Think! Open Source

Full Circle Magazine is a monthly which represents Ubuntu and its variants. Its main aim is to provide tutorials, software reviews and open source world's news etc. It is being published from last 18 months and now, obviously, the issue 18 is out. The title can be seen below with some highlights of this issues.
This month:

* Command and Conquer - Package Management.
* How-To : Program in C - Part 2, Secure Network Drive
Using GIMP - Part 7 and Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.
* My Story - Ubuntu And Me
* Review - Urban Terror
* My Opinion - How Many Distros Is Too Many?
* MOTU Interview - Stephan Hermann
* Top 5 - Mind Mapping Applications

Grab Issue 18!

Nexenta is another OS. You'll say, ohh, again an Operating System. Well this is something little different. It is a blend of to popular and opensource OS to get the usability and power of both. Rather it can also be said that it is Debian/Ubuntu with a little variation at CLI. I mean the Kernel is from Open Solaris the Sun Microsystems' sponsored Unix OS, which is opensource as well, and the applications and packages from popular Linux distributions i.e. Debian or Ubuntu. Now the thing which comes out is called Nexenta.
It has packaging system based on APT, Advanced packaging Tool. So the repositories from Debian and Ubuntu can easily be used with it. The documentation part is pretty much complete with usual topics a Linux user can require to use a new OS. Just download its cd images from the download page, burn and install them. Well it is not for new commers it is for the people who always ready to take risks.

TeeWorlds is a cool game for Linux, Windows and Mac. Obviously it is open source and freely available. The only screenshot tells that it is a jumping game. The download page has binaries and sources for Windows, Linux and Mac. Its about page is pretty full with developers and contributors which indicates that it is an active project. So give it a try and enjoy life with open source.

Ruby on Rails is a popular web development framework which is based on famous language Ruby. Indeed the creation of this framework granted a new life to the Ruby language on the web. The Ruby on Rails 2.2 has be released on 21, November and the team has announced a new feature called internationalization. The simple meaning of this feature is to make Ruby on Rails caable to display languages other than English. The Ruby on Rails creator, David Heinemeier Hansson wrote in his blog post that now Ruby on Rails has a very simple framework to deal with UTF8 and lcalizeable texts etc.

FreeBSD is a popular open source OS like linux. It has many variants. The thing which distinguishes it from linux is the license under which it comes. You can use FreeBSD to create your own closed source commercial project, software or OS. While GPL v. 2, the lisence under which linux kernel is distributed requires that you should open source all the modifications and original code as it was open source before.
FreeBSD has launched its official community forums, it would be a good thing for FreeBSD community now, to build and to cooperate with each other will be much easier and productive.

Adobe has released it flash player's next 64 bit version for an alpha stage on linux. Ok this statement looks just fine with out any amazement but the fact is this, Adobe released this pre alpha version only for linux. Astonished? Adobe is very much sympathetic on linux users since MS Silver Light and Java FX, the competators to Adobe Flash entered the scene. I can still remember the time when Adobe refused to relsease a flash player version 9 for linux while it was available for windows and other platforms.
Anyhows time doesn't remain equal, there are ups and downs and perhaps this is a down of Adobe and up of opensource world, they are benefitted although all this is due to competation with other corporate and technology giants.

Mandriva has released the XFCE version of its OS. XFCE is a popular linux desktop environment which targets old pcs with less capacity and power in terms of Ram, Processor and Space on Hard drive. Most linux distros try to release their remixes with Gnome, KDE and XFCE. But the latter one is not to much highlighted. Ubuntu has a similiar version called Xubuntu but these XFCE powered distros are less frequently used as compared to normal distros composed of Gnome or KDE.

It is a plugin intended to replace the skype user interface. You can play with your skype contacts from within your Piding, Audium etc. Every thing which can be done with Skype is also possible with this plugin. It is a free software and you are free to modify its source code. More interesting is that it is available for Windows as well as Linux. If you want to install it, there is a tutorial available at Ubuntu Geek.

Skype for Linux looks like Windows 98 compared with XP. It lacks lots of features of windows version. But we can hope for betterment in future. So looking at positive side, we have Skype for Linux and it is available officially for many distributions. You can get packages for your distor from here.
Keep in mind these relatively less focussed details of hardware and software.

• Hardware requirements
• 1 Ghz processor or faster
• 256 MB RAM.
• 20 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
• Microphone and speakers or headset.
• Internet connection (broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection). .
• Video card driver with Xv support.

• Software requirements
• Qt 4.2.1+
• D-Bus 1.0.0
• libasound2 1.0.12

Technical details
Version 2.0.0.72

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter has been released. Highlights are as follows.

• New Theme for help.ubuntu.com
• Dell Mini 9 update testing
• Ubuntu Community Interview: Nathan Grubb
• Jaunty Alpha 1 freeze ahead
• Ubuntu Stats
• Tamil Team Release Party
• Ubuntu Peru gives Ubuntu presentation
• Launchpad plugin for Eclipse
• Launchpod: Episode #12
• Launchpad offline November 19th
• 2 new Launchpad interviews

• In the Press & Blogosphere

• Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 released
• Ubuntuero gets inked: Ubuntu Style

• LoCo Council Meeting: November 10th

• Edubuntu Meeting Minutes
• Server Team Meeting Minutes

• Upcoming Meetings & Events

• Updates & Security

Whole issue can be read on official site.

Hocket and Bankwell is a comic book which is intended to teach linux i.e. the popular linux distro Ubuntu in a fun way. Its first issue is about 30 pages long and introduces to the basics of Ubuntu very well. So give it a try.

Banshee is my favorite music player on Ubuntu. It is written in C# and Mono and its interface is in GTK. I personally think it as the only competitor of Amarok, the popular music player of KDE. Banshee has progressed rapidly from a buggy piece of code to a full and matured music player. And now the banshee team has announced the release of version 1.4.
There are lots of new features added in this version. Some interesting are the support of new devices including google's G1, a version for Mac OS X and enhancements in interface of now playing and menues.
The downloads area of official website offers packages for various popular distros. Mine, i.e. Ubuntu is also there in the form of PPA repository where 1.4 is now available. Check if yours is also there.

Sun Microsystems is going to cut its 18% jobs to reduce the effects of global recession. Many departments are merged and they are reduced upto three main areas. Alongwith reduction of jobs Sun will also try to rely on Open Source strategy to survive and gain good income.

Ultimate Edition 2.0 is "Yet Another Ubuntu Variant" with usual and casual changes of theme, splash screen, icons, gdm login screen etc. There is a claim of new kernel, latest updates and some fixes which made a user's sound card working possible on Ultimate Edition which was not working in original Ubuntu 8.10. It is available for 32 and 64 bit platforms. The version 2 is built on daily build of Ubuntu Interpid 8.10. Along with usual changes of look and feel (which most Ubuntu variants do and thus differentiate them from parent distro) there are some game packages preinstalled in gamers edition. The list is below:

• Supertux
• Actioncube
• Assaultcube
• Warsow
• Wesnoth
• Glest
• Scorched3d
• Dreamchess
• Sauerbraten
• Gridwars
• Vgacardgames
• Alien arena 2007
• Brikx
• Nexuiz
• Vertris
• Openarena
• Pokerth
• Snowballz
• Chromium
• Gnome-hearts
• Open arena
• Scorched3d
• Urban terror

Some screen shots are available on sofficial site looking cool. You can do it yourself. Changing the distro to change the look only is an expensive idea. Just you need to know is the theme names and simply install them, you'll have a home made Ultimate Edition. ;)

Canonical has announced the port of Ubuntu to the ARMv7 architecture. New Linux kernel capabilities will enable Ubuntu to be compiled wholly on this platform. Ubuntu is already offering Ubuntu for notebooks and embedded devices. It is also a clever move to establish market to ARM-based devices like Nokia's N810 Internet tablet. ARM is actively supporting the ARM linux development efforts.

Debian has announced the RC of its installer for Lenny. The improvements include better support for live cd installations. Along with it the support for embedded media ARM etc is also improved. Installer images for Xen guest (i386), installer images for Netwinder (again), support from loading firmware from removable media during installation, upgrade for packages in early pkgse, support for i386/AMD64 for installing and loading firmware from MMC/SD cards and new translations have been added to it.
Some minor issues, as they are always there with a beta class software.

tangoGPS is a fast, lightweight and easy to use application for use with or without GPS. It runs on Linux platform like eeePC and Openmoko phone. It is licensed under GPL version 2. A very interactive interface and ability to download GPS maps for offline use make a very handy application.
Its current version is 0.9.3 and packages for popular distributions are available at official site.

OPLC i.e. One Laptop Per Child has announced that they are going to sell their XO mini laptop computers on Amazon.com. It will be started from Monday. The program originally designed to sell these laptops was OPLC, in which the bulk orders from different govts of third world countries were to provide these laptops. But the poor interaction policy of OPLC couldn't get enough orders. This program is slightly changed and Amazon.com will offer $400 per laptop and 1 piece will be offered to a poor child from this cost.
XO runs on XP, although a Fedora based Linux desktop is also there. Its screen is 7.5 inch having 900 pixels, a digitel camera, a WiFi card, Flash storage. It is almost like Asus eeePC. A new version may be provided in 2010 which will have faster processor and more flash storage.

Clip Art for OOo was always a problem for me. Doesn't look it will be now. A great extension Clker is available which you can install on your OOo and provide you a bundle of free clipart in svg and png.
Some other good sources of Open Clipart are OpenClipart, WpClipart, and OOo sample templates and clipart.

I was getting some problems while signing in from Ubuntu 8.10 and Firefox 3 on Hotmail as it every time displayed a message to upgrade the browser to IE, Firefox or Safari. I ignored that message and then it worked with old interface. Some news about this problem are also on internet, looks MS dropped support for Firefox on Linux, or perhaps hotmail is so advanced now that it is unable to run on "older" linux system.
Computer World Says
Linux Watch

Puppy 4.1 is a tiny distro. People say that puppy is for low power pcs having lesser Ram, Processing Power and space. But this 93 mb distro is great. It has all the features you can think in a Linux system. And more the proprietary constraints didn't blocked MP3 and Flash here. There is a built-int Flash, MP3 support along with Gparted the partitioning software, HTML editor, Samba sharing, backup software and Wireless support.
Puppy's live cd boot doesn't seem that it is being run through a cd. Excellent support for mounting the harddrives, accessing internet and working with varous files is a great thing in this minimalistic distro. So give it a try.

Android Unleashed is a brand new website for Google's opensource effort in Mobile OS, Android which is now in marked in the form of G1 mobile phone. This website/blog presents tutorials, howtos and tips for your new G1 mobile phone, Androin the OS and the application development for Android plateform. So don't miss it if you are a user of G1 and want to make some fun with it as well.

Kexi is a popular open source database creating software which is almost equal to MS Access. Although OpenOffice has a component in this regard as well but it is less used and less feature rich. According to the official website Kexi has the features of:

• Full visual designers for tables, queries and forms. Queries can be also designed in dedicated SQL view.
• Running queries, support for parametrized queries.
• Data entry and sorting.
• Support for "Object" data allowing to store images of many types.
• Designing and displaying relational data using combo boxes (lookup columns).
• Simple printounts for table and query data with robust print preview.
• Advanced CSV data import and export from files. Copying to clipboard and pasting from clipboard is also available, thus the data can be easily transferred to applications like spreadsheets or word processors.
• User Mode, allowing to switch off all commands related to editing project's design (since 1.1.2)
• "Find" window for searching thought table and form's contents with rich set of options (since 1.1.3)
• Support for simple database templates (since 1.1.3)

It supports various database engines including MySQL, SQLLite, PostgreSQL etc. And it is obvious that this piece of code is available cross platform, for Mac, Linux and Windows.

In June 2006, Creative Labs was reported developing linux support of X-Fi driver and it was released in the second quarter of 2007. They admitted of neglecting linux drivers due to vista's and therefore the planned support for ALSA and OpenAL 1.1 could not be added. In Last months of 2007 at last Creative labs released a binary only linux driver which was 64-bit supported only.
Long list of developments but the interesting news is that they have opensourced the (about) 13000 lines code of their driver.

GNUveau is developing linux based terminal servers for villages where there is a shortage of electricity. They are solar powered and run popular linux distribution Ubuntu.

Gnuveau proudly announces SolarNetOne, a solar powered multi-user Linux Terminal Server network, with integrated long range wireless access point, analog telephone adapter, proximity based security system, and many other features. Please click the image below for more information on the green computing solution SolarNetOne.

And now I am on Ubuntu 8.10, after an unofficial method of upgrade. I had to download all packages in two or three episodes so I change first the repositories pointing to "hardy" to point to "interpid" and then updated them. Then a simple "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" took me to Ubuntu Interpid Ibex.
It is a fair system, having some enhancements and changes. Tabs in Nautilus, changed shutdown menu and a quick search in Synaptic (last thing is not working for me). And a cleaner which at last I found under Administration named Cruft. It simply deletes some old packages. Anyhows Ubuntu is a great OS.

Sun and IBM joined hands to develop an ODF toolkit. The website is launched. This website would provide the technical details and know how about the open source standard ODF. The API to develop for ODF and SKD etc. I am glad to see C# here along with Java, it would be great for .Net world to develop for ODF.

Dillo version 2 is available now. This is a fast web browser for GNU/Linux having interface with a relatively less known tool kit Fast Light Toolkit. It is a minimalist web browser and new users may feel irritation at first glance. The eco system of plugins is not there as it does in firefox. But it is a good browser with a nicer interface. It ca be loaded much faster than firefox. It lacks support of Flash, JavaScript and HTML frames but... it can be hoped that in future it will be improved. It can be a good try for those who want a different taste in browsing.

Dillo version 2 is available now. This is a fast web browser for GNU/Linux having interface with a relatively less known tool kit Fast Light Toolkit. It is a minimalist web browser and new users may feel irritation at first glance. The eco system of plugins is not there as it does in firefox. But it is a good browser with a nicer interface. It ca be loaded much faster than firefox. It lacks support of Flash, JavaScript and HTML frames but... it can be hoped that in future it will be improved. It can be a good try for those who want a different taste in browsing.

Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis are two popular codec formats accepted and propagated in open source world. Xiph.org has released Ogg Theora 1.0.
It is an important milestone but more important in this that Ogg is going to be a standard tag in HTML5. With the addtion of tag it is possible in next firefox release, for example, to embed Ogg vedios in webpade just like flash objects. And obivously no plugins et all. Most platforms support this open standard.


Gnome, a very popular linux desktop, is now getting support from google and nokia, two giants of IT and Internet. They are going to contribute 20,000 USD to gnome mobile project. Gnome 3 will get benifit as a whole as well.
After the release of KDE 4 and then 4.1, Gnome 3.0 was announced, but as usual in a very steady way it is coming just after 2 years of development in 2010 approximately. So let us see what they are going to do for us. I am hoping that many little things missing on the name of simplicity will be there in gnome 3.

Stunned and then confused why? Why they didn't included version 3 in Ubuntu 8.10. This strange thing why happened I didn't try to find the reason, but I have found an alternate that I am going to use and suggesting here as well.
Yeah it is a ppa launchpad repository for Ubuntu 8.10. So open your Software Sources from System > Administration and add these repositories there in third party tab.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

Update the sources and install OOo3. Enjoy!

GNU GFDL version 1.3 is released. GNU Free Documentation License is a popular license and co-part of GPL in licensing content and written materials in opensource way. This version is compatible with Commons Atribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 3.0 license and now the organizations can move their content from GFDL to CC-BY-SA. The special request of Wikimedia Foundation is now fulfilled and likely Wikipedia project will start discussions now to change the license from Creative Commons Share Alike to GFDL 1.3.

eee-control is an easy-to-use utility that aims to be a one-stop solution for all special Linux Eee PC needs. It allows you to configure hardware and hotkeys, switch between performance levels (very much like Asus' Super Hybrid Engine) and more.

Currently the models 701/701SD, 702, 900, 900A, 901 and 1000/1000H are supported.

Eee PC is quite popular while we talk about sub-notebooks and it is widely used with linux as well. 3 out of ten eee pcs are reported to have used with linux. The above said tool is a utitlity for linux users to handle Eee PC more easily. And obviously the most favourite distribution Ubuntu's packages are there in download page.

FL_TeacherTool is an award winning teachers helper tool which is developed on C++ and used with a linux terminal server client. It was developed for K12LTSP now K12Linux distribution mainly but now works with other FLTK systems as well.
It has many features, a list is available at official site. Screenshots also describe its use. 0.62 sources are available from official site and obviously your distribution will also have in repositories.

Google Chrome is google's way in browsing world, it is disappointing, though, that linux and mac version is not available yet, but, there are a workaround to run it through corssover office or wine, the windows emulator for linux. Here I found a video which tells about some tips of chrome.

VLC Media Player :: The popular opensource, cross platform media player for Linux, Mac and Windows.
Apache:: The most used OpenSource web server which is a sign of trust among webmasters and developers.
WordPress:: I love this blogging software, ever green system of blogging which amazes me on every next release of it. The plugins and the themes are thousands and changes it from a blog to every thing that could be possible with a regular website.
Amarok:: My love on KDE, I like this piece of software and wish I could have it on Windows as well. Great application which is mile ahead from its competators on Linux.
Pidgin:: A multi purpose instant messenger I like to use of Windows and Linux both.
OpenOffice.org:: The version 3 is increasing its productivity, this free suit of office applications is awesome. Stable, productive, pwerful and elegent.
And FIREFOX:: The thing I always require when I am on my computer. I am in love of this web browser.

Command line is a way of life for linux buddies. APT is an essential tool for Ubuntuers and Debian fans. They like to use it for everyday installation and uninstallation, upgrades etc. dpkg is another useful utility which works along with apt for .deb packages. A few tips I found on apt and dpkg and would like to share.
To list all install packages
dpkg –get-selections
Or the output can be directed to a text file
dpkg –get-selections > abc.txt
The '>' sign direct the out put of terminal in the specific file and works for other commands as well.
dpkg -L package
tells the files installed by a specific package. e.g. dpkg -L banshee
To get installed all the sources of a given package, it is a good thing to install them by apt.
apt-get build-dep banshee
will install all the packages required by banshee to be built or compiled on your system. These packages may differ according to version or the requirement of the program you are going to build.

Bootchart is an application, according to official site,

Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart.

It is basically a shell script which runs in background and collects the information about the processes and booting etc. Then this scrip provides this information in the form of png, svg or eps charts.
The official download page provides link to packages of popular linux distors.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter 115 is available now.

Here are some OpenOffice 3 repositories for Ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04.
8.10

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

8.04

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu hardy main

Go to System>Administration>Software Sources, Add these repositories to 3rd parties tab, you will
be asked to update the sources, update and then install openoffice 3 from Synaptic.
Binaries can be downloaded from official site as well.

C++, the 20 years old C-family programming language which influenced the development of software and software industry. It dominated a world and still it is an important tool of a programmer who want to be a 'good' programmer. It was developed to add 'Object-Oriented' approach to old C language in 1980s. Now C++ is going for a change and to add more concepts and libraries to enhance the programming ability and ease. The process of standardization is underway from several years (almost) and now the feature completeness is proposed, the sources are saying.
To learn more about C++0x

hugin is a free panoramic image editor. Version 0.7 is released this month for Mac, Linux and Windows. It can be downloaded at SF.net. Some nice screen shots and a tutorial collection is also available on website.

Ubuntu 8.10 is out on 30th October. Since then, people all around internet reviewing and publishing articles about the new version Ibex. Here some of them are presented.
Ubuntu HQ thinks A +ve Evolution
The Read Deal
Ubuntu 8.10 What Canoncial Improves
The Enterprising Ibex

Solaris, which is now often known as OpenSolaris, is Sun Microsystems' approach to Operating System. The new version of Solaris is available with a bunch of new enhancements and improvements. x86 and Sun SPARC version can be downloaded here.

Qt Software has released Qt Creator and IDE to develop Qt based applications. Qt, formerly called Trolltech, is now a subsidiary of Nokia, the cell phone giant of the world. This piece of software is available for Mac, Linux and Windows intially, althogh the license is not GPL yet, but it will be a GPL (like) license in final release. Some nice screen shots you can see.
1, 2 & 3
A more detailed and user oriented review is published on dot.Kde.

Ubuntu Open Week is announced, it will be a session of Question and Answers on IRC for a week. The motive of this week is to provide help on the new occassion of new Ubuntu release Interpid Ibex.

What else? Lots of opensource blogs and yet one more. Here what you are going to read? You'll find after reading :D. So lets start