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Foxit Reader for Ubuntu

June 8th, 2009
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The default document viewer in Ubuntu, eVince, is a nice application with fast loading times. It’s pdf rendering is pretty good too, and supports Full Screen as well as automatic scrolling. But eVince is not all that steady with all types of pdf documents. For the documents involving high resolution graphics, Images, forms etc, eVince tends to become sluggish and some times taking ages to load the document. For documents like these, we need to use an alternate pdf reader, and that’s where FoxitReader comes to play.

FoxitReader is a famous pdf viewer, most popular with Windows users. But it also has a linux native version (Not a ported version using Wine or something else), which is as fast as it’s windows version and contains all the basic features. The download page has links to .bz2, .deb and .rpm packages.

Go to here, and click on the “More Download” link in the Learn more column of the linux download table, and you can see the links for downloading the packages.

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Running Aptana Studio on Ubuntu Jaunty

May 14th, 2009
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In order to run Aptana on Ubuntu without installing Firefox 2 or uninstalling Firefox 3, you have to install the package xulrunner from the default repositories.

sudo apt-get xulrunner

This will install XUL Runner v1.8, without which Aptana cannot run. Now download Aptana and extract it to your home directory. Open the aptana directory and create a new file, rename it as runaptana.sh. Paste the following into that file:

#!/bin/sh
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/xulrunner
if [ $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
else
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME
fi
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH
/home/ashok/AptanaStudio/aptana/AptanaStudio

The above startup script not only allows to run Aptana, but it also fixes the issues of “Embedded browser not available” and “JVM Terminated”.

Aptana Studio is a very good IDE for PHP with it’s debugging capabilities. I recommend it for anyone who is looking for a good php debugger on linux. For simple coding, it might be an overkill and you may use a simple php editor, but if you do a lot of application development, Aptana’s the way to go! :-)

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GMail got Gears!

March 21st, 2009
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Hurray! Yippee!! Wow!!! Cool!!!! Please, Please, let this be for real!! Oh My Gosh!!! It’s working!!!! –Speechless for few moments–

This morning when I logged into my GMail, There was a bright yellow notification on the top left corner saying “New Stuff in Labs”. When I opened the page, I was still thinking that there will be the usual small modifications, and I won’t be finding anything Big (As is the case whenever I check New Stuff in Labs link, sometimes I didn’t even bother to check that link because I know there wouldn’t be anything great there). But today was different. The GMail developers sent me a message to not to take their laboratory so lightly. I cheked out the first three items (Previews, Undo Send, Tasks Mobile) without any emotions. The fourth one made me cry out loud (Some of them listed in the beginning of this post).

I quickly enabled Gears support and entered the offline mode. The initial sync took some time, but after that It was Awesome!!! Never was I so delighted with a new feature of an application in my life till now. Wow, GMail works offline… And that too, seamlessly. Without any effort from user. When I’m online, it automatically syncs, When I’m offline, it gets switched to offline automatically… Not like the Google Reader which requires specific clicking of the offline button and online button for synchronization.

After the initial sync, GMail was always quick and fast in synchronizing. Offline mode, despite some featurs disabled (attachments etc), is enough for my routine use. Even though I won’t replace my Evolution Desktop Mail client (since it gives me the option to right click a file and send as attachment to email), the offline capabilities of GMail will push Evolution to a second preference in regular usage.

Google Reader folks, please get the google reader sync as seamless as the gmail sync…. It’s really slow, and not being automatic is a pain since in my area, Wi-Fi is like on-and-off. I can’t tell when I’m connected and when I won’t be. Please, make the Google Reader Sync automatic.

Thanks a zillion guys @ GMail/Gears team. You made my day! :-)

Ashok TT - Reviews , , , ,

Indian Railways Availability Calendar

February 11th, 2009
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Cleartrip.com, One of the leading online travel agents in India, has introduced an web application to check seats availability for trains operated under Indian Railways. Cleartrip Train Calendar provides an indication of availability for a range of dates across trains, so you can find the best date and train to travel. Cleartrip Train Calendar is a product of Cleartrip Research and is still in an early stage of development. The website says it may behave unexpectedly at times, but during my experimentation with the tool, it performed fairly well without any glitches.

The UI is as pleasant as an early morning at sunrise. Not only does it show the list of trains and availability, clicking on the train name pops up the train route, the stations that’ll be covered and the expected timings. It even provides a Map view using Google Maps. The whole UI is Ajax powered, and is extremely fast. This tool is definitely much better than what’s been provided at IRCTC website, the official website for Indian railway reservation. This is a wonderful app, Kudos to you guys @ Cleartrip.com.

Link to the Calendar

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Fedora vs. Ubuntu

February 6th, 2009
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As I’ve said in my previous post, while switching to Linux, I used two popular distributions to evaluate before I switched. One was the Fedora from Red Hat and the other was Ubuntu from Canonical. There are a number of posts on web on comparisions between these two distributions, some of them very comprehensive touching all aspects of an operating system, and the others are personal experiences of various people on how much the distros are in alignment with their personal preferences. This post falls into the latter category.

1. Setup:

Both the distros have clean & uncluttered installation routines. Fedora gave me advanced options to select/de-select packages to install where as Ubuntu was like a one-install-package-fits-all which I didn’t like, but given the focus of Ubuntu that it’s part is to make installation easy for noob, I’m okey with it. Ubuntu allows to add packages from CD after the installation is complete and booted into the OS.

The installation package for Ubuntu is quite small, and you need a network connection immediately to download lots of extra s depending on your requirements. The installation package of Fedora is much larger with far more options to choose from on the DVD.

2. Installations:

Fedora uses RPM packages, and handles them through a package manager. I couldn’t work with package manager to install most of RPMs I’ve downloaded from net, The package manager seems like hanged  and felt less responsive. I had to use the terminal to install them from command line. I didn’t like that. Package downloading is through “yum”, it’s good, but not that user friendly.

Ubuntu uses DEB packages, and handles them through Synaptic package manager. This has a nice GUI, can see what’s going on (Terminal button) during the installation, and feels more responsive. Package downloading is through “apt-get”, and we can handle that using a GUI (Add/Remove Programs) which I liked a lot.

3. Stuff:

Both Ubuntu & Fedora doesn’t provide proprietary stuff like mp3 codecs out of the box - we have to download them. Ubuntu scores here with it’s easy to use interfaces to find and install things. The repository concept in Ubuntu is matured than Fedora. Fedora wasn’t able to handle some of my queries for downloading proprietary stuff.

4. Hardware Detection:

Both the distros score well in hardware detection, Fedora scoring more. Fedora detected my WebCam and Wireless  Adapter without any extra effort, where as in Ubuntu, I had to use my Windows drivers for Wireless and tweak/update packages for webcam to work. Other than this, both the distros ran fine on my hardware. One more area where Fedora scores is that when ever I connect an LCD Overhead projector to my laptop, I had to logoff and login again in Ubuntu where as Fedora seamlessly switches the display to the projector. A very major drawback for Ubuntu as per me.

5. Stability & Speed:

Both the distros were rock solid in terms of stability. No point in comparing them in this issue. Speed depends on the number of packages you install, so the more you install, both of the distros become slow.

6. Security:

Biggest downside for Ubuntu as there is no built in firewall. But downloading and setting up one was damn easy, so no issues as per me. Being Linux, both of them are secure agaist viruses and worms.

7. Simplicity:

Ubuntu’s philosophy: give the user what they need, no more unless they want to add that themselves. I liked that. Some people say this makes Ubuntu is for n00bs, No, Not necessarily so. Installing things are simple in Ubuntu than in Fedora.

Apart from these, somehow Ubuntu is connecting in some sort I can’t explain, but I feel easy using Ubuntu than Fedora. May be Fedora making me to use the command line a lot, search a lot for things to install, installing things using package manager isn’t a breeze, the regular popup warnings from SELinux blocking apps from running, and can’t recall what else. It’s a complete misconception that Ubuntu is for n00bs. Just because a distro is simple to install and use and doesn’t come with all bells and whistles, it can’t be called as a distro for newbies. Ubuntu can handle things which any geek want to do on a Linux box.

Disclaimer: All these are my personal opinions, I’m not flaming any distro nor am I waging a distro war. If you are a Fedora fan, I do know that it’s a solid, stable and secure distro. It just somehow doesn’t connect to me :-)

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