Regrowing Grub

The scanning need being important I had to revert to XP. Post install, ofcourse, the grub menu was replaced by XP's boot menu.
The first procedure that I tried was to use a live CD to try to recreate the lost Grub. I recalled seeing such an option in one of the distros. Probably Sabayon. Since FC8 and Kubuntu 8.04 were the only ones that I had at that moment, and neither had the required boot option, I searched online for a solution.
One solution was to use the grub-install command in the Linux rescue mode. This mode is available in most live distro's, though it was absent in Kubuntu. Usually adding "linux-rescue" to the boot option is also adequate, but Kubuntu did not allow changing boot options either. The webpages providing the solution mentioned that the rescue mode would mount the linux partition under mnt/sysimage, and from there the grub-install command from the boot/grub/directory could be accessed. Unfortunately, the FC8 rescue attempt failed with the error that the installation could not be mounted. Without that the grub-install command would not work since the paths were not accessible. So running the command gave a /boot/ path not found error.

More hunting revealed an alternative way. This involved using the setup command after running grub. This too required a Live distro and the rescue mode. At the command prompt, run the grub command, and you get the grub prompt.
There run "find /boot/grub/stage1", to find the path to the directory. This will return the partitions containing the said folder. This would be in the format (hd0,1).
With this info run the root command to locate the menu files. "root (hd0,1)"
The run the setup command to reinstall grub. The format is "setup (hd0)".

After a reboot, I found that grub was installed, but I did not see the menu, just the grub prompt. So I looked around a bit in the grub help, and found the configfile option. Then at the grub prompt, I entered configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst" and voila the menu appeared. After loading the GUI ( I was on PCLinux) I redid the grub installation from the control panel. Now all installations are back to normal, including the new XP.

Scanning snafu

Canon is adamant with regard to releasing Linux drivers. With a Canoscan 3000ex scanner, I am left in the lurch since there are no drivers for it. During my online searches, I came across a forum where someone suggested that using the HP laserjet driver seems to work. While that suggestion seemed to work for one of the readers, the lack of information on how he managed to use the "printer" to scan left this an unsolved riddle. So far I have been unable to use the scanner, even with the HP driver installed.

Shame on Canon. And more appalling is that it is not a small company short on resources to create linux drivers.

Instant Messaging on Linux

One important area where Linux is significantly handicapped is this. A decent IM client which allows voice, text, video streams is missing.
Shame on yahoo and ICQ (MSN can be forgiven for overlooking Linux, and google only has text which can be accessed just as well with the web browser).
Kopete the IM client in KDE seems to be the best option. It supports multiprotocol IM, with yahoo, msn, ICQ and a few other protocols being supported. The support though is rudimentary with many features of the native clients missing (as is also the case with Windows multiprotocol clients like Trillian).
The question that needs to be asked is what prevents major IM services like yahoo and icq from offering a full blown linux client. After all they make money by displaying ads and the more the clients used the greater their earning potential.

FC 9 - A Step Back

FC9 which was released probably a week back would be expected to have support for the latest harware. But, for some reason, the X server could not handle the Geforce 7025 onboard graphics. This was seen in almost every other distro I tried so far as well, which leads me to conclude that FC9 is not a step ahead.
On the other system with the ATI Radeon 200 onboard graphics, no distro had faced a problem, but FC9 did. Though X loaded this time, the taskbar did not, so I was unable to launch any programs or check the menu options. Since the live distro had these issues, installing it to the hard disk is not planned.

Time Travel with Linux

There used to be a time when computer users needed to be qualified to use it. Most older computers were operated by technicians who had the required knowledge to program instructions that had to be sent to the computer.
Thanks to Linux you get a chance to experience the old days. Linux offers a comfy experience to a narrow band of users - those whose PCs are using chipsets that have their drivers included in Linux, and who's computing needs are satisfied by the included applications. Though the band is narrow, it includes a lot of people. Stray a bit from the narrow band, and you are in a different era where to survive you need programming skills and a lot of patience to use the hardware optimally. Delinquents, in the Linux world, include those on systems with chipsets not supported by Linux, and those who are using customised software or games meant only for other OS.