rohitj's domain

So, one of the reasons why I use ubuntu and not debian is that I want relatively new softwares. But ubuntu’s release period is really irritating now. They release a new version in every 6 months. Of course, nothing major changes this short duration. So, all they do is mainly add new release of KDE or gnome, thats it. Basically in ubuntu upgrade is practically equal to a decent size update. Now, there is nothing wrong is releasing new releases every six months, the problem is that those new softwares are not supported in previous release. For example, Jaunty has KDE4.2. But Intrepid will not have 4.2. Just because KDE updated, and because I want to use KDE4.2, I have to upgrade (or I have to use unsupported KDE, which I want to avoid, for obvious reasons). I wonder how big an issue it would be for system administrators. This is getting irritating. The definition of upgrade and update is totally screwed for Ubuntu.
The only decent difference as I see between Jaunty and Intrepid is KDE version, couldn’t they just give an update for KDE. I believe same goes with gnome.

Now then summer is coming, I think I will again be exploring various distros. Any suggestions?

Update : Oh, the issue with upgrading is that there are chances of things breaking. For example, when I upgraded to Jaunty, my knetworkmanager was gone. So, I had to use LAN and install it. fglrx drivers are not installed. And stuff like that.

I went to a group meeting. Usually, my laptop is not used for projector. But since, everyone else had mac, and they didn’t have the connector, I had to use my laptop. I had to restart X to get the projector working. Now, my default my KDE starts kopete, firefox, kontact, amarok, skype, plasma. The worst is plasma, skype and kopete. Plasma because I have this photobox on my desktop which shows pictures. Now, there is no objectional photo being displayed, but I still want to avoid showing that in public, because they are a little private. Skype because it doesn’t start in minimized mode. Kopete because it starts showing offline messages. Also, the sound. Now when I am in a group meeting, I want my desktop to be a little formal. I don’t want all this on startup. But when I am using it for normal purpose, I want all these things. So, here is the wishlist. Is it possible that on start, I could have an option to start the Window Manager in a formal mode, or unformal mode. Like I have an option to select between gnome and kde on start. I strongly believe that its a really important feature, and it should be available. Since I use mostly KDE applications, I believe KDE framework should have such facility. It will also be easier that way.

If you are under a proxy server, and want to access net using http or ftp through Konsole/Terminal, you will need to export http_proxy/ftp_proxy variables. One simple way to do so is that you type the following 2 commands :

$export http_proxy="http://username:password@proxyserver:proxyport"
$export ftp_proxy="http://username:password@proxyserver:proxyport"

You will need to replace “username”, “password”, “proxyserver” and “proxyport” with appropriate values.

But this way, you will see your password as well. And if you are with your friends, they can see the password as well. To solve this problem, you can use this small script. In “/etc/bash.bashrc” append these lines :

function proxy(){
echo -n "username :"
read -e username
echo -n "password :"
read -es password
export http_proxy="http://$username:$password@proxyserver:proxyport/"
export ftp_proxy="http://$username:$password@proxyserver:proxyport/"
echo -e "\nProxy variables set."
}

You will need to replace “proxyserver” and “proxyport” with appropriate values. Thats it. Now whenever you need to export the variables, just type “proxy” and press enter. It will ask you for your username and passwd. And will do the rest by itself.

So, again, we were expecting 50-60 people. Before FOSSKriti whiling planning for FOSSKriti, I was arguing with Arun saying that there wouldn’t be much participation for linux kernel workshop and we dont need 50 computers. To all my surprise, we had around 300 people interested in the workshop.

We had a Lab of 40 computers booked. We had to have 2 person per computer. We also had to kick out IITK students, and we asked them that they will have another kernel workshop. There were still non-IITK students who were kicked out because there was no place for standing the lab. We finally had 100 people inside the lab.

In evening we arranged same workshop for IITK students, in which we allowed non-IITK students as well. It again had awesome response. That even when it was clashing for i-Quiz.

Ankita Garg took the workshop. She was kind enough to take the workshop again for IITK students. People who came for the workshop varied from people who had heard about kernel for the time and people who had their “own” kernel.

For last few days, I have been talking to people (mainly IITK students) about different events we have in FOSSKriti. I found people pretty enthusiastic about different events. I am pointing out those events here:

0: RoR : Y4 batch, being highly affected by Prof. TVP’s, is highly interested in attending RoR workshop. Some people want to learn RoR, some people want to discuss RoR. And I assume that some people will come because they know Saurabh Nanda.

1: Linux Kernel : Those who eff around there linux distro, especially Gentoo users, and those who have slightest interest in systems, were found interested in this.

2: Lisp : I personally am going to attend this event as a participant, not as organizing team. . And I am sure I will bring 10 more people. Actually no, some people were found interested in this workshop, specially those who are doing compilers course, or those who have done compilers course.

3: Linux Chix :

(female.isIITian())&&(female.isGeek())&&(female.hasTalkedTorohitj()) = 0

So, I am not sure how many females will turn up, but I am sure people will be there. This is the second event I want to attend. I want to see what they are upto.

4: KDE4 : Those who do not know, recently there was a big shift in IITK linux community. People broke their long loyalty for Gnome, and shifted to KDE. Alas!! KDE4 is still not in official repos, but they are still on KDE. They think its worth waiting for KDE4. Of course, this talk will attract these people.

Left are beagle hackfest and Clutter talk. Beagle is a must-attend hackfest. (afterall it substitutes stupid google desktop ). And clutter? I have no idea about it.

There was a post on LinDesk about how to use SSH over proxy. Thats surely a big issue for people living in developing country. They have to work behind proxy. So, this post talks about some old way of tunneling. Today we have got transconnect which is much better and makes proxy transparent for applications running through konsole/terminal. All you need to do is something like this : download transconnect from here. Extract it, and follow the following commands :


rohitj@rohitj:~#su
root@rohitj:/home/rohitj# cd Desktop/transconnect/
root@rohitj:/home/rohitj/Desktop/transconnect#make
root@rohitj:/home/rohitj/Desktop/transconnect#make install
root@rohitj:/home/rohitj/Desktop/transconnect#exit
rohitj@rohitj:~/Desktop/transconnect#vim ../../.tconn/.tconn.conf

Now change the file according to your proxy settings. Mainly there are 4 parts where you need to do some changes. 1: set proxy server IP. 2: set username. 3: set password, 4: set local IPs.
After this, when you want to use transconnect just do:

rohitj@rohitj:~/Desktop/transconnect#export LD_PRELOAD=$HOME/.tconn/tconn.so

Or, you can add this to your bash profile.
thats it.
btw, transconnect is GPLed.

2007 was overall good. I got to learn lots of things, and got to do lots of things. Got to talk to lot of cool people. Though I wouldn’t forget that it also brought 7th semester which was like the most difficult semester I ever had. This semester probably took my anxiety level to top. Some of the highlights of 2007 are below:

1. Got a job at Microsoft, India. I am excited about it.
2. Got involved into Free Culture activities.
3. Shifted 99% to open source softwares. (flash )
4. Shifted 100% to free songs. (though, this is true.)
5. Shifted to wonderful KDE. I will write an entry for it.
6. No more Gentoo, it takes time. Ubuntu on other hand is wonderful. (Apologies to all those who are on Gentoo or are thinking of shifting to Gentoo because I asked them to do so. )
7. Hiking
8. Another hobby now is Photography …. need money to buy DSLR.
9. Bought a new web space to play with different things. Its been wonderful till now.
10. Zeropage removed restrictions from their songs.
11. Kelly Allyn sent me her autograph, need to go home to get it.
12. Met some wonderful people during internship at Virginia Tech.
13. <compressed because its personal>

Hopes from 2008 :

1. Grad School or a good job (or a startup?)
2. DSLR
3. Free Culture Club at IITK
4. Passing IITK
5. openmoko / android
6. make IITK music club release an album under CC ( www.tempostand.com should help us)
7. Finish talk with Vox Populi guys

I have been thinking about business models for open source softwares. Though I couldn’t come up with proper answer. Lets see, let me try to start with different software people make and use.

Office : No doubt it needs very big amount of work. And if someone puts this much effort to make an Office package, why will he give it away for free? Of course not, it doesn’t make sense. Probably thats the reason why we do not have any open-source Office software. And surely Microsoft Office is way too good. OOo is dumped for long time now.

Matlab, Visual Studio etc : Again it requires big amount of investment and hard work. No reason one should give it away for free. Though yeah Eclipse is there. And I must say that it is very good. But isn’t it a way in which IBM is earning publicity? And isn’t it same with netbeans as well.

Computer Games : Again too much work and proficiency.

Operating System : Again, do you think open source can help make an Operating System any better? Oh yeah, bug fixing.. probably yes, but without incentive why will someone do quality work? Every second day one thing or another is broken. But yeah surely, like Redhat is doing, good things are possible with it, specially for server side technologies.

Other Desktop Applications :  Amarok, they are fighting to get funds… Is there any good voice chat client? Ekiga? does support proxy. Skype? no more an open source project. Gaim? not yet. Now don’t say that they are fighting in reverse engineering and other bullshit. Firefox? don’t you know that people start with Firefox but do not stick to it for long time. Thats a popular observation, isn’t it. Evolution? I wish they come up with something good. Though I guess they are also having problems (because of open source nature? I guess yes.)

I am not saying that open source is right or wrong. But at the end of the day, what a user wants is good software, softwares in which he need not be a geek to solve the problem. And surely as of now, I do not see open source work to give any good  reply to this need. You may say that Gutsy is a solution, or fedora 8 is awesome, and these distros solves most of the problems. But don’t you think you have been giving these arguments for last 20 years? When fedora 5 came, everyone said the same. When fedora 6 came same. And same goes with Ubuntu.

Its a great pleasure to announce that Tata guys have come up with a supercomputer which is ranked 4th fastest in the world, and fastest in Asia.

I am happy for 2 reasons

1. that India did it again. (remember param2000?)
2. that the computer uses Linux

Tata is the only company that has maintained its reputation for long time now. Even when TCS is criticized sometimes, Tata has maintained its reputation. Those who do not know, Tata’s most of the money goes to charity work. I am using the word “goes” not “will”. I love this group.

For more details check the original post.