Prakash Advani's Blog

A while ago I moved my album to Gallery. It was very easy to configure. I never expected it to be so simple since all complex applications require effort to set it up.

I am quite happy with it and it gives me a lot many features like:

Nested albums
Search facility
Voting
EXIF tags
Front end to upload images
Shows popularity

Computer science researchers at Stanford University have done an analysis that Linux has far fewer bugs than commercial competitors.

Here’s the maths:

Commercial software has 20 – 30 bugs per 1,000 lines of code.
Linux Kernel has 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code.

And most importantly, majority of the .17 bugs in the Linux kernel are already fixed.
Wired has an article:

Linux: Fewer Bugs Than Rivals

Its easy to build a Linux based PVR (like Tivo) which can record and play TV programs. This is useful if you don’t want to or can’t be there to watch your favourite program, so you can program your PVR to do the work of recording which can be watched later.
MythTV is a popular open source solution with with you can use a PC as a PVR.

Clever Tricks with MythTV is a nice article which explains how to build a PVR quickly.

In an interview with Check Point’s CEO.

Why do you think it’s been so challenging for Microsoft to get its arms around security?

My view, as a technologist, is very simple. Go back 20 years or so, in terms of the operating system. There were Unix and VMS. Unix was extremely simple, extremely powerful and easy to master. You could have gone to the Unix kernel and made changes and introduced new applications. Every Unix programmer knew all the APIs (application user interfaces), because they were very simple.

The VMS approach was the opposite. Everything you wanted to do was available there. It was very, very powerful but extremely complicated. Everything was a big bureaucracy. For everything you wanted to do, you needed to read 50 pages or 100 pages of manuals to learn how to do it. Microsoft historically picked the VMS approach. It actually hired the same guy who was in charge of VMS development.

From Linuxdevices.com:

This simple embedded Linux project builds a dedicated music recording and editing computer that uses a CompactFlash card instead of a hard drive, to eliminate hard disk chatter. The project is simple because it starts with an embedded Linux distribution: a “Live CD” released last week by the Agnula Project.

After Acquiring two major Linux Companies – SuSe and Ximian, Novell may be on the lookout for more.

The reasons are as follows:

– Linux has become a major focus for Novell.

– There are still some holes in providing a full end-to-end solution, like providing support for legacy Windows applications.

– Novell has cash!

Who could be the next acquisition ? Codeweaver possibly? Since they have a CrossOver to run Windows application without requiring to buy any further licenses.

Before buying any USB device you can check if your device is supported on Linux. Found this site quite useful and information is nicely classified.

This Site has a nice list of Linux equivalents for common Windows applications. The only problem is for each Windows application there are average 5 Linux applications to choose from!

How do you expect a newbie to decide which one he/she should choose?

I have been screaming that since a long time but finally there is a good article that explains this well.

There seems to be a Linux phone boom! First it was Motorola to announce to Linux, then it was E28 a chinese company to follow suit and now Samsung too had released a Linux phone. On a seperate development NTT DoCoMo Japanese leading mobile provider had said they would go the Linux way.

Whats driving these companies towards Linux? There are couple of reasons.

– They don’t have to pay License fees
– Provides them with lots of flexiblity
– Lets face it, Linux is good 🙂

Most of the phones choosing to use Linux are for smart phone with PDA, camera, MP3 and other facilities.

Novell Announced today that it is acquiring SuSE. This seems to be interesting, SuSE is one of the best distributions and Novell has a very large customer base. Novell also recently acquired another Linux company – Ximian.

Lets see how Novell integrates all this and provides a good distribution for us to use. Its also important to see how much Novell gives back to the community.

In India SuSE has very little market share but Novell has lots of customers. Novell now has a strong product now to offer to their existing customers.

I wrote an article titled If I could re-write Linux for Newsforge. The response was overwhelming, over a 100 comments and most of them negative! Rather than being critical, I would have appreciated if people said how they would re-write if they had too.

My article titled ‘Better features, and cheaper too’ got published in Economic Times today. The article is to urge people to move to Open Office and Mozilla on Windows as the first step. The next step of course is to replace the underlying OS with Linux 🙂

I enjoyed playing with Knoppix and now I have installed it on my hard disk. Its my desktop now both at home and office. I also liked Morphix since it offers more flexibility to build your own Knoppix like CD. I recently interviewed the founder of Morphix for Newsforge.

This first appeared in Express Computer:

Linux in the Enterprise: Total Cost of Ownership

Everybody loves TCO

TCO (total cost of ownership) may be an overused concept, but with Linux on the desktop PRAKASH ADVANI says that the benefits are immediately visible

Total cost of ownership (TCO) has become one of the most politically correct terms in the PC industry’s lexicon. Most companies today claim that their solution has the lowest TCO, but the projected savings accrue over a period of time, so it’s very difficult to feel the benefits
immediately.

In contrast, the TCO benefits of Linux-based solutions are immediately visible. And maintenance costs over a period of time are also lower.

Let’s begin with the reality today. A lot of reports, including the latest MAIT (Manufacturers Association of Information Technology) report, suggest that most of the hardware sold in India is Intel-based commodity hardware. This used to cost Rs 30,000 10 years ago and even today you would end up spending a similar amount to get a decent Pentium 4 PC. The operating system (Windows 98/XP) and office suite (MS Office) are always considered ‘free,’ since people use pirated software. The reality is that the local assembler just installs it and gives it with the PC. If he shows any resistance in offering pirated software, there will always be another assembler willing to fill in.

minimum software that an organisation begins with since word processing and spread sheet are common applications and everyone knows how to use these. There may be other applications such as accounting, CRM, etc, that can be considered while calculating TCO but we’ll stick to the bare minimum here.

In spite of piracy being so rampant and smaller organisations not being too concerned about it, piracy is not an option! For developing countries like India, piracy is not a sustainable model, especially if we wish to project ourselves as a software superpower. The laws in the country are also very strict and unlike other laws where one can dodge—by bribing—getting around piracy is not possible. The only way out is to purchase legal software or go to jail.

What typically happens is that organisations start small with one or more PCs and think it is okay to use pirated software. As more and more business processes get computerised the number of PCs increase and they reach a point where the cost of going legal becomes prohibitive. It’s not just small organisations that succumb to using pirated software but also many large organisations and in these cases, the cost of becoming legal would run into several lakhs or even crores of rupees.

So what’s the cost of going legal? If one had to purchase a Pentium 4 for Rs 30,000, Windows XP for Rs 6,500 and MS Office for Rs 15,000, the cost adds up to Rs 51,500. Microsoft doesn’t sell and support anything less than Windows XP today so we have taken the cost of Windows XP. Secondly it is uneconomical (or the option isn’t even available) to purchase Word or Excel as standalone applications, even if most of your users don’t require the entire office suite. This nearly doubles the cost of computing and computerisation begins looking like an expensive luxury.

Fortunately, Linux has come to our rescue. Linux is finally ready to be used as a desktop. It may not give 100 percent of the functionality of other operating systems but it meets the needs of 90 percent of users. The
benefits of using Linux are plenty. To list a few: Linux desktop applications such as office suites, e-mail, browser and others are finally mature enough to be comparable to their Windows counterparts. The GUIs available for Linux,
KDE and Gnome, have matured considerably and give a Windows-like look and feel. Hardware compatibility has also improved significantly and there are solutions available to run legacy Windows applications as well. Linux also has proven its reliability and stability and is relatively virus-free.

Deploying Linux not only saves on the licensing costs but saves the organisation from typical licensing headaches where software has to be paid on a per user basis or a per PC basis or on the basis of servers deployed. Managing all these licenses and making sure the organisation is compliant has become a task by itself. Using Linux and open source applications frees corporate users from the stress of living under these constant fears.

Linux has a bundle of applications to match its Windows counterparts. Some of them are listed below.

Using Linux as a desktop brings down the cost of software to zero, and thereby reducing the cost per PC to Rs 30,000. Is that good enough?

You can also save more by using a Linux Terminal Server Project- (LTSP) based solution. Here all the applications run from the server and the client can be a Pentium 100 MHz/32 MB diskless client. This works out very cost-effective and in networks of 5-10 PCs, this can help reduce the TCO further by 50 percent.

This solution also offers other benefits as well.

• Centralised management: Since all applications are stored on the server, the admin has to manage only one server. If a backup needs to be taken, just take a backup of the server and all the user data is taken care of. If a new application has to be installed just install it once on the server and everyone can benefit from it.
• Sharing of computer: Since the user profiles are stored on the server, multiple users can log in using the same computer without having the fear of anyone snooping on their data. Each user has his/her own login/password and gets access to only his/her password-protected data directory on the server.
• Low maintenance: Since all data is stored on the server, there is very little maintenance required on the client PC. If a PC fails, it can be replaced immediately and the user can get back to work or alternatively the user could walk up to another PC on the network, login and start working. In terms of hardware, hard disks have a high failure rate. Since the LTSP terminals are diskless it also saves on the hardware maintenance cost.
• Lower TCO over a period of time: This is one of the main benefits of this solution. Since the applications run from the server, the clients never need to be upgraded. This saves on the cost of upgrading the clients, which would otherwise have to be junked within a few years of purchase.

All this sounds very exciting but lets also look at some limitations. Since Linux is relatively uncommon, there may not be too many vendors willing to provide support. Users also have resistance since they have to learn something new. The lack of Windows applications is also a limitation since most applications are written for the Windows platform. There are ways to run Windows applications on Linux but these need the installation of additional software and the purchase of Windows licenses.

The way around it is to co-exist. Have as many Linux machines as possible and the rest can be Windows. This way the organisation can have a taste of Linux and enjoy its TCO benefits.

The SCO-Linux controversy, has taken a twist where Ransom Love, Former CEO of Caldera (Now SCO), admitted that they assisted in make Linux work better on IA-64. The IA-64 code is what SCO claims IBM copied from Unix to Linux.

Newsforge has the details about this Q&A session after the Linux World 2000 and I was the one who asked the question to him.

When I visited Cebit this year, I asked a German why he uses Linux and I was stunned when he said. “Why should I buy an American software when something is available for free?”.

This is probably why the city of Munich decided to go the Linux way. It not because of the cost but by choosing Linux they are promoting the local industry.

This is also bringing out some nice innovations from Germany in the Linux space, such as Knoppix.

If you were considering Dual Booting Windows XP/2000/NT which have NTFS partition with Linux, here are some utlities which would be of help. These tools allow you to resize NTFS partitions without reformatting.

Qt Parted – This is a GUI based tool.

ntfsresize – This is a character based tool. Their site also has information on how to use it.

At a recent Seminar organised by MAIT in delhi, I met a boy Arjun. Arjun is a 8th Standard student at Naval Public School where he administers the Linux system. When I asked him why he uses Linux he said, because he finds Windows difficult. He says its a mind set problem, depending on what you use first, you find the other thing difficult.

What Arjun said is contrary to what people say that Linux is difficult to learn. I feel its the resistance to change, which makes things difficult and not the application. If you are willing to spend time learning something better, then you wont find it difficult. At the end of it, you would also find it worthwhile. Don’t you spend time learning new things when a new version of Windows is released?

In a recent speach which Sir APJ Abdul Kalam, President of India, gave while inaugurating International Institute of Information Technology, in Pune.

He said:

“Think different

I would like to narrate an event that took place in Rashtrapati Bhavan a few months back when I met Bill Gates, the CEO of Microsoft. While walking in the Mughal garden, we were discussing the future challenges in Information Technology including the issues related to software security. I made a point that we look for open source codes so that we can easily introduce the users built security algorithms. Our discussions became difficult since our views were different. The most unfortunate thing is that India still seems to believe in proprietary solutions. Further spread of IT which is influencing the daily life of individuals would have a devastating effect on the lives of society due to any small shift in the business practice involving these proprietary solutions. It is precisely for these reasons open source software need to be built which would be cost effective for the entire society. In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people. I2IT has to play a major role in this national mission. ”

Thank you Mr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for embracing open source. We welcome you in the community.