Debian the clear winner-The Gold for Light and Heavy Weight Championship

Now that the industrial action is over, we brought the Hero to Gyro (not giro and we could not be bought by money circulating on illegal hands or corruption) except perhaps few individual who had vested interests and wanted to be heroes at the expense of the general body politics of our action perpetuated by sheer needs and not aspirations (fell far short of aspirations of accountability, transparency, fairness).
These instant Heroes had unassailable lead and they had to be pulled down to base level and gyrate them on the correct path lest all of us would be heading for disaster.
We never had the political will to bring Heroes to Zeros but the vision to come to the base level we reached way back in 2008 and gyrate in correct orbit instead of asking for miracles which we will never achieve the way we sink into dirty tricks and manipulations by undesirables.

I hope senses will come to body politics of the country, unless of course the voters will bring the Heroes to Zeroes in double quick time at the correct gyroscopic orbit and time and they are not stupid or donkeys who carry burden.

We are of course in the minority in that context and what we can provide is wisdom if not vision.
We came to equilibrium position neither zero nor hero but a position of comfort from where we can gyrate to greater heights if correct recognition is extended.
Otherwise history will take us backward (like in cricket) instead of forward.

Debian

Coming to IT industry where there are commercial heroes but the clear winner which gyrate at the correct orbit is Debian.
It was no surprise.
Score of above 3000 and well above the Gold Standard of 2500 for the standard CD.
For the heavy weight category it is within the Gold Mark where no other distribution has all the components at hand with over 30,000 package well tested.
It has gParted which is around 100 MiB with partition and security features.
It has Blender, Scribus and Inkscape.
Only missing component was O.E.M. component.
It did not have a printed book but thanks to French and the English translation is due soon and available on line as open source.
It has all the versions from Mini to KDE to Server.
It has multi-language support including Sinhala.
It does not pretend to be a (commercial) hero but the wise counsel to all the other distributions which include Ubuntu and extending a hand to Linux Mint currently.
Additionally it is forging with FreeBSD too.
It is the clear winner.
If I said without my marking scheme everybody will say I am biased. Now it is vindicated and flame wars are not the necessity but a feature of Linux and its multi-faceted distributions..
Now I can say with or without bias it is the one that guides us and the Gyroscope for years to come.
If you need a solid, stable and secure enhanced Linux, there is only one and only one.
It is called Debian.
It is not for the lazy souls and it is the one who wants to dig a lot, sweat a bit and enjoy a lot of the hard labour.
Nothing is easy in the IT World.
One has to go into simple command line and give commanding orders till midnight commander sleeps like a sleeping beauty!

Linux in Sinhala and Installation of Debian 6.0 in Sinhala

I can now report to you that Debian DVD 1 (one of many) has Sinhala capability and is available at LinuxTracker with many seeders and one can download it in less than 24 hours.

Please do not go for point to pint download or slt.net.

The good news is that I have now installed Debain in Sinhala with Sinhala dropdown menu  (mixture of Sinhala and English) and it is amazingly good.

It is Gnome but I will miss K3B but  the Debian Sinhala is going to stay in my main computer from now onwards and I will be reporting bugs if I detect any.

I hope, in its next edition, it drops Openoffice and go for LibreOffice.

In any case, it is going to improve my Sinhala leaps and bounds.

Thank you Debian and the Translator Team.

I have no hesitation in recommending it’s use but with one or two advices and some warning is in order.

Please get a proficient Linux guy / girl to install it and do not copy the DVD with Nero.

For best use one must have an internet connection when  one installs it and Debian configures the card automatically (better have a router instead of telephone connection) in its initial install and please have patience, it takes a fairly long time to install (do it in the night when internet is not busy).

With those provisos HAPPY SINHALA LINUX for all.

Mind you this was edited with Sinhala Linux activated and Debian’s Iceweasel on the web track.

Old Note on the CD

Now I have tried installing Debian 6 in Sinhala, I can report back and say it can be done but prior understanding of Linux and how Debian does things is essential.

I also have to report that the 4 CD / DVD that I downloaded is not available in Linuxtracker due to unfortunate incidents there.

It is up and running but it will be sometime before all Debian CD/DVDs are restored for download.
Moment I have good news I will be posting it here and elsewhere.
I  have to tell you that I had  to format my hard disks and redo all the installations new.

It is all fun and game in Linux but took lot of my spare time and not having interesting cricket matches to watch was a bonus.

Everything went on smoothly and I was expecting to work in Sinhala after the installation but sadly it was not to be.

I could not select Sinhala at boot time and none of the Linux distributions let  you do that currently  and even though many of the Linux distributions have the multilingual capacity, Sinhala has not been promoted in the web world outside Sri-lanka.

I am afraid lot of translation work has to be done  in legible and lexicographical world of Sinhala and enough Sinhala fonts have to be installed in the usr/src folders.

Coding for fonts and character map is now available but translation of computer terminology is extremely difficult and many thanks for the guys and girls for trying it.

I enjoyed installing it in Sinhala with my limited ability in Sinhala but lot of guess work, in doing so but having known Debian for a long time and had sweated a lot learning Linux, a little over decade ago, the guess work (Sinhala terms) did work.

This gives an opportunity to learn how Linux works especially Debian for one who has difficulty in English language.

But my advice for all is one should be proficient in both Sinhala and English to be a successful translator and Learning Linux in that process is an added bonus.

I am not at all good in Sinhala to be of any help to you but I am there to test the capability of Sinhala in Linux and report to the wider web.

Thanks again guys and girls for trying a very difficult task.

With good team work and perseverance it can be accomplished and good luck with your future efforts.

Debian is the best Linux distribution to learn nuts and bolts of Linux, even though it is bit difficult to master it and the learning curve is steep at the beginning but it invariably drops quickly after the first year of trying.

Do not give up your efforts of Learning Linux in Sinhala and English too.

Linux100-SAMLinux-95

My live CD craze started with SAM 2007 and it went up to SAM 2009.
It is a derivative of PCLinuxOS and is based on xFce.

My attempt at testing 100 live CDs wouldn’t have taken place if I did not come across SAM-2007 almost by accident.  

All the credit goes to SAM and the xFce. This is long before the my discovery of PCLinux.  

It’s last edition based on PCLinux was on August, 2009.

I waited long to I see the new edition in 2010 that is not to be yet and that will be a brand new edition and not based on PCLinux.

Unfortunately it is not going to be before I finish the 100.

SAM 2007 was the best live CD for me for quite a long time with games and lot of web utilities and that was the CD I used to demonstrate Linux (how easy to mount a live CD and configure internet cards).

I will edit this page when a new edition is on the horizon.

PCLinux-2010-07-Update

PCLinux-2010-07 has released its latest CD. True to its origin keep it slim and fast unlike other KDE versions.
Go and download and enjoy Linux;
It is my Gold standard of Live installable CD.
It also has lighter weight versions and gnome versions too to download.
Pick is yours.
Do not forget to send a donation too.
This update was done on the fly with its live CD.
If you have problem with linking to the internet, the fault is with the Sri-Lankan Telecom.
Make a complain to Telecom and ask for a modem that does support Linux.
If you do not get a proper service let me know in return of wire post.
We have to pressurize them to do that.
Good Luck with Telecom!