Blog Announcement: Moving to Blogger

I’m moving this blog to Blogger.com (a Google blogging service). My new blog can be found at http://practicalfoss.blogspot.com/ in which I will target practical use Free Software and how to make the most out of it.

The 2nd blog http://arabicfoss.blogspot.com/ is going to focus on introducing Free Software to the Arabic speaking community.

Finally, this blog is going to stay online as long as wordpress.com will allow; however, it will not be updated with new articles though I’ll keep an eye on your comments 😉

Happy Blogging to all

ArchLinux: My ultimate GNU/Linux distro of choice

Finally, after testing, using and experimenting with dozens of GNU/Linux distributions during the last 4 years, I’ve found my ultimate distro of choice. It’s ArchLinux. I’ve never been so happy to be a GNU/Linux user as today.

ArchLinux, is exactly what I was looking for. I’m strong believer in the concept of rolling updates because I think it’s the best way for GNU/Linux to take on in the Desktop usage.

Out of many GNU/Linux Distro I’ve tried, only two caught my interest. ArchLinux followed by PCLinuxOS. The only difference between them is that PCLinuxOS is more easy to install while ArchLinux is more easy to maintain. As a result ArchLinux has more recent packages than PCLinuxOS.

Another great thing about ArchLinux is the quality of its documentation. It’s excellent, everything is detailed and simple to follow.

And I’ve never seen any full-fledged GNU/Linux distro running so fast as ArchLinux. That’s because it’s not bloated with useless apps, the user chooses what to install and what not, and because its packages are optimized for i686.

ArchLinux Community plays an important role in providing help and maintaining AUR packages. I can confidently say that ArchLinux Community is a remarkable and vibrant one.

So far, I’ve had only one issue with it. My DVD recorder couldn’t burn above 2x which was due SATA Kernel module. It’s needless to say that not only I was able to fix the issue in a few moments but the way ArchLinux reconfigured the Kernel was lightning fast.

All I can say is Kudos to ArchLinux members and to ArchLinux Community. Really, a Big Thank You to everyone.

Now, I can focus on doing my work instead of fighting with my OS.

XP All-In-One Styler: My little FOSS contribution to Windows users.

I used to be a Windows geek. I hear you laughing 😀

I used to do my own unattended Windows XP install CD, which was a Linux-like in terms of pre-installed softwares; and which I used whenever I wanted to install my own PC.

I personalized everything in my Windows XP. And since at those days I was a Borland Delphi fan I decided to develop a software to manage Windows XP themes, logon and boot screens. The first version was hosted at FreeWebs, you can still find it here and here (By the way, I hated to use DreamWeaver or Frontpage)

After a year or so from the first release, I decided to enhance it and release it under a FOSS license. You can have a look at the project web site here, or if you want to try it you can download it from here. Thanks again to SourceForge.

Actually, I’ve received a lot positive feedback about it. And many asked for more features. However, I’ve promised myself that If I’m going to develop anything else I will use only Free Software tools to do any kind of software. (Qt + Python are way beyond anything I’ve seen in the proprietary development tools)

Why it’s a bad idea to use Debian Sid for daily use

throughout my experience with Debian Sid (nearly a year now), at least I had three show-stoppers. One was a serious package management conflict that required manual hacks to solve. The second one was a complex Xorg breakage that required 2 hours of work to fix. and the last one was yesterday when I was unable to bootup the new installed kernel 2.6.26-1-686

Here is nice screenshot for those who have never seen Linux kernel crash. It’s rare to happen. In 4 years, I’ve only seen it once and it was due to hardware failure.

I’m not going to be defensive, but the Kernel crash you are going to see has nothing to do with the quality of the Kernel itself but it shows what can happen when distro maintainers start to mess with things 🙂

Mozilla Firefox v3.0 is good, though there is room to get it even better.

Although it’s a little bit late to blog about Mozilla Firefox v3.0, I’ll do it anyway. I’ve read some good feedback about it and personally I found to be good. Mozilla has improved many things under the hood: better web standards support, better security and lots of improvements here and there.

I can tell that this new release really do have memory management improvements. There is no frequent sky-rocketing memory consumption when watching Flash videos or visiting web sites with JScript memory leaks. They have really done a good job.

Also, I can confidently say that Mozilla is making Firefox not just a simple Web browser but a platform that is going to have it remarkable share in future software development (either applications relying on it as a core/engine, or web applications).

My only two remarks about it are :

1) The newly introduced Awesome Bar still need improvements, it can be overwhelming to those who have large web browser history. I’ve found that Opera 9.51 has implemented it better than Firefox 3.0; and to those who prefer the old style, they can install OldBar and have a bar similar to Firefox 2.0.

2) Bookmarks. Although Firefox 3.0 use Sqlite as a back-end to manage bookmarks, I’ve noticed browser freezing when I try to access my bookmarks. Some may not notice it but I’ve a large Database of bookmarks (~9Mb html db file). Another thing is that when I try to add a new bookmark in a new folder, either the newly added folder don’t show up in bookmarks tree or the bookmark dialog stops responding to mouse clicks. Also, I’ve found that Firefox 2.0 provides more flexibility in handling bookmarks especially drag-and-drop operations.

Actually, I’ve both Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 2.0 installed. I use only v2.0 for my daily activities. I’ll probably move to Firefox 3.1 when it get released next year.

SilverLight – Let’s Darken Up The Web

Here is the latest and greatest from Microsoft to the Web. SilverLight.

From now on, the Web will crash too!!

And you know what!? it’s a feature. 🙂

A picture is worth a thousand words

I’m moving to Debian Testing codenamed Lenny

Well I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to move to Debian Testing codenamed Lenny. it’s the next coming release of Debian currently being under development; and once it’s marked as stable it will become the default version like the actual one, Debian Etch (Debian 4.0).

Why am I moving away from Ubuntu ?

Back in 2005 (my first days with GNU/Linux), I have set a goal to move to Debian when I become ready. First, I tried many distributions but I settled with Ubuntu because it was newly introduced to the market with the incentive of offering the same software quality for both enterprise and community edition while focusing on making GNU/Linux as easy and user friend as possible for newcomers. I was attracted to that principle and to the fact that it was based on Debian which is well known by its stability and its popularity among system administrators.

Since Ubuntu is based on Debian Experimental (Sid), it offered the latest and greatest versions of softwares. Also, it’s means you are on the bleeding edge every six months which is wonderful. However, this bleeding edge has a hidden but justified cost. It’s some bugs that while they can push you to learn more about GNU/Linux trying to figure out what causing them, they may also be the source of serious headaches. Personally, most of my headaches come from FireFox performance, X11 Drivers’ stability, and Linux Kernel issues with some DSL Modems and most of these problems are Ubuntu specific.

Right now I no longer has the capacity to haunt these issues, I want to be using something that’s new and fairly tested. I think, here where comes the advantage of Debian Testing over Debian Experimental or Ubuntu. You sacrifice some of the coolness of using the latest softwares in order to be using fairly new but more tested softwares.

I want a platform that is always evolving, stable and reliable and where I can experiment other things on.

What’s behind Microsoft recent deals with commercial Linux vendors

Microsoft latest deals (enveloped as “collaboration agreements”) with some commercial GNU/Linux distributions pushed me to wonder what is the real deal/catch for Microsoft ?

Well, it’s not an easy thing to guess but from closely following the news of such deals I come to these completely speculative ideas. [Update: now they became true and valid.]

Microsoft pays more money than they get from these commercial GNU/Linux vendors in order to

1) Allow these commercial GNU/Linux vendors to buy open source startups. (i.e Xandros acquired scalix) [Update: July 1st, 2008, Xandros acquired Linspire too]

2) Then Microsoft opens their proprietary protocols exclusively to these vendors and thus given them advantage over non-commercial GNU/Linux Distributions. (i.e Microsoft offers specifications and documentations to Xandros about MS Exchange protocols)

3) By doing this, Microsoft preserve its dominance since these commercial GNU/Linux distributions would work efficiently with Microsoft proprietary protocols. This will be beneficial to Microsoft in two ways: 1) Slow down full platform migrations. 2) This gives more time to Microsoft to formulate more effective strategies to deal with this open source trend/threat. [Update: Feb. 21, 2008, Microsoft’s Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability announcement ]

4) These deals “may” work in Microsoft advantage in case of later legal actions probably against competing free (Debian, Ubuntu) and/or commercial (Red Hat) GNU/Linux distributions.

However, I don’t perceive any imminent threat from Microsoft as it still trying to figure out what are the driving motives for individuals & SMBs to consider GNU/Linux.

Connexion à Internet avec Sagem Fast 800 USB modem sous Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10 et 8.04 (Feisty, Gutsy et Hardy) en mode PPPoA et PPPoE

Remarque: Ce billet et les deux scripts ne sont plus à jour. Cependant, pour installer et utiliser le modem sous Ubuntu Linux, je vous recommande d’utiliser le paquet UbuDSL ou bien d’utiliser le nouveau script indiqué ici (Article écrit en Arabe)

Ce billet explique comment faire pour installer le modem Sagem Fast 800 avec Ubuntu pour les connexions en mode PPPoA.

Vous pouvez suivre les instructions ci-dessous pour procéder a une installation manuelle, ou bien d’utiliser l’un des deux scripts (un pour le mode PPPoA et l’autre pour le mode PPPoE) pour procéder à une installation automatique.

Pour le mode PPPoA, voici les étapes à suivre pour installer manuellement le modem sagem fast 800 sous Ubuntu :

Récupérer le Firmware du modem a partir d’ici et copier le dans le dossier home. (Le dossier personnel/principale de votre compte utilisateur sous Linux)

Lancer le Terminal à partir du menu Application=>Accessoires=>Terminal

Copier/Coller chaque ligne de ces commandes dans la fenêtre du Terminal et valider par la touche Entrer du clavier

N.B: la copie de certains caractères comme le <b>”</b> ne donne pas le même résultat/caractères lors du coller. C’est dû à une mauvais interprétation par certains forums et blogs. Alors, quand vous retrouvez ” écrivez le manuellement.

Le code suivant copie le firmware dans le dossier ueagle-atm pour faire fonctionner le modem

N.B: la commande sudo nous permet d’élever les privilèges de notre compte pendant une courte période afin d’exécuter des taches qui sont normalement exécuter par le compte root qui représente un super-administrateur.

sudo a besoin de notre mot de passe, le même mot de passe que nous avons saisie pour accéder à notre session.

cp ~Desktop/ueagle-data-1.1.tar.gz /tmp && cd /tmp

tar -zxvf ueagle-data-1.1.tar.gz
sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware/ueagle-atm
cd ueagle-data-1.1/
sudo cp -a * /lib/firmware/ueagle-atm/

Pour le mode PPPoA :

Ici, on vas créer un fichier avec les paramètres nécessaires pour se connecter à l’Internet avec Menara/ MarocTelecom.

La première commande vas ouvrir l’éditeur de texte gedit

sudo gedit /etc/ppp/peers/ueagle-atm

Copier les paramètres suivants dans la fenêtre de l’éditeur de texte gedit et enregistrer le fichier en cliquant sur le bouton Enregistrer. Il faut remplacer “Login@FournisseurAccesInternet” par votre propre login

user “Login@FournisseurAccesInternet”
plugin pppoatm.so 8.35
noipdefault
usepeerdns
defaultroute
persist
noauth

Maintenant on à besoin de fournir notre mot de passe dans le fichier chap-secrets pour qu’on puisse connecter à l’Internet.

sudo gedit /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

“login@FournisseurAccesInternet” * “mot de passe” *

Maintenant on vas tester si on à l’Internet

sudo modprobe pppoatm
sudo modprobe ueagle_atm
pppd call ueagle-atm

ifconfig ppp0

si tout vas bien la commande ifconfig ppp0 doit afficher quelque chose pareille

ppp0 Lien encap:Protocole Point-à-Point
inet adr:196.206.17.0 P-t-P:196.206.16.1 Masque:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Packets reçus:1511 erreurs:0 :0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1349 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:3
Octets reçus:1569624 (1.4 MiB) Octets transmis:172540 (168.4 KiB)

A partir d’ici sois vous tapez la commande pppd call ueagle-atm chaque fois que vous voulez connecter à l’Internet manuellement, sois vous continuez jusqu’à le fin de ce guide pour arriver à connecter et reconnecter automatique à l’Internet.

On vas créer un fichier nommé ADSL qui fait appel à la commande pppd call ueagle-atm qui nous permet de connecter à l’Internet

sudo gedit /usr/bin/adsl

#!/bin/bash
pppd call ueagle-atm

On affect l’attribue exécutable pour le fichier ADSL.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/adsl

On le déplace vers le dossier /etc/init.d

sudo mv /usr/bin/adsl /etc/init.d

et puis un lien symbolique du fichier adsl dans les différentes phase de démarrage du système, le point qui se situe à la fin de la commande est nécessaire

sudo update-rc.d adsl start 50 2 3 4 5 . stop 50 6 0 .

et voilà, une connexion illimité sans interruption.

Bravo Ubuntu Team !!

Congratulations to all Ubuntu Team and GNU/Linux Community.

You have done a great work in Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.