nvidia driver and GNOME 3 on Debian GNU/Linux

So, U have taken the dive and installed G3 on Debian GNU/Linux Testing. We all know that Testing is a moving distributions which is continously updated. but we have a lil trouble with this approach when it comes to running G3. Every time critical G3 components or libraries are updated, the nvidia module fails to load and composting is disabled and u are dropped to the G2.3 ish mode.

The work around is very simple. Just re-install the nvidia driver.


P.s-> Dont forget to install synapse. It is a god send for users who had got used to Gnome-do. synapse is a must for all G3 users. It will save all the users moving the mouse cursor to the hot right corner or one super key click on the key board. Try synapse and you will never repent it.

Wikipedia and freedom

This topic is very close to my heart. Why? One, it is about freedom and two it is sharing. These two are the basic aspects of human existence and will continue to do so. I know, I will be ridiculed and this post will be vandalised over the public network. On what basis am i making this statement? There are posts on google plus where users(I think they are humans and not bots,

Are we continuing to be human?)have expressed their displeasure at the photograph of jimmy wales appearing on the top of the first page visited in the session. There were posts that they would not contribute to the project since they did not like his face.(OMG, height of being inhuman) Now, to request the users of wikipedia to donate, my face is not one of the best and definitely not better than jimmy wales, so I cannot appeal to the users to help this noble venture to be out for future users. Good looking and famous faces may not have the time and the understanding to appreciate the project. One more reason there is no celebrity involved is, the celebrities will are ready to take up project which is going to put them in the limelight and improve their existing mileage. You can get a celebrity for a cool drink or do a semi-nude pic for PETA. This is the same attitude displayed by the present generation w.r.t the available resources. They are not thinking of saving anything to the future gen. Just for eg, we have used fossil fuels in the last 50 yrs as much as been used in the years beyond those fifty years. That is indifference to the sustainability or dissolving of all human ethics.


Coming back to freedom, wikipedia's software is revolutionay in the fact that every user can have a say. It is ultimately a battle between good and bad, right and wrong, true and false and the good thing is people are free to express any of these attributes and there is no moderator to check for and vouch for either attributes. In a world where ethics are being ridiculed, day in day out, The wiki concept has stood the test of time and has killed all the static sources of encyclopedic knowledge. The dynamic nature of wikipedia assures that both the sides are given equal opportunities and ethically the bad, wrong and false shall lose.


Wikipedia is freedom personfied with basis in democracy and sharing as the main pillar. Please do support the project. Not for wales, not for me, not for "any body" but for "everybody". Keep knowledge free and accesible to all classes of people.

Jimmy wales, your project is based on good ethics. All the best with your project. Let us give something good to the community at large and make an example for the future generation.

Please contribute.

Gnome3 extensions on Debian GNU/Linux testing

People running Debian GNU/Linux testing with Gnome 3.0 and want to customize it with the G3 extensions, read on. The locations from where I collected the extensions are

1. http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

2. http://linuxmaniac.torreviejawireless.org/debian/gnome-shell-extensions/

3. http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=146113
 
4. http://pkgs.org/fedora-15/fedora-updates-i386/gnome-shell-extension-places-menu-3.0.2-3.20110630git939994d0.fc15.noarch.rpm/download/

From all these sources just take the folder with the extension_name@something.com and paste them in /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions and logout. But remember doing so activates the extensions immediately.

If you want to disable any extension, U should install the gnome-tweak tool available in the Debian repos. The tweak tool has other options which you would love to play with. Just remember u have to download the packages for 3.0.* There will be the same packages for 3.2.* And they may break when G3 is update to 3.2. U have been warned. G3 is shiny and beatiful. Thanx to the G3 devs.

GNOME 3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing.

Kudos to the Debian GNU/Linux team. They have proved their "release when ready" philosophy once again with GNOME 3.*.

I loved the way my desktop was seamlessly and gradually updated with components from the latest G3 DE. I like the implementation of G3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing. The basic issues have been sorted out with the inclusion of GNOME tweak tool. Especially taking back the control of the desktop area, with icons allowed and right clicking in the desktop allowed.

In terms of the design philosophy of G3, I have liked whatever I have seen as of today. I have easily carried out all the regular tasks on my laptop without much issues. My tip for new users, that is people migrating from G2, is press the super key(windows key) and start typing the name of the program you want to run or to search the file you want to open. Way to go G3 team.


Ur DE is shiny and radical in terms of the design philosophy. My request to the G3 team is just one ie, See to it that you maintain compatibilty of mostly used addons/extensions with ur future releases. This will keep the addons/extensions/customizers interested.

---Proud to be a Debian GNU/Linux user. Will post any other customizations I do later.

RMS on the "Jailer" steve jobs

RMS wrote on his personal blog thus "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."

Now, Let us study what the hue and cry is about this posting.

The first sentence

Is just perfect. It just sums up jobs's entire lifetime of work. "Jail made cool" tells us about the way steve used the fantastic engineers at work in his company. I believe the engineers were first making a product with a positive outing. But later or along during its development the marketing genius put his stamp on all the products, by locking out the users and spreading "individualism" among the "status" friendly computing newbies. He made it such a way that a person who knew nothing about computing would look cool with his device. In fact he "told" people what is cool. After all this I heard RMS was anti-social. LOL

"I am glad he's gone" tells too many things. The same line would be apt if steve had completely retired from his influence on the way computing devices are designed. But that, was never going to happen. Because the brand which apple had built over the years was not "apple" but "Jobs". In fact, this is the right time for RMS to be harsh on him. This would definitely bring about the truth about the marketing genius. I for one, am sure that this conversations b/w "fools who dont know what is freedom" and people who live and swear by freedom. People buy jailed devices if they themselves like to stay in a prison designed by picassa and of course marketed by steve.

"But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing"

I think there is no need to elaborate on this statement. Anybody requiring clarification can head to www.gnu.org and www.fsf.org or use any of the GNU/Linux distros to "feel" it.

So, There is nothing wrong in RMS's post. He is completely sane and the post is carefully worded. As for the last sentence can Apple change the way ios5 will be distributed. Will it be under GNU GPL v3 or at a minimal, any "open source" license(That, would not be acceptable to RMS but .... let it start here). Naa ....................

steve jobs and Marketing of FLOSS products

Before I comment anything on steve jobs, I salute the marketing genius of a man who would be a perfect example in majority of the examples in philip kotler's book. If he is not he will be in the next edition.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? He cared a damn about India, why? He never thought India as a lucrative "Market". 1 billion people and counting, is it not a market ..... This, is the only mistake I could recognise made by this marketing genius.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? Sorry, that is monotonous, let us do it with bullets.

1. Did he have anything to do, technically with the first apple(1976), No. He arranged funding and handled the marketing part of it.
2. Did Apple II have any inputs from jobs, No. Again, only "Marketing"
3. Lisa, Macintosh ..... Marketing
4. NeXT ..... Marketing
5. iMac .... Marketing
6. By this time, Apple recognised that jobs had himself become a commodity. They sold jobs to the bedazzled audience and they lapped him up completely.
7. iPod ..... Marketing. There were a plethora of mp3 players in the market but, the marketing blitz assured that they all were dead within a matter of days.
8. iTunes ..... The greatest innovation which took Apple's revenues to the highest. This was the beginning of the lockdown of the devices in terms of software. This introduced the concept of "ownership" or DRM. You are not supposed to share the music u buy, or for that matter anything u buy from the itunes market. That is again "marketing"

9. iphone .... Revolutionised the mobile phone market. oh, that market word again. He showed that users are ready for premium hardware which dumb users would like to use it blindly and flaunt it too.

10. ipad ... Tapped the same dumb phone market and gave it one more premium symbol to show off.

The one thing common to the latest devices on the market.... is FLOSS. All the devices run FLOSS core. The core runs freebsd on a MACH kernel. Both developed over generations by FLOSS enthusiasts. The bindings are propreitory. The extensions in terms of apps(the itunes app market) are propreitory. Though, the hardware/software combo is ready to run FLOSS apps, I have come across very few people who go beyond what is available in the bundle, except for *nix enthusiasts who "open" the system to be their dream machine. With this they have something to flaunt as well as be working on their favorite *nix aspects. That just shows why apple devices turn up in huge numbers in majority of FLOSS programs/presentations.

In reality he has jailed the users and the FLOSS core in propreitory casing(propreitory UI). Sheer marketing genius. This will be perfect for people who really dont care about the central human principle, sharing. Or they just dont have anything to share.

kudos to the marketing genius for running such a long marathon, always in the lead. For me, steve jobs is "the" tech marketing guru.

Anna Hazaare and freedom

I love the word Freedom. It is my favorite word in the entire english vocabulary. I have been seeing and hearing a lot about how Sri Anna hazaare has held the government at ransom to achieve a seemingly impossible task of impressing the parliamentarians or the law makers as to how a law should be made. Below mentioned are my and only "my" rants on Sri anna's movement.

1. To start with I congratulate Anna in taking freedom and democracy to a new level. It has shown our country men(including me) how strong people are and by how much we should value our freedom. I had noticed that people take freedom for granted. If they are allowed to earn their salary, their food, their morsel of entertainment, sleep, rest, they care a damn about the fact that "freedom" is what is making them do all that and much more without much botheration from an authoritarian third party.

2. Freedom is to do what one likes to do. Democracy is based on freedom. If all the world is embracing democracy, they are in-fact embracing and feeling the warmth of freedom. People in autocratic countries will definitely yearn for that "ethical" approach to living once they taste it during their visits to democratic countries.

3. Democracy is by definition, of the people, by the people and for the people. We see that Democracy is full of "people". Secularism is the kohinoor diamond studded crown for a democratic body. Luckily, having born in India I have tasted Democracy, secularism, their warmth and their pitfalls.

4. Sri Anna has shown the path to the younger lot who were dissolutioned by the way, the country was being led. He has shown the youth that instead of cribbing, make yourself heard. I believe this is a start. The present youth, I believe have got the point. You dont have to be within the framework of the elected government to frame laws. You can be made yourself heard in the most ethically possible "gandhian" way.

5. Sri Anna has shown to the younger lot a sample of how Sri Mahatma Gandhi was able to exert pressure on the British empire just by fasting and following the non-violent way. In-fact sri Narendra modi tweeted to tell that all the naxals who have taken to arms should take a leaf out of sri anna's campaign and choose non-violence. If naxals are a bunch of disollusioned youth of our country it is their time to voice their issues in a similar manner. Get the attention of the media and spell out their issues in the most positive manner.

6. By this I am not telling that "anna's way" is the only way. What I am telling is anna's way is the most constructive way. His movement did not burn any buses, kill any innocent people, etc...

7. I would like to end this post by thanking all the brains behind sri anna in drafting the jan lokpal bill. If implemented it would go a long way in improving the "strongest" bureacratic system in this country. If implemented properely, I believe that the number of people yearning for "government" job would come down drastically. We will have only service minded people who are ready to sweat it out in improving the living conditions of our country.

karen sandlers presentation at oscon

A very dangerous account of issues involving propreitory software. The presentation by karen sandler who has joined the GNOME foundation after leaving the software freedom law centre is simple and straight forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFZGpES-St8

I like the fact that Karen discussed more about the philosophy of FLOSS than the product which she was representing. All the people involved in FLOSS activities will always highlight that the concept and philosophy of "freedom" software is important than the software itself. Well, shed did like the beauty of the GNOME3 desktop( I also like the G3 desktop environment, except that it is treating power users and new users the same ). It indeed was very cheeky of her to mention that the majority of the attendees had a Mac. Did her speech make any effect on the attendees such that they would change their propreitory platform, My answer is NO. It is always better to attract newer developers and users towards the FLOSS ecosystem by teaching them the ethics of "freedom" before they learn any development or usage.

Karen and people like her( in such postions ) should spread the ethics of "freedomm" software. The byproduct of such a movement would definitely result in a world which would make people like karen, more comfortable and confident on technology.

sony ericsson x10 mini pro and xperia mini pro

First let us talk about sony ericsson x10 mini pro.

xperia x10 mini pro(my previous phone) was a great android phone in terms of looks, the processing power and the "slide in back jeans pocket" size. The cons were it ran android 2.1, it had phone memory of ~125 MB(So, u are limited by this memory in terms of number of apps u run on the phone. 2.1 does not support transferring apps to sd. So, there you are stuck with a few apps. You have to uninstall and install any additional app u require), It had a 5 MP autofocus camera but could not record videos in HD, The screen size was very yesterday (240x320) and 2.5" screen size(The first GNU/Linux touchscreen phone, from motorola, a motorola a1200 had the same resolution and screen size), No multitouch, Flaky bluetooth functionality, Support for external memory limited to 16 GB. The most important negative is there is no custom built distro(cyanogenmod) to replace the OS,which is complete. All custom roms have issues related to the camera and fm radio.
No adobe flash vides support(thanks to android 2.1 and processor with armv6 architecture running at 600Mhz. Thanx also to the adobe developers who cannot develop the flash player for this architecture)
Four corners with quick launch(one app in every corner), sony ericsson's custom UI.
No front facing camera.

Now, let us come down to the xperia mini pro(without the x10)

We have the same great looks, albeit, a little less chrome and some change in the location of the physical keys. Out of the three "required" hardware keys for android phones, only the home key is mechanical, the other two come with capacitive touch.
It is running android 2.3.3( Move apps to sd card(if they are coded to support that feature))
The phone memory is given as 400 MB, But after I installed few default apps, the phone memory remaining was about 250MB. So, I dont think there will be any issue with the number of apps we would install owing to good phone memory and android 2.3.3 apps to sd feature
It has a 5 MP point to focus, face detection, HD video recording
Screen size is 320x480( 3" screen size ). That, IMHO, is perfect.
Multitouch fully enabled with pinch to zoom(courtesy android 2.3.3)
Improved bluetooth functionality
Support for external memory upto 32GB.
DLNA support(courtesy android 2.3.3), Good if you have a playstation3 or other DLNA compliant devices.
The sound quality is nearly the same as was on the x10 mini pro, though a new term has been coined to ride on its excellent sound quality called xLOUD(tm).
The killer feature for me is the widget "type to share". If u are on the home screen with this widget, you just open the keypad and start typing whatever you want to share, without opening any app. Once u have finished typing u just go to options and choose the app through which u want to share twitter, facebook, g+ etc... Fantastic and cool.
The keypad has good feedback but should have been silver in color(like in x10 mini pro). Black keyboard on the black phone made it look monotonous.
We have the 3.5mm audio jack port(At last, somebody put some sense into the handset manufacturers to come out of their propreitory audio out port)
Here we have the same custom UI from sony ericsson with four corners for quick launch of apps.But what is different is that now every corner can house a maximum of 4 shortcuts.
There is a front vga camera for video chat.
Complete flash support, v10.3 avl from the android market(Thanx to android 2.3 and flash being developed on arm v7 and above by adobe)
The core is a 1 GHz, arm v7 processor.

I have to add one negative here. It comes bundled with timed, bull shit, trial applications which cannot be un-installed. I cannot even delete the shortcuts. I firmly believe that these apps should be installed once the user buys the phone and he accepts to install them.

There it is. U have the first hand comparison. I will add further info as I come to know. Thanks to all the android developers(google and more importantly, the independent developers at cyanagenmod) for making android the poor man's smartphone OS.

Debian GNU/Hurd trial installation

I downloaded both the DVD and the cd1 from here. I went ahead and downloaded it owing to increased activity and interest in the project by students from the GSoC project. The DVD iso download was corrupted, so downloaded the cd1 of the distribution. CD1 on hp tx1301au installation was stopped since the installer did not identify and hard disks which can be used. After posting the issue on the mailing lists, I was adviced to select IDE(legacy mode) in the bios. This was not possible with my laptop. HP has not given me any options to play with the bios settings.

Next the cd was tried out on dell m501r. Here the installer booted to graphical mode!!!!, but, behold..,, It did not recognise the cd drive itself, so it did not find the installation medium(strange). But seeing GNU/HURD run a graphical installer has kept my hopes high on this project. The installer steps are the same with Debian GNU/Linux. So anybody who has installed Debian GNU/Linux should feel at home. Congrats to the Debian GNU/Hurd team on the accomplishment.

Anybody wanting to install Debian GNU/Hurd, my recommendation would be to dust out that old desktop of yours and install. This may work out because the drivers available with Debian GNU/Hurd are the driver which have been ported from Linux kernel 2.*. So, there is all possibility of your older hardware playing nice with Debian GNU/Linux. Any further questions can be put to the mailing lists. The mailing list replies are simple and quick.

All the best with ur Debian GNU/Hurd installation. We are nearing the dream of RMS regarding the completely FaiF Operating system.

Project Cacophony

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-would-not-sign-a-harmony-agreement/

I would like to refer the reader to the excellent blog above. My blog can be seen as a comment for the above post.

I have re-iterated many a time that Canonical is heading for a dual licensing approach code contributed in the "free as in freedom" environment. It wants to make money out of community contributions, not from its own contributions. Why should there be a community contribution agreement between an organization which is "supposed" to foster freedom software development and the contributors who believe in "free as in freedom" philosophy? We already have a plethora of licenses to chose from, we have the free software foundation to whom we can give the copyright(if we as individual contributors are not to be bothered with the legalities of it), or we could keep the copyright assignment to ourselves which is the default.

During this year's ubuntu summit, Mark spoke at length and emphasis on contributor agreements and of course(unity). I would suggest Mark to remove all the community contributions and package the unity code written by canonical into a blob. Let him sell a "me too" osX clone with his propreitory unity front end(which many others did try). Go ahead and do it. Mark, You are muddying the "free as in freedom" waters by forcing community contributos to sign the agreement to participate in their favorite projec ie, Ubuntu GNU/Linux. Mark, You might have started the ubuntu GNU/Linux with the prospect of reaping money, but now, it is beyond ur grasps. It is in the hads of the community. The day u come out with propreitory extensions and vendor specific improvements, You will definitely see a fork(As though we dont have it now ). I have warned you.

The code is contributed by the community and belongs to the community for the community at large. Mark, You will never own it. Harmony is a backdoor entry by canonical to get as much IP as possible into their lap, thereby increasing its total worth. Harmony places the complete onus of negative impact on the developer. All the positive outcomes are to be reaped by canonical. Harmony is giving a bad example to all project which are using community contributions.

I, as a user, completely desist the cacophony of the project harmony. Booooooo... canonical

Summarized comment on shuttleworths post.

http://srinicame.blogspot.com/2011/05/response-to-mark-shuttleworths-article.html


The above post was my reply to mark to one of his posts. The post was related to the economics of FLOSS, in particular, it explained how the present "hobby" projects were not making money. It also tried to explain methods of raising money. Ultimately the summary was that, Mark is not getting his ROI on ubuntu GNU/Linux.After seeing all the comments in the post, I was shocked at the way, the post was interpreted. People went a step further in explaining myriad number of ways of how "Mark should make money" from Ubuntu GNU/Linux that too, from existing users.

I would like to bring to the notice of all the commenters that

1. Mark did not reply to my comment
2. Mark is not bothered about making money from the existing users. The money he would collect would be peanuts compared to the wealth he has already accumulated from his previous propreitory endeavours
3. If all the "free as in freedom" developers had thought like mark, We wouldnt have GNU/Linux and ofcourse, ubuntu GNU/Linux in the first place
4. Money is not everything for everybody.
5. If Debian HURD or Minix takes off in a big way( Exaggerated ), We again have an alternate os to tinker with. The community will start the cycle of improving the new kid. It is not difficult ot understand where ubuntu GNU/Linux stands with this.
6. If Mark is successful in pre-installing ubuntu GNU/Linux on new hardware, His restrictive ideas will see a format of the new hardware the time it is recieved and the users are once again "free" to taste freedom with Debian GNU/Linux or Debian GNU/Kfreebsd or ..... Debian GNU/Hurd.
7. At the end of the post, Mark told that he would summarize the comments on this post and include it in his next post. This has not materialized.

I think instead, Mark should go the Redhat way or the suse way and aim for corporate users with their pockets full of money. As far as the Microsoft/Apple way, Windows/osX is enough. We dont want GNU/Linux to end up in the same kind of marketing and propreitory blobosphere.

Mark, Pls leave GNU/Linux alone or just be a major contributor to both the GNU/Linux world and wikipedia universe and keep the ads at bay.

Can Diaspora mimic google+

I for one would love to see Diaspora completely imitate google+. By mimicing, I meant that Diaspora should carry features on "one to one" basis. I loved the way google has implemented its social networking concept after failing multiple times. That is definitely a result of n--> infinity dollars available with google. Innovation is the key to google. I believe this is one company which completely innovates and recruits people only to innovate, not to work. Diaspora is born out of a very claear understanding of human sharing psychology. Google implemented the "aspects" in Diaspora more intuitively with "circles". The similarity ends there. The video upload, the mobile app, sparks, hangout, Huddle can be definitely credited to all the existing social networking apps.

I would love to see Diaspora reach the same amount of feature list as google plus. Why?

1. I love "free as in freedom" concept of RMS
2. The layout of the page is very pleasing. This is where diaspora and google+ are on the same level of maturity
3. I want the code of such a social networking setup available to the community at large.
4. When the code is available to the community on a "free as in freedom" license we will see that it will be put to innumerable uses not even visualized by the original developers.
5. I like Diaspora
6. If anybody wants they can run their own diaspora server from their house thereby keeping the data really private and still connect to all the "diasps" across the world.

Here is my best wishes with the diaspora developers, users and community to grow and to implement features with more intuitive front ends. "circles" should be an eye opener to all the diaspora developers for very "simplistic" tech front ends.

Linus should be happy

I came across a qoute by Linus Torvalds which summed up to this 'If Mirosoft developed an app specific for the GNU/Linux environment then he had won'. This has happened now with office 360. Critics might argue that my argument is not right. But my comment comes on the fact that Microsoft is synonymous with "MS office". Many users do not know that the "MS" stands for Micro-soft. But nobody can negate me that MS office is the most widely used "application" in the computer world. Now, that application is available for the majority of the operating systems which can run a fully blown browser.

This is a clear win for Linus and it is celebration time for GNU/Linux enthusiasts. After trying all the different methods for running Office like WINE, virtualization and all other methods, we now have a cleaner method officiated by Microsoft. Kudos to Microsoft for coming out with the online office suite. In a move to counter Google, It has forgotten the amount of users it mahy lose who buy bundled msoffice. Users win. Users have forced Microsoft to come out with a cloud version of its office.

Will we have a libre office hosted on the cloud. We may and we should. That would put a bit more pressure on microsoft to see to it that office 360 worked the same and has the same features across all the OS platforms.

Congrats Linus. You owe the Users/community a toast.

GLib-GIO:ERROR:gdbusconnection.c:2270:initable_init: assertion failed: (connection->initialization_error == NULL)

Is anybody getting the error specified in the subject? If so I would direct you to this post. http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1423295

This happens when u start GUI programs from terminal emulators as superuser(root). This is quite usual to all the users who would just type su, and then type in the password. With this only the user is changed. All the provess and powers of being root is not available. Instead if we use
su -(hyphen), press enter and then enter the root password we have the compete root environment. Now u can run the GUI's as root. I was crippled completely since I use emacs regularly from the terminal emulators for system maintenance. Thanx to the post on the fedora forum, I am back as the superuser. just watch the date of the post too, Interesting.

Economic power(sic!) in FLOSS system

My reply to Marks blog entry http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/680

@ Mark,
“Empower software companies”. Yes you do understand that they are powerless with the copyleft software available right in front of them, but they dont want to take it. So u are going to “empower” them so that they know “ways” to use the hardwork of freedom coders. And, who is afraid of them, Well, u are. Its obvious.

There are no monarchies in the freedom software world. The author, the user, the contributor, the maintainer everybody is a monarch. They live in a free world and enjoy their freedom.

There is order in chaos. U just have to look for it. Take any freedom software project as an example(why not urs).

Freedom software and freedom in general is a passion. It has to be experienced to understand it. Free urself from appeasing big organizations and start helping all the government schools in the world to start using GNU/* . U will see the freedom in the eyes of the children.

I dont know how this word “fear” has gotten into you. What are u fearing?. That u may not get back ur ROI, That ur project may fail, That u neglected the corporate sector and concentrated on the desktop market, That u may not be able to sell boxed ubuntu GNU/Linux on a store shelf. I dont know.

The FLOSS eco-system is driven by ideologies. Ideologies are theoritical perfections which people/organizations should thrive to achieve. The freedom ecosystem is not run by POWER.

Did u send this post to all the CEO/CTO/C** of all the companies whom u fear and have asked u to represent them.

Thank ur lucky stars that GNU/HURD did not take off. You would not have found an ally from the free software foundation like linus.

Freedom software has stood the test of time and will continue. There is no “fear” and no necessity of “power” only passion.

GPL licensed code on the decline

There have been reports that the amount of code written and licensed in copyleft license, that is GNU GPL is on the decline. The entire public network is abuzz with this report. Whoever wrote the report wants to create FUD in the minds of "to be developers" and "contributing communities" regarding GNU GPL. The GNU GPL in my opinion is the most permissive license. It is permissive in the fact that it permits the continuous development of the initial source tree. It is permissive because it permits and paves the way for "not re-inventing the wheel". It is permissive because it permits the basic concept of the existence of human race, sharing and freedom. It is the only license which embodies the concept of freedom and sharing in the same body.

Richard M Stallman has a vision that users, in the near future would be made dumb by making them slaves to proprietary technologies and make every action of users robotic. His prophecy is that "freedom and sharing" as applied to software is the answer to the bullying of big corporations. As the world turns to software for innumerable tasks in human life, freedom and sharing are the human ideologies which would keep the required technology out in the open and approachable to all classes of people. Any future technology developed should be such that they should be based on open standards for the entire human fraternity to repair and upgrade it.

In this crusade of freeing software from the clutches of big corporations, GNU GPL is the open standard which the entire freedom software community should follow. The big corporations are free to package the GPLed software and sell it with improvements(to be given back to the community) to other big corporations. But, individuals, non-profit groups, families also should be self sufficient in computing. This ideological situation is possible if all the freedom developers and in fact, all developers start licensing their code with a GPL V3 and above license developed by the group headed by the visionary Richard M Stallman. His thoughts can be dismissed as completely theoretical and laughed at, but only future will tell what is in store for the computing services users in the near future. Community developers/contributors who give ideas/improvements/code-snippets to freedom software/propreitory software should license their code with GPL v3 and above. This will see to it that these contributions are always available to the "common man" who in the near future is a prospective developer/contributor.

Now, regarding the copyright assignment, I have re-iterated many a times that it is always a better, in fact, the best option to assign the copyright to the free software foundation. The free software foundation is built on very strict ideologies and I am pretty sure that there will not be any dual licensing model as other bigger corporations using freedom software are doing(canonical with ubuntu(future), IBM with websphere(thanx to FAiF podcast for this info) and ....). Assigning copyright ownership of any major code, code snippets, ideas to implement or improve to the big corporations, would lock them up in propreitory black box, thereby stopping further innovation and development and is against sharing and freedom.

I appeal to all the developers and contributors to PLEASE assign copyrights to the free software foundation and license it with GPL v3 and above and make GNU GPL once again, a force to reckon with.

Let the force be with all the freedom developers/contributors/idealists/supporters.

Response to Mark and copyright freedom projects to FSF

Response to Mark shuttleworth's article http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/linux-users-ubuntu-column-100-with-mark-shuttleworth/

To start with Mac, sorry, Mark, I think the effort ur team has put for unity is commendable. Why, it is obvious from the passion with which u can go on and on with it. There have been likes and dislikes, features liked and disliked, UI loved and hated and so on… . I am not against anything which will take Free as in Freedom computing to the masses. What I am against, is re-inventing the wheel. G3 developers doing the same thing and the entire canonical paid developers doing the same thing. This is a step back for freedom software.

Ur inspiration were all the propreitory interfaces around the world and not a single idea was borrowed from G3 or other freedom interfaces. That is again a step back.

About the indicators etc.. The less I talk, the better. The whole public network is filled up with this stuff for and against u. I dont want to go on and start whole over. Btw, G3 implemented it better. So u better buckle up.

I really love the way u talk about copyrights. “contributor agreements” is a fantastic way of talking about copyrights, without even hinting at it. I am pretty sure that there will be dual-licensing of all the software u are accumulating copyrights for in the guise of “contributor agreements”. Dont bark at me, now. Time will tell. Can u assign the copyright for all the software u have accumulated to the free software foundation and the licensing of course would be GPL v3 and above?

I, for one would love to increase the meaning of the word "GNU software". There is a generic thinking in the people that GNU software consists of projects "sponsored by FSF". I would say, GNU software is the entire collection of software/creative works out there with the licensing GNU GPL 1 and above. Embracing a GPL license is not enough to protect ur software and the programmers intent. I would appeal to all the freedom programmers to COPYRIGHT their software to the people who stand for "Pure theoritical" freedom. I believe that free software foundation is in a good place to fight for the freedom of the code and its continuity to stay so.
FREEDOM dot

FSF will do better with more sources of finance

Commercial GNU/Linux, GNU/BSD GNU/Mach distributions(operating systems) are definitely making money. All the vendors are coming out with fancy/experimental front ends to the GNU/* operating systems. They are marketing it as their own OS. Especially Ubuntu. I did not find the word "linux" or "GNU" in a page depth of 2 - 3 on the ubuntu web sit. I am happy with other GNU/* vendors, by at least the fact that they have the name "linux" attached in the name of the product. Ubuntu goes many steps ahead and calls ubuntu, the os. Thats it. Now let us see the attitude of Mark towards the GNU "brand" as he calls it.

My comment on his blog

"Mark, Are u man enough to give an option during install to the users(freedom) to chose between gnome 3.0 and unity *.*?
Do u feel ashamed in calling ur product Ubuntu GNU/Linux?
Dont u think u should thank communities other than U(r)buntu?

btw, congrats on putting out one more experimental shell on the users."

His reply to this was

"@srinivas

I don’t think adding complexity to an install is macho. Do you? By all means, make your own Linux distribution, and add that option. Every Ubuntu user has the easy choice of lots of alternative shells and desktop environments, that’s part of the great thing about Ubuntu. Almost everything is one apt-get away, and if something you care about isn’t, it’s an open environment for your to help others get it too, just step up and participate.

As for your other questions… no, I feel no shame in the fact that Ubuntu is built on GNU and Linux. I also don’t think the people behind those initiatives are so insecure as to feel left out when we don’t put their brand in our brand. You, and every other GNU or Linux fanboy knows exactly what’s GNU and what’s Linux, so there is no benefit to shouting it out. New users who may become contributors to those initiatives will quickly figure it out. And we won’t turn off potential users with a flurry of terminology they don’t understand. All in all, Ubuntu’s track record for bringing new users and contributors to GNU, Linux and Debian is very good. I doubt your whining is much of a help in that regard, but perhaps I’m mistaken and I’d gladly stand corrected if you have facts to back it up.

As for thanking other communities, yes, we do that, all the time in many ways. Lots of those communities work hard to make sure their stuff is fully and properly reflected in Ubuntu as a result. I don’t think you have any point here, other than perhaps to try and be mean and a smart-ass. You succeed admirably on two out of three counts: mean, and an ass.

Mark"

My reply

"@ Mark

Everything is not apt-get away. It has to be brought to that stage by hundreds/thousands of developers. shooing me away by comments which are not “filtered” will not make everything else right.

Come on Mark, Now, who is insecure. U are facing the insecurity of losing new “customers” for ur operating system. As for us “fan boys” we will always fight for “powered by GNU/Linux” label to appear wherever it is used. Suddenly u seem to be upset by the word GNU/Linux. Dont forget that your product aint anything except GNU/Linux unless u develop all the userland and the kernel urself."

Please do continue showing ur “mean” side to the world. I am happy that I have succeeded in exposing that.


I would now like to draw ur attention to this blog http://www.networkworld.com/community/defective-by-design-lacks-traction. It is very clear that FSF's GNU efforts need some traction in terms of cash. I would call upon all the commercial distros to give back to the source. All the commercial distros are taking the source in public domain and in GPL very lightly. They are taking it as granted. They dont want free software evangelists to increase in numbers. They reach this milestone by telling that users are normally dumb and they dont prod deep. If GNU/* is added to the product name, it will create curiosity in the user and will definitely follow the links. This would help FSF enormously in its endeavors.

All biggies use FLOSS nobody gives back.

Take all the big companies in the IT world. They have used FLOSS in one way or the other. But when it comes to giving back to the same FLOSS projects they act smart. They take out all the loop holes in the FLOSS licensing and use it to shield their proprietary ways. They always resist using software licensed in gpl v3 which is one of the best FLOSS license I have come across to preserve the FLOSS ecosystem. The main reason a FLOSS developer goes for a lesser restrictive license like gpl v2 or bsd/apache license is that proprietary biggies love those licenses and the possibility of its use and reach to users increase. If a developer is interested in vast reach then he would never release it with gpl v3.

The linux kernel is the best example for software licensed with gpl v2. If it was licensed with gpl v3, I dont think google would have put that kernel in android systems. They in turn would have gone for a bsd kernel. Which is the same case with apple. Though linux is far ahead in terms of hardware support compared to bsd kernel, for apple it worked nicely since they are not here to support all the hardware in the world. But for android, it was different. They wanted to support anything and everything on the planet so google went ahead with linux gpl v2. Given the same hardware support or if linux is licensed in gpl v3, I am pretty confident that google will go with bsd kernel. They just have to re-write their virtual machine, and all the apps would run fine.

facebook also uses lot of FLOSS software, but I have not heard about any code being given back to the FLOSS eco-system

The summary is, all these proceeding will stifle further innovations in the FLOSS world and there would not be any special FLOSS project which the biggies can parasite on. I appeal to all the biggies to come out with their usage of FLOSS projects and put the changes and improvements they have done back to the FLOSS ecosystem.

RMS and cell phone.

I was getting bored with the heap load of discussions about GNOME, Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth..... Here comes a whiff of fresh air from the Master.

"I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Richard. M. Stallman. That is a very serious statement by the founder of Free software foundation. RMS has always been vocal about any technology that invades privacy of people. Let it be the cloud, social networking sites which lack enough privacy extensions or recently the cell phone. RMS is always for absolute freedom. In India Sri Mahatma Gandhi called it "sampoorna" ie, freedom without any tag lines, without any special conditions, without any riders.

Now, what is it with a cell phone. I still have to come across anybody who can make that statement and stand by it. RMS walks his talk. When he was in India a couple of years ago, I read in Linux for you mag that he did not drink packaged water produced by the coca cola company. He waited until he found out a decent source of water not produced by the multinational company. Cell phones can be tracked to the last millimeter. With this we forgo the last millimeter of privacy which is left. The beauty is you will not know that u are being tracked. We do yearn for the good old days where meeting anybody after a long time evoked so much positve happiness among everybody who meets. Now everybody is connected and are normally updated every day/hour/minute by talking over phone or tracking on the social networking sites. Meeting people is these days never exciting. Now that was the "social" problem. RMS does not like the cell phone since it gives immense opportunity for big brother to wait on you, collect enough info on you and then fix you.

Can I live without a cell phone to his standards. No. Partially yes. I would definitely like to increase that "partial" to near complete No. Let us see how much I would succeed. As of now, I do support RMS with his statement regarding cellphones. Will he succeed in changing few others? Difficult.

A blog reply to mark shuttleworth

This was the reply sent to mark concerning the revenue sharing model for banshee.

Mark, Please do note the following.
1. Ur explanation of the whole situation is most confusing.
2. U have not taken any stand.
3. Ignorance of law is also a crime. Ignorance of the banshee scenario is no explanation for such a heavily debated topic
4. Banshee or any other "free as in freedom" developers do not need ur advice. They very well know how to make money or not from their favorite project.
5. Your re-iteration of telling the banshee developers to develop "their" project, improve "their" project, think about only "their" projects is something that will not be taken easily by the "free as in freedom" developers.
6. Ubuntu is "your" project. So go ahead and do whatever u want with it.
7. Since u dont like nasty comments here please head out to my blog, If u have time(And if u think that it might give ur monetary returns).
8. "U" and "U"buntu are here at this commanding position because of the "free as in freedom" developers(gnome, linux kernel, open office, kvm, qemu, firefox, X, all the plethora of window managers, GNU/Debian and all the fantastic "free as in freedom" developers.
9. U seem to be interested only in the beatification of GNU/Linux.
10. U have spent only "dollars" in making brand ubuntu known(If allowed, u might have a windows kernel if it was free.)
11. U in fact should have spent those "dollars" in making the world understand "free as in freedom" software.
12. stop aping Apple.

Debian GNU/Linux testing(nearly squeeze) on Dell M501R

The installation was a succesful one. The installer behaved better than the one coming with ubuntu. The salient points of the journey

1. I downloaded the DVD1 of the testing branch.
2. Booted of the DVD and was presented with myriad of options to start installation. I selected the text based install. (I tried to boot with a ubuntu 10.10 previously, but was unsuccesful. This was owing to the fact that the custom ubuntu kernel was not playing nice with the acpi architecture of my laptop. The kernel option passed was pci=noacpi, which then booted to the live enviroment)
3. Installed the desktop and the laptop options
4. The ati card behaved beautifuly with the open source drivers. Installed xcompmgr and composition was provided for docky and gnome-do.
5. Broadcom drivers had to be compiled from source. More about this in a previous post.
6. Tried to install the liquorix kernel using synaptic. It screwed up my graphics drivers. Purged the graphics driver and booted back to the debian kernel.
7. Compiled the liquorix kernel manually with liquorix configs. Then installed the propreitory drivers from ati, followed by re-installing xcompmgr for composition.
8. Re-compile the broadcom drivers for the new kernel
9. Configured docky to look similar to the layout in pinguy os.
10. Installed mplayer-mt for the 3-core amd phenom
11. Installed pidgin.(Empathy started crashing after few updates)
12. Installed chrome browser
13. Installed KDE full.
14. Failed to run compiz

Update 18.02.2011:

Empathy(11) and compiz(14) started working after updating the ati propreitory drivers to v 11.2

Thanks to the Debian GNU/Linux team and congratulations on a great release.

Debian GNU/Linux squeeze, aka V6 released

The entire world celebrated the release of Debian GNU/Linux 6 aka squeeze. All over the world, people await and rejoice the release of a new "stable" version of Debian GNU/Linux. This is true particularly for people running servers, apps who want a stable interface to all other interconnected software. The stability issue relates to the interfaces the apps provide to the external world. This stability is important in keeping mission critical servers/computers uptime to the maximum.

When apps are upgraded in a fanatic manner, the interfaces they offer to the external world too change. This results in lot of effort being put to manage these changes. Security updates are provided for stable versions such that they dont disturb these interfaces. For "normal" users the stable might seem outdated compared to the downstream projects like ubuntu. Ubuntu uses the packages from the "unstable" branch to provide bleeding edge software to "normal" users. I would recommend the stable branch to all kinds of users owing to the highest quality of packages resulting from being cooked in the testing stage for approximately two years.

If users want to use the bleeding edge software, I recommend people to download the weekly builds. With this they have an advantage, they run bleeding edge packages. The Debian project also gets an advantage, since, users can test these packages over time and provide feed back to the project which in turn will help in fine tuning the packages for the next stable version.

Thanks RMS, Ian, Linus and all the Freedom software developers for liberating and continuing to do so my computing experience. I am very confident that the Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/KfreeBSD will grow and include many more freedom kernels in the future. I for one would like to see GNU/Minix in the next release. With multi-cores we are now ready for micro-kernels.

Broadcom issues on Debian GNU/Linux

Debian GNU/Linux testing installed excellently on my Dell inspiron m501R laptop. But it had the kernel 2.6.32. So I went ahead and compiled the vanilla kernel patched with the liquorix touch. After booting into the new kernel I was welcomed with a broken public network connection because of the broadcom chip. I knew that the drivers from broadcom were now "freed". I was confident that the community definitely would have done something about it. It was made true by a maintainer on arch forums who goes by the name vesath.

The work around were very simple. The patch files were all one or two lines long. But they did the trick. Thanks vesath. The compile went excellently well after applying those patches. Loaded the "wl" with the requisite crypto modules. lo and behold, I am connected to the public network and am typing this immediately.

So what did I do.

1. Download the latest driver source code from http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
2. Extract it in ur home directory
3. Download vesath's patches from here http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514
4. Patch them by "patch -p1 < patch_file_name
5. Run "make"
6. Copy wl.ko generated to /usr/src/linux-2.6.37/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko
7. add "insmod /usr/src/linux-2.6.37/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko" to /etc/rc.local
8. add "lib80211" to /etc/modules. This is a dependency module for wl.ko
9. Reboot

I just love the freedom I am having with my computing experience. Thanks to all the freedom software developers.

Android phones outsell Nokia symbian phones

Well, that is good news. Even Linus torvalds is happy with the android phones. He himself did not envision the growth of his hobby Linux operating system to run on phones and with this much of success. So, with every android phone sold, we have a GNU/Linux installation in a users hands. The GNU software might be minimal right now, But i envision that we will have a GNU land apps required for everybody's needs in the near future. GNU userland and the Linux kernel are excellent partners. The best example is Debian GNU/Linux and in turn Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

My dream is always a phone which will run GNU userland apps natively on the Linux kernel and it should also be phone. That would be the killer device. I recently wrote to the adam tablet makers. I am yet to recieve reply from them. The nokia N900 was somewhere there. I dropped my idea of buying it after knowing it that Nokia is not interested in giving an "open" phone to the customer. This will happen when they release meego on phones similar to the nokia n900. I doubt that the meego OS would allow users to run GNU apps natively on the Linux kernel. If they do so, I will be the first person to buy that phone. With the ability to install GNU userland apps, the phone would never be outdated. You can continuously upgrade the apps and all will run natively and happily on the Linux kernel. WOW, Thats awesome.

Thanks Debian GNU/Linux.

Broadcom has joined the Linux foundation

That is great news. Because this completes the complete eco-system of wi-fi available on GNU/Linux. During the initial days of wi-fi and its proliferation, it was a pain to make a GNU/Linux box connect to the wi-fi networks owing to the lack of drivers. The situation improved with atheros and intel providing code and info regarding their wi-fi devices. For broadcom we were left with reverse engineering the drivers. I myself have a broadcom chip on an nvidia chipset(tx1301au). wi-fi worked with forcedeth drivers written by the GNU/Linux community.

I am very happy with the recent development of broadcom open sourcing their drivers. This will result in GNU/Linux developers not re-inventing the wheel and allow them to concentrate their energies on other freedom software which is not existing. Welcome Broadcom to the GNU/Linux, GNU/BSD, GNU/Hurd freedom software eco-system.

App store is a mis-spelt Apt

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/70405

The link above is an excellent article which explains the subject perfectly. I am putting my views on this article, thats it. I cannot add much to whatever has been told there. The appstore of apple is an example how excessive marketing spending billions of dollars will give a new dimension to an existing technology which stood its test of time an continue to do so in the community circles.

I am using debian for the past 9 years. I always had aptitude and the synaptic and then now, software center since that time. I have never re-installed my debian installatiion since debian 3.1 to this day. I install whatever I want at any time, whenever I want it and then un-install it once its use is over( I will install it once again when needed ). I upgrade my kernel, system software(debian specific conf files), and all other apps from open office to the smaller but important mpg123.

The apps go through three phases of bug squashing before they become part of the stable basket. I laughed at the installation methods being doled out by apps installing in windows. We GNU/Linux users know exactly where the files are to be installed. With this concept in mind, apt(Advanced packaging tool) was developed by the debian developers. The concept was so excellent that Redhat re-wrote it in a new way called rpm(Red hat package manager). But, that was a step backward. They then had to come out with something called yum.

The beauty of apt was it would find out the dependencies and pull all the necessary packages automatically over the public network. It is getting better day by day. I do not have a single broken package to this day. I have changed my state of packages to testing for the past 2 yrs and am awed at the quality of work the debian developers are putting into this fantastic distribution.

Now we are having an app store for everything. Good. All the credit go to the freedom software developers and particularly to the debian developers. Thank u.

The liquorix Linux kernel configuration project

The website of the liquorix kernel configuration project is one of the most simplest I have come across. liquorix project provides customized kernel for debian based distributions. The customizations are taken down from the zen linux kernel projects. Both zen and liquorix projects take the vanilla kernel and optimize them with additional drivers and kernel code which is not yet part of the vanilla kernel.

Installing the liquorix kernel is as simple as adding the repository source to /etc/apt/sources file, open synaptic, refresh the list, search for liquorix and install it. People having trouble with the latest devices can try this kernel. Liquorix is optimized for the desktop use. If further configuration is required, then the config file can be downloaded with the respective kernel patch.

Patch the vanilla kernel(Be careful in downloading the patches and the configs. The version numbers should match on all the three files). The versioning system for the Linux kernel is just a google or bing away. Build it and install it as u would install a regular vanilla kernel.

I really liked the patches and appreciate the effort put behind by the team in providing a kernel which is geared towards the desktop users. The desktop is zippy and zappy. The response is excellent for the mouse and the key strokes, it is almost immediate. My laptop is on steroids. I had a shutdown/restart problem on my tx1301 au laptop, but installing the latest liqourix kernel solved it. The desktop is more responsive and the hibernating option is much better. There is the tuxonice patch ("It saves the contents of memory to disk and powers down. When the computer is started up again, it reloads the contents and the user can continue from where they left off. No documents need to be reloaded or applications reopened and the process is much faster than a normal shutdown and start up" from the tuxonice website)

So, all in all an excellent community effort in putting all the good kernel code which is not yet upto linus's standards. Thanks to Linus and the entire freedom software community.

"It is very clear that in order to challenge Apple we're going to have to make a lot of changes"

The subject was told spoken by Mark shuttleworth. Now we all know what he is really up to. He cannot take the freedom community for a ride with his prejudiced view of where the GNU/Linux desktop has to land up. We are not here to challenge Apple. We are here to have an alternate OS when the whole world is engulfed and locked in proprietary solutions. He should learn from google on making money from GNU/Linux. Improve the core and make it attractive to OEMs. The OEMs in turn will develop the UI and distribute as though it is their own, But the core is still the same.

This will make the OEMs to contribute towards the core also as is the case with android OEMs. The competition among the OEMs will make GNU/Linux reach the mass in the best possible ways. So, Mark improve the core and leave the UI to the OEMs and the user/developers/artists. Make the core one of the best OS in the world.

What is Mark up to?

Mark shuttleworth now wants return from his investment in GNU/Linux. He is now fed up with all the free ideologies taught by Sri RMS. He thought that by talking about freedom software and in turn spend dollars for publicity he would create a parallel environment which would give him his ROI. How exactly is he expecting his ROI?.

1. He wants to "differentiate" GNU Ubuntu Linux. How is he going about it? Well, to start with he has unity. The bull shit front end which will use the blood and the nervous system of the GNOME project and add bells and whistles and also integrate his "mp3" service tightly into the bloody front end he is building.
2. He "wants" to build a generic OS very similar to the fruity company. His os should run and look the same on all the devices on which he wants or expects it to be used. He wants it to be as in-compatible as possible with other GNU/Linux. Now, why does he want to do this? The answer is obvioius. He has been a parasite all these years and will continue to be so. He will take from the Freedom software world but will not give anything in return owing to incompatibility(very much the fruit company)
3. He wants his os to be as game savvy as the windows of the world. He wants his os to run games as good as the other os is running them. He is going to do this by shifting his "development?" effort to wayland. I myself would love to play all the games in this world on this freedom os, but dropping the X server is something I cannot digest. This is from the same company which is supposed to use LTSP project for schools in south africa. The X group of utilities is central to the freedom philosophy which allows us to use all the old hardware efficiently. Is he interested in schools now? NO. Is he interested in shipping cds in large numbers? NO.

This man is now serious. He wants ROI for his investment in freedom speech which he has been giving all these years. He wants to copy all his strategies from a company which is more secretive than the projects at NASA. I wish him all the very best and want to tell him that he can go his way. He can no more influence GNU/Linux. It size is beyond his realms. Thanks RMS. Thanks Debian GNU/Linux.