gQuigs' View

Moving to my own site...

2011-01-01T09:53:00.000+05:30

I'm moving from Blogger to my own site BryanQuigley.com, please go check it out.

Google Checkout

2010-12-09T00:16:00.000+05:30

Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and more have stopped letting donations go through to Wikileaks.

I would really like to see Wikileaks to start allowing donations with Google Checkout. It would let us see if Google really is different than the rest of those corporations.

Scribus, How close is it to replacing Adobe Acrobat Pro?

2010-11-30T07:15:00.000+05:30

For my specific use case of making PDF fill-able forms. If you remember I previously posted about showing support for the Adobe suite on Linux. In this post I look into how Scribus is progressing on this use case.

The Competition
Adobe Acrobat Pro can make any PDF into a fill-able form. Importing is easy and you can just reopen the final PDF if you need to make changes.

Scribus
Step-by-step this is the closest I have gotten to being able to do this with Scribus. There are some issues which I will highlight at the end.

Print each page of the form you want to make fill-able to a seperate PostScript file (.ps)
Scribus Limitation - You can't import PDF forms directly very well at all
Import them individually into Scribus using Get Vector Image, line them up on thier respective pages.
Insert the PDF form elements you want from the right side of the toolbar.
Change any options you need on the elements by right clicking on the element and going to PDF Options -> Properties
Export to a PDF.

Send out your fill-able form!

The caveats: With Scribus you need to keep the Scribus file or else you are going to have to start over from scratch. You canNOT reopen the PDF you created in Scribus for editing.
Oh, right, Adobe Acrobat Pro will run you 450 dollars. Scribus is available free for Windows/Mac or for Ubuntu.

Nuclear Disamament - Needs your voice

2010-11-19T00:55:00.000+05:30

"The treaty advances a world free of nuclear weapons. The New START will further reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons in both countries' arsenals. It has the support of many political leaders.

Please contact to your senators today. Ask them to support the New START treaty and press for a vote on the Senate floor."

Please add your voice. The sooner Russia and the US reduce our nuclear weapons pointed at each other the better.

Test out Firefox 4 Beta 7

2010-11-13T10:37:00.000+05:30

Firefox 4 Beta 7 came out this week. You can get it here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html I strongly recommend encouraging friends and family to install it (first explaining the nature of beta).

Why?
Firefox 4 is a very important release. Firefox has lost a little bit of market share recently. Firefox 4 has features, speed and otherwise, that may help to correct that. The more people that you move (knowing the risks) to Firefox 4 Beta 7 the more stable the next release is going to be and also the better Mozilla will understand how things like tabs are used (thanks to user surveys).

Want even less stability? / Want to be on 64 bit?
I run it and have no problems with it.. (your mileage may vary, for instance it could explode) http://nightly.mozilla.org/ Nightly builds!

Help get hardware acceleration on Linux
Learn more - http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2010/09/15/so-you-want-to-help-us-with-hardware-acceleration/

Show demand for Adobe Creative Suite on Linux

2010-11-10T21:57:00.000+05:30

An Adobe Employee has responded to an idea about have Adobe Suite on Linux.
"I have forwarded this feedback on to the appropriate team who will consider it for future releases of Adobe software."
Let's make the demand overwhelming (http://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/produce_creative_suite_for_linux)

(remember Dell IdeaStorm)

Natalia Michaella Woods-Quigley

2010-10-27T23:05:00.000+05:30

On June 19^th, my fiancée and I returned from India. She was 26 weeks pregnant and we returned to the States to get better health care for the delivery of our baby. Health care can be a daunting thing to coordinate. We used the health care broker CBIZ to set us up with a Blue Cross EPO Plan in NJ, with the specific requirement that the pregnancy be fully covered.

The problems started with the plan as soon as we arrived. Although we had specifically said we needed the plan to be effective the day we arrived, it took 20+ days for the plan to be activated and useful for us. During her 27^th week of the pregnancy, contractions started and we were hospitalized. We still hadn't even received health insurance cards yet.

The care we received at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital was excellent. Our daughter, Natalia, pulled through and we were allowed to go home a day earlier than expected.

We finally received our insurance cards. Then, a couple of weeks later, we got news from the doctor’s office that Blue Cross wouldn’t cover our doctors office visits because we had a pre-existing condition. We contacted CBIZ immediately and they said they would take care of it. Two weeks later, we got an email asking for an additional requirement, basically saying if we didn't meet that requirement they couldn't take off the pre-existing clause off. Back in May, they required that my fiancée had proof of coverage from before we got pregnant. In August, after they’d been paid and coverage began, they changed the requirement to 1 year from date of the beginning of the Blue Cross plan, which we didn't have.

The best part of this so far is that we tried to be responsible. We paid Blue Cross 300 dollars a month for this "coverage" on good faith that our pregnancy would be covered because we were advised against getting the free Medicare program by the CBIZ representative. Nor were we told that you CANNOT apply for Medicare if you have insurance.

About 2 months ago, I went to work like any normal day, unaware that I would be at the hospital with my fiancée for the rest of the week. Our Natalia hadn't made it. (We delivered at Virtua Hospital in Voorhees, which, again, provided great care and as much comfort as they could given the circumstances)

The recovery and grief have been hard enough. What’s worse, CBIZ has stopped returning our emails and calls. My fiancée called Blue Cross about 10 times and got different stories every time she called, until she finally got a call with the same story about needing the 1 year prior coverage (this after getting told that the pre-existing clause would be removed).

About 2 weeks after our last hospital visit "Obamacare" as it is referred by pundits took effect. If only it had kicked in 2 months ago. He made pre-existing conditions a thing of the past, and we are very grateful that no one will have to go through that much health insurance hell again. We don't know why our daughter didn't make it, but we are sure that the stress of dealing with health "insurance" definitely didn't help our well-being.

When I was getting ready to be a father one of the biggest things that scared me was that I was bringing a child into this world, with all of its horrific problems. She didn't make it, but that feeling has stayed with me. I will be volunteering with a local Democrat this election season, because the parts of this story that we can help we can't let happen again.

Our daughter, Natalia Michaella Woods-Quigley, was conceived around January 1^st 2010. She loved to listen to music (WXPN in Philly being her favorite radio station.) Natalie loved eating all kinds of food (except Indian). Her favorites were potatoes, pasta, cantaloupe, and burgers. She was very opinionated, kicking her opinions every moment. It's amazing how much (and how little) you can learn about someone when they aren't even born yet. It's amazing how deeply you can fall in love with someone you can't even see.

We love you Natalie.
Bryan & Erica

Linux-Devel-Focus App Idea

2010-05-31T01:56:00.001+05:30

Sharing another of my crazy ideas with the community in the hope that it's actually already out there... This one involved encourage participation in Linux kernel development by providing new developers a "laptop-personalized" experience.

The basic idea:
User compiles the kernel specific to their hardware using "make localmodconfig", user records all warnings -> and goes to work fixing the warnings specific to the users computer. localmodconfig, for those that don't know, tells the kernel to only compile the code that is specifically needed for this hardware. This makes it pretty much computer specific code.

Expanded idea 1 - Really Free Software:
The user is given a list of all binary blobs or other non-free things that they are using in their kernel, no matter how small. To FSF standards.

Expanded Idea 2 - Depreciated APIs:
The user is given a list of the hardware they use and which are using depreciated APIs or other items that will cause issues in the future.

Expanded Idea 3 - Old Untouched Code:
The user is given a list of the hardware they use and how old the code is in each driver they are using. This may allow the user to focus their efforts on the likely least optimized code paths.

Expanded Idea 4 - Where to go from there?:
Based on which area of the kernel it is, the user is given different instructions designed to help them commit patches.

It may also be neat to see which hardware you have is least and most popular...

Thoughts?

OpenOffice & GStreamer

2010-05-03T11:38:00.001+05:30

If you have ever installed OpenOffice from Sun's (and now Oracle's) website you will notice that it doesn't have any media playing support. But it does on Ubuntu and Debian and Suse and Fedora and well pretty much everywhere else.

OpenOffice's policy is to only include code that they have a shared copyright on (or some other similar legal wording). Novell, wrote code to make OpenOffice integrate with the common (on Linux) gstreamer media framework.

According to this bug report Novell won't share the copyright with Oracle/Sun and Oracle/Sun won't integrate it without it.

I don't really know who to blame in this instance, but it seems incredibly silly to me. We (collectively) have the code to make OpenOffice work better (and be much easier to test new versions without losing audio/video), but we still manage to restrict what we end up doing with the code. :(

Apps I'd like see in Google's MarketPlace

2010-04-26T18:42:00.000+05:30

What is the Google Apps Marketplace?
"The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google's universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain's data."

Basically it makes those using Google Apps for their domain have easy access to sign up for other supported web services. It would also be an awesome way for open source companies to make money. Any open source product with a company behind it that offers a hosted solution could potential qualify...

What would I like to see in the Google Apps Marketplace?

Ubuntu One - why can't I add my entire company to using Ubuntu One in one click? Better yet, if we get some more Gmail/Calendar-Ubuntu integration.

OrangeHRM - Great open source Human Resources system, right and it's open source and provides a hosted solution. Let's make it easy to have the Human resource system and google apps be in sync. User get's let go, their account automatically gets suspendeded, etc. User's calendar automatically shows leave, etc.

Likely more like SugarCRM, vTiger, or Alfresco... Which open source projects would you like to see available in the Google Apps Marketplace?

So.. you want to try out the Alpha version of Fedora on a usb stick?

2010-03-15T11:41:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I like taking the latest releases of Fedora Linux for a spin. There aren't any guides for quickly getting Fedora's usb creator working on Ubuntu. So I decided to change that.

Download Fedora Alpha here (I strongly suggest using the torrent so it's verified automatically)
*Note* you could also choose to get a stable version of Fedora, as Alpha can mean the usual, aka data loss, losing access to your Ubuntu drive if you install it, or the network card on your computer becoming permanently made useless, etc.

Get the file: liveusb-creator-3.9.tar.bz2 (140K) (under Source)
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

Install the following dependencies - which I believe would all be installed by:
apt:python-qt4-dbus ,python-parted

Extract the liveusb-creator-**** file. Run with following command:
gksudo "./liveusb-creator --noverify"

Then follow the on-screen instruction. Enjoy testing!

Couple of testing points:

On initial bootup, just press enter when you see "boot:"
Just wait when you get to the login screen, it will eventually log you in. Don't try clicking on anything, it doesn't seem to like it.

Let's take security to the next level...

2010-01-21T22:06:00.000+05:30

Current Setup:
An application has to be limited by the most lax permission in order to maintain the functionality. For an application that will ever have access to the user's files this means it needs to have access to all of the users files.

Possible Solution:
Have the file browser/chooser application give temporary permissions for the specific chosen files/folder to the application that launched the file chooser. Care will need to be taken so that "recent files" in applications still work as expected. This may require a per application recent file list to be stored in the security system.

Example Use Cases / How it does it:
Picture Viewer
1) User clicks on Picture with an active exploit in it (on the desktop)
2) Opens with default photo viewer
3) The exploit now has full control of the photo viewer, but can only access:
    Photo viewers recently opened photos
    The photo with the exploit
    Photo viewer config
    Anything else the photo viewer can access (say uploading to flickr)
    All other photo's in library (if configured, which in this example it is not)
*) All other documents remain secure...

How it did it. (behind the scenes):
the user opened 4 pictures from the file manager, the application had those 4 pictures added to it's "per application recent file permission list" thereby enabling the user to open them directly from the photo manager at any point in the future. That list was customized for the application to limit the list to the 4 most recent due to the application only having 4 option in it's "recent list".
This list is used by apparmor/selinux to enable access to the pictures for the application.

Rhythmbox
1) User configures library (using directory chooser)\
    - Called with options to set up a permanent user/application permission for the music folder in question
    - this allows rhythmbox to access all files contained within
2) User listens to internet radio and finds a malicious file
3) The malicious file deletes everything it can touch, the user loses her entire music collection, but has all documents intact.

When configuring the rhythmbox library directory, Rhythmbox used a special call to the directory chooser to ask it to switch it's permanent directory to whatever the user chooses, thereby adding the necessary rules as well.

Of course, if you can already do this with selinux/apparmor (at about the same complication level) please tell me how :)

Memory is to hard to measure

2010-01-08T16:45:00.000+05:30

Inspired from the comment "It saves zero memory" from here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/501241

I've been trying to keep my eye on Ubuntu's memory usage for some time now, but there has never been a great way to measure memory usage. Here is an alternate memory tracking idea.. Don't bother trying to observe it directly. These are the steps I followed to prove that removing tty2-tty6 will save us more than zero memory.

Figure out how much your computer (when booting off of a liveUSB in my case) needs to boot, open a terminal, and run free -m with using almost no swap.

[make sure the computer has a swap partition, or else this won't work]

Do this by booting the kernel with different mem=???M options. And try getting swap close to zero (see it with free -m), but still in positive territory by a few. Mine was mem=450M, and swap used was 3 M
Then make your changes, in my case rm /etc/init/tty[2-6]
Reboot with the same kernel option (mem=450M), run the terminal, run free -m and rejoice in the lack of swap used.

Why does this prove my point?
It gets around the memory measuring difficulties and says, "If we don't do X, will the system decide it doesn't need to activate swap?"

Firefox 3.5 Most Popular Browser (Major Version) In The World

2009-12-21T01:04:00.000+05:30

According to StatCounter Global Statistics the most used browser version on the web is Firefox 3.5. Congrats to Mozilla (and the open web)!

But we can use this as a rallying call to do more. Let's Finish Off IE6 (remove the links to IE8 and Safari if you want, and maybe add one for Opera). And how many of you end up upgrading your family's browsers over the holidays? Good job keeping them safe, but bring everything you need this time on a USB stick, and then get back to enjoying the holidays.

Internal LAN, Package Distribution Quick Howto

2009-11-27T15:49:00.000+05:30

This guide simply mashes up two other guides, with just the parts needed to create simple packages and them to your own repository, all on the local network (no PPAs).

First you need to make packages (a more complete guide below [1]). My packages are very simple as I am using them just to distribute files around the local network. Let's pretend you want to include a simple bash backup script in a package.
Make a package

Make a folder mycompany-backup
Make two new folders in it: DEBIAN and opt
NOTE: pretend mycompany-backup is the / directory of whatever system you install it on, so everything in opt would go to /opt when installed, etc.
Make a new text file under DEBIAN called control
Add Some text to the file:
Package: mycompany-backup
Version: 0.1
Section: mycompany
Priority: optional
Architecture: i386 or amd64 or all (however all sadly doesn't work with the next part of this guide)
Essential: no
Installed-Size: 10
Maintainer: My Name
Add your content (in my case a backup script) to opt/backup.sh. Mine just backs up Documents to a place on our server. (NOTE: This isn't a complete backup solution as there is no automation)
#/bin/sh
SAMIAM=`whoami`
sleep 60

gvfs-mount mount smb://$SAMIAM@server/$SAMIAM #User must have saved password for share

rsync -rv /home/$SAMIAM/Documents "/home/$SAMIAM/.gvfs/$SAMIAM on server/BACKUP" --log-file="/home/$SAMIAM/.gvfs/$SAMIAM on server/BACKUP/latest"
Go one directory above where mycompany-backup is.
Run the command dpkg -b mycompany-backup/ mycompany.deb and you should have a new .deb file.

I got most of this from:
[1] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html

Distribute the Package in your own company repository

You need to already be running a simple web server (or not, you could just install apache)
Make a new directory on the server called apt (likely /var/www/apt)
Make two new folders in it: conf and incoming
Make a new file in conf called distributions - like this
Origin: Your Name
Label: Something here as well
Suite: karmic
Codename: karmic
Architectures: amd64 source (all would be ideal here but it doesn't work)
Components: mycompany
Description: Your description
Oh right, install reprepro
Add your deb to incoming
Then while in the apt directory, run sudo reprepro includedeb karmic incoming/mycompany.deb

Then just add the line to your other computers:
deb http://mycompanysServerOrIPAddress/apt karmic mycompany

Update apt, and then install the mycompany package like any normal package.

Again this website provided a great starting point for me, and has many more details.
[2] http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/286

Mostly did this for my own documentation, hope it was helpful for you as well.

If anyone wants to figure out why the "all" architecture doesn't work with reprepro it could be very helpful in making actually correct packages. The one in this example really should be all and not amd64.

Memory Requirements

2009-10-24T11:19:00.013+05:30

Mostly kicked off by this post (http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/ubuntus-minimum-requirements/)

OS	Required / Realistic
Ubuntu (full Gnome)	384 MB / 512 MB
Xubuntu	192 MB / 256 MB
Windows XP	64 MB / 128 MB
Windows Vista Home Basic	512 MB
Windows Vista (Other)	1 GB
Windows 7 32 bit	1 GB
Windows 7 64 bit	2 GB

Ubuntu is approaching Windows Vista Home's minimum memory specs, but is still a long way off our biggest competitor, Windows XP (70% market share and our only real competitor in netbooks). With netbooks usually having 512 - 1 GB of memory, it seems like XP would really let the user run many more applications (yes I am ignoring anti-virus and all the other random stuff OEMs load onto Windows to make it slower). So, I just have one question:

How hard would it be to reduce Ubuntu's memory usage from 9.10 to 10.04 by just 64 MB (oh, and does anyone want to make this an official goal for 10.04)?

I have knowledge of at least one school district where the majority of computers have only 128 MB of RAM. They are running XP and want to switch to Linux, but it was simply not an option due to memory. (And no if they don't have a big IT budget, read: no budget for LTSP)

Win 7 requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx
Win xp requirements http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
Ubuntu requirements https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements
Win Vista requirements http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx

Exaile & Amarok. Because my original review of them...

2009-10-01T20:15:00.000+05:30

was not quite that good. Let's try this again...
Exaile and Amarok are very similar players as Exaile is a music player inspired from Amarok but designed for GNOME. Whereas Amarok is the premier music player on the KDE desktop.

(I'm also on Karmic now, so things might look a little different if you install on Jaunty and also look different from my original review)

Exaile in Depth
The above is the Exaile main window. On the left side it let's you navigate through your Collection, Radio, Files, and Playlists. Clicking on them only update the next area to the right (which is where I currently have right clicked on an album and am about to "Append to Current").
The next region (or main region) is a tabbed collection of playlists or music sources. The use of tabs always makes things more cool. Quite useful for going through your music once and separating into multiple playlists (for things that can't be done by smart/dynamic playlists).

The easiest way to just start playing random music, is to go the playlists tab where you will find several smart playlists. Among them are Random 100/300/500 songs, Entire Library, and Rating >3 / >4.

Blacklists, which let you exclude songs from being played, are one of the features Exaile has that I haven't seen elsewhere.

The Radio should provide you more than enough shoutcast streams to listen to, although it can be somewhat overwhelming with the number of stations. Karmic Xubuntu users will be enjoying music from Exaile out-of-the-box. For the rest of you, get it below.

Get Exaile

Amarok, Rediscover Your Music!

The Amarok motto is back! I swear it went missing when I did my first review this year. Since I first reviewed Amarok (and then upgraded to Karmic) they made some significant changes to the interface. For instance, the left hand vertical navigation is gone. The first area (going left to right) is the Local Collection (can be switched to Playlist/Internet/Files mode (sound familar?) This is pretty identical to the one in Exaile (or I really should say the Exaile one is the same as the Amarok one). However, after that things change :).

The next area with the nice "Discovery Blue" (I'm making up colors now), is the Discover your music area (I'm also making up names). You can customize this area with Wikipedia entries, Videos, Photos, etc, that will automatically update based on the artist you are currently listening to. You can mess with the layout as well, like I did below:
The last area is the Playlist section which allows you to sort and rearrange the playlist by (seemingly) every possible bit of metadata you have on your music.

Random in Amarok can be made to cheat. Which is awesome (who wants mathematically perfect random for music playing anyway). It can be made to favor Higher Ratings or songs that you haven't played in a while.

Amarok really rocks when it comes to finding music or audio online for you to listen to. Aside from the more standard ones (Magnatue, Jamendo, Last.fm) it also has access to Librivox recordings (books) and a Podcast Directory.

Ubuntu Users, Get Amarok Here

Read my old review of 2007 Amarok

India, 4th of July

2009-09-17T13:19:00.006+05:30

I went to the US Embassy for the 4th of July and got a beef cheeseburger and french fries... In the red circle is the US Ambassador to India. He gave a short and sweet speech.

This is during the pledge...There were fireworks as well! (btw, do we let embassy's in DC use fireworks?)
And then there was cake..

Note: Pictures not actually in chronological order.

India, the park

2009-09-17T12:32:00.005+05:30

I love this park and it is about a 2 minute walk from the office... these are pictures from a bit back...
Look "normal" park stuff:
The best part is this is a medium size park here :), and just walking around it you can usually find a....

Gecko! And sometimes discarded legacy stuff. :)

India, living and working

2009-09-06T20:58:00.008+05:30

About 2 months after it was requested I am finally providing a couple pictures....
This is the MIA office building we only have 1 floor, which also (luckily) happens to be the only floor with air conditioning.
And this is where I live.. (bottom right balcony is mine)
And last but actually interesting :), is the view from my office window when there is a bit of rain outside.

Flowcharts!

2009-09-05T23:45:00.000+05:30

Any now for something completely different.

Can flowcharts be scaled up to cover some of the more complex social interactions, we know it can cover Creating an AIM Profile.

http://www.okcupid.com/flowchart-to-my-heart?g=icDV86SY94A

Music Player Review: Heavyweights

2009-08-24T22:04:00.007+05:30

Exaile has some features I really like. Here is a screen shot to get you started

Some of the features which rock.

Blacklists - put a song/artist/album on the blacklist and have it not play while randomizing your whole collection
Dynamic playlists additions - adds new songs to playlists automagically
Has significant plug-in selection

Exaile also has an Equalizer, Radio support, Album Art Collector, smart playlists, and more. It can also bring your music collection together from multiple locations. Some plugins include Alarm Clock, Desktop Cover (Displays the current album cover on the desktop), and HTTP Server Control.

My previous post details why Exaile is being removed from ths review.

Ubuntu Users, Get Exaile

Exaile is inspired from Amarok. Amarok uses the most memory of those that remain by more than double, it's around 70 mb on my machine and it almost lost on my CPU review, so it gets to be in the heavy weight category with Exaile. It seems like every time I try Amarok, I end up wanting to try KDE again (I'll try in Karmic, KDE 4.3 should be stable, right?).

Amarok really rocks the "Internet" with Cool Streams, Jamendo, Librivox.org (free audio books), magnatune, Opml Directory, Shoutcast Directory. Also available are Ampache and mp3tunes.

It definitely has dynamic playlists but doesn't appear to have blacklists or plugins. It does however have Random that well.. let's you make it not Random. Random that favors tracks that have higher ratings, etc, which is honestly how most people would actually like "Random" to work.

The heavyweight champion of the music player review is..... well...
Amarok if you use Kubuntu (KDE)
Exaile if you use Ubuntu or Xubuntu (XFCE)

Of course depending on your needs this changes completely and I really can't tell if I like Blacklists more or Amarok's "Random".

Ubuntu Users, Get Amarok Here

Read my old review of 2007 Amarok

Who's left? Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Rhythmbox

Music Player Review: CPU Performance

2009-08-12T21:02:00.016+05:30

The task: playing 7 minutes of a FLAC file.
The tester: Phoronix test suite - specifically "MONITOR=cpu.usage phoronix-test-suite benchmark idle"
The tested: Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

This chart is neat, the indicator in the middle is where the average lies (out of 7 minutes) and the bottom of the line is where the low is, top is where the high is.

If you want to, you can look at their exact charts below. A bit about the results, followed by some possibly relevant tech details.

Amarok
It is the premier music player on the "heaviest" open source desktop KDE. Btw, I was using Xine. Qt.

Exaile
Being one of the most CPU intensive it is concerning to me that Xubuntu is considering moving to it. Python, gStreamer.

Banshee
4th Place but quite close to the lead. Mono, gStreamer.

gMusicBrowser
Low of 1.01%, High of 9.00%. Perl?, Direct to libs/mplayer for playback?

Quod Libet
Biggest range, but also lowest average. Odd. Gstreamer, Python.

Rhythmbox
Low and High tied with gMusicPlayer. .15 less average. Nice low usage for the default player. C, Gstreamer.

You should be able to use the phoronix test suite's idle and monitor mode to get similar results. So, the question is, am I kicking someone out for this? For now, Exaile is out.

(but I plan to look at this in more detail specific to Exaile and send my results to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Specifications/Karmic/DefaultMusicPlayer, as well as doing an indepth goodbye review like usual)

Amarok is close to the line as well, but it will stay in for now. Disagree? Please do comment.

Please do attempt to reproduce, preferably on low end hardware so the variations will be more pronounced (as soon as Jaunty is available on my OLPC, I will rerun these on it).

Music Player Review: VideoLAN - VLC Media Player

2009-08-09T00:15:00.007+05:30

VideoLAN Client (VLC) is quite an amazing and powerful program. You can play DVDs, stream things from here to there, do about 50,000 other advanced (and simple) things. In recent versions they added a media library.

To access the media library you actually have to go Playlists -> Show Playlists. Also any settings for randomness or repeating appear to disappear every time you close it.

Some more awesome VLC capabilities:

Shoutcast audio/video - Under Playlist -> Additional Sources
Streaming video from one source to another (or to a file)
Viewing your webcam (and streaming it elsewhere)
Playing DVDs
Playing practically any video/audio file

VLC although awesome, really doesn't belong in a music play review. I left it in just to test out the new features in the 1.0 series (or close enough). I'm going to be watching a lot of the shoutcast items in the near future. Also available for Windows and Mac. Yes I realize this is a very short review, but it shouldn't have been here anyway.
Get VLC Ubuntu Users.

Who's left? Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox
What's Next? Performance.

Music Player Review: Music Player Daemon Explored

2009-08-07T01:06:00.011+05:30

So, two Music Player Daemon (MPD) clients made it through my first review waves. Which was then followed by a "face off" or two. I generally try to make my reviews geared towards people who don't want to have to do technical things to make music play. Music Player Daemon likely requires editing 1 text file and possibly restarting a service or two. If that scares you, read at least the next two Q&As before running on your way.

What is a daemon?
A daemon is an application that runs without a user directly seeing it (in the background) but that other applicatins the user can see ask it to do things for them.

So... What is a Music Player Daemon?
An application that organizes and plays your music, that can be controlled through various applications that you can actually see and use. All MPD clients get to use the same music library and control what is currently playing (yes you can open more than one client at the same time!)

Wait.. What about the applications that I can see?
Sonata - "An elegant music client for MPD." Here is the info screen. It seems to follow a KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) philosophy. Sonata works (or should) out of the box if you have MPD locally set up and working.

Ario - "GTK Client for MPD" - Yes they have a technical tag line, bah! However it does win on features. Here is the Ario info screen:
The "Currently Playing" can always be shown in the bottom pane. Here is where Ario wins.. umm.. some cake:
As well Ario has a bunch of other cool features (more than Sonata).

Memory Usage (just so you saw wow compared to some others):
MPD - 11.1 MiB (which really should be added to the one you are using)
Sonata - 16.6 MiB (respectable - 27.7 in total)
Ario - 4.8 Mib (wow...)

Of course MPD clients require a bit more config. Let's get you installed and running Ario!
First install mpd
Then install Ario || or install Sonata

Hold ALT with F2. Then Copy in: gksudo gedit /etc/mpd.conf
Change the 8th line

music_directory "/var/lib/mpd/music/"

to point to wherever your music is stored, such as

music_directory "/home/your-username/Music"

Then save it. By default all users on the machine will get access to play music from the collection. (You can also enable remote access)

Then, hopefully just start up Ario and get playing :)

The music applet (add to your gnome panel) can also control MPD directly, so you can actually close all the other MPD clients after setting up a playlist and just control it through that!

But still, I'm not sure if MPD is ready for the non-technical user, so I am going to exclude it from the rest of the review, for now. Please do share your thoughts if you think otherwise. If you are a non-techie and love, I'd love to hear that.

Who's left? Amarok, Banshee, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

Music Player Review: aTunes and Songbird

2009-07-31T23:22:00.016+05:30

Ok, this might be confusing:
aTunes beats Amarok at it's own motto "Rediscover Your Music"
Songbird is basically open source iTunes with the power of Firefox

aTunes!
aTunes looks how I remember Amarok the first time I reviewed it. As well as helping you organize your music it brings you a TON of information on it in the same interface:

This shows the bigger picture and similar artist view on the right side.

This shows song lyrics from lyricwiki.org. (Interesting site, btw)

This shows Artist infoThere is a good deal more to aTunes and it seems quite powerful. Memory usage seems to be in the 100 Mb to 170 Mb range, which I find completely insane. On a related note, it uses Java and has multiple installers available (Ubuntu/Debian deb, Windows Installer, Java App Installer).

Again, it can't win my Music Player Review because it is not in the Ubuntu repository, but still a music app to try (and if you like/liked amarok, try it). http://www.atunes.org/

Songbird!

Not much more to add. It's based on Firefox and looks similar to iTunes, in fact with an extension you can make it look like this:
If you miss iTunes or want to try to write music player extensions in javascript give it a try. Grab it at http://getsongbird.com/ Take a look at some of the add-ons at http://addons.songbirdnest.com/
(Don't get the wrong idea, it is *much* better than iTunes)

Again, I can't do the awesome one-click installer for these so they can't win my review. However, they might be perfect for you and definitely worth trying.

Who's left? Amarok, Ario, Banshee, Sonata, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod LIbet, Exaile, Rhythmbox
Read more of my reviews

Music Player Review: qmmp vs audacious

2009-07-28T11:00:00.008+05:30

These players have more in common then not. Audacious seems to have more options though and supports WinAmp skins. If you are looking for a linux app to replace (the look and feel of) WinAmp these are the two best options I've found, slight edge given to Audacious. Although, I personally like the qmmp default skin better. Other than options, they are practically the same program.

Look you can rearrange them in similar ways (and arbitrary)
And they both can become "1 Liners":
So Audacious "wins" cause they have more plug-ins, options, and skins by default. Also they have a voice removal pluging (a little bit buggy) but quite awesome if you want to get some karaoke going. I will definitely be looking for that feature in more music players. (Neither is continuing in my review, as they are competiting more with each other, than the others)

Both are very light weight and good players, Go give them a try, Ubuntu users click below.

Click here for qmmp ||||| Click here for Audacious

Who's left? Amarok, Ario, aTunes, Banshee, Sonata, gmusicbrowser, Videolan Client, Quod LIbet, Exaile, Rhythmbox, Sondbird

Music Player Review '09 edition - Wave 1.5

2009-07-27T17:00:00.000+05:30

Adding Songbird and aTunes to the list, with the note that they can't actually "win" because they aren't in the Ubuntu repository.

Just to catch them up to where we are:
aTunes - available as a a deb that adds a menu icon, passes on all first wave items
Songbird - available as a tar.gz, extract and then run, no menu icon, passes all other first wave items

Wave 1.5 just asks two questions. Playing all the songs on shuffle. Generating a playlist is fine as long as I can select multiple (read all) folders. Who is out?

Alsaplayer - Playlist, no media library and doesn't let you select multiple folders to add them. Is still awesome because it let's you speed up (chipmunkify) or slow down a song.
Aqualung - It has a bunch of options that I don't quite understand but that an audio junkie might love.
KPlayer - A frontend to MPlayer, not designed to handle a music collection
Listen Music Player - looked good, GUI is very bad at being responsive, ends up crashing
Minirok - Can't shuffle, quite a simple player, simplest player with KDE theme that I have reviewed
Xfmpc - finally an MPD client fails, except for this one they have all been very consistent how you add the entire library, cause they share a database. Now if you add the entire database to the current playing in another MPD client, and then go Xfmpc it will work fine.
gxmms2 - All xmms2 clients are out. Now to be fair, there is a bug that is basially making most of the xmms2 clients not work, so maybe Karmic will have them fair better.

Internet Radio?

Decibel - Nope
Gimmix - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Glurp - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Gnome Music Player - Just focuses on being a MPD client
Juk - Nope
Muine - Nope
Pygmy - Nope
gbemol - Nope
gmusicplayer - Nope, but I'm keeping it just because I can :P.

These are all focused more on just the music you have, which if that's all you use, try these out!

Next up, I switch from waves to a VS match. Audacious and qmmp have very very similar interfaces., so I'm going to compare them until I find one I like more. (Quite similar to WinAmp, Coolplayer, Xmms, etc). Who will emerge victorious?

Music Player Review '09 edition - First Wave

2009-07-26T16:30:00.000+05:30

About a year and a half ago, I did a music player review, where I went through a lot of the music players in Ubuntu and reviewed them for functionality, etc. One of my finalists from last time, BMPx, has actually gone away, but all the others are still here. This time I want to do a more thorough review, so I am including all the MPD/XMMS2 clients (I will go more in depth on what they are in the future).

In this first wave I only looked at applications under Add and Remove Applications, in the Sound and Video section and they had to say something about being able to play music or audio. From that long list, I checked the following criteria (who fails, follows the criteria):

Does it appear in the menu and actually open (also is it designed for desktop use)?
Helix Player - crashes!
Xfmedia - crashes!
pympd - crashes!
Elisa - really designed for a TV
Freevo - really designed for a TV
Can it actually play music?
Jlgui - Java app that just wouldn't play music with OpenJDK or Sun Java, or with/without pulseaudio
Can I add items to the playlist/library and play them (from within the interface)?
(To include MPD in this review, I cheated for them, added 1 single line to MPD config file)
Abraca - couldn't get it to add items (it could play items added by other MPD clients thought)
Bluemindo - added items fine, but they were invisible in the interface
Esperanza - couldn't get it to add items (but it could play items added by other XMMS clients)
Potamus - A very simple client that you need to drag and drop items to. I want at least an add button.
MP3 Support?
Everyone passed.
FLAC Support?
Everyone passed.

This leaves me with:
Alsaplayer, Amarok, Aqualung, Ario, Audacious, Banshee, Decibel, Gimmix, Glurp, Gnome Music Player Client, Juk, Kplayer, Listen Music Player, Minirok, Muine, Pygmy, Qmmp, Sonata, Xfmpc, gbemol, gmusicbrowser, gxmms2, Videolan (which I added just for fun), Quod Libet, Exaile, Rhythmbox

Have I missed any, or missing something obvious with the ones I left behind today? Suggestions for future criteria are also wanted.

Why do you like Free Software and Ubuntu?

2009-07-26T01:45:00.021+05:30

Why do you like Free Software and Ubuntu?

My Answer:
I consider software important. Really really important. Why?
Most people don't really understand just how much power software has over our current society. Let's pretend all the software in the world was really just one single person. What could that person do?

Change everyone's bank account balances (and change local records to match so noone notices!)
Choose many elected officials
Isolate individuals socially, make their emails go unanswered, etc (or worse make seem to send emails creating arguments)
In some places, arrest people
Ruin a credit score
Change the news
Change history
Nuke the world (or just provide bad information to leaders and let them do it)

Yes, quite skynetish, eh? Luckily software isn't just one individual, nor was it written by one person. But the power is still held by all of the software in the world (or really the people who created it).

I believe that an essential part of democracy is allowing those that are interested to have a hand in controlling the systems that have the power. How?

The (A)GPL ensure perpetually that the end user of the software will have the clear ability to take control of the software on their devices. The AGPL could also be used to force transparency, another democratic necessity, of the methods used in voting, banking, etc.

A world with just Free Software (let's just say all AGPL for simplicity) should be substantially closer to perfect competition. Why?

It lowers the barrier to entry, you can just pick up the source code to Gmail and make a new product. (Which Gmail can then copy from you).
More sellers. The more sellers, the more responsive a supplier needs to be to you cause you can switch.
Similar Products. They are mostly compatible with their specific value adds that will be likely incorporated into the next version of a competitor.

Perhaps this sounds a lot like Linux distros to you? :)

Well, Why Ubuntu?
We aren't there yet
Ubuntu makes some of the necessary compromises (proprietary drivers, etc) that give many more people, more of the freedom and control then they would have had without it. Right now, I feel Ubuntu has the best chance of getting us closer.

Community
People need help to get involved with politics; communities exist to help concerned citizens to help change their governments. The Ubuntu community is here to help new users and contributors get involved helping to shape their software. Which is critical, because even if you have the freedom or right, doesn't mean you have the knowledge to use it. Receptive communities, like Ubuntu's, help get the knowledge to you.

Where are you going with this?
I was actually trying to answer the question, Why do I hate Microsoft? (I mean, come on, I don't want Mono included on the default Ubuntu install, so I clearly hate Microsoft or Novell, or somebody)

I don't hate Microsoft. I don't consider myself anti Microsoft or anti Mono. I have actually set people up to use both Windows and Mono applications before, gasp! And I actually like Novell. (I'm also a MCSA)

I consider myself pro Free Software and pro community created and governed languages (as well as content, and much more).

We have a better way to create software, a more democratic control structure over what we do, and most importantly, we give users great software and a path (through the community) to help them be in control of their software and have a say in its future.

Related Posts, somewhat referenced:
SciAm Column on "Rational Atheism"; The Dangers of Being "Anti" Rather Than "Pro"
Why do you like Microsoft?

United4Iran.com July 25th

2009-07-25T01:49:00.004+05:30

Go to www.united4iran.org.
Find the city closest to you.
Support human rights.

Three random things....

2009-07-21T02:56:00.006+05:30

Microsoft adds code to Linux
Microsoft donates code directly to Linux kernel (although I can't find the actual code or LKML post, meh, I'll take their word for it). http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Jul09/07-20LinuxQA.mspx

I find this to be quite a good development, it should make it easier for those places that only have MS setups to try out virtual Linux servers. But, most importantly, MS is playing our game by some of our rules now (at least partially). Although at the same time they have videos on the linked article only playable in SilverLight on Windows (and Intel Macs). (To be fair they link to Moonlight, which doesn't work)

We can also now say, "Even Microsoft has fully GPL Linux drivers, why don't you?"

Google Chrome for Linux - External Repository Dist-Upgrading
I tried out Google Chrome for Linux and noticed that it installs a cron job that will keep adding an apt sources line to get around the fact that during dist-upgrades we disable all non-Ubuntu repositories. That sucks for users and PPA/repository developers, can't we have a better update method for that? I don't particularly like Google's way either, though. Ideas?

Firefox 3.5 - Offlne Storage - Sites to try it on?
So Firefox 3.5 is out and one of the new features is the HTML5 Offline Application Storage stuff, similar to Google Gears. Has anyone found any sites that use the HTML5 Offline Storage stuff? I am hoping Gmail, etc will start working natively with 3.5 (without gears).

Community Council vs Technical Board

2009-07-14T21:13:00.019+05:30

So.. both the Community Council and Technical Board will be welcoming new members. I'm trying to determine if I want to run for one, the other, or neither. If you don't know these are two places where many decisions are made for Ubuntu.

I've decided to lay out my own pros/cons list of what I would be bringing to each and ask for the communities advice.

Community Council	Technical Board
Only a very general idea of how the community is really organized.	Generally good understanding of how all the technical pieces fit together.
Will likely make an Org Chart and increase the documentation on some Community Council pages.	Not a developer+
Can make policies to make decisions (of other boards) more transparent (hopefully to prevent some decision flamewars)	Follow technical developments (on X, sound, kernel, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gnome, and more) very closely
Could invite other corporate sponsors into contributing money and development efforts into the Ubuntu repository (including using CD creation facilities) Cough ChromeOS powered by Ubuntu?	My views on a certain language* may distract some (and the technical board decides default inclusion on CDs)

*Look at perceived conflict of interest (here)
? I'm not actually sure if I could do this.
+I'm not sure, but this might completely disqualify me

In either case (or the third do nothing) I plan on updating some certain pages with a bit more information.

I have internet!

2009-06-15T21:50:00.004+05:30

Hey. It's still internet.

Going to OpenOffice, Step 1 Unfreezing

2009-06-12T17:13:00.011+05:30

"Unfreezing" is a term I took out of a text book about organizational change. People have their ideas "frozen" about how things should work, so the first thing you should do to change them, is to do some "unfreezing".

How did I approach "unfreezing" with OpenOffice:
Communication:

Say the organization is going to change (gasp)
Email them with more information on WHY, and how they can learn more
Speak rationally and honestly, if it's money, say that. If it's more flexibility say that. If it's both, you get the idea...
Get feedback (I used a google docs form, somewhat ironically)

What should be in the feedback? Most will not just want to change, you should expect that. Feedback let's you identify what concerns they have and see if they are legitimate (or if you can easily explain them away). It's also essential to determine what different use cases are covered by different users.

Training: Take the feedback and engineer some training to cover the common 80% of users. (For the other 20 you can do advanced training later). A key part of training is to make sure the users have OOo installed on their machine, so they can follow along and get used to it. Another important training item is how to convert a .doc to .odt, etc (and redo any formatting that breaks).

Get more feedback on training and see if the users feel better about switching and also if you are doing a good job in training. When you think the
organization is ready, switch to OpenOffice opening all .docs, .xls, and .ppts (I haven't done that yet).

Oh right and make sure everyone gets this:
Internal docs: use .od* (ods,odt,odp)
External docs (and no external editing): use .pdf
External docs (and need to edit): use .doc, xls, ppt

So, Planet, what do you do differently?

Random Picture from India..

Banshee by default, C'mon not all of us have 4 GB of memory!

2009-06-02T16:01:00.004+05:30

I read this (http://mrooney.blogspot.com/2009/05/karmic-desktop-uds-run-down.html) and quite like almost everything I see.

Pidgin being replaced by Empathy is somewhat sad (I really like Pidgin), but the reasons are quite good.

Disclaimer: I am quite against any Mono (the technology beyond Banshee/F-Spot/Tomboy) applications being on the Ubuntu Desktop CD for other reasons. You can likely read why somewhere else :P. This isn't necessarily about Mono.

Banshee replacing Rhytmbox on the other hand, not so much.

However, it does seem to use 3-10x more memory than RB which is very troubling (60-300MB compared to RBs fairly consistent 25MB),

Please, Please think of those of us who only have 512 Mb of ram in a laptop, or even those with less.

But clearly Banshee will get better memory usage over time..?
I reviewed it's memory usage (and others) about 2 years ago (Banshee was in dead last, then). http://gquigs.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-players-out-in-memory-performance.html

And yes, I realize Rhytmbox isn't going away, but development seems to slow in applications that lose "default" standing in Ubuntu.

Other items I am curious about: replacing gnome-pilot with multisync? any screensaver (removing) discussions? Remote desktop viewer vs terminal server client?

I'm in India

2009-05-23T15:23:00.000+05:30

About a week ago I boarded a plane bound for Delhi, India (actually Dubai, but transferred) to begin my first out-of-college job. I am working for a non-profit that helps communities through microinsurance. [What is microinsurance]

I will be working on several projects but the primary project will be migrating this non-profit from a Windows platform to a Linux one (quite likely Ubuntu). This includes reviewing every application currently used and finding an alternate (or wine, virtualization, etc). The first thing we are doing is an OpenOffice switch.

I am currently writing up the Project Plan for OpenOffice and have already noticed a couple things. Upon importing a .doc Project Plan template:

Table Of Contents breaks
Header/Footer no longer covers the entire document

Fixing Table of Contents
It breaks because OpenOffice uses styles - Headings specifically to do a ToC. Most people who use Microsoft Office use numbering. So you need to go through the document turning off numbering, and assigning it to a Heading #.

Go through the document
For each line that is numbered and that you want to make part of the ToC
- Turn off numbering by clicking anywhere on the line
- Bullets and numbering should appear
- And then click Turn Off Numbering (third button from left)
Change that line to be on Heading #
- Based on the previous numbering scheme
- So for 3. You make it heading 1, For 3.8 you make it heading 2, For 1.3.8 you make it Heading 3.
- You select the style in the drop down box to the right of the font (or by using F11)

Styles are a much better way of doing things, and you should learn more about them.

Fixing Header/Footer
It doesn't matter what page you do this on, but don't you want different Headers/Footers on different series of pages!

Bring up "Styles and Formatting" by pressing F11
In Styles go from Paragraph to Page (fourth button on the top)
If you see any Convert 1, Convert 2, etc - Right click and delete them

That should be it. Oh and this is my street..

Hitslink confirms it, Linux is growing

2009-05-01T20:18:00.003+05:30

"Linux Breaks 1% on the client!"
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&sample=35

Kill The Screensaver, Save The World

2009-04-21T21:03:00.024+05:30

A screensaver wastes power when it shows you the pretty graphics. It keeps the screen out of power-save mode and keeps the CPU and GPU active.

This is my attempt to quantify just how much power the screensaver wastes for just one average Ubuntu user. Using the default Ubuntu setup the screensaver starts after 10 minutes as a blank screen and it asks the monitor to sleep after 40 minutes. *Diff = difference between device in normal operation and power save mode in watts.
Variables

% CRT Use: 50%
Diff CRT: 60
Diff LCD: 25
Time screensaver is active a day: 2 hour

.50 * 60 + .50 * 25 = Diff Avg Monitor 42.5 Watts (also Watt hours)
Total for one user per day is 85 Watt hours.
That is 31 KwH for a year. Or at $ .15 a KwH, $5.

Variables

User Base Of Ubuntu Desktop: 10 Million
Diff Screensaver: 85 Watt-hours (a day)

That is 850 MWH (Million Watts) a day for all Ubuntu users.
That is 31 GWH a year. Or somewhere in the range of $46,537,500 a year.

Please if you can get more accurate variables please tell me about them, also send corrections. Kill the screensaver, Save the World.

You eat pieces of FUD for breakfast?

2009-04-21T08:40:00.005+05:30

Response to "I eat FUD like you for breakfest"

I suppose I am one of the vocal minority you are speaking about. A little known guy by the nickname of RMS is another. And yes there are others that go a little overboard.. on both sides of this debate.

First off, we obviously do care about patents. Ubuntu doesn't play MP3s out of the box. And no, it isn't just because we like Ogg (or FLAC) better.

Let me make this clear. In a patent-free world I would still not like Mono installed by default in Ubuntu. Why? Because we let Microsoft be the leader, we follow. They create .NET, we follow. They modify it, we follow again. We do need to follow Microsoft on some things in order to compete (like opening .docs) but we should choose our battles wisely.

I, however, am completely fine with Mono "stealing" development resources from all the other programming languages. Because,it's not stealing resources, someone is volunteering or being paid to do the work and odds are they are having fun doing it.

It is their choice if they want to work on Mono or a complete reimplementation of a good Mono application in C++ so it's faster, uses less memory, and is in their favourite language.

You eat pieces of FUD for breakfast? Perhaps you should stop following Microsoft.

Teach Courses. Share The Freedom.

2009-04-08T10:47:00.024+05:30

I've been teaching courses at the local library for some time now (almost a year now). I've been meaning to make my materials public. Here are a few of them.

Course - "The Best Free Stuff on The Internet: Introduction to Free and Open Source Software"

Description
Need new computer software that won’t break the bank? A quiet revolution is growing in the world of computer software. You may have heard of it simply as a source of software for free, but it’s far more than that. This program introduces some popular free software like Firefox, OpenOffice and Linux. Come learn about these reliable, easy-to-use, and, most importantly, free software.

Presentation BestFreeStuff.odp
Before you present review all linked sites for familiarity, yes I provide links to the free stuff more than describing it.

Handout BestFreeStuff.odt
Change the local resources at the bottom before use!

Course - "Safely Exploring the Internet with Mozilla Firefox"

Description
Learn how to browse the Web like a pro with the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser. You will learn how Firefox protects you from threats, techniques for searching and browsing the Web, and tips to keep your browsing experience organized.

Presentation FirefoxSecurity.odp
This just covers a couple key Firefox Security features. I usually do the rest as a hands on exercise having the students do various things. Look here for ideas.

Here is a starting point, go out and teach a course! Also, looking for suggestions/comments for my current materials.

Announcing Mirrors Project

2009-04-02T05:51:00.009+05:30

Mirrors is my attempt at creating a remix or respin of Ubuntu. Although this first phase is nothing more than a customization of the included packages and changing of default themes and wallpaper. The goal for this release was to get in the range of using 100 mb of ram in the initial liveCD boot. It is close, but still needs work.

It currently only exists as a script for use by UCK. Among the major things it removes are:

Evolution
Tomboy
F-Spot
Pulseaudio
Gnome-pilot
Screensavers
Bluetooth
Virtual Terminals 2 - 6. Saves about 10 megs on livecd

This is not necessarily because I think these are "bad". It's just I don't use them and am tired of them taking up space / memory / processor cycles. Download it from here.

Fedora Beta Released

2009-04-01T01:04:00.007+05:30

If you've got some time go check out and test Fedora Beta. It was released today and incorporates some very exciting features. Particularly for me:

"Further improvements to the boot process that include NVidia, ATI, and Intel video adapters, using the revolutionary kernel mode setting feature in an effort to cut boot time and provide pleasing visuals." - and lay the ground work for better 3d and video performance, better suspend and resume, not running X as root, and a bunch more.

Ubuntu will likely adopt kernel mode setting in the Karmic Koala release but if we test it and find the bugs now we could get less bugs later. You can read the Red Hat Press Release here. And grab the torrents here.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (Restarts X, don't do it)

2009-03-31T05:46:00.016+05:30

So apparently some don't like that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is going away. Others say this will motivate us to fix bugs.

Once upon a time I was new to Ubuntu and was somehow accidentally pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. I was using multiple workspaces (key combo Ctrl-Alt-Arrow Keys and editing documents). Needless to say, it took me a long time to figure out what the cause was.

The bottom line is Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is the WRONG way to help people regain control of their computer when a runaway application or buggy driver is not letting go. What if they are doing something important?
No! Going to a terminal through Ctrl-Alt-F# is still WRONG. Why should our users need to know the command line, if there system goes crazy? They should not.

Most users aren't going to use either of those, they are going to restart the machine, thus losing all their data.

But there is a key combo many users know that on Windows can help them kill a runaway application and get back the rest of their applications. Ctrl-Alt-Del. It is by far the most user friendly way for a user to regain control of their misbehaving computer. From this discussion we do have a need for it. I'm also not planning on holding my breath for there to be no bugs in Ubuntu or any software package for that matter (that's not to say we shouldn't try). Our users deserve a user friendly way to keep them (and not bugs) in control of their computer.

Oh and they just moved the key combo for Killing the X server to something less likely to be pressed. DONT DO THIS! Finish reading your tabs, close your documents, etc.
Right Alt - Print Screen - K (Alternate Screen Kill, I like :)

Jaunty does boot fast, but how about worse case?

2009-03-28T00:55:00.002+05:30

There are other posts about regular boot times, so how about the worst case, file system checks. That's that check that runs every 30 boots or so just because we are paranoid about making sure the file system is sane.

Boot	Intrepid (est)	Jaunty with ext4
Normal	30 – 45 seconds	18 – 22 seconds
File System Check	5 – 10 minutes	43 seconds

Of course a lot of this is due to the use of the new ext4 file system (ext3 will be the default in Jaunty again because we are paranoid). At 43 seconds I don't mind the file system check nearly as much. Progress. :)

Last Chance - Ubuntu for Node 3 of the ISS

2009-03-18T10:32:00.019+05:30

Please go and vote: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

You can vote once a day until the 20th (or including, not sure).

This is going to be my last blog post on this so I thought I'd try my hand at convincing Firefly fans to vote for Ubuntu as a better name for Nasa Node 3.

Might be a weak argument, but wouldn't you rather Serenity be the name for a ship, not a node?
How about the first manned ship to Mars. Any takers? :)

Also Ubuntu really does capture the concept of international cooperation better than any name on that board. "I am what I am because of who we all are".

To recap what I hope to happen if we get in first:

Colbert is currently in first place (From a very popular comedy central show)
Ubuntu passes Colbert and wins the naming
Colbert mentions Ubuntu on his show and eventually (preferably timed about a week after the Jaunty release) ends up inviting Mark Shuttleworth to the show.
Many many more users try Ubuntu and other free software. They love it.
We Win. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtdnZNYN0MM)

So, please blog, slashdot it, digg, share, and whatever else you can do to spread the word.Thanks!

We're Linux Video Contest :(

2009-03-15T03:35:00.004+05:30

I had finally finished my We're Linux video when I find out the Linux Foundations website doesn't support Ogg :(. (I can convert to other formats fine, but still)

On a better note, Go Vote For Ubuntu again in the Nasa Node 3 contest. Bookmark it and vote Everyday.

Name Node 3 for Ubuntu.. We are on the board!

2009-03-12T13:08:00.003+05:30

In the Help NASA name Node 3 of the International Space Station Contest Ubuntu just made it on to the bottom of the suggestion board (Original Post).

Thanks to everyone who voted, but there are still 8 days left!

We are currently sitting in 10th place on the suggestion board. In 9th Place is the name Vista. Hmm...

Again, you can vote once a day. So go vote again (and again).
Vote Here http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Help NASA name node 3... after Ubuntu

2009-03-10T03:46:00.010+05:30

Vote Here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Help NASA name Node 3 of the International Space Station after Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a great name to capture the collaborative nature of the International Space Station.

You can vote once a day. So, Vote Every Day!

Stephen Colbert is telling his followers to vote for him, challenging him could get us some publicity even if we don't win. (Maybe it could even get my old idea to come to pass)

Note on voting: it appears their CAPTCHA is case sensitive (or maybe just all capital letters?).

Drabble: The First

2009-02-28T00:19:00.006+05:30

From afar it looks like a sea of darkened solar panels in otherwise empty space. In the middle of the panels, dwarfed, by the panel's massive size lies a small ring suspended by the electromagnets surrounding it. The ring looks perfectly round and the inner perimeter is but the outer perimeter is just spinning, tremendously fast. The electromagnets keep pushing it to go faster but they've been becoming less effective.

A probe approaches the spinning ring while the capacitors start charging.

The capacitors discharge causing a flash of lightning that jumps through the ring as the probe disappears from sight.

My participation in the latest meme.

Better DTV Map

2009-02-18T04:54:00.006+05:30

So I previously created a very simple DTV coverage map, apparently the FCC has a similar idea and it does pretty much exactly what I would have wanted it to do.

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/

Also interesting is to click on a station and the Gain/Loss map which is supposed to predict what will happen come the new transition date. (Although I haven't actually found a key for it)

Public Software and Technology Policy

2009-02-13T23:40:00.014+05:30

Late last year I ran with the Cherry Hill Linux User Group a Health Care IT Community Discussion at our local library and we created a report and submitted it to the Obama Administration (they asked for it) with the hope that they will implement some of our ideas.

Summary:
This evening we focused on Health Care IT, referred to in many debates as the magic bullet that will make health care affordable again. We agree that IT can and must play a major role in Health Care Reform, but could be a major hindrance if we make the wrong choices.
The Federal Government through the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) should:
• Maintain a fully free and open source electronic medical record (EMR) system.
• Mandate the EMR be taught in all medical and nursing schools.
• Mandate an open and freely implementable EMR communication standard.
• Mandate a national medical identiﬁcation number and prohibit the use of, and storage of, Social Security Numbers in any health care system.

It has gotten me thinking about other ways the Federal government can help other local systems such as schools, townships, maybe even police and fire stations. I'm going to use Education as the best other example:

Federal goverment funds development of free linux distribution for schools. Requires use of GPL for everything it pays for to ensure school software remains free. This is designed to be the end-all for schools, (maybe Moodle is at the core and all systems authenticate to it?). Basically they pay to add features to make these GPL-licensed systems do everything a school needs.
Federal government launches grant program to implement free linux distribution in 5 schools (made up number) in every state with the condition that the schools will allow other schools technology departments in to look around and help train them.
Profit, err less profit as every school no longer needs to pay for any licenses for software. It also encourages a local software ecosystem as schools can pay locally to fix a bug or add a feature.

Perhaps these should both be added to the stimulus package? I'd say this would get a great ROI compared to some of the other stuff on there.

Why GPL? Because I want the federally funded systems for education and health care and any modifications made to them to always be free to hospitals and schools. They are public institutions and as a matter of good public policy we should not pay for the same work over and over and over again, especially if the federal government already paid for it.

DTV Pre Feb17th

2009-02-10T11:50:00.006+05:30

Did the last test of broadcast tv in my area before February 17th. NJN and WHYY join the 1080i HD crowd (total 5 1080i, 3 720P). Other than that no big changes, except didn't see any flaky channels during my last test.
February 9th Results

Should be interesting to see what, if anything actually changes on the 17th.

Another related TV item is how much power we might save from the DTV transition, these are power stats from our HDTV:

Digital Broadcast (OTA): 132
Analog Boradcast (OTA): 171
Digital Cable: 131
Analog Cable: 170

That adds up when you do it to an entire country. Of course thats only a saving with DTV ready TVs, TVs that need a converter box will use more power (the converter box needs power).

On yet another related note, I just watched MacGyver for free on cbs.com (they also have original Star Trek). They have just 1 ad in each of the commercial break segments so I actually don't zone out during them. Clever. Must make a media center that let's me stream that (and hulu) to my TV.

"No input" Recovery & Story

2009-02-02T01:39:00.013+05:30

So, back in college (a whole 3 months ago). A group and I gave a presentation on Free and Open Source Software. The presentation went well until we got to the end where I wanted to show a nice Compiz demo. Unfortunately, right after I made some comment like, "and these are some features Windows and Mac just don't have", the Microsoft mouse decided to die (keeping free software down conspiracy of course :) ). So, needless to say, my Compiz demo was pretty much ruined. (I was able to show multiple desktops, that's it)

That got me thinking that maybe we should at least at boot automagically determine if the user is missing either a mouse or a keyboard and try to help them around that. It became my most popular idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5231/)

I then decided to try to implement it and with a good amount of help got it to work ok on my machine. (The current code is here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/no-input-recovery).

So, right now, I'm looking for comments, suggestions, testing, what I should do to get it into Ubuntu proper, and output of "xinput list --short" clearly labeled with what you have in the computer at that time and with difference scenarios.
Thanks

Bad Memory HowTo

2009-01-17T11:03:00.042+05:30

So.. Memtest tells you have bad ram! Here are your easy options:

Buy new ram
Turn off everything after the bad memory* (mem=###M option)
Turn off just the memory around the bad memory* (memmap=#M$###M option)

*May require moving RAM around in the computer for best results.

Testing The Memory
Tool 1: Memtest
There is the classic Memtest which is on every Ubuntu LiveCD and most other Free operating system CDs. It tests memory and gives you back fun technical numbers and also what sectors are bad in the easier form of 797M or 84M. It's the easier number we want. So try to write down the range (if applicable) of bad results.

Tool 2: Memtester
Memtester (click here to install) is like memtest only it runs from a command line once Ubuntu has loaded. It can't test your whole ram so you should make sure that it would be testing the area that memtest has detected being bad.
You absolutely need to run it with sudo/root.

WARNING: Don' try to test your whole RAM, just say 100M over where the error is. Doing really close to your actual total ram will make your computer unresponsive (unless you are following this with nothing but a shell, then you might be fine).

Ex. Let's say you have 150M taken up by your OS, the badram is at 797M (from memtest) and you have 1024M total memory.

This command would work:

sudo memtester 750M

Option 1 - Buy New Ram

Simple. Easy. Safest. Might be cheap if your computer supports new ram. Wastes hardware that we could likely get to work. Some people say that once RAM starts to go, it will just keep getting worse, I personally don't believe them.
I will not be liable for you losing data by using bad RAM. Use YOUR own judgment.

Option 2 - Turn off everything after the bad memory (mem=###M option)
This is simple take the lowest number from memtest, subtract let's say 3 from it for a bit of safety. Then add it to your kernel command line for bootup.
Ex. So for bad memory at 797M we would add to the default kernel options:

mem=795M

Option 3 - Turn off just the memory around the bad memory (memmap=#M$###M option)
WARNING: This is much less tested than Option 2. There may be bugs lurking about.
This isn't much more difficult. Instead of just stopping at 795M, we are going to stop at 795M but then only ignore the next 10M. If there are multiple places try to make a range that includes them both.

Ex. So for bad memory at 804M and 806M we could use:

memmap=10M$800M

But for this option I will fell better if you use memtester afterwards to make sure you actually got the right memory spot. (And maybe do it before too, too make sure you actually were testing the right spots in the test)

HowTo Kernel Default Options
Edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst with sudo/root
(ex. sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst)\

Navigate to here

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
## kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
## kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# kopt=root=UUID=f0906667-bcde-4b64-86bc-5a47320d5517 ro

Edit the line (DO NOT GET RID OF THE #):

# kopt=root=UUID=f0906667-bcde-4b64-86bc-5a47320d5517 ro (add mem stuff here)

Then run:

sudo update-grub

Then reboot.

Thanks for following my HowTo. Many happy PCs and memory modules saved from landfills.

Open Maps; customizable in so many ways

2009-01-14T05:04:00.034+05:30

OpenStreetMap.org
OpenStreetMap is best described as the Wiki of Maps. It is a Free (both libre and gratis) source of maps and map data. Having free access to the data means you can download it to your own GPS device and have a much more detailed map than most come with. From their Wiki you can find out how to download whole states, countries, or the entire world. Most of the US is already on the map thanks to US Goverment data, but there are plenty of input errors that you could help fix. Just get an account on the site and click the Edit button, (play around first), and then edit for real.
OpenStreetMap unfortunately doesn't let you plan routes, although others take the data and let you do that and you can of course do it yourself.

OpenLayers is the javascript graphical interface used by OpenStreetMap and many online maps which let's you customize how the data is displayed, display overlays, and customize how it is controlled and much more.

I made a simple map using OpenLayers which shows the range of four Digital TV stations in the NJ area.
Note: I made up the range to be 30 miles, it is actually longer (or shorter) and has many other issues I didn't consider (antenna, obstacles).

I've been thinking of ways I could build on to this idea, perhaps in conjunction with my every other month or so check of what channels OTA DTV is providing my area. Would anyone else want to collect that kind of data on an every other month basis? I think we could store the data in OpenStreetMap (you can make your own tags) and then use OpenLayers to generate a map based on that data.

Open For Questions

2008-12-30T01:22:00.002+05:30

Change.gov, Obama's transition website is using a IdeaTorrent/IdeaStorm like system called Open For Questions (powered by Google).

http://change.gov/openforquestions

Join Up! Ask Questions! Make Mistakes! Get Messy! Rock the vote!

Future of Real-Time Linux?

2008-12-19T12:57:00.005+05:30

So I've been thinking about real time Linux and how we actually provide an entirely separate kernel for it. I've been thinking, there could be a better way. Please keep in mind that I am not a kernel hacker.

What is Real-Time?
Real-time is a requirement that the worst-case response time to an event of an operating system is under some time requirement. It's useful for multimedia, embedded devices, etc.

What is MAC (SELinux and AppArmor)?
Mandatory Access Control (or the part I am covering here) basically wraps individual running processes in there own security sandbox. Basically forcing it to run with only access to certain things.

My idea: Could we use MAC to allow some applications real-time, instead of having a separate kernel?
This would mean that when you download an application through the package manager that applications that require real-time would come with apparmor or selinux configuration files to force them to run in a real-time context.

Doable?

Announcing New Jersey Bug Squashing Month

2008-12-03T21:31:00.002+05:30

You've heard of 5 Bugs a Day. Well how about 100 a month? That's what the NJ Loco Team is trying to do. And we are even postponing our usual LAN party to do it!

David Harding took the lead and created the initiative. The goal is get more of the Loco involved in both triaging bugs and fixing them. To aid in getting us there Harding is posting 5 easyish bugs every day for the Loco to go loco over fixing.

The main wiki page is here, and you can provide a description of what kind of bugs you can handle/would like, be subscribed to the NJ Loco Mailing list, and we will see about getting you a good starter bug.

If you aren't in New Jersey you can still participate, we just aren't going to give your state credit. Of course, I don't think we would mind if we got competitive with other Locos about this.

If you really can't wait; here are some other strategies to find a bug:

Pick an application you love/like/use/previously reported a bug in+/want to succeed
List all the bugs it has
Do Something (based on ability/time):

Look for obvious duplicates*
Ask more questions*
Look for duplicates on the upstream bug tracker*
Fix a bug and attach a patch

*https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage
+I personally have noticed that if you triage a bunch of bugs in the application you just reported a bug in, your chances of getting your bug looked at and fixed go up a lot.

Test The Change

2008-12-03T05:44:00.006+05:30

Join me in asking Obama and the change.gov team to support completely free and patent-unencumbered video formats on the Change.gov website.

Currently videos play in YouTube (or Yahoo or MSN) with flash and with MP4.

Get inspired here:

Why Wikipedia likes Ogg
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Video_policy#Freeness

The Xiph Website (they make/release Ogg, Theora, Vorbis, etc)
http://www.xiph.org

Wikipedia Page on Ogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg

Free Software Foundation's Play Ogg Site
http://www.fsf.org/resources/formats/playogg

Post on Firefox getting Theora support
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/07/theora-video-backend-for-firefox-landed.html

+Add your inspiration to the comments

*Hint: Ask for Ogg, Theora, Speex, Dirac, Vorbis, etc

Send a message here: http://change.gov/page/content/contact/

System Administrator Philosophy and job search

2008-11-18T12:08:00.008+05:30

One of the system administration jobs I interviewed at told me their philosophy of being in the IT business, and I've been meaning to blog about mine for some time now.

My philosophy is that as a system administrator my job is to make technology work for my users. And to do that I need to be aware of their problems, be aware of how they currently use the system, and be in able to change the software to meet their needs. That last part is key and is why I have basically made it a requirement that my next job is, or will let me transition it to becoming, a Free Software shop.

In my perfect system administrator philosophy this is how things would go when a problem comes up:

User has a problem
System Administrator implements a solution

If problem is reoccurring:
Discuss with upstream about problem and implement a solution for the next release

Ubuntu with a 6 month release cycle and welcoming attitude is well suited for this philosophy.

But it doesn't end there, many users end up doing a lot of extra work when the task could be automated by the computer. In my system administrator philosophy, it's my job to make sure that the users can identify when a task could be automated, and also my job to help them automate it.

I have also noticed that many people consider doing desktop administration to be just a stepping stone in the IT world. I'm willing to bet that the desktop still has a lot of innovation in it, and is going to surprise a lot of people.

Still Searching

I really wish job sites would support OpenID

I'm still looking for a job, so if you know of anything that you think would match my philosophy please don't hesitate to get in contact. (It doesn't have to be system administrator)

Book Meme

2008-11-13T13:20:00.002+05:30

So yea.. my closest books were the ones on my hard drive, but they were all in HTML, so I printed them to PDF...

So saying, Madame de Saint-Meran extended her dry bony hand to
Villefort, who, while imprinting a son-in-law's respectful salute on it, looked at Renee, as much as to say, "I must try and fancy 'tis your dear hand I kiss, as it should have been."

- The Count of Monte Cristo

As for my other "book" it's only 14 pages but a great read. It's Asimov's favorite story that he wrote, called The Last Question. So I went to the 56th line:

"They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle."

First things I do...

2008-11-06T00:52:00.004+05:30

When installing Ubuntu:

I remove a bunch of stuff: pulseaudio, tracker, evolution, mono, screensaver and any other apps I don't really use. I really should make an actual list, but every computer is different. Some I want to play with pulseaudio on, others have files I want to search through (tracker).

For almost every computer I add:
WineHQ
Medibuntu

Depending on hardware I might enable repositories for nightlies for nouveau (open source nvidia) or open source ati/radeon driver. They are both PPAs and not for novices.

I also enable proposed and backports, and then, finally I install just a few things:

powertop - program to analyze power consumption on Intel-based laptops
workrave - Workrave is a tool that reminds you to take regular breaks, thus pre‐ venting RSI or helping you to recover from it.
gthumb - an image viewer and browser for GNOME, supports videos too
phoronix-test-suite (not in repo) - the best linux benchmarking system
and usually ubuntu-restricted-extras

Vote.. but

2008-11-04T21:31:00.003+05:30

Voting for president is of course important.

But to really make a difference research your local and state candidates. Just voting down party lines is the worst thing you could possibly do. Think for yourself America!

Projects that might help ya:
For President: http://glassbooth.org/
For Everywhere: Votesmart.org

CHLUG Events in November

2008-11-01T03:31:00.008+05:30

We (CHLUG) have some nice events for you this November. All events are held at the Cherry Hill Public Library.

Safely Exploring the Internet with Mozilla Firefox Course

*Requires Registration
Date: 11/5/2008
Start Time: 7:00 PM
End Time: 9:00 PM

Description:
Learn how to browse the Web like a pro with the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser. You will learn how Firefox protects you from threats, many ways to search and browse the web, and many tips to keep your browsing experience organized.

If you are a Cherry Hill Library card holder you can use the form in the link below, if not you can call the number and be put on the waiting list.
http://host6.evanced.info/cherryhill/evanced/eventsignup.asp?ID=240

Introduction to OpenStreetMap

Just Show Up
Date: 11/7/2008
Start Time: 7:00 PM
End Time: 9:00 PM
Guest Speaker: Richard W.
Description:
My Introduction to OpenStreetMap presentation is suitable for
beginners and brings everybody to a fevered pitch of cartographic
enthusiasm. OpenStreetMap is "the wiki-style map of everything" and
is both Open Source and Open Map Data.

So please join us!

(Intrepid) Watch out for this bug..

2008-10-30T21:02:00.002+05:30

Using Brightness Function Key Combination Breaks Keyboard and Menus
On some laptops using the function key combination to change the brightness can result in a loss of most keyboard control and an inability to fully open menus.

If you lose keyboard/menu control do the following:
Ctrl-Alt-F1 - Brings you to a text console
Ctrl-Alt-F7 - Brings you back to your desktop

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/285323

Find, Read, then Go out and Speak up!

2008-10-20T22:54:00.015+05:30

Last week I went to a local township meeting about saving taxpayer money. I had two suggestions one on demand response and the other to start using free and open source software. I actually got to talk to the head of IT for the township and found out they bought their Microsoft licenses outright 5 years ago, so monetary incentive to change, yet.

It's not the same with the local school district; they have a Microsoft Software Assurance program. They pay somewhere in the range of $400,000 of taxpayer's money to Microsoft every year, partially for the right to upgrade to Vista. They've been doing this since at least 2002, so they mostly have been paying in advance for the right to upgrade.

I plan to contact the board of education and try to make using free and open source software a political issue for them. First, I have contacted the IT department with the hopes of opening a dialogue to discuss this and what the taxpayers really get for $400,000 every year.

If you have some free time and want a way to make a difference:

Find the budget's you pay locally, township, schools, etc
Read what they are spending on software and what their future plans are
If they are spending an absurd amount, continue:
Speak Up!
Write letters/emails! Phone Calls! Go to Board Meetings!
Start with IT people, than move to administrators, than to the board.

You have the most political power in your local township, your vote and voice matter more in your local government than anywhere else in the political system. USE IT!

(Rinse and repeat with any issue you care about, for me this means energy as well)

Language Leadership (I actually gave up on this)

2008-10-19T08:53:00.004+05:30

I believe Ubuntu should take Language Leadership seriously and choose to embrace those languages which are lead by those who firmly believe in Free Software.

Including a language on our default desktop cd is a form of embracing the language and all that it stands for. Microsoft is clearly playing the leadership role when it comes to the creation of .NET and Novell is for all intensive purposes following their lead with Mono.

Yes. I reopened the can of worms hopefully for discussion for 8.10. I am looking for people to write logical points FOR and CON. I am also looking for someone who is impartial to do usability testing on photo applications and note taking applications.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/No-Mono-by-Default

No really, the train should be faster.. what's going on here.

2008-10-17T11:49:00.002+05:30

Ah.. 55 Minutes of walking along the AC expressway anyone?

OpenOffice 3.0 NOT in intrepid

2008-10-15T23:03:00.003+05:30

This post really isn't about OpenOffice (but the bug report is here, Subscribe if you want OO3 in Intrepid or think Ubuntu should have included it. Please don't add comments)

This post is about one of the ideas I wrote down for the future of Ubuntu, that I wrote down as part of my application for Ubuntu membership.

This is what I wrote:

When starting a new release.. let's say 9.04 the Jolly Jacana, branch the code you are going to end up shipping. So if it's going to include Firefox 3.1, switch to a Firefox 3.1 nightly ASAP in the dev process. Try to match what that project does itself. Nightly builds for Firefox, Every two weeks or so for OpenOffice, etc.

Yes, releases can slip, but another point here is, we should include the latest that we think we can ship, first. We can always fall back to the previous release, if it slips to far.

We should never wait for an official release of core desktop software in an alpha, it is so much better to include rcs, beta, alpha, or even nightlies that way we can provide the upstream with what I'm pretty sure is the largest linux based testing ground for that software.

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Thanks for reading.

Note: I didn't guess the 9.04 release name correctly :(

DTV Improving ahead of transition

2008-10-13T02:44:00.002+05:30

At some point during the last 2 months WHYY (Channel 12) started transmitting (that reaches Cherry Hill, NJ) finally completing the channels that most broadcast watchers are used to seeing. This brings the total channels way past analog broadcast to 28 channels. You should check it out in your local area, too. Did I mention 3 1080i and 3 720p channels all for free?

Channel Data.

Authtool/gtk anyone use?

2008-10-11T22:37:00.002+05:30

Does anyone use authtool or authtool-gtk?

It has been broken since it was first released in Feisty and hasn't been updated yet. It makes a bad first impression as this is the first thing that comes up when you search for Active Directory or LDAP. It has never worked out of the box, and it has seemingly been replaced by other packages.

I previously asked here
I am asking here (this blog), if anyone still uses. If not, I'm going to file a bug to have it removed. Thanks.

Memory Usage on Intrepid

2008-10-01T05:51:00.010+05:30

Just on Boot (livecds), Comparing to Previous Releases

	7.10	8.04.1	8.10 9/30
32 bit	146	154.1	162.5
64 bit	212.9	237.6	238.4

Top 4 Applications on boot and their memory usage 32 vs 64 bit (8.10 9/30)

Top 4 (Initial Boot)	32	64
nautilus	17.7	22.9
Gnome-system-monitor	7.7	10.9
Gnome-panel	7.2	10.1
python	5.5	9

Some Common Applications and their memory usage 32 vs 64 bit (8.10 9/30)

	32	64
Firefox	22.7	34.7
Gimp	18.3	27.1
OOWriter (.bin)	17.6	24.1
Totem	12.6	15.6
Rhythmbox	15.6	23.8
Total (of those apps)	118.8	189.3

All numbers from gnome-system-monitor. Is there any project to track Ubuntu (and it's applications) memory usage/performace over releases? Any interest in creating one?

Slippery Slopes

2008-09-28T09:23:00.007+05:30

The 700 billion dollar bailout is on one of the "slipperiest slopes" I have seen since well.. The Iraqi War buildup.

It's basically on this premise: The Economy will fail if we don't do this.
We have seen that with every bailout in recent history. And somehow we are still buying it

I would like to counter it with this: The Country will fail if we do this.

Seemingly no matter where we get the money (except from taxes), it's going to increase inflation, which means prices on food and gas are going to go up, which means harder economic times for everyone but the rich.
From there the path is set for the classic Rome empire failure. Economic and political troubles within and an unmanageable and overextended military situation abroad.

Oh, I guess I forgot the part where it doesn't actually solve the problem it was made for. It misses it completely, we use the credit system too much in the US. It has us expanding it, when the market wants to cut it back.

My Crazy Idea: Let the people who have the mortgages refinance, with the 10-30 cents on the dollar that the goverment would get in the 700 billion dollar plan.
What does this do?

Helps the people owe 1/10 to 3/10 less in mortgages than they do now.
Let's the "bottom" form in the housing crisis

Thoughts?

OpenOffice 3.0

2008-09-23T01:21:00.003+05:30

Crosses fingers for OpenOffice 3.0 making it into Intrepid.

You can grab the OOo 3.0 rc2 here (not for production systems)
Bug Report for OOo 3.0
OOo 3.0 Schedule (looks slipping)

I for one, think that including an RC of 3.0 is fine, we included a beta version of OpenOffice in a previous release after all.

The Chevy Volt, It's a hybrid

2008-09-18T09:41:00.002+05:30

Not an "electric car".

Some Wikipedia Definitions:
"A hybrid vehicle is a vehicle that uses two or more distinct power sources to propel the vehicle."
"The term most commonly refers to Hybrid-electric vehicle(HEV) which includes internal combustion engines and electric motors."

The Chevy Volt is more towards the electric side of things, perhaps we could call it "gasoline assist", instead of the usual "electric assist". It has a gasoline engine to power the electric motor after the 40 mile electric battery runs out.

The range of the Chevy Volt Hybrid is 40 miles on pure electricity (from 2008).
The range of the GM EV1 Electric Car was 160 miles (from 1998).

This is American Progress. Enjoy.

Poem and Okcupid

2008-09-12T12:05:00.005+05:30

Here is an excerpt from my recently updated Okcupid profile:

The six things I could never do without

space without : can not exist
time without : can not age
freedom without : can not choose
dreams without : can not hope
hope without : can not love
love without : can not live

OkCupid is a match making site that does things a little differently than the norm (they built their own open source web server, they only use word of mouth for advertising). More complete list: http://www.okcupid.com/faq/#1.7

If you want to join, use this link to be my friend.

Ralph Nader and Ron Paul on same stage today

2008-09-11T01:50:00.002+05:30

http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/09/10/nader-and-ron-paul-with-wolf-blitzer-on-cnn-today/
The two party and two OS system are both broken. I wonder which will fall first.

BOINC Meeting

2008-08-30T06:35:00.010+05:30

BOINC lets you donate your idle computer power to noble scientific causes that you choose

I just attended the first ever east coast BOINC meeting at the very nice University of Delaware. A couple thoughts (and parallels) I got from the meeting I want to share with the Ubuntu community.

They want more people to start using BOINC (increase market share)
Part of a talk was on getting the support of a major OS vendor or PC manufacturer and having BOINC bundled with it. I was thinking could this ever be included in Ubuntu by default? The following issues I feel would be difficult to address: Security, one more question for the user at install time, and it would take up space (both ram and disk, even if user didn't want it). Your thoughts?
They want more women to get involved in donating computing resources
A recent survey they conducted of about 1300 volunteers showed 49 women. Does anyone have any suggestions for them?

Oh, and if you're computers are currently idling, help them solve their first issue. There are packages in Ubuntu, boinc-client, (does the actual work) and boinc-manager (because you might want a gui). Learn more about it at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and attach to a project you like.

Converting Dad to Ubuntu - Investing Site

2008-08-26T09:15:00.013+05:30

My longest standing issue for converting my Dad to Ubuntu was one investing website that uses an ActiveX control. They do have a way for Firefox users though, but it doesn't work on Linux or with wine.

I eventually started trying to get IE4Linux (which uses wine) to get it to work. And it worked fine, except for the flash ads, which make the page unbearable to look at (the entire page flickers when any movement is registered in any flash window).

Now I couldn't just get rid of flash, because they used flash for videos on the site. And I don't have any interest in learning to block things in IE.

The eventual solution: IE4Linux with Moblock (Peerguardian for Linux) to block the IP addresses of Ad servers, so no more annoying flash ads.

Watch the olypics in 1080i

2008-08-20T00:38:00.003+05:30

with your HDTV and not paying a dime to a cable or phone company.
It is available in 1080i on digital broadcast TV. My family has actually gone back to broadcast to get it.

What channels can you get (in Cherry Hill, with a really bad antenna)?
Note: Channels 6.* came back to not being flaky and some of the higher numbers are flaky again.

Oh, and Hello Planet Ubuntu!

Yea.. Gmail

2008-07-28T02:42:00.001+05:30

Making Security Easier
Gives you the option of always forcing https for all of your mail.

Memory Usage 64 bit vs 32 bit on Ubuntu 8.04.1

2008-07-27T22:29:00.028+05:30

*Corrected mistake, thanks Martin.

I have previously posted about memory usage on 7.10. http://gquigs.blogspot.com/2007/12/32-vs-64-bit-memory.html

All tests were done with an Ubuntu LiveCD on the same machine for both 7.10 and 8.04.1. A network card may have changed between 7.10 and 8.04.1. Applications used were Firefox, OpenOffice.org Writer, Rhythmbox, Totem and Gimp. All values copied out of Gnome System Monitor.

Comparing Ubuntu 8.04.1 64 to 32

	32 bit	64 bit	Difference
Initial Boot	154.1	237.6	83.5
With Apps Open	262.7	395.7	133

I used the Phoronix Test Suite to attempt to get an idea of how ram access is changed from 32 bit to 64 bit. I was hoping to find a benefit for using 64 bit. I performed a very small test and did not find the benefit (in fact 64 bit was slighly slower). Results below:
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=quigs-32083-11560-32025
Note: This was a very very small test.

Comparing 7.10 to 8.04.1, Initial Boot Only

	7.10	8.04.1	Difference
32 bit	146.0	154.1	+8.1
64 bit	212.9	237.6	+24.7

Year of the Linux Desktop Part 4

2008-07-20T09:38:00.007+05:30

Apparently I wasn't the only one to notice that Linux had a good marketshare month.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2179

Time for another prediction and to check up on my older ones.
I last predicted on February 1st that Linux would displace Windows 2000 6.6 - 9.8 Months from them. We are now at the 6 month point and let's see what would be needed for that prediction to become true.

Currently Windows 2000 is at 2.11% and Linux is at .80%.
Windows 2000 is losing about .10 every month (average 6 months) and Linux is gaining about .03% every month.

Based on that data, it'll be another 10 months until Linux passes 2000. Far from the four more of my original prediction.

To actually make the "6.6 to 9.8" prediction true they would need to reduce the delta between them by .3275% every month.

My first prediction would require Linux to beat Windows 2000 by the end of this year, which would require the delta to shrink by .22 % every month.
I think that is doable, oh right and 1% at least by the end of the year as well (if not sooner)

No Really...

2008-07-14T12:14:00.003+05:30

bryan@homer:~$ dpkg -p flashplugin-nonfree
Package: flashplugin-nonfree
Priority: optional
Section: contrib/web
Installed-Size: 164
Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers
Architecture: i386
Version: 10.0.1.218+10.0.0.525ubuntu1~hardy1+really9.0.124.0ubuntu2

It's a really long thread of explanation..
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/235135

Basically, flash10 and pulseaudio actually get along with Flash10. Firefox on the other hand does not :P. They reverted it out of backports due to this new bug.

No new channels.. but colors

2008-07-13T02:26:00.004+05:30

The digital transition is coming... and not much changed this month. But I made the spreadsheet and added colors. Yes.. that was a useful.

Look at the colors...

Also, we set up a DTV converter box for one of our analog TVs. Much clearer. Get coupons, and we bought the cheapest one we could find.

AS-IF-Privacy

2008-07-02T21:16:00.002+05:30

Sign my pledge

"I will Vote Third Party for President If Telecom Immunity Passes Into Law but only if 100,000 other registered voters will do the same."

I simplified it, cause it apparently had confused me. Thanks to David Harding for his suggestions.

Year of the Vista Desktop, Month of...

2008-07-02T06:03:00.015+05:30

It's time to try a little bit of an honest assessment in my statistics gathering (Eh, honesty and statistics are overrated).
The simple fact of the matter is that if Linux had gained market-share like Vista did this year, I would absolutely call this the "Year of the Linux Desktop"
Vista gained 10% market-share this year, reaching 16%. Linux almost doubled it's market share going from .47% to .80%.

For all of how bad we have heard Vista is 16% or so of the world appears to be using it. Linux is still vying to beat Windows 2000 and the PPC Mac OS.

Windows XP		71.20%
Windows Vista		16.14%
MacIntel		5.25%
Mac OS		2.69%
Windows 2000		2.11%
Linux		0.80%
Windows NT		0.69%

However if you look at the total Windows / Mac / Linux stats it paints a slightly different picture..

Month	Windows	Mac	Linux

May, 2008	91.13%	7.83%	0.68%
June, 2008	90.89%	7.94%	0.80%

This is Linux's biggest monthly increase (+.12%) I can see going back to 2006. We gained more total market-share then either the total of Windows or Mac (although we lost to versions, Vista and MacIntel). We might not be able to claim this year as the year Linux freed the computing desktop.
Month of the Linux Desktop sounds like a good stepping stone though.

*All Statistics from Net Applications, http://marketshare.hitslink.com

True Change Petition

2008-06-28T00:27:00.005+05:30

I propose this petition, called the True Change Petition (please think of a cooler name as well as your normal comments)

If the FISA bill with retroactive immunity for telecoms passes into Law I hereby agree that all those who voted for it will not get my vote in the 2008 November election for House or Senate.

This specifically includes those running for the office of President. Furthermore as Presidential nominee is a leadership position, if it passes even if the presidential candidate votes against it, I will not vote for them in the Presidential 2008 November election.

I agree to do this if this petition collects 10 Million signatures. This way if we all must vote for a third party candidate because of the above oath we are acting with enough votes to matter.
~Bryan Quigley

(Please make suggestions for modifications as well as a good real site to put this on)

Firefox, Oh so close..

2008-06-19T08:59:00.005+05:30

I previously predicted
"Firefox 3, 1% marketshare before release"

According to NetApplications , it got pretty close (.96%)

Preinstalled OSes

2008-06-14T20:45:00.009+05:30

Things I noticed based on options for preinstalled OSes:

Dell

Stops selling Windows XP preinstalled on June 18th to make the June 30th deadline.
Currently ships Ubuntu computers with 7.10.
replaces Windows XP with more Ubuntu options after the July 3rd 8.04.1 release?
Their website still doesn't work properly with Adobe Flash and Firefox on Ubuntu.

System76

Sells all Desktops and Laptops with 8.04 64-bit edition (only)

The Digital Transition is coming...

2008-06-10T22:48:00.008+05:30

Curious to know what is available already on the digital television airways? So am I.
So I took our HDTV on cable and hooked it up to some bunny ears. A few settings changed and a scan later and it was working.
I compiled a list of available channels and put them in a spreadsheet:
View Online
Or Download ODS

I plan to try to do another scan every month or so, and update the spreadsheet (which you can subscribe to if you really want).

Note: Those that were "flaky" most likely due to my bad hook up job. On analog all stations were quite fuzzy.

Participatory Freedom (Rough Draft)

2008-06-03T00:50:00.008+05:30

How the Free versus Proprietary Software conflict frames our culture and ultimately government.

This is the first large political science paper I've written (20 Pages). I do plan on releasing the final copy under CC licensing, or maybe make it a wiki page.

It is currently available as HTML, PDF, and ODT if you would like to try to read it.

Please criticize, suggest, comment, etc. I am looking for feedback. Thanks.

NJ Primaries - Looking at Democratic Candidates

2008-05-31T09:57:00.019+05:30

United States Senator (Choose 1)
Links to more information
Note: VoteSmart is pretty cool, check it out

Member of the NJ House of Representatives (Choose 1)

Adler

Yes, he is running unchallenged for the Democratic seat. His record is pretty good in my book.

Members of the Board of Chosen Freeolders (Choose 2)
Both Democratic and Republic candidates are covered in this Courier Post article.

So.. Who Am I planning on voting for (in the primary)?
If I had to vote right now I would:
Lautenberg, Adler, Owens, and Stettler.

Firefox 3, 1% marketshare before release?

2008-05-30T10:53:00.003+05:30

The possibility appears to exists that Firefox 3 might reach 1% market share before it is officially releases.
My blog reports exactly 50/50 between Firefox 2 and 3.
Other more mainstream sources are reporting as high as .50% for Firefox 3 from last month.

Firefox 3 might already have reached 1%, and we will find out on June 1st.

Crazy Physics Theory of Nothing

2008-05-27T11:14:00.016+05:30

I believe in nothing. But this isn't an atheism post.

High level physics has this nice little attribute: we really really don't understand it, nor do we have enough evidence to disprove most current theories

I hereby present my "Crazy Physics Theory of Nothing":
Matter doesn't exist. There are no "atoms" as in particles that can not be divided. As to the fundamental "atoms" or building blocks of the universe I foresee two possibilities:

Small Tears in Space-Time
Very small patterns in Space-Time that fit together with other very small patterns in space-time and maintain equilibrium

So, what about forces you ask?

Gravity seems well defined to me at least
Electromagnetism could just be similar to gravity but at some sort of special frequency that resonants with others that are the opposite of it.
The others.. similar idea as the above?

So, what do these ideas imply?

There might be more forces like electromagnetism that can pull different materials together
We will never discover an "atom" NOTE: "atom" refers to the original meaning of atom, basically, fundamental indivisible building block of the universe
I have too much time on my hands at 2am and should be sleeping

Use Gmail? Try This Extension

2008-05-16T04:50:00.005+05:30

It's called "Better Gmail 2" and it really just packages a bunch of greasemonkey scripts into easy to use options to modify different aspects of Gmail.

A few of the features:

Row Highlights
Force HTTPS
Hiding Spam Count or Invites
Alternate theme

Oh, and it apparently works for your Gmail at your domain too.
Give it a try here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6076

Mozilla was right...

2008-05-15T07:10:00.012+05:30

A lot of people questioned Mozilla's protection of their Firefox trademark preventing Debian from using their brand name. They did this because Debian wanted to patch Firefox and still call it Firefox.

What Debian (and Ubuntu) is really doing by maintaining their own patch-sets on packages is forking the entire Free Software Universe. I believe the ability to fork is essential for the free software world. However, maintaining a patch-set against a package should be the last resort for a distributor.

OpenSSL is taking a good amount of heat; For a Debian fork of their software.

Let's pretend this happened to Debian's fork of Firefox, which they can only call IceWeasel.
The Firefox brand would be protected from the clear fork of their product.
+1 to Mozilla for foresight

Dynamic DNS

2008-05-02T23:09:00.006+05:30

Using Dynamic DNS is easy. There are several clients to choose from in Ubuntu (or practically any OS).

I used ddclient, Description:
Update IP addresses at dynamic DNS services
A perl based client to update your dynamic IP address at DynDNS.com
(or other dynamic DNS services such as Hammernode, Zoneedit or
EasyDNS), thus allowing you and others to use a fixed hostname
(myhost.dyndns.org) to access your machine. This client supports both
the dynamic and (near) static services, MX setting, and alternative
host. It caches the address, and only attempts the update if the
address actually changes.

It's also the recommended client from DynDNS.com which is the service I decided to use. Did I mention it's free. They also have a nice readme to follow.

Installing ddclient will basically ask you a bunch of questions as to what DNS provider you use, what interface to query on, your login, password, and the domain to link to.
All of that is stored in a /etc/ddclient.conf and the last change I needed to make was change the line:
use=eth0?
to
use=web

This let's it get around the fact that my router is in the way, by checking IPs using a whatismyip.com like service. You probabley could have changed that when you initially set up the interface to check on, but I didn't think of that.

Forward the required ports on your router for whatever service you want to share (and secure it) and you now have a Dynamic DNS server.

Proposed Amendment XXVIII

2008-04-21T23:25:00.002+05:30

Section 1. The ability of Congress to declare wars is hereby revoked.

Section 2. Congress may pass a declaration of war but it must be affirmed and authorized by a direct majority vote of United States Citizens.