Welcome to the fourth edition of Granular Newsletter
Last month saw the finalization of updates in Granular's repository in preparation for the RC release. Finally, after much delay, Granular 1.0 RC was released on the 1st of July. The last month and start of this month also saw the highly anticipated releases of many major distributions, like Linux Mint 5, openSuSE 11.0 and Sabayon 3.5. Find out more in this month's newsletter.
We hope you'll enjoy reading the newsletter.
Granular Newsletter is divided into 3 parts:
- News - Latest happenings from the Granular Linux community and Team Granular, and some other news related to Granular.
- Tips & Tricks - Find some tips, tricks, work arounds and tutorials in this section that would help tweak/fine-tune/enhance your Granular Linux.
- Featured article - Check out an original piece of writing submitted by members of the Granular Community.
Team Granular is looking out for contributions from interested ones for the future editions of Granular Newsletter. The newsletter is intended to grow both in quality and quantity. And this is possible only with the support of more people. If you wish to contribute articles, tips, tricks, tutorials, news (non-Granular), or any other possible contributions for the newsletter, contact us through email at admin@granularproject.org.
Granular 1.0 RC released
The second and last testing release of Granular 1.0 was made on 1st July 2008 in the form of Granular 1.0 RC. The download was made available as an ISO image, downloadable via torrent and direct downloads. Read the release notes.
Granular Community Forums hacked, then restored
In a menacing attempt to disrupt the communication between the various members of Granular Community Forums, a group of hackers (or a single evil-minded maniac?), who called themselves "Turkish Hackers", were able to somehow exploit a security hole in SMF forum software and replaced the main page of the forums with their own; a page with dark (read it black) background, adorned with a freaking green sketch of a lady in the center, with dull grey text written on it and a dark music running in the background - this was what the visitors got to see for a few hours. The forum was restored back soon enough to stop any further attacks.
Major Linux releases last month
For Linux distro fans, the last month of June was an auspicious month. On 6th June, Zenwalk 5.2 was released, followed by the long awaited Linux Mint 5 the next day, June 7th. On the 19th of June, probably the best release of the year came out - openSuSE 11.0, which won critical acclaims and accolades the world over. Arch Linux 2008.06 was released on 24th, and sidux 2008-02 on 26th. Then came the famous Turkish distro Pardus on 27th in its 2008 avatar. And finally, it was Sabayon 3.5 released on the 1st of July, coinciding with Granular 1.0 RC's release date. So, all in all, last month was the month of great Linux distro releases.
Problems with Granular 1.0 RC
One one hand, where Granular 1.0 RC release saw some good amount of appreciation from its users, on the other hand, many of the existing and new Granular users found it impossible to install Granular onto their hard disks. According to a bug, either the installer does not detect some SATA hard disks during installation or the installation proceeds successfully but on booting from the hard disk installation gives a Kernel panic - not syncing... error. But Granular 1.0 RC works absolutely fine in the LiveCD mode. This bug has been marked as an official one and would be solved before the final Granular 1.0 release. If you are one of those unlucky users who got the same problem with this release, please check out this temporary solution.
Xandros acquires Linspire
If June was a month of distro releases, so it was for hidden surprizes. And one of them was the acquisition of Linspire by Xandros. The acquisition went silently and press releases were posted on the websites of both the distros only after the deal had been done. Both of these Linux-based corporates had been charging for their products since a long time. Linspire on one hand used to release a free edition of their distro, Freespire, on the other hand, Xandros had discontinued their free edition releases, Open Circulation (OC) starting with Xandros 4, again silently! A detailed article covering this news can be found here.
Poof! My emails are gone! Where?
If you have configured an email account in Mozilla Thunderbird which can also be accessed using a web-based interface, such as one of GMail or Yahoo! and you are wondering where do your emails go from the main server after you have retrieved them in Thunderbird, then worry no more. By default, Thunderbird is set to delete the emails from the mail server after being sucessfully retrieved. To change this setting and make Thunderbird to not delete your precious emails from the server, go to Edit > Account Settings. Under the desired account, choose Server Settings and tick the option "Leave messages on server".
Create an Image Gallery in HTML
You can easily create an Image Gallery in HTML format for the images contained in a particular folder. For doing this:
Creating a new bootsplash theme
Bootsplash is the screen with a loader bar that shows up during the boot time. It makes the traditional (and otherwise boring) boot process more fun to watch. By pressing the Esc key when the bootsplash is on, you can see the processes that get initialized as the system boots. Bootsplash themes are what give those beautiful looks to the bootsplash screen. In this tutorial, you shall see how to create your own bootsplash theme and get it to work... [continue reading]
Put your multimedia keys to a better use
If you have one of those keyboards that boast of some "extra" keys or multimedia keys, you could put them to a better use, the use which they are meant for. Granular 1.0 includes a package called hotkeys pre-installed. If your keyboard (desktop or the laptop one) is supported by this little utility, you can easily setup those extra keys to get them working. To do this, issue the command hotkeys -l in command-line (Konsole) and find your keyboard in the list that appears. If it is there, note down the code corresponding to your keyboard. Now, go to your home folder and click on View > Show Hidden Files. Next, go to .kde folder and then the Autostart folder. Create a new empty file there by right-clicking the empty area and selecting New > Text File. Open the file for editing and put the following contents in it:
#!/bin/bash
hotkeys -t xxxxx
Replace "xxxxx" with the code corresponding to your keyboard. For example, hotkeys -t dellinspiron. Save the file with the name hotkeys.The next time you boot into Granular, you shall find your extra keys working!
Switch the GTK theme
Granular 1.0 also includes a nifty little utility to switch the default GTK theme, using an easy-to-use interface, to the one of your choice. Granular's default GTK theme is Nodoka, but includes plenty others pre-installed. To change the theme, open up command-line (Konsole) and issue the command gtk-chtheme.
A Broken Warranty by Craig Shockley aka Galjaman
Into kick boxing? The computer box makes a dandy training device. With a bit of forethought and a steel toed boot you can loft that baby right over the telephone wires. And while we're on the subject, a monitor can double as a punching bag in just the right circumstances - like when your Internet connection goes dead for no apparent reason. For those who may be contemplating this or similar sporting use, bear in mind you will probably void your warranty.
There are other ways to void your warranty that undoubtedly are less painful to your feet or fists. Suppose, for example, you purchase a name brand computer with Windows installed. Then suppose you install a Linux operating system. And finally, suppose your wireless lan card goes belly up without even the smallest quiver left in its little diodes. Your warranty is instantly worth a lot less than the paper it's printed on.
At this point you have four options:
Option 1: Forget about wireless.
Option 2: Purchase a new wireless card from the manufacturer at a price roughly double the cost you originally paid for the entire computer.
Option 3: Use the computer as a martial arts training device. This will not resolve your problem, but it will surely give a degree of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment when you view the end result.
Option 4: Search through your huge stack of CDs and DVDs for the installation disk that came with the computer. When you finally find it, wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. Then call customer support. It will help if you rehearse your story line before making the call.
So what's a person to do?
The cheap and easy route is Option 1. You can continue to be "mobile", assuming you have an Ethernet bridge handy where ever you want to be mobile to. (Unfortunately new Ethernet bridges cost almost as much as wireless lan cards.)
The most reasonable answer is, of course, Option 4. This option will put your computer back to the unreliable software status it had when you bought it. After installing the new part you can install Linux yet again.
Something similar happened to me some time back. After jumping through the appropriate hoops, and barking like a trained seal at the command of a Windows trained technical support geek, I began to wonder why an otherwise beneficent major corporation would force me to use Microsoft Windows. Why was it necessary to use software developed solely for the enslavement of people by an evil, grasping empire? And does a different operating system actually harm the hardware of a munificent original equipment manufacturer?
I did some research. After minutes of study I reached a conclusion. The consensus of many experts is that it must be a giant conspiracy geared to keeping Bill Gates the richest man in the world. I agreed. Admittedly, my "research" was done on forums devoted to Linux because those are the only ones I have bookmarked.
Still, I wasn't happy with the experts' views. Was the conclusion I reached ever so slightly skewed? Could all of those experts on the Linux forums be just a little wrong? So I thought about it. Then I thought about it some more. Finally I arrived at a new theory of my own. Here it is.
Whenever a crime occurs - other than a crime of passion - the first question investigators ask is, "Where's the money?" And so it is with the beneficent, munificent original equipment manufacturers.
Ask any CEO where his corporation incurs the highest cost. The response is always just two words, "Human resources."
Yes indeed. Humans, in the long run, are much more expensive than any high tech, super impressive, complicated, bright and shiny chunk of manufacturing equipment. Humans, you see, must be paid constantly, psychologically pampered, trained, and retrained. Humans require expensive health plans, retirement funds, and maybe even corporation sponsored baby sitting services. Even a human's work environment must conform to standards deemed pleasant and relaxing, and that's expensive too.
On the other hand, machines are completely content as long as some expensively trained maintenance person occasionally squirts some oil into their innards. Machines actually save the corporation tax money as they depreciate, all the while continuing the same high level of production and quality. The machines will even work in dark dank basements that smell like a sewer, wearing a mechanical smile on their mechanical faces, and uttering not a word of complaint. No attitude problems with machines!
Technical Support people are all humans (probably) and therefore are a very expensive element of the corporate asset sheet. When you call these stalwart fonts of knowledge, their expertise is free to you (as long as the box is still under warranty), but it is not free to the corporation. These people have been trained, retrained, and familiarized at specified intervals to assist you with problems related to your computer as it was originally purchased. Key words: "as it was originally purchased."
But silly you. You've gone and swapped out the operating system. Now these highly trained and very expensive human assets don't have a clue how to help. None of their cheat sheets lists a single Linux or Unix command. There is no way for them to verify if it really is an equipment malfunction, or if the software is simply borked up, or, if you did in fact use the box for martial arts training. They have no choice but to refuse your pitiful pleas for hardware replacement.
Tech Support's refusal to help you with your problem can only create ill will toward the corporation in your own mind, not to mention the ill will you'll feel with the ear bending you're going to get when your significant other still can't connect to the Internet. You won't be buying that corporation's product again.
Nevertheless, the Chief Executive Officer and the Board of Directors really do want you to buy another of their products. That's how they make money. Heads of corporations most fervent desire is keep the bottom line in the black. They know they could solve "your" problem by training their tech support people in Linux, but they also know any additional training is very EXPENSIVE. Most of them know there are hundreds of varieties of Linux. Is separate training required for each variety? And what if someone replaced Windows with BSD? More training? Even more expense? Where's all that money going to come from?
The Board's solution is simple. The warranty applies only as long as the equipment remains in "as sold" condition. Now there is no need for additional training, or highly paid outside consultants, or printing costs associated with new cheat sheets. The bottom line doesn't turn red and the figure shown isn't preceded with a " - ."
So that's my theory. Bill Gates and his evil minions have nothing at all to do with the corporation's refusal to honor the warranty - except for Bill's fantastic success in making Windows the operating system used in about 90 percent of computers world wide.
Yeah, I know. Some folks will cling to their conspiracy and evil empire theories no matter what. But in reality only one question needs be answered, "Where's the money?"
And now, another question. How do we get those CEOs and Boards of Directors to change their warranty policies? Well . . . I've got a theory on that too.
Linux usage (okay, and maybe BSD too) must increase. Major OEM companies must be able to see the demand and to be able to realize a profit from manufacturing or supporting Linux systems.
And how can we increase Linux usage (demand) worldwide? That's the easy answer. Simply convert all of your friends and family to the Linux way of computing. Then make sure they follow your example.
What's your theory?