Posts Tagged ‘FOSS’
Conky Lands on top of Windows!!! May 9th, 2009
I showed you how to install Conky, which is a free software system monitor for the X Window System in my last post. Some of us have experienced that if we add Conky to the Session/Start Application list, after booting Conky tends to appear on top of all windows. If you kill the Conky process and restart it, then the display is fine.
Now the solution to this is :
1. Open a terminal and type : gedit .startconky0
2. Paste this in it :
#!/bin/bash
sleep 35 &&
conky
3. Save and close
4. Type in the terminal : sudo chmod a+x .startconky0
5. In SYSTEM>PREFERENCES>SESSIONS/START APPLICATION
Click +Add
Name= Starting Conky
Command=./.startconky0
Also remove conky from Session/Start Application list when you have added .startconky0
Now reboot, it should work then. 
Tags: Conky, FOSS, Linux, Ubuntu
Posted in Techi Gyaan | Comments (1)
Conky – a light weight system monitor for Linux Systems!!! May 9th, 2009
Conky is a free software system monitor for the X Window System. Not only monitoring system, with a little bit of scripting, it can be useful to know your new mails, weather info etc. Conky is highly configurable and is able to monitor many system variables including the status of the CPU, memory, swap space, disk storage, temperatures, processes, network interfaces, battery power, system messages, e-mail inboxes, Arch Linux updates, many popular music players, and much more. Unlike system monitors that use high-level widget toolkits to render their information, Conky is drawn directly in an X window. But this flexibility comes at a price: all Conky’s settings are stored in the .conkyrc file, which you have to create and tweak manually. The good news is that once you understand the inner workings of the .conkyrc file, you can easily create powerful Conky configuration profiles.
Note: Each time you edit your .conkyrc file you would need to restart conky. That is done by typing the following commands in the terminal “killall conky” to kill conky and “conky&” to start it again.
To install Conky on Ubuntu type in the terminal :
$ sudo apt-get install conky
Now download the following .conkyrc file, if you want your Conky to look like mine :
1. After downloading save it as .conkyrc in your home folder.
2. Now, make a directory scripts in your home directory. Download these scripts, extract and copy them inside the directory you just created.
3. Download all these fonts, extract and copy them inside .fonts directory in your home directory. If you don’t have the .fonts directory, you need to create it. You might need to have administrative privileges to create this directory.
4. Open .conkyrc file. Look for this line:
${execpi 300 python ~/scripts/gmail_parser.py yourgmailusername yourgmailpassword 3}
Replace yourgmailusernamewith your username and yourgmailpassword with Gmail password. You might also need to install python-feedparser if your mail does not show up.
$ sudo apt-get install python-feedparser
5. To monitor your hard disk and CPU temperature install lm-sensors and hddtemp
$sudo apt-get install hddtemp
$sudo apt-get install lm-sensors
6. Now try and run conky by executing conky& in terminal, if everything is correct you would be able to see conky on your desktop.
If you need more info :
1. More variables for conky
2. Settings variables for conky
3. More Conky scripts can be found here.
Tags: Conky, FOSS, Linux, Ubuntu
Posted in Fun Gyaan, Techi Gyaan | Comments (3)
Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Review!!! May 8th, 2009
Ubuntu is an open source operating system with the intention of supplying an up-to-date, stable operating system for the normal computer user. In addition to stability Ubuntu try to target ease of use and installation. Ubuntu can be used on almost anything including Desktops, Business PC’s, Notebooks and many others that are able to support x86 CPU or ARM CPUs, this has only been adapted in the 9.04 version.
In terms of ease of use, Ubuntu outshines Vista without a doubt. But it is arguably limited when it comes to software. Most applications written for Windows have not been ported with Linux, and therefore you may not be able to get your favourite programs running on Ubuntu. However, I don’t think this is much of a problem, as there is a whole world of open source out there, which sometimes provide even better functionality.
Jaunty is very good. Its the first version of a linux distribution that I’d pretty much recommend to anyone to try (with only a few minor issues..). It has made vast improvements over Hardy from a year ago. Its stable, snappy, and quite a number of annoyances that I experienced before have been fixed or minimised.
The new features
Ubuntu 9.04 uses GNOME 2.26.1 and Linux Kernel 2.26.28.
These 2 combined, creates a very nice interface.
All things that didn’t work for me in 8.10 or had to find a way to get them to work now works in 9.04 right from the start, like Wireless Internet and Bluetooth.
One feature that annoys me is that if you are logged in as Root through the command “sudo su”, you are forced to type in the password of any Super User account, or Root.
The feature I like the most is the new volume panel applet. Many of my Windows friends now want it on there OS.
In other facts, if you change the background, it shows a fading effect, which is very nice, through.
The default theme is the same old brown ‘Human’ theme. Ubuntu never does seem to work on it’s visuals very much. But there was surprise. Last time, Ubuntu introduced the DarkRoom theme. Now, in addition, there are two themes called ‘Dust’ and ‘Dust-Sand’. Dust is the closest Ubuntu has yet come to making a real, professional, working interface. It looks very nice, and the styling is easy on the eyes. All that disappointed me was that it had no wallpapers or icon-sets to complement the theme. Even the new dark theme New Wave looks nice.
Inside the upper layer
First thing that strikes you is that there is the unified notification system. I really enjoyed the fact that all applications can now channel their notifications into a single uniform message. No more mess! Email notifications, messenger messages, system notifications etc are all there. All in all, this is one of the most welcome changes, and it really helps those users that are used to putting lots of applications in their traybar.
Boot times have gone down, takes around 25 seconds to boot, this is lot lesser than earlier versions of Linux. The only full distro that boots faster for me is Dreamlinux. Though I hardly ever shut down my laptop, many people do.
To my surprise, the stability issues have disappeared if by magic. Here, the stability was no issue at all. I pushed the system as much as I can but the Jackalope held on. Impressive indeed. 
Conclusion
To be honest, this is probably the least ground-breaking release of Ubuntu so far. My only complaint with this release is that it gave me very little to write about. Very few earthbreaking features, but rock solid stability. The netbook remix of Ubuntu 9.04, however, offers significant improvements over previous releases, and is worth a try if you use a netbook. Having said all this, Ubuntu is still miles ahead of any other desktop version of Linux, and this release does have some significant server platform developments. Personally, I think Ubuntu is on the same level as Windows and OS X. We’ll just have to wait and see where Ubuntu goes from now on.
Note: Ubuntu 8.10 onwards (9.04 too) has an IPV6 bug. This disallows users with static IPs from connecting to the internet, and some users have trouble disabling this behavior.
Here’s a very useful page about what do after installing the standard Ubuntu 9.04: Eva’s useful guide to Ubuntu 9.04
I’ll post a review of Ubuntu 9.04 on a Dell XPS M1530 in the near future..
Cheers…
Tags: FOSS, Linux, Ubuntu
Posted in Fun Gyaan | Comments (0)
Experience of freed.in!!! February 21st, 2009
Freed.in is an event thats held at JNU where people who are interested in FOSS come from various walks of life. The aim of this event is to motivate people to move over to FOSS by having talks from people from ILUGD, other local FOSS communities and other FOSS developers. This time discussions and talks were held on OSDD, GNU/Linux Clusters, WikiEducator and Django. This was the first time that i attended an event like this.. and its a experience that i would not forget. It was a day two day event held on 20th and 21st of February . The unique inauguration ceremony, freed.in has never had a chief guest other than members of the community. The best thing about this year was that it was arranged without any sponsors. Students from our college took part in the event acting as volunteers. I was a volunteer as well as a speaker at freed.in. I represented a group of students from our college, our talk was on “Learning through Open Source: Our experience with GNU/Linux-based clustering” which is the project we are currently doing at my college. Getting to know so many people from the world of FOSS was really nice. I’ll attend it every year now on.. would try to attend foss.in too this time.
You can have a look at the pictures at Flickr
Tags: FOSS, foss.in, freed.in, Linux
Posted in Assorted Gyaan, Fun Gyaan | Comments (0)
Compress Pictures In Linux(Modified)!!! February 1st, 2009
I got the script to move the new compressed images into a new folder that would be located in your home folder.
As i explained before you need imagemagick installed on your system to run the script.
In ubuntu it can be installed by typing in the terminal sudo apt-get install imagemagick
Heres the script :
#!/bin/bash
# A script to resize images.
readonly OUT_FMT="_new.jpg"
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "A script to resize images "
echo "How to use : $(basename $0) add_of_image1 add_of_image2 ..."
exit 1
fi
read -p 'Enter name of Folder where compressed images would be located (would be made in your home folder) : ' fname
mkdir ~/$fname
for pic
do
# New filename
out_name="${pic%.*}$OUT_FMT"
if [ -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo "Output file $out_name exists, Not resizing!!!"
elif [ "${pic#*$OUT_FMT}" == "" ] ; then
echo "$pic already resized!!!"
elif [ ! -r "$pic" ] ; then
echo "Error : could not access $pic !!!"
else
echo -n "$pic -> $out_name"
convert -quality 80 -resize 800x600 "$pic" "$out_name"
if [ ! -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo " Error .. No output file!!!"
else
echo " ($(du -h "$out_name" | cut -f1))"
fi
fi
mv "$out_name" ./$fname/
done
I also didn’t explain the script properly in the previous post so i’ll that now.
Firstly the script should be copied from here and pasted in a text editor. Then save it as resize.sh in your home folder(you can save it any where you wish but then how you call the scritp would change thats why its easier to save it in the home folder ). Now open a terminal type:
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ sudo chmod +x resize.sh
after this do animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh aaa.jpg
This would ask a for a folder where new image should be placed
Enter name of Folder where compressed images would be located (would be made in your home folder) :
Specify the name of a new folder where you wanna save the image.
The new compressed image would be saved in the folder you specified with the name aaa_new.jpg
You can also convert all pictures of a directory at once by
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh Desktop/linux09/*.JPG
This to would ask for a folder where you would like to save the new compressed images.
Now in the line convert -quality 80 -resize 800×600 "$pic" "$out_name" in script the value after -quality is the argument specifies the amount of JPEG/MIFF/PNG compression level, the lower the value(meaning 60 or 50) the higher is the compression(change it according to what you want). The -resize is used to resize an image, the argument following resize(i.e. 800×600) can be changed to what you want.
Leave a comment if you face any problems.
Tags: FOSS, Imagemagick, Linux, script, Softwares, Ubuntu
Posted in Techi Gyaan | Comments (7)
FOSS Workshop!!! January 31st, 2009
A workshop on Free and open source softwares was conducted at Acharya Narendra Dev College on 29th of January. The workshop was kicked of by the screening of a movie Pirates of The Silicon Valley which tells us about the history of Apple and Microsoft. Following the movie was a presentation by Mr. Gora Mohanty on “Introduction to Free Software” and “The local FOSS community” which gave the students knowledge what FOSS is and why it is important form a students point of view. This was followed by a presentation on “Mobile Computing, OpenMoko, and open-source hardware” by Mr. Supreet Sethi, a presentation that i personally wanted to attend and which i liked a lot . OpenMoko is about how FOSS can be on cellphones. A presentation on rapid web application development was also conducted with Ruby on Rails by Mr. Sawood Alam. He also gave us a live demo on how to go about it. To sum it all up i think the workshop was successful in its aim to get students as well as faculty an introduction as well as experience of FOSS.
Here are some pictures of the workshop.
Tags: Apple, FOSS, Linux, Windows, workshop
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Compress Pictures In Linux!!! January 26th, 2009
I have made a script to compress a set of images so that they can be mailed as images taken form a digicam are normally of 10 or 15MB and to upload a set of images is a pain in the ***.
Firstly you need to install package Imagemagick…
In ubuntu you can install by sudo apt-get install imagemagick
Now just copy the attached in an editor:
#!/bin/bash
# A script to resize images.
readonly OUT_FMT="_new.jpg"
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "A script to resize images "
echo "How to use : $(basename $0) add_of_image1 add_of_image2 ..."
exit 1
fi
for pic
do
# New filename
out_name="${pic%.*}$OUT_FMT"
if [ -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo "Output file $out_name exists, Not resizing!!!"
elif [ "${pic#*$OUT_FMT}" == "" ] ; then
echo "$pic already resized!!!"
elif [ ! -r "$pic" ] ; then
echo "Error : could not access $pic !!!"
else
echo -n "$pic -> $out_name"
convert -quality 80 -resize 800x600 "$pic" "$out_name"
if [ ! -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo " Error .. No output file!!!"
else
echo " ($(du -h "$out_name" | cut -f1))"
fi
fi
done
Now save it as resize.sh in your home folder.
Now in the terminal type
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ sudo chmod +x resize.sh
after this do animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh aaa.jpg
This would return a file aaa_new.jpg
You can also convert all pictures of a directory at once by
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh Desktop/linux09/*.JPG
The only problem with the script is that all the resized pictures would be in the same folder as original pictures. I am not able to move it in a new folder don’t know why. If you face any problem please leave a comment or if you know the solution to my problem please lemme know…
This post has being modified.
Tags: FOSS, Imagemagick, Linux, script, Softwares, Ubuntu
Posted in Techi Gyaan | Comments (2)
FOSS for Windows!!! January 25th, 2009
I got a a lot of requests to publish a list of free and open source softwares(FOSS) for windows. This would be useful for people that are not comfortable to move away from windows.
| Windows version | FOSS version |
| Microsoft Office | OpenOffice Suite |
| Internet Explorer | Firefox |
| Outlook | Thunderbird |
| MSN / AIM / Yahoo / Gtalk / IRC | Pidgin |
| Adobe Photoshop | Gimp, Inkscape |
| Quicken / Quickbooks | GnuCash |
| Microsoft Publisher | Scribus |
| Microsoft Project | OpenProj |
| Microsoft Paint | Paint.NET, Tux Paint |
| Adobe Acrobat Professional | PDFCreator for creating PDF, Sumatra PDF for viewing PDF |
| Adobe Illustrator | Sodipodi, Inkscape |
| Windows Media Player | VLC |
| iTunes | Amarok 2 currently a beta version |
| Nero CD/DVD burning | InfraRecorder |
| BitTorrent / uTorrent | Azureus/Vuze |
| Windows Image Viewer | Cornice |
| Final Cut Pro / Avid Liquid / Windows Movie Maker | VirtualDub |
| Visio | Dia |
| FrontPage/DreamWeaver | Nvu, SeaMonkey |
| Skype | Ekiga (includes free normal telephone number via IPKall.com) |
| Notepad | Notepad2, Notepad++ |
| audio editing and/or recording | Audacity |
| WinZip | 7-Zip |
| Window Media Center / TiVo | MediaPortal 2 |
| WinFax | Faxtastic |
| anti-virus / anti-spyware | Clamwin |
| 3-D Studio | Blender |
| Backup tool | Abakt |
| FTP client | FileZilla |
| database management | MySQL |
| RSS feed reader | RSSOwl |
OpenDisc is a collection of open source software for the Microsoft Windows operating system, I recommend people that use windows to use it. I tried my level best to go through as many windows softwares as possible and find there FOSS alternatives. If i have left any leave a comment i’ll update the post.
Tags: FOSS, Softwares, Windows
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Kerala Government initiative…. January 8th, 2009
Kerala has taken an initiative towards FOSS which has being in the news for a long time now. But the interesting thing is that there site is not like a typical government entities website which are a simple HTML page and in which half of the links don’t ever work(example ICAR). But the kerala gov FOSS initiative site is totally made by a free and open source CMS called Joomla which is nice to hear.
One of the most interesting part is the apply online tab where you can apply for a crash course in FOSS Technologies & Soft Skills. Its a 6 months crash course with admission fee of Rs. 50,000. But its held in kerala which is the only bad news for people from other parts in india.
Tags: FOSS
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (0)
Linux Workshop!!!!!! January 8th, 2009
As a initiative taken by our college to move to 100% FOSS and GNU/Linux, a workshop on Linux, FOSS & Clustering was held from 5th to 7th Jan in my college Acharya Narendra Dev College. The Focus Area: History, Philosophy, Development, Growth, Versatility, Affordability & Security of FOSS with special emphasis on Linux operating system. As our main Resource persons we had Amit Karpe and Dnyanraj Mali who were part of the effort the large and successful effort among academia and industry in Pune to migrate to Linux. Mr. Niyam Bhushan (Graphic Designer and FOSS enthusiast) was also present to motivate the students and faculty towards FOSS and Linux. During the three days the participants learned about FOSS and GNU/Linux.
A installfest was held where participants learned about installation of Linux as well as other softwares and also problems faced by Linux users were dealt with and solved.
For the past one year a group of B.Sc.[H] Comp. Sc. students (four to be precise were there at starting but due to course pressure now there three) and a dedicated Teacher of Physics are trying there level best and have succeeded in making A GNU/Linux based cluster of 6 computers using Parallel Knoppix. This was the first time that it was presented to an audience and now our aim is to attract attention to the on going developments in our college.
Here are a couple of presentations :
The ANDC Cluster
Parallel Programming on the ANDC Cluster
Tags: FOSS, Linux, workshop
Posted in Assorted Gyaan | Comments (4)