SCHOOLOS(Part-2)

I made the first post with out actually trying SCHOOLOS myself and when I tried it myself, I was amazed and lost myself with the applications that come prebundled with SCHOOLOS.Two of them are :


The first and foremost of all applications I rate is the TUX Paint that comes in the education tools.I heard it's a drawing tool for children.So I opened it keeping in mind that some kids like stuff will come teaching every aspect as the mouse hovers.But wonder what I directly started working on the drawing sheet and the custom sound in the back ground made me feel more interactive with what I am drawing.I clicked on the magic tool and the options that it could provide are amazing.There is an option called bricks and when I started using on the drawing arena, a custom sound came from the background that comes when the bricks are arranged to build a wall, and I am building a wall on the foreground.Next with glass panes, and so on.Every option is amazing and if you start using it, you will become mad for drawing.

The next best application until now of all I used is the game SUPERTUX2, what a game it was.It's the same as the mario game, but the characters and the playing arena are changed to antarctica mode.Mario was replaced with a penguin and the duck with a small bug that is always present inside a ice cube.When you start playing it, you will get a feel of the real antarctica, the totally white interface, the ice cubes, penguins etc.,But quitting this application had always been a trouble for me.I need to wait for 5 min, after I hit the quit button to get it closed.But that couldn't resist me playing this game.

SCHOOLOS

Ubuntu, a perfect answer of open source for the windows.But there are two main problems with this:

1.When a normal user suddenly shifts from windows to Ubuntu he feels confused and needs to waste a lot of time to get accustomed with the new one
2.When it comes to India or if you go to a country that has less connectivity with internet, this OS fails.Because along with the operating system only the quite essential softwares come and when it comes to multimedia, it frequently asks for codecs to be installed.

School OS is an OS that mainly addresses and tweaks all these problems.It is made keeping the Ubuntu as base operating system.So shifting from either windows or Ubuntu is not a big deal.This OS has also enhanced the features of right click a lot with a lot more flexibility for regular programmers.For more information, visit SCHOOLOS and there is a free distributor of this OS with in our campus, if you need an ISO image.You can contact him through mail.This is his gmail id "pahninsd@gmail.com"

Ubuntu(Part-8)

This is the last post on Ubuntu.For all the starters of Ubuntu I recommend "UbuntuPocketGuide" is the best e-book to start with.Try googling for it, download and read it.In the last chapter of that e-book ,you will get to know of configuring firewall in Ubuntu and it will be an interesting one.Today I went awe as I was watching a movie and there is still 5 minutes of battery left as it is showing in my lappie, but still the movie is going on smoothly.This is an example which shows the less amount of power that the Ubuntu uses.One more thing, don't use Ubuntu for playing games ,a lot of them are available for free download, but most of them are broken packages and you will damage your system, if you run them.

Ubuntu(Part-7)

Installation of everything in Ubuntu including the operating system itself happens with the help of packages.These packages are just like set up files in Windows.Packages are small files that have to be extracted to install anything in Ubuntu.This is mainly done by two software sub systems APT and dpkg.APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool and dpkg for Debian Package System.dpkg does all the basic hardwork of actually installing and uninstalling packages while APT tracks these changes at a higher level.APT also recognises broken packages and prompts us,if updates are available.

Ubuntu(Part-6)

Lets play with command line for some time.Well you know how to open it,otherwise go to Applications-->Accessories-->Terminal.Here what you can see first is prompt,which appears like this in my lappie dileepkumar@dileepkumar-laptop:~$.Well the first dileepkumar is the user and the next dileepkumar is the owner of the laptop.Of course both are myself.Before going into the depth let me tweak out certain things for you.

1.System-->Administration-->System Monitor and what you see after clicking processes tab is similar to task manager in Windows.You can use this to force a process to quit.
2.Many of you may have the problem with the battery icon appearing only some times and disappearing most of the time.Go to System-->Preferences-->Power Management and go to General tab and click on the radio button that reads "Always display an icon"
3.Most of you may be experiencing problems with Pidgin Internet Messenger,well here is the permanant solution for that(I'll explain for gmail)
a.When you are creating an account or editing,you will generally see three tabs Basic ,Advanced ,Proxy
b.In the Basic tab---Protocol-XMPP,Username-you gmail username,Domain-gmail.com,Password-Enter your gmail account password,and keep the remaining fields empty.
c.Don't touch the Advanced tab
d.In the Proxy tab Proxy type as 'No Proxy' and click Save.Now you can easily get connected to your pals and friends.

Ohhhhhhh forgot,we started this for terminal na,and I know that you cant insert more matter into your brains.OK no problem lets work with it tommorrow.

Ubuntu(Part-5)

There are some virtual consoles in Ubuntu,a total of 6 in all which you can access at any time.These consoles can be accessed by pressing ctrl+Alt+f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6 depending upon which console you want.These let you proceed on ur work in a command line interface and if any time you want to return back to graphical press ctrl+Alt+f7.Now I want to tell you some things about 'Nautilus'.It's a traditional file browsing system specially designed for Ubuntu.When you are browsing any folder,just press ctrl+T,you will see a new tab opened like that of a web browser.Not only that you can even add bookmarks and copy and move the files between the tabbed windows :).One more important thing,you know with unix or Linux there is a problem if you give spaces in between names like rm dileep kumar It gives error telling you that neither dileep nor kumar files are present and they cannot be removed even though there is a file by name dileep kumar.There are two ways in which you can overcome this
1.rm "dileep kumar" (using double quotes)
2.rm dileep\ kumar (Typing a backslash before every space)

Ubuntu(Part-4)

Just only some simple facts for today.In windows what we call as taskbars, we call them panels in Ubuntu.And we have 4 virtual desktops generally present in Ubuntu,we can increase them to 256.Just right click over the bottom right corner where you see 4 workspaces and click on preferences.There by changing row number and column number, you can check the difference.Donno about any previous versions of Ubuntu, but in the latest version if you want to clean up your system from all left out and not used packages and other stuff, go to System-->Administration-->Computer Janitor.It will automatically show you,what can be removed from your system.By clicking "Do selected tasks", you can clean up your system.

Ubuntu(Part-3)

The latest version of Ubuntu is called Lucid Lynx and it is version 10.04 .The reason behind this version numbers is simple.The second part stands for the month(04) and the first part before dot ,stands for the year(10) of its release. Hence Lucid Lynx was released in April ,2010. So by seeing the version number of Ubuntu ,you can tell its month and year of release. For every 6 months there is a release of new version of Ubuntu and it will be supported for atleast 18 months by the Cannonical Ltd.,(The principle company behind the development of Ubuntu).

I went to a distant relatives house one week ago and there I saw a beautiful girl in their neighbours house. She once came to our relatives home for some work ,and I asked my cousin who is 8 years old to know her name slowly. He went to her and asked her name and came and told me.After that she went away and never came to my relatives house. There are two reasons for this :
1. The worst part that happened in this is that my cousin pointed his finger towards me and asked her that I want to know her name.
2. After knowing her name he came near me and I expected him to tell her name to me in ear. Instead he shouted her name so that everyone in the house could hear it.

Ubuntu(Part-2)

Coming into the second problem, which I faced was downloading applications directly from internet and trying to install them, just like I do in windows.But that created a lot of problems ,and I need to follow a lot of steps from terminal also to install the required application.Here where I came to understand the power of Ubuntu Software Center which lets you choose and install thousands of free applications directly from the internet with out the need for you to follow any steps .But sometimes, even with proper authentication I could not install certain applications telling me that there is some authentication failure. I cleared this problem with going to System-->Administration-->Synaptic Packet Manager and installing the required software from there.All the software that can be seen in Ubuntu Software Centre is also available there .

Ubuntu (Part-1)

I have installed and uninstalled ubuntu a number of times during my last year at NIT.Firstly for the sake of curiosity and secondly "Life is a race............(3 idiots)",but never sticked to it.I haven't used it for a week in a row continuously until my junior introduced me to it again in the middle of march this year.I installed it this time and using it to this day and also made the people around me get inspired through me for using it.(By mistake I formatted my friends system completely installing ubuntu once :P).In the next few posts on Ubuntu I will list on the few problems I faced with Ubuntu and how I overcame them.

The first problem was with dual booting.I want to install Ubuntu along side my Windows partition so that I can choose between them during boot up process.These are some of the tips and tweaks for it :

1.If you format your entire system and install ubuntu first and windows later, then you are going to lose Ubuntu completely since firstly you cannot dual boot ,but enter directly into windows partition and the hard disk portion in which you installed Ubuntu will get completely disappeared.

2.Now if there is already Windows in your system and you install Ubuntu with out any change to the drive in which windows partition is present ,then you will get to dual boot,but the portion of hard disk which you gave for installing Ubuntu will get disappeared here also.This problem is still faced by me ,but since I gave only 12 GB of my 250 GB harddisk for Ubuntu ,I am not facing much difficulty with the disappearance of that space.

3.If you want to just install Ubuntu like a set up file and uninstall it like any other file through control panel in windows use Wubi installer .But you will get to use it with reduced performance and hibernating option will be absent in this.