Sharique's blog.

I installed Kubuntu 10.10 on my new laptop, my laptop is Compaq CQ62- 308AX. It has Ralink 3090 wifi, which is not automatically detected by Kubuntu. Even restricted driver manager does not show any option for this device. So I downloaded the driver from Ralink site (http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2).  It is in the source format. I thought I might have to patch the kernel source. I went through the readme file and I found that I don’t have to compile kernel ( yippee an hr saved). Only device driver source is needed to be compile. These days things are much more simple. So I compiled the driver by running command “make” and installed it by “make install”.  It has compiled other ralink wifi modules along with 3090 module. After installation (using ‘make install’)  reboot the machine, reboot is not necessary in Linux after installing driver.  After reboot it loaded incorrect  rt2086 module. So I tried manually unloading and loading module using insmode...

Recently we were building a multi-domain site, we are using same theme for all sites but we want to have different colors for buttons for each domain. We achieved this using my overriding theme_button in template.php of theme, here is the snippet. /** * Overwrite theme_button() * @file template.php */ function mytheme_button($variables) { $element = $variables['element']; // Add some extra conditions to make sure we're only adding // the classto the right submit button Now add our custom class if (isset($element['#attributes'])) { $element['#attributes']['class'] [] = 'button'; $domain = domain_get_domain(); $element['#attributes']['class'] [] = $domain['machine_name']; } $variables['element'] = $element; return theme_button($variables); }

The first thing that I note is faster booting. It takes about 15 secs, with previous version it was about 45 secs. Second thing is better performance. Desktop is very responsive and takes lesser memory. As compared to Ubuntu 12.04 with KDE 4.10, it consumes about 300MB less RAM in OpenSuse on my office laptop. Installation I installed it on 2 different variants on 2 different laptops, first one is Dell Vostro- Core i5 2nd generation,4GB ram and second is Compaq CQ-62 AMD Phenom X4, 6GB ram. I installed KDE live on AMD one and Mango Linux on intel one. Mango Linux a OpenSuse derivative developed and maintained by me, contains all additional stuff that is needed after installing OpenSuse, like Google chrome, flash, google earth, vlc, etc... and updates. Installation is no different from previous version. Installation went smooth without any issue. Hardware support On both the laptops all the device are detected and are working well. For the first time in KDE bluetooth is worki...

Like all major CMS drupal stores text fields in encoded html format, to prevent cross site scripting attacks. Some times drupal does not process custom fields and encoded text is displayed as it is. I come across similar issue in my current project. I also post question on StackOverflow. While search for solution I come to know about decode_entities function. decode_entities converts html encoded text to more friendly text. Similary to encode special charters in text you can use check_plain. decode_entities function http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes!unicode.inc/function/decode_entities/7 check_plain function http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes!bootstrap.inc/function/check_plain/7 My question on StackOverflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14229641/rss-feeds-view-showing-encoded-special-character-in-title

After about 2 months delay from initial schedule, OpenSuse 12.2 finally arrived. During recent time, contribution to OpenSuse has increase a lot, so it is taking time review and accept/reject those changes, this is main cause of delay. OpenSuse is working on a mechanism to handle increased traffic. From the release announcement “ The latest release of the world’s most powerful and flexible Linux Distribution brings you speed-ups across the board with a faster storage layer in Linux 3.4 and accelerated functions in glibc and Qt, giving a more fluid and responsive desktop. The infrastructure below openSUSE has evolved, bringing in mature new technologies like GRUB2 and Plymouth and the first steps in the direction of a revised and simplified UNIX file system hierarchy. Users will also notice the added polish to existing features bringing an improved user experience all over. The novel Btrfs file system comes with improved error handling and recovery tools, GNOME 3.4, developing rapidly,...

Here I'm posting an Idea to improve the interface to services module of Yast. Yast is the control panel like application in OpenSuse Linux. Yast is superb piece of software, I would say it is one of the best control panel among all OS available. The current services configuration module is not very user friendly, even simple mode is very confusion for the first time users. Other distributions have much better interface. We can borrow few things from other distros. Ubuntu services manager (USM) - The interface is too simple, does not show service running status. System-config-service (SCS) - The interface is user friendly, separate tabs for background services and on demand service, large area for description and status. Windows - Shows service status in list, option for delay start of services. I think we take few things each of theme. We can use USM interface for simple mode and SCS for advanced mode. Yast is a superb control panel application but not cool, now we should mak...

OpenSuse 12.1 was released just few days back. I was expecting it to be the update of all the components. I downloaded the KDE live CD, burn it to DVD. I normally install linux using live USB drives, created using UnetBootin utility, which method does not work well for OpenSuse. Official method of installing from Live use drive is specified here http://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick. This method has a problem that if format the USB drive in ext3 filesystem, so it cannot be used as regular storage device. Installation run smoothly, installation from Live version asked lesser questions comparatively lesser then DVD installation, like, software selection etc.. For boot loader configuration it still shows "boot loader 128 GB" error, it is there since 11.3. So decided not to install boot loader at all, I have Kubuntu 11.10 installed on other partition of the HDD, so I used that boot loader. Automatic partition detection was really smart, it properly detected my home partition an...

I was working on data clean up to some schools database. Data can be  in any language. One of the thing that I have to as part of this, is to find possible  duplicates. First we tried out soundex algorithm, which has build in  sql server, it is a good algorithm but is most suitable names and  surnames (as it was developed for use in census ). Next algorithm we  tried is Levenshtien distance, this takes 2 strings and gives no of  character different in both strings. For a table with 10k rows for  checking one field for possible duplicates it was taking about 15 min,  which is quite long. Levenshtien does not well for string with spaces. Which make reduces its usefulness very much. So I searched around for few better algorithms. I found a soundex  derivative 'Daitch–Mokotoff Soundex' , but it is also for surname with  Slavic and Germanic support. Another one I found is Metaphone, which  is suitable for most English words, but ...

SUSE Studio: Using AutoYaST for customizing your appliance on first boot

I found this fascinating quote today: As a part of the new, experimental PuneTech video series, we interviewed Anand Soman, CEO of Pune-based startup Infinishare, and serial entrepreneur. Infinishare provides software for a host of internet enabled devices, including digital photoframe devices, digital displays, home internet devices. They provide a full software stack for such devices, but their core IP is in device-to-cloud, and device-to-device communications. punetech.com, PuneTech , Aug 2009 You should read the whole article.

I installed ubuntu 9.04 on my cousine's machine along side of windows. When I try to access windows (ntfs) partition it ask me for root password everytime to mount them. This can easily disabled by changing few settings in polocykit. Go to System->Administration -> Authorisations and search for mount Than add appropriate user to allow list. In constrains either select none.

i installed latest development snapshot of Drupal 7. I found that a lot things have been changed. Whole core is rewritten with PHP 5.2 as base to utilize improvements done in language, like pdo, better timezone handling, etc and few important modules have been moved to core. Database layer is rewritten using pdo, now it supports more databases.jquery ui is added to core. cck and jqury plugin manager is moved into core. Seven is the new admin theme, it is single column theme. 1st september was expected to be release date of beta of Drupal 7 but there is a lot work still remain to do.

I'm running windows 7 rc in virtual box.win7 rc seems to be well polished, there are alot things which looks similar to kde4, but they are well funished. Win7 is runnig very smooth even without guest tools.

As part of our ongoing Embrace and Extend.NET series (SIMD, supercomputing), today I wanted to talk about the Mono.Tasklets library that has just landed on Mono's repository. This library will become part of the Mono 2.6 release. Mono.Tasklets is the Mono-team supported mechanism for doing continuations, microthreading and coroutines in the ISO CLI. It is based on Tomi Valkeinen's excellent work on co-routines for Mono. Unlike the work that we typically do in Mono which is pure C# and will work out of the box in .NET (even our Mono.SIMD code will work on .NET, it will just run a lot slower) Mono.Tasklets requires changes to the VM that are not portable to other ISO CLI implementations. Read more at http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Apr-09.html

Color Manager is color palatte management application. It is very useful for designers, specially web designers. It let you create a palatte for each project. It store data in xml file. This application is alpha stage, So don't expect it to work smoothly. Curretly I'm working on this only during holidays, so development will be slow. This application is written some time back. I'm thinking about rewritting this application using .Net 3.5 . Current 0.1 version is basd on .net 2.0. All future versions will based on 3.5. Download Your comments and feedbacks are welcome.

I installed OpenSuse 11.1 on my machine. I have done kde4/kde3/gnome installation. It takes about 40-45 minutes. After instaltion I installed Nvidia driver, nvidia driver has installed new kernel (containing trace in name). When I changed boot order to make trace default kernel, grub is installed on root partition than MBR, so my system become unbootable. I got only 2 days of holidays. I come to know abt this problem after I returned to my work city (Indore) from Home (Khandwa). So I could not fix the problem. So I have to fix it via phone. My brother booted the system with Opensuse 11.1 dvd. My brother is not very technical person but he is advace-level PC user. We have never used recover/rescue installed system option. We selected automated recovery mode. It first checks all partitions and packages, all of them found is good state, setup found error boot loader configuration, we loaded boot loader configuration from disk and found that grub is installed on root partition instead of M...

10 things Linux does better than OS X | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com OS X is heralded for its friendliness, but according to Jack Wallen, it falls short in many other respects. Find out why he says Linux is superior in everything from flexibility to portability to cost. It may sound strange, seeing as how OS X is based on a Linux variant and is widely considered to be the most user-friendly operating system available, but Linux does a number of things better than everyone’s favorite iOperatingSystem. Before you shun the thought, read on. You might be surprised at your resulting opinion. Flexibility Open source Command line Hardware requirements Security Portability Cost More available software Not so dumbed-down Keyboard efficiency

10 ways to go green with Linux | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com From reduced packaging to energy savings to extended equipment lifecycles, Linux can help you green up your tech environment. Jack Wallen looks at some of the eco-friendly benefits of running Linux. If you’re not beginning to think green, you’re a release behind. In today’s world you have to think green. But how do you do that without installing a roof of solar panels? If you are using (or thinking of using) Linux, you’re one step ahead of the competition. In this article, you will find 10 solid ways to start thinking green in your IT department. It’s responsible, it’s smart, and it’ll save you money and time on this great planet. Reduced landfill Powertop Netbooks Zonbu Money savings Less energy-demanding desktops Custom-compiled kernel Kpowersave, ACPI, and other power-saving tools Migration from Windows Server Only the daemons you need to run

10 things Linux does better than Windows | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com If you tallied up the strengths and weaknesses of Linux and Windows, which OS would come out ahead? According to Jack Wallen, superiority in security, flexibility, interoperability, community, and command-line power (among other things) put Linux well ahead. See if you agree with his assessment. Throughout my 10+ years of using Linux, I have heard about everything that Windows does better than Linux. So I thought it time to shoot back and remind everyone of what Linux does better than Windows. Of course, being the zealot that I am, I could list far more than 10 items. But I will stick with the theme and list only what I deem to be the 10 areas where Linux not only does better than Windows but blows it out of the water #1: TCO #2: Desktop #3: Server #4: Security #5: Flexibility #6: Package management #7: Community #8: Interoperability #9: Command line #10: Evolution