Playing With ArchLinux

One of my friend has suggested me to try on ArchLinux since last year (or probably two years ago), but i haven't had time to try that Linux distribution, even though i have heard about it since long time ago. Well, that day is now over as i have successfully installed ArchLinux on my old laptop replacing Fedora 14 which has been installed since last year.

I started to download the latest ISO of ArchLinux which already contains the basic packages needed for minimal installation yesterday and prior installing it, i read some tutorial described on their website. It's very detailed and since i have been using and installing Slackware several times, i didn't have problem understanding it in no time.

So last night, i decided to overwrite Fedora 14 with ArchLinux after i burnt the ISO into a CD and boot with it. It installed without any problem. The key of success was to read the instructions that has been given. I bet you can also do the installation if you know basic knowledge about device naming and have been using Linux before. Since it was basic installation, it ended up without no X, no KDE/GNOME, no fancy apps, etc. It's just a plain shell with some basic utilities.

First thing i did was to configure the network as it's the primary means of updating my systems. I finally use my cable to connect my laptop to my D-Link wireless router and start installing several packages, starting from XOrg, KDE/GNOME, and many other packages i need for daily activities. Somehow, GNOME wasn't working on my laptop, so i decided to threw it away. I'm already used to KDE and it worked out-of-the-box on my laptop, so i'm using it. I'm also comfortable with it.

So far, i'm quite impressed with ArchLinux. It boots very fast (i can have my login prompt under 10s in 1.5 GHz Intel Pentium M processor and 1 GB of RAM) and it's very stable (just like in Slackware). Since ArchLinux and Slackware share similar philosophy, i have no problem adapting to ArchLinux's way. There are some differences between ArchLinux and Slackware, but i get the main idea.

One of the biggest difference is the package management tool. Pacman is like apt-get in Ubuntu. It can help users to resolve dependencies during new package installation, but sometimes it could be a problem as well, since it could bloat the system just because it's linked to other libraries and packages, so even if you don't need that library/application, you still need to install them just because it's part of other package dependencies.

I must admit that i really like how bleeding-edge ArchLinux is. Their repository is very up to date and i could get new update everytime i ran pacman -Syu on my terminal (let's say once per hour). Since they use a rolling-release model, it's natural for them to have the up-to-date packages on their repository so fast. For most of their users, it's no big deal, but for someone who isn't used to it, it could be a problem as users (we) are responsible for our own system. If you do full system upgrade, you must be prepare that the upgrade process could break your machine. No one can predict that from happening.

Lucky for you, ArchLinux has (probably) one of the best documentation on their Wiki page. Everything you need to know about ArchLinux including their package details is already written there. All you need to do is search and read it.

ArchLinux also has AUR (ArchLinux User Repository) which works like SlackBuilds project. It provides users with a PKGBUILDs script that could compile a source code into ArchLinux's native format (tar.gz).

Even though i like ArchLinux, i never said that i would leave Slackware and move to ArchLinux. Slackware will still be my favorite distro and probably i will add ArchLinux to be my second one.

Linux Runs on iPad

In the past, Linux can be found in almost every devices, but not in Apple devices, since it was pre-installed with iOS, but that no longer true as two hackers has successfully managed to install Linux on iPad and other iOS devices (iPod and iPhone).

Of course, you won't be able to access Apple Store or use any iOS apps, but it's still so fun to have Linux running everywhere, including iOS devices

Mandriva 2011 is Out

After having lots of delays and unsure situation which caused some of their developers forked into Mageia, finally Mandriva has released their latest product called Mandriva 2011. It seems the problems still affecting their work. I can see it from the supported applications they have on this release.

Usually, Mandriva is one of the big Linux distro that ships a bleeding-edge applications such as KDE, GNOME, and many other bi apps, but not for this release. They are sticking to the previous-stable version of KDE, GNOME, and many others. I think they were having some man-power problems.

Anyways, it's still a good release and i hope they can catch up with 2012 release just before 2012 comes up in the next few months

MU Crushed Arsenal

We have our big match tonight and it was Manchester United who host a match against one of their biggest rival, Arsenal. Both team showed a very contradictive situation. Manchester United had a good start and it's on high motivation since their young players were able to show a good start, meanwhile Arsenal has just lost two of their key players, Samir Nasri and Cecs Fabregas.

The results was already predictable. MU totally crushed Arsenal and it's 8-2, thanks to goals from D. Welbeck, A. Young (2), Rooney (3), Nani, and Park Ji Sung. Arsenal replied back two goals from T. Walcott and R.v. Persie. This results was really unbelivable, considering Arsenal is one of the Big Four in English Premiere League. They really in a bad condition right now and they need to think of a solution really fast. It's still early in the competition and they will need to react fast in order to regain their position as one of the Big Four.

New Sign In Page

GMail team is now preparing for a new sign in page which should be out soon. The new design is now much more slicker, simpler, and as always, it's flat page with white as the most dominant color, as typical Google's work in most of their products.

Once you signed in for the first time, you will have a chance to change your profile, including activating two-factors of authentication and even deleting all your profiles and social-related datas. I think Google is working hard to make sure that users has better access to their privacy preferences.

I like the new page and salute to Google for their hard work

Vacation

It's about time i have some spare time to recover my throat due to busy schedule this semester. There will be one week of holiday due to Eidul-Fitr and probably it's the only holidays i have on this semester besides there will be two weeks due to mid test.

I hope nothing goes wrong during this vacation, since in the next week, i will have to speak for one whole week for the entire class i teach. It happened that it's all my shift to give the presentation

Steve Jobs Resigns

After having his medical leave for the third time and so many speculation about his health and also Apple's current CEO position, finally the conclusion is now drawn. Steve Jobs has resign from Apple effective immediately and he has asked the Board to take Tim Cook as the new CEO and making it a permanent role. Cook has been playing as the CEO while Jobs is taking his leave, so he's already used to it.

What about Steve Jobs? Will he leave the company he built? Of course not... he will become the Chairman of the Board where his inspiration will keep inspiring more and more Apple creative products in the future.

Curious about what Steve's letter? Take a look on Apple's Press Info page.

Enable HTTPS on Twitter

Since Firesheep tool was introduced last year, many web sites has enable HTTPS by default, starting by Google, Facebook, and now Twitter has also follows this good idea. They mentioned it on their own Twitter account. Please go to their Support Page for more information about this new feature.

Basically, this feature is not always turned on, so you must activate it on your preferences settings. Tick the "Always use HTTPS" option and press the Save button and you are done with it. It's just that simple

For sites that has HTTPS, but doesn't route you to their HTTPS URL by default, you can add it into HTTPS Everywhere URL list. Basically this is a Firefox extension that will force a website to load the HTTPS version if it's available.

Processing HTTPS is not as expensive or resource-hogging as before, so i guess it won't make big differences for the developers to add the HTTPS for the sake of their client's security and privacy.

Tagged Photos

Sometimes, my profile in Facebook was tagged by unknown person and i wasn't on that photos. This is the method that mostly be done by seller that uses Facebook to promote their merchandises. Tagging photos is a new way to promote their items to public. Some people let this happened, but personally, i don't like it at all. I wanted to have my profile filled with my personal photos, not photos that i'm not into it.

Well, Facebook probably read my mind and so does other people and decided to change how photos can be tagged and shared to other people. According to the Guardian, the new policy will ask tagged person to confirm whether they want to accept/reject the tags before Facebook linked that photo to their profile. Basically, the user gets more control on tagged photos. I like this idea and hopefully i can activate this feature ASAP. It's so annoying to remove the tags all the time

Upgrade Your PHP

PHP team has released a warning about their previous stable release: PHP 5.3.7. That version has a serious bug that affects crypt() function where it only returns the salt for MD5 where it should have returns the whole value.

To remedy this situation, a new version of PHP has been released and it's the recommended solution to fix the previous problems. This version only has two fixes, which is considerd the most important bug fixes that should be applied immediately.

If you haven't upgraded to 5.3.7 yet, it's the best time to upgrade to 5.3.8

BackTrack 5R1 Released

After months of working, finally BackTrack 5R1 is now released to public. According to the announcement, this version uses Linux Kernel 2.6.39.4 and it has gained 30 new tools on this release along with regular 120 bug fixes and 70 tool updates.

There are several flavours available for you to download: Gnome and KDE ISO images for 32 and 64 bit, as well as a VMWare image of a 32 bit Gnome install, with VMWare Tools pre-installed.

You can start downloading the ISO and VMWare image on their download page, but for now, only Torrents are available even though they said HTTP mirrors should be ready on August 20. I'm in the process of downloading the ISOs and Image on UKDW's ISO Server.

Watching Transformer 3

Transformer 3 has been released few weeks ago, but i haven't watched it due to my busy schedule. I have watched Harry Potter and Kungfu Panda 2 before and today, i decided to watch Transformer 3 with my fiancee at Cinema 21 at Amplaz.

We went there after we left for Church in the morning. When i got there, lots of people has stood in line queueing for the tickets. Luckily most of them bought other movies (probably Kungfu Panda and Fast n Furious 5 since it's the latest one lately) or probably they bought it for night show. Moreover, BCA promotion for 50% still available, so i only need to buy one ticket to get another for free

Even though i have watched the first and second sequel of Transformer, i must say Transformer 3 is still the best among them. The effect is still as good as before, but with more robots. I must admit Transformer 2 has better story than the third one though.

There probably won't be any sequel to Transformer as Megatron is dead (except a new leader is coming in) and so does Sentinel, so another movie that has reached it's end of life

Substitute Class

Since last Wednesday was Indonesia's Independence Day, all classes were off and that included two of my classes, so i had to replace them this Saturday. Can't you imagine it? Teaching in Saturday and it's five credits, meaning 4 hours and 10 minutes

Anyway, the class went smooth and i'm happy with the first session we had on this week. Looking forward to see next week's progress

PHP 5.3.7 Released

When i got back from half-day travelling, i saw an interesting news about PHP 5.3.7 that was coming from i0n1c's tweet and suddenly, i downloaded PHP 5.3.7 although it wasn't announced yet (you can just substitute the URL using the version you wanted to download) and compiled it on all of my machine i handled (my desktop, workstation, and two of my virtual servers).

The only thing left is my laptop and i'm planning to upgrade it as well tomorrow when i have some spare time. PHP 5.3.7 brings so many bug fixes (including several security fixes) as well as new enhancements compared to the previous PHP 5.3.6 release, so please be sure to upgrade your installation to the latest version.

It has been announced officially, so you won't have any problem finding the correct URL

Kungfu Panda 2

I have been waiting for Kungfu Panda 2 and finally i got some time to watch it with my fiancee. Even though it was first released last Tuesday, i only had a chance to watch it today and i decided to watch it after i finished my classes at 4 PM. I got the tickets for 5.45, so there wasn't so much time for me after finishing my work back then.

It was a funny movie (as usual) and i found it more interesting as there's more moral story in this episode instead of the first one. I like PO's style even more. He is so funny

I'm waiting for the third one since the ending was a bit of hanging. I'm pretty sure there will be the third one

Here's the trailer if haven't watch it

App Inventor Find New Home

A week ago, i posted a news that Google App Inventor will be discontinued and they were looking for a new home for the project. Well, in just seven days from that day, Google App Inventor has found a new home for their project and it's MIT Media Lab.

MIT has announced that they will make a new MIT Center for Mobile Learning, a place to learn more about mobile computing and App Inventor will be one of the sub projects that goes into this place.

This would add MIT's educational project as Scratch is also hosted at MIT. It's also another great tool for teaching students to understand about visual programming without having to fully understand basic knowledge about programming itself. It's a drag-and-drop environments which is very suitable for both the students and the lecturers/teachers.

Congratulations for App Inventor for finding a new home. Hope you like the new environments

More Improvements on Linux Kernel

We have seen several performance improvements introduced on every merge window just after a new Linux Kernel is being released to the public by Linus Torvalds. This trends will always an interesting (and sometimes controversial) topics whenever new ideas came out since performance itself in most cases cannot be achieved without taking some risk and probably could break others as well. In short, gaining performance requires some sacrifices before you get the optimum results.

A new patch is being developed at this moment and it's predicted to be pushed to the main repository when Linux Kernel 3.1 gets released and a new merge window for Linux Kernel 3.2 is open for public. Phoronix already posted about this news. Follow the discussion on LKML

First Day in New Semester

Today is my first day on the new semester after a long break. As i said before, i have a very busy schedule and Monday is one of them. I only teach two classes in Monday, but each is 5 credits, meaning 5x50 minutes = 250 minutes, that's 4 hours and 10 minutes

So today's schedule was all day in the classroom with one of my colleagues teaching Software Engineering. It was a fun session and i hope it would last until the end of the semester

Slow Start

MU has just started their journey to defend their EPL title and hopefully grab the 20th title in the end of this season by facing WBA in their first away match. Even though they look so strong in their USA trip, it's not a guarantee that they will have a smooth start in the EPL as you can see from the score.

MU won 1-2, but actually the second goal was an own goal, not contributed by MU's player. Rooney did score the first goal, but it's the ony goal produced by MU player tonight. I wish for a better play in the next game.

Other big players seems to have their own difficulties. Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool had a draw in their first match. Looks like it won't be an easy season for all clubs in the EPL.

EPL Started

For EPL mania, the time you have been waiting for has come. It's time for a new season of EPL league and there has been several matches finished at this moment and some will be played tomorrow.

Here are the latest match recap taken from LiveScore

FT	Blackburn R.	1 - 2	Wolverhampton W.
FT	Fulham	0 - 0	Aston Villa
FT	Liverpool	1 - 1	Sunderland
FT	Queens Park R.	0 - 4	Bolton W.
Postp.	Tottenham H.	? - ?	Everton
FT	Wigan Athletic	1 - 1	Norwich C.

Last Week

This is supposed to be my last week before i entered my busy schedule for the next four months when the new semester starts next week. I guess it's time to go back to work again after almost three months resting, watching lots lots Korean and Taiwanese dramas, finishing lots of HSDS episodes along with H&E fansubbing, and preparing for the big day next month.

Anyway, i will try to keep this blog updated, even though i may not be able to post lengthy posts as i used to be as i don't really have that luxury of time to write such a long story about what happened in my life lately. I think a small and interesting video from YouTube is enough for now as it's really nice and touching videos that i posted.

Good bye vacation and welcome back to work

Amazing Grand Mother

I found another great video uploaded to YouTube which is based on real story. She is a Taiwanese who travelled to another country to visit her daugher who have given her a new grand daughter, but she was caught in the airport because the officer mistakenly thought she brought an illegal drug.

She can't speak English and it's her first trip abroad with no one else accompanied her. She struggles so hard just to bring the Chinese medicine to her daughter. I'm so amazed to that.

I believe it's mother's real power that enables her to do such things. I believe we should care more about our mother.

Google AppInventor is Discontinued

Google AppInventor is designed to allow non-programmers to create Android applications by dragging, dropping and connecting blocks of code to create a complete application. It was released a year ago and it gained lots of positive reactions from many developers.

Unfortunately, Google has decided that it will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code. They will keep support for this project until the end of this year, but the URL will likely to be changed in the next 90 days.

Another Amazing Video

One of my student share another amazing video (insurance ads actually) posted on YouTube and it's from Thailand. It's not like an ads, but you will notice that it's an ads after you have finished watching the video completely.

Check this out. It's really touching video

No Btrfs on Fedora 16

For those who have been waiting for Btrfs on the next Fedora, get ready to dissapointed since it will NOT be included in Fedora 16 and likely will be postponed until Fedora 17. This is an official announcent made by Josef Bacik to development mailing list of Fedora about Btrfs status.

I think it's a good decision as making a certain filesystem to be the default filesystem used in a distribution is not an easy task and it requires lots of testing and standards compliance. So far, Btrfs has shown us a great progress, but still can't made it into Fedora 16.

We shall wait for future releases of Fedora that will likely to include Btrfs as it matures on each release of Linux Kernel cycle

New Semester

New semester is coming up and starting this week, it will be full of preparation week before the next semester begin next week (around 15 of August).

This semester, my schedule is a bit full, but it's not yet the final schedule, as i might add another subject to teach. Let's just hope i won't get overwhelmed by this semester's load as i have to work on my big day this September

Can't wait for the new semester to begin next week

First Attempt on Linux-3.0

Last night, i tried to download Linux Kernel 3.0 and i want to test this new kernel on my workstation since it has bigger bandwidth and also faster in terms of spec (it has 8 GB of RAM and high speed processors). Since i have openSSH daemon running, i can remotely connect to the computer and do a compilation over the Internet.

I can do full compilation in less than one hour, so it's still acceptable for me while i was doing other activities. At the end, it was compiled successfully and i commit the final steps for the kernel installation procedure and reboot the system to test the new system.

After some time, i tried to connect again to my computer, but it won't responded. I guessed it got kernel panic since that's the only reason why i couldn't connect to the computer. Since it's already at night, i couldn't do anything and just wait until the next day.

This morning, i went to the office and checked my computer and yes, it was a kernel panic. I rebooted and start the old kernel to boot and since Linux Kernel 3.0.1 has been released by Greg, i downloaded the latest stable kernel and recompiled it again this morning.

So far, i haven't rebooted my computer, since i would have to wait until Monday if it got stucked again. Thus, it's still running on Linux Kernel 2.6.39.x branch. I think it's my first kernel panic due to manual compilation

3D or No 3D

When 3D movies arrived about 2010, i was so excited so that i watched lots of them even though it's more expensive than normal movies.

Lately, i have been thinking that most of the movies that i have ever seen doesn't really use the 3D effects. There's only small part of the movies that utilize the 3D. I think the best movies so far are Despicable Me and The Avatar. The rest are just a plain movies.

I'm not sure if it's because of the glasses, but it's so annoying that i have to pay more for nothing

My next movie will be Transformer. What should i pick? 3D or no 3D?

Google Chrome 13 Entered Stable Channel

Just when Firefox is about to release their major update (Firefox 6), Google has taken a step ahead by releasing Google Chrome 13 into the stable channel. This means that it's marked stable enough for most users and they will get the update through the update built-in feature.

What's the new feature in this version? One of the most interesting feature is Instant Pages. It's like a read-ahead or prefetch technology that tried to fetch links that are likely to be clicked by the users and when they do, it will be displayed in an instant.

Google Chrome 13 also fixed lots of bug fixes, including security vulnerabilities through Chromium Security Reward Program.

Thanks to Google and all the developers who have worked so hard to make it even better and users will have more options regarding the default browsers to be used in their machine.

Welcome New Twitter

Twitter is planning to migrate all of their users to the new site after testing it for a few months. For some time, the users have their options to revert back to the old version of Twitter, but within a week from now, those options will no longer be available, as Twitter will migrate it automatically and the old version will be just a good bye

If you haven't tried the new version, it's your chance to take a look and get used to it because sooner or later, that's the web interface you will be seeing everyday if you don't use any Twitter client apps.

Metasploit 4.0 Released

HD Moore has released Metasploit 4.0, their major update for the well-known Metasploit product. As a major update, it surely has nice and interesting features that most users would like to see and they are:

• 36 new exploits
• 27 new post-exploitation modules
• 12 auxiliary modules
• new SCADA exploits
• Improved 64-bit Linux payloads
• Exploits for Firefox and Internet Explorer
• Full-HTTPS and HTTP Meterpreter stagers
• Post-exploitation modules for dumping passwords from Outlook, WSFTP, CoreFTP, SmartFTP, TotalCommander, BitCoin

LibreOffice 3.4.2 is now Enterprise Ready

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 3.4.2 and marks it as "Enterprise Ready". Even though it's just a monthly update from the 3.4.x branch, it's a considered important milestone as the developer fix some annoying bugs that prevent it to be marked as rock solid release. Those bugs were mostly incompatibility with Microsoft Office products which is still considered de facto for Office Suite around the world.

As Italo Vignoli said in the announcement, LibreOffice 3.4.2 is the result of the combined activity of 300 contributors having made more than 23,000 commits, with the addition, deletion or modification of around five million lines of code. It's really a community and enterprise effort to bring LibreOffice become much closer to reach Enterprise level. You can take a look on the chart below.

Next LibreOffice release will be ready on August and that will be LibreOffice 3.4.3. For now, let's just enjoy LibreOffice 3.4.2