rohitj's domain

-by guest blogger nareshov

Let’s begin then:

Let’s see, I’ve been asked to post here by rohitj on some sort of Fedora vs. Ubuntu. (He was more interested in “Fedora sucks” than “Ubuntu rocks” ).

I have my own experiences with these distros ever since the FC3 days (and then Ubuntu 5.04). I’ve had n00bs having trouble with the default SELinux settings in Fedora given the LAN environment in IITK. Hunting for everyday requirements such as Valknut (those days, we didn’t have linuxdcpp). This repo and that repo and more. The troubles people had with not having mp3 support out of the box in either of these distros.

I hate hunting 3rd party repos and installing nvidia drivers only to experience strange lockups or X crashes. Many of us have had bad experiences with nvidia and deb-distros. Freezes and Crashes were common (not sure now, with gutsy things might’ve changed).

Ubuntu has seen a lot of improvements since Breezy. Trying to adjust time+date asks you to install NTP support if you choose to use a time-server. Ubuntu asks you to install either NFS or Samba if you try to share a folder. Totem calls synaptic to install gstreamer-plugins-{ugly|bad} when needed. I’m not aware if Fedora does the same. They probably do. While Shuttleworth still insists on a brown+orange mixture in the default appearance of the desktop, Fedora has been playing around with their blues ever since the Bluecurves in RedHat9.

Here in India, the “old” linux junta is primarily a RedHat fanbase. Ever since Ubuntu started sending CDs for free, we see things changing. Many who have a lot of faith in RedHat (for good reasons) use Fedora, only to realise that it’s more of a community playground for the RedHat folks to experiment on. I’m not really sure why SuSE wasn’t very popular until Novell showed up in Bangalore.

More? When I do an aptitude install mysql-server , Debian would ask me to set the root password for the server and start the service. Now, yesterday RohitJ had trouble even starting the service and didn’t know the default root server (Probably had none). I can understand Gentoo not setting a default root passwd and not starting the service for you, but Fedora?

Another point of dissatisfaction being the GUI Server administrative tools in Fedora. Boy do they suck donkey balls. I don’t even have to describe what we went through a year ago in that hurry.

Gutsy is here btw, I can see the Indian Ubuntu servers go slow with the rush as I write. Ubuntu has a decent Compiz-fusion set up that hasn’t crashed on me so far – been two days roughly. It also has a n00b-friendly restricted drivers manager. All this cuts trouble and time-expenditure, you know? Ubuntu even understands that when I do an aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree on an amd64 machine it first gets nsplugin-wrapper and then downloads the flashplugin from Adobe’s mirrors and voila! Your 64-bit firefox can play videos on Youtube. I seriously doubt if Fedora can do this (comments please).

What else? Ah yes, good things Fedora has done recently is to stop messing around with the upstream Gnome default layout and combining /core and /extras. But Livna et al still exist >_>.

Look at Debian or Gentoo, it’s all there in one place. *Most* of it at least, compared to the rest – Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva where you _have_ to depend on third party repositories for some software which might not be popular in the US but very popular in Russia or India (DC++ !). Come on!

Well, guess I’ll drop by when the comments are pouring in

So, I was out for the weekend. When I came back I saw my phpMyVisites and found this statistics for the week :

Isn’t it strange?

1 : Zeropage initially released its tracks under CC by-nd-nc. Their tracks are really cool. I specially liked Ambient India. So, I talked to them, and asked them if they could remove the nd-nc clauses, and indeed they did. It’s under CC by-sa now. )

2 : I asked pornophonique. to release their videos in OGG format. Kai stunted me saying “this wmv-stuff is quite a pain in the ass, i know!”. But they didn’t know how to convert the videos, so I suggested then ffmpeg2theora. But it seems they didn’t have time for it, so Kai has asked to me convert the videos and share it for them . I will do that as soon as possible.

3 : Antaragni is a cultural festival organized by IIT Kanpur (of course only students organize everything). Students from all over India comes and participate in this event. This time, antaragni has flash page. The flash used the song “Right Here Right Now by Fat Boy Slim”. Of course I knew that they don’t have license to use this song. Even in IITK, people don’t know that there is something called “copyright” and there is something called “license” and “piracy” is illegal. So, anyways in IITK.MISC newsgroup I raised this issue, and they had to remove the song. . Since the flash is not sounding cool without music, so I suggested them to one of the songs Jamendo offers. I mainly suggested them “Steep”, “Bradsucks”, “pornophonique” (yes, pornophonique’s songs are under ND clause, but they said, they will give permission very easily), “terremoto”, “Josh Woodward” and now I have told them about “Zeropage” as well. I am hoping that they will take my advise.

So, with the inclusion of nd and nc in the different licenses that CC offers, we can actually define Creative Commons License as a license which (at least) allows others to use the work for personal purpose, to distribute the work, to get the work free of cost. “No derivative allowed” basically didn’t (doesn’t?) make sense to me because I usually prefer Free Culture in the sense that I think people should be allowed to use others product in their own product so that the creativity will work upon the existing work rather than to build already existing work. So, with the same thoughts I contacted pornophonique, (Kai basically) and asked him if they could release their songs without nd clause. Well, he was aware of the issues ( I was impressed by that) and gave a good reason for that, quote from his mail

The songs are under nd because we want to know the idea or the script of the video/the remix before someone is using our songs e. g. for some rassist or sexist content. We wouldn’t like to be involved in stuff like that. Also the licence says that everyone should feel free to ask for our permission. And be assured that we got only a few principles that prevent us from giving anyone our authorization.

The reason is pretty genuine. So, I do not know to what extent cc-nd is logical.

So, I got to know about this from nareshov‘s blog post. I tried it, all I needed was answering 20 easy and fast question… and here is the result :

Auditory : 60%
Visual : 40%
Left : 68%
Right : 31%

Rohit, you are mildly left-hemisphere dominant while showing a slight preference for auditory processing. This overall combination seems to indicate a well-working blend of logic and judgment and organization, with sufficient intuition, perception and creativity to balance that dominance.

You will at times experience conflict between how you feel and what you think which will generally be resolved in favor of what you think. You will find yourself interested in the practical applications of whatever material you have learned or whatever situation you face and will retain the ability to refine whatever knowledge you possess or aspects of whatever position you are in.

By and large, you will orient yourself toward intellectual activities and structure. Though not rigid, you will schedule yourself, plan, and focus on routine and continuity of operations, rather than on changes and disruptions

When changes or disruptions occur, you are likely to consider first how to ensure that such disruptions do The same balance is reflected in your sensory preference. You will tend to be reflective and measured in your interaction style. For the most part, you will be considered objective without being cold and goal-oriented while retaining the capacity to listen to others.

Preferentially you learn by listening and maintaining significant internal dialogues with yourself. Nevertheless, you have sufficient visualization capabilities to benefit from using graphs, charts, doodles, or even body movement to enhance your comprehension and memory.

To the extent that you are even implicitly aware of your hemispheric dominance and sensory style, you will feel most comfortable in those arenas which emphasize verbal skills and logic. Teaching, law, and science are those that stand out among the professions, along with technical sales and management.

Curious

UPDATE : Is it possible that these things make anysense?

So, in IITK we get net access through LAN. LAN not only gives us access to internet but also supports our LAN activities like file sharing, gaming etc. No doubt internet has decreased human interaction and is making people introvert/weaker. IITK is facing a similar problem. Some frequent suicides in past 2 years brought the issue that interaction between students should increase. And interaction between senior and junior students should increase as well. And authority came up with the rule that for first 3 semesters students should not be allowed LAN or personal computers. For computing purpose they should use Computer Center or Hall Computer Center. They claimed that reason for decreasing student interaction is computers. Students tend to spend most of their time in front of computer rather than with other students. To some extend its not wrong. If I consider myself, I spend most of my time in front of computer, and because of computers only, I spend most of my free time on computer rather than with friends. But being an extrovert guys ( I am pretty much extrovert, right?) I interact with friends as well. But its not same with others. Those who are not active in different activities inside campus tend to become more introvert.

But the question was, is LAN Ban going to help? Actually NO. Because its not computers that is contributing more, but its lack of activity in student community that is making students introvert. Gossips between students can not make students truely strong. We need to increase student co-curricular activities. Kanpur being a sort of village place where IIT students have no life outside IIT Campus, we need to create opportunities for students so that they come out of their rooms, rather than sitting in front of computer. Computer is just filling their free time. If you want that this free time should be spent outside students room then we have to increase social activities, which can be sports, festivals or anything. Let us talk logic here, how many of us play any game here? How many students do physical exercise? If I consider my wing of 24 students. No one does any physical activity. games, dance, jogging, gym, nothing. We do not have that good infrastructure for physical activities. How many of us participate in some club activity or something? Except from 2-3 guys, no one else does that. Why?

I guess there are 2 main reasons :

1. First is that academics load is a bit extra and irregular. We tend to work really hard for 2-3 days and then we relax for 2 days. Such irregularity doesn’t let us do anything other than acads and then sitting in room. For example, I want to play Lawn Tennis or Table Tennis, but I need a partner. The academic system doesn’t allow a student to be remain regular in schedule. So, I can not have a fixed partner, and hence I can not play either game regularly, and soon I stop playing that game. I have tried it a lot of time, and every time after 2-3 days, I got an assignment or my partner got an assignment and we stopped playing. But they wouldn’t decrease academic pressure.
2. Lack of infrastructure for student co-curricular activities : no of Table Tennis tables in each Hall of Residence of 500 students is just 1. For the whole IITK of 10,000 population only 2 Lawn Tennis courts are there. Squash? no. Bad-minton? no. Swimming? limited service. Volley Ball? just 1 court which has lights. Basket Ball? just 2 courts (though its probably enough). Gym? limited service. pool/billiards? no.

And more it. LAN Ban meant snatching freedom from students. Those who want to learn about computers, will not be able to have their own computer and hence wouldn’t be able to experiments. I remember I learned about Linux in my 3rd semester. LAN/Computer ban for 3 semesters will mean that a computer science student will remain away from computer for 3/8th time of his degree. What an irony. Those who want to partipate in programming contest, those who want to work on their projects, have to dependent upon Computer Centers, ah common thats so inconvenient. And anyways, as we got feedback from new batch which is affected by this ban, this ban is not helping students interact with seniors. Probably same batch student interaction would have increased.

So, considering this new batch’s response, Student Senate has said NO to LAN Ban. IITK has been a place which has given full freedom to students. This freedom has given us rights that we can say NO to decisions taken by authority which affects students. I hope now when even Student Senate has said no to this, authority will take back their decision.

I invite comment/suggestions regarding the two point I raised.