Ubuntu 9.10

An article submitted to IT mag which was rejected...


Introduction
The release of Ubuntu 9.10 which coincided with the release of the latest Windows OS prompted comparisons between the two. With many sites even suggesting that those who are not satisfied with the MS product should give Canonical's a spin.
Frankly, this writer is not as thrilled about Ubuntu 9.10, even without having used Windows 7. So, strangely, an article titled "Tips and Tricks" for Ubuntu 9.10 also includes a suggestion to avoid the OS if possible!

Who is it for?
After trying out Ubuntu 9.10 this writer feels it necessary to discuss the target audience of the OS and this article.

If you are someone who has used earlier versions of Ubuntu upto 9.04 and is familiar with the OS, the latest version doesn't bring anything conspicuously new to the table, except some eye candy. For you, the OS and this article are avoidable. The extremely short release cycles ensures that minor releases are nothing but "service packs", and do not deserve the song and dance and alliterative codenames - in Ubuntu's case atleast - that usually accompany them. And, summing up the relevance of 9.10 going by online opinions, 9.10 is just a stepping stone to 10.04 which is expected to be a major release.


If you are someone who has extensively used Linux, but have not used any Ubuntu version seriously before, there is nothing in Ubuntu 9.10 that is compelling enough to make you hop from your existing distro. Most importantly, if you have found solace in KDE 3.5 and have grown familiar with most admin routines/commands, you will be tearing your hair out when dealing with the Gnome interface and the other new features in Ubuntu. For you, the OS is passable, and the article will shed light on the reasons for this suggestion.

If you are someone who has never tried out Linux at all, but have used some GUI based OS before, and are thinking of making Ubuntu your first step into this wonderful world, after being bombarded with the U marketese: be warned, Ubuntu is not the best distro for newcomers. More userfriendly distros like Opensuse and PCLinux do a better job of presenting the prowess of Linux in a seamless package. Yes, no other distro is as responsible as Ubuntu for popularising Linux and it is considered the hippest distro, but for a new comer Ubuntu 9.10 can be quite frustrating to the point of making the competition look better. This article should offer some comparisons with other distros to prove the point on userfriendliness to influence your choice of first Linux distro.

Probably anticipating this frustration, Canonical has included Wubi with the distro CD. Wubi offers a safer way to sample Ubuntu without the delays associated with a Live CD environment, but will work only in Windows. Which puts off Linux-only users!

If you have managed to slip through the above categories, Ubuntu 9.10 should be an ideal distro.

Where does the writer stand : After having tried out over a dozen distros, this writer settled on Opensuse 10.3 and has stuck to it even while sampling a few distros over the years. Being more comfortable with the GUI (rather than the Command line), the writer is representative of the bulk of the computer using population that shares a similar bias.

This writer would like to humbly submit the golden rule for people venturing into the Linux world for the first time, to make sense of the superabundance of Linux distros and avoid unwanted frustration of failed installations and internet scouring for fixes:
Do all the distro hopping till you find a perfect match (when all hardware works in perfect harmony), and then avoid all temptations to switch. Ofcourse, since all distros come in a live CD format, one can always succumb to the temptation without breaking one's vows.

New Features in Ubuntu 9.10

An exhaustive list is available on the ubuntu.com website, so we shall avoid duplicating it. Briefly, what would be relevant to lay users is summarised here.
Ubuntu 9.10 being woven around the latest Linux kernel version (2.6.31) supports the most hardware among the Ubuntus. So if you have a system that is loaded with the latest components, Ubuntu 9.10 offers the best chance of getting the most out of the system - right out of the box.

For those who spend time tweaking the appearance of the installation, 9.10 offers the latest Gnome Desktop Environment (2.28) which has a lot of visual appeal. Even on a system with 256 MB RAM, the visual effects were truely impressive without slowing down the OS collaterally.



Ubuntu uses the newest version of the GRUB boot manager. GRUB2 adds a lot of features, but for the lay users, it is nightmarish to configure in contrast to the earlier version. More on this later.

9.10 includes the new Empathy Instant Messaging client that includes support for most chat protocols, like Yahoo, Windows Live and Google.

Ubuntu introduces the online storage and syncing service called Ubuntu One. A free 2 GB account is available to all users, and data can be stored and synced across any PCs loaded with Ubuntu 9.10.

One has heard of the App store concept used in Apple products, which allows independent developers to create software and make it available for use/purchase to end users directly. Ubuntu incorporates the Ubuntu Software Center which offers similar function, but at present all apps available are free. This utility is not to be confused with Synaptic which is the default application manager, and also exists alongside.


Tips and Tricks

Setting boot options
If you are satisfied with the Live CD experience, and choose to install the OS to the disk along with any existing OS, you will feel miffed.
During installation, Ubuntu succeeds in annoying the user by displaying what is hallmark Windows behaviour - messing up the bootloader. The boot loader installation cannot be tweaked, so one cannot change the default boot option - which is Ubuntu. Dedicated tools to modify the boot menu are available in some distros like PCLinux and Opensuse, but in Ubuntu one needs to do the modification maually using the text editor and command line. Additionally, those who are familiar with editing the /boot/grub/menu.cfg file will be clueless here. The reason : Ubuntu uses GRUB2 which works differently and doesn't use a menu.lst file.


In Ubuntu to get the default OS entry right, you need to edit the /etc/default/grub file. This file is not quite helpful because it does not list the boot entries. So either recall the entries in the boot menu displayed when your booted, or open the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file to figure out the exact entries and their sequence. In the grub.cfg file, the "menu entry" prefix denotes the entries in the boot menu. The first entry is numbered 0, and the second 1 and so on.
Once the required default entry number is arrived at, this figure can be added to the line "GRUB_DEFAULT=1" replacing the 1. This line is in the /etc/default/grub file, NOT the grub.cfg file.

The default interval of 10 secs can be adjusted by tweaking the "GRUB_TIMEOUT=10" line, in the /etc/default/grub file.



Ofcourse, there is a possibility that the GRUB routine gets the boot parameters wrong. In the case of the writer's system already containing a PCLinux installation, GRUB did not properly detect the boot parameters leaving the PCLinux installation inaccessible. In such cases the menu can be modified by editing the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file to include the corrected menu entry. This is a bit advanced, but for minor editions, like in the writer's case, the relevant entries from the grub.cfg can be copied over to the 40_custom file and necessary changes made.

Once all modifications are completed, the command "grub-update" needs to be run to ensure that the changes are incorporated in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file which is the basis of the boot menu.

What is the root password?
In the Linux world the root account is held in high esteem. In 9.10 the all powerful root account is practically insignificant - the first user becomes the defacto root. Unfortunately, if one doesn't know this fact, it can be quite frustrating trying to figure out what the default root password is (a online search reveals this is "rootmein"), since the installation routine doesn't seek one and trying the user password is the last thing on a Linux user's mind.
Also try logging in as root or su, and you won't get much far. The solution is to use the "sudo su" command to stay on with higher privileges for a longer period.

Getting the Resolution right
Getting the video right can be considered as a top most priority for a distro, and when two year old distros manage to get it right, one would expect the latest distros to atleast do as much, especially since the hardware is not cutting edge. But, Ubuntu 9.10 (or 9.04 for that matter), fails to detect the max resolution on two of the systems this writer tried installing the OS on. Now had this been PCLinux or Opensuse, the tools to modify the graphics properties would be available within the GUI, but this is Ubuntu. So one needs to be prepared for some command line action.
There are a few surprises in store here as well. For one, the familiar xorg.conf file is missing. So to create a xorg.conf file, one needs to run the "X -configure" command after logging in as superuser.
As in the writer's case, even this doesn't always work, in which case the best option is to download the relevant graphics drivers and follow the instructions.

Getting on the Cloud
Ubuntu One is the name of Ubuntu's cloud service. The Link to Ubuntu One is under the Appications, Internet Menu. A user needs to sign up for the service first, and on first launch a browser window takes you to the sign up page. Subsequently launching Ubuntu One link opens the preferences window, where one can set the behaviour of the service. An icon in the system tray will display the status of the Cloud and allow easy synchronisation. Unfortunately, despite 9.10 being the first Ubuntu to offer this feature, the synchronisation operation is not smooth and the reason for this is that the client software is incompatible with the server.

Nonetheless, one can add data in the form of files, contacts and notes to the Ubunto One account and these can be synchronised within applications like Nautilus, Tomboy and Evolution respectively on systems running the service.

Migrating settings from Other Installations
Theoretically, it involves merely copying the files from one installation site to the other. Ubuntu has incorportated a tool to do this during the installation, but in the three installations that this writer did, the tool failed to detect the Windows installation on the same disk, and in one case the PCLinux installation as well.
Even when the other OS is detected, the end result of the migration is not obvious. There doesn't seem to be any documents imported to the user's home folder, and neither are any settings changed in the Ubuntu environment as a result.


Wubi (Ubuntu Installer for Windows)
This is an interesting utility. Briefly, it allows one to install Ubuntu in any Windows partition. Wubi creates a folder in the Windows partition where all OS files are stored, and requires atleast 3 GB free space to start.

After providing a password, space and location to store the files at the start of the process, there is no user interaction required. So, potential minefields like creating partitions are avoided. Once launched, Wubi goes through the same motions as the normal installation process. On rebooting, post installation, the modified boot menu presents both OS options with the default option being the Windows installation. The Ubuntu installation performs quite smoothly with no apparent lag inspite of using a non native file system.
The application can be uninstalled like any Windows program and the disk space freed, but the boot menu is not restored (atleast in Windows XP). If no entry to the uninstall link figures in any menu, the uninstall file is present in the Ubuntu folder
Wubi is highly recommended for people using Windows and should be the only way to try Ubuntu to avoid most troubles of a normal installation. Sadly, Linux users are not similarly treated.

Automatic Mobile Broadband Configuration
One feature that thoroughly impressed this writer was the automatic configuration of the GPRS enabled mobile phone. Just plugging in the mobile presented a wizard, which already had the settings to access various GPRS service providers from India, like BSNL, Airtel, Idea etc. A few clicks and one was online. Impressive. In contrast with the earlier PPP or wvdial routine in older versions of Linux, and the Nokia PC Suite in Windows, 9.10 truely is in a different league.

Conclusion
9.10 is for the inveterate distro hopper who already has gotten into the Ubuntu groove. For Windows users, Wubi is the recommended route - probably the best way to sample a distro, something for the other distros to emulate. For the rest of us, 9.10 is worth a dekko to drool over the visual effects, and return to our more familiar distros.

rpm independence

After some consideration, made a swtich from Opensuse 10.3 to PCLinuxOS 2009.1.

One of the many advantages PCL offered over OS was the ability to cache downloaded packages. In OS I needed the Smart package manager to do this.
But, I realised that having the rpms cached did not allow easy access in another PCL installation. Synaptic, the package manager in PCL integrates repository management and app management in a single interface, unlike OS. But, there are no settings to install rpms from a directory, all the sources have to be online. This is a major freedom limiter.

In any case, I found that this hinderance can be overcome with the rpm -i command. Thanks to rpm -i , I could install most of the apps I had downloaded in the previous installation. The ones that did not install were the ones that caught the dependency flu. In the GUI, the dependencies are automatically downloaded and installed, not with the rpm command (atleast the man page didn't suggest any setting for this).
One app that refused to install was vlc. Though there were other dependencies, which installed easily with rpm - i, the libv4l2 always held up the proceedings with a dependency error. I found that adding a "--nodeps" parameter would allow instation to proceed without dependency checking. And that is how I got vlc installed. So eventhough there seem to be some dependencies missing, the app works fine. I did observe the fact that these dependencies were not downloaded during the earlier installation, which was why they were not in the cache. So apparently synaptic too avoided a dependency check on this package.

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Ghost ( key ) busting with Linux

Among laptops, it is common to come across the problem of stuck keys. Keys that continually send a signal even when they are not pressed, as a result of a short contact in the keyboard.

In most cases it is easy to find the offending key - just open a text editor and the output text will reveal the culprit with a long stream of repeated letters/numbers.
But, ghost keys are a bit difficult to identify - which is why they are so named. And these are usually the Function keys. The problem with having a stuck F2 is that it interrupts the booting process, unless another key is pressed after which things remain normal. Even normal working on the desktop is not effected in most cases, so you don't bother about it, untill you reboot the machine and have to nudge the system to continue from the interrupted state.

REcently I faced this problem, and the easiest solution to the issue was to use a live linux CD. Once the system starts to load itself into RAM, the log messages are displayed - this may not be the default behaviour in most cases, since a static loading page could be shown with a message to press any key to view messages, do so. The constant stream of output from the function key in the midst of log messages will give away the defective key. The output will be in a cryptic form and not "F4" or something similar, but comparing it with the output of all the Function keys will be adequate.

In the latest case, I had a tough time with the F10 key, with the only indication once the desktop was loaded was that the right click menu would disappear as soon as it appeared. With the live CD, I could find the output code and match it with F10. The F10 key was disabled permanently.

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Hibernate out of sight

For so long I was unaware of the facility to hibernate. The speed with which a system can be brought up from the dead makes hibernating a really attractive option. But, I had assumed that Linux did not have this feature, and didn't bother with going online to search for options.

Today, which trying to find a way to check the laptop battery status when confronted with a low battery alert, I came across Kpowersave.
It is nowhere to be seen - not in the Desktop control panel or the Admin YAST panel. And probably, considering it as superfluous, probably I had disabled it's autoloading at boot time. Nonetheless, after going through all menus with a fine comb, I found it under System - Desktop Applet.

I sucessfully brought back the system from hibernate position, though I think the time it took was just as much as a normal startup. Kpowersafe also allow modifying the low battery handling process.

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BSD = BloodSheD

Recently got an opportunity to try BSD (FreeBSD to be exact). Considering myself comfortable with Linux and all, I thought it would be a joyride.

Let's just say, BSD is Linux about a decade back. And as I have stated elsewhere, those who say that Linux is not ready for the big time, should spend time with BSD.

I am not sure about the origins of the disk partitioning scheme in BSD. Why make a simple task of partitioning, complicated by bringing in "Slices"? I would hope there is some performance advantage. There better be.

With a partitioner that does not do resizing, FreeBSD simply cuts off a vast proportion of people with little knowledge of manipulating partitions. Linux scores high here, since even novices can easily create blank space by squeezing existing partitions, and the tool is quite reliable as well.
Then there is the slicing operation which confused me a bit.

The whole OS installation is primitive, brought back memories of the CGA esqe Slackware installation routine. This was a bit more haphazard. There are three CDs (or a single DVD ) containing the packages, and the installation is not properly scheduled. So, try installing the KDE package, and the dependencies are sprawling over all three CDs requiring switching CDs furiously. It would seem more orderly to organise the packages sequentially on the CDs to reduce this switching.

Post installation, even if KDE is installed, you are dumped to a boot prompt. Unless you have already read about the editing the ttys file. In which case, the installer will launch a text editor to do the editing. I must stress here that this is the only area where BSD trumps Linux by a vast margin - the editor. vi is so annoyingly thick, that ee (the editor) seems like a genius. And ee is not there in my Opensuse 10.3. Sad indeeed.

Even after editing the ttys file, and getting into KDE, the lack of proper integration between the windows manager and the kernel leaves one returning to the command line for many tasks - some as routine as mounting a thumb drive (no automouting please, we are BSD). wvdial didn't work but pppd did, K3B would not recognise the PATA writer (requiring a lot of googling for an answer), wine installed and the only bright spot in the experiences, besides discovering ee, was I could install and run Opera 10 without hitch.

Eventhough I had downloaded the three isos over a GPRS connection (30 hours in all), I deleted them since I had no plans to return to BSD. The history is quite interesting - BSD v/s Linux, that is.  It would not require great intelligence to see that the only thing that differentiates between BSD and Linux is the large band of contributors backing the latter. And the hand of fate, that took the form of a lawsuit to temporarily thwart BSD when Linus was seeking contributors for his pet project is for conspiracy theorists to ponder on.

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Mandriva 2009 Free - simply inane

Mandrake/Mandriva was one of my favourite distros. The simplicity of it's installation and usage were a refreshing change from what other distros offered - waaay back.
 
I recently picked up Mandriva 2009 Free ( from zyxware.com ) to see if it could do the tango with the Canon printer.

What struck me, hard, like a slap, was the oversimplified installation procedure. NO PACKAGE SELECTION. Just a screen that shows three desktop screenshots of KDE, GNOME and another one. Once selected, the installation continues with no interaction.

Post installation, the flatfootedness of KDE4 dooms Mandriva. But not before I get to see a functional implementation of a proper desktop. The only KDE4 installation (including Opensuse 11.1) I tested so far that allows shortcuts to be created on the desktop. Ofcourse, there seems to be no intuitive way to recreate this "desktop space", once it is deleted.

Mandriva joined Slackware in oblivion soon after.

Mandriva 2009 Free is notable for one reason, it rightfully reflects the spotlight on to Opensuse. As a regular user of Opera 7.54 (under Wine) I see considerable similarities between the thoughfulness that went behind creating these excellent pieces of code. Yes, there are more popular choices, but with half a brain one can appreciate the profusion of practical, thoughful options offered by these two products that are glaringly absent in the others. Options are important, very important.

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Schizo Slackware

I never could bring myself to try out Slackware so far, and I am not sure why.
Recently, I had the opportunity to try out Slackware 12. Well, actually had the DVD burnt at zyxware.com.


Slackware shows the classic schizoid behaviour - a split personality. The installation procedure brought back memories of days long gone by when I first ventured into Linux territory by trying out Red Hat (the free one, before it was FC). The absolute absence of any progress in this part of the Slackware experience was indeed a disappointment. What is Slackware trying to convey by not having a proper GUI driven installation procedure? The VGA screens and the absence of mouse control are pardonable, but the inability to create a Linux partition during the setup process is not. There are other similar areas where a user will need some familiarity with installation routines to successfully complete the installation. The app package selection is also quite difficult to use, even if it's uselessness is temporarily ignored.

Once a user bravely goes through the steps to get to the desktop, Slackware suddenly becomes an entirely different creature. The harsh taskmaster during the installation procedure, now becomes an overprotective mommy. So, there is no way a user can now access any real system admin tools - no "Control Panel" access. Sure one can change the way the dumb KDE4 behaves, but real access to underlying hardware is prevented.

Slackware was unceremoniously dumped soon after.

What Slackware DID show was the Opensuse remains one of the most well organised and planned distro in DVD. The Canon printer episode is just one major hinderace why I cannot use it.

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KDE4 : the impossibility of it's existence

Most users of KDE4 would have found it to be irritatingly dumb.

A regular OS GUI user would appreciate the importance of the desktop. The benefit of a shortcut on the desktop can be realised only if a folder has to be opened to access a file in it. The sheer number of clicks that can be saved as a result of this shortcut leads to significant savings in time and resources. KDE4 completely makes it impossible to drop shortcuts on to the desktop, edit properties of existing desktop shortcuts and in anyway use the desktop productively. No useful menu pops up when right clicking on the desktop. The more one uses it, the more irritatingly dumb it seems. I tried KDE4 in Opensuse 11.1, and the default file manager is Dophin. Compared to Konqueror, this is a pretty obtuse application. Simple tasks like being able to set all folders to show ownership details of files is a mind boggling task which I haven't managed to complete. Then there is the issue of being able to manage the default view, it seems that Dolphin will by default only show folder contents as icons, not as detailed list. And there seems to be no way to modify this default behaviour, and manually setting the detailed list view in one folder isn't carried on to it's subfolder even.

How could something so obviously crippled be the outcome of a community? One of the core arguments in favour of the opensource movement is that problems in code are rectfied faster that in closed source apps, since there are many peers reviewing the app and the source. If Vista is a failure, it can be explained by the limited access the target market had to the beta version. But KDE4 cannot use this fig leaf.

One finds it hard to believe that the final product after so many peer reviews still managed to reduce the desktop to just a place holder for the wallpaper. It is just impossible that such a piece of code could see the light of the day. And yet, KDE4 is here, impossibe. Luckily, opensuse 11.1 thoughtfully bundled KDE 3.5 as well, which though also tweaked with, retained most of it's productivity features.

The loss of functionality is a big shame on the Linux community. It will have long term ramifications, since most new users will find KDE just too inefficient to bother with Linux. This is sad indeed.

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PCLinuxOS to the rescue

Finally got the Canon 2900 printer working, without having to put up with the dumb GUI of KDE4. PCLinuxOS 2009 was the answer. The printer driver was installed as per manual - through command line with rpm command, and not the hardware tool in Control Center.

Used the live cd of PCQL for the job. It is sad indeed that PCQL doesn't come in a DVD format, which would have been so much more convenient. Now, every package needs to be downloaded.

PCQL hasn't changed much since the last time I used it. The Install to USB option, and the Remaster CD option were two things that stood out. Being able to save the present installation is a great idea.

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chowning out of trouble

I have found that minor irritants that crop up in one user account are easily overcome by creating a second user account and moving all files.

This saved me the latest when for some reason all browsers would crash everytime I tried to save content or in anyway tried to access local files. Probably it had something to do with the interaction between wine and konqueror, since only Opera 7.54 and 9.6, which I was running under Wine seemed to have that problem. The problem cropped up recently, after flawless working for close to a year.

The quickest work around involved creating a new account, and copying all files from the older account to the new one - overwriting all existing files. This, ofcourse, was done under root login. The final act involved altering the ownership of all files from the old user to the new one. And chown is the command to do it

chown newuser /home/olduser -R

was all it took. Now under the new username the file error is not encountered.

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Free Fedora, Frustration & Fury.

It had been a smooth ride for a long time with Opensuse 10.3. After experiencing the best that the linux community has to offer, I had become confident of finding my way around most day to day issues.

The issue with the Canon 2900 laserjet printer was the starting point for the search for a compatible distro. As a self created rule, this is the only reason to want to try another distro. It is important to not keep changing distros as soon as they are released since this fragments the user base. Also it is possible to incorporate newer kernels (which support newer hardware) without getting the newer distro entirely. This is something I haven't tried yet, though.

My search obviously took the familiar path - Opensuse 11.1. Unfortunately, like the 10.3 version, 11.1 too couldn't print a page, though no errors are reported during the installation or the printing. Just no page comes out!

The next step was Fedora 10. Thanks to the folks at zyxware.com, it is quite easy to get the full fledged DVD at one's doorstep for a nominal cost. In fact, I ordered the Fedora 10 DVD just to average out the shipping costs on shipping the Opensuse 11.1. DVD.

The Fedora experience is a nightmare. The frustrations that I faced as a newbie in the Linux world all came back to me, thanks to fedora. It could be because Opensuse is an excellent distro that Fedora looks uncouth, unpolished and unkempt in comparison. Everything about the distro, from the first page and menu to it's inability to get the resolution right fills one with fury.

Initially seeing the CGA menu I thought, well there is no need to invest resources to make the menu flashy, since it doesn't matter post installation. But, the resources were not invested elsewhere, probably because there were no resources to invest at all!
Part of the blame will need to be laid on the doorstep of KDE 4. An interface that is so retrograde functionally. But, Opensuse offers even KDE3 as an option, Fedora does not. I couldn't see an option to install Wine as well. Post installation, all attempts to get the screen resolution corrected was frustrated - there seems to be no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 and running Xorg -configure also fails. And there seems to be no GUI way of getting X reconfigured, only the set resolutions are available as options. In contast the Opensuse 11.1 installation process, and installed environment seems heavenly.

Fedora was removed in a fraction of the time it took to install. It was too frustrating to deal with the mind numbing obtuseness that pervades the interface.

But, considering that people have reported success with getting the 2900 running under Fedora, it may be a bitterest pill I have to swallow.

As easy as GPRS

I have experienced the pains of getting the Nokia 6230 to work as a GPRS modem under XP. And I was prepared for something worse in Linux, partially because there seems to be no readily available drivers to start with.
A lot of clicks with the Modem section in the Admin hardware control got nowhere. Trying the kppp utility also didn't result in anything workable.
Then a little google and I came to this site http://microdotsagamedev.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/usb-mobile-phone-modem-under-linux/ .

What is great about this site is that, unlike the many that are thrown up, the data is offered in the most briefest and clearest manner. The crux of the solution, as mentioned on the site, are these lines (most of which are cut and pasted) :

open /etc/wvdial.conf file as root (use Kate or anyother text editor).
delete everything from the file except the ‘Dialer Defaults’ heading (if there is none add one enclosed with ‘[' and ']‘) and add the following (Phone, Username and Password will be different depending on provider)
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Phone = *99#
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 115200
Dial Attempts = 2
Username = vdata
Password = vdata

Save the file

Plug in your USB data cable ( Phone must be on… snigger :D )
* Exec the following at any point, root or not to establish an internet connection.
sudo wvdial


That's it.

It is hard to believe that all the gui fiddling was needed to effect this change, when it could have been done just this way!!!

Yahelite, yahoo

There are chat clients for directly chatting over the main pm networks - yahoo, msn etc. But, I was in need for a client to chat over the public chat rooms offered by linux.
Previously I had used YAhelite and found it much better than the default, all frill yahoo client. Much like the google search page, yahelite was to spartan and functional. Remembering this, I was surprised to see that Yahelite also offered a linux client. This though was having issues right out of the box. The next solution was to get Yahelite for windows and rely on Wine. Here too, the yahelite site did mention the need to download additional files to be able to use text formatting for using under Linux. But, since all I needed was normal text, I just downloaded the main client. It works beautifully.
It was only after running the windows client that I discovered the issue with the linux one. The captcha image was not being displayed in the latter.

NEMESIS MET

The ride had been smooth for a long time now.
But, with the Canon LBP 2900 Laser printer, I have hit a wall.

In their defence, Canon does offer a driver (2, infact, for the deb and rpm based distros), and an elaborate installation manual. One glaring omission in the manual is the absence of a troubleshooting section. Probably they are not believers of Murphy's law, or they did not bother.

The present installation being Opensuse 10.3, I first tried getting the printer to work in it. The detection and installation proceed without any errors, but the printer just wont print. It will even accept jobs, and the printer manager will show a processing status. Nothing else. I looked high and low for a solution. The few reported cases that I did come across, all ended without any success. Of particular interest is this interaction at linuxquestions.org Baig, eventually, did find success with Centos as reported at Unixmen. Unixmen was the other place where success was reported, but not as far as Opensuse was concerned.

Thinking Fedora will prove luckier, I tried a live Fedora 8 installation. Same fate.

Finally, after searching for the "dependencies" that unixmen had pointed out (at rpmfind), I found that only mandriva repository had those rpms. Opensuse and Fedora did not have the rpms even there. In anycase I doubt if the dependencies are really so. Because, with a Mandriva 2007 live CD, I can get the Printer to work. The only dependency that did cause a momentary hiccup was libstdc++.

It is a tough decision, whether to switch entirely to Mandriva or keep it as a "printing' installation and dual booting. IN the course of the installation, reinstallation, I have found the application management of Mandriva to be quite faster than Opensuse. Opensuse, I think, takes time reading through the entire repository list before loading the windows, whereas Mandriva doesn't. this saves atleast 20-30 seconds everytime. Besides double clicking on an rpm directly installs the package, without the kind of repository modification that is needed in OPensuse.

The jury is out.

Bypassing root password

Found a tip at makeuseof.com that allows one to get inside an installation without knowing the root password. It did change my view of security in Linux. If the author is to be believed, by default a distro does not protect against this mischief, which is find unbelievable. Read the tip here http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-reset-any-linux-password/

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Konquering Konqueror

After installing AVI Demux, I found that the default application handling order had been changed, so now all AVIs opened with AVI Demux and not VLC as previously. It was a minor bother that I overlooked for a long time, before I came across the Edit menu in Konqueror.
In this menu, under the Edit File type option it is possible to set the preferred file handling method. This can also be used to ensure that jpgs and pdfs are not opened within Konqueror, which I find annoying.

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