GreySquare Blog

The Linux Phase

// February 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // General, Linux

Hope I’m NOT going through the same phase. I tend to pacify myself by saying that I’m learning something new everyday. Even my router has custom compiled Linux now! And I have to say I’ve gone through my fair share of kernel hacking.

From: xkcd

Switch to Linux: Part 1

// February 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // Linux, Tech

I’ve recently decided to try and switch completely to a Linux operating system. Partly because I like the idea of using open source software that is available for public scrutiny. Also because I wanted to start improving my Python.

As a part of this process I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala in addition to my Windows 7 and started using it as my primary os. I’m known to be partial to Fedora but this time around I wanted to just go with Ubuntu owing to the humongous user base, which means better support information thats available out there.

Some of the issue I faced, in hope of receiving some excellent suggestions from the community of-course -

Issue 1: I have a Logitech MX Revolution multiple button mouse. Apart from the fact that the mouse is jittery all the time, the buttons are not detected by default. Installed btnx and enabled revoco for my mouse. Everything seems to be fine for now.

Issue 2: I’m partial to Photoshop and I use Illustrator on and off to design weird logo’s sometimes.

Issue 3: No Windows Live Writer replacement for Linux. None of the blog clients simple cut it. Even if MS wants me to pay for Live Writer, I probably would. It’s that good. Installed VirtualBox > Installed Windows XP > Installed Windows Live Writer.

Issue 4: Non existent Netflix support. I’m not a big fan/addict of Netflix but I do like watching movies instantly once in a while. But when I try to do that under Linux I get this rather unpleasant message – “Our apologies – streaming is not supported for your operating system.” Excuse me, but is that even correct English? shouldn’t it be “on your operating system”?

Issue 5: Old Firefox. It seems the Firefox build that is available in the Ubuntu repositories is almost always older than the current available Firefox. My version is 3.5.8 whereas the latest available version of Firefox is 3.6. If you need the latest Firefox you need to remove the one you have and get the latest from Mozilla. It’s imperative that I work with the latest version as 3.6 has the latest CSS, DOM and HTML5 support and I need those things since I’ve started working on those.

How To Install NS2 (Network Simulator) & NAM (Network Animator) on Fedora 10

// March 16th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Linux, Tech

[It was a very hard and crazy ass thing to do in the first place. I though I should celebrate with a blog post. Now I’m too lazy to do that even.]

New Edit…

Check out this post on the Fedora Forum and read it COMPLETELY.

Go to: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=225999

There a bug in tk which has to be patched manually before the next version of tk comes out. What I did was to manually replace the code and then run the install script.

Again, read the bug report on gentoo.org CAREFULLY.

Fedora 8 (Werewolf) Released

// November 9th, 2007 // No Comments » // General, Linux, Tech

Fedora 8 released today minus the ‘core’ mid word which has been dropped after Fedora Core 6. Fedora Linux has been my fav even though many flavours of linux like Mandrake, SuSE, Redhat and Ubuntu have come and gone. You can view the complete release notes here: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/en_US/

Same of the Latest Features that everyone should be excited about:

• Fedora 8 features a 2.6.23 based kernel.
• NetworkManager 0.7 provides improved wireless network management support. It includes support for multiple devices and provides the capability of system-wide configuration, among many other enhancements.(Yay! More wireless support. They always say ‘improved’ but never things like complete wireless support)
• PulseAudio is now installed and enabled by default. PulseAudio allows for hot-switching audio outputs, individual volume controls for each audio stream, networked audio, and more.(One of the first linux distributions to use PulseAudio by default)
• CodecBuddy is now included, and promotes free, superior quality, open formats to end users trying to play multimedia content under patent encumbered or proprietary formats.
• Compiz Fusion, the compositing window manager that re-merges Compiz and Beryl, is installed by default. To enable Compiz Fusion in GNOME, use the System → Preferences → Desktop Effects tool.
• Bluetooth devices and tools now have better graphical and system integration.
• Laptop users benefit from the “quirks” feature in HAL, including better suspend/resume and multimedia keyboard support. The pam_console module usage has been removed in favor of access control via HAL, which modernizes the desktop.
• Security: A brand new graphical firewall configuration tool, system-config-firewall, replaces system-config-securitylevel. This release offers Kiosk functionality via SELinux, among many new enhancements and security policy changes. A new PolicyKit authentication system that makes secure authority escalation possible for individual operations rather than for the entire program when required.

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