Fired the torrent as well as direct download. The latter because, saw only one peer @ 98.7% download. Let’s see who, direct or the torrent download, wins the race on my 2 Mbps connection at home. The torrent download is not giving me more than 3KBps whereas the direct download is dicey and swinging – at times from about 260 KBps to 40 KBps

Once downloaded I have to start thinking about backing up my laptop running Fedora 9 and installing the 10. This may happen tonight, if sleep does not take over the X.

Will update this post as I sail to X from IX.

And now (Nov 27, 2008 @ 16:30 IST), my laptop runs Fedora 10 Continuing to write from Fedora 10, about it. Following is the first glimpse, with the noteworthy new wallpaper,  of Fedora 10’s desktop, after the installation:

Fedora 10 Desktop

Installation
Didn’t find anything strikingly new in the installation. But worth mentioning is about ext4 filesystem. Fedora 9 started supporting this new filesystem. I skipped using ext4 on Fedora 9 fearing that it is relatively new. With Fedora 10, I decided to go with it. But seems ext4 is still getting a newbie treatment. While partitioning ext4 does not show up until you type it in as a boot option.

That is, while booting from the Fedora 10 DVD, select “Install or upgrade an existing system” from the boot menu, press tab and append ext4 to the boot options such that the boot options look as follows:

vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img ext4

But then I got struck with a doubt while doing a custom partitioning. I recalled that when I used ext4 in Fedora 9 (just to experiment), I was not able to boot into the system because Grub (the Linux boot loader) did not like ext4 (/boot was ext4). I wondered whether this problem still existed with Fedora 10. Quick and impatient browsing did not help. So I decided to select ext4 even for the /boot partition, expecting that I may face a crash after installation. But thanks to Fedora 10’s installer. It prompted me (unlike Fedora 9) to not to use ext4 for the boot partition.

Bottom line: Don’t use ext4 for /boot or the boot partition. Those who are not in a habit to create a separate /boot partition will now have to create one, if they want to use ext4 for the root (/) partition.

Remaining installation was typical Fedora like. I was expecting but did not find Netbeans during the package/software selection. Hoping that it will be available separately from the Fedora repositories.

Booting: The Wow Factor
After installation and during the boot up, we see the Fedora 10’s WOW Factor. Unlike most Linux distributions, including Fedora < 10, no cryptic text saying “booting kernel”, “starting udev” etc. A straight jump to a graphical boot with a progress bar. Is this the Wow factor? No. Can’t explain it without a video While booting the animation of the shooting blue flairs from the blue Sun is really Wow. Thanks to the new boot system so called Plymouth. Following are the links to some YouTube videos which showcase the magnificent, new, animated boot screen:

Plymouth Solar Theme in Action

I think it is really a good move to hide those cryptic boot time messages. It scares a newbie and sometimes even me when I once saw a message as follows:

“Memory for crash kernel (0×0 to 0×0) not within permissible range”

during the boot process of CentOS Linux. Upon read up, this message was claimed to be harmless despite talking about “crash kernel” Similarly it may be unnecessary to show the plethora of boot time messages, especially to a newbie and Fedora 10 does it well and even better with Plymouth. But, alas, shutdown of Fedora 10 still shows system messages on the screen.

As customary to Fedora, after the boot, I was greeted by the First Boot screen where I could setup a non-root user account, amongst others.

Finally I was dropped on the GNOME desktop (as shown in the screenshot above) and was greeted by 49 pending updates! This is something which used to surprise me before but humours me now, with all Fedoras. It has been just a day or two since the release of Fedora 10 and about 50 pending updates!. Either the releases are deadline driven or the Fedora community is indeed quite active. Anyways, being a long time Fedora user, this is just a rant.

Note: Fedora 10 does not even show the Grub menu while booting. As per Fedora 10’s release notes, the Grub menu is shown only if you have a dual boot (say with Windows and Fedora 10). Yet, to see the Grub menu, press any key after powering on your computer.

Internet Connection Sharing with Windows Mobile
One of the most talked about set of enhancements in Fedora 10 are those in the NetworkManager – a graphical applet which manages wired and wireless connection. One of the enhancements in NetworkManager is the connection sharing via WiFi ad-hoc which I will test and write about later.

This para is devoted to how easily I was able to connect my Windows Mobile (I-Mate Ultimate 8502 running Windows Mobile 6.0) via USB and was able to browse through its EDGE connection. One of the advantages of using USB to using Bluetooth is, the mobile keeps charging via USB while serving the Internet connection.

The general case is, if you are on the move and do not have access to an Internet connection (wired or WiFi), then one of the best ways is to connect your laptop via your GPRS/EDGE enabled mobile phone or PDA.

In Fedora 9, I could not get NetworkManager to work as easily for connection sharing with my mobile. I had to compile drivers (usb-rndis-lite), write configuration files and connect to the mobile from the commandline.

But with Fedora 10, its a breeze. Connect the mobile via USB, start “Internet Sharing” on the mobile and voila, you are connected! To launch “Internet Sharing” via USB on Windows Mobile 6, launch Start>Programs>Internet Sharing. Select “USB” from the “PC Connection” dropdown and for Network Connection, select your pr-configured GPRS/EDGE connection – “HUTCH (WEB)” in my case. Click on Connect. In seconds NetworkManager applet on the top right GNOME panel will show as connected to the mobile. Jet, set, browse!

Note: There are forum posts across the web which suggests to try permutations like click on the Connect (on the mobile) before connecting the mobile via USB or click on Connect after connecting the USB cable. I tried both and always found it to connect. Bottom line: whichever way, you should get connected instantly.

To be continued…

iPod Shuffle (Silver)

My first Apple software product was Quicktime (when I desperately wanted to play .mov files) followed by iTunes  which was for testing the Podcast feed on a Website which I was involved in.

iPod Shuffle is not a new/latest device. Hence would refrain from writing a review. In a nutshell, I found it nifty and compact – in fact, it is the nirvana of compactness. The sound quality is amazing even at higher volume. The volume in turn was high enough, at its maximum.

I don’t regret it not having a display. I’m the sorts who can do away with looking at songs if I can hear them It clips on my belt tightly and I don’t fear it falling off (unlike my PDA).

Shuffle with Linux

Next, came the tricky part. How do I sync it with my laptop running Linux? I had some answers before I bought it. But obviously they were not tried and tested by me. What worked for me nicely was gtkpod. Installation was simple on my Fedora 9 desktop – “yum install gtkpod”.

I plugged in the Shuffle via the small(est) USB docking station. Fedora detected it and created a mountpoint and an icon for it on the desktop. But copying MP3 files straight to the mount point (or the device) did not play them.

Hence I fired gtkpod from Applications>Sound & Video>GtkPod. Gtkpod, very cryptically, started asking about my iPod model. Well, I know it is an iPod Shuffle but had no clue about its generation!. It gave me the option to select from first, second and third generation, along with the capacity (storage) and the color. After referring  to this Wikipedia article, I decided that, mine was definitely not the first generation which was a USB dongle shaped device.

Googling convinced me that the difference between the second and the third generation was some color options. I, finally, opted for Shuffle (3rd. Gen) > 1 GB Shuffle (Silver) (xB225).

The device started showing on the left pane of gtkpod. I selected the device and clicked on the menu File>Add Folder. Selected the directory which had my MP3s and then clicked on Save Changes (on the top). Right clicked on the device and selected Eject device. Warning Warning:  This, though expected, did not unmount the iPod Shuffle. Also the Orange light on the Shuffle kept blinking in the same way as it have been, ever since I plugged it to the USB. The Shuffle’s manual clearly says not to disconnect the device when the Orange light is blinking.

Hence, I right clicked on the desktop icon (mount point) and selected Eject. The blinking Orange light turned Green to tell me that now I can unplug the Shuffle and start listening to the MP3s.

I repeat again, the sound quality is amazing!

1. Using the Web browser in your mobile device, goto the URL http://www.google.com/gwt/n
2. In the text box, key in the URL of the website, that you want to visit.
3. Optionally, check the box “No Images” if you do not want to see/download images on the website.
4. Click on Go.
5. And you would see, a rather clean, only vertically scrolling, website.
6. Henceforth, you would like to make http://www.google.com/gwt/n the default page of your mobile’s Web browser.
   

Note:

1. Once you visit a site using the above method, and further, click on links on the site, the resulting pages will also be mobile optimized. (technically: all links in the site are rewritten to redirect through this URL i.e. http://www.google.com/gwt/n)
2. The images are actually stripped off (and not simply hidden), if you select “No Images”.
3. The mobile optimized markup has all whitespaces and newlines removed. This means a much smaller page and hence faster download on your mobile.

Webmasters may provide a link on their Website(s) to the mobile friendly version. For example: for www.foo.com the link will be: http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foo.com

Screenshots:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121721408704288951.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Cuil pronounced as Cool is suppose to be a new search engine launched (not a beta launch) which is suppose to challenge Google in the search arena. I quickly checked out this search engine  and following are a few first and quick +ves and -ves

Thumbs up

1. Explore by category: Being a techie, I use search for searching through technology. I searched for “php prado”. Prado is a web application framework for PHP. Cuil showed the search results. Interesting was the “Explore by category” sidebar (what does Cuil call it ?). It showed me other web application frameworks. This included CakePHP, Symfony etc. which were other PHP web application framework.
2. The Menubar: Again don’t know what Cuil calls it. It is the top bar below the search box on the search results page. While searching for PHP it showed me PHP Scripts, PHP Nuke, PHP Editor. Clicking on these will show results for PHP Scripts, PHP Nuke etc. This kinda helps if you want to drill down the search from PHP to PHP Scripts in particular.
3. Images in search: Looks nice (only aesthetically) to  see some images in the search results. Cuil claims to use an algorithm to fetch the most relevant image (if any) on the web page and display it along with the search result.

To be true, I don’t like to criticize a technology piece because I can imagine the efforts gone behind it. Perhaps that’s the only reason I mentioned the above points. Honestly speaking, I didn’t find the menubar of much use and images is search is definitely a no no for a quick web surfer like me.

Thumbs Down

1. Safe Search Works?: I tried switching on Safe Search and searched for “porn”. It still showed me “porn.com” in the search results. Google showed no results for “porn” with “Strict” Safe Search on.
   

   Showing porn sites and images with Safe Search On

2. Not mobile friendly: I tested it on my Windows Mobile 6 PDA. Find some screenshots below. Notice the horizontal scrollbars which didn’t go away even after switching to two column (bottom right link on the Cuil page). Images showed in the search results in mobile – occupies screen estate and adds to your mobile data transfer bill . Surprised to see that a newly launched and latest search engine, is not optimized for the today’s hot and ever growing platform. Even, if it had been the Cuilest on the mobile, it could have been COOL.
3. Erratic: While I was searching through, at times I got page saying “we didn’t find any results”. It happened quite a few times when I clicked on Page 10 (at the bottom of the page). And once when gave a space after “php” as search keyword. Hitting refresh worked at times. Not a launch quality experience, though.
4. Fastest crawler and 120 billion web pages ?: And yet I cannot see my blog (launched about 20 days back) in the search results, even with precise keywords like “shekhar govindarajan blog”. A recently launched site www.dare.co.in also did not show up.

I browsed Cuil using Firefox 3.0.1 on Fedora 9. Just FYI, “Add Cuil to Firefox” (the link towards the bottom of the search results) works.

Cuil on Mobile:

Update:

Cuil went down: While I was proof reading this post and tried to go back to Cuil to re-check some facts, the site is down (@ 1354 hrs IST) with a notice as follows:

“Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.”

Cuil back online: Noticed at 14:15 IST.

From above: “as we add more capacity”.

10 more servers gone in ?

Sent request to include this Blog: As I said above, this blog does not show up in the Cuil search results. Cuil’s FAQ page leads to this page for webmasters. Following the instructions on this page, I sent a mail to crawler at cuil dot com with the URL to this blog.

Update:

Noticed today that my blog has started appearing in Cuil. keywords: shekhar govindarajan blog

Update (Oct 3, 2008):

As of September 30th 2008, the Cuil team seems to be alive and adding new stuff (like keyboard shortcuts) – http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2008/09/30/power-features

A quick test and found the key shortcuts for Paging and Suggestions to be working in IE 8 Beta 2, Firefox 3 (for Windows and Linux), Google Chrome (Build: 0.2.149.30). Could not get the Categories shortcut working in Linux (Fedora 9, Firefox 3.0.2). Once I hold the ALT key, I’m not able to click on the category links. This is because I’m using GNOME and in GNOME CTRL+Click moves a window.

Contrary to the earlier update, my blog has again disappeared from Cuil search results for the keywords: shekhar govindarajan blog

Update (Oct 7, 2008):

Noticed that, as opposed to sending an E-mail from a mailto link (which opened the default E-mail client like Outlook), as earlier, Cuil now has an online form to submit new website(s) to crawl. This may mean better attention to non-indexed websites because the form submit is possibly getting redirected to the concerned technicians with the appropriate subject and, perhaps, other information like source and medium of the form submit which may reveal automated (maybe unwelcomed) submits. Following is the URL to submit a site:

http://www.cuil.com/info/contact_us/feedback.php?to=crawl%20me

I resubmitted (read above) my Blog, hoping that it will get indexed, permanently, this time

Update (Nov 3, 2008): Breaking news!!! (for me, by me). Cuil now shows my blog for the keywords shekhar govindarajan blog.

Thanks to Wordpress Mobile Edition plugin (http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress).

I tested it on Windows Mobile 6 PDA device (on my I-Mate 8502). While browsing the mobile version on the PDA, I clicked on the link “Exit the Mobile Edition” (near the bottom of the page) and it showed me the  desktop edition/page (with blue background, images). However, to go back to the “Mobile optimized page”, I had to clear the cookies. This can be done as follows on Pocket IE (Internet Explorer).

On Pocket IE, click on Menu (on the right) > Tools > Options > Security (Tab). Next click on the button labeled “Clear Cookies”.

Browsing back to the site or a refresh showed me the Mobile optimized page again.

Also asked a friend of mine, who owns a Blackberry to browse the site. On Blackberry, “Exit the Mobile Edition” was reported to not working. It shows the the mobile optimized page even after clicking the link. Will need to check this further.

Update:No need to do delete the cookies in Windows Mobile. If you are browsing non-mobile optimized page (or the regular page), there is a link under each blog post which says “Return to the mobile edition”. Clicking on this link shows the mobile optimized page again. Missed this link in the cluttered regular page on the mobile screen.

Update (May 30, 2009): Have upgraded to 3.0.4. with the Carrington Mobile theme. Refer to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-edition/ Following is a screenshot of how my blog looks on a Android phone (Android Dev Phone 1):

WordPress Blog on Android Phone