This week, I installed Linux Mint for my girlfriend after her Windows installation crashed. The idea was to temporarily use Linux until the new (and bigger) harddrive that we ordered would arrive. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, but has some additions like codecs installed by default.
Installation went smooth. After the installation, she could easily access the NTFS data partition (modern Linux distributions use NTFS-3G for read/write access) and the computer booted up much faster than with Windows XP.
But she encountered a few problems:
Openoffice Calc sometimes showed a very high CPU usage when selecting multiple cells, rendering Calc very slow and unusable. After some Googling, I found that it is in the Ubuntu bug database, bug number 568892. But the reactions of the developers do not show much interest. I replaced it with the less-featured Gnumeric.
Many websites, including Gmail, suffer from bad font handling and anti-aliasing. In fact, most websites are a pain to the eyes. I tried Firefox, Epiphany, Arora, Konqueror, Chromium, and another browser which name I forgot, and numerous font settings (including Microsoft fonts), but nothing helped. [ Addition: The Ubuntu team works on a better font. ]
When switching from Gnome to KDE, the KDE menu did not show a “shutdown” option because the Gnome and KDE login managers, also called display managers (gdm and kdm) are not compatible with each other. Only one of the desktop environments can show a shutdown option. When you want to shutdown your computer in KDE, use the kdm. Same for Gnome and gdm. Funny thing is that five years ago, someone posted a solution for this, but still the problem is in the normal software repositories.
I use Linux on some servers for years. It’s great software if you want to have control, stability, speed, easy remote access, easy software installation and so on for your server. But Linux on the desktop has always been somewhat of another story, and although much improvement has been made, I believe that Windows (XP of 7, never Vista) with Office 2003 or Office 2010 (skip 2007, it’s kinda beta of 2010) is still unbeatable for desktop computing. Some Apple users wouldn’t agree, though.
If you are frustrated by Linux and your college’s network, which is windows based or sysadmins can help you with windows only, and sysadmins for a request call, replies as “use Windows”. If you are in a university then I am sure they use that damned( or good) software called as proxy (squid proxy to be specific). And you are a linux newbie then, here are some quick tips for you.
TIP # 1
You want your download manager (wget), updates by apt or aptitude to use a http proxy, you can type
Type the command as it is, don’t leave unnecessary spaces.
Username/password is the username and password you use to access the proxy, that is the same password which you type when you access internet using a web-browser. If you don’t use one, then use the second version of the command
Proxy and port are the values that are the same as used in your web-browser, or you can ask check them out with your sysadmin, or anyone who has a working internet on the same network.
After you do this you can use apt or aptitude and it will use the http proxy you specified!
TIP # 2
For GNOME users : GNOME allows users to specify a proxy from a GUI, which you can find in
Preferences –> Network Proxy
It also allows you to specify username/password, by clicking on “Details”
TIP # 3
Using socks proxy with evolution (the e-mail client)You need a package named tsocks
you might want to read the man page for configurations too.
So, that’s it. I hope it makes your life a little easier with Linux on network. Tell us about your experiences of using Linux behind proxies. Remember google search is your best resource!
NTLDR is Missing. Press any key to Restart NTLDR is Missing. Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart.
These are a couple of messages you don’t want to see when you start up your computer. But if you do see these do not worry… they can be resolved and hopefully while keeping your data intact. Firstly for those of you who are wondering what is NTLDR it is the NT boot loader from windows which is used by all windows operating systems since Windows 2000 (and previous NT versions). It is the file which tells the computer on how to start the operating system. More detailed information on how it works can be found on the Wikipedia page.
Now lets get to resolving the issue.
The main reason for the error to occur is that your computer is trying to boot from a non-bootable source. This could be due to a non-bootable Disk in your Drive or also a Connected USB Disk/ Device or a smart card. Read the rest of this entry »
In the future, far away, legend will tell about an epic game, played by lots of folks: Starcraft. Playing the game is pure action and fun, but the game is old, even requires the dinosaur-age IPX network protocol. Still, it was fun to connect a bunch of computers together with a few network cables and to play against each other. And now, Blizzard has given us a sequel: Starcraft II.
I played the scenario, which was great. Besides the usual screenies, which you have probably already have seen everywhere – this new game is tremendously popular, already the best sold game of the year after 24 hours or so – the game offers nice cinematics. I will include one screenshot of a cinematic at the end of the scenario:
Playing the scenario is fun, but playing on a LAN is not. In fact, it’s not possible. You must play over the internet, using battle.net, if you want to play with your friends. Although many people have fast internet connections and Battle net is better than Steam, it is still a pity that we get the far, far inferior ping (latency) of internet connections, compared to our Local Area Network (LAN). It’s a shame, and I don’t recommend this game for LAN parties. (Latency or ping is how fast packets are delivered. Not how many packets could be delivered, that’s bandwidth.)
If only we could run or own local server. Maybe redirect traffic from Battle.net to or own server with DNS tricks or simply changing local host files. Older Battle.net games were supported by PvPGN – alas, this new game uses a newer version of the Battle.net network protocols. But some guys are trying to create their own Starcraft server. Let’s hope they succeed. Keep a watch on them.
During my childhood I had the opportunity and means of listening to vinyl records. When I used them, I had to be extreamly careful not to damage them by accident, otherwise … You wouldn’t want to know
For those of you (such as myself) who still adore their precious vinyl records and want to preserve them for a long long time, have certainly thought about making backups. I do not wish to convert my vinyl records to any other type of media (I’m talking about digital), so here is a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to back-your precious-up. Enjoy!
If you’ve ever tried to import javascript via jQuery.getScript(), you might be rendered unable to actually debug the fetched js in firebug or similar debuggers. The reason is simple and lies in how jQuery implements getscript :
get: function( url, data, callback, type ) {
// shift arguments if data argument was omited
if ( jQuery.isFunction( data ) ) {
type = type || callback;
callback = data;
data = null;
}
return jQuery.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: url,
data: data,
success: callback,
dataType: type
});
}
Debugging further you’ll find that ajax uses JSONP to allow linking scripts from non-origin domain by taking advantage of the behavior of src attribute in script tag. Read the rest of this entry »
A while back, I had to write a few papers. Typing was going fine with my three or four fingers. Or so I thought. Until I saw one of my friends spewing out letters like a machine gun. Would it be worth the trouble to learn to type with ten fingers? Probably not. Learning to type is boring and takes lots of time. Or so I thought.
I forgot when I first heard of TuxType. It is a game created for children, but I really liked the game. You can use the game to learn ten-finger (blind) typing. Learning how to use your fingers to press keys on your keyboard is fun. The program shows you which key to press with which finger and plays music on the background.
If you are a WindowsXP user then you must be already familiar with the life-saving graphical tool called “Task Manager” on Windows. Whenever the PC starts hanging and the processes start eating up a lot of memory (Sadly most of the time its Firefox for me), we press the alt+ctr+del key to bring up the the “Task Manager” and try to kill the memory eating processes and the ones which are “not responding”. Well, you should also know that this can be done efficiently from the command prompt as well.
As my project work requires writing and running codes, I generally have at least one Windows command prompt open. If this is the case with you then it is much faster to manage your windows processes from command prompt than to open up the Task Manager, just like we do on Linux using “ps” and “kill” command. Get to know the following commands and you can easily use the command prompt to see and kill processes.
1. Tasklist : This command is similar to “ps” command on Linux and is used to see the details of the programs and processes that are running in Windows. Tasklist can be applied to see how much memory and CPU time running processes are using, what DLL files they rely on, and other information. Thus it can be a very useful troubleshooting tool. Read the rest of this entry »
RSS Reader, now what is that. Lets take an example.
Say you live in 1930′s.
You like to watch music shows, plays and similar stuff. In order to do so, you will have to keep an eye on the posters or newspapers or keep checking with the theaters to know about the new shows.
So how do you get along reading all those. Grab a coffee in morning and open all the sites in tabs and read the updates. Or catch an update or two when the boss in not looking at your computer screen at work!
Here is a way to consolidate most of the web updates that you follow, in a single page and only shows the updated content. For current discussion we are going to pick Google Reader. It’s a great web based application which also integrates with Google Buzz and GMail.
Here is a basic video tutorial on how to use Google Reader on firefox. There are many advanced features which I’ll leave you to figure out yourself.
The reason I use Google Reader is I can read the feeds from my home laptop, and it will be marked as read next time I log from office desktop. This synchronization is currently missing from most desktop based RSS readers.
Being just out of college I realized that one thing I am going to miss is the LAN and how easily everyone was just a net send away. And the main thing the GAMING experience you share with friends is never the same. With everyone being behind a NAT and some even behind proxy servers a direct connection is out of question.
But there is a very sleek solution in form of VPN (Virtual Private Network) over the Internet which gives you alternate IP’s for your private LAN and you can now do anything you want just like it was a real LAN. Wippien is a P2P based VPN application so you do not have to worry about delays or speed limitations due to routing all the traffic via a central server.
Installation of Wippien is very simple just visit the site to download the small < 2 Mb file and it will guide you along to creating your own VPN network. Once setup you can use your Wippien IP as in you were directly connected.
Wippien uses the Jabber protocol to connect you to your friends. I would recommend creating a new account rather than using your existing jabber account for convenience sake.
To connect to a LAN/network from a computer over Internet, firstly you will need to setup a VPN between one on the network to the computer outside, Wippien will do this for you. Now to be able to communicate/connect with the other computers on the network you will have to use the internal computer connected to you via Wippien as a proxy. To set up a proxy on the computer you can use tools like ccproxy, winproxy, or if you just want to communicate/ connect on a particular service you can simply use port forwarding.
Also VPN can be used by two or more users to connect directly when they don’t have an Internet IP, it can be used to play LAN games, file sharing netmeeting and various other services that require direct connection.
Wippien is available for both windows and Linux environments and what’s more its open source for those who want to try something extra.
The views expressed on this blog are personal. We do not claim to be a representative voice of the views of any organisation whatsoever. We are not responsible for the content present on the blogs to which we have linked.Views expressed are solely that of the author and does not reflect a collective opinion of contributors.
