Nayar's Blog

I am very impatient to test the new Kubuntu 12.04 which is a Long Term Release version i.e. it will be supported for 5 years. It is supposed to be hyper stable

However, i haven’t taken the decision whether to upgrade my current Kubuntu or to wipe my partition and install afresh. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, we can’t download the .iso file and upgrade from it offline as it tried when upgrading to Kubuntu 11.10. They really need to add this option in Kubuntu installation (or maybe they did it already in this version?).

Anyways, i am very busy this week as i have exams starting soon. I don’t think i’ll be able to afford to wipe my current installation and reconfigure it as awesome as it is now:-

I think i’ll upgrade to Kubuntu 12.04 from the software center for now and later when my exams finish, i’ll do a fresh install.

Problem solved ^_^

Click here to download the latest Kubuntu

Want to have the Birthdays of your Facebook Friends right in your KDE calendar like this?

Here’s what to do:-

1. Go to www.facebook.com

2. Go to events >> Birthdays >> Export Birthdays

3. Copy the link which appears

4. Open Kontact.

5. Go to Calendar Tab. Add new calendar.

6. A screen like this will appear. Select KDE Calendar (traditional)

7. Select “Calendar in Remote File”

8. Paste the link in “Downloaded from”. Leave “Upload to” blank. The calendar will be read-only.

9. Press next and complete the wizard. You’re done!

RELATED: Mauritian Holiday Files for KDE

The long awaited Wi-Fi at The University of Mauritius has been officially released since 2 weeks i think. It is a really good move.

As for me, i was concerned whether it would work on linux operating systems. I’ve completed switched to Kubuntu since some time now.

I tried the procedure on https://mysites.uom.ac.mu/wifi/. I managed to connect to wifiprovisioning successfully

But when i open Firefox and when to google.com. It would redirect to some to some page in “uom-wifi-ca.uomwifi.local” but it would stop there. It was supposed to ask me a username and password and give me a certificate.

The Solution?
I booted on Windows 7. Tried connecting to wifiprovisioning. Downloaded the certificate and saved it on my hard-disk. The file name is “certnew.cer”. I switched to Kubuntu again.

I tried connecting to uomstudent directly. It asked for some security fields. I loaded the certificate i downloaded from Windows 7 there. The window should appear like this at the end:-

Connected!

The procedure is a PITA for someone who is not an IT guy. I managed to connect after lots of trials and errors. I would be very cool to officially support Linux OSes. Anyways, i am very happy i managed to connect my Kubuntu. I thought it would have been impossible for a Linux device to ever connect (despite having to download the certificate using a windows device).

Wanna have our National Holidays and special days get shown in your KDE calendar?

Here’s the way to get it:

You can checkout from SVN here or download the files here (might not be up to date):

svn checkout http://kde-for-mauritius.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ kde-for-mauritius-read-only

Copy the contents of “Holiday Files” to “/usr/share/kde4/apps/libkholidays/plan2″. You will need administrative permission to do so. Open the destination location with this command (kubuntu). Then you will be able to paste the files

sudo dolphin /usr/share/kde4/apps/libkholidays/plan2

Right click on the time widget in the lower-right section of your screen and select “Digital Clock Settings”

Now go to calendar, nect to Mauritius, select “Days Off”

U’r Done!

Notes:

1. This calendar is only valid for Year 2012 only. The following Holidays won’t appear in the following years:

Spring Festival
Thaipoosam Cavadee
Maha Shivratee
Ougadi
Assumption // This holiday did not appear in year 2011. I did not put it reccuring for this reason cause i’m not sure when they decide to put it
Ganesh Chaturthi
Divali

If you know in advance when the above events will occur, please let me know. Events like Eid-Ul-Fitr and Eid-Ul-Adhia are approximated yearly like this:

“Eid-Ul-Fitr” weekend on hijri 1 shawwal // weekend makes it appear as a Day off
“Eid-Ul-Adhia” on hijri 10 thualhijjah // this will appear in green in the calendar as it is not a holiday

2. Send me a list of cultural days which mauritian celebrate such as St. Valentine’s day, Father Laval day and birth of Sir Ramgoolam etc.

3. If you want to help, here’s my project page hosted on Google code: http://code.google.com/p/kde-for-mauritius

Next, i’ll be doing a calendar for the Major activities organised by The University of Mauritius. Stay tuned to the SVN

I inserted a CD of Microsoft Office 2007 on Kubuntu and ran setup.exe through Wine. 

Ms Office is unusable on Linux right now. But it could work in a near future. There is hope

I spent my most of my childhood times doing mainly these 3 things:-

1. Playing Lego

2. Cycling
3. Playing Seven Kingdoms!

Seven Kingdoms is a Real-time Strategy (RTS) game. You are a king and and you have to build your empire so as to conquor the world.

However, the game has a slight issue. It can’t go in Full Screen mode or even maximize it. It would only play at a resolution of 824 x 645. It kinda spoils all the fun as you can scroll freely around.

sudo apt-get install 7kaa

After i downloaded the Kubuntu 11.10 .iso file and made a startup pendrive with it. I thought when i would boot with it, it would offer me an “Upgrade” option like Ubuntu does but it didn’t. I installed afresh and overwrite onto my existing installation.

I got this toy when I answered a quiz question by The UoM Computer Club (University of Mauritius). The question was:

Who invented Linux?

I answered:

Linus Torvalds

Well, what’s so interesting about this car? It a wireless mouse

Let’s open the hood now

To use the mouse, simply insert 2 AAA sized battery in the mouse and put the dongle in a USB port of your computer. It starts working ASAP

Its responsiveness is awesome. You should be able to play FPS games with it without much issues.

However, the wheels do not spin. Anyways, it’s still fun

Almost all music players in Linux are either bloated or ugly and sometimes both. Clementine Music Player is a super hero to me. It’s fast, clean and very powerful. It is based on Amarok (which i didn’t like though).

A pretty OSD appears after each song starts playging anywhere you want on the screen. I’ve set mine at the top-right corner. You can also set the OSD colour to Orange. Both look simply awesome.

On the left panel, you will find 2 tabs tab which are called “Song Info” and “Artist Info”. When you click on Song Info, the lyrics and background information on the song playing is fetched from the Internet such as sites as metrolyrics.com and wikia.com. It’s a really great feature. On the Artist info tabs, some pictures and biography of the artist is displayed.

Another cool feature is the icon in the system tray. When a song starts playing, the icon is fully coloured. As when the song progresses, its gets decolorised according to the position of the song.

However, there are some things i don’t like about the player (it is the case for almost all Linux players i came across). The shuffling is as if static. Take for example Clementine played the following songs in this order when shuffling was on:

C >> B >> D >> A

If i want to re-listen to song B after song A, i have to press the Back Button twice on my keyboard. But when song B finishes, song D and A would play again before a new song (e.g. F) is played. Sometimes i get really addicted to a song which i want to listen again and again. But there is currently no way to enable some sort of ‘Shuffling on the Fly’ method.

If you want to try this music player, click here and enjoy.

Windows guys/gals can also download this player.