My Favorite Linux distro's

1. Opensuse

OpenSuse was my first linux distro. I borrowed the install cd from my local vendor and It was pretty straight forward to install and I found it easier to use.I must say I loved it.Of all the RPM based distro's out there opensuse is the best, it has a good package manager called Zypper and has a lot of software packages in their repository and also great documentation.In my words I would always say better Opensuse than Ubuntu.

2. Debian

After using opensuse I began to read to what is linux and how it came into being and I read about Debian and how they elect their own leader and their  policy towards stability moved me. My experience with debian is, it is a rock solid distro and you must have a death wish to break it. Once installed you can fine tune debian to your needs. As Dorothy  in wizard of Oz would say " There is no place like home"  I would say "there is no place like Debian". Even though many people say debian is suited only for servers, the truth is it is a good desktop distro as well. The goal of debian linux is to provide a stable os suited for production machines and to have a universal operating system for major computer architectures.Those who want stability rather than bleeding edge software that breaks your system, Debian is your best bet.

3. Slackware

I Installed Slackware for a bit of a adventure and it certainly was an adventure. Slackware follows the simple policy: If it isn't broke don't try to fix it. It doesn't patch heavily that is why it's called Vanilla  distribution.There is a saying if you learn redhat or debian you only learn that if you learn slackware you learn linux and remember people it is a golden word. It doesn't handle dependencies in installing software like apt-get. The user gets to install every other dependencies himself. Also you don't use binaries like deb or rpm; you  use source tarballs to install the software you need. There are tools like slapt-get in Slackware they have limited software in repo it's better to use slack builds it's like manual installing in the process you learn what each software is and why they are needed. Let me give you a perspective, VLC  isn't installed by default in slackware although there is AlienBob's  binary slackware package for VLC (Yes there are binary slackware packages it ends with .tgz) I tried to compile from source using slackbuild it took me one and half hour to download all the packages and compile and installation took another three hours,by doing this I learned why each package is needed and also made judgement if a certain optional package is also needed or not. If it had been debian or suse or fedora enverything would have been handled by the package manager but by going through slackware's way one knows which package is installed why they are needed.Like Debian, Slackware is stable suited for both desktop and servers but somehow most people judge both Debian and Slackware are to be used only for servers but in reality it can also be used for desktop it's just people doesn't see it. People today see poison wrapped in shiny box and say they love it  but medicine in a plain box they discard it even though it is good for one's health( it's midnight that's why I'm philosophic)  that is what's going on in software world too. All i'm saying is that both Slackware and Debian doesn't  get the recognition they deserve. Also I thank AlienBob a.k.a Eric Hameleers for providing binary packages for Slackware  and  tips for making life easier for every Slackware  user out there.

P.S: The ranking I made in this list is certainly random.

Indian language[Tamil] in LaTEX

Even though I knew about LaTex (not the rubber, people)  I didn't even try to learn about it until i wanted to write my project report in Latex (The university wanted the project to be written using MS word) anyway I completed my report in Latex afterwards I thought if I can write Indian languages especially Tamil and Hindi using Latex, so I searched Google (every student's best friend and also for the anti-vaxxers) there were bits and pieces for it one solution recommended using itrans and after searching various forums I came at the following code for indian languages

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}

\newfontfamily\tamilfont{Lohit Tamil}

\usepackage{polyglossia}

\setmainlanguage{tamil}

\begin{document}

 வணக்கம்

\end{document}

and compile using XeLatex or LuaLatex and after compiling successfully you will have a pdf file.Of all the Tamil fonts I found Lohit Tamil font worked best other than that TAM family of tamil fonts gives good rendering but not like Lohit Tamil. I believe there is  an another code which does not use the polyglossia package for compiling indian languages if any of you had another code please put it in comments.

P.S: 1. It didn't compile for Hindi

       2. My Project guide said  Latex Times new roman font didn't look like the Times New roman font at all. I mean how do they find it, now that's a million dollar question.

Debian Linux Tips

1. Writing file name with spaces:

In linux spaces are not recognized, so if you type it with spaces. The work around is to put double quotation in the file name:

Code:
ben@debian$ cd "new folder"

2. Mounting iso file in linux:

To mount iso file in linux in the command line issue the following command

ben@debian# mount -o loop  abc.iso  /mnt/iso

3. Adding fortune and cowsay in Bash

To add fortune and cowsay in bash edit the .bashrc file in  your home folder, it is a hidden file unhide the file and open the file and add the following lines to the .bashrc file

 if [ -x /usr/share/games/cows -a -x /usr/share/games/fortunes ]; then
        fortune | cowsay
    fi

there are more than one way of doing things another way to add fortune and cowsay in bash is  

fortune | cowsay -f `ls -1 /usr/share/games/cows/ | sort -R | head -1` -n

this will give a random fortune and random cow. 

My short review on Debian 8.1 [Jessie]

Debian released it's much awaited release of Jessie featuring SystemD as the new default init system. SysV init still available as a choiche though. I tried  both GNOME and  XFCE.

         I was once a fan of gnome as it was fast and very responsive compared to KDE at the time of  Debian 5 and  when gnome3 was released after trying it, i hated it because it moved away from traditional desktop and it was hard to use as a desktop and so I switched to XFCE  but in jessie both  Gnome and Debian developers  brought a way to bring the traditional desktop using the Gnome shell extension and  I must say it was good to have the traditional desktop back. Compared to the previous debian release the implementation of Gnome in this version is good.

           XFCE is traditionally geared towards older hardware. Let's just say XFCE can be just as awesome as GNOME or KDE while keeping the memory low and can have both Qt and GTK apps working well seamlessly. well I'm not going delve into what software version is in and what not but i'll  tell you what my experience is. Software for daily needs are in GNOME and for XFCE some of the software  may have to be installed from the debian repo.

                       One thing that irritated me the most was IBus implementation in XFCE  because XFCE doesn't have native support to ibus compared to gnome and kde  only after an couple of hours of google searching and after many attempts could i implement the ibus in XFCE. Another thing is the mounting of NTFS partions it requires a password for mounting it for every session I think it's nothing but a hassle on desktop users who are the only users on the system.

                           Finally it's about SystemD, I read the discussions in the mailing list both for and against it.I personally feel that those who against it, have two specific  valid points such as binary logging and mission creep. I don't have the requisite knowledge about how operating system works, etc ,etc i hope you get the picture.The SystemD developers say binary logging can be turned off  which is true by the way but the second point "Mission creep" is certainly valid. Because SystemD surpasses what an init system should do. There are lot of website that deals with SystemD on how to avoid it and there are also proponents of  SystemD. In the debian implementation it certainly did offered an faster boot and faster shutdown.But never during the time of using Debian did I ever have an system freeze like windows or had to reboot after an update like in Jessie, certainly this is irksome. 

                        All in all Debian Jessie gives back what it promises a stable desktop for a production machine. I thank the Debian developers and maintainers for giving the community an another  rock solid distro.

P.S: 1. Debian developers may look into UselessD a stripped down version of SystemD for default init which may be acceptable for the Debian community.

2. You may think i harbor a grudge against KDE but it's not the case also i've also not mentioned both MATE and Cinnamon because i've not tried it. 

3. Debian implementation on KDE definitely needs some improvement based on my previous experience of it. If you compare  slackware KDE  or openSuse KDE with Debian KDE then any sane person would agree that there is still room for improvement in Debian KDE.

ABAQUSLM: The desired vendor daemon is down(-97,121)

If after installing Abaqus 6.10 you get an error saying ABAQUSLM:the desired vendor demon is down; don't panic like the house is on fire,just become root and remove loackabaquslm file in /var/temp and then use the csh shell and give the lmreread command
% ./lmutil lmreread
lmutil - Copyright (c) 1989-2008 Acresso Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.
lmreread successful and then issue lmstat command to check
% ./lmutil lmstat -a
lmutil - Copyright (c) 1989-2008 Acresso Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Flexible License Manager status on Sun 9/2/2012 21:19
License server status: 27011@debian
    License file(s) on debian: /home/jim/abacus/abq6101.dat:
 debian: license server UP (MASTER) v10.8

Vendor daemon status (on debian):

  ABAQUSLM: UP v10.8

.ICEauthority update problem

one day you power on your computer and before you login to your system there is an error saying could not update .ICEauthority file and each time you login this error  keeps coming up that drives you insane so what to do you might ask,simple open your file manager  goto view-->show hidden files, right click the file and goto properties and then to permissions and set access as read and write and reboot there will be no more of that nagging error and one more thing all of these things must be done as root.

Installing canon canoscan lide 110 in debian squeeze

The canon canoscan lide 110  the cheapest scanner that has support in linux  as it was mentioned in sane project website but when i installed in my Debian squeeze machine it didn't even start to scan or give any sound at all; worst of all this scanner doesn't have any power on indicator LED's to let you know if it is on or off  so much for being economical :/ well anyway after searching a variety of  linux forums I  had couple of things to check whether it was working or not. The first is the scanimage command,open the terminal and type  scanimage -L 
it showed the usb id and said my device is detected and may be powered off, it was ironical considering the fact that the scanner doesn't have any indicator and asking you to check for it.The second method is to update sane drivers as the sane drivers come with squeeze is a little bit old,just download the latest sane drivers from
http://ppa.launchpad.net/stef-dev/sane-backend-genesys/ubuntu/pool/main/s/sane-backends/
just install libsane and sane-utils package  and that's it  folks you can now scan images from xsane