Well, I finally got around to installing openSUSE 10.2 on my ThinkPad T60. Unfortunately, I was running very low on disk space and couldn’t get any screen captures of the installation process.
In general, the installation process went very smoothely. The biggest advantages of openSUSE 10.2 over Fedora Core 6 during the installation process are:
- Installation picked up my Intel Centrino 3945 and installed the kernel module. Fedora requires you to set this up manually later.
- openSUSE has the ability to connect to the Internet, get a list of add-on repositories and add them during the installation process. Fedora has a screen where you can add the repositories manually during the installation process but this requires you to know the full URL of the repository.
- openSUSE also allows you to install third-party applications like Sun’s Java JRE along with the Centrino firmware and kernel module that Fedora requires you download and install from a third-party provider of RPMs such as Livna or RPMForge.
openSUSE also has better fonts and looks “cleaner” and cripser than Fedora. Proprietary ATI drivers on openSUSE are easily available and installable. The default installation used a VESA driver and set the resolution to 800×600 so installing the ATI drivers was important. Fedora does a better job of providing a hi-res driver but installing the ATI drivers on Fedora is also very easy and well documented all over the place.
I’m not using openSUSE as my primary desktop yet. There’s some hacking to be done with my user settings that would allow the same user id and home directory to be used on both systems. I might remove openSUSE and give Ubuntu a whirl.
With Google’s release of Google Maps for Australia, I am hoping Google Maps India isn’t going to be that far away. Being a complete outsider to Indian roads and traffic, it would be a very welcome addition to our list of expat related sites and tools that we’ll be relying on after we move to India.
I know the challenges of putting together Google Maps in a place like India. I’ve been to the tiny little alleys that are at least 400 or 500 years old. I’ve also been to what was farmland 6 months ago and today is a luxury residential development outside Bangalore. In a country where the streets are thousands of years old and where farmland and undeveloped land is changing so rapidly, it will be an immense task to keep the data updated. However, could this be the perfect place for an experiment in Social Mobile Mapping or Mapiki? This is the term that I’m going to use for what I think could be a tremendous addition to the social web.
Imagine an application that will redraw maps based on GPS transmitters and SMS text messages, submitted by none other than the users of the mapping application. In a place like India, a rikshaw driver can pull out his mobile and type in a message and sms it to a service that will instantly display on the map the changes reflected by the rikshaw driver. Of course, this can be gamed but so can Wikis. The question is, can the wisdom of crowds provide cleaner more accurate mapping information just like it has helped to create Wikipedia?
For now, however, at least I can get driving directions in New Delhi.
Comic Vine has put together a super hero date quiz for Valentine’s Day. Apparently, Aurora is a perfect match for me. Other matches would be Rogue and Storm. hmmmmmmmm …
Go ahead and take your own Superhero date quiz over at Comic Vine.
Lenovo is offering users of ThinkPads and other Lenovo products who purchased their PC between October 26th, 2006 and March 15th, 2007 a free upgrade to Windows Vista. Take a look here. Personally, I would rather pay for an upgrade that would allow Apple OS X to run natively on my ThinkPad T60.
This is fairly well known news but I just came across a link describing the loophole in detail. It describes how to install Windows Vista from scratch using a Windows Vista upgrade DVD which costs hundreds of dllars less than the full version. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not a Windows user but it’s probably not legal to do this unless you have a valid copy of Windows XP or Windows 2000 (something all of us should have with any PC we purchased in the last 5-7 years.
I find it interesting that Microsoft isn’t acting against this hack in any way. Probably because they would rather sell upgrades than no copies of Vista at all.
http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=07_02_2007_001_028&kword=&mode=1
The 2001 Census projects a yearly requirement of 75,000 dwelling units. Eighty per cent of this demand will be met through redeveloping existing colonies and urbanising agricul
Ban Proposed On Walking While Talking, Listening To iPod - News
A state senator from Brooklyn said on Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation that would ban people from using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in either New York City or Buffalo.
I would think passing a law prohibiting doing your make-up or reading while driving would be more important. Perhaps, we should also sponsor a law that bans music in cars because it is a distraction, especially if it’s too loud. We should probably look at eating while driving and walking as potential threats to personal safety as well. Talking to another person while driving or crossing the street is also fairly dangerous because it draws attention away from the task at hand so perhaps State Senator Carl Kruger can examine these issues as well and include them in the proposed bill.
I had written about M2I (Moving-2-India) here and about how I’ve been bitten by the bug. Well, we’ve made our final decision to make the move. As scary as it might be, we think it’s going to be incredibly exciting. There’s a lot to be done but we’re going to India for a few months to try it out first. We’re going to be there during the worst possible time of the year to experience India - the Summer. Our current plans are to begin the move in March. We’re going to start off in New Delhi but who knows where we might end up. Gurgaon (close to new Delhi) and Bangalore are the other options we are considering.
it’s been a tough decision, especially to leave our family and friends behind but we feel like we might be blazing a new trail for our friends and family. Many of them have never been to India. Now they will have a reason to visit. I will continue to update everyone about the whole process of moving from visas, to legal issues, to tax issues, etc.
I’ve decided to use the Redoable theme by Dean J. Robinson. I like the look of this theme and I’m really diggin’ the colors. Please let me know what you think …
LinOSX might be in some strange state for the next few hours as I’m going to be upgrading it to Wordpress 2.1 and probably changing theme as well.
The upgrade to Wordpress 2.1 went pretty well, just as documented here. I’m still fiddling with potential cell phone themes and haven’t decided on one or another just yet. Hopefully, I’ll pick on soon.
