participant's attention as I performed a few 'magical' gimmicks on Linux, showing off the power of the Linux shell and a couple of simple commands. Perhaps they were impressed overall.

And yes, as always, I missed out a lot on what I had thought to cover, due to time and resource constraints. But I hope the participants enjoyed the session. Though I could not get first-hand feedback about the session, I felt overjoyed when Sathish called me back this evening to say that a lot of his friends who attended the session were impressed, motivated and have also decided to look forward to learn more about Linux and Free Software to strengthen their career.

Overall, it was quite an impression for the participants, while it was quite an experience to me.

I thank each and everyone who have managed to spare their weekends (well, weekends are a luxury for working professionals) and attended the 2-days quick dip training on scripting.

Nothing in this world is perfect. So, talking about the "what-went-wrong" and/or "what-was-inconvenient" first:

• Most participants had to travel a long distance, which
  should've been very much tiring for them on a hot
  summer. I appreciate each and every participant's dedication and
  determination to learn inspite of these nuances.
• Most participants had problems in locating the venue
  (my residence/office) at Sholinganallur. I strongly
  appreciate their patience and the effort put forth
  in locating the venue.
• The hall was too small to accomodate the crowd, which
  coupled with the unbearably hot and humid weather
  had transformed the hall into a hot oven. But the participants
  were kind enough to tolerate the hot/humid
  surrounding.
• Inspite of my rush-for-speed, I could not complete all
  the topics that I had mentioned/advertised. The sheer
  lack of time, and schedule-overspill had me wind up
  with only the core concepts of scripting and introduction
  to shell scripts. Perl was left uncovered! Yet, I'm happy
  that none of the participants complained - but rather
  commended my effort and had claimed that they learnt interesting
  concepts in 2 days.

There were 17 participants on Saturday, and 16 on Sunday. Some folks who came over on Saturday didn't make it on Sunday; there were new participants on Sunday. Inspite of all hurdles and inconveniences, every participant gave me a positive feedback, which is very much motivating. Everyone who attended the training session claimed to have learnt new techniques and commands, and everyone (based on the Sunday's feedback) happened to like the way I conducted the 2-day session [No presentation, breadth of coverage, focus on fundamentals and quick'n'dirty practical demonstrations]. A couple of participants claimed to have been inspired to learn more - which makes me feel happy and more motivated.

All in all, every participant left with a smile and I hope that their weekend was worthwhile.

I thank everyone once again for their wonderful feedback which motivates me to conduct more such free sessions in future!

I woke up today morning and took a glance at my website, and whoa, some lame looser hijacked my website using a security vulnerability on Drupal. The index.php was replaced with a one line message:
SPYKIDS INSIDE Contacts? spykids.br@gmail.com

Luckily I restored my website from backup, and upgraded the portal to Drupal 4.6.3. All I'd say to the wasted soul that tried a website take-over would be: "Nice try lamer... better luck next time.

As I've upgraded to the latest version of Drupal, there have been some issues with migrating the old theme... perhaps, I must code it again...

Moreover, I've been more impressed with Etomite and MODx CMS these days. Perhaps, I'll need to work on migrating to them.

Lastly, a few words of advice to the script-kiddies and the website hijacker wannabe:
"You might as well devote your precious time and give your life a purpose by cleaning up garbage on streets of your city, for instance, than waste your life over this website hijacking nonsense. Good luck :-)"

Lately, I've been getting a lot of hits from google/yahoo search engines for keywords like "BSNL+dataone+utstar+linux" and so on. While I dont have any specific information relevant to configuring BSNL DataOne broadband connection using UTStarcom's UT300R modem on my website (though I've been using the same modem happily for the last couple of months), I have collated a couple of links with hope that it could be of some use to those who've been fighting with the configuration for a long time on GNU/Linux. To all those who've accidentally tripped onto my website, here are some links that might interest you:

• First, to know about various BSNL DataOne relevant information, try this link
• To get tips on how to configure your GNU/Linux box to use BSNL DataOne using rp-pppoe package, try this link
• To know how to setup internet connection using the web interface on UT300R series modems for use on GNU/Linux (and any other OS platform, really!), try this link
• There's a pretty active discussion thread about BSNL Broadband connection on Mr. Vinu Thomas's personal website. You might find this link useful too.

I did this to avoid redundant work of putting up a BSNL-DataOne-On-Linux-Howto guide on my website :-)
Hope this helps in finding your way in quest for solution. Good luck!

Update
Check this link for software to check your DataOne Billing.

GNU/Linux is all about choices! There are plenty of everything that we could install, ranging from several audio players to several 100(!) window managers.

Yet, as of now, we are still stuck with the file and folder (or directory) hierarchy paradigm for managing all information on these platforms (GNU/Linux/*BSD); therefore to manage these files and folders, we need a file manager. Yes of course, die-hard UNIX geeks might live with the good old shell prompt (ksh/bash/tcsh) with the coreutils relevant commands, but do they ? Not me atleast.

During the MS-DOS days that I started my computing career on, I was overly fascinated by the power(!) of Norton Commander
with the combination of JPSoft's 4DOS shell for doing all my Quick'n'Dirty work. Infact, I used to set Norton Commander as my default shell (later to be replaced by a leaner, more powerful clone called "Volkov's Commander" by some Russian programming wizard). It was not too late until Norton Commander became my comfy-crutch - I just couldn't stand DOS without it.

And then, when I began my early exploration on GNU/Linux, I spent a couple of months griping about the lack of a similar file manager, until I found the now infamous (for the command-line geeks) GNU Midnight Commander - a masterpiece authored by none other than Miguel De Icaza himself (with a dozen of other familiar hackers). Midnight Commander came as a blessing for people like me who couldn't live without Norton Commander. After a couple of months on the GNU Midnight Commander, I began to frown upon Norton Commander as a retarded tool for its lack of powerful features and performance like Midnight Commander - which is a clone alright, but a clone done right.

Back in those days, GUI file managers on GNU/Linux platform was a joke. Most of them were shady looking or rather shabbily-clad hacks without focus on usability and being quickly coded using toolkits like Tk.

But now that the time has come for GNU/Linux to reach the desktop users, there are excellent tools and applications for the desktop. This includes some good file managers too. The following are a few of them that I got my hands on:

Evidence
The enlightened file manager. Though in its initial development stage and still not largely usable/stable, it holds great promises for the future as it is being built using the enlightenment's framework (EFL). I've been using this one for sometime now and it looks to be the most sexiest of all file managers I've seen so far, with clean interface, nice usability features (no cluttered toolbars/menubars). It goes well with the beautiful enlightenment window manager.
Update: It seems that this project has collapsed or has become dormant. Let's hope that something better turns up for Enlightenment 17.

ROX-Filer
The most powerful file manager for the Linux desktop that I've used so far. There's a steep learning curve involved to unleash its power, but once you get used to it, you'll no longer want any other file manager. It supports drag'n'drop and excellent keyboard navigation/support as well. If you intend to use a GUI file manager without moving your hands to the mouse, then this is the right pick. Of course, you'll need to spend sometime configuring it to suit your taste (setting short-cuts for all your most-used features, for instance). Though, this project focuses on creating a desktop environment, all that I found good so far from it was the file manager itself. This file manager depends on GTK, Python and a couple of other Gnome relevant libraries.

X File Explorer
This is the file manager for those who are accustomed to Windows Explorer's interface. It uses the FOX toolkit for its UI. It looks and somewhat behaves like the Windows Explorer. It is well suited for making up a desktop environment that resembles Windows. I've been using this file manager along with Qvwm window manager to make up a lean desktop environment for my old machines that I use for my training sessions.

GWorkspace.app
Though officially termed as the workspace manager for the GNUstep platform, I still consider it as a file manager. It is based on Workspace.app of the NeXT! platform and is highly usable (for those who love NeXT/GNUstep). It is best used with WindowMaker or AfterStep environments.

Gentoo File manager
Not to be confused with the Gentoo GNU/Linux project, this file manager is somewhat inspired by the DirectoryOpus file manager on Amiga platforms. Though not polished-looking according current UI/look'n'feel standards, it is still considered to be powerful enough and user-friendly for those that come from the Amiga platform.

X File manager
One of the file managers that I had considered as a joke years back in terms of UI/look'n'feel. This file manager might appeal to users who've used CDE (which in my opinion is equally bad-looking and feature-handicapped).

Nautilus File manager
Nothing much to be said, as most GNU/Linux users would've experienced this already. This is the official file manager of the GNOME desktop environment. This is supposed to be powerful(?), heavily bloated and resource-hungry application. Dont even bother using this file manager on a machine with less than 256 MB RAM and/or processor running below 1.3 GHz clock speed. There are some nifty features in this file manager, yet it fails to impress me due to its bloat-factor and its unresponsiveness (on my machine with AMD AthlonXP 1800+ with 512MB RAM and ASUS A7V400MX motherboard). And yes, it crashes quite often. I somehow miss the nautilus 1.4 which used to look more better with justified for the bloat. The recent versions of it are getting rid of features, yet they seem more bloated than their predecessor releases. If you've used Ubuntu Linux, or Redhat/Fedora core, and complain that GNU/Linux is too slow/unstable, blame none other than this file manager along with its bloatware-cousin - GNOME itself.

XFCE's File Manager
Yet another badly-designed file manager, IMO. I would seriously recommend X File Explorer as your default file manager for the XFCE desktop, instead of this one. The hype that this file manager is light-weight is a myth! It gobbles up 10 MB of RAM for each instance, which doesn't justify its "simplicity". The UI/look'n'feel is unconventional and overly confusing. It seems that its developers need to learn from X File Explorer, ROX-Filer or even Nautilus.

Konqueror file manager
This is the official file manager for the KDE environment (and almost every GNU/Linux user knows it). But what makes it special is its integration with the KDE desktop. If you've used Mandrake Linux, Knoppix (and its cousins), SuSE Linux, and many other desktop linux distributions, you've most likely used Konqueror. Its not just a file manager, but a complete web browser too. More broadly termed, its a universal viewer (to view webpages, files and folders, images, PDF documents and so on). It uses component re-usability to its limits to provide endless possibilities of integration. It is bloated alright, but for a good reason! I've had it working on my laptop (Pentium 133 MMX with 32 MB RAM), and it didn't crash/misbehave like Nautilus. It was slow, but stable and still usable. I would highly recomment this file manager for GNU/Linux newbies, along with its family - the K Desktop Environment.

GNU Midnight Commander
My favourite file manager. Though it is a console file manager, I still use it from within a full screen rxvt-unicode. Its the fastest, most stable and most usable file manager I've ever tried. My opinions might be overly biased on this one, as this is my most widely used app on Linux (file management, editing, so on). The only file manager that comes close to the power of this file manager (for a keyboard-junkie) is the ROX-Filer.

GNU Midnight Commander 4.1.X-MP
This is a patched version of the older midnight commander (4.1 series). But it sports some neat features, performance and is leaner when compared to 4.6.x series of the official Midnight Commander. It did crash a couple of times during file copy/view operations, but perhaps it might be due to my overly tinkered compiler flags.

Krusader File Manager
This is the GUI clone of the Midnight Commander for the KDE desktop. It sports all of the features of the infamous console file manager, and offers lots more features that are made available as the part of KDE's reusable components (like support for various archive formats and KIOSlaves). It feels a little slow and might not be as appealing as the Konqueror or the console based Midnight Commander, but someone might just like it.

There are many more file managers worth exploring, and I'll update as and when I find something impressive.

Update

Thunar File Manager
A better alternative to the old XFCE's file manager. This file manager is based on GTK2 and is lighter when compared to nautilus or konqueror. The look'n'feel is somewhat similar to nautilus, but its focused to be purely a file manager with minimal dependencies - it does not have extraneous features like desktop icon/background wallpaper management and GNOME-specific dependencies. It is the best recommended file manager for XFCE desktop as of now.

PCMan File Manager
PCMan File Manager is yet another GTK2 based file manager that mimics Thunar file manager in terms of look'n'feel and functionality. What makes it a lot different is the support for tabbed browsing (like in the mozilla firefox browser). Instead of opening a directory in a new window, you can open them within the same window under a new tab. Think of it as flexibility/usability of firefox web browser (in managing multiple windows) into a file manager. It seems to be in active development right now and I've faced occasional crashes while trying to launch files using applications like xpdf. But I hope these minor issues are being ironed out as of now.

Of late, I've been getting in touch with a lot of my old friends. No, I'm not talking about school-time buddies or even college pals. I'm rather referring to friends who are coincidentally in the same area of work as I am - computers. Well, I broadly termed computers as my area of work as I've been a "Jack of all..." kind in the field. I started my career on computer hardware, progressed to being a system programmer (albeit for the MS-DOS platform) and then climbed myself upto the position of system administrator+webmaster+programmer for the Linux platform to the position I represent myself in business today - a Free Software/Open Source Solutions Technologist.

While climbing up the career ladder, I've made a lot of friends amongst my collegues at each work-place, my old students (Oh yes, I still teach computers/linux/programming) and via references. Among the old friends I've been in touch lately, I've vaguely classified three categories of people:

One category of friends I've met are those that remain in their same old job working on routine/mundane tasks while convincing themselves that they are best suited for the kind of job they are being designated, and remaining rather ignorant/clueless about the evolving/changing world around them. Yes, I'm talking about Foxpro programmers, MS-DOS TSR hackers, Delphi/Powerbuilder/VB wizards and AMD386 CPU based motherboard chip-level servicing and old CGA/VGA monochrome monitor servicing gurus of mid-90s who are still working on their same old job. They are far convinced that they would retire while working on the same job over their lifetime. This makes me wonder as to who would use Foxpro or MS-DOS in the next decade or two. But yes, these wizards of the previous century still rely on these obsolete technology for their bread, butter and wine. Luckily for them, these old technologies never die so easily thus justifying their existence.

Another category of people I've met are those that constantly run around chasing a moving target updating themselves to new technologies/hype/trends just to find these technologies go obsolete just before they get mastered. They are people who've been going through a constant metamorphosis since the late '90s from VB development to COBOL programming to e-Commerce/enterprise development (using jargons like COM, DCOM, ActiveX, CORBA and other vanished-over-the-night technologies/tools) and coincidentally to J2EE and .NET development these days. We can easily identify them as they use way too many currently-hyped-vocabulary spiced up in their talks. Though at time I wonder if I loosely belong to this flock-of-sheep, as I consider myself as a Jack (though not a master) in the list of technologies/tools that I mentioned in this paragraph. Apparently, a large majority of my techie friends fall into this category.

And there is another category of friends I've met, who are small in number, who do not worry much about trends and technologies, but rather concentrate on "concepts" that drove various trends and technologies since decades. Here, I'm talking about system programmers (typically UNIX & C gurus), Knuth-worshippers, Stallman's believers and so on. While the earlier two categories of friends are in the field of computers to "make money" and "make living", this particular category of friends (highlighted in this paragraph) are those who believe in ideologies/philosophy than the bread. They form the major chunk of people who work on Free Software/Open Source technology today. They represent the natural evolution of software development paradigm for the 21st century and are laying a strong foundation for the next generation tech-wizards to thrive on.

Sadly though, the second creed of people that I discussed about, are into the Linux bandwagon too. They are here because Linux has created a hype to (much like Java did in the late 90s).

More broadly summarising, there are 2 kinds of people again - One's that work to earn their daily bread, and one's that work for self-satisfaction, curiosity and hunger for knowledge with an apt for improvising the quality of life for mankind in general.

Now, which side do you belong ?

• adesklets
  Who ever needs Gnome panel/Kicker/whatever when there's an icon-launcher as leet and light-weight as this one ?
• rxvt-unicode
  The most impressive X terminal emulator that I've found so far. Whats impressive about this terminal are its features - unicode, xft, transparent background with tinting/shading support (like in Eterm), automation-capable pty interface (configurable scroll bars) and so on. Its built ontop of rxvt and adopts all the best features of its predecessor while also giving us great new features with very lean memory/resource usage. The terminal is also extremely fast and does not load the CPU too much while running commands like 'ls -lR /'. Of course, this terminal deserves a well-written article by itself ;-)
• X File Explorer
  A fast and efficient file manager for X Window system with very lean resource usage. It somewhat resembles (and rather advances) over the good old Windows Explorer found on Windows NT 4.0 platform. Feels polished and light-weight and uses the FOX toolkit for rendering widgets. Of course, Windows bashers might not like this one for its close resemblance to the Windows look'n'feel.
• ROX Filer
  The most feature-rich file manager with extensive features that could make it work well as a complete desktop environment on its own as well (using ROX-Session). It provides library support for building desktop/tray applets and applications. It follows its own way of organising files and applications, and is very powerful. The project seems have been inspired by the not-so-familiar RiscOS environment.
• The Enlightenment Window Manager
  The most impressive window manager that I've used till date. I've been using this window manager as my default desktop environment itself since '98 and I'm continued to be impressed by its features, stability, speed and its lean resource usage. Yes, by today's standards, this window manager is far leaner than other so-called lean window managers (metacity, sawfish, afterstep). But still, its sports various features that make it completely self-contained on its own. Also worth noting is its flexibility, customizability and themability is second to none. Of course, some might argue that fvwm is far more customizable, but still, it doesn't sport the great features offered by enlightenment 0.16 series. The next generation of Enlightenment (0.17) is getting stabler and I'm just waiting for the best to come out from Rasterman (Enlightenment's key author).

The following are two other great CMS tools worth exploring:

• Blur6ex
  An extremely light-weight, yet feature-rich CMS perfectly suitable for hosting personal blog sites on minimal resource. Found it to be highly customizable sporting a cleanly designed code-base and theme-sets. Sounds promising in the long run.
• e107
  It seems to be the easiest to setup so far, with loads of built-in features, and an overall polished look'n'feel. The configuration interface also feels impressive. It sports a good number of builtin modules/plugins for various requirements.