tech tit-bits

The first step in shifting to Ubuntu is trying the live CD version for a while. So here's small guide for first time users. The live CD version means that whenever you want to use Ubuntu you just pop in the CD and reboot the PC, you can then try out Ubuntu without affecting your computer in anyway. All you have to do is shut down, remove CD and restart comp to restore your PC to original condition and use Windows. No installation, no partitioning needed.

Step 1 Download Ubuntu 8.04 from here. download the desktop 8.04 LTS version for your PC configuration. the defaut selections on the page will mostly work for you. This version includes the Ubuntu installation + a live CD version. Next burn the downloaded iso image onto a CD using any CD writing software.
Step 2 Boot the live Ubuntu version throught the CD.
Just pop in the CD and restart your computer. It should now proceed with loading Ubuntu. If not, follow the steps below to ensure the PC boots from the Ubuntu CD and not into Windows.

How to change boot opitions ? ( you need to do this only once)
* Immediatelly on switching on the computer keep pressing the Esc button ( or
Del button on some PC's ). You'll see a boot prompt coming up.
* Look for a list in the prompt called a boot priority / boot order. Edit the list so
that your CD drive is first in the list and then your hard disc.
* Now select option Save Changes and Exit. It should now proceed to load Ubuntu.



Once Ubuntu boots you'll have a screen with options to try out live CD or install Ubuntu.
Select the first option thats "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer".


Your done with this. Now go ahead with exploring Ubuntu.

Step 3 : Restoring your computer. Actually this might not even qualify as a step.
All you have to do is select shutdown option in Ubuntu and remove CD when its done. Its that simple.

Enjoy Ubuntu and once you are familiar you can go ahead with installing Ubuntu on your PC. That'll give you much better performance and let you personalise your Ubuntu and install other interesting software

For total newbie here are few softwares commonly used in Windows and their open source eqiuivalent you can try out in Ubuntu
Open Office Suite for Microsoft Office
Firefox browser for Internet Explorer
GIMP graphic editing s/w for Photoshop
RythmBox music player for Windows Media Player.
Archive manager for WinZip/ WinRar

Also try out interesting games and the file explorer in Ubuntu. Check out the dual desptop feature . You can decluster windows and organise your work into two seperate windows. You can shift windows using the option provided at the bottom right corner of ur desktop. Also try out the Windows+Tab shortcut to switch wondows to get a taste of the awesome UI if Ubuntu 8.04.

The hype surrounding the release of firefox 3 was unbelievable. Was it due to the interest of the open source community or because a browser has now become integral to our everyday lives?

Anyway, I ended up waiting until midnight 27th(IST) for the release. Everybody discussing ff3 and the boring wait for it over gtalk. And the download wasnt a breeze – the Mozilla site seemed to have conked out with the load and I had to wait for ah hour before i could lay my hands on ff3.

Mozilla were gunning for five million downloads in 24 hours to set a Guinness world record and not surprisingly it exceeded expectations, passing the five million mark in just under 14 hours.

I'll go through a few of the interesting improvements and new features that i found. Please bear with me for repeating some the new features as i'd already covered them in my review of ff3 beta edition earlier.


The Awesome bar

The new location bar ( nicknamed The Awesome Bar) is by far the best and most used improvement in ff3. When you start typing into the Awesome Bar, Firefox starts searching through your browsing history and bookmarks. The Awesome bar shows you a dropdown menu of pages, and when you see the page you want, you can just arrow or mouse down and select it. It also conveniently weights the search results to favor frequently-visited pages and pages you visited more recently.

The smart auto-complete function remembers not just pages' addresses but also their titles. Heres an example of how extremely simple it makes my life. If i want to go a blog with a name Amateurs coding i dont need to remember the url http://www.kgmodi.blogspot.com . juist typing "amateur" is enough for firefox to zero in on the site.


Bookmarking - Quicker and Easier

On the far right side of the location bar is a star. One click and the current page is immediately bookmarked, into an unsorted bookmark section. Click again on the star and you can edit the bookmark, where you can add tags. If you type a tag word into the location bar you will get a list of sites from your history and bookmarks that have also been tagged with that same word. try it out.


Streamlined look and the BACK button

Firefox’s skin now automatically matches the general UI of your OS and looks more streamlined with a focus on a larger back button – possibly the most used button for navigation.
Surprisingly this larger back button is missing on my Ubuntu verion of ff3 !


Add-On Manager Improvements

The addon manager provides a list of recommended add-ons. You can also search for new ones and find more complete add-on descriptions with ratings. installation is pretty simple.


improved Zoom

The new zoom is much better. The entire page zooms in and out, with the graphics, interactive elements, text, and layout all remaining in proportion to one another unlike earlier versions where zooming haphazardly overlaps various elements as you zoom.
Firefox 3 also seems to remembers the zoom setting the site for your next visit.


non intusive password manager

Firefox 3's password manager is much more polite about offering to remember Web passwords. It asks you if you'd like to save your password in an unobtrusive strip atop the browser window, not a pop-up dialog.


online app's support

In the past you’d click on an email address in a Web site and your computer’s default email application would open up to send a message to the linked address—even if you never email through the program ( read Microsoft Outlook ). Now you can choose a Web mail clients (like Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) to launch when you click on that email address.


Reality check , Is firefox good enough to beat ie ?
Internet Explorer, for better or for worse, still enjoys a significant advantage in market share, but data show this advantage eroding. According to study that judged the market share by the traffic at a particular Web site, Firefox gained almost 8 percent over Internet Explorer for the month of May, year over year, moving from just over 26 percent of all visitors to 33 percent. Internet Explorer lost a total of 9 percent to other browsers in that time frame.
And there's Apple's Safari,another competitior that gained almost 3 percent.


Three years in development, over 15,000 bug fixes and feature improvements, remarkable performance gains, multiple OS integration—you could say the several hundred engineers working on Firefox have been busy. And their work has paid off.
a big thumbs up to firefox 3

I'll be reviewing a few good addon's for firefox 3 soon. so keep checking.
and also comment on your experience with firefox 3.

Joost is yet another web shattering service following the likes os youtube , kazaa n stuff.
Joost is sorta p2p platform that gets streaming television on your comp.For those that don't know, Joost is a new web venture that puts on demand video on the web. The service is free, and paid for by advertising that is interspersed within the shows you watch. I'd rather have Joost be free with ads than have to pay for it. The grand plan for Joost seems very cool. On Demand television without paying the cable company. The channels are specific to the content on them. For example, there is a Green Day channel, an Indy Car channel, and a Gaming channel. Currently there are about 25 channels to choose from (in india ) The interface is simple and clean and easy to navigate. In addition to the standard channel flipping methods you can also search for shows by name or type. Joost allows for full screen viewing or putting it in a window so I can easily watch have shows going while I do other stuff on my computer. The full screen is nice for putting it on my TV.
The worst fear in such video app's id the struttring of video. But i was amazed at the quality even on my average mtnl connection. just a few hickups once in a while ( mind you , u still need broadband & 512mb ram)

so thats all for now go ahead and enjoy.