EnGarde Secure Linux - Installation screenshots

These screenshots describe all the steps required to install EnGarde Secure Linux on your server.

Fig: Booting from the CD-ROM

Fig: Welcome screen

Fig: Set root password for LiveCD

Fig: Configure networking

Fig: Choose between installation and LiveCD mode. I chose the Installation mode.

Fig: Choose the language

Fig: Decide on the partitioning scheme.

Fig: Choose the type of your hard disk

Fig: Point of no return

Fig: Select the packages you want to install.

Fig: Configure the network cards

Fig: Set fully qualified host name for your server.

Fig: Set the primary and secondary name server.

Fig: Installation finished message

Fig: LILO boot loader of EnGarde secure Linux

Mandriva 2008 release

Mandriva Linux distribution project team has released their latest version namely Mandriva 2008. What is unique about Mandriva is that apart from providing the Free version of Linux, they have also made available a LiveCD version which contain all the proprietary codecs and drivers including the graphics drivers from Nvidia and ATI.

Mandriva 2008 is available in three formats namely :

1. Mandriva 2008 One - This is a liveCD which can also be installed on the hard disk. Mandriva team recommends that people download this one because it contain all the non-Free bits and pieces like the multimedia codecs, Flash player, Sun's Java, NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers and so on. It is available for free download.
2. Mandriva 2008 Free - This is the same as above but without the proprietary codecs. It is available as a 3-CD / 1-DVD edition made up entirely of free / open source software which also you can download for free.
3. Mandriva 2008 Power Pack - is a DVD edition which includes support, services, and important third-party proprietary software like LinDVD, Cedega, the Fluendo multimedia codecs, Flash Player, Scilab and 03 Spaces. You have to buy it from the Mandriva store.
   

Mandriva 2008 features at a glance

• Linux kernel 2.6.22
• X.org 7.2
• KDE 3.5.7 with an option to try out KDE 4.0
• GNOME 2.20.0
• OpenOffice.org 2.2.1
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6 and updated versions of all other software.
• Compiz Fusion
• Windows documents and settings migration tool and
• a new network management tool
  

Changes in Mandriva 2008 at a glance

• PHP 4.x has been deprecated
• Loopback based encrypted file systems as well as XFS file systems support has been removed.
• A more granular package selection process in place during installation. Also improvement to rpmdrake and urpmi
• Open SuSE's Aparmor has been included as the new security tool.
• Liberation fonts have been included.
• Man pages now compressed with LZMA
• Compiz Fusion replaces Beryl as Beryl has now merged with Compiz.
• Alternative open source drivers for ATI graphics cards
  

All in all, Mandriva 2008 seems to be a robust up to date Linux distribution with out of the box support for all the essential non-Free bits to cater to the general populace, at the same time providing a Free version sans proprietary stuff to satisfy the cravings of the Free software lovers. You can read the full release notes and also download a copy of Mandriva 2008 here.

World map of Internet connectivity

Care to know the level of Internet connectivity in your country ? Or rather, you would like to know which all areas in the world are the most densely wired. Well here is a pictorial representation of the density of Internet connection.

Fig: Internet connectivity world map

The aptly named "Internet Map" is the creation of Cris Harrison. To create the set of visual maps, he made use of the data from the DIMES project which is a distributed scientific research project, aimed to study the structure and topology of the Internet - a purely volunteer effort on the lines of SETI@HOME project.

Not surprisingly, Europe, USA and Japan lead in the most wired areas in the world.

View the full set of maps of the internet connectivity across the world at Cris Harrison's site.

Poll indicates GNOME the most popular desktop environment with KDE close behind

Around one month back, this blog featured a poll that asked you which window manager (Desktop) you used the most. The poll was open roughly for two weeks and closed on 31st of August 2007. In those two weeks, nearly 900 (889 votes) people voted in the polls. And the results are not entirely out of expectation.

GNOME and KDE are neck and neck in the popularity front with GNOME being the favoured window manager by 361 people vs KDE by 335 people. Now it can be stated with certainty that both these window managers (desktops really) are equally popular since the difference is just less than 30 votes. The third place goes to XFCE which is also not a big surprise and it snagged 71 votes (around 7% of the total votes cast). Fluxbox/Blackbox combination takes the 4th place.

What is really surprising is that Enlightenment received 18 votes which is more than what IceWM got. Now, I have not seen that many Linux distributions or Unices which come pre-loaded with Enlightenment window manager, though I have found it a very good one. But many Linux distributions such as the mini ones do bundle IceWM with them.

Fig: Pie chart of the percentage of votes polled

Below are the full results of the polls.

Total votes cast : 889

Window manager	Votes	% Votes
GNOME	361	40%
KDE	335	37%
XFCE	71	7%
Fluxbox, Blackbox	44	4%
Enlightenment	18	2%
IceWM	15	1%
Window maker	9	1%
Fvwm	5	< 1%
After step	2	< 1%
Some other	16	1%
I don't use a window manager	13	1%

Is there a correlation between Socialism and Free Software ?

The word Socialism is a broad term. There are different streams of socialism. On one end of the spectrum, there is the extreme form of socialism known as communism infamous for its stringent following of its ideology, which was practiced by countries such as the erstwhile USSR (present Russia) and currently by China and Cuba. And at the other end, there is the more humane form of socialism as practiced by countries such as India and Sweden. That is right, India is a sovereign socialist democratic republic nation as stated in the constitution of India.

And before any of you point at the problems faced by India, let me tell you most of those problems are due to its burgeoning population and should not be attributed to its socialist aspect. And as far as Sweden is concerned, it is ranked as the 4th least corrupt nation in the world. A clue that it's people lead contented lives. And Sweden enjoys an ultra low unemployment rate of around 4% which is the least in the European Union.

Simply put, socialism is a process of control of resources by a community or state in varying degrees. So the big question is does the Free Software movement enjoy any relation with socialist ideology ?

If you go by the definition of Socialism, I would say yes. The source code is open and is controlled by the Free software community at large. And it is the community which largely decides and dictates the direction of a software's progress. Each decision is taken through consensus and by interacting with its users. Though at times there is bound to be a lot of bickering and clash of egos, for the large part, the job gets done splendidly. And socialism works in the software realm when it is a massive failure when implemented in an extreme form (read communism) in real life is because unlike the resources in real life, software is a replenish-able resource. You can literally make millions of copies of your source code and distribute it to others free of cost and still you will be left holding the original copy of the source code.

Having stated my views about this topic, I came across this lengthy article which talked about the inherent link between Free software and socialism. What held my attention was the insidious way in which they had portrayed the 'X' in Linux with a hammer and sickle - the trademark of communist movement. If anything, Free software movement is far removed from the mess that is communism.

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.

Introducing LAMP, WAMP and MAMP application stacks from Bitnami

Lets say you are interested in running a website related to a subject close to your heart. In days of yore, it involved getting your hands down and dirty in writing code which will show your content legibly in a web browser. But then a couple of years ago, a new phenomenon gathered momentum - which was the spurt in software which help one to manage ones content online. Not surprisingly most of these software categorize themselves as content management systems (CMS) though many call themselves by other names like blogging systems, Wiki and so on.

What is really spectacular and common about these software is that all of them allow non-tech users to publish their content online without worrying about writing code. Some of the more popular CMSes around are Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, MediaWiki ... the list is a long one and I could take a whole day to list all of them here.

But ease of use of a CMS to publish your content doesn't mean ease of installing it. That is, most CMSes make use of a web server to serve the files and a database to store the content. While it is simple to set up when you are hosting your website online on a shared or even managed dedicated host provider since most of the work is done for you, when it comes to developing your site (setting up all the software locally on your machine), it fast gets tedious. This is especially true if you are a pure web designer by profession and know little about configuring a web server or a database server.

This is were software stacks gain prominence. Software stacks are installation bundles which contain all the relevant software to get you up and running in what ever you intend to do with it. For example, if you are a Wordpress developer who intend to work in developing a Wordpress theme, then instead of separately downloading, installing and configuring a web server, a database server and likes, you can just download the Wordpress stack, install it using the point-and-click method and then go about testing your theme in the newly installed Wordpress blog on your machine.

Keeping the web developer and tech agnostic people who intend to develop their own website in mind, a group called BitNami are providing software / application stacks as a free download. They have laid out an impressive array of software stacks on their website. For example, you have the Joomla stack, Drupal, Wordpress, Mediawiki, even CMSes targeted at corporate environments which require Java, such as Roller. And each of these stacks are an all inclusive bundle containing all the relevant software. You just need to download, install and then start using the CMS - which removes a major hassle from you.

Bitnami provides these application stacks for multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux and MacOSX - though the Linux and Mac OSX versions of their stacks for some applications are yet to be ready.

I decided to download their Drupal stack mainly because they provide a Linux version of it. Not surprisingly it is a hefty download of 56 MB. After downloading, I was flawlessly able to install it on my Linux machine and in no time, I was browsing the newly installed and running Drupal. One thing worth noting is that during the installation itself you are prompted to set a user name and password which will be your administrator user name and also the IP address of your machine so that the software can be configured to be accessed from within your LAN. If you are using a standalone machine, you can enter the IP address 127.0.0.1 or your machine host name.

Pros of Bitnami Stacks

• Each stack is self contained and will not interfere with other software installed on your machine.
• Each stack contain all the relevant software pieces which are required to run the application
• No need to edit the configuration files of your web server or database server as all of it is taken care for you.
• You can download bitnami stacks for multiple platforms.
• You can install multiple stacks on the same machine - though I guess, not run them at the same time.
  

Cons of Bitnami Stacks

• Since each stack is an all inclusive package, it is a relatively hefty download. For example, the Drupal application stack is a huge 56 MB download compared to that from the Drupal official website which is around 5 MB.

Suggestions for further improvement

• When I downloaded the Drupal stack from Bitnami, I found that it was a plain vanilla installation. A glance at the Drupal website shows it has 100s of extra modules which a web developer needs to download and install separately in order to use them, not to speak of the themes. It would be a really good thing if the Bitnami application stack included all these extra Drupal modules and themes too. As the size of the download is not an issue here, including these extra modules and themes will at most increase the size by a further 10 - 20 MB but will provide even greater value for the web developer.
• Apart from providing an installer it would be nice if they also provide a standalone zip or tar.gz archive for download so that it can be unpacked to a USB stick and run from it.