Filling my Technological Void|Learning to Adapt to new Technology…… The Hard Way.

Over time I’ve always enjoyed idling time off in IRC channels but now over time I think the good times have passed. Not only does it consume way too much time but it sometimes leads to unnecessary aggravation also. Sure I mean I have a sense of humor but that doesn’t always work especially when you just got from work after a tiring day. An example.

<Person X> Hey guys,
<Person Y> Hi!
<Person X> Hey is it possible to <insert random question here> .
<Person A> Learn to fcking spell it.
<Person B> STFU
<Person C> GTFO
<Person A> <Insert Momma joke here>
……………………………………………

Well obviously thats more than enough to piss off most sane people I know. Sure once its funny but every other day it starts taking a toll. Hell you don’t even get a response like that from channels like Ubuntu or Archlinux. Obviously the answer is simple , I’ve been idling my time in the wrong channel or the people I once knew are now possessed by demons. Either way I’ve found that spending more time in my channel or #archlinux and #Ubuntu and its offtopic channel is more fun.

Its been a long time since I made my last post and I’m going to plead the Fifth so that I don’t look guilty of slacking. Anyway the past 1-2 months have been quite hectic. First of all results have come out and they are quite below what I expected. Although the subjects for this semester aren’t alot they contain quite a bit of content to keep a student busy.

The subjects I have for this Semester are given below:

1. Advanced Operating System
2. Advanced System Architecture
3. .Net Applications
4. Project

The subject .Net Applications is an elective which I chose over Embedded Systems. Mainly I chose that over Embedded cause I greatly doubt SMU’s ability to be able to provide quality study material on the subject. As the fourth subject you can see I’ve listed out a Project. It seems that the whole project is graded as a separate subject and even has an examination which is based on four subjects that we learned in previous semesters like OOPS , DBMS etc.Now to mention I have the usual slew of assignments which needs to be done within a month. This month and the next should be quite interesting.

Finally, I decided to go and download Cent OS so I could try it out for my Network Installation Project. You can access the download section here at this page . At first when I saw the size I was kind of pessimistic if this was going to happen anytime this year. I couldn’t have been any more wrong, I managed to get speeds above 150 kbps for their downloads which is the fastest speeds I have had yet (329 kbps).  Anyway I managed to get the 32 bit of the distro very fast.

Next task was installing Virtualbox. So I went ahead and entered the following command.

pacman -S virtualbox

After confirming the download and installing it I followed the instructions which I found here on the ArchWiki. Once Virtualbox was installed I configured it for the installation of Cent OS (Red Hat).  Next I burned the ISO I downloaded onto a DVD for backup purposes and then inserted the Disk and checked if I was able to start the Installation. As soon as I started the installation I was greeted by the Cent OS GUI Installer. Continued with the Installation and choose the Option for Server and with the Gnome GUI. Further selected server services like Apache, Samba etc as this was going to help me with my Network Install project.

Heres a picture of my Arch Linux desktop with Cent OS 5.2 Running in VirtualBox.

I noticed one thing though, the mouse seemed not to be captured till I went to Devices > Install Guest Additions. Although I’m not sure why that actually fixed it or it wasn’t working in the first place. Now its time for me to get my hands dirty and goof around on the server and prepare for setting up this on our Windows Network :).

Here is my desktop for the month. I haven’t modified it quit alot . Its just using a new theme , icon set , wallpaper and a modified conky script. Links for each of them are given below.

Theme : SlateHorn Blue (Comes in Emerald Theme Manager on Arch)

Wallpaper : From Hdwallpapers.net

Icon Set: Crashbit on Gnome-look.org

Conky : Gnome-look.org

I’m sorry for the lack of updates during the last month. If you read previous posts you might have noticed that my exams we’re this month and I must say I’m not quite impressed with the way I did though. My averages hit around 80-85% and to be frank I studied much more than I usually do for the other Semesters but it seems that those scores are from reality this time. By the way, SMU please have the courtesy of at least running a spell check on your papers to confirm whether at least 50% of it is typed up correctly . The way your papers come out just glorifies the inefficiency of whoever made those question papers in the first place.

Anyway this Semester should be real fun as I have to do my Project and I don’t have a clue yet on what I will be doing. The little college where I go to ask me if I could make them some bulletin board which each student could access. Although I could probably do that easily with Joomla I’m only going to resort to that if I can’t find anything else proper to do. On the other hand I’ve been looking forward to work on something involving Python, but I still have ways to go before I reach a competent level to do the same.

With the growth of Linux rising at a slow and steady rate one of the most common questions I see is from users asking which distro is best for them. On a Forum with Linux users you will notice that the above question generally gets bombarded with hundred of opinions. However, its quite common that most of these opinions given out by posters don;t meet the actual need of the user. One of the most frequent causes for this is the lack of information. Recently I posted a thread on a Tech Forum I frequent with some basic information you need to give to facilitate others to explain to you why a certain distro might be a good choice.

What is your purpose ?
Are you looking to just casually play around with it here and there? If so why install? Why not just use a Linux Live CD. No changes are made to your Win system and you get to goof around in Linux as well. Or better yet why not install it on a VM?

What is your system configuration?

We don’t know if you have a C2Q or if you have a P533 for that matter. If I were to suggest you OpenSuse / Ubuntu / Mint you would be very angry at the results if you we’re running a box with a 533 Mhz Processor. If I were to ask you to install NimbleX on a C2Q with 4 Gb memory again it would be rather silly because you could easily install some of the more heavier feature rich distros.
What is your intent?
Are you doing this for Office work, Entertainment or to learn Linux. Mandriva and Ubuntu sort of have a way of giving GUIS for every single task there is. Hell I didn’t even know how to create a user using CLI till I used Arch. That being said if you don’t want to use CLI why would I ask you to install Arch. You would scream bloody murder and chase me with a pitchfork. You tend to learn more about Linux commands based on the amount of tweaking you do. So keep that in mind also.

How far are you willing to go and whats your experience level?
Trust me when I say Gentoo is not for beginners. Also trust me when I say that Linux Hardcore folks would set me on fire if I told them to install Ubuntu. The main question is how far are you willing to go. It took me a well one day to configure Arch. Are you willing to go that far.How about compile a distro for a few days? Or do you want a ready made distro which works great out of the box?

Other factors you might want to put in is what kind of internet connection you have or are you downloads somehow limited. Want to use this box for Education also? etc. I’m pretty sure that with more data it makes the job of pointing you in the right direction much easier.

Yeah, its that dreaded time again. Our exam time tables have been posted and look, I have less than one month to prepare. Considering that I did do a good revision of the subjects I should be okay. But considering that this is SMU you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to pass anyway. Its about getting every single mark you can. I’ve uploaded the timetable here to my Blog just in case someone needs to access it. For some odd reason I can’t download it off the University website and I had to have one of our professors get it for me from the Learning Center Login.

Time Table for July 2008 Exams

If you read my earlier post you have noticed that I mentioned about pledging your support to make Firefox the most Downloaded Software.

Well finally the day has finally been decided.

The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. Join our community and this effort by pledging today.!

If you are like me then lets see if we can get our favourite browser into the Book of Records. Spread the Love

Heres another update after a long time. If you have been here before you have probably noticed that the theme has been changed to a new one. The theme being used is called Blue grey and you can get it from here .I’m pretty much new to blogging so I didn’t have a clue on what to do to get this site hooked up. If it wasn’t for my friend Amitava  I’d probably be still be fiddling with some setting. Thanks bud, I have no clue on what I would do without your help .