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by Kulbir Saini on Adobe, Hardware, Laptop, Linux, News

Humour: Ubuntu is Costlier than Microsoft Windows XP

Dell started selling their new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 series yesterday as informed by slashdot article. Lately I have been looking for a mobile solution which should be easy to carry and have enough computing power to meet my expectation. I liked the SSD concept replacing the mechanical hard disk. I just moved over to Dell website and tried configuring one for myself (go here to configure them yourself). I am an open source addict but I am not an Ubuntu fan but still going with ubuntu sounds better than going with M$ stuff. So, started configuring the Ubuntu machine and pushed everything (main memory, hard disk and other components) to maximum. A few minutes later I realized that the Ubuntu model’s price is more than the equivalent config with M$ Windows.

Below is a table comparing Windows XP and Ubuntu model of Dell Inspiron Mini 9 series. The differences are highlighted in red color.

Ubuntu 8.04
Microsoft Windows XP Home Premium
$494
$479
My Components
Obsidian Black
Obsidian Black
Mini OS powered by Ubuntu 8.04
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
1GB DDR2 at 533MHz
1GB DDR2 at 533MHz
16GB Solid State Drive
16GB Solid State Drive
Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 capability
Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 capability
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
My Service
1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service
1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service
Also Includes
Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache) Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600)
Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
32WHr Battery (4 cell)
32WHr Battery (4 cell)
Base LCD Assembly
Base LCD Assembly
Base LCD Assembly in Black
Base LCD Assembly in Black
No Installation
No Installation
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1, English
McAfee SecurityCenter 30-day Trial
Microsoft Works 9 DOES NOT INCLUDE MS WORD
No ISP requested

According to the above table Ubuntu alone is costlier than Genuine Microsoft Windows XP Home Premium + Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1 English + McAfee SecurityCenter 30-day Trial + Microsoft Works 9 (MS Word Excluded). I am not sure if Dell is trying to promote Microsoft by selling Windows XP model at a lower price or they are generating more revenues for Ubuntu by selling it at a higher price or they are just fooling the customers. Below are the picture proofs if Dell changes the prices.

Inspiron Ubuntu

Inspiron Windows

 
by Kulbir Saini on Eclipse, Linux, News

Info: Eclipse DemoCamps 2008 – Ganymede Edition Hyderabad

About the event from Eclipsepedia,

Eclipse is releasing version 3.4 (Ganymede) on 25th June 2008. To mark the occasion, the Eclipse foundation is organizing a series of Democamps around the world. The Hyderabad edition is organized by hyd-eclipse.org (a Hysea initiative). We will discuss the new features and projects in the Ganymede release, and also present a few case studies of some interesting usecases of Eclipse. The event will conclude with a networking of the Eclipse developers’ community in Hyderabad.

I happened to attend the camp with a lot of my friends. Organisers were overwhelmed by the turnout. More than 100 people (mostly from industry) attended the camp and the place was almost overcrowded. The idea was to educate the newbies about the new features in version 3.4 and showcase some demos for enterprise software development and also to bring the eclipse developers at a common platform.

The camp started with a session about the new features in Ganymede version. Kiran Kumar from Progress Software talked about the new features like improved regular expression support, changes in update manager, enhancements in PDE etc. Following this, Saurav from Pramati Technologies talked about the WTP new features in this version mainly with respect to JavaScript and other Java improvements. Finally Ravi Sankar from Progress Software concluded with Xpand demo.

All in all, it was a good event which provided a bit of exposure to the developments going on in and around Hyderabad. Thanks Hysea, Progress and Pramati for organizing the wonderful event 😀

 
by Kulbir Saini on Extensions, Firefox, Fonts, News

Info: Padma Version 0.4.13 Released

From Padma’s official website,

Padma is a system for transforming Indic text between various public and proprietary formats. This extension applies the technology to Mozilla based applications. Padma is available as an extension for Firefox, Thunderbird, Netscape, Mozilla suite and SeaMonkey platforms. Padma currently supports Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali, and Gurmukhi scripts

This particular version includes support for Marathi TrueType Font – Shree-Dev-0714, which I wrote last summer. I am happy that it is finally Padma core. A big credit goes to Radhika Thammishetty and Harshita Vani for guiding and helping me out in writing the mappings.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Bug, News, Yum

Info: Yum Bug Day on May 30

Hey all yum lovers,

We (the yum people) are organising Yum Bug Day on May 30, 2008. We try to kill as much bugs as possible. For a list of bugs, check Yum Bugs and Yum-Utils Bugs. If you think you can fix, provide info about one or more or you have any suggestions, just drop in #yum on freenode.net or shoot a mail at yum-devel.

In Seth’s words,

Yum Bug Day!
It’s exciting! It’s Fun! You get to tell people things like: Already
fixed, WONTFIX, CANTFIX, NOTABUG, and ‘ooo yah, that’s pretty broken’.

So, what are you waiting for?? 😛

 
by Kulbir Saini on Hardware, Motherboard, News, Wireless

Info: Motherboard with Embedded Linux

A dull Sunday as usual. Woke up at 12:01pm and after finishing all startup jobs, came to lab at 1:00 pm. As usual, had nothing to do. Just went to slashdot to have some snacks. And what I saw over there was more than a surprise. OMG what the hell is going on. ASUS has come up with a new motherboard with embedded Linux. At first, I thought that guyz at slashdot has gone mad and just writing anything to have some news. But when I read the complete story and the review at Phoronix, it sounded something really geeky. They have embedded a Linux environment deep into the motherboard.

Asus is shipping this P5E3 deluxe motherboard with a feature called Asus Express Gate powered by SplashTop. The wonderful thing is that you can now boot into a basic Linux environment in just 7-8 seconds. Unbelievable !!! This basic Linux has a stripped down web-browser called FireFox 2.0 ( do we have any alternatives 😛 ) and skype. So, you can just go over the internet in a few seconds.

Much more surprising is onboard Asus WiFi-AP @n (802.11n wireless, undoubtedly the fastest wireless till date). So, you can browse at 300mbps on wireless ( of course if the infrastructure is 802.11n). And wifi card works with embedded Linux.

The BIOS browsing is no more keyboard based. It comes with a page which you can browse with your mouse. The embedded Linux is not so lame as it may sound. It has a variety of configuration utilities which includes network configuration, screen resolution, volume control, language selection and much more.

The only bad thing is the price. It is currently priced at US $360, which is very costly for having that stripped down Linux. But with time price will certainly go down and we will hopefully see new innovations for that embedded Linux. Hope to have a terminal over there soon 😀 and it’ll be fun if we can have beryl as well 😛

Wonderful innovation 😉

PS : No internet in my lab today 🙁