Prakash Advani's Blog

Here is an inexpensive Ubuntu notebook, the ASUS X201E-DH01.

• Intel Celeron 847 (1.1GHz) Sandy Bridge
• 4 GB DDR3
• 320 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
• 11.6-Inch Screen, Intel GMA HD Graphic card
• 1 USB 3.0 and 2 USB 2.0
• SD MMC Card Reader
• WiFi, Ethernet and Bluetooth 4.0
• 1 HDMI and 1 VGA
• 5 Hours claimed battery life.
• Light Weight: 1.3 Kgs (2.9 Pounds)
• Ubuntu 12.04 preinstalled!

It is not the fastest PC around, but enough for day to day tasks. Runs faster on Ubuntu than Windows. Is light weight for people on the move, inexpensive and has enough of ports.

Ubuntu 13.04.10 is here.  Torrent is the preferred method for me.

Other releases.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.04/ (Ubuntu Desktop and Server)
http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/13.04/release/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/13.04/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/13.04/release/ (Ubuntu Core)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/13.04/release/ (Edubuntu DVD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/13.04/release/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/13.04/release/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/13.04/release/ (Ubuntu Studio)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/13.04/release/ (Ubuntu-GNOME)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/13.04/release/ (UbuntuKylin)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/13.04/release/ (Xubuntu)

As always Have fun

With Windows 8 pushing a “touch-first” desktop interface—Microsoft’s words, not ours—and with Valve’s Steam on Linux beginning to bring much-needed games and popular attention to the oft-overlooked operating system, there’s never been a better time to take Linux out for a test drive.

Dipping your toes into the penguin-filled waters of the most popular open-source ecosystem is easy, and you don’t have to commit to switching outright to Linux. You can install it alongside your current Windows system, or even try it without installing anything at all.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution for desktop and laptop Linux users, so we’ll focus on Ubuntu throughout this guide. For the most part, Ubuntu just plain works. It sports a subtle interface that stays out of your way. It enjoys strong support from software developers (including Valve, since Steam on Linux only officially supports Ubuntu). And you can find tons of information online if you run into problems.

Read more.

Since the Ubuntu phone has been announced, many people are getting eager to give it a try. The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview, which allows you to get a peak into Ubuntu phone and tablet is available for download. Images are available for the following:

Phones: Google Nexus, Nexus 4

Tablets: Nexus 7 and Nexus 10

Please read the disclaimer before you begin:

It is an experimental development snapshot that can potentially brick your device. It does not provide all of the features and services of a retail phone and cannot replace your current handset. This preview is the first release of a very new and unfinished version of Ubuntu and it will evolve quickly.

This process will delete all data from the device. Restoring Android will not restore this data.

Grab your bits here.

From PC World.

Ubuntu is a widely popular open-source Linux distribution with eight years of maturity under its belt, and more than 20 million users. Of the roughly 5 percent of desktop OSs accounted for by Linux, at least one survey suggests that about half are Ubuntu. (Windows, meanwhile, accounts for about 84 percent.)

The timing of this latest Ubuntu release couldn’t be better for Windows users faced with the paradigm-busting Windows 8 and the big decision of whether to take the plunge.

Initial uptake of Windows 8 has been unenthusiastic, according to reports, and a full 80 percent of businesses will never adopt it, Gartner predicts. As a result, Microsoft’s big gamble may be desktop Linux’s big opportunity.

So, now that Canonical has thrown down the gauntlet, let’s take a closer look at Ubuntu 12.10 to see how it compares with Windows 8 from a business user’s perspective.

Read More.

After installing Ubuntu 12.10, the first thing I wanted to do, was to disable reverse scrolling – you scroll down and it scrolls up! This is also called natural scrolling by Apple. Don’t know what is natural about it but may be natural for Apple users.

Open the terminal and edit this file using any editor and edit the .Xmodmap in your home directory for example:

 gedit .Xmodmap

Here you would seet his:

pointer = 1 2 3 5 4  6 7 8 9 10 11 12

You would note that in the sequence of numbers 5 and 4 are interchanged. Change it back to the sequence..

pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Now you are done, logging out and in should do the job.

If you have Ubuntu Tweak installed. Just go to Tweaks-Miscellaneous and you would see an option to toggle Natural Scrolling on/off.

Ubuntu 12.10 is here. With this release there is no CD image only DVD image which is 800 MB in size. Torrent is preferred method for me.

Have fun

Hewlett-Packard released two beta versions of its open source webOS on Friday: one for developers that runs on the Ubuntu Linux desktop, and one for the “OpenEmbedded” development environment, intended to help developers port webOS to new devices.

The August Edition, as the webOS team calls the latest release on the project website, consists of 45 open source webOS components and 450,000 lines of code. The two versions were released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community, the team said.

Read More.

From the article:

“You’d be a fool to use anything but Linux.”

Most Linux people know that Google uses Linux on its desktops as well as its servers. Some know that Ubuntu Linux is Google’s desktop of choice and that it’s called Goobuntu. But almost no one outside of Google knew exactly what was in it or what roles Ubuntu Linux plays on Google’s campus, until now.

Read More.

In the battle of the desktop operating systems (OS), there are only three dominant players left – Windows, Mac and Linux. At some point, Windows was cast as the platform for the common man, Mac as the one for the artist, and Linux as the geek’s playground.

Linux found favour in powering servers, supercomputers, large businesses and even stock exchanges. And Google even used it as the platform to build its popular Android mobile operating system. But in the desktop and notebook space, it still failed to gain traction.

There’s an image associated with Linux that can be frightening for a normal user, invoking pictures of command lines and terminal windows. But over the past 20 years, some massive steps have been taken to make the OS more accessible.

Read More.

The same was also published on Economic Times.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is here. This is the first time Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Desktop) will be supported for 5 years.

Torrent is preferred method for me.

Other Links:

CD images + Alternative CD.

Ubuntu Core – Just 35 MB  of pure Ubuntu.

Have fun

HP has now jumped on the bandwagon as a cloud service provider with HP Cloud. Here is an excerpts from Senior VP of HP Cloud services:

On When OpenStack Reached Its Tipping Point: My thesis: The day Canonical shifted Ubuntu’s cloud bet from Eucalyptus to OpenStack, it was a wake up call for small vendors that were still getting ready to make their bets. “I would completely agree,” replied Singh. “A bunch of private cloud guys have been at it [trying to develop platforms] for awhile but OpenStack caught up and passed them. We’ve been impressed with CloudStack and we’re glad to see it moving along, and we’re happy to see Eucalyptus working with Amazon. But look at the ecosystem and OpenStack looks impressive.”

On How HP Will Differentiate from Other Cloud Providers: “With all due respect to Rackspace, we’re a little larger and we have a global reach. And we’ll address that reach in the cloud as well.”

In terms of HP’s secret sauce, “Nobody is ever going to turn away from a secure, business-driven, SLA_driven cloud service,” said Singh. “I challenge you: Who is delivering that type of cloud today? Amazon Web Services has a lot of stickiness but folks are saying ‘I need more tools and I need good, old fashion service.”

HP will differentiate above the IaaS level, focusing on platform as a service, database as a service, and analytics as a service, he added. “Standing up VMs is so 2009. It’s time to stand up quality clouds, tools, APIs, and service that scale. We’ll offer a complete stack of services, and we’ll give you a complete [cloud] marketplace on top of that.”

Read more of the interview of Zorawar ‘Biri’ Singh, senior VP and GM of HP Cloud Services.

The recently acquired Instagram is powered by Ubuntu! Instagram was recently acquired by Facebook for $1 Billion. Its a 13 people company almost all of them in their 20s and just 2 years old.

It is not just Ubuntu, the site is completely built on Open Source: Apache Solr, PostgreSQL, Redis and Django.

Read more on the technology underneath.

In my experience if you can absolutely focus on getting one thing done, you can get it done really fast. Now Harvard Business review has a nice article on this. Here are some useful suggestions from the article.

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you’ll be. When you’re done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don’t, you’ll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that’s relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you’re off, you’re truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you’ll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

Read the complete article.

Android so far has been maintaining its separate kernel from the mainline Linux kernel.  The android kernel forked out of the mainline because of differences in accepting the changes which the android developers were working on.

The good news is now with Kernel 3.3 the android specific changes are accepted in the mainline kernel.

Ubuntu 12.04 scheduled to release next month, will be on Linux kernel 3.2, expect 12.10 to benefit from this.

Ubuntu Cloud Day is coming to Bangalore on April 4th 2012.

If you are interested you can register here. http://ubuntucloudday.in

Here is a discount code to get you 20 percent off. Have Fun

LNKD20

Epson L200 is a low cost multi-function device which is good for bulk printing. It offers Printing/Scanning and Copying. A similar model L100 is a stand along printer.

Note: This printer is a pain to get it working on Ubuntu, or Linux as it is not officially supported by Epson on Linux. If you are a Linux user, I would advice you not to buy this printer.

First this model works on Ubuntu 11.04 with these instructions. However on Ubuntu 11.10 you require some tweaking.

First go to Epson Linux Download Center.

These instructions work for L100 and L200.

Search for N11, L200 is not yet officially supported hence you search for similar model. The OS drop down below should show Linux.

Download the printer driver. For 32-bit systems the file is

epson-inkjet-printer-n10-nx127_1.0.1-1lsb3.2_i386.deb

It will require some LSB files which it should download on its own.

Now reboot your system and plug on USB, your printer will get auto-detected and it will install the driver. You will not be able to print yet.

On your browser, type localhost:631  this will bring up cups front end where you need to change a few things.

Click on printers tab on the right, select L200 under Queue Name, you will see two drop down menus.

Select Maintenance in the first one and Modify Printer, Now select the printer and say continue.

It would show Make Generic and Current Driver Generic ESC/P Dot Matrix

Click on Select Another Make/Manufacturer

Select Epson and Click on Continue

Now Select Epson Stylus N10 N11 Series

Now click on the Link below that says Modify Printer

Now if you print a test page you should see it printed.

To install the scanner, This is for L200.

Now  go back to Epson Linux Download Center.

Now search for L200

The OS drop down below should show Linux.

Now accept and download these files for 32-bit systems

iscan_2.28.1-3.ltdl7_i386.deb

iscan-data_1.14.0-1_all.deb

Install them and now you can scan from Any application like SimpleScan or use the ImageScan application installed.

My first comments on this printer for Linux/Ubuntu users.

This printer was a pain to install on Ubuntu and to print in the best photo quality you need Windows, on Ubuntu I was able to print in colour but not get the best quality.

Secondly to setup the printer you need Windows, to enter the ink tank codes, you will need this every time you re-fill the tanks.I have seen some hacks around this on Youtube, yet to try it and those hacks are also Windows only

If you have Linux only, you won’t be able to setup this printer and even if you have Windows, its a pain to setup this printer the first time.

Additional Comments for 12.04 and 12.10 users:

I haven’t been able to get this printer working properly on 12.04. It is printing but scanning is not working. So if you are a 12.04 user, beware.

However it worked well with 12.10 with the above steps.

The root cause is branding. “Linux” (the brand) is muddy, confusing, and unfriendly to the mainstream computer user: those on the other side of the chasm. They are the exact people that we need to embrace Ubuntu and they don’t *get* “Linux”. They don’t know what it is. They get a negative connotation when they hear the word. Don’t believe me? Ask your non-techie friend or loved one. (I just asked the person beside me and the response I got was less than flattering.)

Read more on Randall’s blog.

Recently published postcast on Ubuntu Cloud. This was recorded at Intel Cloud Summit.

Conversations in the Cloud.

Direct link to the pod cast.

If you want to test drive your own private cloud, try Ubuntu Cloud Live. It’s a 600 MB image, just download, burn to USB drive, boot your system with it and you have a cloud setup.

Download the image from here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-cloud-live/releases/11.10/ubuntu-11.10-cloud-live-amd64.img

Note: This is a 64-bit mage.

Recommended to have atleast a 4GB pen drive.

Use the ‘dd’ command to copy the image over to your USB drive. For example, if your USB drive is connected to /dev/sdb,  then run `dd if=ubuntu-11.10-cloud-live-amd64.img of=/dev/sdb`. WARNING: THIS COMMAND WILL ERASE ALL DATA PREVIOUSLY STORED ON THE TARGET DEVICE. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DEVICE WHEN FLASHING.

Have fun