Prakash Advani's Blog

Who says you can’t have fast, good and cheap? The Document Foundation’s latest release of the most popular open-source office suite, LibreOffice 4.4 is quite fast on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows; it works well on all three desktop operating systems, and it won’t cost you a penny.

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-best-open-source-office-suite-libreoffice-4-4-gets-new-release/

Download Here: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/?version=4.4.0

Yes you can install WhatApp on Ubuntu Desktop!

It currently works with Chrome browser only (no Chromium support yet).

In Chrome go to : https://web.whatsapp.com

On your WhatApp on your phone, go to Menu (top left) – WhatsApp Web and add your web client.

That’s all, now all your WhatsApp messages will also show up on your Ubuntu Desktop.

Have fun!

From Introduction to Linux to Web development, CIO magazine covers 8 online courses which are completely free.

Read More: http://www.cio.com/article/2847396/it-skills/8-free-online-courses-to-grow-your-tech-skills.html

The Indian smartphone market grew 82% from a year ago and 27% over the preceding quarter, making it the second consecutive quarter of more than 80% year-on-year shipment growth for smartphones.

There were 23.3 million smartphone handsets shipped in the reporting quarter, comprising 32.1% of the overall mobile phone market that touched 72.5 million units in the September quarter of 2014, recording a 9% growth from a year ago and 15% rise from the preceding quarter.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/jssXBoP3nMkZOOGbXOCdeL/India-fastest-growing-smartphone-mkt-in-Asia-Pacific-IDC.html

Amazon EC2 was the most reliable compute and Google Cloud Storage was the most reliable storage.

The Laguna Beach, California company tracks status of more than 30 clouds from AWS to Zettagrid:

Read More: https://gigaom.com/2015/01/07/amazon-web-services-tops-list-of-most-reliable-public-clouds/

This Thanksgiving, Amazon Fire Phone is available at a special price of $199. For that price it looks like a great phone.

• Unlocked
• 2.2GHz quad-core processor
• 2GB RAM
• Bright 4.7″ HD display
• 13 MP camera with optical image stabilization, HDR, and LED flash
• 4 G LTE
• NFC support
• Free Headphones
• Free Amazon Prime for 1 year.

The only reasons why I wouldn’t buy this is..

• Tied to Amazon app store, no Google Play,
• 4.7″ Screen, if you are in the market for a bigger display
• No expandable memory slot
• GSM Only

My setup:

Laptop with Ubuntu 14.04LTS  and Nexus 4.

I also assume you are comfortable with the command prompt. You need to run some commands from terminal.

If you are already running Android 5.0, you can skip Step 1 and go directly to Step 2 to root your device. In my case, I didn’t wait for the OTA update, but if you prefer to play it safe, get the Android 5.0 update and then start.

Pre-Preparation.

Make sure your laptop is charged or plugged into the power and your phone is charged too.

Take a full system backup, because these steps wipes the Android clean.

And ensure your laptop doesn’t go into suspend mode while you do this.

Now install a few packages:

sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

sudo apt-get install fastboot

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install phablet-tools

Step 1: Installing Android 5.0

NOTE: This will wipe the system clean so if you haven’t backed up, go and back up first.

Download the correct file from the Google site:

https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

For Nexus 4 it is called.

occam-lrx21t-factory-51cee750.tgz

Now extract the files, it will show you a directory

occam-lrx21t

Change to this directory occam-lrx21t

Now boot into the bootloader, remember this step as you will need to do it a few times.

adb reboot bootloader

If it’s not able to find the device,  you can boot manually.

For nexus 4, while holding the volume button down, press the power button.

Now unlock the device with the following command.

fastboot oem unlock

Now flash the Android 5.0 Image by running this command from the directory above.

./flash-all.sh

After a few minutes, On the phone you will see a new boot up logo for Android 5.0. this will take a few minutes to complete. Grab a coffee or your favourite beverage.

Once this is complete, wait you still have to root the device.

wait, don’t do much on your android, as the unlock process may wipe your data!

Step 2: Rooting Android.

Download the rooting script from chainfire: http://download.chainfire.eu/297/CF-Root/CF-Auto-Root/CF-Auto-Root-mako-occam-nexus4.zip

When you scroll down, you see the actual link to download.

This will download this file: CF-Auto-Root-mako-occam-nexus4.zip

Extract this directory, change to this directory.

Now boot into the boot loader with your preferred method. I used volume down button + power on.

Now type these commands.

chmod +x root-linux.sh 
./root-linux.sh

Step 3: Installing MultROM manager

Find the app in Google Play and Install.

Start the app. This will ask you to install 3 things, go ahead and install.

It will also boot into recovery mode.

Once its done, it will reboot and start android.

Now start the MultROM manager again.

You should see the option to install Ubuntu Touch.

Step 4: Installing Ubuntu Touch

If you want demo files, select the -demo

you can choose stable OR development version, you can also install both one by one.

This step took the longest amount of time for me. Go get a nap!

It will ask you to reboot once.

Once this is done, there is no intimation that it is completed.

When you reboot, it will give you an option to boot internal (Android) or Ubuntu Touch. Here you can select Ubuntu Touch and boot into it and setup.

Final Housekeeping. Boot into bootloader and lock the boot loader again:

fastboot oem lock

click on start to reboot your system.

Note: If you upgrade your Android, you will lose the dual-boot and have to start again from step 2 which may differ with your android version.

With other languages such as Java and Python getting large user base, this is a good move to gain some users.

Microsoft is open sourcing .NET, this should reduce the compatibility challenges with cross-platform applications developed using Microsoft Tools.

http://news.microsoft.com/2014/11/12/microsoft-takes-net-open-source-and-cross-platform-adds-new-development-capabilities-with-visual-studio-2015-net-2015-and-visual-studio-online/

The main thing the Tox team is trying to do, besides provide encryption, is create a tool that requires no central servers whatsoever—not even ones that you would host yourself. It relies on the same technology that BitTorrent uses to provide direct connections between users, so there’s no central hub to snoop on or take down.

There are other developers trying to build a secure, peer-to-peer messaging systems, including Briar and Invisible.im, a project co-created by HD Moore, the creator of the popular security testing framework Metasploit. And there are other secure-centric voice calling apps, including those from Whisper Systems and Silent Circle, which encrypt calls made through the traditional telco infrastructure. But Tox is trying to roll both peer-to-peer and voice calling into one.

Actually, it’s going a bit further than that. Tox is actually just a protocol for encrypted peer-to-peer data transmission. “Tox is just a tunnel to another node that’s encrypted and secure,” says David Lohle, a spokesperson for the project. “What you want to send over that pipe is up to your imagination.” For example, one developer is building an e-mail replacement with the protocol, and Lohle says someone else is building an open source alternative to BitTorrent Sync.

Read More: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/tox/

An independent survey of 200 UK-based CIOs has revealed that they are only using about half of the cloud capacity they’ve bought and paid for, and that 90 percent of them see over-provisioning as a necessary evil.

Cloud provider ElasticHosts, which commissioned the survey, says: “Essentially, bad habits like over-provisioning and sacrificing peak performance are being carried from the on-premise world into the cloud, partly because people are willing to accept these limitations.”

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/cloud-customers-are-still-paying-for-twice-as-much-as-they-need-7000033369/

After the  iPhone 6 vs Android: Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC M8 and Xiaomi MI3,  I am now comparing the Phablets: iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and LG G3, Sony Xperia Z3 and Note 3 Neo. I picked the top Phablets and also the budget Note 3 Neo.

Still want an Apple ?

I was watching the iPhone 6 launch last night and was wonder what the fuss is all about? Well it’s from Apple and people may be drooling.

Lets find out how the iPhone 6 compares with the Leading Android phones. I am only comparing the specifications and features and not the actually quality which is very subjective.

Here is Apple iPhone vs Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and Xiaomi MI3. Galaxy S5 and One M8 are the premium Android phones while the MI3 is the poor man’s option or the rich mans budget phone which ever way you look at it.

As you can see the Android variants are leading in almost all the specifications which does matter. This includes the inexpensive Xiaomi Rather than innovating, Apple seems to only playing catch-up. Apply skillfully hides the finer specifications. Its your choice to stand in the queue for iPhone 6 or go with an Android at a cheaper price.

At CloudOpen, a Linux Foundation tradeshow held in conjunction with LinuxCon, the Foundation announced that an online survey of open-source cloud professionals found OpenStack to be the most popular overall project.

That wasn’t surprising. Although OpenStack is only four years old, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud project is very popular with support from such industry giants HP, Red Hat, and VMware. What was somewhat surprising was that number two was Docker, the just-over-a-year old container technology.

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/most-popular-open-source-cloud-projects-of-2014-7000032856/

That tech is called Linux Containerization, and is the latest in a long line of innovations meant to make it easier to package up applications and sling them around data centers. It’s not a new approach – see Solaris Zones, BSD Jails, Parallels, and so on – but Google has managed to popularize it enough that a small cottage industry is forming around it.

Read More: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2S0zFm/YAbnLcdp:9a2Vn45F/www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/23/google_containerization_two_billion/

This also explains why meditation (truth) got converted to religion. Why conflict arises from religion, was religion created for vested interests ?

One day, Mara, the Evil One, was going through a village with his attendant when he saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something lying in front of him. Mara’s attendant asked what that was and Mara replied, “A piece of truth.” His attendant thought a while and asked, “Does it not bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?” Unfazed, Mara replied, “No, because right after that, they usually make a religion out of it.”

Read More: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-19/news/52983337_1_mara-attendant-evil

Front page news Economic Times, Bangalore Edition.

“India is the fastest growing market for us with great stickiness and adoption of Ubuntu. It is definitely one of our key focus markets globally,“ said Prakash Advani, regional manager for Asia Pacific at Canonical.

Read More: 

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/india-opens-up-to-operating-system-ubuntu/articleshow/39682855.cms

http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31815&articlexml=India-Opens-Up-to-Ubuntu-05082014001077

Olympus TG-3 is a new release of the popular TG series of waterproof camera. Here is what is interesting:

• Waterproof: you can go diving with it up 15m.
• Shockproof
• Crushproof: you can throw it around and literally jump onto it.
• Has GPS, so you can tag the location of your photos
• Also records altitude/depth and pressure
• e-Compass, to get directions if you get lost
• Wifi with Android application
• 16 MegaPixel
• Wide Aperture: F2.0 for those great pictures in low light conditions
• 1080p video shooting
• fish eye and telephoto lenses options (at additional costs)

Top cities with Tech Skills are: Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.

These 4 Indian cities are ahead of San Francisco Bay Area.

Read the complete report: http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/24/indias-got-tech-talent-cities-in-india-top-list-of-cities-attracting-technology-talent/

The company has pledged to invest $1 billion in open cloud products and services over the next two years, along with community-driven, open-source cloud technologies.

“Just as the community spread the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, we believe OpenStack will do the same for the cloud,” said Hewlett-Packard CEO and President Meg Whitman, in a webcast announcing Helion Tuesday.

Read More

I often get asked this question 32 or 64-Bit? In the past I have told people to stick to 32-Bit because of compatibility issues but things have changed now. Quoting for Phoronix which recently did a benchmark test between 32-Bit and 64-Bit.

Going back years we have run 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux benchmarks. While the results seldom change, we keep running them as the question of choosing between a 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distribution image is still a popular question… These tests drive in a surprising amount of traffic and I continue to be flabbergasted by the number of people still asking this question when nearly all modern x86 Intel/AMD hardware fully supports x86_64 and it generally means much better performance. Usually the only caveat in not using a 64-bit Linux image is if running a system with less than 2GB of RAM.

In the past there were issues surrounding the Java and Flash support for 64-bit Linux along with an assortment of other possible problems (e.g. with Wine), but all those major issues are a matter of the past. 64-bit Linux is in great shape and as long as you have a decent amount of RAM you really should be running 64-bit Linux.

If you are still in doubt, read the full article for the benchmark results.