Geek of the Month: Hans Reiser

For this April’s “Geek of the Month”, we will give tribute to one of the most controversial free software developer in history. His name is Hans Reiser, and he made headlines just recently.

On April 28, 2008 Hans Reiser was found guilty of first-degree murder after his wife’s disappearance. He faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. But who is Hans Reiser? Why is he that important?

To answer those questions, read this concise summary about his life:

Hans Reiser was born to Ramon Reiser and Beverly Palmer in December 1963. He grew up in California and dropped out of his junior high school before he was 14, citing disagreements with the conventional schooling system. He was accepted at the University of California, Berkeley at the age of 15 where he received a BA in Systematizing (an individualized major dealing with physics, math and related topics). Reiser was also one of the founding members of the Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley. Though preferring higher education, Reiser chose not to pursue a Ph.D., citing the same reasons he had dropped out of junior high school. He was therefore unable to pursue a further career in academia and worked part to full time in the computer field while founding and building the California-based international software company Namesys Inc. Prior to founding Namesys, Reiser held positions at Synopsys, IBM Research, Premos and ARDC.

In 1999, while working in Russia, Hans Reiser met and married Nina Sharanova, a Russian-born and trained obstetrician and gynecologist who was studying to become an American licensed OB/GYN. They had two children.

The Reisers separated in May 2004. Nina Reiser filed for divorce three months later, citing irreconcilable differences and saying that their children “hardly know their father” because he was out of the country on business for most of the year, according to court records, and was granted sole legal custody of the children and shared physical custody of them with her husband. The divorce was never finalized. Nina Reiser obtained a temporary restraining order against Hans in December 2004 after he allegedly pushed her, at the height of the divorce proceedings. She dropped the temporary restraining order in late 2005 because the heat of the divorce had chilled over time. In exchange, Hans Reiser agreed to be bound by a one year civil restraining order which prohibited him from “contacting, harassing or disturbing the peace” of Nina Reiser at her home or place of work and ordered him to stay at least 100 yards away from her. In May, Nina Reiser alleged in court filings that her husband had failed to pay 50 percent medical expenses and childcare expenses as ordered by a judge.

Nina Reiser’s Disappearance:
Nina Reiser was reported missing on September 5, 2006. She had last been seen on September 3, when she dropped the couple’s two children off with Hans, at his mother's house where he was living at the time. She also failed to meet her best friend at her house later that evening.

Nina Reiser's 2001 Honda Odyssey minivan, with groceries inside, was found on September 9 on Fernwood Drive in Oakland's Montclair district, just east of the CA-13 Warren Freeway. It was reported by police that neighbors first spotted the parked minivan on September 5, the day she was supposed to pick up her children at school.

Hans Reiser's neighbors said that they saw him spraying water off something in the driveway for half an hour shortly after Nina went missing and said that his car — a 1988 Honda CRX Si hatchback — disappeared shortly after, and his mother rented a car so Hans could drive hers. Police brought cadaver dogs in to search his property, but no human remains were found.

Following Nina Reiser’s disappearance, which resulted in the removal of the Reiser children from the Reiser family, Hans Reiser attempted to obtain custody but was unsuccessful. Oakland police, who generally do not testify in juvenile court custody cases, testified against Hans Reiser at the custody hearing, though they did not reveal the evidence on which they based their concerns.

In September 2006, Oakland police briefly detained Hans Reiser, served him with a search warrant on his person, and obtained a DNA sample.

On October 10, 2006, following the second search of his home (in which Oakland police and FBI investigators removed a number of items), police announced that they were now treating the disappearance as a homicide case, and Reiser was arrested for the murder of Nina Reiser and subsequently charged.

Following his arrest, a number of people in the Free Software community expressed concern over the future of Reiser's filesystem (ReiserFS). For example, a Slashdot thread on the subject of his arrest garnered over 1,600 comments, significant numbers of which discussed the future of the filesystem. However, the employees of Namesys have said that they will continue to work and that Reiser's arrest doesn't slow down the software development in the immediate future. They confirmed that if the case expands over a longer time, they would seek solutions to ensure the long-term future of Namesys. In order to afford increasing legal fees, it was announced on December 21, 2006 that Hans Reiser was going to sell his company. As of 2008, Namesys has not been sold.

Media and blog reactions after Hans Reiser was convicted:
CNN:
Programmer guilty of wife's murder

ZDNet:
Reiser found guilty of first degree murder

ars technica:
Hans Reiser is fscked: jury delivers guilty verdict

Practical Technology:
Was Reiser really found Guilty of being a Hacker?

San Francisco Chronicle:
Reiser juror: "Never showed sympathy" for Nina

Tech Source From Bohol:

If you ask my opinion about the guilty verdict, I would say that it was a bit harsh on Hans Reiser’s part because as what I have known, the evidence was weak and Nina’s body have not been found. But, in fairness to Nina’s family and her children, I hope the verdict will finally give them peace of mind and somehow help heal the wounds caused by these unfortunate consequences.

12 of the Best Media Players for Linux

One of the many perks of being a Linux user is that you have plenty of excellent software to choose from. This is especially true if you are in search for an essential application like a media player because there are definitely loads of options. However, this could sometimes be a disadvantage particularly to new-to-Linux users for the reason that they could get overwhelmed with the many choices they have.

To somehow guide those who are still looking for a media player that will suit their needs, I have put together a list that I hope will help. Take your pick from 12 of the best and certified quality media players for Linux.

Banshee
Banshee is a free audio player for GNU/Linux operating systems that is built upon Mono and Gtk#. It uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding, and decoding various music formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play, import and burn audio CDs, but it can not synchronize music with any portable media players, including Apple's iPod and Creative Zen players, in the current version. Music stored on the iPod can be played without synchronization, and album art stored in the Banshee library is transferred to the iPod. Support for MTP and PlaysForSure devices, as well as the Rio Karma player is planned for the near future.


Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework. It is currently under active development.

Playback from a variety of digital music sources is supported, excluding MIDI. The most common playback is music stored locally as files on the computer (the 'Library'). Rhythmbox supports playing streamed Internet radio and podcasts as well. The Replay Gain standard is supported.


Totem
Totem is a free software media player (audio and video) for the GNOME computer desktop environment that runs on Linux, Solaris, BSD and other Unix and Unix-like systems. It is officially included in GNOME starting from version 2.10 (released in March 2005), but de facto it was already included in most GNOME environments. The default backend is GStreamer framework but Totem can also use xine libraries. Totem is included as the default media player in many desktop Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Mandriva Linux and others.

Thanks to a large number of plugins developed for GStreamer, Totem is able to play all mainstream media formats, both open and proprietary ones. It also understands numerous playlist formats, including SHOUTcast, M3U, XML Shareable Playlist Format (XSPF), SMIL, Windows Media Player playlists and RealAudio playlists. Playlists are easily manageable using drag-and-drop features.


Amarok
Amarok is a free software music player for Linux or other varieties of Unix. It makes use of core components from the K Desktop Environment, but is released independently of the central KDE release cycle.

Amarok serves many functions rather than just playing music files. For example, Amarok can be used to organize a library of music into folders according to genre, artist, and album, can edit tags attached to most music formats, associate album art, attach lyrics, and automatically "score" music as it is played.

Here are the primary functions or uses for Amarok:
* Playing media files in various formats including but not limited to (depending on the setup) FLAC, Ogg, MP3, AAC, WAV, Windows Media Audio, Apple Lossless, WavPack, TTA and Musepack. Amarok does not play digital music files embedded with DRM.
* Tagging digital music files (currently FLAC, Ogg, WMA, AAC, MP3, and RealMedia).
* Associating cover art with a particular album, and retrieving the cover art from Amazon
* Creating and editing playlists, including smart and dynamic playlists. The dynamic playlists can use such information as the "score" given to a song by an Amarok script, and the playcount which is stored with the song.
* Synchronizing, retrieving, playing, or uploading music to the following digital music players: iPod, iriver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative ZEN, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support.
* Displaying artist information from Wikipedia and retrieving song lyrics.
* Last.fm support, including submitting played tracks (including those played on some digital music players) to Last.fm, retrieving similar artists, and playing Last.fm streams.
* Podcast


xine
xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. Another important feature of xine is the ability to manually correct the synchronization of audio and video streams. xine uses libraries from other projects such as liba52, libmpeg2, FFmpeg, libmad, FAAD2, and Ogle. xine can also use binary Windows codecs through a wrapper, bundled as the w32codecs, for playback of some media formats that are not handled natively.


Exaile
Exaile is a music player aiming to be similar to KDE's Amarok, but for GTK+ and written in Python. It incorporates many of the cool things from Amarok (and other media players) like automatic fetching of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via Wikipedia, Last.fm submission support, and optional iPod support via a plugin.

In addition, Exaile also includes a built-in SHOUTcast directory browser, tabbed playlists (so you can have more than one playlist open at a time), blacklisting of tracks (so they don't get scanned into your library), downloading of guitar tablature from fretplay.com, and submitting played tracks on your iPod to Last.fm.


KPlayer
KPlayer is a multimedia player for the KDE desktop environment. KPlayer uses MPlayer as the backend for playing multimedia files and provides a variety of additional features.

Features include:
* video, audio and subtitle playback from file, URL, DVD, Video CD, Audio CD, TV, DVB, and KIO Slaves;
* volume, contrast, brightness, hue and saturation controls;
* zooming, full screen and fixed aspect options;
* status and progress display and seeking;
* multimedia library to organize your media files and streams;
* configuration dialog;
* file properties for setting file specific options.


Kaffeine
Kaffeine is a media player for Unix-like operating systems running KDE.

By default it uses xine-lib media framework but also supports GStreamer. It also supports the use of MPlayer project's binary codecs for proprietary formats. Kaffeine developers have also produced a Mozilla plugin to start the player for streaming content over the web.

Features include streaming, DVB, DVD, Video CD and CD audio.


Audacious
Audacious is a GUI-based free software media player for POSIX systems, such as Linux.

It is a fork of Beep Media Player 0.9.7.1, which is itself a fork of XMMS. William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork Beep Media Player after the original development team announced that they were stopping development, in order to create a next-gen version, BMPx.

The reasons for the fork were purely technical. There were some quirks in Beep Media Player that had annoyed users, such as the ID3v2 tag handling, which had been reported as buggy by some users. The developers also had their own ideas about how a player should be designed, which they wanted to try in a production environment. Besides, Beep Media Player allegedly lacked functionalities that were considered useful for people who did streaming, such as support for an XMMS-like "songchange plugin".


XMMS2
XMMS2 (X-platform Music Multiplexing System 2) is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase. While Peter Alm, one of the original authors of XMMS, was responsible for the initial design and coding of XMMS2 (late 2002 to early 2003), he has since passed on the responsibility of furthering the project to Tobias Rundström and Anders Gustafsson.


MPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open source media player distributed under the GNU General Public License. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems; Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows versions work with some minor problems, and also in DOS using HX DOS Extender. A port for DOS using DJGPP is also available.

MPlayer supports a wide variety of media formats. In addition to its wide range of supported formats MPlayer can also save all streamed content to a file.

MPlayer is a command line application that has different optional GUIs for each of its supported operating systems. Commonly used GUIs are gmplayer (the default GUI for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems, and Microsoft Windows), MPlayer OS X (for Mac OS X), MPUI (for Windows) and WinMPLauncher (also for Windows). Several other GUI frontends are also available for each platform.


VLC
VLC media player is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but that meaning is now deprecated.

VLC uses a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries. Many of its codecs are provided by the libavcodec codec library from the FFmpeg project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.

Version 0.8.6, which adds support for WMV version 9 and enhances support for H.264, was released on 10 December 2006.

Weekly Ten (04-28-2008)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Ethanol, the ultimate home brew
What if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard for less than you pay at the pump? Would you?
More @ International Herald Tribune

2. What makes a design "Googley"?
Late in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing—set out to articulate the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide.
More @ Googleblog

3. Remote control function said hidden in iPhone beta firmware
Code in Apple's latest iPhone 2.0 beta firmware allegedly contains references to a utility that will let an iPhone or iPod touch play media from nearby iTunes sources.
More @ AppleInsider

4. DIY X-Men: flame throwing wrist guard
More @ HackaDay

5. Will Cute Factor Be Enough for Chumby?
Chumby, a Linux-based device that streams widgets, is cute -- there's little doubt about that. In order to gain traction in the consumer market, however, it's going to take a lot more than the cute factor, analysts say.
More @ LinuxInsider

6. Hackers Focus Efforts on Firefox, Safari
Many people are switching from Internet Explorer to alternative browsers such as Firefox and Safari. Though that might make them feel more secure, the shift has also opened new doors for bad guys.
More @ Washington Post

7. Microsoft earnings post-mortem: The cash cows quiver
The headlines on Microsoft’s fiscal 2008 third quarter earnings were all over the map this week — with claims that Microsoft beat expectations, to Microsoft fell far short of the mark.
More @ ZDNetBlogs

8. Man attempts LCD TV theft using water bottle UPC, fails
More @ Engadget

9. Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs
Lately I've been delving into the WordPress ecosystem, as it seems to be the most popular blogging platform around at the moment. I've set up two blogs with it so far. In the process, I've gotten quite comfortable with the setup, interface, and overall operation of WordPress.
More @ CodingHorror

10. Do You Have An Unrealistic Dream?
If you don’t have one, get one–Quick!
More @ BoSanchez

Girls Love Linux

If you think that Linux is only "for the boys", then think again. Did you know that there are women-oriented Linux communities that are created to provide both technical and social support for women Linux users? The most well known among them is called LinuxChix, and I’m not kidding. To know more about LinuxChix, I have collected some interesting facts about them so read on.

LinuxChix was founded in 1998-99 by Deb Richardson, who was a technical writer and webmaster at an open source consulting firm. Her reason for founding LinuxChix was to create an alternative to the "locker room mentality" of other Linux User Groups and forums.

LinuxChix started out as an electronic mailing list, but soon graduated into a community with regional chapters in several places around the world. In 1999 LinuxChix consisted of a single mailing list, grrltalk. The growth of this mailing list led to the establishment of other mailing lists, beginning with techtalk for technical discussions and issues for discussion of women's political issues. LinuxChix was first noticed when ZDNet published an article on it, which was cross-posted on Slashdot.

LinuxChix allows local groups following its principles to use its name. By 2002, there were 18 LinuxChix regional chapters in the United States, six in Europe, and five in Canada and two in Australia. In 2004 a new chapter started in Africa and 2005 saw the formation of LinuxChix_India. In 2007, the New Zealand chapter was established. In March 2007, on the International Women's Day, Australia's two LinuxChix chapters united to form a nationwide LinuxChix chapter called "AussieChix".

In 2006, LinuxChix inspired the creation of WikiChix, a wiki and mailing list for female wiki editors to discuss issues of gender bias in wikis.

LinuxChix may sound like a girl band to some of you, but don’t mess with these women because most of them surely know how to hack :)

MBP on Xubuntu/Ubuntu Hardy Heron WiFi Card Fix

Since I promised to keep everyone updated on my little Xubuntu on Macbook Pro adventure, I'm happy to tell you all that my WiFi card is now properly working. How did I do it? Just follow these very simple steps.

Note: The fix has only been tested on 4th gen. Macbook Pro with Penryn Processor and only in Xubuntu/Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" 32 bit.

1. Using Synaptic Package Manager (I assume you have Internet access via Ethernet cable/wire), install the following packages:

unrar
ndiswrapper-common
ndiswrapper-utils

2. Insert OS X Leopard installer DVD (disk 1) and find "broadcomxpinstaller.exe" in bootcamp/drivers folder, then copy and paste "broadcomxpinstaller.exe" to your home directory.

3. Open a terminal, then type this command:

unrar x broadcomxpinstaller.exe

4. Install broadcom wireless driver using this command:

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf sudo ndiswrapper -l sudo ndiswrapper -m sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

5. Setting ndiswrapper to auto load at boot time:

First, open "/etc/modules" on a text editor (use gedit instead of mousepad in Ubuntu) with this command:

sudo mousepad /etc/modules

Then, add:

ndiswrapper

at the last line and then save and close the file.

6. Creating file /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper

Add the ff. text below, then save and close the file.

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: ndiswrapper
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
# Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
### END INIT INFO
rmmod ohci_hcd
rmmod ssb
rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
modprobe ssb
modprobe ohci_hcd

7. Set file access permissions using this command:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper

8. Create a symbolic link call S99ndiswrapper in the folder /etc/rc2.d from /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper using this command:

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper /etc/rc2.d/S99ndiswrapper

9. You are done! Unplug the Ethernet wire then reboot to test your WiFi connection.


I hope that helps. Feel free to comment if you need some clarifications:

---
To do next:
Fix keyboard special key functions and backlight.
---

A Message from Steve Ballmer to Ubuntu

Good day to everyone.

After two years in the making, Canonical Ltd. has announced right on cue the Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu 8.04. In behalf of Microsoft Corporation, I would like to congratulate Mark Shuttleworth and each and every Ubuntu community members who made it all possible.

Now, you might be wondering why I'm posting my message here in this mostly Linux and Open Source related blog. My friends, my answer to that is simple , " I LOVE LINUX". Yes I do. It's a secret that I've been trying to keep for so many years. And because it's a secret no more, I would like to take this opportunity to tell the whole world that I love all the Free and Open Source guys. I love Linus Torvalds, Eric S. Raymond and Jon "Maddog" Hall. I love Richard M. Stallman and his hair, and all the FOSS people that I failed to mention here, I love them all. Seriously, I want to be like them.

Let me tell you another secret. I have been using this new version of Ubuntu since yesterday. Mark sent me a very special limited edition of Ubuntu 8.04 on a Blu-ray disk, the one with a serial and activation number. And all I can tell you is this; I really adore what I'm seeing that I wanted to do the monkey dance all over again. The Wubi thing, which let you install Ubuntu inside Windows is just magnificent. I also tried the spinning cube desktop effects and was just blown away that I immediately called Mr. Gates. He told me that he's been playing with it since last year and have been wanting to implement it on the next Windows version. However, he told me that he wanted to beat Linux by putting 3 desktop cubes spinning together side-by-side. I told him that it was a bad idea. Why not put 6 cubes? Bill then told me that he'd think about it.

We all know that Windows Vista is the finest, greatest and most excellent computer operating system in the history of mankind. But after extensively using Ubuntu last night for 26 long minutes, I can say that it is a good OS. Not as superb and as breathtaking as Vista but it is good nonetheless. And because Ubuntu is a nice OS, we are offering to buy Canonical Ltd. for 999.9 Billion Dollars. Take it or leave it Mr. SpaceShuttleworth.

I won't end this message without leaving you this wonderful motto. I want you all to live and breathe with this motto and place it deep inside your heart.
"SAY NO TO PIRACY"

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,
Steve Ballmer
Microsoft, CEO

This is just a silly parody and should not be taken seriously. I hope I won't lose my regular readers with this one ;-)

-Jun-

Xubuntu Hardy Heron is Ready for Takeoff

“So far, so good.” That is all I can say when I tested Xubuntu 8.04 RC last night on my Macbook Pro. I didn’t want to wait for tomorrow’s distribution release because I know the download will be slow during that time due to expected heavy traffic. Anyway, the Release Candidate version will almost be the same as the finished product, I think.

My first impression with Xubuntu “Hardy Heron” was rather respectable because first and foremost, the installation was trouble-free and it was smooth sailing all the way. The bug that I talked about on the Xubuntu Beta release was fixed. I also want to point out that the partitioning was much simpler and the overall installer was much more responsive and quicker than its predecessors.



The looks were pretty much the same as that of “Gutsy Gibbon” except for the default wallpaper. It’s not the usual boring light-bluish wallpaper anymore. The “Murrina Storm Cloud” theme was kept which I think was a good decision, because for me, it’s one of the best gtk themes out there. Also, I’m glad that there is now a ‘places menu’ at the top panel which I find very useful. I know that it is very easy to add the "Places" plug-in, but I think it is handy to include it by default for those who are new to using an XFCE desktop like that of Xubuntu.



There were some good and bad changes with the included and excluded applications or packages in this latest edition of Xubuntu. Let’s start with the good. Xubuntu now features the latest XFCE 4.4.2 desktop, Linux 2.6.24 kernel, X.org 7.3, Gnome Office 2.20.2 and Firefox 3 Beta 5 among others. Also worth noting is the new image viewer called Ristretto. The bad part is that I can’t seem to find the ‘Screens and Graphics Preferences” in the Settings menu. I think it is not included anymore or they must have forgotten it, I don’t know.


Some of you maybe curious to know how well my Apple (Macbook Pro) hardware handled “Hardy Heron”. As of the moment, the important components that are working properly are USB, Bluetooth, graphics card, CD/DVD drive, and Ethernet. The track-pad worked but with no multi-touch function. The keyboard is also usable although I still can’t get the special keys to get going which means I can’t use the screen brightness keys, eject button, and volume control shortcuts. Also, the audio and wireless Internet still needs to be configured. However, I find it consoling that the suspend/resume is working flawlessly, and I have successfully extended my laptop display to a secondary monitor.


To extend the Macbook Pro (Penryn) display to a secondary monitor in Xubuntu, you have to install and enable the Nvidia proprietary driver first, and you will need to reboot after the installation. Then, open a terminal and install Nvidia settings manager with this command:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

Next, open it with the command:

sudo nvidia-settings

A graphical Nvidia settings manager will appear, and from there you can now easily configure your dual monitor setup.


I noticed a slight glitch or bug every time I’m selecting a screen saver because the X server will restart on its own. I hope this will be fixed with a patch or in the final release.

Though I was kind of disappointed with the hardware support I’m getting with my Macbook Pro, I have high hopes that I will get everything going in due time. I will just keep you all posted especially those who are having the same problems like mine as soon as I have them fixed. For now, I will hang on to Xubuntu because it is still the best Linux desktop distro for me.

UPDATE: WiFi card is now working!
Keyboard Special Keys and Sound is Fixed!

Distro Rankings and Popularity Ratings through the Years

Have you ever wondered which Linux distribution was most popular during the previous years? If you have, then you may be interested in some of the data that I’m going to present to you.

With the aid of Distrowatch’s infamous ‘Page Hit Ranking’ system and Google Trends (a tool that shows the most popularly searched terms from 2004 up to present), we shall find out which distro had the most number of followers in the past. Here it goes:

2002
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Mandrake -473
2 -Red Hat -453
3 -Gentoo -326
4 -Debian -311
5 -Sorcerer -253
6 -SuSE -250
7 -Slackware -216
8 -Lycoris -209
9 -Lindows -151
10 -Xandros -123

2003
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Mandrake -770
2 -Red Hat -631
3 -Knoppix -489
4 -Gentoo -460
5 -Debian -428
6 -Yoper -390
7 -SUSE -366
8 -Slackware -357
9 -Lycoris -220
10 -Xandros -175

2004
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Mandrake -1,457
2 -Fedora -1,202
3 -KNOPPIX -910
4 -SUSE -858
5 -Debian -832
6 -MEPIS -694
7 -Gentoo -670
8 -Slackware -669
9 -PCLinuxOS -451
10 -Damn Small -416

(Google Trends)

2005
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Ubuntu -2546
2 -Mandriva -1664
3 -SUSE -1451
4 -Fedora -1211
5 -MEPIS -1145
6 -Debian -867
7 -KNOPPIX -830
8 -Damn Small -687
9 -Gentoo -647
10 -Slackware -613

(Google Trends)

2006
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Ubuntu -2640
2 -openSUSE -2027
3 -Fedora -1444
4 -MEPIS -1045
5 -Mandriva -1015
6 -Damn Small -841
7 -Debian -819
8 -PCLinuxOS -774
9 -Slackware -648
10 -Gentoo -618

(Google Trends)

2007
(Page Hit Ranking)
Rank -Distribution -H.P.D*
1 -Ubuntu -2519
2 -PCLinuxOS -2502
3 -openSUSE -1596
4 -Fedora -1332
5 -Sabayon -1087
6 -Mint -991
7 -Debian -953
8 -MEPIS -921
9 -Mandriva -845
10 -Damn Small -705

(Google Trends)

*H.P.D = hits per day

As you can see, nothing is constant in the world of distro rankings and popularity ratings. Mandrake was king of the hill from 2002-2004. Then, Ubuntu started its dominance in 2005. PCLinuxOS was inches away of kicking Ubuntu out of the top spot in Distrowatch ranking in 2007. However, it is interesting to note that PCLinuxOS was way below in Google Trends during that year while Ubuntu was really soaring high.

So there you have it. I want to know your thoughts about this one.

Weekly Ten (04-21-2008)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Should All Developers Have Manycore CPUs?
Dual core CPUs are effectively standard today, and for good reason -- there are substantial, demonstrable performance improvements to be gained from having a second CPU on standby to fulfill requests that the first CPU is too busy to handle.
More @ CodingHorror

2. Working together to fight malware
As part of this ongoing security series, we'd like to talk a little about malware. The term malware, derived from "malicious software," refers to any software specifically designed to harm your computer or the software it's running.
More @ Googleblog

3. The 500,000 GB MP3 Player
Sounds impossible? It could really happen, thanks to a new breakthrough.
More @ DigitalTrends

4. Electric (off-road) skateboard
More @ HackaDay

5. Will Hardy Heron Shine Where Red Hat Fears to Tread?
Red Hat's announcement that it would give up its pursuit of the consumer desktop with a Linux-based operating system started quite a buzz on the Linux blogs this week. The acceptance of Linux as a consumer alternative to Windows and Mac OS X is a perennial issue in the open source community.
More @ LinuxInsider

6. PayPal may block Safari users
As part of a multi-tiered approach to guarding against online fraud on its site, PayPal says it will block the use of any web browser that doesn't provided added validation measures, potentially restricting the current version of Safari from the e-commerce site.
More @ AppleInsider

7. PETA’s Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to pay a million dollars for fake meat — even if it has caused a “near civil war” within the organization.

More @ NYTimes

8. Pioneer intros the NavGate AVIC-F900BT and AVIC-F700BT GPS units
More @ Engadget

9. Asustek to Launch Eee PC With 10-inch Screen
Asustek plans to launch a new version of the Eee PC with a 10-inch screen, a top executive said Monday.
More @ PCWorld

10. Is Praying Supposed To Be Fun?
Do you struggle praying daily? I did. For years.
More @ BoSanchez
---

20 Coolest Linux Distro-themed Wallpapers

Since my list of 25 Coolest Linux Wallpapers unexpectedly became a huge hit, I’m going to share to you some more to keep the Linux pride alive. This time, I have collected some of the coolest, high quality distro-themed wallpapers. I know that you are excited already, so let’s cut to the chase and just present to you the "20 Coolest Linux Distro-themed Wallpapers" in no particular order.

1. Fedora


2. Debian


3. Kubuntu


4. CentOS


5. FreeBSD


6. Gentoo


7. Mint


8. Mandriva


9. Mepis


10. PCLinuxOS


11. OpenBSD


12. Ubuntu


13. RedHat


14. Slax


15. Sabayon


16. Suse


17. Slackware


18. Zenwalk


19. Xubuntu


20. Ubuntu, Suse, Debian, Fedora

What Linux and Open Source Related Websites Are on Your Feed Reader?

I want to share to you some of my Linux related feed subscriptions where i get all the news and information to stay up-to-date. This could be valuable to those who are still at their getting-to-know Linux stage, as well as long time Linux users who have yet to discover some of the useful and interesting posts from these sites:

Slashdot
Source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues. The most popular tech and Linux related website on the planet.
Avg. Posts per Week: 137.2
Feed URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot

Linux Today
News, forum, related to Open Source software and community. One of the best Linux and Open Source news aggregator site.
Avg. Posts per Week: 149.1
Feed URL: http://linuxtoday.com/backend/biglt.rss

Distrowatch
Latest news on Linux distributions and BSD projects.
Avg. Posts per Week: 13.8
Feed URL: http://distrowatch.com/news/dw.xml

Tuxmachines
"Do you waddle the waddle?" Some of the biggest Linux and Open Source news are always featured here first.
Avg. Posts per Week: 196.9
Feed URL: http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/feed

Linux.com
"A Means to World Liberation!" Their goal is to provide all the information necessary to make your use of Linux a success.
Avg. Posts per Week: 17.5
Feed URL: http://www.linux.com/index.rss

Linux Journal
The monthly magazine of the Linux community, promoting the use of Linux worldwide.
Avg. Posts per Week: 8.4
Feed URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/feed

LXer
Linux and open source news aggregation, editorials, reviews, and announcements.
Avg. Posts per Week: 166.8
Feed URL: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/headlines.rss

HowtoForge
HowtoForge provides user-friendly Linux tutorials about almost every topic.
Avg. Posts per Week: 10.5
Feed URL: http://www.howtoforge.com/node/feed

Linux Insider
Linux news and information from around the world with fresh perspective on Linux and the open-source movement.
Avg. Posts per Week: 18.7
Feed URL: http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/syndication/rssfull


How about you? What Linux and Open Source related websites are on your Feed Reader?
---

Top 5 Potential YouTube Killers

YouTube is without doubt the most popular video sharing website on the planet with daily page views of around 100,000,000. At the moment, there are plenty of video sharing sites that are striving to take YouTube down. If you ever wondered which other video sharing websites come close to YouTube in terms of audience share, then you have to read this list of "5 Potential YouTube killers".

5. sevenload

sevenload is an online Web-2.0 media platform used for managing multi media contents. It has estimated page views of about 1,500,000 per day.

sevenload allows users to upload their video and photo contents onto the site and then tag them, put them in albums and share them with other users. In addition, sevenload offers users various multiple other features which are often associated with Web 2.0 websites and interact with other users on the site. sevenload is currently available in three languages: English, German and Turkish. Plans for other languages such as French and Spanish are being made.


4. iFilm
ifilm.com was an online archive of short films, movie trailers, and other video clips of interest. Originally founded by independent media and filmmaker Raphael Raphael in 1997 as interactive film and media collective, it now hosts a variety of viral marketing videos, allowing these clips to spread between users easily.

On October 15, 2005, iFilm was purchased by MTV Networks in a multi-million dollar deal. It has since been rebranded as the online site of Spike.

ifilm.com has around 2,000,000 page views daily.


3. Metacafe
Metacafe is the largest independent video sharing web site, specializing in short-form original entertainment, where users upload, view, and share video clips.

Metacafe is similar to other top video viewing websites such as YouTube or Dailymotion, but with several key differences. Core differentiators include duplication elimination, adult content filtering, an 80,000 community member reviewer panel, VideoRank™, and Producer Rewards™. Its VideoRank™ system gauges viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove most popular to its viewers. Additionally, Metacafe pays video creators for original work that has exceeded a certain threshold of both total views and VideoRank score through its Producer Rewards™ Program.

Metacafe has an average of 17,000,000 page views per day.


2. Dailymotion
Dailymotion is a video hosting service website, based in Paris, France. Its domain name was registered one month after YouTube (but the site opened one month earlier) with gandi.net, a French internet domain name provider, and at least one name server is based in France with the .fr name extension.

The site is well known for its superior video quality in comparison with other flash-enabled video hosting websites.

As of January 2008, the site was getting about 16,000 new videos posted daily, and page views in excess of 26 million per day. As of January 2008, Dailymotion had a global Alexa Internet ranking of 38.


1. Tudou
Tudou is the largest video sharing websites in China. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September, 2007 served over 55 million videos each day.

Tudou states they are one of the world's largest bandwidth users, moving more than 1 Petabyte per day to 7 million users. YouTube does serve a larger number of videos per day, but since the average Tudou video is longer in duration, the total amount of minutes of video being streamed daily from Tudou is significantly larger - about 15 billion minutes vs. 3 billion for YouTube.

Tudou’s daily page view is around 55,000,000.

Why Mac OS X Sucks and Linux Rocks

As some of you may know, I had my very first taste of Mac a few weeks ago. I got a Macbook Pro (Penryn) which comes with the standard OS X Leopard. But for the sake of sanity, I immediately installed Linux, in particular Xubuntu “Gutsy Gibbon” on that new Apple hardware of mine with the aid of BootCamp.

Xubuntu works on my MBP, but not that well as there are still important hardware issues that need to be fixed. I decided not to repair the problems any longer and just wait for the release of “Hardy Heron”. So while I waited, I used Leopard more and more the past week.

At first, I enjoyed playing with Leopard. I used it like an ordinary computer user and didn’t want to set-up my coding and development tools yet. I surfed the web, wrote emails and blog posts, took some funny photos using Photo Boot, watched videos, and listened to music all in that glorified operating system called OS X. I find its new multi-touch function really handy, and extending my laptop display to a secondary monitor was no sweat. Its fast start-up time is also worth noting. I’m beginning to love that sleek and cool-looking OS and have almost forgotten my humble Xubuntu partition…almost.

It started with an audio problem. While playing my favorite tunes on iTunes (duh!), I heard this crackling and popping sound coming from my Macbook Pro’s built-in speakers. I was worried because I began to think that it was a hardware trouble, but when I searched for answers by reading posts from several Mac forums, I learned that this was after all caused by MBP’s sound card that automatically turns off (or is turned off by OS X) when the computer is idle to save battery life. So I assumed that that was just a software glitch which can be patched up soon, I hope.

Next up is the web browser issue. Because I don’t like using Safari, I installed the greatest and safest browser in the world which is Firefox. Several days later, while visiting a number of trusted sites including my own site, Firefox automatically downloaded a file and then opened a new window containing some weird codes and an animated links to some advertised sites. I thought this can be fixed by cleaning the cache or browsing history, but it didn’t. I also tried using Safari but the same thing happened over and over again.

The last thing that I’m going to complain about my Mac OS X adventure is speed. While Leopard booted really fast, it was slow to open an application and seemed always running sluggish. I would rather start slow and be the first to finish, than to start fast but ends up last. I’m really into speed and it's the main reason why I prefer using lightweight Linux distros.

For now, I decided to quit using Leopard (except when I want to take funny and distorted pictures), and I am more determined than ever in making Linux (Xubuntu) fully compatible with my Macbook Pro. You may ask why I think Linux rocks. Perhaps an article here, here, and here can somehow help explain my line of reasoning.

If you agree or disagree with me, feel free to comment.

Slax 6.0 on an Ancient Prestigio 109 Laptop

My first good impression of Slax was documented on my Slax, the Shrunken Slackware post. It was with Slax 6.0 RC7, a development release version which I tested under VMWare Server. So recently, I decided to take a closer look at Slax, by getting the latest “Distribution Release” which is version 6.0.3. This time, I’m using our ancient Prestigio 109 laptop to fully check the features and capabilities of this tiny distro. By the way, you can get Slax from their project website HERE.

This old mobile computer of ours has 1GHz VIA Nehemia processor, 256MB RAM, and 20GB hard drive. The hardware specifications may not seem that old to some of you, but if you’ll compare these to today’s laptop specs, you will agree with me. Just a little history of our beloved Prestigio 109 laptop; its original operating system is Windows XP. I decided to install Zenwalk later on after my wife complained that XP is starting to run like a turtle. I then switched to Ubuntu, then Mepis, and then finally settled with Xubuntu.

So how did Slax 6.0 get along with our ageing not-so-portable machine? Read on.


When the Slax Live CD was loaded, I was greeted with the familiar Slax boot options menu screen. I had a choice to start Slax in the default Graphics mode. I also had an option to copy Slax first to RAM to make it run faster, to start it in Text or command prompt mode, or to begin in VESA mode. I opted to start Slax the default way and then let it boot. Without delay, I was taken to the Slax KDE desktop.



The desktop look is still the same since the RC7 version of Slax. It's cool-looking default wallpaper and its splash image are still unchanged. There’s really nothing fancy about its overall appearance, just a simple KDE desktop with very minor customization. But, I don’t want to judge the book (I mean the distro) by its cover alone.



Slax comes with plenty of useful applications to keep the average desktop users happy. Some of its included free/open-source software packages are KOffice suite (contains a word processor, spreadsheet, and slide presenter), Kuickshow image viewer, KolourPaint (where’s Gimp?), Kplayer (video player), JuK (audio player), K3b (CD/DVD burner), Perl scripting language (where’s Python?), KWrite (Text Editor), Konqueror file and web browser (where’s FireFox?), some games, and plenty more. Flash is already installed by default so you don’t have to worry about it if you are into watching Youtube or any other flash-based videos.



There’s a Slax Module Manager with a purpose of getting and installing additional packages, but it seems the modules are not available (see screenshot below) in this distribution release. I find it odd because the modules were available in the “Release Candidate” version without me having to configure anything. I'm sorry to say that I just didn’t have the luxury of time to dig further and find the cause of this problem.


The good thing about Slax 6.0 is that it jelled well with Prestigio 109 laptop’s old hardware. The audio, USB, CD drive, and Ethernet were properly recognized and were functioning the way I want them to function. The display was also correctly set to its default 1024 x 768 resolution. I really had no problem hardware-wise and I can say that it was smooth sailing all along.



Because Slax is fast and lightweight, it is naturally an ideal distro for older computer machines like our ancient laptop. However, I must say that it is still not for everyone. I think it is not yet ideal for Linux beginners since newbies will probably need a distro that is a lot easier to use and has a widespread community support. Also, there are still issues that need to be fixed like the one I said above. But, as I’ve stated before, Slax is a good tool for those who are technically oriented because Slax can be utilized for rescuing a broken system. Or if you are willing enough, it is possible to build your very own Linux distro out of Slax.

Though Slax 6.0 needs a little improvement, I feel that it still a quality, reliable, and stable distribution release. I will be keeping an eye on Slax and hope for the best on their future releases.

Weekly Ten (04-14-2008)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them
In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.
More @ Wired

2. Rediscovering Arcade Nostalgia
I can also attribute my career in software development to arcade games. Like many software developers, my introduction to programming was my Dad telling me if I wanted to play video games at home, I had to write them first.
More @ CodingHorror

3. Developers, start your engines
We just launched a preview release of Google App Engine, a way for developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure. In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run web applications.
More @ Googleblog

4. Ben Heck's PS3 Laptop
More @ HackaDay

5. Linux Ecosystem Revenue to Near $50 Billion by 2011
Analytic firm IDC sees revenue from Linux-oriented servers, software and services reaching $49 billion in three years, more than double what it is today.
More @ LinuxInsider

6. Microsoft-Yahoo-Google: The vicious antitrust circle
Within minutes of Yahoo announcing it was going to do an AdSense for Search deal with Google, Microsoft began firing the antitrust warning shots.
More @ ZDNetBlogs

7. IBM's 'racetrack' technology could increase iPhone storage tenfold
A new form of digital storage technology under development at IBM could deliver more than tenfold increases in both the storage capacity and battery life of handheld gadgets like Apple's iPod and iPhone, according to the company's claims.
More @ AppleInsider

8. Psystar's OpenMac clone is close to a Cease and Desist order
More @ Engadget


9. Wikipedia breeds 'unwitting trust' says IT professor

If you are faced with the prospect of having brain surgery who would you rather it be performed by - a surgeon trained at medical school or someone who has read Wikipedia?

More @ ComputerWorld

10. I Still Date My Ex-Girlfriend
After ten years of marriage, I’m still crazy for this woman.
More @ BoSanchezBlog
---

Free/Open-source Multimedia File Formats

A Multimedia file format is a particular way to encode multimedia files such as audio, video, and images for storage in a computer file.

Some of the most known closed-source multimedia formats are MP3, WMV, and QuickTime. However, I prefer to utilize free and open-source multimedia file formats because their full specifications are freely available and for which there are no restrictions (e.g. legal or technical) on their use. They are also good for interoperability and to prevent vendor lock-in.

Here are some of the most widely-used free/open-source multimedia file formats.

Portable Network Graphics
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace the GIF format, as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. The PNG initialism is optionally recursive, unofficially standing for “PNG's Not GIF”.

PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit RGB colors), greyscale or RGB images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other color spaces (such as CMYK).

PNG files nearly always use file-extension "PNG" or "png" and are assigned MIME media type "image/png".


Multiple-image Network Graphics

Multiple-image Network Graphics (MNG) is a public graphics file format for animated images.
MNG is closely related to the PNG image format. When PNG development started in early 1995, developers decided not to incorporate support for animation, not least because this feature of GIF was seldom used at the time. However, work soon started on MNG as an animation-supporting version of PNG. Version 1.0 of the MNG specification was released on January 31, 2001.

MNG is currently not as widely supported as PNG. Nonetheless, Konqueror has native MNG support, and MNG plugins are available for most other web browsers. Mozilla browsers and Netscape 6.0, 6.01 and 7.0 included native support for MNG until the code was removed in 2003 due to code size and little actual usage, causing complaints on the Mozilla development site. As a result, a MNGzilla project was started to offer patched Mozilla and Firefox browsers. Neither Internet Explorer nor Safari currently supports MNG. Recent Sony Ericsson phones support MNG files in their themes.

Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML specification and file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated. SVG can be purely declarative or may include scripting. Images can contain hyperlinks using outbound simple XLinks. It is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium's SVG Working Group.


Ogg is a multimedia container format, and the native file and stream format for the Xiph.org multimedia codecs. As with all Xiph.org technology, it is an open format free for anyone to use.

As with most container formats, it encapsulates raw compressed data and allows the interleaving of audio and video data inside a single convient format. Other examples of container formats are Quicktime .mov, the MPEG program stream, and AVI.

In addition to encapsulation and interleave of multiple data streams, Ogg provides packet framing, error detection, and periodic timestamps for seeking, and in a small, bounded percentage bitrate overhead.

Ogg is a stream oriented container, meaning it can be written and read in one pass, making it a natural fit for internet streaming and use in processing pipelines. This stream orientation is the major design difference over other file-based container formats.

Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open source, lossy audio codec project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and intended to serve as a replacement for MP3. It is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is therefore called Ogg Vorbis.

Vorbis development began following a September 1998 letter from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft announcing plans to charge licensing fees for the MP3 audio format. Soon after, founder Christopher "Monty" Montgomery commenced work on the project and was assisted by a growing number of other developers. They continued refining the source code until a stable version 1.0 of the codec was released on July 19, 2002.


FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation, has a well documented format and API, and has several other independent implementations.


Speex is an Open Source/Free Software patent-free audio compression format designed for speech. The Speex Project aims to lower the barrier of entry for voice applications by providing a free alternative to expensive proprietary speech codecs. Moreover, Speex is well-adapted to Internet applications and provides useful features that are not present in most other codecs. Finally, Speex is part of the GNU Project and is available under the revised BSD license.


WavPack is a completely open audio compression format providing lossless, high-quality lossy, and a unique hybrid compression mode. Although the technology is loosely based on previous versions of WavPack, the new version 4 format has been designed from the ground up to offer unparalleled performance and functionality.

In the default lossless mode WavPack acts just like a WinZip compressor for audio files. However, unlike MP3 or WMA encoding which can affect the sound quality, not a single bit of the original information is lost, so there's no chance of degradation. This makes lossless mode ideal for archiving audio material or any other situation where quality is paramount. The compression ratio depends on the source material, but generally is between 30% and 70%.

The hybrid mode provides all the advantages of lossless compression with an additional bonus. Instead of creating a single file, this mode creates both a relatively small, high-quality lossy file that can be used all by itself, and a "correction" file that (when combined with the lossy file) provides full lossless restoration. For some users this means never having to choose between lossless and lossy compression!


Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+.

Development of MPC was initiated in 1997 by Andree Buschmann and later taken over by Frank Klemm, and is currently maintained by the Musepack Development Team (MDT) with assistance from Frank Klemm and Andree Buschmann. Encoders and decoders are available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, along with plugins for several third-party media players available from the Musepack website, licensed under the LGPL or BSD licenses, and an extensive list of programs supporting the format.


The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free Container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in conception to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is completely open source. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (and audio) and .MKA for audio-only files.


Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
SMIL, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C recommended XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations. It defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual transitions, and media embedding, among other things. SMIL allows the presentation of media items such as text, images, video, and audio, as well as links to other SMIL presentations, and files from multiple web servers. SMIL markup is written in XML, and has similarities to HTML.

A Simple Python Alarm Clock

Problem: You are all alone in a far away land and needed to wake up early the next day. The problem is, you forgot to bring any alarm clock. But, you brought a Linux-powered laptop computer with you. Say for example an Asus Eee PC.


Solution: Most Linux distributions have Python installed out-of-the-box. All you need is this very simple Python alarm clock script:

import time
import os

not_executed = 1

while(not_executed):
dt = list(time.localtime())
hour = dt[3]
minute = dt[4]
if hour == 5 and minute == 45:
os.popen2("open /Users/jun/shout.mp3")
not_executed = 0


Happy Hacking! :)

Free/Open-source Optical Disk Authoring Software

Optical disc authoring software, most commonly known as CD/DVD burning application is computer software for authoring optical discs such as CD-ROMs and DVDs. An optical disc recorder is necessary to use such software.

Creating an optical disc typically involves first making an optical disc image with a full file system designed for the optical disc, and then actually burning the image to the disc. Many programs create the disk image and burn in one bundled application, such that end-users do not even know the distinction.

Though most Linux distributions have cdrtools (standard open source optical disc authoring software) installed, there are other excellent and easy-to-use CD/DVD burning programs that are available for Linux.

Here are some of the finest free/open-source optical disk authoring software:

Brasero
Brasero is a free disc-burning program for Unix-like systems, which serves as a graphical front-end (using GTK+) to cdrtools, growisofs, and (optionally) libburn. One of the lead developers, Luis Medinas, is a contributor for other projects such as Muine (audio player) and Beagle (search tool), both written in C# using Mono. He is a Gentoo Developer involved in the Gentoo Gnome Team, and maintains miscellaneous applications for the GNOME project.[1] The software itself has been reviewed in a few places.


AcetoneISO
AcetoneISO is a disk image manipulator for GNU/Linux.

It is a feature-rich and complete software application to manage CD/DVD images. For example it can Mount typical proprietary images formats of the Windows world and do plenty of other things.

It uses common open source tools to achieve its goals such as FUSEISO.


Bashburn
Bashburn is no more than a Terminal User Interface (TUI) frontend based of the CD burning shell script called BashBurn for Linux; this originally does not have the best eye-candy CD-burning UI, nevertheless, MyBashBurn uses dialog boxes/functions which draws (using ncurses) windows onto the screen. MyBashBurn dialog boxes offer good functionality, and has very good capabilities of automatically finding dependencies and auto detecting devices CD/DVD RW. In short, do not reinvent the wheel - just let MyBashBurn do what you want it to do.

MyBashBurn can burn data Cd's, music Cd's, multisession Cd's. It can burn and create ISO files. It can burn bin/cue files, create mp3s, oggs and flac files. Supports burning DVD-images and data DVDs, and other funny options. Also makes use of advanced and extensive regular expressions for the control of the capabilities of backend applications to burn and create audio files. MyBashBurn depends on cdrecord and other backend applications, so basically if your writing device works with it, MyBashBurn will work flawlessly.

cdrdao
cdrdao records audio or data CD-Rs in Disk-At-Once mode based on a textual description of the CD contents. The cdrdao program runs from the command line and has no graphical user interface, except for third-party ones such as K3b (Linux) or XDuplicator (windows).

cdrdao is cross-platform software and is reported to work on FreeBSD, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, UnixWare, and Mac OS X.

Exact Audio Copy, an advanced CD-ripping software package, relies upon CDRDAO code in order to provide CD-burning functionality.


GnomeBaker
GnomeBaker is part of the GNOME desktop environment.

The GnomeBaker offers many features for authoring CDs that surpass the basic Nautilus CD/DVD burning capabilities. Among these are the possibility to create an audio cd from existing sound files and other useful things.

An overview of available functions is given here:
* Create data CDs.
* Blank RW disks.
* Burn DVDs.
* Copy data CDs.
* Copy audio CDs.
* Support multisession burning.
* Record to and burn from existing CD ISO images.
* Can burn via SCSI and ATAPI on Linux kernels 2.4 and 2.6. Basically if cdrecord works, then GnomeBaker will work.
* Drag and drop to create data CDs (including drag and drop to/from the Nautilus file manager).
* Create audio CDs from existing WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg files.
* Integrate with GConf for storage of application settings.


Graveman
Graveman is a free software CD burning tool for Linux. It is technically a GTK+ front-end for cdrecord, mkisofs, readcd, sox, flac, dvd+rw-format, dvd+rw-tools and cdrdao.

Currently, Graveman supports the following:
* creating audio CDs
* creating data CDs and DVDs
* recording to and from ISO images
* CD copying
* erasing rewritable CDs and DVDs
* burning multisession CDs


K3b
K3b (from KDE Burn Baby Burn) is a CD and DVD authoring application for the KDE desktop for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual disc recording in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord or wodim, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b features a built-in DVD ripper.

K3b was voted LinuxQuestions.org's Multimedia Utility of the Year (2006) by the majority (70%) of voters.

As is the case with most KDE applications, K3b is written in the C++ programming language and uses the Qt GUI toolkit. Released under the GNU General Public License, k3b is free software.

What's the Smallest Computer that Runs Linux?

More and more Linux-powered Ultra-Mobile PCs are appearing out of nowhere. I think it started with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) which is merely 1.45KG in weight and have an approximate dimensions of 242mm x 228mm x 32mm. Then there's the ever popular ASUS Eee PC with light as a feather weight of 895g. The list is getting longer and longer already. If you think that these new breed of ultra-portables are the smallest computers in the world that are running Linux, then you have to read on.

Meet Picotux, considered as the smallest Linux computer on earth. Actually, there are more than a few kinds of Picotux available, but the main one is the picotux 100. It is 35mm x 19mm x 19mm and just barely larger than a RJ45 connector. Two communication interfaces are provided, 10/100 Mbit/s half/full duplex Ethernet and a serial port with up to 230.400 bit/s. Five additional lines can be used for either general input/output or serial handshaking.


The Picotux 100 operates a 55 MHz 32-bit ARM7 Netsilicon NS7520 processor, with 2 MB of Flash Memory (750 KB of which contains the OS) and 8 MB SDRAM Memory. The operating system is uClinux 2.4.27 Big Endian. BusyBox 1.0 is used as main shell. The Picotux system runs at 250 mA only and 3.3 V +/- 5%.


For more details on Picotux, visit their website at www.picotux.com.

Free/Open-source Television Software

Watching live or recorded TV feeds using a desktop computer is made possible using television software. Most TV software applications nowadays are integrated into media center programs with playback support for almost all kinds of media contents such as audio, video, image files and even RSS feeds.

To those who are using Linux and are looking for some television software, then you are in luck because there are plenty to choose from. Here is a list of some of the best free/open-source television software that you may want to try out:

Freevo
Freevo is a full-featured personal video recorder application for Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X similar to MythTV. It allows easy playback of videos, DVDs, pictures, music, and watching live TV. It also allows scheduling a TV program for recording with a TV tuner, and backup of DVDs.

The Freevo front-end is programmed in Python, and uses 3rd party applications for many of its functions. MPlayer or Xine are used to handle the multimedia playback. Freevo is intended to be used in home theater PCs and media centers, and is designed to be easy to operate with just a remote control. Freevo is used by the GeeXboX project.


GeeXboX
GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution that aims at turning your computer into a so-called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Being a standalone LiveCD-based distribution, it's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM.

Despite its tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.

GeeXboX also comes with a complete toolchain that allows developers adding easily extra packages and features but that might also be used to give birth to many dedicated embedded Linux systems.


KatchTV
KatchTV is an Internet TV application for the KDE desktop, which is popular on Unix-like operating systems such as Linux. Similar to Miro Media Player, KatchTV allows users to find and watch digital TV channels (in the form of podcasts). By clicking on a channel's feed button from a website such as VODStock, users can subscribe to that channel. For all subscribed channels, they can see a list of episodes available, and can download episodes of their choice. Any downloaded episodes can be watched from directly within the program. KatchTV is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL.


kdetv
kdetv is a television capturing program in the KDE application suite (though one of the "Extragear" programs, released separately) that allows Linux and UNIX users to view television programs on their computer, if they have a working TV tuner card installed. The requirements on having a TV tuner card include having an ALSA or OSS-compatible mixer (for audio), and video4linux, video4linux2, or XVideo-input (for video).


LinuxMCE
LinuxMCE (Linux Media Center Edition) is a free and open source software platform designed to allow a computer to act as a HTPC (Home Theater PC) with a personal video recorder complemented by home automation functionality, which allows control of everything in the home including lighting, climate, home security and surveillance, and a full-featured phone system with video conferencing.


LinuxTV
The LinuxTV project is an informal group of volunteers who develop software related to digital television for the Linux operating system. The community develops and maintains the DVB driver subsystem that is part of the Linux 2.6.x kernel. The Linux kernel and the LinuxTV CVS include a fair number of drivers for commonly available PCI cards and USB devices, but the DVB subsystem core is also targeted towards Linux based set-top boxes.

The LinuxTV project was originally initiated by the Berlin, Germany based company Convergence Integrated Media GmbH with the goal to distribute free and open source software for the production, distribution and reception of digital television. In 1998, the Convergence founders claimed, "Only the access to the source code of our future television sets will guarantee the independence of content and technology".


My Media System
My Media System is an Open Source application for Linux that manages, displays and plays media content such as videos, music, pictures etc. The target platforms of this application are Set-Top-Boxes and HTPCs.

My Media System is being developed since 2002 and was formerly known as Mpeg Menu System V2 but changed its name in October 2006 with the 1.0.8 release to My Media System to better reflect its current feature set. My Media System was originally written as a software front end for the DXR3 card but has since been extended so that it now works with the DVB, SDL, X11, and frame buffer output systems.

Unlike the commercial Media Center MCE from Microsoft, or the also free Media Centers, like Freevo, MythTV or LinuxMCE, MMS has no TV functionality of its own, but offers the possibility to integrate such.


MythDora
MythDora is a specialized Linux distribution based on Fedora Core 6 and MythTV 0.20-1. Like KnoppMyth, MythDora is designed to simplify the installation of MythTV on a home theatre PC. Unlike KnoppMyth, however, it does not run as a Live CD. The distribution is installed on the computer in order to run.

In addition to MythTV and its plugins, Mythdora includes extra Linux packages that are necessary for MythTV to run, and drivers for hardware commonly encountered in machines intended to run MythTV. Also included in Mythdora are several video game emulators, and extra tools and scripts. These aid with the initial configuration of the system and allow the user to perform such tasks as rebooting the machine and backing up program data, directly through the MythTV interface.


MythTV
MythTV is a Linux application that turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer. MythTV is free software licensed under the GPL. It can be considered as a free and open source alternative to Tivo or Windows Media Center.

MythTV features:

* A backend server and front-end client architecture, allowing multiple front-end client machines to be remotely served content from one or more backend servers. A single computer can perform as both the front-end client and the backend server.
* Analyzes recorded shows for optional commercial skipping
* Play recordings at an accelerated or decelerated rate, adjusting the audio pitch as necessary.
* Intelligently schedules recordings to avoid conflicts.
* Interfaces with free TV listing sources such as XMLTV or PSIP.
* Interfaces with subscription listings service Schedules Direct in the United States and Canada.
* Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows.
* Schedule and administer various system functions using a web browser-based interface.
* Supports ATSC, QAM, and DVB high-definition television.
* Controls a decoder/STB using an infrared remote (Irblaster).


tvtime
tvtime is a program for Linux that allows a person to watch television through his or her PC using a TV tuner or a Satellite receiver card DVB-S.

tvtime does not use a general purpose widget set, so it does not favour any particular desktop environment. The interface to tvtime is bespoke (American English: custom-developed) and resembles the On-screen display from a sophisticated TV set. tvtime's deinterlacer is well regarded, giving better results than most software provided by TV card vendors, and used in several other GPL-licensed projects.


XBMC
XBMC (formerly named "XBox Media Center") is a free and open source (GPL) media-player and entertainment hub. XBMC can play a very complete spectrum of of multimedia formats, and featuring playlist, audio visualizations, slideshow, and weather forecast functions, together with a multitude of third-party plugins. Originally developed as XBox Media Player (XBMP) for the first-generation Xbox game console in 2002, XBMC have eventually become a complete graphical user interface replacement for the original Xbox Dashboard, and it is currently also being ported to run natively under Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating-system. This, The XBMC Project is also known as "XBMC Media Center" or simply "XBMC").


xawtv
xawtv is a program that allows a person to watch and record television through a PC with either a TV tuner or a Satellite receiver card DVB-S. xawtv works on Unix-like operating systems, and is licensed under the GPL.

It does not favour any particular desktop environment. It comes with applications that use MOTIF-based widgets, as well as other X11 and command line applications. It works with Video4linux and XVideo. The interface to xawtv is minimalistic.

Weekly Ten (04-07-2008)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Dial D for Disruption
Want to build a phone company for $100? Give Mark Spencer a ring.
More @ Forbes.com

2. 'Ruthlessness gene' discovered
Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness.
More @ Nature.com

3. WSJ's Mossberg says 3G iPhone due in 60 days
Speaking at a Beet.tv executive summit, well-known Wall Street Journal writer Walt Mossberg has stirred the pot by stating that an iPhone with 3G access will be available within 60 days.
More @ AppleInsider

4. Beer-30, OLED style
More @ HackaDay

5. Cone of silence (finally) lifts on the spectrum auction
For three weeks at the end of January and early February, a small team of us holed up in double super secret "war rooms" in Mountain View, CA and Washington, D.C. to bid on Google's behalf in the FCC spectrum auction. Bidding took place electronically, and literally billions of dollars were at stake with every mouse click.
More @ Googleblog

6. Facebook Chat Launches - Tour & First Impressions
Facebook has just turned on Chat in a “few networks” (including mine) this morning and I think it’s a great implementation. While Facebook hasn’t announced an official rollout schedule, Chat will be gradually rolling out over the coming days.
More @ InsideFacebook

7. Test-driving OpenOffice.org 3.0
With OpenOffice.org 2.4 just released, OpenOffice.org 3.0 (OOo3) has already passed its feature freeze, and is scheduled for release in September. Based on recent development builds, what can you expect?
More @ Linux.com

8. Everex's new MyMiniPC: $500 and gOS-powered
More @ Engadget

9. Kernel space: ELF prediction to speed application startup
A new technique might make it faster to get started with a large application, by giving the kernel advance notice of what are most likely to be the program's commonly used memory pages.
More @ LinuxWorld

10. Yang hits back at Ballmer; mentions antitrust concerns
That didn’t take long. Two days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a three-week acquisition ultimatum to Yahoo’s board, Yahoo answered with its own letter.
More @ ZDNetBlogs

Linux Got Game: Nexuiz 2.4 Review

It's been quite a while since I played a game on my Linux box, so when I took a break the other day, I got the latest version of this awesome game called Nexuiz. So what exactly is Nexuiz?

Nexuiz is a first-person shooter which started as a Quake modification in the summer of 2001. Made by Alientrap Software, it is a free/open-source game: source code is free software and data is free content. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Nexuiz currently utilizes DarkPlaces, a significantly modified Quake engine.

You can download Nexuiz from its project website HERE, or if you are using Ubuntu, just get it through Synaptic Package Manager.

Sounds and Graphics:
I always thought that Alien Arena is the best first-person shooter game for Linux, but when I've tired Nexuiz, I began to think twice. I was blown away by Nexuiz's smoother and more compact graphics. The game environment was just stunning.

I had no trouble adjusting the screen resolution to 1440x900 in order to suit my 19 inch display. I also had an option to further enhance the graphics by adjusting the lighting and shadowing and add some extra eye-candy by enabling offset mapping, bloom, and high dynamic rendering.

The audio sounded great on my 2.1 Labtec Speaker. The music background and sound effects were loud and clear.



Gameplay:
The gameplay is deathmatch with the most excessive possible speeds and weapons, giving incredibly intense fast paced action. Along with deathmatch, there are multiple game modes such as team deathmatch, capture the flag, domination, and many mutators and weapon options like rocket arena and instagib. The user can fight through the single player campaign, going through over 20 levels, or play online using the Nexuiz server browser.



Recommended System Requirements:
- 1 GHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon
- Geforce2 Video card
- 512 MB of ram
- Linux Kernel 2.2 or better with glibc

Conclusion:
Nexuiz is highly entertaining and is somewhat addictive especially when played online or in multiplayer mode. This game has a mix of violence though, so I wouldn't recommend it to kids or even to adults who have violent crime records (hehe). Anyway, I really had fun playing Nexuiz, and I'm keeping it because I'm going to be playing it over and over again.

Here's my quick rating for Nexuiz 2.4:

Sounds and Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Total: 8/10

Xubuntu “Hardy Heron” Beta Still Can’t Fly

Being a fully satisfied Xubuntu 7.10 user, I've been eagerly waiting for the distribution release of Xubuntu 8.04 which will be coming out most probably at the end of the month. Codenamed "Hardy Heron", it is a "long-term support" LTS release that promises some new and exciting features and incremental improvements on stability, security, and overall performance.

To have a feel of what's yet to come, I downloaded and installed the recently released Xubuntu 8.04 Beta. I also wanted to find out for myself if Hardy's enhancements are crucial enough for me to upgrade without disturbing my peace of mind.

So, is Xubuntu "Hardy Heron" tough enough? Here's my quick observation:

Installation:
The first of the many changes in Xubuntu can be noticed at the boot options menu. You will now have a choice to skip the live session and start the installation process immediately. This is really a handy improvement since it somehow saves some extra time.



I found no changes in the Wubi installer. It's still the same old straightforward Ubuntu-style installation. I noticed a slight bug when choosing the country and timezone. I can’t click on the bright orange dots or in any part of the world map when selecting the area, so I used the drop-down menu instead. Anyway, the set-up was finished in less than 30 minutes and without further problems.



Look and Feel:
Xubuntu Hardy's looks or appearance is pretty much the same except for the new and brightly colored log-in menu screen and wallpaper. It is still using Murrina Storm Cloud as its default theme. Other significant change is the inclusion of the "Places" menu plug-in found at the top panel for easy access to most frequently used files and documents.



Software/Package Management:
Xubuntu 8.04 has plenty of upgraded and added packages out-of-the-box. It now features the latest XFCE 4.4.2 desktop, Linux 2.6.24 kernel, X.org 7.3, Gnome Office 2.20.2 and Firefox Beta 4 among others. Also worth noting is the new image viewer called Ristretto. It is indeed more functional than Gqview. The PulseAudio sound server is already integrated in the desktop for quality sound output. There's also a new "screen resolution utility" with added feature that will let you easily configure multiple video displays. Other significant addition and improvements were virtualization support and security features.



Stability/Hardware Detection:
There are quite a number of issues that I've encountered in this Beta version of Xubuntu 8.04. Some of my important hardware devices were not properly configured like my Ethernet for example, and I had to add "apic nolapic" parameter at boot which was not needed in "Gutsy" at all. Since I understand that it is still a development release, I don't want to enumerate further all the minor problems that I have noticed in Xubuntu 8.04 Beta.


Conclusion:
The expected release date is getting nearer and nearer, but Xubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” still can’t fly. I have high hopes for this LTS release version, and I expect Xubuntu developers will unleash a well-polished Linux operating system at the right moment. For now, I’ll sit back, wait, and hope that this heron, I mean distro will soar in due time.

PS: If you want to try Xubuntu 8.04 Beta, you can get it HERE.

PS2: I'll be updating my Xubuntu on Macbook Pro post soon.

PS3: I guess that would be all :)

Free/Open-source Spreadsheet Programs

A computer application that replaced paper worksheets is called a spreadsheet. It shows multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values. A spreadsheet cell may otherwise hold a formula that classifies how the contents of that cell is to be calculated from the contents of any other cell (or combination of cells) each time any cell is updated. Spreadsheets are often used for financial information because of their capacity to re-calculate the entire sheet automatically after an alteration to a single cell.

If you think that the proprietary and expensive Microsoft Excel is the only available and capable spreadsheet software, then think again because you are wrong. There are quite a number of free/open-source spreadsheet programs that are almost as good or even at par with Excel.

Here are some of the most known free/open-source software spreadsheet applications:

Gnumeric
Gnumeric is part of the GNOME desktop and has Windows installers available. It is intended to be a free replacement for proprietary spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel, which it broadly and openly emulates.

Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenDocument and Quattro Pro; its native format is the Gnumeric file format (.gnm or .gnumeric), an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric. Pivot tables and conditional formatting are not yet supported but are planned for future versions.

Gnumeric's accuracy has helped it to establish a niche among people using it for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks. For improving the accuracy of Gnumeric, the developers are cooperating with the R Project.

GNU Oleo
GNU Oleo is a lightweight free software spreadsheet software package. Oleo was originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet (using the curses library).

Oleo is much older than the GNU Gnumeric spreadsheet (a part of the GNOME desktop system) and has fewer capabilities. It is also not as active as a project, not having had a release since 2001.


KSpread
KSpread is part of KOffice, an integrated office suite for the KDE Desktop Environment.

Among KSpread features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 100 built-in functions, templates, chart, spell-check, hyperlinks, data sorting and scripting with Python, Ruby and Javascript.

KSpread native format is XML, compressed with ZIP. However, KSpread has the ability to import in several spreadsheet formats, including Microsoft Excel, Applix Spreadsheet, Quattro Pro, CSV and OpenOffice.org Calc.


OpenOffice.org Calc
OpenOffice.org Calc is a component of the OpenOffice.org software package.

Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files.

The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0 Calc can be set to either Microsoft Excel or the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files.

As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Calc can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Calc is free software.


SIAG
SIAG (Scheme in a grid) is a spreadsheet using a SIOD engine or base. The grid, siag is fast and very configurable. Suitable for small unix distributions, it was selected by DSL to provide a spreadsheet inside their fifty megabyte system footprint. Consequently, siag can be used on older PCs with their limited memory and disk space.

Language modules for C, SIOD, Guile, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. permit extensive control over input and output data. Any unix shell can further script siag grids to display cells in algorithmic form.


Simple Spreadsheet
Simple Spreadsheet is a web-based spreadsheet program written in JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP. It features formulas, charts, formats, cell/row merging, cell locking, keyboard navigation, etc. Simple Spreadsheet is released under the GNU General Public License, and is thus free software.

Custom macros can be written in Javascript. Javascript is also used as the default (human-readable) data format. Future versions will contain collaborative features to allow many people working simultaneously together on one sheet. The charts are generated on the server-side using a PHP library called JpGraph. On the client side they are referenced with a function inside a formula.

Simple Spreadsheet can be used with all common browsers like Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, and Internet Explorer. Safari may be used, but was not yet tested.


wikiCalc
wikiCalc is a web application, created by Dan Bricklin, that allows for the creation and editing of spreadsheets through a wiki-style user-editable interface. It is currently released as version 1.0 for use on Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, and other platforms that can run the Perl language.

The product was envisioned in 2005 by Bricklin, who 27 years earlier created VisiCalc, the first commercial spreadsheet program for the personal computer. Version Alpha 0.1 was released for alpha testing in November 2005. Version 1.0 was released on January 25, 2007. wikiCalc is written in the Perl programming language.

Xubuntu on Macbook Pro (Penryn)

I couldn’t stop the urge to install Linux on my new Macbook Pro. I know I said on one of my recent posts that I will have to wait for the release of Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” before I’ll take the plunge. However, I changed my mind and decided to install Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” instead.

Since I couldn’t find a tutorial on the web on installing Xubuntu/Ubuntu on the 4th Generation Macbook Pro with Penryn processor, I decided to share to you how I put the somewhat “geeky” Xubuntu on my “beautiful” Mac.

Here is the step-by-step guide:

Partitioning Using Boot Camp:
(I assumed that Mac OS X Leopard is already pre-installed)

1. Inside Mac OS X Leopard, click on Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Boot Camp Assistant.

2. When resizing the disk, just remember that the Windows partition will be allocated to Linux later on. The partitioning is very easy using Boot Camp Assistant so I don’t need explain further.


Installing rEFIt (a boot menu and maintenance toolkit for Intel Macs):

1. Inside Mac OS X Leopard, download the latest version of rEFIt (Mac disk image) which can be found HERE.

2. Mount or open rEFIt.dmg disk image.

3. Double-click on the “rEFIt.mpkg” package.

4. Follow the instructions and select your Mac OS X installation volume as the destination volume for the install.

5. Restart your Mac. You will see the rEFIt boot menu if the installation is successful.


Installing Xubuntu:
(Note that Wireless internet connection is not yet configured inside Xubuntu, it is advisable to establish link using the hard line or the Ethernet port before starting the installation.)

1. Restart the computer with Xubuntu 7.10 Live CD inserted. rEFIT should recognize it and give you option to "boot Linux from CD". Scroll to this option using the arrow keys.

2. Once inside Xubuntu desktop, click on 'Install' icon.

3. Select the appropriate language, select 'Keyboard Layout' as 'Macintosh', select 'Manual' partitioning, then 'Forward'.

4. Boot Camp will have created '/dev/sda3' which should be roughly the size of the partition you created. Select 'dev/sda3' and delete it by clicking 'Delete Partition'. This should now be 'free space'.

5. Select the 'free space' and click 'New Partition'. Set the size to approximately 1 GB less than the total amount of free space. Format it as an 'ext3' type partition and set the 'Mount Point' to '/'. Set the formatting to occur at the beginning. Click OK.

6. This should leave approximately 1 GB of free space. Select this free space and click 'New Partition'. Format it as a 'swap' type partition. Set the formatting to occur at the beginning. Click OK.

7. Now click 'Forward'. After being prompted for a user and computer name, check to make sure that the formatting is occurring at partitions #3 and #4 and click 'Install'.

8. Let the installation finish. Remove the Xubuntu CD and restart.

9. You will now be able to boot on the newly installed Xubuntu 7.10.

10. After the first reboot, you will be prompted to install the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver. Install it and you are done.


You might think that the installation is done, but not really. I have listed here some key hardware components that are not working out-of-the-box:

* Wireless networking
* Sound/Audio
* Backlight, keyboard light and hotkeys
* Apple InfraRed

So, what’s working out-of-the-box?

* Keyboard
* USB
* NVIDIA graphics
* Ethernet networking
* TrackPad is working but with limited capability.

What’s yet to be tested?
* Bluetooth
* FireWire
* iSight

I’ll update this post as soon as I find ways to get these important Macbook Pro (Penryn) hardware mechanisms to work on Xubuntu.

UPDATE:
I made a review of Hardy Heron on Macbook Pro (Penryn) HERE.

Weekly Ten (04-01-2008)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Top 10 April Fools' Pranks for Nerds

Here are the top 10 tech-related April Fools' jokes to play on friends and co-workers. The best geek pranks make a gadget or a co-worker's computer appear "broken." Watch with glee as the unsuspecting victim goes mental trying to figure it out.

More @ Wired

2. Linux Declared 'Hacker Proof'
The Linux running on a Sony Vaio remained undefeated at the end of a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference.
More @ AllHeadlineNews

3. Announcing Project Virgle
In my life, I've had a lot of exciting adventures and launched a lot of ambitious business ventures. I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google which qualifies on both counts.
More @ Googleblog

4. Reverse engineering the Novint Falcon
More @ HackaDay

5. Revisiting The Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
I like to re-read my favorite books every few years, so I brought Robert Glass' seminal Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering with me on my most recent trip. I thought it was a decent, but imperfect read when I originally bought it in 2004.
More @ CodingHorror

6. Apple encountering ongoing US-wide iPhone shortage
Checks with stores across the US show Apple to have been virtually devoid of iPhone stock for days, even at its online store -- and with signs that the company is aware of its widespread nature.
More @ AppleInsider

7. Report: Mozilla enterprise browser share hits 18 percent
On the same day that Mozilla is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of its Mozilla source code release, Forrester Research analysts have released a new study that shows that Firefox’s market share among business users has doubled in the past year, and is now at 18 percent.
More @ ZDNetBlogs

8. Nokia WiMAX N810 appears in the wild
More @ Engadget

9. Trying to get PyPy to run on Python 3.0
As you surely know, Python 3.0 is coming; recently, they released Python 3.0 alpha 3, and the final version is expected around September.
More @ PyPy Status Blog

10. Why I Look Like Tom Cruise
I get interviewed a lot. Perhaps once a week, I get interviewed (No joke).
More @ BoSanchezBlog