OLPC makes its entry into India - finally!

When the OLPC first made news, a prominent official in the HRD ministry of the Indian government had gone on record snubbing the OLPC project ($100 laptop), even making a preposterous claim that work was under way to create India's own $10 laptop. But as things have worked out, OLPC has already made an entry into India in the form of a pilot project in a rural primary school in a village in the state of Maharasthra.

The OLPC is currently being field tested at the Khairat primary school. The smiles on the children's faces indicate that this is going to be a very successful project if implemented judiciously - ie making sure the long tentacles of corruption do not touch the project.

Fig: Group study in progress

Fig: A student proudly displaying her XO laptop

Fig: Another student with her XO.

Carla Gomez Monroy who is overseeing this project being implemented in India has provided a detailed writeup of the day-to-day functioning of the Khairat school, how the OLPC is put to use by the one and only teacher and the students in the school, the bond formed with the villagers and so on. A very fascinating read.

So you want to be a System Administrator ? Here is how ...

What is the job profile of a System administrator ? Obviously he is in charge of managing the servers and making them work flawlessly. But is that it ?

Ask a person like James Hicks who has over 10 years experience working as a system administrator and he will tell you there is a lot more to the job than just managing servers.

But lets start from the beginning; what does it take for a fresher to land a job as a system administrator ? First and foremost, you need three things namely, Intelligence, an interest in Computers and last but not the least people skills.

James has written a 3 part series [ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 ] providing insights into the art of snagging, managing and thriving as a system administrator which is a worthy and informative read. He even gives his personal opinion about the various certifications in the market and their worthiness.

An excerpt from the article :

Good systems administrators in good companies spend the bulk of their time preventing bad things from happening and finding new ways for IT to improve their organization’s efficiency. Bad systems administrators or good ones in bad companies spend the bulk of their time fixing problems that come up - usually the same problems over and over again.

Take part in a book auction to benefit FreeBSD foundation

Are you an avid user of FreeBSD ? Perhaps you use FreeBSD more than even good ol Linux. Well, here is a golden chance to support your favorite operating system.

Book publisher No Starch Press of San Francisco, California will auction the first copy of the second edition of "Absolute FreeBSD" to the highest bidder with all the proceeds being donated to The FreeBSD Foundation which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the FreeBSD Project.

If you are the highest bidder, then you will receive a signed copy of "Absolute FreeBSD" hot off the press and a Certificate of Authenticity. The ongoing auction at eBay runs through November 2, 2007. The latest bid as of this writing is $525. Now the big question is are you willing to up the ante and in the process contribute more to the FreeBSD foundation ? If you are interested, hurry because the auction closes on November 2 2007.

AMD / ATI release Linux drivers for their popular graphics cards

It is a common perception among Free software enthusiasts that AMD's acquisition of ATI bodes really good for Linux and Free software. This perception is bang on target because AMD has promised that it will be eventually providing open source drivers for all its graphics cards. Just yet, AMD/ATI has released Linux drivers for its popular range of graphics cards namely ATI Catalyst 7.10 graphics drivers.

So what is so unique about the ATI Catalyst ? Well, ATI Catalyst is a unified software suite which delivers a full software solution for supported Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. And AMD/ATI claims that all ATI products use the same Catalyst driver ensuring all products take advantage of the incredible performance, stability, innovative features, and visual quality that the Catalyst software suite have to offer. The latest version of ATI Catalyst is 7.10. It has support for AIGLX and ATI GPUs which translates to enhanced performance in playing 3D games such as Quake and Doom.

Fig: ATI Catalyst driver architecture

If you own a ATI graphics card, you may download the driver suite for Linux from AMD's official website. Of course, this driver has not yet been released as open source and is as proprietary as the Nvidia drivers. But with AMD in charge, one can say with certainty that ATI has become a lot more Linux friendly than it was before its acquisition.

Install Linux on Sony Playstation PS3 - a collection of tutorials

Do you own a Sony Playstation (PS3) ? If you do then here is some good news for you. Now it is possible to install your favorite Linux distribution on a Sony PS3. Then you may ask, what is so unique about PS3 and why should I bother installing Linux on a machine which is primarily designed for playing games, right ?

You see, PS3 has the PowerPC architecture underneath its hood. More importantly, it is powered by IBM's Cell processor. The same processor which will be powering future IBM mainframes. So if you own a PS3 why not harness this awesome power of its processor to run Linux ?

Sony has provided an open platform for Playstation 3 where you can get details of installing another OS on your Playstation.

Apart from the above link, I came across a number of resources which provide step by step explanation of installing a specific Linux distribution on the PS3. They are as follows :

• Install Fedora on PS3 [ Read the article ]
• Install OpenSuSE on PS3 [ Read the article ]
• Install Ubuntu on PS3 [ Read the article ]
  
• Install Gentoo on PS3 [ Read the article ]

The only prerequisites for installing Linux on your PS3 is that the distribution you choose should have a CD image available for the PowerPC architecture. Other than that, I think the steps are more or less the same.

A problem encountered by laptop users running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and a possible solution

A number of people are blogging about how running the latest version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on a laptop could possibly end up causing an early demise of the laptop hard disk. The problem is that the hard disk essentially consists of a spindle and a bunch of disks stacked one on top of the other which rotate at high speeds. Now as with all objects which have moving parts, hard disk also faces wear and tear. The problem faced by Ubuntu laptop users is the aggressive use of hard disk by Ubuntu thus shortening the life of the hard disk.

A bug submitted at launchpad confirms this anomaly. So what is the solution to this rather irritating problem ?

Use hdparm; a command line tool to disable advanced power management (APM). This is achieved by running the following command :

$ sudo hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda

Here the -B option is used to set the APM value. A low value means aggressive power management (that translates to more wear and tear for your hard disk) and a high value means better performance (but more battery consumption). By setting the value as 255, we have disabled the APM all together. Over 2 years back, I had written an article explaining how to improve your hard disk performance using hdparm. And if you are interested in knowing more about hdparm, you may read the article.

I run Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and it doesn't cause this problem on my desktop PC.

Check out the opinions from two sources [ linux hero and Planet Beranger ] to get a different angle.

GIMP 2.4 finally released

It has been quite some time (somewhere around 2 or 3 years) since the last release of GIMP which was version 2.2. But the GIMP team has finally made it across the finishing line by releasing yet another stable version of GIMP namely ver 2.4.

But even though GIMP 2.4 has been officially released only now, if you are using the latest version of any of the major Linux distributions, then chances are you already have a release candidate of GIMP 2.4 installed on your machine.

The most visible features in GIMP 2.4 for me are the following :

• Rectangle and Ellipsoidal selections can be resized.
• Foreground selection tool - Select a region containing foreground objects.
• Healing tool - Heal image irregularities.
• Perspective clone tool - Clone from an image source after applying a perspective transformation.
• Alignment tool - Align and arrange objects and layers.
  

Then via the menu, you now have access to a red eye removal plug-in. This is a very useful addition for the simple reason that many photos snapped by amateurs like us often display the red eye phenomenon and now it can be corrected in GIMP with a simple mouse click. Earlier this required several steps.

Fig: GIMP 2.4 toolbox

The screenshot plug-in now features more sophisticated options. Now there is an option to grab a region rather than just the whole screen or a particular window.

These are the new features that I noticed when I used GIMP 2.4 but there are a slew of less visible but equally useful features that are incorporated in the new version which is listed in the release notes at GIMP website.

Overall, I am very pleased with GIMP 2.4 and even though there are a lot of features yet to be added to bring it at par with Adobe Photoshop, this is a big step in the right direction.

Google rolls out IMAP support for Gmail

IMAP which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol is an alternate but better method of accessing and managing your email. While this protocol has been around since ever, it was seldom implemented by any of the free web email services mainly because allowing people to access their mail using IMAP put an additional strain on the server.

But IMAP has a lot of advantages over its poorer cousins POP and POP3. For one, like with POP, people using IMAP protocol can also access and manage their mail using any of the numerous email clients such as Thunderbird and outlook express but the difference being that any changes you make to your mail in your email client is propagated to and mirrored in your email account at the server end in real time. Secondly, you can view your mail from multiple devices and still you will have access to the same structure. Mails will not be downloaded multiple times as it sometimes happen in using POP. Overall, IMAP provides a more stable experience than POP.

So the big news is Google has finally rolled out IMAP support for Gmail users. But having been using the web interface with the spify Ajax and Javascript effects, I am in two minds on whether to use IMAP or stick for the time being with the web interface of my Gmail account.

Fig: My Gmail settings show the IMAP in the Forwarding email tab section.

If you are opting for IMAP, there are a few things to keep in mind. Them being the actions you take in your email client and their effects in your Gmail account . Here is a table of what you can expect when you take certain actions in your email client.

Action on mobile device/client (e.g. iPhone/Outlook)	Result in Gmail on the web
Open a message	Mark a message as read
Flag a message	Apply a star to the message
Move a message to a folder	Apply a label to the message
Move a message to a folder within a folder	Apply a label showing folder hierarchy ('MainFolder/SubFolder')
Create a folder	Create a label
Move a message to [Gmail]/Spam	Report a message as spam
Move a message to [Gmail]/Trash	Move a message to Trash
Send a message	Store message in Sent Mail
Delete a message	Remove label from the message, or delete the message permanently if the message is already in the Spam or Trash label

[Source: Gmail FAQ]

Lastly I wonder where this puts the other major free email providers like Yahoo and Microsoft's New Hotmail which let alone do not provide IMAP but also fall short on numerous other features which are standard in Gmail. As of now Yahoo is the most used email service in the world but if Google would have its way, this is going to change in the near future.

Install multimedia codecs in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon in 2 easy steps

Ubuntu is a fantastic Linux distribution and its development is right on track. While I have had issues in running Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn on my machine, the latest release namely version 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) turned out to be a heck of a distribution. Not only does it work flawlessly on my machine, the Ubuntu developers have also incorporated a number of features which brings it at par with or in some cases even excels Mac OSX in functionality and ease of use.

But at the same time, unlike many other Linux distributions (read Mandriva et al), the Ubuntu developers have not succumbed to providing the proprietary codecs and drivers out of the box. In fact, they have walked a fine line by making sure the distribution remains Free as in freedom, at the same time have made it very simple for people who want to surely install any proprietary drivers for their machine.

For example, here is how you can install all the proprietary multimedia codecs automatically on your machine running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

First thing you have to do is to navigate in the Gnome panel to "System -> Administration -> Software Sources" and enable all the additional repositories namely main (which should already be enabled), universe, restricted and multiverse. Truth be told, you need select only the multiverse repository but while you are at it, you might as well enable the rest of them too.

Once you have done that, navigate to your video or audio file and try playing it in Totem which is the default multimedia player for GNOME. When you open the media file in totem, it will notify you that it can't find the necessary codecs to play the file and will offer to search for and download the necessary files. It will then start downloading the missing pieces and install them. That is it. You have finished installing the codecs necessary to play your multimedia file.

Fig: Enable all additional repositories

Fig: Totem asks you whether it should search for the necessary codecs to play the media.

Fig: Totem searching for required multimedia codec packages

Fig: It provides a list of packages which contain the required files

Fig: Asks for confirmation.

Fig: Totem playing the movie after it finished installing the required codecs.

As a side note, I have found that this is the same process that is followed by the Windows media player when it can't find the necessary codecs. But there is a significant difference though, in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, this process works flawlessly where as in Windows, it gives an error ;-).

Alternately, if you do not want to go through the above process (though I wonder why), you can also install all the multimedia codecs by firing up a terminal and running the apt-get command as follows :

$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

You must be wondering, if there are bad and ugly gstreamer plugins there should be the good ones too right ? Well the good gstreamer plugins are installed by default on your Ubuntu machine and so you need not install them manually.

Finally, for the brave at heart, you can also install the multimedia codecs manually as explained in this article.

Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon ready for download

Ubuntu 7.10 the latest offering from Canonical, named Gusty Gibbon has been released. This is touted as one of the most important releases ever by Canonical mainly because a number of enhancements have gone into it which were lacking in previous versions.

Some of them being :

• Streamlined Firefox add-on support
• Improved devices support such as Printer, WiFi, Digital Camera, iPod and so on.
• Read write access to Windows NTFS partition by default - In earlier versions you couldn't save files to the NTFS partition.
• 3D Effects are enabled by default - But will be disabled automatically on systems which do not meet the minimum requirements. I think perhaps they might be using Nouveau device drivers.
  
• Novell's Aparmor security has been incorporated. Aparmor is a name based access control which does the same job of selinux but is claimed to be much easier to configure.
• And finally integrated desktop search using Tracker.
  

Of course apart from those listed above, there are a number of subtle changes such as a GUI for XOrg server configuration and so on. All in all, there is a general expectation among Ubuntu users and Linux lovers in general that this release of Ubuntu is going to be one of the best releases so far. I had covered the expected features earlier.

You can download the latest version of Ubuntu namely ver 7.10 Gusty Gibbon from the following location. Or you can also choose from a list of mirrors closest to your geographic location.

As for me, I am off to download Gusty Gibbon to install on my machine. You can look forward to my personal opinion about this much touted release from Canonical soon.

KDE 4.0 beta 3 - more beautiful than ever

KDE is moving into the fast track of becoming the number one Desktop environment. And if the latest beta release (3) of KDE 4.0 is taken into consideration, 2008 could very well be the year of KDE.

KDE community has released the 3rd beta of KDE 4.0. A couple of months back, I had listed a number of new features expected in KDE 4.0. Since then KDE 4.0 has got even better and more good looking. As of now, since the last beta release, no new features are added into KDE 4.0 and it is going through a bout of bug fixing and necessary polish.

Fig: Plasma widgets in action in KDE 4.0 beta 3

I think, when KDE 4.0 final is released in December this year, it is going to be a heck of Desktop - lean, beautiful, responsive, modular and user friendly.

Read the full news of KDE 4.0 beta 3 release on the official site.

Update : KDE 4 beta 3 release packages are available for Kubuntu. If you are a Kubuntu user then check out how you can install KDE 4 alongside KDE 3 and give it a test run.

Review : EnGarde Secure Linux

There are hundreds of Linux distributions targeting a diverse sets of users. While quite a number of these Linux distributions - especially the main stream ones - position themselves as a universal solution to all your Linux expectations, there are some of them which take a specialist role of one form or other, catering to a specific set of Linux users.

One such specialized Linux distribution which is targeted specifically at servers is the EnGarde Secure Linux. As the name indicates, this Linux distribution lays stress on the security aspect because servers should by default be secure out of the box. And EnGarde Secure Linux goes the extra length and pulls all stops to make sure the server is indeed secure. More on that later.

EnGarde Secure Linux is released by its parent company Guardian Digital in two forms - one is the Community edition which is available for free download and the other is the commercial Professional edition. The community edition of EnGarde is full featured, secure and is built entirely from open source and it contain many of the capabilities of the Professional edition. Guardian Digital claims they have over 500 corporate clients across USA, Canada and the rest of the world who use EnGarde Secure Linux.

I decided to install the Community edition of EnGarde Secure Linux on my machine and take it for a spin.

One of the unique aspects of EnGrade Secure Linux is that it ships with only those packages that are absolutely necessary to function as a server. So you won't find software such as a X Windows server or other desktop utilities which is expected in any normal Linux distribution. But EnGarde ships with the necessary databases, web server, mail server and DNS server and you can configure EnGarde to function as any of those or all of them.

Installation of EnGarde Secure Linux

Installation of EnGarde Secure Linux is as such, a trouble free affair and is achieved via its text based installer. On the other hand if you are just interested in trying it out, that is also possible because the ISO also functions as a LiveCD and you can try out all the features that EnGarde has to offer without installing it on your hard disk.

Basically, These are the steps I had to go through in installing EnGarde on my machine.

Fig: Booting from the CD-ROM Check out all of them

Fig: Decide on the partitioning scheme.Check out all of them

• Change root and webTool password - this is applicable only if you are using EnGarde as a LiveCD.
• Decide on whether you want DHCP or static networking
• Choose between running EnGarde in installation or LiveCD mode - Here I chose Installation mode as I wanted to install it on my machine.
• Choose the language - English is default.
• Decide on the partitioning of your hard disk. Here there are two choices. One is the automatic one where the installer will create the necessary partitions (usually /,/var and /home). And the other option is manual where you can decide to partition your hard disk as per your requirement. But either way, it is not possible to dual boot between OSes if you are installing EnGarde on your machine as it wipes out your whole disk. So backup your data before you proceed with your installation - you have been warned. I chose automatic partition option here.
• Decide on the type of hard disk - whether IDE or SCSI.
• Choose the packages - The packages are broadly classified into 6 sections namely Databases, DNS, Firewall, Mail services, Network Intrusion Detection and Web services. I selected all the packages and pressed OK and the installer started copying all the files to the hard disk.
• Next I had to configure the network card and provide information such as the IP address, netmask, the default gateway and the network address.
• Then it prompted me to provide a fully qualified domain name for my machine.
• Lastly I had to enter the IP address of the primary and secondary name server.
  

That was it. EnGarde secure Linux was now fully installed on my machine.

By default around 220 packages are bundled with EnGarde and using the versatile webTool you can also install an additional 300 or so packages all of them cherry picked for use at the server end. EnGarde is available for i686 and x86 64 bit architectures and uses RPM packages managed by apt-get.

Security aspect of EnGarde secure Linux
Engarde implements security by following a number of rules.

1. It locks down the box at the Host level by implementing a number of features such as TCP wrappers, implementing restricted user rights globally and running SELinux policies in enforcing mode.
2. At the network level, EnGarde ships with a plethora of network tools which allow a system administrator to analyse the security level of his machine and take preventive measures. EnGarde ships with a unique webTool through which you can do any and all system administration tasks from a remote location including rebooting or shutting down the server. This means that after installation, you can safely place the server in a locked room and not worry about its physical security.
3. Up to date security patches of software are released on a regular basis (more like every month) enabling system administrators to plug any security holes in the server software they run. This is automated to a certain level via the Guardian Digital Secure Network (GSDN). And you are prompted to register and create a GSDN account (for free) - it is not an option.
   

Webtool in Engarde Secure Linux

At the end of installation, you are notified that the most preferred way of administering the Linux box is via a web browser using the address https://<engarde-linux-ip-address>:1023/.

I initially typed the address but missed the 's' in 'https' and was flummoxed but later figured out my mistake and correctly typed the address. That is right, the web tool is accessed via secure http (using SSL).

You log in to the webTool using two different passwords depending on whether you are using EnGarde as a LiveCD or if you have installed it on a machine.

For LiveCD :
The login name is 'admin' and the password is the root password you set while booting the EnGarde Linux CD.

When Installed :

The login name is 'admin' and the password is "lock&%box". And the first time you log into the admin section, you are confronted with an initial configuration screen.

Here the first thing you are prompted to do is register for a GSDN account which is free. EnGarde Secure Linux makes use of the GSDN account to provide up to date automated security fixes to your server. Then specify (or rather change) the root and webTool password, specify the NTP servers as well as your geographic location and lastly fine tune the services you would require to run on your remote server.

Fig: WebTool main page
More screenshots of webtool interface

The web interface can be viewed in three languages at present namely English, Spanish and Italian with work going on to support more languages.

WebTool is the pivot with which you can effectively administer the system remotely from within a web browser.

I was really amazed at the things you can achieve from within the web tool. For instance, you can manage users, manage database servers, manage the web server (Apache), implement DNS, view all the security logs updated in real time, manage mail servers, enable and disable system level services, enable and configure firewall, even run most of the security tools such as Snort bundled with EnGarde and view their output in the web browser. In short the web tool is a one stop shop for troubleshooting and managing your server from a remote location. A very powerful interface indeed.

I can already see the possibilities where choosing EnGarde Secure Linux at the server end could circumvent some hardware limitations. Here is a scenario - Say you are interested in hosting a website on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) account. Now a days, it is possible to get a VPS account for as low as $7/month. While the price is equivalent to any shared hosting price, there is a catch which is that, at that low price, the memory (RAM) allocated to your virtual machine is not more than 64MB and the % of CPU cycles allocated is also limited. You can't possibly run CPanel or Plex in this account as they require at least 256 MB memory be allocated to your server to function efficiently. Since the webTool is integrated with EnGarde Secure Linux and does not utilize much memory, EnGarde turns out to be a viable alternative solution to an automated server not to speak of the importance it gives to security and performance.

To sum up, I found EnGarde Secure Linux to be a unique blend of a robust Linux server topped up with loads of security features coupled with a very powerful webTool which aids in administering the server remotely, all from within a web browser.

EnGarde Secure Linux WebTool interface - Administrate your remote machine from within a web browser

One of the USP's of EnGarde Secure Linux is its fabulous WebTool. This tool is so versatile that you can do any and all system administration tasks from within this interface. You access the WebTool from within any web browser. Here are some of the screen shots of this tool. These are just a small subset of the tasks you can achieve using the WebTool interface.

Fig: WebTool main page

Fig: View the log files in real time

Fig: Initial configuration screen - choose the services to run

Fig: Initial configuration screen - Create a GSDN account

Fig: Manage the services on the machine.

Fig: Make a backup of files on your server.

Fig: SSH server configuration page

Fig: General configuration for firewall

Fig: Write firewall rules

Fig: FTP server configuration page

EnGarde Secure Linux - Installation screenshots

These screenshots describe all the steps required to install EnGarde Secure Linux on your server.

Fig: Booting from the CD-ROM

Fig: Welcome screen

Fig: Set root password for LiveCD

Fig: Configure networking

Fig: Choose between installation and LiveCD mode. I chose the Installation mode.

Fig: Choose the language

Fig: Decide on the partitioning scheme.

Fig: Choose the type of your hard disk

Fig: Point of no return

Fig: Select the packages you want to install.

Fig: Configure the network cards

Fig: Set fully qualified host name for your server.

Fig: Set the primary and secondary name server.

Fig: Installation finished message

Fig: LILO boot loader of EnGarde secure Linux

Mandriva 2008 release

Mandriva Linux distribution project team has released their latest version namely Mandriva 2008. What is unique about Mandriva is that apart from providing the Free version of Linux, they have also made available a LiveCD version which contain all the proprietary codecs and drivers including the graphics drivers from Nvidia and ATI.

Mandriva 2008 is available in three formats namely :

1. Mandriva 2008 One - This is a liveCD which can also be installed on the hard disk. Mandriva team recommends that people download this one because it contain all the non-Free bits and pieces like the multimedia codecs, Flash player, Sun's Java, NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers and so on. It is available for free download.
2. Mandriva 2008 Free - This is the same as above but without the proprietary codecs. It is available as a 3-CD / 1-DVD edition made up entirely of free / open source software which also you can download for free.
3. Mandriva 2008 Power Pack - is a DVD edition which includes support, services, and important third-party proprietary software like LinDVD, Cedega, the Fluendo multimedia codecs, Flash Player, Scilab and 03 Spaces. You have to buy it from the Mandriva store.
   

Mandriva 2008 features at a glance

• Linux kernel 2.6.22
• X.org 7.2
• KDE 3.5.7 with an option to try out KDE 4.0
• GNOME 2.20.0
• OpenOffice.org 2.2.1
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6 and updated versions of all other software.
• Compiz Fusion
• Windows documents and settings migration tool and
• a new network management tool
  

Changes in Mandriva 2008 at a glance

• PHP 4.x has been deprecated
• Loopback based encrypted file systems as well as XFS file systems support has been removed.
• A more granular package selection process in place during installation. Also improvement to rpmdrake and urpmi
• Open SuSE's Aparmor has been included as the new security tool.
• Liberation fonts have been included.
• Man pages now compressed with LZMA
• Compiz Fusion replaces Beryl as Beryl has now merged with Compiz.
• Alternative open source drivers for ATI graphics cards
  

All in all, Mandriva 2008 seems to be a robust up to date Linux distribution with out of the box support for all the essential non-Free bits to cater to the general populace, at the same time providing a Free version sans proprietary stuff to satisfy the cravings of the Free software lovers. You can read the full release notes and also download a copy of Mandriva 2008 here.

World map of Internet connectivity

Care to know the level of Internet connectivity in your country ? Or rather, you would like to know which all areas in the world are the most densely wired. Well here is a pictorial representation of the density of Internet connection.

Fig: Internet connectivity world map

The aptly named "Internet Map" is the creation of Cris Harrison. To create the set of visual maps, he made use of the data from the DIMES project which is a distributed scientific research project, aimed to study the structure and topology of the Internet - a purely volunteer effort on the lines of SETI@HOME project.

Not surprisingly, Europe, USA and Japan lead in the most wired areas in the world.

View the full set of maps of the internet connectivity across the world at Cris Harrison's site.

Poll indicates GNOME the most popular desktop environment with KDE close behind

Around one month back, this blog featured a poll that asked you which window manager (Desktop) you used the most. The poll was open roughly for two weeks and closed on 31st of August 2007. In those two weeks, nearly 900 (889 votes) people voted in the polls. And the results are not entirely out of expectation.

GNOME and KDE are neck and neck in the popularity front with GNOME being the favoured window manager by 361 people vs KDE by 335 people. Now it can be stated with certainty that both these window managers (desktops really) are equally popular since the difference is just less than 30 votes. The third place goes to XFCE which is also not a big surprise and it snagged 71 votes (around 7% of the total votes cast). Fluxbox/Blackbox combination takes the 4th place.

What is really surprising is that Enlightenment received 18 votes which is more than what IceWM got. Now, I have not seen that many Linux distributions or Unices which come pre-loaded with Enlightenment window manager, though I have found it a very good one. But many Linux distributions such as the mini ones do bundle IceWM with them.

Fig: Pie chart of the percentage of votes polled

Below are the full results of the polls.

Total votes cast : 889

Window manager	Votes	% Votes
GNOME	361	40%
KDE	335	37%
XFCE	71	7%
Fluxbox, Blackbox	44	4%
Enlightenment	18	2%
IceWM	15	1%
Window maker	9	1%
Fvwm	5	< 1%
After step	2	< 1%
Some other	16	1%
I don't use a window manager	13	1%

Is there a correlation between Socialism and Free Software ?

The word Socialism is a broad term. There are different streams of socialism. On one end of the spectrum, there is the extreme form of socialism known as communism infamous for its stringent following of its ideology, which was practiced by countries such as the erstwhile USSR (present Russia) and currently by China and Cuba. And at the other end, there is the more humane form of socialism as practiced by countries such as India and Sweden. That is right, India is a sovereign socialist democratic republic nation as stated in the constitution of India.

And before any of you point at the problems faced by India, let me tell you most of those problems are due to its burgeoning population and should not be attributed to its socialist aspect. And as far as Sweden is concerned, it is ranked as the 4th least corrupt nation in the world. A clue that it's people lead contented lives. And Sweden enjoys an ultra low unemployment rate of around 4% which is the least in the European Union.

Simply put, socialism is a process of control of resources by a community or state in varying degrees. So the big question is does the Free Software movement enjoy any relation with socialist ideology ?

If you go by the definition of Socialism, I would say yes. The source code is open and is controlled by the Free software community at large. And it is the community which largely decides and dictates the direction of a software's progress. Each decision is taken through consensus and by interacting with its users. Though at times there is bound to be a lot of bickering and clash of egos, for the large part, the job gets done splendidly. And socialism works in the software realm when it is a massive failure when implemented in an extreme form (read communism) in real life is because unlike the resources in real life, software is a replenish-able resource. You can literally make millions of copies of your source code and distribute it to others free of cost and still you will be left holding the original copy of the source code.

Having stated my views about this topic, I came across this lengthy article which talked about the inherent link between Free software and socialism. What held my attention was the insidious way in which they had portrayed the 'X' in Linux with a hammer and sickle - the trademark of communist movement. If anything, Free software movement is far removed from the mess that is communism.

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.

Introducing LAMP, WAMP and MAMP application stacks from Bitnami

Lets say you are interested in running a website related to a subject close to your heart. In days of yore, it involved getting your hands down and dirty in writing code which will show your content legibly in a web browser. But then a couple of years ago, a new phenomenon gathered momentum - which was the spurt in software which help one to manage ones content online. Not surprisingly most of these software categorize themselves as content management systems (CMS) though many call themselves by other names like blogging systems, Wiki and so on.

What is really spectacular and common about these software is that all of them allow non-tech users to publish their content online without worrying about writing code. Some of the more popular CMSes around are Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, MediaWiki ... the list is a long one and I could take a whole day to list all of them here.

But ease of use of a CMS to publish your content doesn't mean ease of installing it. That is, most CMSes make use of a web server to serve the files and a database to store the content. While it is simple to set up when you are hosting your website online on a shared or even managed dedicated host provider since most of the work is done for you, when it comes to developing your site (setting up all the software locally on your machine), it fast gets tedious. This is especially true if you are a pure web designer by profession and know little about configuring a web server or a database server.

This is were software stacks gain prominence. Software stacks are installation bundles which contain all the relevant software to get you up and running in what ever you intend to do with it. For example, if you are a Wordpress developer who intend to work in developing a Wordpress theme, then instead of separately downloading, installing and configuring a web server, a database server and likes, you can just download the Wordpress stack, install it using the point-and-click method and then go about testing your theme in the newly installed Wordpress blog on your machine.

Keeping the web developer and tech agnostic people who intend to develop their own website in mind, a group called BitNami are providing software / application stacks as a free download. They have laid out an impressive array of software stacks on their website. For example, you have the Joomla stack, Drupal, Wordpress, Mediawiki, even CMSes targeted at corporate environments which require Java, such as Roller. And each of these stacks are an all inclusive bundle containing all the relevant software. You just need to download, install and then start using the CMS - which removes a major hassle from you.

Bitnami provides these application stacks for multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux and MacOSX - though the Linux and Mac OSX versions of their stacks for some applications are yet to be ready.

I decided to download their Drupal stack mainly because they provide a Linux version of it. Not surprisingly it is a hefty download of 56 MB. After downloading, I was flawlessly able to install it on my Linux machine and in no time, I was browsing the newly installed and running Drupal. One thing worth noting is that during the installation itself you are prompted to set a user name and password which will be your administrator user name and also the IP address of your machine so that the software can be configured to be accessed from within your LAN. If you are using a standalone machine, you can enter the IP address 127.0.0.1 or your machine host name.

Pros of Bitnami Stacks

• Each stack is self contained and will not interfere with other software installed on your machine.
• Each stack contain all the relevant software pieces which are required to run the application
• No need to edit the configuration files of your web server or database server as all of it is taken care for you.
• You can download bitnami stacks for multiple platforms.
• You can install multiple stacks on the same machine - though I guess, not run them at the same time.
  

Cons of Bitnami Stacks

• Since each stack is an all inclusive package, it is a relatively hefty download. For example, the Drupal application stack is a huge 56 MB download compared to that from the Drupal official website which is around 5 MB.

Suggestions for further improvement

• When I downloaded the Drupal stack from Bitnami, I found that it was a plain vanilla installation. A glance at the Drupal website shows it has 100s of extra modules which a web developer needs to download and install separately in order to use them, not to speak of the themes. It would be a really good thing if the Bitnami application stack included all these extra Drupal modules and themes too. As the size of the download is not an issue here, including these extra modules and themes will at most increase the size by a further 10 - 20 MB but will provide even greater value for the web developer.
• Apart from providing an installer it would be nice if they also provide a standalone zip or tar.gz archive for download so that it can be unpacked to a USB stick and run from it.