Recently managed to get a desktop system home, especially after coming back, it was necessary. The laptop just doesnt provide enough power.
This sure looks like a monster for a desktop system usage.
- Quad Core CPU (Core 2 Quad Q6600) at 2.4 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache
- 2 GB RAM @800 MHz
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda Hard Disk
- Here I was a bit disappointed. My local vendor just couldnt manage to get me a 10K rpm or higher hard disk from his supplier. He kept saying it would require a SCSI card and all that configuration. From my understanding it should be a simple SATA or SATA2 disk. But, well, this is the first one in place, may be we'd have more... :)
So, with this system in place, I plan to do some interesting things... e.g. running my long awaited local oracle server so that I can work with apex (http://apex.oracle.com)
Running Hardy on it. To say the least, hardy flies on this system. To start with, everything was detected normally on this configuration and I had no difficulty to make it work with Ubuntu Hardy. Even the live CD worked fine.
Now with the installed copy along with all the updates so far, the system literally flies... The system monitor shows me 4 CPUs and it adds so damned much to my confidence in using this power.... :)
The only issue I have found till now is with my power supply ratings/configuration. It somehow draws a lot of power (the rating on the PSU box says 450W) whereas the Display is not connected to the CPU power (its a TFT anyway). The UPS that I have is a APC with 500 VA rating. The UPS just doesnt hold.
All the power from the UPS comes to just this system and the display. Still it doesnt hold. About the power supply, I was told that the rating (450W) is an indication of how much can this provide, not how much does it need all the time. That might be wrong or right both. I am still figuring that out. No idea till now.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
iPhone 3G in India...
Finally... finally... after such a long wait.. iPhone comes to India.. officially. But, despite all the hype and wait around it, the affordability of it really a huge question mark.
I didnt change my mobile phone for last 2 years, waiting for the iPhone to come to India. I booked an iPhone for me through both the prospective service providers in India, Airtel and Vodafone. It was all in anticipation that once its released in India, there would be huge queues for buying it, as was seen in other parts of world for iPhone 3G release.
However, the launch in India was not as expected. There was hype, but not as many customers. I am not a statistician and therefore cant give any numbers to prove my point, but I guess I have a feeling for the situation.
In my view, the pricing of the iPhone is a big reason for its slow launch. I cant say whether or not it would pick up in future, but right now, the price tag of 31000 and 36000 INR for iPhone is a very very high price. I mean, yes its a good phone, there are nice features, but thirty one thousand rupees... its just too much for a gadget in my view. And then, compare the price of the phone in US, 200 USD.. converts to around 8000 INR and so it shows that apple is selling that phone 4 times as costly as in US.. what kind of business strategy would that be ??? Especially in a cost sensitive market as India...
There would be people buying it, but not like me, not the average Indian IT guy, who knows the features, their meaning and usage and has a wish to own one. I dont know many who'd take up the phone at this price tag.
May be Apple will come back with a price cut in India as well, as they did in US... but will they offer people refunds for the difference.. we'll see...
Till the time apple decides to cut down on the price tag, my wait for owning an iPhone continues...
I didnt change my mobile phone for last 2 years, waiting for the iPhone to come to India. I booked an iPhone for me through both the prospective service providers in India, Airtel and Vodafone. It was all in anticipation that once its released in India, there would be huge queues for buying it, as was seen in other parts of world for iPhone 3G release.
However, the launch in India was not as expected. There was hype, but not as many customers. I am not a statistician and therefore cant give any numbers to prove my point, but I guess I have a feeling for the situation.
In my view, the pricing of the iPhone is a big reason for its slow launch. I cant say whether or not it would pick up in future, but right now, the price tag of 31000 and 36000 INR for iPhone is a very very high price. I mean, yes its a good phone, there are nice features, but thirty one thousand rupees... its just too much for a gadget in my view. And then, compare the price of the phone in US, 200 USD.. converts to around 8000 INR and so it shows that apple is selling that phone 4 times as costly as in US.. what kind of business strategy would that be ??? Especially in a cost sensitive market as India...
There would be people buying it, but not like me, not the average Indian IT guy, who knows the features, their meaning and usage and has a wish to own one. I dont know many who'd take up the phone at this price tag.
May be Apple will come back with a price cut in India as well, as they did in US... but will they offer people refunds for the difference.. we'll see...
Till the time apple decides to cut down on the price tag, my wait for owning an iPhone continues...
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Data Warehousing on a Shoestring Budget : TDWI
Another interesting set of articles around low budget data warehousing...
Data Warehousing on a Shoestring Budget
Data Warehousing on a Shoestring Budget
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Ideas on DWH Testing...
Recently I was asked about strategy on data warehouse testing. Realizing how rarely we talk about this, I went to google for this and spend about half an hour searching.
Found the following links, which still need to be researched/analyzed further.
DM Review : Where are the Articles on Data Warehouse Testing and Validation Strategy?
A Wordpress blog : Strategies for Testing Data Warehouse Applications « Business Intelligence and Datawarehousing
DM Review : Strategies for Testing Data Warehouse Applications
Found the following links, which still need to be researched/analyzed further.
DM Review : Where are the Articles on Data Warehouse Testing and Validation Strategy?
A Wordpress blog : Strategies for Testing Data Warehouse Applications « Business Intelligence and Datawarehousing
DM Review : Strategies for Testing Data Warehouse Applications
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Lookup Transformations in Informatica
Lookup is a transformation to look up the values from a relational table/view or a flat file. There are two types of Lookups in Powercenter, namely;
Different types of caches can be used with lookup like static, dynamic, persistent, and shared(The dynamic cache cannot be used while creating an un-connected lookup). Each of these has its own identification. For more details, refer to Informatica Transformation Guide.
Lookup is a passive transformation, and can be used either connected or unconnected. Typically, connected lookup is used when you want to do the lookup for all rows. When you have selective lookup requirements, its normally better to go for unconnected lookup. Unconnected Lookup can be used as if its a function call.
To read more, here is a good article -
What is lookup transformation in informatica? - IT Community
- Connected Lookup
- Unconnected Lookup
Different types of caches can be used with lookup like static, dynamic, persistent, and shared(The dynamic cache cannot be used while creating an un-connected lookup). Each of these has its own identification. For more details, refer to Informatica Transformation Guide.
Lookup is a passive transformation, and can be used either connected or unconnected. Typically, connected lookup is used when you want to do the lookup for all rows. When you have selective lookup requirements, its normally better to go for unconnected lookup. Unconnected Lookup can be used as if its a function call.
To read more, here is a good article -
What is lookup transformation in informatica? - IT Community
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Getting Started with ActiveScaffold
Recently I returned to my rails env to do some more experiments (which might be used for a future project)
To start with, I have seen a bit of active scaffold stuff and was very impressed with it originally already. In the meantime, rails 2 have arrived. Quite a few things have changed and I was thinking that it might have an effect on the overall picture of active scaffold also.
However, checking up on railsforum etc brought out that not much effect has gone down to active scaffold kind of plugins from rails 2.
Starting up active scaffold is really easy as they say on its website also...
try it here... www.activescaffold.com It turned out to be really simple to initialize yourself with it.
Searching a bit more I came across a few tutorials -
Tutorial from Active Scaffold guys
Another one from someone like me, experimenting with activeScaffold...
AkillesBlog » Blog Archive » Ruby on Rails: Experimenting with ActiveScaffold
To start with, I have seen a bit of active scaffold stuff and was very impressed with it originally already. In the meantime, rails 2 have arrived. Quite a few things have changed and I was thinking that it might have an effect on the overall picture of active scaffold also.
However, checking up on railsforum etc brought out that not much effect has gone down to active scaffold kind of plugins from rails 2.
Starting up active scaffold is really easy as they say on its website also...
try it here... www.activescaffold.com It turned out to be really simple to initialize yourself with it.
Searching a bit more I came across a few tutorials -
Tutorial from Active Scaffold guys
Another one from someone like me, experimenting with activeScaffold...
AkillesBlog » Blog Archive » Ruby on Rails: Experimenting with ActiveScaffold
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Open Solaris build May 2008 ( 2008.05 ) released
Today I came across a few news items and articles here and there that talked about the release of OpenSolaris projects' May 2008 release.
Though its available for download from the open solaris home page, Sun is offering Free CD shipments for the latest release here : https://www2.sun.de/dct/forms/reg_us_2307_228_0.jsp
I already ordered my copies :)
Also, there is a nice article about bit of unix OS history and open solaris 2008.05 release review here : http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8703
Though its available for download from the open solaris home page, Sun is offering Free CD shipments for the latest release here : https://www2.sun.de/dct/forms/reg_us_2307_228_0.jsp
I already ordered my copies :)
Also, there is a nice article about bit of unix OS history and open solaris 2008.05 release review here : http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8703
Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu server 64bit on vmware server 2 beta
I have this wish to install a hardy server version on my system. Since I did not want to add another partition, so I chose to do that inside a virtual machine (using vmware). vmware supports 64bit Guest Operating system, as opposed to virtual box which does not. :(
So, I have been able to install the server edition inside the vmware machine. I have never used nfs before, but the tutorial I was following was suggesting to use it.
http://www.pythian.com/blogs/654/installing-oracle-11g-on-ubuntu-linux-710-gutsy-gibbon
However, I am having problems with -
So, I have been able to install the server edition inside the vmware machine. I have never used nfs before, but the tutorial I was following was suggesting to use it.
http://www.pythian.com/blogs/654/installing-oracle-11g-on-ubuntu-linux-710-gutsy-gibbon
However, I am having problems with -
- Trying to expand the virtual hard disk inside vmware. I tried it, but havent succeeded yet.
- The Oracle installer exits with a strange error message.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Using Base64 encoding with Oracle / Perl
For basic encryption purposes, base 64 encoding can be used. In fact its so basic that it would probably be incorrect to call it encryption. Its more encoding, basically preventing the subject text from appearing in plain text.
For example, if in some tool, all the parameters are stored in repository tables, and therefore, its not very nice if the passwords are stored there in plain text. They should at least be made illegible, so that they dont appear in plain text and there is some effort spent in decoding it.
Base64 encoding is an industry standard and almost all programming languages, development toolkits provide plugins for this. For Oracle, there are pre-existing packages providing the functionality.
We can use base 64 encoding on oracle side using Oracle supplied package UTL_ENCODE. On the perl side, we could use cpan package MIME:Base64. Other languages provide different kinds of plug-ins. For example, ruby on rails has a plug in for this, Javascript also allows this to be done relatively easily.
The idea is that, such sensitive data to be entered by customers, in encoded format. So, we also dont see the plain text version. And then the program uses the encoded version, right to the point before actual data needs to be used.
For achieving this, following way of working can be used :
1. On Oracle side, the sensitive data is encoded using a program call equivalent to the following will return an encoded/decoded string for a given input string.
Its a design decision whether to put this code in a procedure/package somewhere.
2. On the other end of the processing chain, reverse operation would have to be performed. For example, in Perl, the implementation relies on the cpan package MIME:Base64
For example, if in some tool, all the parameters are stored in repository tables, and therefore, its not very nice if the passwords are stored there in plain text. They should at least be made illegible, so that they dont appear in plain text and there is some effort spent in decoding it.
Base64 encoding is an industry standard and almost all programming languages, development toolkits provide plugins for this. For Oracle, there are pre-existing packages providing the functionality.
We can use base 64 encoding on oracle side using Oracle supplied package UTL_ENCODE. On the perl side, we could use cpan package MIME:Base64. Other languages provide different kinds of plug-ins. For example, ruby on rails has a plug in for this, Javascript also allows this to be done relatively easily.
The idea is that, such sensitive data to be entered by customers, in encoded format. So, we also dont see the plain text version. And then the program uses the encoded version, right to the point before actual data needs to be used.
For achieving this, following way of working can be used :
1. On Oracle side, the sensitive data is encoded using a program call equivalent to the following will return an encoded/decoded string for a given input string.
FUNCTION fnc_encrypt(lv_str IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN VARCHAR2
AS
BEGIN
RETURN utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2(UTL_ENCODE.BASE64_ENCODE(utl_raw.cast_to_raw(lv_str)));
END;
FUNCTION fnc_decrypt(lv_str IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN VARCHAR2
AS
BEGIN
RETURN utl_raw.cast_to_varchar2(UTL_ENCODE.BASE64_deCODE(utl_raw.cast_to_raw(lv_str)));
END;
Its a design decision whether to put this code in a procedure/package somewhere.
2. On the other end of the processing chain, reverse operation would have to be performed. For example, in Perl, the implementation relies on the cpan package MIME:Base64
use MIME::Base64 ();and then use the decode/encode function as per the need...
MIME::Base64::decode($PI_CAT_PWD);
MIME::Base64::encode($PI_CAT_PWD);
Friday, May 9, 2008
vmware 2 beta on hardy
I installed vmware 2 beta on my hardy. It was a surprise and a pleasant one at that, the installation procedure did not require any tweaks at all. It worked out of the box.
Further, when I tried to connect to the web based management interface, I encountered my first problem. vmware requires a log-in with root user, and as any ubuntu user would tell you, the root user is well-hidden in ubuntu. Almost never used, my knowledge on how to set a password to root user was zero.
Again, communities came to help. This thread on vmware communities helped me through that.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/901283#901283
Its a small tip, but none-the-less important. Just run "sudo gnome-terminal" and it would open a root terminal for you. Once there, type "passwd" to change the password for root user and you are done.
now, in the browser, log in to vmware web mgmt interface with user as root, and password you chose for root user.
As a precaution, I gave my normal user admin privileges so that I dont have to login as root all the time.
Further, when I tried to connect to the web based management interface, I encountered my first problem. vmware requires a log-in with root user, and as any ubuntu user would tell you, the root user is well-hidden in ubuntu. Almost never used, my knowledge on how to set a password to root user was zero.
Again, communities came to help. This thread on vmware communities helped me through that.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/901283#901283
Its a small tip, but none-the-less important. Just run "sudo gnome-terminal" and it would open a root terminal for you. Once there, type "passwd" to change the password for root user and you are done.
now, in the browser, log in to vmware web mgmt interface with user as root, and password you chose for root user.
As a precaution, I gave my normal user admin privileges so that I dont have to login as root all the time.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Oracle wrap utility...
Oracle's wrap utility helps to hide the application logic from being visible. However, I recently discovered that it doesnt hide string literals.
Hard to grasp though, since my understanding was a bit different. I cant really think of a reason why would they keep strings etc in plain text. Perhaps to force people (like me) not to store their encryption key in a package and wrap it to achieve another level of security...
Here's the standard statement from Oracle about the limitations of wrap utility -
I wonder if there are any tricks to achieve something like that... my investigations are still on.. will report...
Hard to grasp though, since my understanding was a bit different. I cant really think of a reason why would they keep strings etc in plain text. Perhaps to force people (like me) not to store their encryption key in a package and wrap it to achieve another level of security...
Here's the standard statement from Oracle about the limitations of wrap utility -
From : http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/c_wrap.htm#LNPLS016Limitations of the Wrap Utility
String literals, number literals, and names of variables, tables, and columns remain in plain text within the wrapped file. Wrapping a procedure helps to hide the algorithm and prevent reverse-engineering, but it is not a way to hide passwords or table names that you want to be secret.
I wonder if there are any tricks to achieve something like that... my investigations are still on.. will report...
xgl - System monitor bug in hardy...
On Ubuntu's latest release, Hardy Heron, if you are using xserver-xgl package for graphics, you are in for a surprise.
The system monitor carries on a bug in xgl package wrt incorrect reporting of memory usage, and shows processes using zillion bytes of memory.
I started using xserver-xgl from the times in Gutsy when Compiz would not run on my hardware without that. However, I didnt quite notice this until I involved myself with beta release of hardy.
As it happened, I raised this issue on the Ubuntu forums (more than once actually, link-1, link-2), and finally after a few discussions/posts, it was discovered that
Attaching two screenshots here to give the idea of the Martian numbers...
The system monitor carries on a bug in xgl package wrt incorrect reporting of memory usage, and shows processes using zillion bytes of memory.
I started using xserver-xgl from the times in Gutsy when Compiz would not run on my hardware without that. However, I didnt quite notice this until I involved myself with beta release of hardy.
As it happened, I raised this issue on the Ubuntu forums (more than once actually, link-1, link-2), and finally after a few discussions/posts, it was discovered that
- xserver-xgl has a few bugs
- no more active development is happening on this stream of packages
- Compiz should work without needing this package as well.
Attaching two screenshots here to give the idea of the Martian numbers...
Monday, May 5, 2008
acid3 and webkit on hardy
I have been fascinated with the rendering of web pages by Safari. Always liked it, it has a certain edge to it when talking about the look and feel. When I read more, it turned out that the rendering engine is similar to Konqueror (somewhere I read that its actually based on open source libraries from Konqueror).
I dont have a mac so I cant really experience it first hand, but the windows release of Safari made me get my first experience.
This weekend, I was surfing net when I came across "webkit". Reading a bit more about it informed me -
Well, I didnt had to look much further... search produced this link...
http://blog.kagou.fr/post/2008/04/21/Test-Webkit-on-Ubuntu-Gutsy-and-Hardy
However, my first attempt at compilation failed, due to lack of one of the packages. libxt-dev
So, now the list of pacakges that should be installed on hardy to compile webkit would look like this :
The sample browser, gives me 98 on acid3 (acid3.acidtests.org). Though very minimalistic in capabilities, this is the best score for acid3 that I could get on my system.
Here are my scores
Firefox 3 beta 5 : 71
Flock : 51
Opera 9.5 beta 2 : 78
Midori (webkit based) : 64
Webkit minimal browser (nightly build r32862 ) 98
On my windows partition as well, none of the browsers went beyong 70's. Best being opera at 71.
I dont have a mac so I cant really experience it first hand, but the windows release of Safari made me get my first experience.
This weekend, I was surfing net when I came across "webkit". Reading a bit more about it informed me -
WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit's HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60's S60 WebKit development.This made me think, if its actually open source to start with, the code must be available and may be I can compile it for my system.
Well, I didnt had to look much further... search produced this link...
http://blog.kagou.fr/post/2008/04/21/Test-Webkit-on-Ubuntu-Gutsy-and-Hardy
However, my first attempt at compilation failed, due to lack of one of the packages. libxt-dev
So, now the list of pacakges that should be installed on hardy to compile webkit would look like this :
sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool bison flex gperf libicu-dev libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libsqlite3-dev libjpeg62-dev libpng12-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk2.0-dev build-essential libxt-dev
The sample browser, gives me 98 on acid3 (acid3.acidtests.org). Though very minimalistic in capabilities, this is the best score for acid3 that I could get on my system.
Here are my scores
Firefox 3 beta 5 : 71
Flock : 51
Opera 9.5 beta 2 : 78
Midori (webkit based) : 64
Webkit minimal browser (nightly build r32862 ) 98
On my windows partition as well, none of the browsers went beyong 70's. Best being opera at 71.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Linux Kernel sites...
Found this interesting site. If you want to start knowing or playing around with linux kernel, this site could be a interesting start.
Linux Kernel Newbies
Also interesting would be to watch out for this site... www.kernel.org
Linux Kernel Newbies
Also interesting would be to watch out for this site... www.kernel.org
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Thursday, May 1, 2008
vmware infrastructure web access on vista...
For those who try to use vmware server on windows vista (unfortunately I am trying these days), the vmware server 2 beta is using tomcat engine to provide web based environment.
The access control is weird to say the least. It doesnt matter if ur user has Administrtor rights on the vista box. You have to have the "Administrator" user and log in as that only. So, you got to make a new user called Administrator and then log in to Vmware Infrastructure Web access.
I found the help on vmware forums. reproducing here for benefit of myself (lest I forget) and others who might come across.
The access control is weird to say the least. It doesnt matter if ur user has Administrtor rights on the vista box. You have to have the "Administrator" user and log in as that only. So, you got to make a new user called Administrator and then log in to Vmware Infrastructure Web access.
I found the help on vmware forums. reproducing here for benefit of myself (lest I forget) and others who might come across.
- Logon to Vista using your usual account.
- Launch the cmd prompt - Make sure you select, 'Run as administrator'
- Net user administrator yourFavPassword
- Net user administrator /active:yes
- Switch User, or logoff
- Logon as Administrator Password yourFavPassword
(Your password may be different!)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
making vmware work on hardy..
Had trouble originally making vmware work on my new hardy 64 bit system (behaves almost same on desktop and server variants).
Careful looking up found out two things,
Loads of thanks :) to http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4357442&postcount=10
Careful looking up found out two things,
- the new beta version (2) of vmware works from web based console, and could take quite some time making it work
- vmware on hardy 64 bit requires some tweaking to do before you can really get up and running with it.
Loads of thanks :) to http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4357442&postcount=10
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
25 reasons to use Ubuntu... :)
Well, its a very interesting collection of reasons to use Ubuntu...
Some might not be as 100% agreeable as other might be, but still most are completely agreeable...
Well done...
Found it on this blog-... here u read 25 reasons for using Ubuntu
Some might not be as 100% agreeable as other might be, but still most are completely agreeable...
Well done...
Found it on this blog-... here u read 25 reasons for using Ubuntu
running a 64bit guest os in vmware
I tried to install a 64bit guest os and that took much longer to realize the problem.
What I found out (may be you guys already know that) the hard way today, is that, you cant keep your virtual disks on a non-ext3 partition (I was trying to keep them on my ext hard disk - all ntfs) :(
Also, you need to switch on the VT feature from your bios to be able to actually use 64 bit guest os.. My Core2Duo supported that, so luckily I had it already with my hardware. But if you want to do that, make sure ur cpu supports it.
What I found out (may be you guys already know that) the hard way today, is that, you cant keep your virtual disks on a non-ext3 partition (I was trying to keep them on my ext hard disk - all ntfs) :(
Also, you need to switch on the VT feature from your bios to be able to actually use 64 bit guest os.. My Core2Duo supported that, so luckily I had it already with my hardware. But if you want to do that, make sure ur cpu supports it.
Monday, April 21, 2008
converting .img to .iso and mounting iso
.img files are CloneCD files created as a result of dumping contents of a Cd into a file. Very similar to .iso files which are more popular for containing cd images.
Many tools, like virtual box allow mounting .iso files as a virtual cd/dvd. Ubuntu repositories provide a tool called ccd2iso for converting the .img to .iso.
just install ccd2iso from the repositories using
sudo apt-get install ccd2iso
Once installed, just launch it for converting
ccd2iso file.img file.iso
This will create the iso equivalent of the img file.
To mount the iso file normally in the linux environment, just type
mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/iso
Many tools, like virtual box allow mounting .iso files as a virtual cd/dvd. Ubuntu repositories provide a tool called ccd2iso for converting the .img to .iso.
just install ccd2iso from the repositories using
sudo apt-get install ccd2iso
Once installed, just launch it for converting
ccd2iso file.img file.iso
This will create the iso equivalent of the img file.
To mount the iso file normally in the linux environment, just type
mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/iso
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Experiments With Hardy...
Ubuntu is by far the more stable of the OS's.. nothing new about that.
Last friday the release candidate of the new Hardy came out. It was beta for sometime now, and I had it for a few days in beta phase too..
It was my first time playing around with an OS in its beta stage and sure.. it feels good to be involved..
I found a few things, suggested on the forums, put out bug reports and it all works so nicely. Everybody involved is so open and helping... it was actually very nice exp. A good learning curve as well for a few things... :)
Currently there are a few things still going on with the "Hardy Release Candidate" with differing opinions, but all in all it looks like a good package to me. On my laptop, it works nicely, no issues as such...
In my view, the Ubuntu series has had its share of issues with hardware compatibility. With different people using different set of hardware, it turns out that not everything is 100% picked up by the installer as it should be.
I tried using virtualbox on hardy to install another copy of hardy 64 bit to experiment something, however, virtualbox wont allow that !! People on the ubuntu forums suggest that it could be a "feature" of vbox not to support 64bit cpu as of now... That would be a shame, actually... :(
Checking out vmware has been another shock. Earlier it used to be "FREE" for Linux, however now its only 30day evaluation version. Sounds like just another corporate, not a company supporting open source...
On the 64 bit point, I am really thinking of going 64 bit completely... all out... I have tried it for a few weeks now, and for me its been no problems at all... and the support for packages etc is fine for my needs... Yeah, some more programs need to be compiled by hand, but thats ok for me... :)
Last friday the release candidate of the new Hardy came out. It was beta for sometime now, and I had it for a few days in beta phase too..
It was my first time playing around with an OS in its beta stage and sure.. it feels good to be involved..
I found a few things, suggested on the forums, put out bug reports and it all works so nicely. Everybody involved is so open and helping... it was actually very nice exp. A good learning curve as well for a few things... :)
Currently there are a few things still going on with the "Hardy Release Candidate" with differing opinions, but all in all it looks like a good package to me. On my laptop, it works nicely, no issues as such...
In my view, the Ubuntu series has had its share of issues with hardware compatibility. With different people using different set of hardware, it turns out that not everything is 100% picked up by the installer as it should be.
I tried using virtualbox on hardy to install another copy of hardy 64 bit to experiment something, however, virtualbox wont allow that !! People on the ubuntu forums suggest that it could be a "feature" of vbox not to support 64bit cpu as of now... That would be a shame, actually... :(
Checking out vmware has been another shock. Earlier it used to be "FREE" for Linux, however now its only 30day evaluation version. Sounds like just another corporate, not a company supporting open source...
On the 64 bit point, I am really thinking of going 64 bit completely... all out... I have tried it for a few weeks now, and for me its been no problems at all... and the support for packages etc is fine for my needs... Yeah, some more programs need to be compiled by hand, but thats ok for me... :)
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