Category: Uncategorized

Published on by Nayar

My New Laptop: Dell Inspiron 5547 (Hardware)

Quick Specs:
– CPU: Core i7 up to 3.1GHz
– RAM: 8GB
– GFX: AMD Radeon with 2GB VRAM + Intel HD Graphics 4400
– HDD: 1TB
– Screen: 15.6″ @ 1366 x 768

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Technical Specs:

CPU: Intel® Core i7-4510U Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)

My previous laptop had a dual-core CPU (Core i5-480M) which could achieve 2.9GHz. The current CPU despite being a Core i7, is still a dual-core which can attain 3.1GHz only. It has 4MB L3 cache which i hope helps in extra performance.

Only benchmarking can tell whether this CPU is worthwhile over my previous Core i5. (Benchmark coming soon)

RAM: 8GB

My previous laptop had 4GB RAM (it was originally 3GB). Hope the 8GB will be sufficient for the next 2 years.

Graphics: AMD Radeon R7 M260 (2GB VRAM) + Intel® HD Graphics 4400

Finally a graphic card in my house 😀 Hope I can play some games now even if games are in range of 2005 – 2010. I’m fine with that.

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The nice thing is that the dedicated Radeon graphics can be switched off when not needed thus saving battery life 😀

Storage: 1TB HDD

No SSD drive unfortunately. You can actually *feel* the Hard Drive hindering the performance of the laptop while the CPU tells you to feed him more. Must swap the drive for an SSD in the future. Only then the real power would be unleashed!

Screen: 15.6″ @ 1366 x 768

Nothing extraordinary here. Just like any other laptop on the market. Wished it were 1080p :-/

Misc

Audio Jack

It got a single audio jack on the right. It can be quite inconvenient since i am right handed and i usually use a mouse.

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It doesn’t has a dedicated port for mic so i’ll have to buy a ‘jack splitter’ to be able to use my headset’s mic.

Keyboard

Kinda disappointed that the media shortcut buttons (Play/Pause, Next, Previous) do not have a button bump like my previous laptop had on Play/Pause.

Keyboard Bump on Inspiron N5010

vs

Inspiron 5000 Media Buttons

Changing music would now require me to obligatorily look at the keyboard instead of using my finger senses. Causes inconvenience in the dark or when focusing on something important.

Touchpad

This one has a huge touchpad. The surface is not as smooth as my Inspiron N5010. I feel as if my fingers would be used after sometimes. I prefer small touchpad which are fast and butterly smooth like my previous laptop

Coming Up: Getting Started with Kubuntu 14.04 LTS

Installing Kubuntu 14.04 alongside Windows 8.1 with both Secure Boot and EFI ON was a breeze.

Stay tuned…

Published on by Nayar

The 3 Arrays of Life

Everything that happen to us can be classified as follows:

  1. Favour from God
  2. Test from God
  3. Punishment (Karma)

Favours

A favour is something good that happens to us. e.g. we have food in front of us. Or we get a promotion in our job. Or we have a healthy body.

Tests

A test is something which we consider as ‘undesirable’ such as property loss, getting sick, your children dying, getting a leg crushed under a truck. Theory says God is testing your patience and loyalty.

Punishment

Punishment (Karma) is a like a test but it is for people who have done a previous bad deed. For example, if one person steals then falls sick, it will be said that because he stole, he is paying for his action.

Is life fair?

By definition,

“God is good.” (Quran, Bible, etc)

If he created Satan means he created a testing tool.

Some tests end in ugly ways. Children getting exploded in Syria, Palestine; Women getting raped; Dying in famines; People born handicapped; People being mentally retarded.

How can God be still good? Different religions try to solve ‘the equations‘ by either saying: OK, there’s paradise in which the people will finally rejoice. Others say it is because they did wrong in their previous lives that karma is punishing them. Next life would be cool.

Ending…

Planet earth, if considered alone, seems to be unfair/unjust/cruel. Based on the discussion above, we see that an external entity such Paradise or Reincarnation is needed as a parameter to solve the equation of life and to be able to yet have a good God.

And for those who think the equation hasn’t been solved, theory says:

God’s wisdom is infinite (∞).

It should be enough to overpower any finite variables such as tests and punishments. Period.

Published on by Nayar

The People who Ripped our Beaches

Note from Nayar: This is a guest post by one of my fellow mates.
————————
Following a Linux event in the north of Mauritius, a couple of friends and I went for a troll to the beach. Hungry we were, we bought some food & drinks along the way. Oh! The north is a beautiful place. With the “flamboyant” trees shining orange, we know summer is knocking at the door.

Folks told me this cozy beach place, called Coden, might be the last time I am seeing it. I was puzzled and asked why? It appears that this beach will soon to barred to public since the land (owned by the Government) is being given to some group of Hotels for “development”. By development I assume that Mauritians will no more be able to access this cozy beach.

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A sad moment it was for I mourned the state of our country once more.

A few bunch of small-brained people who never traveled standing in a bus, who never had water problems in their taps, who never walked the super-markets comparing prices before purchasing items, who never got excited when their salary is credited, who never had to run behind the last bus leaving the station, who never stopped on the side of the road to buy a pair of dhol-puri … they just pretend to know everything that’s good or bad for the country.

My heart urged to curse these people but I stayed calm and only prayed to Lord that intelligence, humility and righteousness be bestowed upon these lost souls. Amen!

– Ish Sookun
—————–
Note from Nayar: It is a very sad situation that people have to pay to huge prices to hotels in order to have some peace. Can’t “ti-dimoune” be allowed to enjoy the beach and the sea? Why do we need to pay for peace? Why can’t we use our beaches freely in full liberty to relax and have a nice time with our friends and family? Our national anthem has the verse:

“In peace, justice and liberty
(for those who have money)”

Can’t Mauritians live in peace with tourists? Is this the independence we voted?

Published on by Nayar

Ubuntu servers SHOULD be LTS

I was young. Bleeding edge was what i wanted. Little i knew that non-LTS Ubuntu releases become obsolete after 9 months (ref).

After reading a lot about the shell-shock, I tested whether my VPS was vulnerable to it. And it was! It was an Ubuntu Server 13.10.

I thought a simple apt-get update && apt-get upgrade would fix it. But no. The repositories were obsolete. I was getting errors like these:


W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/raring-security/restricted/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.153 80]
W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/raring-security/universe/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.153 80]
...

Following this guy’s advice on Askubuntu.com was life saving.


$ sudo sed -i -e 's/archive.ubuntu.com\|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
$ sudo do-release-upgrade

All seemed to go fine until i got an error saying:

import apt ImportError: No module named apt

More googling led me to this post on stackoverflow. I ran the following command:

$ apt-get install python-apt

do-release-upgrade was able to continue then. After pressing yes to multiple questions, few reboots, my Ubuntu server was finally on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 😀