Ubuntu 10.04 on Book G4

Last week I have got an old Apple Mac Laptop, iBook G4. I have decided to install Linux( of cources my first choice was Ubuntu 11.10, but I had some problem on installing with the beta live CD).Later I have downloded the 10.04 Ubuntu to work on my iBook you can follow these steps to boot the Ubuntu 10.04 livecd on your iBook.

Download the image for Ubuntu 10.04 for PowerPC... You can go here
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/

The desktop Live CD allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later.

There are three images available, each for a different type of computer:you have to select this from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/
Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) desktop CD

Then the next step is burn that image to a disk and insert this newly burned disk into your iBooks and reboot your iBook. Holding "c" key during booting (you have press for 10 seconds).

Next step you get the prompt to select image to boot, by default it is "live"( But in some cases do not boot it right away you need to type in this command line. "live-nosplash-powerpc modprobe ide-core video=radeonfb:1024x768-24@60")

From your live CD Desktop you can click on install to install Ubuntu on your iBook G4.All you have to do is click on shortcut on the desktop.

When you compare the speed with OS x Tiger, it is same , remember there is no support for Macromedia Flash in PPC, but you can manage with other tools(gnash..). I hope we get a better porting of ubuntu 11.10 PPC after October 13th.



see the result here

Mikogo An Excellent Zeero Configuration Netmeeting Tool

Mikogo a cross-platform desktop sharing tool and it is free and Zeero Config Tool.We have tested in Ubuntu 10.04 Linux. Mikogo is available for Linux, Windows and Mac. There is also a web client but it lacks most of the Mikogo features so it can only be used for viewing.what we found that Mac and Windows version of Mikogo are better performance than Linux.

Mikogo can be used for web conferencing, online meetings, presentations or remote support and comes with built-in file transfer and chat features. It doesn't come with native audio conferencing but it does support it through regular phone calls.

Mikogo does not charge fees for this audio conferencing service, But it provide a list of free Phone number in few countries , please refer here for details.

What we found that , it has better quality and more secure than Microsoft tools. Mikogo can be used for Technical or Corporate trainings, webinars , Web meetings( see a full list of features here )
Needless to say, security within Mikogo is of a high standard, with several levels of security available to protect the user’s privacy and computer data.All transmitted information during a web conference or remote support session is compressed with proprietary compression algorithms. Mikogo never sends session content in clear text, but encrypts all data using 256-bit AES encryption. ( see a full list of security list here )

Other technical details are here 

Google+ Facebook and DuckDuckGo

Google+ Facebook
Google+ is the next one coming to this category, It can collect your complete personal data.When you have concerns about  privacy of personal data, better to avoid google+ and stick on with facebook.

Google and  DuckDuckGo
Google has been collecting  usage statistics of their products. Anything you use that google owns, they see. Not so much as who's entering what data, but what data has been entered. DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and only uses cookies when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell.

GNOME 3.0 Launch Party - Zurich

GNOME 3.0 Release

On April 6th 2011, GNOME 3.0 released, the long awaited Linux Desktop to the world. It is one of the most powerful and easy to use desktop of GNOME. It includes most of the revolutionary changes in desktop world like GNOME Shell and Activity Journal. In Zurich Switzerland, the GNOME release party took place on 8th of April. This happened in the premises of ETH,the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

GNOME 3.0 release party featured live demonstrations of GNOME 3.0 in different Linux distributions and talks about the new features. I gave a short talk on Free software in general and few screens of Gnome 3.0. Marcus Muller, the man behind frOSCamp Zurich, gave an excellent live demonstration of GNOME 3.0 using Fedora, there were couple of active participants in this party. Marcus presentation was in German.

Bruno Friedmann, Ambassador of openSUSE in Switzerland,gave an in-depth live demonstration on openSUSE and how to get GNOME 3.0 in it. it included many powerful features and services of openSUSE like SUSE Studio. Bruno in his presentation demonstrated many powerful feature-rich solutions to th real-world situations. I have published few snaps here.

Free Beer Version 2.0 Release

free beer products

Free Beer -An Eco-friendly,Green Energy, Socially Committed and  tasty open source  beer -  you can even free beer recipe to produce and sell our, for recipe and etiquette under a free license (Creative Commons)

This was my second meeting with free beer product, I saw a lot of satisfied clients / users who liked the previous version of free beer that was in FrOSCamp one year back in Zurich.I was surprised at the number of people who were interested in free beer. The first event happened in Sep 2011. Some snaps from the event that I have posted in my previous blog.

Pascal Mages,Roland Studer and Daniel Reichlin - Three men army behind the free beer (free beer web site). On April 1st of 2011 the new version of free beer was released. HUB was the Release location. When I started for the event there were three things in my mind, First How the HUB looks like, Second meet the people behind free beer, third to find people to discuss the CC licensing model.
The presentation was in German, but fortunately I got a translator,Dominik Scheck from CS bank.

Daniel Reichlin the Great Brewer and the Quality Controller , his presentation was very simple and natural and I think it is nice to have a Quality Controller Job in freebeer :), lot of testing and tasting to ensure the quality of Product.

The Free Beer and Dabu Fantastic Band was a nice combination. I am planning to visit brewery on 7th of May.

Open Format and MS Office Alternatives

 We have lot of Alternatives to MS Office available today to get the work done. Here are dozens of FREE alternatives to what Microsoft Office has to offer. We can select a web based or normal productivity suite. If you are always connected you can go for a web based office software suite.

With my experience I suggest to use Zoho (Zoho offers a suite of online web applications which is easy to collaborate. Zoho suite goes beyond that by offering a wiki, a planner, email , CRM etc..

Zoho provides a wide, integrated portfolio of rich online applications for businesses. With more than 20 different applications spanning Collaboration , Business and Productivity applications

The second choice is Google docs, Zoho  is far better than google docs) In both you can create word processing documents, spreadsheets ,presentations and lot more. You can share these documents with friends and co-workers quite effectively with the push of a few buttons. 

Zoho

 

Open Office can install in Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, it is better solution for those who are looking for a free open source alternative to the MS Office.

KOffice  have distros for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux , there are eight packages in this suite, including  project planning and image editing tools.

Lotus Symphony ,Libre Office,Abiword,Atlantis Nova ,SSuite Office and too many are in the list, but till this time MS office have one only competitor product , that is Zoho.

I am sure people have tried all most all these free suites to abandon MS Office, but the reality is, they always come back to MS office suites. The main reason for this trend is compatibility problems. So what we need along with Free Software and Open Source, we need Open Format in Software and in hardware too.

Migrate From Microsoft Windows or Mac OS to Linux

We support individuals and corporations for moving from Windows/Mac to Linux, when you decide you want the stability, flexibility, and a virus free environment of Linux. Recent few years we can see a steady growth in migration from Windows to Linux and the number of enterprises migrating from Windows to Linux is a dramatically growing during 2005 to 2010.

What most people do not realise is that there are very simple ways to help ease this migration. Microsoft Windows is one of the first computer operating systems  for individual and corporations,It is easy to use for a layman user during late 90s,but that doesn't mean it's perfect till this time. In fact, Microsoft Windows operating Systems cause continual trouble or distress by bugs, viruses, crashes and many other serious problems that can make your computer difficult to use. Linux, however, is much more stable, more user friendly than Apple Mac or MS Windows and, more importantly, it is free, no worries about Licence or software piracy and NO VIRUS threats.

1. Select a Linux Distribution

If you decide to migrate from Windows to Linux, you will need to take few steps before doing so. The first things is selecting a Linux distribution. There are hundreds  of Linux distributions out there, for just about every type of user and every type of use. There have been plenty of distributions that have attempted to mimic the look and feel of Windows and Apple Mac as closely as possible.We cannot say that which is the best distribution, it is just like which food is the best, it depend on your taste and need.

In my experience,we can select Ubuntu, OpenSUSE,Mandriva or Redhat. If you are new to Linux, Ubuntu will be the easiest distribution to learn, you will be addicted to great nice graphical user interfaces. Mandriva and OpenSUSE are also very popular versions of Linux.

2. Backup your Files and Configurations.

Back up all of the files you wish to keep when you migrate to Linux from Windows / Mac. If you are doing a complete reinstall on your drive and removing Windows completely, then these files will end up formatted and lost. Backing them up will allow you to replace them on the hard drive once Linux is installed.

3. Check your hardware

When you install a new operating system, and find a particular piece of hardware is not supported your computing life has become infinitely more difficult,but nowadays hardware incompatibility and driver support is not a problem with Linux Distributions, but this was a biggest issues that many people have had in the past eigh to ten years back, there are instances where a specific piece of hardware were not supported. You have to give particular attention to Networking cards, video cards, sound cards, I prefer to note down the details of this card name and their versions.

4.Export your Email contacts and Bookmarks.

Export your important contacts and personal information from Outlook or other mail clients in your Windows machine, backup all or important email messages, web browser preferences, email and browser configuration, and so on. Don't forget to backup your bookmarks from Internet explorer or other browsers.

5.Install the Linux distribution

Download and install the Linux distribution you've selected, then install other applications for use with your new Linux OS.

There is a nice website called OSAlt has a large database, comparing Windows applications to open source equivalents which can usually be run on Linux. You can find alternatives or better alternatives for Visio, Photoshop ,Dreamweaver, AutoCAD, WinZip, Movie Maker, MS Project, Norton Ghost, Access, Publisher, Sound editor etc...

Reference.

1.A complete migration guide,can be found at Tom's Hardware

2.Screen shots of my favourate linux Distribution, which i have installed in my machines can be found Linux Club Album.

Ubuntu Linux 10.10

OpenSUSE 11.3

OpenSUSE 11.2

OpenSUSE 11.2