My Experience with VirtualBox

Before a year I first encountered Virtualbox, It was easy to setup and use. Before virtual box I have tried Qemu and VMware. I started loving virtual box, from then on it became my favorite Virtualization software. Last week I was build Linux from source (LFS) in Virtualbox, It went well in the beginning.

When I was building Linux from source I stored at-least 15 snapshots to restore if something went wrong and It took me two days of continuous building to reach a point where I am close to finish. I took a break after saving snapshot. To my surprise I could not restore from the snapshot. I lost two days of work due to a bug in Virtualbox 3. Do not rely on snapshots stored in Virtualbox 3, it is bugggy!!
Now I have to start over and build my linux from scratch.

DYI Dropbox service

I have used Dropbox over a year and its a really good product. If you want a similar service within your network you can do it with GIT and rsync in Linux. Following article is an interesting read and I will try it at my home network!!

Link:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429573

Adobe Flex - Behind the scenes

I think you will enjoy these videos as much as I did!

Video of the day: Ubuntu Linux

Presentation made by Mark shuttleworth:

Linux Wallpapers

Following links take you to some of the best Linux wallpapers.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ubuntu+wallpaper&m=text
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=linux+wallpaper&page=2
http://www.linuxwallpapers.org/linux-wallpapers.htm

Flickr has thousands of good wallpaper and its safe to download from there. When I tried to download wallpapers by googling I ended up in downloading spyware and viruses. So the above links are the safe way to get good wallpapers and decorate our desktop!

Silverlight Training

Microsoft Silverlight is a browser plugin to run animation, vector graphics and audio-video playback. Lynda is offering a free training on SilverLight. You can find the training link here.

Happy New year 2008!!

Wish you Happy New Year 2008 and I wish you success in all your endeavorers!!!

Yahoo Picks is down

Yahoo Picks will be down after 12 years and here is the official announcement. I was a big fan of Yahoo picks few years back and did not visit the site for the past few years. Today Digg, Reddit and many other blogs are far better than Yahoo Picks. Bye bye Yahoo Picks!

Wannabe Ultra Geek !!

I have been exploring and experimenting with Linux for a while now. When I started as a newbie I was looking for the best distro which suited all my needs. I tried out at least 20 distros before deciding my favorite one's. I don't think one distro can solve all my needs. So depending on the situation I use one of the following distros. The distros which I personally liked are:

• Knoppix
• OpenSuse
• Slax
• LFS

Each distro has some unique strength over others. For example,

• Knoppix comes with a rich set of softwares(7 GB!) and out of the box hardware support. This contains almost all softwares which I need from a Linux distro.
• As a long time windows(7+ years) user I felt comfortable with OpenSuse. In my opinion this is the best distro for windows users. I use OpenSuse 10.3 at home.
  
• Slax is a small and flexible distro. Flexible meaning, I can quickly assemble my own distro without knowing any internals of this distro. With MySlax creator I was able to choose the modules and assemble my own distro in no time.
  
• Linux From Scratch(LFS) is not exactly a distro, but I would like to call it a distro. This is for Ultra geeks who want to build their own distro from scratch.

I am not Anti-Windows and having used windows for over 7 years, I should admit that I am really bored of Windows OS. Even though Linux is being widely used by non-geek users, I personally believe that Linux is for geeks. The reason why Linux is for geeks is: We can explore the internals of the OS and experiment with it, which makes Linux more interesting.


Linux from scratch is for ultra geeks who want to build their own distro from source code. In the beginning, It requires many days to build a complete distro(i.e. LFS + BLFS) and it is very challenging to build from source. Even geek's find it very challenging and thats why I called LFS as a distro for Ultra geeks.

With every challenge lies an opportunity, and LFS is not an exception. Even though building LFS from source is challenging for a geek, the opportunity to learn the internals of the OS and building our own distro is rewarding. I am really excited about LFS and planning to build Linux from source. Let me get my hands dirty with LFS and let you know when I become Ultra geek!