Experiments with Technology

This is how i solved my wireless card issue with the brand new HP laptop. This card support abgn specifications and is fairly new so I guess the driver is missing. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1645716

For quite sometime, I had been trying to make my ubuntu desktop more and more cool. First I stumbled upon macubuntu script. This is single no-hassle script that will make a Mac blush. And now, I found something more interesting - Conky. I was aware of conky earlier but not in the same incarnation. See the attached screenshot of my desktop. Isn't cool? In case you are wondering, conky provides the nice looking sidebar on the desktop. This sidebar is heavily customizable in terms of what you fit in there. The desktop is inspired by this link . I did some customizations of my own and made a few things working. In doing so, I realized how easy it is build upon this nifty utility called conky. Here is How: Install the programs  sudo apt-get install co nky hddtemp lm-sensors python-feedparser Download Scripts Download the scripts that I used from here . Extract these files into ~/bin/conky directory. I generally keep my programs in ~/bin but feel free to customize the location....

What: Virtualbox is a nice desktop virtualization software from erstwhile Sun Inc.  I used the personal use as well as open edition of it for quite sometime. However, could not resist the temptation to migrate to KVM, given its increasing roars in the virtualization space - both for desktop as well as server side. Not having a good tool to manage the VMs was a shortcoming of KVM for sometime. However, with Virt-Manger, this seems to have changed quite a lot. And so I started to migrate my windows image to KVM based. Source: Host OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Virtualization tool: VirtualBox Guest OS: Windows XP Sp3 Target:  Host OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Virtualization tool: KVM Guest OS: Windows XP Sp3 objective is migrate this guest image to KVM so that the migration is seemless. How: Pre-planning: Shut off windows XP gracefully. It probably might make a difference. But in anycase, will be a good idea rather than land up in surprise You need reasonable space. nearly 3 times of ...

Tethering my modem on ubuntu was one thing I was postponing to do for quite a while. One of the reasons for not attempting it was that on windows too, it did not happen quite easily. And I was n't going to kid myself to believe that it will be breeze on Ubuntu. The ease of tethering on the same laptop with iphone took me by surprise today - more about that later. So, today is the day to try it on my blackberry... First some versions etc. so that you know if this is a good match to your situation... Ubuntu Lucid Dev (kernel - 2.6.32-15-generic) pppd (version 2.4.5) berry4all (latest from berry4all.com) Blackberry Curve 8320 T-mobile unlimited data plan (Enterprise) Installation: No brainer.. just follow http://www.berry4all.com/install.  sudo apt-get install python libusb-dev ppp python-usb python-wxgtk2.8  Last one is for GUI and I dont think thats an optional package even if you are using a netbook. You want to make life easier - Don't you? Using it: tar -zxv...

When 3D effects came to Linux with Compiz and Beryl - much before windows - Linux made great news. MS tried hard with Vista to take on this challenge but we all know how these compare. They hardly do. do they? :) Anyways, fast forward to Gnome Shell . This is another first from Linux (oops Gnome). Windows 7? It will take Windows 9, 10, 11 to reach there - if at all it did :) Gnome Shell... My initial reactions Its super coooool way of working with desktop. Nice gimick there Best part is - the speed. Its so much faster to locate things - files, folder, commands, programs, places etc. Combine it with Gnome-do and its nice look dock at the bottom, the efficiency in navigating around the desktop is awesome. it is simple. Why do we need 2-3 drop downs at the top. Just have one launch point. Neat! No more trying to figure out where recent files are, network is etc. But where is the System Administration stuff? It did not take much to realize that I have an expanded ve...