Why's Ubuntu special?

Ubuntu's very special due to simplicity, and absolute simplicity at that, has 32/ 64 bit versions, support for almost all the devices/ peripherals and speedy fixes. But I've a single reason above all those reasons. Its based on the best of the distributions: Debian. I'm not sure I'm loud and clear here, so I'll go on...

Debian was once the most complicated installation, with hardly any other flavor than the German. Its installation was in German, all docs, everything. Not many could install it back then and therefore, very few got to use it. It was still the best distribution then. What is interesting to note is that the makers of Ubuntu built on Debian, the best distribution available then, available in the least user-friendly way and turned it the most user-friendly distribution without messing up the best things.

Whats more, you get to pick between plain vanilla Ubuntu with Gnome, Kubuntu with KDE, Xubuntu which is packaged for speed, Edubuntu for education and Gobuntu thats totally GNU/ FSF!

Not BSNL, Vista blues!

One thing about blogging about Linux is that it contrasts against Microsoft way of doing things. That is, Linux does things in a standard way but Microsoft keeps on contradicting itself.

Now, this one is about setting up the BSNL provided router to let wired access for PC and wireless access for laptop. I suspected BSNL and/ or UTStarcom's stupid router to be the culprit when I'd trouble with DHCP. (I did mention that I moved my PC to Ubuntu yesterday, but I'm still stuck on Vista for my laptop). The wireless adapter on the laptop wasn't getting a DHCP IP 192.168.1.x and somehow got some funny IP 169.254.205.173! Ergo, no LAN or WAN access. Instead, I'd to force a static IP on the laptop to access the router settings, force it to bridge mode and then dial up PPPoE from laptop! This pathetic setting would also mean that I can use either the laptop or the PC, basically one client at a time and also means on-demand connection from that client! I tried almost every setting with the router, including adding MAC filter for wireless access, but made no progress.

I knew there was something fishy about DHCP but didn't know what. So I began on that thread of thinking: why the hell does Vista get me a nonsense IP? Whats 169.254.205.173? Then I searched online on network classes to find that this is a fallback IP if everything else fails! How can DHCP fail for wireless/ Vista and still work for wired/ XP or wired/ Ubuntu? It turns out Vista was the culprit here with the wireless adapter not getting DHCP, it was falling back on 169.254.205.173 which was its autoconfiguration IP, a zeroconfig! More search online led to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233 which says "Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers"... hmm, interesting, very interesting, note the words "non-Microsoft". What do you mean non-MS DHCP servers? Shouldn't you be saying Vista is non-DHCP OS in some way instead? Be as it may. :) The MS suggested solution is to add a DWORD32 DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle flag set to 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID} where GUID is the network adapter that you want to Vistafy or Vis**-up! :)

I blog this only as a reference for some or even me if I go mad to come back and use Vista ever again. This might work for some, it didn't work for me. But taking hint from the MS article, I'd to finger wireless network properties to "connect even if the network is not broadcasting". This worked, yes! I got a clean DHCP IP and things seem good.

IDE and debuggers

Since the time I started programming, I've been using printfs for debugging. For some reason, I found it much easier, better and concrete overall compared to any tools. So my programming tools have almost always been vi and printfs. Of course, when I was forced into using Visual Studio, I did use the VS debugging tools, but they were limited only to looking up values in runtime than anything, something that you'd do with gdb or printfs. IDEs and debuggers do make life easier in the short run but they *help* build bad habits, quite similar to relying on word processors that correct your language even if you write syntactically incorrect stuff. A bad coder, similarly, tends to rely on IDEs to help the syntax and debuggers to assist fix an unthought piece of code already written!

Today, all that came back when I was looking up to tune the Ubuntu install to see what all I'm missing that I may use once in a while. Not that I'm doing any coding, but I began looking up IDEs that came up on Linux since Anjuta. Looks like KDevelop and Anjuta are still going good. Funnily enough that led me to some pros-and-cons debate of using IDE, which had a link to what Linus Torvalds feels about debuggers, more clearly kernel debuggers, aka "I'm a bas****" mail. :)

Goodbye Windoze!

(Shifted from anythingwise blogged yesterday)

I'm up and running on Ubuntu 8.04 for my 64 bit system and looks like I've already fallen in love with it. :)

Of course, my installation may have been non-standard first time in all these years because after cleaning up one drive and before beginning an Ubuntu installation, I did the following:
--Searched Ubuntu 64 bit binaries on the system. I found the ones I'd downloaded. Unzipped them. Was thinking of burning a CD and starting Ubuntu installation, but...
--While going through them I found a Windows executable, perhaps wubi.exe. Running it just installed everything in an NTFS partition without removing anything, moreover, from within Win XP! Ubuntu really believes in simplicity, doesn't it? :)
--A reboot led to installation and I switched on the DSL just in case it needs it. Everything done.
--Then it asked me if I wanted to get a proprietary Nvidia driver for my graphics card and downloaded them without hiccups.
--The programmer within me tested cc first, which was working. So I tried c++ which it asked to confirm, downloaded and installed!!!

No wonder, Ubuntu stands for: Linux for humans. :D