Prakash Advani's Blog

Linux has always been better than Windows is many ways.. one of them being that Linux doesn’t need to be defragged.

Read this excellent article to know why.

I am tempted to write an article on 101 reasons why Linux is better 🙂 If I get enough inputs for this.. I would go ahead and write this.

From Network World article.:

All these companies business model is to open source their software and charge for services.

Open Source companies to watch:

Cleversafe – Grid file system.

Digium – Open Source PBX – Asterix.

Hyperic – Platform for managing heterogeneous IT environments.

Optaros – Helping enterprises choose open source solutions.

Qlusters – System management platform.

rPath – Preconfigured, pretested application appliances that can be downloaded and deployed by enterprise users in minutes.

WSO2 – Tungsten, an Apache-based open source application server built from the ground up to handle Web services.

Sahana – Sri Lanka-based nonprofit committed to promoting open source software development.

Zenoss – Network and systems-monitoring software.

Zmanda – AMANDA backup utility software.

Mind mapping software caught my fancy a little while ago when I tried out Freemind.

Now I came across another one KDissert – Which seems to be better.

Check out the flash demo.

I have been looking for tools which allows you to create cross platform applications as well as be able to host the same application on the Web.

I came across XAMPP which run on Linux, Mac, Windows and even Solaris!

Its a bundle of Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl and other goodies to all these platforms. If you can do with Web based apps this would work. You can always use AJAX if you need more rich client experience.

This can be used to host applications which can be developed in PHP or Perl.

A big advantage of this is that you can use several of open source applications written for the LAMP stack such as Media Wiki, Drupal, etc. which can be used for creating intranets.

Disadvantage would be that this may not as portable as Java or Mono.

Check it out. – XAMPP.

People who often move from Windows, need to unlearn a lot of things. Here is list of 10 things when they move to Linux.

The first thing ofcourse is that they don’t need to reboot anymore 🙂 and they need to learn this.

Sandisk is using Open Source as a weapon to fight against Apple iPod. From this article they plan to use Rockbox which is an open source firmware for music player. Rockbox can also be use dto replace the original firmware of many of the popular MP3 players to enhance the features.

List of features.

Support for over ten Sound Codecs, including OGG and FLAC
Gapless playback DONE (with lame -nogap)
5-band fully-parametric equalizer, and crossfeed
High-resolution volume control, 64-100 levels (model-dependent)
Abilty to create your own themes or use user-uploaded ones
Advanced crossfading
ReplayGain support (volume normalization
JPEG image and text-file viewing
Doom – The popular game!
Real Time Clock (RTC)
Customizable ID3 Tag Database
Unicode support
Advanced On-The-Go playlist creation
Multilingual Interface – 30 supported languages and counting
Optional fully voice-driven interface
Many plugins – games, apps, and demos
Open Source, so Rockbox is constantly improved

From an Infoworld article.

If Indian developers get more involved in open-source projects, they could do wonders for the country and the open-source community at large, according to Advani, of IndLinux.org. For now, however, the Indian developer is concerned with earning his “bread and butter,” he said.

“They can only start thinking of making free contributions to the open-source community and society at large after they ensure that their basic material requirements are met,” Advani said.

Read the full article.

Larry Augustin is the founder of VA Linux, one of the early Linux companies.. Here is his view on India’s contribution to Open Source.

From the Article

Perhaps his most interesting statements concerned the “threat” of competition from India and China. If they want traction in the software market they, too, need to give a little bit.

“I still don’t see many people from India and China contributing to open source. It’s when the people in those countries get into the process that you’ll see things. It’s not going to happen until you see the contribution level increase.

People often ask me what is the best way to partition a PC used for a laptop/ home desktop or professional workstation for Linux.

Here are some ideas on how you should do it.

1. If you plan to dual boot, the first primary partition can be Windows – Fat 32, this makes the partition read-write enabled on Linux, so makes it easy to switch files between Linux and Windows.
2. The second primary partition is Linux mounted as /
3. The third primary partition is Linux mounted as /data (optional)
4. The forth partition is extended for the rest of the file system
5. The firth partition is a logical partition formatted as swap which is twice the size of RAM but need not be more than 1GB for a office workstation/home PC.
6. The sixth partition is a logical partition mounted as /home which will use up the balance space..

The third partition can be used when you wish to install another version of Linux without disturbing your existing one. For example I am using SUSE Linux 10.1 which is installed in the second partition. When I want to install 10.2, I can install it in the third partition and mount the same (firth partition) as /home.

The second (mounted as /) and third Linux partitions can be 10-15 GB.

As per this article a windows PC was so badly infected with virues and spyware that Mr. Steve Ballmer and Microsoft’s top engineers couldn’t clean it!

Support for a specific hardware on Linux has always been a concern , most Linuxers check for compatiblity before they buy the hardware. Here are some sites which has a compatiblity database which can be referred to before doing a purchase.

Phoronix.com

LinuxCompatible.org

I have written a small script to create personalised greeting cards.

With this script you can print a persons name on a template file at a specific location.

How to use it. Create a template file, then run the command greetings Name (where name is the name that you want to print on the file. This would generate a Name.jpg out of the template file. If you want to modify the position of the text, Look for “text 300,80” try changing this.

Sample Template File.

Example Output File.

Download the script.

Dependency: This program relies on convert program, which is a part of ImageMagick. I have written and tested this on Linux.

Here are some of the thoughts on building a Education Content Server for educational institutes.

The content server for education, is a server located locally in the school/college premises. This server has all the content such as software, documentations and source code, that is available for free. This content is replicated through a central server and each of these local servers are accessible to the outside world as well. This is similar to the model used by Tucows.com which is leading network of download servers.

The local server will be situated in each of institute. It will replicate from the central server. The replication can happen through the Internet or incase Internet connectivity is not available through CDs sent out every month.

Each local server will also act as a local mirror and if it is connected to the Internet, anyone can access this content within or outside the institute.

FOLD Stands for:
Free Software
Open Source
Linux
Documentation

This will have all the free software and open source software. The source code of all these applications will also be available.

This brings in all the latest applications, source codes, documentations, etc available locally in the institute’s premises. The student can use this as well as contribute code back. There would be a local CVS mirror which updates the central CVS server which updates the global CVS server.

The documentation would consists of all the free technical documentation as well as important and useful information such as tax laws, government notifications, forms for passport and other utilities; important telephone numbers,emails and contacts. It will also have all the student project reports and other things contributed by the students.

Each local server will also have a search facilty to search through all this content. Each local server front-end can be customised by the institute with their branding such as logo. They can also have additional sections put up their local content on the server.

What else can this be used for?

For example, if the government wants to release a document say the budget. Why should it be released only on the Ministry of Finance site? This document can be released on FOLD which is replicated across all the servers at each of the institutes which are connected to the Internet and a user can download the document from any of the servers.

Example Sites which do similar thing:

Sourceforge.net
Freshmeat.net
Tucows.com

Constitution of India says: Of the People, By the People and For the People. Since public money is used, the work done should be given back to the public. Other then sensitive defense projects, all other software projects supported by the government should be made Open Source. Students doing projects in schools and colleges where fees are subsidised by the government should also be release under Open Source.

Reuse of Code

Suppose a Municipal Corporation decides to create a software, if the software is released under Open Source, then a Municipal Corporation in another city or town could reuse most or all of that code. They can also improve upon it and send it back to the original developers. This way code can be reused, there by reducing the cost of further development. Lot of government projects work on the similar projects and each one is re-inventing the wheel. If the code of all the project is available, they can collaborate and avoid duplication of work.

Transparency

Showing the code also bring about transparency in the way the government functions since citizens can view the code and verify the quality of work done as well judge weather the money was rightly spent.

Code Never Dies

Quite often it happens that a government funded project dies over time due to various reasons. What happens to the code that they developed? The code also dies with the project. Sometimes the project may be active but code may be lost or unable after a few years. If the source code of all government funded project is released as Open Source, the code will never die even if the project is discontinued. Any one who wishes to continue can just download the code and continue where someone else left off.

Reduce Costs

Open Source and Linux helps in reducing the Total Cost of Ownership drastically of the entire system. India being a developing country, should use such technologies so as to reduce the over all cost. The money saved can be used to provide computers where there aren’t any currently or can be utilised for other projects.

Outflow of foreign exchange

More than 90 percent of software that Indian purchase are not produced by Indian companies, valuable foreign exchange is used to purchase them. By using Open Source software, there is no outflow of foreign exchange since the basic software is free. You may have to pay for services, but the services revenues goes to Indian companies or Indian subsides of foreign companies which employ Indian to provide local support.

Opportunities for local vendors

When proprietary/close source software is used, there is very little revenue opportunity for local vendors. With Open Source, since the source code is available, local vendors can do value additions and customisation as required by the customer and thereby earn extra revenues.

Open Standards

Since Open Source follows Open Standards, government must encourage the use of Open Standards document formats. For example if the government tender documents are in Microsoft Word documents which is a proprietary format, then citizens are forced to buy Microsoft Word to read/write those documents. On the other hand if the government standadises on the use of open standard document format, then the citizen can use any software to create them.

Make Software a Cottage Industry

To develop software there is an investment required in the PC + Operating System + Development tools. The cost of proprietary development tools alone would come to a lakh of rupees. The cost of Open Source development tools is zero and there are a huge family of development tools available as well as a huge collection of development libraries are available for free. Also since the source code is available, the developer can study the source code of some of the best applications.

If the government encourages the Open Source model of development, the software industry can become a cottage industry. The Open Source development model is also decentralised, which means a student, sitting in a small village can easily contribute code to a large Open Source project. Where as if he had to contribute code to a close source project, he would be required to be physically present at the premises of the software company and be employed by them.

Also Open Source makes it easy for anyone to contribute code, even if the person is fresh out of college, he could still write some application and put it out as Open Source. Linux started by Linus Torvalds as Hobby when he was a student at University of Helsinki in Finland. We would like the next Linus Torvalds to be from India.

No Dependence on a Particular Vendor

With Open Source you are not dependent on a single vendor, so if one vendor fails to support you, you can get any one else to support you since code is available. This creates a healthy competition and companies cannot hold the government at ransom.

Last but not the least

If China Mexico, Brazil, Germany, UK, US and South Korea have done it, why not we? These countries are promoting the use of Linux and Open Source in a big way, so why should India be left behind?

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License” on the GNU website.

Many corporates are using Open Source but don’t want to talk about it. ZDNet has an article on the various reasons why organizations are doing that.

Primary reason being the fear of Microsoft increasing the license fees if they get to know that that a corporate is using open source.

This implies that more and more organizations are using Linux and Open Source but just don’t want to talk about it.

The whole of Microsoft’s Wi-Fi network is going to be power by Linux. As per Computerworld:

Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft’s existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba’s centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points.

Mark Robards, Aruba Network’s Asia-Pacific vice president, said the company’s mobility controller switches provide integrated security, including a firewall, VPN, and hardware encryption, and they are “all Linux-based”.

While Microsoft may say Linux is not reliable, etc, etc.. the usual FUD that it creates in the market, it will be using Linux to provide a reliable Wi-Fi Network.

Preach what your practice Mr. Gates 🙂

Linux is everywhere. You can have a Linux phone, home security system, PVR and now a Car PC.

Looks very interesting, hope I can build one someday.

Many of my friends are impressed with Windows Media Center. On checking with some PC vendors, I learned that its just a PC + TV Tuner Card + Windows + Software to control the TV and do the recording.

What is needed is any TV Tuner Card. If you need to record then TV Tuner Card with hardware MPEG encoder would be preferred.

This can easily be done on Linux as well. You can also save some money Hauppauge is considered to be a good TV tuner card and works well with Linux too.

On Linux there are two good open source software which can achieve this: Freevo and MythTV.

Freevo is easy to use and quicker to setup.

MythTV is suppose to be considered more stable and also allows you to pause TV programs while watching them. When you do that, it starts recording in the background.

Setting up MythTV may be more complex but there are ways to speed that up. The best bet is to use Knoppmyth. This is bootable CD (based on knoppix) which is already preconfigured with MythTV. All you have to do it boot from this CD, it will load Linux + MythTV. However if you want record, you will need to install to the hard disk.

If you are installing MythTV on SUSE Professional 9.3 then this guide will be a definite help.

Newsforge also has an article on this.

If you are looking for the latest Linux applications and can’t find the RPM’s for SUSE LINUX Professional, try one of these. They can also be added into YaST source.

http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/

http://packman.links2linux.org/

You can find Mplayer, Gaim and several others.

I have written a small script to make it easy to process digital camera photos.

You can use the script to optimise your photos before putting them up on the web. It does the following:

It creates a directory web and puts the processed photos in that so as to not alter the original images.

When you click photos vertically from a Digital Camera, it actually stores the photos horizonally and puts a rotate tag. Some of the viewers are not able to understand them.

This script looks for images with rotate tags, rotates them and removes the tag. This makes it easier to view on any image viewer.

The script also optimises the size of the image so as to save space. For example a 3.2MB pixel photo can take 1-2 MB of space, after using this script it is optimised to 1024×768 ( which is good for viewing on the screen) and uses only 100 KB of space.

It puts a copyright notice on the top right corner of the image.

And it changes the file name to lower case.

The script requires the following:

Linux, haven’t tested on anything else.
convert (part of imagemagick).
jhead
chcase. This requires Perl.

I have also found ren a nice tool to rename multiple files. Eg. If I have files called photos001.png.jpg, photos002..photos003… and I want to rename all of them to photos001.jpg ..photos002.. then I can do that by typing.

ren “photos*.*.*” photos#1.#3

Download the script from here.

See some of the photos which have been processed using this script in my photo album.