Linux Mint Debian Included -An Update

Linux mint is trying to forge away from Ubuntu, Kubuntu derivatives and that is a very encouraging change since they are going back to basics.

Go back to Debian base and forge ahead.

Reason being the change of canonicals to Unity.

I am one who is in favour of mark Shuttleworth’s smart move.

Yes it is a smart move by him.

He is doing a Bill Gate to Linux Community.

I wish him success.

Linux missed the opportunity for netbooks and I do not want to see it misses on tabloid too.

Like iPads, tabloid is the future.

We must not let only Apple to dominate the market.

Google’s Android has shown the way and Ubunbtu should not miss this opportunity come what it may.

I am highlighting Linux Mint here since it overtook Ubuntu head and a nose recently in downloads at DistroWatch and Ubuntu in the last week or so putting its nose ahead again.

Linux Mint did not miss time in promoting both Ubuntu 10 and Ubuntu 11 base.

Not only that it did not forget the Debian and out came Debian Mint in Last December.

Linux Mint was thinking ahead and getting ready for all the consequences resulting from Unity experience and not forgetting the community they were with.

Like PCLinux Linux Mint gave variety of options and Long Term (LTS) support and rolling editions and also brand new version based on Debian for the newcomers and the newbies.

This is what was lacking with Ubuntu.

They did not have two versions but with too much enthusiasm promoted Unity only.

They can reverse this by supporting their community who were with them when Microsoft was dominating the field.

It is not too late, let the user decides the trends of the future what canonicals and Mint and Debian should do is to be ready for all the eventualities including brickbats were call in our country.

God Luck to everybody in Linux and especially the developers and without you we do not have a customer base,too.

In any case innovation is the future for IT both hardware and software.

Linux Update Pinguy and Ping-EeeOS

The Latest Edition based on Ubuntu 11 Unity is superb and is for Laptops, Netbooks and it can be installed on a Desktop.

In time to come this Ubuntu derivative with Unity desktop will roam the web with style.

The recent edition of Pinguy based on Ubuntu is very pleasant.

It has both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
This was one of the DVDs I could download overnight and was over 1.67 GiB and comes under my middle weight or the Chimpanzee category.

Rapid download was due to the availability of large number of seeders.

Seeders themselves speak of it popularity and I need not say any more.

It has Unity and Apple like desktop.
Boots up fast has LibreOffice and Dropbox, Skype and many of the utilities that a first time user may prefer to have in his or her system.

I have no reservation of recommending it to a newbie and Linux savvy should decided for himself or herself.

It has some issues like not being able recognize multiple Linux operation that I have in my hard disk. Grub is is little bit limited and finicky (one does not have to worry about it and let me deal with it myself) in its behaviour.

This comment is short and sweet and I should wind up with my bonobo to gorilla classification of the ape family assuming that we, users not the Linux community descended from apes.

This was something to substitute the boxing category I started with and being interested in biology, environment and biodiversity, I could not resist using our nearest relative (I am not an expert on apes and not even humans and their behaviour especially with the computers) to illustrate how heavy or padded a Linux distribution is.

1. Bonobo is the feather weight category and include all Linux distribution under 200 MiB and fits in to a mini CD. Puppy to DSL to IPcop.

2. Common Sri-Lankan Monkey is the Light weight category and the best in this category is Peppermint, again a Ubuntu derivative.

3. Middle weight is the Chimpanzee category and goes up to 1.5 GiB and Pinguy fits in well to this category. (Mind you mini DVD can fit in 1.4 GiB image and still fit in with your front pocket. I still have few Mini DVDs, I bought for Cricket World Cup,2007 left in my cabinet and a double layered one not used. This is to illustrate the point that I rarely go above Mini CD and standard CD for my work. I am light weight in my approach. Fact that there are DVDs now one need not fill them with junk packages one never uses. Remember Linux used to pack them in Floppies. Do not forget that creative beginning).

4. Heavy Weight ( 3 to 4 GiB) or the Gorilla category is PCLinux FullMonty and Knoppix, the 10th Anniversary edition which is less than 4 GiB and it is my number one).

5. If one wants one can add HaliWandura (Sri-Lankan jungle variety which is less in numbers with a blackish ring around the face and neck) for 700 MiB CD and PCLnux and Ubuntu fall into this category.

I find between 500 to 700 MiB one is limited with many constraints (We are limited by the physical capacity of the disk and not Linux) and going up to 1 GiB does not do justice to the developers, either.
So go for next best that fits in with mini DVD of 1.4 GiB).

One (1) GiB may be good for Flash Drive guys / girls but with Flash drive capacity which has increased now, trying to fit a distribution (KDE) to 1 GIB is not advisable.

So developers it is far better to stick to 4 categories.

1. 50 to 200 MiB
2. 500 MiB
3. 500 x 3 and the 1500 MiB ceiling.
4. 500 x 6 and the 3000 and above category

5. For any glutton use above 4.0 GiB (this is not hitting Debian below the belt punch (boxing terminology) which has the best repository on this planet but to state that packages above the base system should be blocked into either 4 GiB (standard DVD) or may be even 1.5 GiB (Mini DVD) and that depend on how they are used.
It is high time somebody outside the Debian (it become an independent survey) community do an objective survey of the use of various elements in the repository.
Then on the basis of 5-S classification divide into three categories and archive according to that system.
1. Frequently used
2. Less frequently used but generally useful (? Education).
3. Used for a particular purpose but rarely (Science)

Double Density and 8 GiB is a waste of time and it is far better to have two 4 GiB game DVDs instead of one big 8 GIB DVD.
Incidentally I saw a Debian distribution of 20 GiB (? BlueRay) in LinuxTreacker today and I wonder to whom this distribution is targeted for?

Who is the glutton?

Grand Finale

I am almost completing 18 months come end of March of downloading and testing Linux Live CDs and lately few of the DVDs.
All good things have to come to an end and with Sinhala Linux coming to the scene without fanfare or funfair after a long delay, I will be concentrating on that instead of the Live CDs but with occasional reference to them (not full time as it used to be for nearly 18 months).
Real reason for this venture was the boring one year election campaign and as a diversion tactics of an intellectual nature.
The things I learned was enormous.
Sinhala Linux coming at the tail end was quite a surprise.
It looks as some of my critical comments are taken with serious attention and lot of my audience is not Sri-Lankans but Americans and far way web browsers.

I believe my comments were only academic and may be some times constructive but lot of things not intended by me has / have happened.
In the Grand Finale, I would like to list few.

1. Multilingual Distributions are coming from EU and South America which is pretty good.

2. French is also becoming a leading language of distributions.

3. Light weight and multiple editions are hitting the bench.,emulating PCLimux. Sabayon (Gentoo), Salix(Slackware), Aptosid (Debain), Fedora (Redhat) and Zenwalk are examples.

4. Some dormant like Korora coming out of the attic.

5. Distributions are looking at others to emulate or improve the Linux image.

6. Dominance of Ubuntu is diminishing and Ubuntu also looking for an image lift.

7. Redhat has come out of hibernation.

8. Debian is showing its prowess and slowly and rightly embracing the changes. Lot of live editions including Sinhala Linux edition.

9. Flame wars are becoming less intense but critical and constructive.

10. With all these I am becoming rejuvenated at my twilight years and old and young are coming together for a Grand Finale.

11. Puppy (front pocket) and Knoppix (piggyback) remain my favorites.

12. Pendrives are ubiquitous.

Only criticism I have is the children programs (except gCompris and few others) and games have been neglected.
Morphix, Myah and Adios are slow to wake up from hibernation or slumber.
Young chaps take them out of the attic and put some the grandpa influence on the map and make some really grandiose games and creative activities (for children and grandpa like me) and reinvigorate the Linux spirit of the yesteryear.

Linux-100-Extras-Knoppix-6.4-Update

In spite of work, Cricket World Cup, I found time to test Knoppix 6.4 CD/DVD and both are equally good and can be installed into the hard disk.

In the past after various tricks I managed to install Knoppix in a FAT partition of my laptop.

Since I have number of distributions in all my computers getting any new distribution installed is a bit of a hassle.No wonder the developers cannot keep pace with my finicky behaviour.

This is equally true when I have two hard disks.
I am yet to find a distribution except perhaps Debian which can detect multiple distributions in the same computer and the correct boot record.
Each distribution has its own way to figure out and configure the boot record. Distribution counts  hard disks a and b , c for hard disks and in one distribution a become b and b become a and another a is a and b is b at boot time.

This is confusing for me and I have to figure out how to sort it and edit boot message. I do not like this happening.

If you have no distribution in your hard disk the installation is straight forward but my installation are very complicated since I have to figure out how the distribution configure thing and sometime try trial an error method.

I never give up but after many trials I get the distributions to behave in the way I want them to be.

New Knoppix was no different I had several failures but finally I got it in my hard disk cohabiting with various other distributions this time in a native Linux partition not FAT.

It is derivative of Debian squeeze and is pretty good.

Who says Debain is bad.

It has no administrative constrains, like Puppy can do anything without root permission sometimes with superuser status. Please do not get angry with me these are Linux vocabulary.

So be careful (it gives a brief warning every time it does something drastic).

It needs a swap partition and at least one reiserfs partition (big enough to accommodate the wast resources it has). Small partition for CD but a very big one for the DVD.
It need at least 1 GiB swap in the first partition, but I gave 2 instead.
It’s partition tool Gparted sometime find it difficult to partition the hard disk.

So I booted Debins Gparted and did the changes and booted Knoppix.

Its actions are almost automatic and instantaneous and moment you press  ENTER it gets down to work so if you have data in your hard disk please take special care.

It’s compiz is excellent and I will install it in every one of my computers when they are undergoing major changes. I went down for a cup of tea and when I returned the monitor was going berserk with scintillating graphic and thought the graphic card has gone. Not so its graphics are pretty good.

It has lot of games too.

Pingus is excellent. I kept playing it while it was being installed which one can never can do when windows are being installed.

Linux100-Category is almost ready

Now I can report to you that the first 100 distributions of Linux distributions that I downloaded and tested are put  in the Linux 100 Category.

I could not tick them all off  yet, but now there are at least 80 odd distribution listed there for easy browsing.

It was  all solo work and nobody helped me. I had lot of sleepless nights due to Telecom’s breaking link and very poor download speed.

I had to resort to K-Torrents as a last resor for some downloads.

It is all worth the trouble since it was painful downloading but entertaining testing material that each distribution had some peculiar nuance.

If testing was that difficukt, I can understand the trouble the developers and the community went through in puting the final product out.

It is seen with mageia project, now.

Now I deserve a welcome respite (more than one year of labour, not nine months of human gestation) and I am going to watch cricket and enjoy all the matches.

I am not going to support any country this time round but enjoy good lovely cricket.

So guys and girls developing distributions and not watching cricket, this is a little break you guys / girls get from me by not finding little nuances, in each distribution that come out after hard alpha and bets stages testing.

Freedom, Friendship and Sinhala Capability of Linux

I am happy to report that Debian 6 is available with Sinhala graphical installer.

Well. well I am happy to tell you that I downloaded KDE version (currently downloading Gnome version) of Debian 6 and it can be installed in Sinhala but I prefer installing it in English and then using Sinhala capability by changing the language after installation. 

It is install only but not a live CD.

Now I can update you to say that Live DVD is available which is Live as well as install. Ir comes in both 32 bit and 64 bit with Sinhala Capability.

I am going to make them available locally in Kandy and you are free to copy it,  install  it and send me a comment below if there are any difficulties in using it in Sinhala.

The Sinhala terminology in there was like Greek to me but when I have the free time I will install it in one of my spare computers in my office and see its virtues.

In the mean time, I get a few of my university students who are versed in Linux to try it and give me a feedback.

It is advised that one downloads it as K-Torrent and not as normal web browser download (point to point).

Thanks you Guys and Girls at Debian for doing the honours for Sinhala Language.

I have to thank Anuradha (who comes from Kandy) profusely for his initiation.

Please do not worry him he is a busy person and doing some other important work. It is time for you to make local Linux Groups and spread the message of wisdom in Sinhala.

It was long time waiting for me but I am now at a different level and carry Linux in a Pendrive and enjoying it as  pastime. and promoting Live CDs.

Visit my blog at http://www.wordpress.org  (Linux for Computing and updates at asokaplus).
There over 200 hundred versions but many of them are not in Sinhala and many do not have multilanguage capability.

I am now more interested in promoting Linux globally and activating K-torrent Groups who are posting and seeding Linux distributions globally for every nation on this planet to use without copyright laws.

For me this as an achievement of a few dedicated Sinhala (not the race but the Language) loving IT Guys and Girls who had devoted their free time to make Sinhala available in Linux.

It was our own Anuradha who tried to Make Sinhala Linux.

Unfortunately he was drawn into Presidential Forces after tsunami and he could not persevere with this project due to his workload and lack of support of dedicated Linux guys.

Our own Rev. Mettavihari (foreign) of course added Pali and Sinhala font and the unicode version of Sinhala some years ago but nobody took active interest in prompting Sinhala Linux.

Please note http://www.worpress.org has Sinhala capability and it is open source and I have seen a few using it in Sinhala.
One reason (now there are many) I felt out Microsoft is when it introduced XP there was NO Sinhala in its 40 odd languages.

Please note the note below.
Due to the lack of translation updates two languages were dropped in this release: Wolof and Welsh.

If we do not persevere it will (Sinhala) be dropped from Linux like Welsh.

Asturian, Estonian, Icelandic, Kazakh and Persian have been added to the graphical and text-based installer.

Kannada, Lao, Sinhala and Telugu have been added to the graphical installer.

Spread the message of Linux in Sinhala and Tamil.

Linux100-ArtistX-106

Version 1 has come. It is fantastic and I have it in my K-torrent archives. I will seed it for at least 4 weeks.

Enjoy the fun while it is there.It is 3.7 GiB.

I have temporarily suspended testing Live CDs and thought of downloading a few heavy weight DVDs, just to satisfy some of the Linux fans who go for heavy weight fights without having fun with light weight guys.

After three days of downloading 2.4 GiB of Gravity and Weight and tested this Ubuntu derivative that come from Italy.

It has fantastic collections of artistic utilities including Blender, Adobe Flash and Wine.

The collection was fantastic but there are a few proprietary packages that might have problem in the West.

I must tell you I enjoyed watching CNN News with Adobe.
Once I was trying to download Adobe for Suse and their was a hitch and gave it up.
This is about the third time I had problem with Flash.
Genu should develop gFlash as soon as it is feasible lest I miss CNN News Flashes.

This is a good one for everybody.

There is something for everybody.

Thanks guys from Italy if you are inclined to read this in English.

Linux100-PuppyBrowser-100

It is fitting to arrive at 100 with two Puppy editions.

 

One I am booted now is Puppy Browser. It is 5.1. and I started with 4.1 and I have a large collection of Puppies now. 

The other that I downloaded few minutes ago was PupItUp, the music Puppy.
Both connects to the web instantaneously.
If not setup configures you in seconds.

I am afraid Microsoft pets cannot even bark.

Well done.

You cross the line at 100 with flying colours.

 

Don’t worry Guys / Girls, I think I have made several entries for R.I.P and would add a few more than the 100 already in to remain not out till 2011. 

I should now concentrate on Puppy to entertain me when big fat DVDs take a long time to download and test.

Guess, 4 more days of downloading for SuSe. then Mandriva before its metamorphosis.

I have not passed 3.3 yet.
That is artistX which has an erratic boot loader.

Linux100-Trisquel-mini and Standard-99

Another Spanish Distribution based on Ubuntu with support for English language. 

It seems that one my criteria for Live CD is language support and if English are not doing it others in the EU is doing it for us and US.

There are very good Linux distributions coming form Spain, Italy, France and most recently from Poland (Greene).

This is a very good one with all the utilities in 400 MiB.

If you boot in English it goes strait to web site in English.

If you boot in Spanish it goes to the the web in Spanish.

Well done Guys and Girls.
Your distribution is excellent,
Like PCLinux get some variety too.
I am impressed.

Standard edition has more options and Open Office.

Is my Selection of 100 Live CDs Scientific?

Before answering this questions I have to enumerate the limitations I had.

 

This was not a full time study and I had to to do this amidst lot of work and hardships.

To begin with I would not have done this if I had not gone abroad for a short but intensive stay abroad which included a Medical Examination Review.

 

When I started looking for Linux resources to take home there was nobody to guide me abroad. 

I had to find my own way.

 

I thought people abroad are more clever and they really had a choice in their selections. 

This was not true and that was my first scientific observation.

When I realize they are much stupider than me looking for an alternative operating system.

They thought I was stupid enough to ask such a question and me being not a local (foreign descent for them was a distinction of stupidity and not their own ignorance in scientific knowledge) they felt superior and comfortable selling a proprietary stuff.

The average Sri-Lankan feel very comfortable here but when abroad bend backwards including our M.P.s.

In fact I had to mount a fight to get what I wanted and there was only one Sri–Lankan guy standing beside me.

I had to say it is my money and I know how to spend that in my own way, not by market forces.

The difference was that I paid one third the price an average Guy / Girl pays for the stuff.

Vendors and O.E.M guys were worse off than the ordinary guys and girls.

Not knowing what to buy is a blessing for the vendors and the proprietary guys knows this very well well and brainwash the vendors first.

These guys in turn brainwash the average guy.

So what I state may look out of the blue and completely insane to the average but I believe there are lot of Guys / Girls who are more than average intelligence and their intelligence is always far superior to that of mine.

So I had to download the stuff myself and had few copies of Tiny Linux (including Puppy Linux) in my front shirt pocket to outsmart these gullible vendors.

When I displayed in few seconds what they take at least half an hour to display they had to stand back and watch (if not admiring) what I had in store. 

Then I turned to the web browser and typed two words that included my Christian name and Linux what flowed out of the web page was a shock for them and my friend standing by,

 

My friend had been a computer guy and was building his own web page for publication but he had to have several key strokes to present and sell his name. 

Finally we came to our room and I told him few Linux (he was not a Linux Guy anyway having been abroad very well brainwashed) tricks and started downloading distribution after distribution till it was three in the morning.

What it took six (6) months in Ceylon we did it in two days.

1. So my biggest handicap was the download speed and the throughput.

2. I had to shun DVDs to begin with due to this disability.

3. I had my own work to do and restrict my activity after midnight.

4. Testing could not be comprehensive due to time constraints.

5. Basically 386 testing but few of the 64 bits I tested in my laptop for fun.

6. My testing laptop only had a CD and no DVD and that also packed up (mounted a windows CD) not due to testing.

I managed to find a DVD (secondhand for a firsthand price) by that time I have passed 80.

7. Then last but not least I had to format and install new all the distribution s in my box four (4) times due to some of these said to nice and innocent LIVE CDs taking over my hard disk and erased (killer whales I call them and they think that there is only Microsoft there and not even DOS partition) everything (I only lost few Linux Images in the process).

This I took as and opportunity to test few of the distributions that had no Live CDs.

The list can go on.

Only silver lining in the sky was that we had two elections and I was bored to death and knew that this year nothing constructive would happen or emerge except me devoting full time to Linux and killing eavesdropping souls if there were any, especially election engineered.

Mind you I asked my former Dean to give me a desktop computer and leave it in a prominent place so that would be Linux guys can learn from me. He has gone now and a new one has come and because of my little pride left I decided not to offer or volunteer any teaching in Linux to the newcomer.

Instead I got permission to hold a mini workshop for my friends and students.

The theme of the workshop was Linux is not only Ubuntu.

But basically I displayed Ubuntu to the audience except for the last 15 minutes.

There are many more!

I believe some of my students will take the message across.

My other voluntary restrictions were

1. I downloaded only iso images.

2. Did not use torrent.

3. Did not use ZIP files.

4. Dis not use giz files.

5. I used only K3B for writing and only one Linux box (unlike old days windows and Nero) was used for downloading and it had only 76 GiB and only about 15 GiB for downloads. I had to save them in a U.S.B hard disk as well as on DVDs (USB DVD writer). So there were lot of little little inconveniences and I never lost an iso image except during the time the Killer Whaler Distributions went into panic mode (not me).

I do not recommend anybody to download them in Windows and Nero for writing.

High speed writing does cause damage to the isos.

Always should test the Media before booting if not done on Linux box.

Microsoft has found more than one way to kill these images when downloaded in a a Windows box. One lost file can be damaging and unlike Microsoft , the Images have to be 100%.

Nothing less nothing more.

To my surprise some of the commercial bent Linux distributions make sure that their images are slow to download and some with missing files.

This make the would be newbie to go to their site and buy from there ebay.

Unfortunately Mandriva (One of my favorites Mandake), Xandros and Linspire are culprits.

They have their hands tied down by Microsoft and they cannot do anything about these things happening.

They get caught pants down, though.

Mandravia is breaking up since insiders know very well these things are happening under their very nose and closed eyes.

It is a sad story for Mandrake and Mandriva fans.

Do not worry guys there are hundreds of alternatives distributions as I have listed.

Finally for those distros not included, my apologies,
I have used distros that updated from September 2009 to September 2010 but very few from Distromania archives for completeness sake and the variety, flavor and taste.

In future they should have iso in all formats.

Isos should be available in all formats.

Not only Torrent downloads but also HTTP.

ZIP for Linux guys.

Giz.biz for source and compiler guys.

Even Google Chrome has done this mistake.

So Guys and Girls enjoy the list in the Supper of Linux distributions in many flavors.

I have earned a welcome holiday and a vacation.

See you in 2011 with a Very Happy New year.

Please keep in touch if there are knew developments. in the meantime.