" If you don't ask, you don't get "- Mahatma Gandhi

Ubuntu 9.10 – First Impressions

Just a week or 2 after it’s release, I got hands on the latest offspring of the Ubuntu family, this time it’s a koala! I just keep wondering how do they get such weird names!

Well, downloading was easy enough. I got to ubuntu site (courtesy Google!), and downloaded the 32-bit ubuntu 9.10 iso. 680MB to be approx, it took nearly an hour for me to download it. After which, I put into my usb drive (through usb disk creator), and rebooted to the pen drive. The first that turned out to be different was the booting screen. It just shows a white ubuntu logo that gleams in the black background. It’s kinda resembles Windows 7 boot splash screen, but I like the windows one much better. Next comes the similar ubuntu loading screen, which is a bit darker than in 9.04.

While loading the live CD, I noticed the fast, extremely fast booting up time. I mean this is the fastest a live cd has ever booted (maybe it’s because of the usb, but previous ones did take considerable time). And then comes the desktop. What was noticeable was the resolution, which was set to my default laptop standard, the earlier always switched to  lower resolutions until the NVidia graphics driver was installed. My laptop’s the HP Pavilion dv 6602au, with AMD turion inside. So that’s a plus.

Also I noticed a little UI improvement, better styled and nice icons. Aesthetically it has done a good job, and I think this will appeal to normal users too. I then went on to install over my old partition, which contained the 8.10 version. The steps were similar, but installation takes a little less time.

After the installation, the login screen came up. It’s a lot different now, and has some graphical touch to it. I liked it though, quite thoughtful of the dev ppl to have put so. Though I couldn’t find a way to change it till now. Now all the apps are similar, maybe the OpenOffice version is now 3.1, firefox 3.5, and no Pigdin, instead it’s Empathy IM client. Games have been categorized to logical ones and the rest. Also there are more wallpapers to choose from, which is a small but welcome change.

Few other changes I noticed is the new items that can be added to dock, like the pointer capture, drawer, dwell click etc. Also they added Ubuntu one, which is kinda web storage where I can synchronize folders in my system to the web, and also add a network of computers. Sadly though it doesn’t work for me now, showing capabilities mismatch ( seems t

What I really welcome is that now I don’t need to connect to a power source for booting into ubuntu as I used to! Ah, at last now I can call my laptop portable!

Connect to the Internet using Sony Ericsson K750i bluetooth modem in Ubuntu

In my earlier post related to this ( Connect to the Internet using mobile GPRS modem ), I’d shown you how to connect to the Internet using a K750i bluetooth modem in windows. In this post I’ll show you how to do the same in Ubuntu.

Now for the specs. First up, I’m using Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), and though it is buggy as I mentioned in my earlier posts, I’m able to manage with it by doing periodic fscks disk checks.

Swine flu, the truth and absurdities….

Swine flu, or the H1N1 variant of the virus, has brought chaos all across the world. Educational Institutions shut, offices closed, people running around with masks on their face. Many in the comfy homes are glued to the idiot box watching the media, who are culpable for creating a mania on this virus, telling the people on how dangerous the epidemic has become, and the possible cure and prevention against this.

Jaunty Jackalope, a review

A month after I published my previous post on this related issue (Ubuntu 9.04 – A very buggy affair!!!), I did some research to fix these problems. Now, my ubuntu is running perfectly ok, and no more problems cropped up.

The few problems that might be reason why the ubuntu was behaving abnormally are -

• It requires frequent disk checks. The disk allocation seems to go haywire after several reboots, and thus needs periodic fscks to fix this.
• It does not do automatic disk check during booting, when on battery power. I’ve noticed quite a few do not connect to the power source when they switch on their notebook. This then disables the automatic fsck checks that the ubuntu usually does when on battery power. Also the period of these checks is actually of longer duration, maybe one check after 20 boots, and this is not good for during that time, the ubuntu can spoil the disk! So you can change that by this command ” sudo tune2fs -c 10 /dev/sda1 “. This sets the number of boots after which the fsck must be done. u can change that number however you like, i suggest 6-10 is good. It works with 10 for me though.
• I noticed that if you forcefully shutdown, then the ubuntu goes haywire! No remedies for that except prevention.

Though the ubuntu is working fine, there are still some nagging problems, like the case when booting under battery power, it needs some user input, otherwise it does nothing, it stays just like that. Any solutions?

GRE and dreams…..

Well, this is totally different from what I post in my blog. But then I thought why not share with everyone on the net, whoever is able to find this post, and that without any restrictions like in social networking sites. So I post it here for what my aspirations are, and what I have in view of my future.

The Modern and not so modern youth

I came across this article (suggested by Vipin sir), about the how the youth have been for the past century. You can read the article from this link….

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=In+the+footsteps+of+comfy+cousins&artid=7xQgLyLBNgw=&SectionID=d16Fdk4iJhE=&MainSectionID=HuSUEmcGnyc=&SectionName=aVlZZy44Xq0bJKAA84nwcg==&SEO=

At first, when I began reading it, I thought how could young people in India be happy according to Bertrand Russell? I’ve seen many of my friends, including myself, to be victims of something or the other, and not be happy all the time.

But as I continued reading the article, I realized how true Mr. Russell has said.

Buggy Jaunty Jackalope – A solution in sight…

Ok, so I got many replies to my earlier post on the ubuntu 9.04 being a buggy affair. Thanks guys for all that.

Actually I happened to meet my cousin online in google chat, and he told me that he faced similar problems with the jaunty jackalope in his desktop. He, after searching, tried out the file system check.