Holla…

My first post typed in from Ubuntu with it hooked to the net!!!

Just managed to configure the Broadband connection in Ubuntu!! Am on cloud nine, given the fact that I’d been struggling in vain for the past few months to get a few Linux flavours hooked on to the net. Believe me, There couldn’t be anything else that’s as simple as this!!

Here’s the trick ( if at all it could be called that!) for those novices ( obviously like me! ) who haven’t yet had luck configuring their systems.

1> Switch off your modem

2>Open the Network settings Dialog box ( System> Administration> Network)

3>Select ‘Wired Connection’ and click on the Properties.

4> In the ‘Connection Settings’ Menu select ‘Static IP ‘ type in the following values and save:

IP Address : 192.168.1.2

/* Assigning the Ethernet Card an IP different from that of the modem*/

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

/* No idea why this value is always this */

Gateway address: 192.168.1.1

/* The Modem is being made the default gateway*/

5>Switch on the Modem and wait for a few minutes for the values to get recorded.

6>In the Terminal ( Applications>Accessories> Terminal) type ‘sudo pppoeconf’

6>A window pops with a blue screen notifying that an ethernet device has been found. Just follow the on screen instructions till you reach the screen which asks you for your BSNL UID and PASS. Ping in the values (after deleting the text Username from the line) and you’re done!!

I’ve still got to figure out how to disconnect from the n/w though that shouldn’t be a big issue…..

[Update: 22-Oct-09]

Jusr type the following commands in the terminal:

sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

sudo route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0

This could also do the trick.

The OSS and Red Hat community have launched their latest OS. Parting from their age old nomenclature, they now prefer to call it Fedora 7 and not Fedora Core 7. It’s available for download here.

For those of you people with access to snail paced connectivity to the internet, there’s a provision to request for a free DVD. The Community releases only 200 free DVD’s a month in a given region. So if you’re pretty much interested in having a DVD for yourself, act fast here.The request form purportedly, is going to be available only at around 1pm July 2nd PST, so that’s around 1:30 am July 3rd IST.

Unlike other free distributions, the package will be posted to your address from India, so it should reach you in a couple of days . Eagerly looking forward to lay my hands on it !

I’ve tried installing almost all flavours of Linux on my old system. Starting from Red Hat and going all the way till Ubuntu. Each installation came along with its appended troubles, thanks to my ignorance then. One main constriction I had was the hardware configuration of my machine. It was a pentium celeron running on 128mb Ram and a 20Gb hard disk. I had several issues with the mouse and configuring my internet connection. With passage of days I realised my mouse was designed to work with windows and finding device drivers for it in Linux was a big time pain. On the whole I had to restrain myself to low end operating systems.

Last week I upgraded my Hardware config. From then, installing Linux has never been a problem. Installation gets done extremely fast but for a few glitches here and there. Tried installing Solaris 10 but for some reason the video device wasn’t identified (I’m still hooked with a 14” LG monitor ) and I had quite a problem running a graphic installation. Realising there was no point going in for a non graphical interface setup , I put in bay the Solaris installation. I had a FC4 DVD and I tried installing that . You wont believe me! The whole installation got done in just over 10 minutes!  :-) The main reason for installing FC4 was that I direly needed a net connection in the OS and my ISP gives me a provision for installation only though the Red hat Packet Manager ( RPM ) setup. Before I tried out the FC4 I forked in the Ubuntu 7.04 CD and tried booting from the Live CD to partition my HDD using the in built GParted software. But for some apparent reason the Live CD never booted and always led to the command prompt. Frustrated, I gave up and installed FC4 without properly partitioning the HDD.

A few days later with a bit of googling I found that Ubuntut 7.04 had a bug that prevents it from booting on a SATA hard disk. They was a small fix up for that and once done, the setup was done with at lightening speed! Just six minutes on the clock!  Feisty Fawn has a Desktop Effects feature that can be enabled once you log in.  You need to see to believe it! Once this feature is enabled  the desktop gives you a wobbling sort of effect. There’s also this extremely cool Cube effect which helps you in organizing your workspace into four relative graphically independent desktops. The desktop swirls to the correspondin desktop on your command! All this for a single CD Distro!!! Just one backdrop of this distro is that you need to have an active net connection to download the other softwares that you may need to accentuate its working…But for that Ubuntu 7.04 rocks!!