Looking for a Reason to switch to Linux?

How about this:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/29/linux-becomes-only-os-to-escape-pwn-2-own-unscathed/

Anime Marathon

That is what I was doing this weekend, instead of going around the city in the cold weather. After reading this blog the other day http://theaveragelife.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/saber-rider-and-the-star-sheriffs/ I decided to visit my childhood cartoon favourites, the ones I used to see when I was in Germany.

At the top of my list were Galaxy Rangers, Rock n Cop and Saber Riders. After watching a few episodes I realised that although I still like cartoons by taste has shifted a bit in terms of Artwork – thank you Animax. Animax hooked me to Getbackers, Samurai X and Full Metal Alchemist all of which have interesting art (except during the funny scenes). After coming here I’ve been using my bandwidth to watch the episodes which I have missed out on in Animax.

Anyway, this entry is about my weekend activity which was 50 episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed over the weekend . The idea of watching an anime with robots lead me to search google for popular animes and I ended up watching episode 1 & 2 of Gundam Seed – and boy did I get hooked, mainly to the artwork, the story is similar to Mobile Suit Gundam which they already showed on Animax (and the artworked of which sucked majorly). So on Fri n Sat nite I was up till 4am just watchin one episode after another. The good thing about Gundam Seed: Art work, nice looking characters (anime style), somewhat adult themes (this cartoon even has a censored version), nice robots, good story. The bad: too much time spent on recaps.

Now that I completed watching all episodes I already set on my next target which is Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny .

As far as I can tell the best sites to watch online videos are veoh.com & imeem.com

Also downloaded Smallville season 1 & 2 after seeing the price of just one Season in Saturn.

With great power comes great responsibility…

This is not regarding Spider-Man, this entry is regarding Linux. You can do a whole lot more in Linux than you can in Windows (such as opening the terminal and typing stuff in which you barely understand).

Who uses the command prompt in Windows anymore, other than to find the I.P. address? In Linux you can use it to install stuff, modify files…and to copy code from the web and paste it in the terminal, since you don’t know its GUI alternative. After doing that kind of stuff for a while you actually think that you know something, which is the beginning of your downfall.

I had/have a problem with sound on my laptop in order to fix it I did something which resulted in my XServer not working anymore. Some brilliant guy on a forum asked me how I did that since both are completely unrelated, beats me, must be a talent. Of course I did not know that there was a problem with X-Server, I instead opted for the easiest solution which I could think of (OS Reinstall), only I remembered the trouble I had in getting my Wifi to work in the first place, so I opted to searching the Forums with my mobile (thank god for the wifi on it). These days I am active in the Linux Mint and Ubuntu forums, always ready to post new problems

I seriously wonder whether I had this many problems on windows or that it was so long ago that I don’t remember. In windows, if there was a problem I generally just restart (and lose all data in the process), since the system basically hangs. Linux refuses to hang…too bad I don’t know how to use the terminal so well.

Current status: Sound still not working, GUI needs to be enabled manually via the terminal. And instead of 4 virtual desktops I only got two, not that I mind, but it also means that instead of a cube I get a rotating disc.

With great power comes great responsibility… its true… in the case of linux it gives you more options to mess up your system. However the satisfaction you get after solving a problem is simply great, only thing it doesn’t last too long since the next problem is just around the corner.

Post-warranty Problems – Compaq Presario v3000

Nearly 2 months after my 1 year warranty on my laptop got over I realised that the first component of my Laptop stopped working, that was my wifi, i managed to get around that problem by buying a usb wifi dongle. Now, one month later my display stopped working – no meassage ..nothing. All the lights on the laptop get turned on, but the display won’t show anything. Surprisingly both times, with my wifi as well as with my display, it used to work on-and-off before finally saying bye-bye.

I first noticed that my display was getting problems on Sunday, where the display wouldn’t show anything after a reboot. Switching off and booting didn’t help either. What did help however was waiting for 2 hours before trying to switch on my laptop..which worked (maybe those were the signs that are used to indicate that the laptop is getting older). The next day it was working with no problems at all. And yesterday it stopped working all together.

It makes me wonder whether the laptop companies have built in a chip which checks whether additional warranty has been purchased or not, and then systematically takes apart the system from the inside. The only way to test that would be to purchase 2 identical laptops – and extend the warranty on only one of them. I know it sounds insane, but I am depressed and life doesn’t seem fair. Y doesn’t this kind of stuff happen to my Office laptop instead (which is older and which I can get replaced)?

So, currently I am searching the sites for nice laptop configurations and seeing by how much it will set me back. Advice to all laptop users, get ur extended warranty!!

Free calling from ur cell phone – truphone

Do you have a cell phone with symbian OS (hopefully Nokia)? Does it have Wifi? Would you like to make calls abroad at low prices? If the answers to the above are Yes..yes and yes.. then its time to install Truphone on your mobile, its a VOIP software which lets you make calls at low prices.. to many countries even for free (until feb 29th). The software works like a charm and you can make calls immediatly as you normally do…if the numbers are in the US and UK then you do not need to provide the international code, else that little piece of info is required.

All is not rosy here also.. the software tries to take over your phone. It refuses to shut up and lie low (until I found out the option “Disable truphone”), that would not be a problem if it did not always try to switch On the Wifi which is a major battery strain. Another catch is that the software also works over 3G, so you have to be careful that the call does not accidentally takes place over the 3G connection.

The software works on Nokia N-series and the E series, already tested on those, probably it also works on other mobiles having a Symbian OS and Wifi (or 3G).

Meet the next episode

Thats the caption for the Nokia N81 8GB and my latest gadget. Those who know me were already shocked that I switched to Nokia after suggesting Sony Ericsson to anyone who wants was/is buying a new cell phone. The reason I bought it is because the N81 is definitely more of a gadget than a cell phone. It took care of my plans of buying the Creative Zen (which wud have set me back by another 200 Euros) , and I did not feel like springing another 300Euros  to get a N95 instead (who needs a 5MP cam and a GPS anyway when you don’t even have a car).

The negatives of the phone first, its heavy – the first thing anyone will notice when they hold it, its even heavier than the N95 which has got more features. Its camera sucks beyond bad – its 2MP without autofocus but with flash, don’t even think bout using it in the night – currently searching for a software so that I can put the flash to good use by acting as a torch. Its MP3 application cannot be closed – bad if you want to free up memory space. The keypad is weird – some keys are very responsive others are not. 

Now on to the good, its got 8GB storage space, so I got plenty of songs on it as well as videos. Its got a 3.5mm audio jack, so you can use any head phone you want to use with this phone. It looks cool – its black n sexy (catches a lot of fingerprints though). It has Wifi- which connects quite well, so free browsing if your laptop is not around and if you are willing to leech of someone else’s network, the browser is also quite good, I’ve installed Opera Mini in addition to the default browser and both are good. Being a smartphone it has plenty of options for adding details to contacts, too bad that the thumbnail which gets displayed during a call is tiny- One of the reasons I like SE, the other being that a Bday entry in contacts gets automatically updated in the calendar.

Being a smartphone it has the other advantage that there are more software options available for download such a EMplayer for watching youtube, and divx player for watching movies (if people can watch on a iPod they can do it on this one as well – not yet tried it though). The Video recording on this device is better than its camera capablities. Playing videos is of mixed opinions, the pre-installed videos played and looked great. When I tried playing the videos which were provided on the Nokia cd, they keep on getting stuck. Videos downloaded off the net played fine.

Its a sad thing that the Symbian phones do not allow you to install wallpapers fullscreen, neither do you get animated wallpapers (again something which is better in SE). Despite all the negatives.. I like the phone…plenty of Themes available for download and softwares as well.

Currently am in the process of trying to install the German Language  Pack so that I can use the T9 dictionary for SMS.

Linux Story Goes on..

In the short time I’ve tried Linux I’ve already switched Distros without have really tried any. I’ve started with Ubuntu 6.06, moved to OpenSUSE 10.2 followed by 10.3 and now to LinuxMint Daryna. One thing I liked about all was the look.. though some looked better than others, OpenSUSE did look the best in terms of Icons and that little start bar with the wanimated eye. Compiz was a major deciding factor in moving to OpenSUSE and Multimedia is the reason for moving to LinuxMint (both OpenSUSE 10.3 and LinuxMint have Compiz built in). 

Moving to Linux is something which I cannot consider aat the moment without having a Dualboot for Windows mainly because some devices are still not supported by Linux and others it took me a while to get em working. My wifi experience on LinuxMint was one of those things. I initially had OpenSUSE10.3 but immediatly switched to LinuxMint when I realised that the wifi did not work out-of-the-box in OpenSUSE, however neither did it work in Mint. Which resulted in me tryin another OS install. Note: I don’t know jack bout using the console – if there is something not working, which was working before, I generally reinstall the OS and pray that it works on the next attempt.

So here I was sitting on my brand new Mint only to realise that Wifi was not working, connecting to the net was possible though with the LAN cable (thank god for small favours). So I tried installing drivers from the repository only to realise that it wasn’t working either.

After hunting on the net n Linux forums I came to know bout ndiswrapper (this tool allows you to use your windows driver to get the wifi working under Linux), being the non-console guy I am I immediatly tried using the GUI version of the same, only to find that it was not working properly – answer found on a forum – ndiswrapper GUI is relatively new so it may not work Next I tried ndiswrapper from the console (after copying my wlan driver from their windows location into linux) and hurray .. it worked. So now I had Wifi but still no connection to the repositories.. answer for that was to enter openDNS to the DNS server list… the answer was derived by googling  

After getting these two critical components life is looking a whole lot better on the Linux front. Download whatever you want from synaptic. And windows takes a major trashing in the “Looks” department.. doesn’t matter if its Vista or XP (i mean..who would compare with XP anyway?) . Compiz simply rocks!! There are so many animations available.. I am yet to try out all of em.. but its fun nevertheless.

One area where Windows still rules is Device support, all manufacturers are nice enough to provide drivers for the hardware, not so many are as nice for Linux. I now have to toss my Webcam if I want to use it in Linux – so first check for Linux support before buying the hardware.

 Multimedia support is gud in Mint, it plays most formats out-of-the-box. Of course its still better to download VLC because Mplayer and Totem seem to freeze every now and then (similar to the buffering in Online movies).

Final words, Linux has come a long way but don’t trash your Windows just yet coz u never know wat problems you may encounter (in which case you may need to switch to Win.. and search the forums for answers to your Questions). In the Looks department – which is important to me.. Linux wins hands down.

P.S. does anyone know how to unsplit splitted RAR files? downloaded a movie which has been split into multiple RAR parts which I somehow need to integrate before extracting it. Also if anyone knows how to make a Skype webcam from USRobotics work in Linux please let me know, its model number is USR9640, when plugged into Linux it shows up as 0c45:6242 Microdia which has been classifed as “Unsupported by Linux”. Just some of the unending Linux questions on my road to enlightenment

New Year with Bad Health

Ever since New Years I’ve been down with a cold/fever. Now I’ve added a sprained ankle to my list. Is this some sort of subconcious new resolution of mine..I hope not.

XMas Vacation in India

Its been a while since I posted here… mainly coz of the lack of time an due to the lack of an internet connection. I had gone to India for my Xmas Hols…solid 3 weeks, which I must say were simply fabulous. I went to India on the 19th Dec(vacation lasting till Jan 9th ). I spent some time in Hyderabad… Kerala.. and Bangalore. Needless to say, Xmas was at home n New Years wit friends in Blr.

Reached Hyderabad on the 20th morn, spent 2 days there before taking off to Kerala. The look on my parents faces was really worth the surprise of going home… coz they had no clue I was gonna be there..of course my Bro knew. Xmas was truly Xmas as we used to celebrate it… with Xmas Tree n presents..a nice day indeed. Later in the week we also went to Athirapalli Waterfalls.. supposedly one of the tourist places in Kerala.. havent gone there before.

For New Years I went to Blr where I spent New Years with friends. The time spent here went by very fast but it was awesome. A Gud break into the new year.. the only catch was that I entered new year with a cold…seems like an omen of things to come.. more on that later.

After Blr it was pretty much fast forward to my return to Germany..just a set of trips from one place to another. 

26.. n none the wiser

I just came back from my Bday party.. so quite high.. . I m writing this in the hopes that this entry still counts as Today’s (i.e. 4th Dec)  blog instead of 5th…actually its already 00.25am ..so already on the 5th, but anyway.. i felt like writing.

One of the things I like the most bout having a Bday is tat it is a reminder of how many friends you have.. it can begin with an sms at 12a.m. in the nite to a wake-up call at 7am in the morning. Or with 13 missed calls which happen while u r takin a shower… either way.. its a cool experience.. you hear from people you havent heard from in ages.. or those who u r in regular contact with…in one instance even with a person whom u dont know but who likes to wish people on their bday…. weird yeah,,, but kinda nice.. after all.. how did that person know that it was my bday… not gettin into the stalker theory.. since my bday can be found out in any of the umpteen community sites.. a tribute to those by the way

The day was a regular one… with the only difference being the birthday wishes n phone calls during the day.. (it was one of those days which made glad that I was having a cell phone.. another tribute to modern technology..)..

The day was completed with a small birthday party which I threw for a few people who have made my stay in Germany.. worth staying.. too bad tat a few cud not come.. either way it was a gud day..n a nice night. Spending my Bday here in this country after 13 years is a nice experience.. n it only reinforces my feeling that I am not away from home.. coz.. wherever I go.. I ve got my friends n family with me,..n I think tats pretty much all that matters.

Sheesh.. I may regret this blog later on.. but rite now I am in a Sentimental mood… so there it goes into Save.