I know what CAPTCHA Means

Woohooo.
I was always disturbed when while posting to a Forum or to Digg , I got the error saying something like CAPTCHA. It always appeared to me like it way saying "Caught You" doing something wrong. OK !! Imight have entered wrong letter, probably wrong case ( lowercase or uppercase), but for that the CAPTCHA error was really annoying.


Now that there are reports that CAPTCHA is broken, I got to know its real meaning.

CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a technique adopted by Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft (News - Alert) among other service providers to prevent automated software programs from posing as humans and signing up for new accounts.It presents text that is easy for humans to comprehend but difficult for automated programs and as a result protects Web sites from bots. The first CAPTCHA was invented at the Carnegie Mellon University to be used by Yahoo. CAPTCHAs have other applications like preserving the authenticity in online polls, preventing comment spam in blogs and preventing dictionary attacks in password systems among others.



The article further says that a broken CAPTCHA could result in more spam mails and probably more phishing attacks.
Please beware.

The news about more spam and phishing worries me too, but I am happy at least I got to know the meaning of CAPTCHA.

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Amazing Interview with Owner of Tuxmachines.org

Guys from Seopher did an interview with Srlinuxx, the owner of Tuxmachines.org.
I know the interview happened in April 2007, however, it is still relevant even after 10 months, its still fresh and its still as inspiring.

I'll take a few experts from it

Soepher : I like seeing how many reads each item has - LinuxToday does that and I find it comforting, especially when my content is up there! So do you run the site full time?

Srlinuxx : Well, I guess you could say I work on it full time. More than full time. I can't even add up the hours I put into it, not to mention the articles I write. I update it quite often. I keep my eye open for articles every waking hour and actively hunt every coupla hours. I'm working from the time I get up 'til the time I go to bed on it. Even when I'm sleeping, I get up every few hours to update it.

Now I understand the significance behind the ultra updated Tuxmachines.
Srlinuxx means business, she has no qualms in accepting that she wants revenue from her site.

Soepher: Well it seems to be working. What about more generally?

Srlinuxx :All the time, effort, and love I put into it, I'd like to be able to pull in a bit of revenue. Not just personally but also for the site. I'd like to move the site to a dedicated host for better performance, but until some substantial revenue starts coming in that's pretty much impossible. It's still a goal though. Someday...

She does not believe in taking the easy way out. Though she likes PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE etc, but at personally she uses Debain as server and Gentoo as Desktop. ( No Mention of Ubuntu). She is preety active in Gentoo Forums too.

Soepher:Crucial question here... What is your favourite distro around at the moment?

Srlinuxx: It's so hard to pin down a favorite. I use Gentoo on my desktop daily. I guess one could say it's still my favorite. ...or perhaps it's just home. But when I first started using it in the fall of 2003 and for two or three years afterwards I was totally in love with it. I moved from Gentoo to Debian on my server and I'm so pleased with it. It's doing a fine job for me.
But other distros I like a whole lot (I think in order) include PCLOS, openSUSE, Slackware & derivatives (such as wolvix), SimplyMepis... and of course Mandriva. Mandriva has its problems, but one never gets over their first love. I like so many of them, it's hard to list really. ...as long as it's Linux.

And Finally she believes that desktop Linux is a reality now.

Soepher: That's true, there were some very "militant" viewpoints expressed around the time. So in your opinion (with that aside) where do you think desktop Linux could be improved?

SrLinuxx: That's a toughy for me. I think it is pretty good now. With distros like PCLOS you get good looks, advanced features, and a wonderful out-of-the-box experience. Many equate improvement with fancy features, but that results in bloat and sometimes instablity. I think finding a good balance between needed functionality and luxury features is the challenge these days - from the kernel outward.


I loved the interview because this is exactly the way I think too, though I prefer to take an easy way out and love PCLOS against the source based Gentoo :). Jokes apart Srlinuxx is going a great job by letting us have access to the most updated Linux Site on internet. Does anyone know her real name? I feel a little awkward by always referring her as Srlinuxx.

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Tweak PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime into Full blown distribution

Textar and the ripper gang released the Minime version of PClinuxOS 2008 on 7th January 2008.

The PCLinuxOS Minime Wiki says that
The aim was to make a MiniMe iso that is a very basic KDE desktop cd without additional applications. It is designed for advanced users or for users who wish to learn how to customize their system with the applications and support files they want to use.
The release announcement says
Here is a little MiniMe 2008 (296mb) you can play with and customize the way you want. Comes with 2.6.22.15 kernel, Alsa 1.0.15 and a very basic KDE 3.5.8 desktop. This is a minimal LiveCD that is bootable, plus it can be installed. Add in your own background, window decoration, localizations, preferred applications and supporting libraries to fully trick out your desktop. In addition you can remaster your own custom version of PCLinuxOS. Have fun!
Well to really have fun, we need loads of other applications and some tweaks. Lets check what Minime offers and then we will go ahead and apply the required tweaks.
Minime main features are::

1. Window decoration is Linsta Squared.
2. Background is again Vista Aero inspired.
   
3. There is a utilities folder which contains easy links to some essential tasks like network setup (including wireless setup using ndiswrapper ) and Display driver setup.
   

Live CD:
The Live CD boot is exactly like that of PCLOS 2007, with a slight difference that network is not configured during boot. There is an installer to install the Minime version to hard disk. The devs have tweaked it a little and now we only have to specify the boot partitions during install. The user setup, root password setup etc are done on first boot from hard disk.
Note :: The network setup and Time Zone setup is left for the user to do as and when required :)


Hard Disk boot:
The first thing that hit me was the super fast boot from grub to KDM login prompt. Now this is expected as I only had a mini KDE and nothing else, even the time required for network setup was not there. Now I have a NVIDIA 6200 256 m card and fortunately PCLOS Minime provides an easy way to install the driver for it. However, the required drivers are downloaded from internet and by default network is not configured. It was easy though, the Utilities folder had an icon for Internet Setup and it took me to a wizard which made connecting to internet a breeze.



After that the NVIDIA driver install was also very easy, please check my earlier article at Techzone about it.

Now that I had my screen resolution set and internet enabled, I set myself a task to install the remaining essential software I use. Well installing software is a child's play in PCLOS.
I went ahead and installed the following softwares.

1. Flock web browser ( Its a rip-off from Firefox but has many extra features like easy integration with media and blogs ). Check out my article on Flock on Techzone.
   
2. The regular plugins like java, flash and adobe acrobat.
   
3. OpenOffice
4. Amarok ( libmad, for playing MP3, is auto installed)
5. Kaffeine ( with Win32 Codecs and libdvdcss2). The codecs not free in some countries including USA.
   
6. Digikam ( for getting pictures from Camera). Digikam also installs ShowFoto and excellent image viewer with basic editing capabilities.
7. Thunderbird email client with Lightning Calender extension.
   
8. ie4Linux and wine.
   
9. Ksnapshot for taking screenshots of my desktop.
   
10. Compiz Fusion for eye candy, it can be easily enabled in PCLOS Control Center.
    
11. K3B for ripping CDs and DVDs
12. unrar and pk7zip and lastly
    
13. KDevelop
    

More on Utilities Folder:
Other utilities include

1. Alsa config tool
2. Clock and Timezone Setup tool
3. Grub settings tool
4. A version of remasterme to create a custom LiveCD or a Live USB.
   

Conclusion:
I think Minime is a boon for people like me, who do not want the overhead of software like CUPS, bluetooth etc, but still want the user friendly interface of PCLOS.
PCLOS Control Center is a one stop shop for all system configurations, it mimics Mandrake Control Center and is as intuitive as the famous YAST from OpenSUSE. This is where we can make system wide changes, such as enabling or disabling system services, add or remove users to the system, configure the firewall, configure hardware, etc.
PCLOS promises to be radically simple and Minime gives a glimpse of that, surely we can expect a great distro in form of PCLinuxOS 2008.
What I miss in Minime is KDE4 packages, which I hope to find when PCLOS 2008 is released.

NOTE::
All the screenshots are taken from the Texstar's page on picasaweb . Thanks Tex.
EDIT:: Added Kaffeine installation.

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KDE4 System Settings

In KDE4 they have changed the KControlCenter and named it System Settings.
I found it to be easy to navigate and very intuitive.

Lets start the visual review.
The start page looks very similar to KControl of KDE3.


Lets start with Look and Feel section.

1. Appearance :: Configure Theme, Colors, Style
   
   
2. Desktop: Configure Cool desktop Effects and Screen Saver
   
   
3. Notification : System Notifications and Bell
   
   
4. Splash Screen
   
   
5. Window Behavior : Titlebar Actions, Windows Actions, Focus, Moving Actions etc.
   

Second Section is the personal Settings

1. About Me. Configure user details
   
   
2. Accessibility. Improve accessibility for differently abled people
   
   
3. Default Application
   
   
4. Regional and Language Settings
   

Going over to Network and Connectivity Section

1. Network Settings: Set Connection preferences, proxy etc.
   
   
2. Setting for Samba Client (Not Server) Windows Share
   
   

KDE4 System Setting also provide some Computer Administration settings

1. Date & Time
   
   
2. Display Settings
   
   
3. Font Installer
   
   
4. Joystick configuration
   
   
5. Keyboard & Mouse Settings
   
   
6. Sound Settings
   

These are normal settings. The Settings manager considers some more settings are part of Advanced Settings

1. File Associations
   
   
2. Input Actions
   
   
3. KDE Resources
   
   
4. KDE Wallet
   
   
5. Service Manager
   
   
6. Session Manager
   
   
7. Solid Configuration
   
   and
   
8. Samba Configuration. I do not have Samba installed so got this message
   

All in all, I can say that KDE4 System Settings provide and exhaustive interface for almost full system settings.
I liked the new and crisp interface, please do share with me how you liked this screenshot tour.

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KDE 4.0 Final packages released.

I have installed KDE 4 on OpenSUSE 10.3, you may read the detail in my previous Article. Today morning, I fired up YAST and found that there was an update available. The KDE4 packages now have version 4.0.X instead of the previous 3.97.X. If its available in YAST that means that KDE team has released the KDE 4.0 final source and OpenSUSE team is quick enough to package them.

I found the package kdebase4 having a version number 4.0-1.3 against the previous 3.97.2-4.5. Same goes for most of KDE 4 packages.
Now I am here in India and its already January 11, 2008, however, in NewYork it will still take more than 4 hours before the clock ticks 0:00.
A strange thing I noticed is that the following KDE PIM packages are marked to be deleted. ::

1. libkdepim4
2. libakonadi1
3. kdepim4
4. kdepim4-wizards
5. kde4-korn
6. kde4-korganizer
7. kde4-knotes
8. kde4-knode
9. kde4-kmail
10. kde4-kaddressbook
11. kde4-kakregator and
12. akonadi.
    

At the same time "oxygen icon theme scalable" package was marked to be installed.
Looks like the KDE4 PIM is still not stable so KDE devs have removed them from the official release.
I had to come to office so could not install and check the packages, surely this will be the first thing to do when I get back home.

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Installing Latest Banshee

Banshee is a music management and playback application for GNOME. Over the course of the year a variety of high quality, highly polished, and all around “swell” Mono GNOME Desktop applications have been popping up. As with many of these apps, Banshee has a beautiful user interface and is well architected.

It features

1. Import Music
2. Organize Music
   
3. Play & Share
4. Rip CDs
5. Sync with IPod and most popular Music devices
   
6. Play Last.fm playlists
7. Play podcasts

The latest version ( 0.13.2) got released on January 8, 2008 and I was pleased to see the packages in Arch Linux. A simple pacman -S banshee revealed the fo;;owing packages will be installed.
pacman -S banshee
resolving dependencies... done.
looking for inter-conflicts... done.

Targets: libgdiplus-1.2.6-1 mono-1.2.6-1 gtk-sharp-2-2.10.2-1
libgnomecups-0.2.2-4 libgnomeprint-2.18.2-1
libgnomeprintui-2.18.1-1 gtkhtml-3.16.2-1 gnome-sharp-2.16.0-2
sqlite3-3.5.4-1 gstreamer0.10-faac-0.10.5-1
gstreamer0.10-faad-0.10.5-1 pmount-0.9.13-4 sg3_utils-1.25-1
libipoddevice-0.5.3-1 ipod-sharp-0.6.3-1 libnjb-2.2.5-3
njb-sharp-0.3.0-1 banshee-0.13.1-2

Interesting to note is that banshee comes default with ipod-sharp, the C# library for syncing with IPod. However, Banshee does not currently support IPod Touch or the IPhone. Also the latest version of Banshee supports PodSleuth, which replaces libipoddevices. However, Arch linux still does not have packages for PodSleuth and still use libipoddevices, I am sure this will soon change.

Banshee requires HAL and Dbus to be started before starting banshee.
I have just installed it and started using it for playing music from my hard disk.
Will try bnashee soon to sync my IPod Video.





Well if doing pacman -S banshee is difficult for some people, then they can install latest banshee with a click of mouse on OpenSUSE 10.3.
Aaron Bockover, the developer of banshee, got a comment saying that

dude a release blog without a 1-click link is like coffee without caffeine
So Aaron has promptly released the 1-Click install package for OpenSUSE 10.3.
Just click the following icon and let YAST do the work for you.

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Disabling touchpad at will

I code a lot and also write some blogs, during writing sometimes my thumb or palm touches the touchpad and results in mouse pointer moving to another window or at a different place within the same window. While coding in "vi" editor in konsole, sometimes I have even accidentally closed the konsole terminal resulting in me loosing all the unsaved work.

Now I do not want to permanently disable the touchpad of my Laptop, but was looking to find a solution where I can disable and enable it at will. I found a great article on gentoo wiki where they use ksynaptics or gsynaptics to accomplish this.
I followed their manual config and found it to be much simpler and easier than the GUI versions.

1. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Add the Option "SHMConfig" "on" to the Section "InputDevice" where the driver is "synaptics".
   The entry would now read something like ::
   
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "synaptics"
Identifier "TouchPad"
Option "SendCoreEvents"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
Option "Protocol" "event"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
EndSection

   
   
2. Thats it !! Config has been done. Now we just need to make use of the syndaemon utility to disable touchpad while typing.
   If I want to disable touchpad for 1 second after the last keystroke then I would type
   
$syndaemon -i 1.0 -t -d

   If we see the man page of syndaemon, then we can see that "-i" governs that seconds to wait after the last key press before enabling the touchpad; "-d" makes syndaemon start as a daemon, we can close the terminal and still syndaemon will run; "-t" indicates to only diable tapping ( the accidental touch) and not mouse movements.

Job accomplished.

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KD 4.0 Desktop blossoms

I have installed KDE 4.0 RC on OpenSUSE 10.3. I was just checking the installed version and found that we have an updated version (3.97.2-4.4) of kdebase4 and almost all kde4 packages in YAST. A simple YAST update took me to a much better looking KDE desktop.
The new KDE 3.97 is beautiful, more stable and a little slow.

Now I have a NVIDIA 6200 with propriety drivers and Compiz Fusion works very well with KDE3. KDE4 comes with its own desktop effects. Though as of now I am not able to use them, but will soon find a way. For the time being I am loving my current desktop.

KDE4 now comes with a few desktop wallpapers, I really liked the KDE4 black wallpaper.
Next was the time to configure some plasmoids

1. KDE4 took up all the desktop icons from my KDE3 desktop and displays them as plasmoids. Hence, I had plasmoids for Firefox, SUSE Help, etc..
2. I added the plasmoid to display KDE news. It acts as a news ticker and clicking any news opens it up in konqueror. The plasmoid configuration option allows to add more feeds apart from KDE news.
   
3. Also in my must have list is the "New Device Notification" plasmoid. I have a TSONIC MP3 player, when plug it into the USB port, I get an intimation in "New Device Notification" plasmoid. Clicking it opens the TSONIC device in Dolphin.
   

Here is my beautiful desktop screenshot.


The desktop is lean, elegant and well organized. The inclusion of plasmoids make it compatible to VISTA ( Lets accept it that MS definitely knows how to offer a very good looking and usable desktop). Unlike the traditional means of adding desktop widgets, plasmoids are easy to add and very functional. All in all I would say that KDE 4.0 is turning out to the the dream desktop I could imagine.

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Konqueror in KDE 4.0 RC2

Konqueror has the distinction of being the default file manager as well as the default web browser of KDE 3.xx. It supports basic file management on local UNIX filesystems, from simple cut/copy and paste operations to advanced remote and local network file browsing. It has support for KIO slaves and has the KParts object through which it can embed components like media player, KWord etc. As a web browser it is HTML 4.01 compliant, supporting Java applets, JavaScript, CSS 1, CSS 2.1, as well as Netscape plugins (for example, Flash or RealVideo plugins).
Konqueror is a also universal viewing application, capable of embedding read-only viewing components in itself to view documents without ever launching another application.


Its like the center of my KDE desktop, hence when KDE devs decided to limit Konqueror as a web browser and introduce Dolphin as the default KDE file manager, I was disappointed. KDE devs, however, had their own reasons and say that what often happens in Konqueror when you are browsing the internet is that Konqueror still wants to behave as a file manager and not a web browser. This split behavior is easily noticed through elements such as toolbar buttons. For example: the "Up" arrow is still available on the toolbar even when browsing Google Maps, but it is totally irrelevant in this context; another is having a web bookmarks toolbar visible while sorting icons in your /home folder.

Here is my take on the new konqueror.
The default interface still remains very similar to the earlier one, it still acts as a file manager ( and I still like it over Dolphin)


I, however, faced a little problem while accessing "Storage Media" and got the error that Protocol not supported: Media

I found a similar issue with Dolphin, luckily the Konqueror of KDE 3 works and I was able to view my DVD contents. I will limit myself to using Konqueror as a web browser and will cover it differences with Dolphin when I review Dolphin.

Konqueror now supports OT4 based WebKit, a modified version of KHTML used by Apple in Safari web browser. It renders a variety of pages very nicely.


The rendering is as neat as we would expect it in Firefox or IE. Konqueror, by default, does not allow any cookies and asks user permission. While this acts as a good security measure, this can easily disturb a novice user. I believe some cookies should be allowed.
I found Konqueror too much integrated with Konsole, it has a option to start Konsole (Tools -> Open Terminal) and another option to start Konsole embedded in Konqueror (Window -> Show Terminal Emulator). If we use Konqueror as a file manager, then Konsole integration makes perfect sense, but purely as a web browser, I really fail to understand the importance of integrating Konsole within Konqueror, but KDE devs must have their own reasons.

Another interesting feature is integration of download manager KGet. Now this was possible even in KDE 3.x konqueror, but with KDE 4.0 an icon for KGet comes floating to the desktop and we can simply drag and drop links from konqueror to KGet. Not only is this handy, it also looks cool!!. Talking about cool feature, we have different split views in Konqueror (Window -> Split View (left/right and Top/Bottom) ).
Check it out.


I really found the split views usable. Foe instance if I want to compare the Page Hit Ranks, in Distrowatch, of PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE for different Time frames, I can simply open two views ( Left/Right) and compare all distributions. We can also open different websites in different views. Like I have opened Distrowatch in two of the views and Linux Today in the third.

The KDE 3.X Konqueror had and option to configure the plugins in "Configure Konqueror". With this option I could easily specify the mozilla plugins I want Konqueror to use, notably java and flash plugins. In Settings of KDE 4.0 Konqueror, I did not find an option to specify plugins, also I does not take the Firefox plugins by default, hence I do not have flash integrated into KDE 4.0 konqueror and cannot watch youtube videos.
This is expected as KDE 4.0 is still not stable, but I wish that on 11th when the devs make the stable version public, they enable flash in Konqueror.
Finally, I found Konqueror 4.0 to be faster than Konqueror 3.x and it appears that Konqueror 4.0 renders better. This might be a case on my OpenSUSE desktop, btu as OpenSUSE is one of the first distribution to release packages and LiveCD for KDE 4.0, I believe that OpenSUSE does not do much modifications.

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Installing Flash Plugin in Firefox on Ubuntu Gutsy

Ubuntu 7.10 includes a modified version of Firefox 2.0.0.8 which has
some unique new improvements that increase integration with the Ubuntu
platform. In Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox now has a Flash installation utility
that will allow users to install Flash from Ubuntu's software
repository. It also gives users the ability to choose between Adobe's
closed-source Flash implementation or the new open-source Gnash plugin
that replicates much of the functionality found in Flash. The Flash
installer will only install Flash for the current user, so each user
can individually choose whether to use Gnash or Adobe's Flash player.

It works like this, if we come across a site which requires Flash, then firefox gives an information about missing plugin and gives an option to install it. On selecting to install we get a pop-up window like

and we can easily install Abobe Flash plugin for Firefox.

Aaah !! I wish life was this simple, the Flash plugin does not gets installed properly by this mechanism.
In the background Ubuntu uses Synaptic to install packages, Synaptic downloads the install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz package but fails to install it due to incorrect md5sum. I tried to install the underlying package flashplugin-nonfree (9.0.48.0.2+really0u) and again got the same md5sum mismatch issue

Now that the trusted Synaptic had failed me, so I went ahead to install Flash plugin myself.
I went to the Adobe Flash for Linux site and downloaded the Flash Player tar.gz file. The file got downloaded to my Desktop.
From then the installation was as simple as these steps.

1. Open terminal. Applications->Accessories->Terminal
   
2. Change directory to Dektop by running the command "cd Desktop", without the quotes.
   
3. run the command "tar zxvf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz".
   
4. This will create a folder/directory called "install_flash_player_9_linux".
   
5. "cd install_flash_player_9_linux".
6. Finally run the installer "./flashplayer-installer".
   

The installer will ask to close any running instance of Firefox and will install the Flash plugin.
You may verify the plugin by againg starting Firefox and typing "about:plugins" in the address bar.
If you get something like

Shockwave Flash

File name:
libflashplayer.so

Shockwave Flash 9.0 r115

MIME Type	Description	Suffixes	Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash	Shockwave Flash	swf	Yes
application/futuresplash	FutureSplash Player	spl	Yes

Then Flash plugin is properly installed.
Enjoy.

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Ubuntu for Dell 6200 Laptop

Canonical ships the (K)Ubuntu CDs and I received mine as a New year gift. I was really excited and decided to try it immediately.
My wife has a Dell 6200 Laptop and I tested the LiveCD on it.
I popped in the Live CD and it booted into a nice looking desktop. Ubuntu gave me a warning about the Laptop battery,
.
I checked it and was amazed. It read "Your battery has very low capacity (5%), which means that it may be old or broken. Since last month my wife is complaining about the battery problem, the battery lasts only 15 minutes. Since this problem started after the flight from Delhi, which had a bumpy Landing, I think the battery might be broken.
Its amazing that the user friendly "Windows XP" could not issue such a warning, neither did PCLOS. Kubuntu or OpenSUSE, however, Ubuntu was prompt to report it.
I hope this feature of Ubuntu will help my wife in making up her mind to use Ubuntu instead of Windows XP.

NOTE:: The KDE cousin of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, also failed to report this problem.

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