Rendezvous with a Debian Developer

Just about an hour ago is when I dropped of Jonas Smedegaard on his way to the Bangalore International airport after his week's stay here.

courtesy vigneshwar shankar

Although I haven't been writing about any person in specific even in my personal blog, in this post I only intend to reflect upon the paradigms of Jonas in comparison to my own. I won't repeat all the technicalities discussed through the week, but will try to project my perception of this hacker, who is more than a mere geek.

Now, why Jonas, and not compare myself to someone I've already known?
I believe our perceptions, and hence our deep principles heavily depend on the circumstances we are faced with, and it cannot be universal - will be relative.
Me and Jonas, as I did very well realize are from different societies, and hence have different mental worlds.

In Jonas' own terms, he comes from a different world and many a times we from this world (as many of us kept proving it through the week) here get duped into just looking at the surface, and not the details of them.
"Surface is narcotics", as he said, is so apt.

I have had a different perception of westernization. I would never be a hypocrite, or a dumb emulator of people from different societies. I must have exhibited some tendencies towards some "unreasonable" emulation, and this week long interaction with Jonas has help me sort out my prerogative in my realms.

Another important aspect which got me all inspired was, the way he correlates his work, its impact to the grand scenario. I think I fail to recognize (at least for now), the ramifications of my own small contributions to the big picture. Being inert about an issue is equivalent to encouraging it, is another point he reiterated many a times.

Leaders need to inspire, and make space for the team to grow and express themselves : A nice notion about leadership I heard Jonas say, and I, like him too have been trying to get closer to this ideal.


All said and done, respecting differences between people and each taking the better of the paths for oneself is what is the ultimate path to harmony and cooperation, both in dissimilar communities of similar individuals, and similar communities of dissimilar individuals.

PS: If you missed the technicalities, here are some reports of the events in Bangalore
http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2601600.ece
http://fossphosis.blogspot.com/2011/11/jonas-smedegaard-in-bangalore.html
https://alieniscogitationibus.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/debian-pureblends-and-the-freedom-box/
http://sreejithsblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/freedom-debian-pure-blends-and-jonaas.html

Jonas Smedegaard in Bangalore

Jonas Smedegaard : Debian developer is in Bengaluru and FSMK has been actively trying to get Jonas meet, interact and discuss with Free Software enthusiasts from the whole spectrum. Debian Pure Blends and FreedomBox are primarily on the agenda of Jonas' visit to India. So, most of the sessions would revolve around these.

The schedule for Jonas' visit, which I had worked out in consultation with Jonas has kept him occupied for most of the days ( and many a times making it hectic for him!).
Now that we are losing track of all that's happening, I thought it to be good if I could jot it down here. Will keep updating it further

• 1st Nov: Jonas arrives, and although I was to escort him when he arrived, the train reaches early and I reach late - we then stumble upon each other serendipitously! Nice start :) 

• 2nd Nov: No concrete schedule for the day, but casual interactions with some of our FSMK activists and enthusiasts

• 3rd Nov: First of the formal talks at PES School of Engineering. Will gather more info about the talk itself from some of the audience and update it later. 

The talk was followed by a hurried, adhoc meeting with Secretary, Education Department, Government of Karnataka which was one of those unfruitful meetings. Nonetheless, an insight into the problem at hand of implementing Free Software in education did make itself clearer

 Towards the evening a dinner with Prof.Chatterjee from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, which turned out to be a vibrant discussion ranging from nuclear power to wars, to free software and astrophysics! We ended it with a eulogistic reminiscence of Neils Bohr!

• 4th Nov: Free Software talk at Bangalore University in the morning. The talk has created extra interest amongst the audience, and we will look forward to creating an active GLUG there. 

Afternoon, a talk on FreedomBox and Debian Pureblends was organized at the Indian Institute of Science. Session details will be updated. 

Post talk, Jonas gave an interview to The Hindu. 

The day being so demanding, and all the sessions being monotonous, just to digress from the flow, it was arranged for Jonas to watch a carnatic classical music concert live. Will collect his views and update here!

• 5th Nov: Another talk on Freedombox/Pureblends in BMS Institute of Technology scheduled in the morning. It will be followed by a casual GLUG members discussion on Debian, contribution etc...
• 6th Nov: Debian Pureblends Packaging session at FSMK office, and the first hands on workshop in this stint! Looking forward to it.
  We're also working out a quick visit to the Ambedkar Community Computing Center.
  
  
  
• 7th Nov: Jonas is leaving to Vietnam

This is for now! Will see if anymore appendages occur for the remaining time!

Adding custom menu entries in Debian/Ubuntu

Some of the applications which we install from third party sources are not indexed in the Applications tab in the GNOME shell.

The problem in such a case is the high chances of forgetting what the application name is! And this happens so often with me, that I am forced to create these entries in the Applications menu.

Here's a simple procedure to do this. Although there's System->Preferences->Main Menu to do this, this one is better for some obvious reasons (you can give your custom icons)

• The Applications Menu entries reside in the directory /usr/share/applications , and to create a new entry create a .desktop file in this directory

cd /usr/share/applications

sudo nano myapp.desktop

• The .desktop files have just the information needed to put up an entry in the Applications tab, and to run your app; Here is the sample content of the Qtoctave entry from the file qtoctave.desktop

[Desktop Entry]

Version=1.0

Name=QtOctave

Comment=Graphical Qt frontend for GNU Octave

TryExec=qtoctave

Exec=qtoctave

Icon=qtoctave

Type=Application

Categories=Development;Math;Science;Education;Electronics

• Make these entries into the myapp.desktop file with relevant modifications like your executable file name in the exec field.
• After modification of the .desktop file, save and close it. Now, the entry should appear in the categories which you mention.
• To add your application an icon, crop a 32x32 png image and add it into the default icons directory /usr/share/app-install/icons/,

sudo cp myicon.png /usr/share/app-install/icons/ 

In the Icon field of the .desktop file, provide the file name if the icon resides in the aforementioned default directory, or give the full path of the icon

And there you go, your own custom application entry with a custom icon!

Over to Oneiric Ocelot

Ubuntu 11.10 aka Oneiric Ocelot made a silent appearance yesterday in the Operating system arena. Although it has come silently, it does make quite a bit of noise with whatever it has brought along.

After Natty Narhwal and the controversial Unity, Oneiric Ocelot comes somewhat as a pacifier, with improvements on Unity (yes, Unity is here to stay) and official support to Gnome3.


Here are some salient features of Oneiric.

• Linux kernel 3.0! 

Of all the reviews I had read, no one seemed to have noticed that Ubuntu 11.10 ships with the Linux 3 series kernel. That is certainly worth a mention. Although the Linux3.0 by itself has had no major changes except for the notation and rumors about power regression. Will keep an eye on the battery on my machine.

• Unity revamped

As all other reviews have been posting, Unity does get a revamp and seems more stable. It responds quickly, no lag whatsoever. And the aesthetics are more pleasing than in Natty. When I am going to get Oneiric as my production OS, I will certainly want to have picked up all the keyboard shortcuts for Unity.
super+s, super+a, super+f and super+m are for now really handy to view the workspaces, browse applications, files and music respectively.

Another important aspect about the feel of Unity is the dash itself. The new dash is gorgeous which acquires a tinge correlating the backdrop of the other windows/the desktop itself.

• Login screen is sleeker

Another small but pleasing change is on the Login screen itself. It looks simple, yet futuristic. There is also something about the new asterisk while typing the password which grabs one's attention :-)

• No Me menu

The elaborate Me menu has been removed and a less elaborate dock with access to most performance options like Power, hardware, etc.. has been added. Unclear of the intent of this change though.

• Evolution gives way to Thunderbird

Evolution the  long associate as the default mail client has been replaced with Mozilla Thunderbird. Having used only Evolution and not Thunderbird I'm not in  a position to comment on it. From Mozilla must be good. 

• Software Centre is bigger, better

I haven't been a big fan of Software Center. Nonetheless, it has a more professional look and will be of certain use to new users. First thing, I am getting Synaptic, just for sentimental reasons ;-) 

• Missing applications

After removing GIMP from the default install in Maverick, there's no Synaptic Package Manager and Pitivi video editor. Nonetheless, still very much supported by Ubuntu.

• Miscellaneous: Default font all across is the Ubuntu font. Looks a little weird on the terminal though. The default set of wallpapers are amazing, except for the Oneiric one.

• Installation took about 7 minutes and that is still the best in Industry!

• Multitouch support still there; One point touch is left click, Two point touch is right click and the accelerometer simulation kind of an effect with the track pad are still thriving.

• Booting takes about 10-12 seconds on a fresh install; Will see if it slows down as Natty did when I had loaded with hundreds of startup applications. 

 Of all the current OS'es, Oneiric, if not for everything, just for its aesthetics takes a far leap ahead!

Wavelab with GNU Octave

GNU Octave is the Free Software used for mathematical computation. With an extensive support for versatile library functions, and code compatibility with Matlab, GNU Octave is a sweet treat to every engineer and researcher.

Apart from the officially supported libraries and application toolboxes, GNU Octave also has abundant support and addons from extraneous efforts.

The Signal processing toolboxes, are exhaustive enough and consist of speech processing, image processing and video processing functionalities, which provide a common, stable and evolving platform for any of these domain specific applications.


Taking signal processing to the next level, when one is looking for some advanced signal processing functions, rendezvous with Wavelet Transforms is assured.


While GNU Octave does not officially, as yet , support a Wavelet Transform toolbox, the Wavelab toolbox from the Stanford University project works like a charm. With this extensive background to the toolbox itself, I present the procedure for incorporating this Wavelab toolbox with GNU Octave.

• Download the Wavelab toolbox  http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~wavelab/Wavelab_850/WAVELAB850.ZIP

• Unzip the archive; A folder Wavelab850 will be created with the contents of the toolbox

• Create a directory /usr/toolbox to dump the Wavelab toolbox

sudo mkdir /usr/toolbox

• Copy the unzipped contents to the location /usr/toolbox 

sudo cp -r Wavelab850 /usr/toolbox

• To link the Wavelab library to GNU Octave, open the GNU Octave interpreter in the GNU/Linux terminal, and add the path of the previously added Wavelab850 directory, so that GNU Octave can fetch the Wavelab library files when the function call is made 

octave:2> addpath /usr/toolbox/Wavelab850

• Now, invoke the functions from Wavelab by running the Wavelab file WavePath.m in the octave terminal, by just typing WavePath in the interpreter.

octave:2> WavePath

• If the WaveLab has been invoked a welcome message as shown below would appear  

• Now all the amazing Wavelab functions are available in GNU Octave! 

• To take a stroll into WaveLab, type WTBrowser. "Chapter 2 Fourier Kingdom" is something every science enthusiast must look into and understand! 

• Further one particluar example code I was deeply impressed with is the 2-D analysis of synthetic objects ( like images). Type in toon0231 in the interpreter to have some pleasing revelations of Wavelet Transforms

octave:2> toon0231

 Happy Hacking, Happy Learning !
PS: In subsequent posts I will try to regress and give some more fundamental features of GNU Octave. 

i-freesoftware: My eulogy to Steve Jobs

Well, it might sound abusive to add the i-tag to Free Software, I suppose.

After the demise of Steve Jobs, and the initial outpour of adulation of Steve Jobs and few trickles of criticism, I am late in getting this post up.


Steve Jobs' demise, personally to me has been the loss of an individual who showed people how to fight the odds. Like the many of you, even I too was deeply moved and inspired by his Stanford Speech. There is no denying that he was a man to look up to, and learn from at various levels.

But, when it comes to the perception of the entreprenuer Steve Jobs, there lies a deep disdain for some really important reasons I shall try to putforth in this post.

Steve Jobs: The Entreprenuer is not someone I would really be missing (I wrote this before RMS could say something on these lines); Given the fact that I am at awe with the aesthetics embedded in sleek pieces of Apple hardware, the point of contention is Steve Jobs being the grandest mascot of "Closed, Proprietary Technology" and  in this process Jobs has driven his customers into the most dreadful of the proprietary shackles.

Before a couple of years, while I was in an offline discussion with Eben Moglen, he had expressed serious bitterness towards Steve Jobs and Apple. I later realized it was about the BSD code of the UNIX which all Apple products embed, and also of the initial free software projects which today reside behind Apple's closed doors. And today, carrying on with that legacy, there is virtually nothing that ain't super proprietary and really closed when it comes to Apple.

Further, Apple products apart from being the zenith of closed source software, they are also the certain baton holders of highly closed hardware, and now into the Digital Restricted Media realms, ultimately rendering the users with zero freedom.


And as the brain behind most of the Apple decisions, these are certain moves by Steve Jobs which have made the technological world a really bad place! It might be good for technology, it certainly is not for people!

Although a person who showed courage in battling his life through odds will be missed, a ruthless entrepreneuer and mascot of unfreedom will certainly become oblivous.

People, and their freedom first, is what we believe in the Free Software Movement. 

Software Freedom Day-2011 @ BMSIT

Software Freedom Day 2008 is when I got introduced to the movement and the awesome community attached to the Free Software. Ever since then, Free Software has been a revelatory experience on a daily basis.

The philosophy of learning, sharing and growing together has been manifesting itself regularly with opportunities of interacting with numerous other like minded individuals.

Free Software Movement Karnataka has been involved in propagating Free Software in various educational institutions. With regular efforts BMSIT in Bangalore will become a prospective Free Software hub.

And SFD, every year is something we look forward to and this year's celebration in BMSIT would undoubtedly be one of the most memorable Free Software meet ups.

This celebration comprised of the ritual of cutting a yummy chocolate cake and sharing the 'joy of freedom'. With this setting the premise I tried to invoke some background to the necessity of freedom in software using Eben Moglen's ideas of "Mathematics as property", which I think conveyed to some extent the need of freedom in software.

It was followed by a basic introduction to Python: The programming language by a couple of students from the college. We were trying to project the scalability and usability of Python.

It was followed by a demonstration of a signal processor based wrist watch by Texas Instruments, interfaced with Ubuntu executing python scripts and some aspects of the features that could be extended by writing simple scripts.




I demonstrated the 3-D module in python mayavi and the tool's super capabilities of simulating 3-dimensional surfaces and volumes. There was also a demonstration of solving second order ordinary differential equations using python, which was hopefully of some use to the students gathered there.

In all, this SFD was eventful in Bangalore, while the celebration at BMSIT was only one of the numerous other sessions we had planned to conduct.


Free Software is the future,
The future is ours.