[ilugd] Reminder: FOSS meetup tomorrow
Just a friendly reminder that we're having a FOSS meetup of folks around NCR tomorrow at Vivekananda International Foundation. All details here: http://lug-iitd.posterous.com/delhi-ncr-foss-geek-meetup-on-26-dec-2010 Hope to see lots of list folks! Pratul -- dum vivimus, vivamus pratul == lut4rp http://pratul.in ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] [...@iitd:10950] [Tip] Access your accounts(Gmail/Facebook.. etc., )as diff users on the same web browser
Multiple account login as Google provides, is very unstable and incomplete. When I use gmail account as well as Google apps account, it breaks a lot. They will get it fixed and fully integrated with other Google services in future, but for now, I wont go for it. FireFox profile switching is great, and as far as I know, it wont mess anything since it creates different container for sessions and cookies for each profile. On 24-Dec-2010 2:49 PM, Sagar Belure sagar.bel...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Tha.Suresh jemenisur...@gmail.com wrote: Multiple sign is possible in gmail from quite a long back. I agree. But what about other sites, like banking/social network sites.!!! Yup. That was just FYI. Also, information provided by you was nice. Appreciate it. -- Thanks, Sagar Belure ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Narendra Sisodiya naren...@narendrasisodiya.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Rakesh Kumar kumar3...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, One of my friend was using ubuntu 10.04. Today she tried to update my observation rule number one 1) never upgrade Ubuntu , always reinstall.. Stupid rule. I have been upgrading ubuntu since ages on mine and my sister's PC since ages without any problem that I didn't manage to solve. Leave reinstalls to windows noobs. And what's with the redundancy in numbering? -- With Regards, Mehul Ved ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Mehul Ved mehul.n@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Narendra Sisodiya naren...@narendrasisodiya.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Rakesh Kumar kumar3...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, One of my friend was using ubuntu 10.04. Today she tried to update my observation rule number one 1) never upgrade Ubuntu , always reinstall.. Stupid rule. I repeat - golden rule, follow it or get trouble.. http://www.google.co.in/search?q=ubuntu+upgrade+10.04+to+10.10+failed Google says - 1,96,000 Results. , http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=enq=ubuntu+%2B+upgrade+%2B+failed Google says - 15,00,000 Results I guess u are lucky,,, I have been upgrading ubuntu since ages on mine and my sister's PC since ages without any problem that I didn't manage to solve. I am talking about normal user and not sysadmin type of guys (like me ) who can handle problems Leave reinstalls to windows noobs. And what's with the redundancy in numbering? -- With Regards, Mehul Ved -- ┌─┐ │Narendra Sisodiya │http://narendrasisodiya.com └─┘ ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
Can I buy a Dell laptop without the Windows Operating System so that i can cut cost on that? Also it is unfare to forcefully sell windows to customer who are unware of the choices. Some step similar to European Union in case of web browser choice(http://mynetx.net/#!/2042/eu-settles-web-browser-arguement-with-microsoft ) should be taken. ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 11:04 PM, subodh subodh.rohi...@gmail.com wrote:
Can I buy a Dell laptop without the Windows Operating System so that i can
cut cost on that?
Also it is unfare to forcefully sell windows to customer who are unware of
the choices. Some step similar to European Union in case of web browser
choice(
http://mynetx.net/#!/2042/eu-settles-web-browser-arguement-with-microsoft)
should be taken.
This can be tried.. but this need a good amount of effort and legal work. we
may need to hire legal services .
This if we able to take Windows refund then it will be a small revolution
in nehru place in the content of FOSS.. {infact india}
I am willing to provide any help you need in this case !
Niyam once discussed this kind of things with me but we never got time to
meet each other after that interaction.
--
┌─┐
│Narendra Sisodiya
│http://narendrasisodiya.com
└─┘
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Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
I bought a Dell two years back with FreeDOS from Nehru Place showroom only. I don't know if they still sell those systems there, but you can surely contact them via their website to enquire about this. I had also called them up at their Bangalore office and they had agreed to send me a FreeDOS system from there, after I pay them with a credit card, which I did not have at that time, so I just went to Nehru Place. Hope that helps. -- Regards Chirag Anand Blog: http://techfreaks4u.com/blog/?author=16 anything weird is worth a try... ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Narendra Sisodiya naren...@narendrasisodiya.com wrote: I am talking about normal user and not sysadmin type of guys (like me ) who can handle problems Most of the users who follow the package manager do not run into problems. Google search results do not suggest much. Many of the users simply do not read the upgrade instructions properly and even then it works fine for most people. Do you have a study of the problems experienced to justify the statement? Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
Do you have a study of the problems experienced to justify the statement? Problem 1 : think of those who use i945 and radeon chipset and upgraded to 10.10 from 10.04 on 10/10/10 .Although Ubuntu know about this bug in advance but that was not a part of so called , upgrade notes . Ref : http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com/msg09202.html Ref : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libdrm/+bug/619663 -- With Regards, Gaurav Paliwal http://gauravpaliwal.com ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 11:04 PM, subodh subodh.rohi...@gmail.com wrote: Can I buy a Dell laptop without the Windows Operating System so that i can cut cost on that? It's true that you can buy Dell without Windows as they do offer some models with Ubuntu installed ( http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=usl=encs=19 ). But the fact is those models are always kept low in hardware features compared to what they offer (or what the norm is) in their mainstream product line. My friend Jaseem had recently tried to buy a Dell Studio system without Windows though unsuccessfully. They did not agree even to not put the Windows 7 sticker on the palm rest. Out of dire need, he bought the system, formatted it to install Ubuntu and pasted some other sticker over Windows 7 sticker. As Narendra has rightly pointed out, it involves a complex legal procedure and time to get it done as was discussed in this list some months (may be over 12) back. -- Kartik Singhal BTech CSE Student, NIT Calicut http://www.google.com/profiles/kartiksinghal ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] How bios detects hard drive
On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Ankit Chaturvedi ankit.chaturv...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 10:28 PM, Rajveer Singh torajveersi...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Chirag Anand anand.chi...@gmail.com wrote: On Dec 22 10:43PM, Rajveer Singh wrote: Hello Guys, I've a confusion related to hard drive detection process by system BIOS. This question may sound strange to some of you but I'll appreciate if I can get any link or lead to explore it further. As all of us know, to detect hardrive, we must need a suitable driver for hard disk in kernel. When we buy a new hard drive, if it's driver is not in the kernel, it doesn't detect but system BIOS can read it's MBR. So I'm just wondering, What machenism or techniques are used by BIOS so it doesn't require any additional drivers to detect hard drives. Talking about programming, the BIOS first reads the 1 sector of any hard disk by a BIOS interrupt 0x80 and tries to locate the byte 0xAA55 at the 512th byte, which confirms that the starting 512 bytes are bootable code. So, if your hard disk is detected inside the BIOS, I think it will be able to do the above procedure. After the kernel is loaded, the generic drivers for IDE/SATA etc. should do the needful. According to me, there is no need for drivers at the BIOS level, they are only required while/after the kernel is loaded. Thanks guys for your quick responses, Yes, I agree, drivers for disk(IDE/SATA/SCSI/SAS chipsets, thanks to Mahesh for correcting me) are required by kernel not by BIOS but I'm wondering, why BIOS doesn't need drivers to access it. What special techniques are used in BIOS, so it can detect disks without it's drivers. If it's true, why kernel can not use the same technique to detect the new disks. BIOS is not a singular entity, there are several BIOS' on any system. The motherboard bios is the master bios however. Here is a quick run down at how BIOS detects and loads OS from disk: 1. On start, the processor looks at FFF0h location for code to execute. But since there is no code yet, this location is usually the start of mapped m/b bios. 2. After POST, the m/b bios issues an Interrupt 09h which inits the IDE/SATA controller. This init is different from driver loading as it does not support UDMA modes, caching or paged r/w. In this restricted mode the drive is only able to access specific tracks and sectors. 3. After this, bios searches for other h/w rom's that may be needed to init the devices. For example, video bios is located at C000h, floppy controller at 7C00h and IDE hdd at C8000h. These addresses are reserved and hard-mapped by devices. Once it discovers all the bios' the main bios executes all of them and inits the devices. So now our hdd has been initialised and is ready to read write (in restricted mode, only 16bit txfers), and so is the video controller ready to display in a text only mode. 4. Next Int 19h is issued which is an interrupt for Bootstrap Loader. This call searches for a bootable MBR in the order specified in bios settings. MBR in hdd is always at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1. This is where it looks for 0xAA55 pattern to detect if it is loadable or not. If it is, it is loaded into location 0x7C00h and then executed from there. Remember that once the IDE drivers are loaded the ide controller as well as hdd itself is reset and put to udma mode for faster transfers. But since the mbr is in ram, it can still be executed to load the initial kernel or ntldr or whatever bootstrap you are using. Hope this helps. Thank you so much, Ankit and all of you who have shared so valuable information here. By going through the above points, I understood that kernel uses the drivers which gives features like udma, pagged r/w, caching etc. whereas the bios way to access the disk is restricted to specific track and sectors. So if we don't require these features like udma, pagged r/w, caching etc. and only needed the restricted access to specific track and sectors then kernel may detect the new disk(SATA/ATA/SCSI/SAS etc) the same way as the bios without specific drivers. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you all guys for helping me to overcome this doubt. Regards, Rajveer Singh ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 12:12 AM, Narendra Sisodiya wrote:
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 11:04 PM, subodh wrote:
Can I buy a Dell laptop without the Windows Operating System so
that i can cut cost on that?
As Kartik pointed out: most models without Windows preinstalled are
likely to be underpowered.
Also it is unfare to forcefully sell windows to customer who are
unware of the choices.
There is not force involved. Ignorance is no excuse for getting
fleeced. And you will find that unfair does not imply illegal.
Some step similar to European Union in case of web browser choice(
http://mynetx.net/#!/2042/eu-settles-web-browser-arguement-with-microsoft)
should be taken.
This can be tried.. but this need a good amount of effort and legal
work. we may need to hire legal services . This if we able to take
Windows refund then it will be a small revolution in nehru place
in the content of FOSS.. {infact india} I am willing to provide any
help you need in this case !
I tried getting a refund about two years ago. Even spoke to a couple
of lawyers but few understand the issue. Majority of my efforts were
meant to make Lenovo see my point (which, of course, they did not
see.) I did not try filing a simple complaint to a consumer court
which I think I should have. There was a suggestion to publish the
story but was warned that most publications will not do so (including
LFY) for various reasons.
Here are some suggestions to make your case air-tight. Document
everything: video tape box opening, first boot, license text and your
rejection of it (if you choose to do so ;-). Try and have a couple of
witnesses around while you do it. State clearly why you think you
should get the refund, send refund request to the vendor with evidence
of your disagreement with license requesting an acknowledgement, wait
for some reasonable period. Hopefully you get a favorable response or
at the very least an acknowledgment that they received your
request. File a complaint in consumer court with all the evidence,
request sent to vendor and their acknowledgement (if you do get that)
and their resposne (if they rejected your refund request.)
You will find it's not an easy battle and your life and work will get
in the way pretty soon. Sadly, not all of us have the tenacity (or
conviction) of a Stallman. :-( Please understand I am not trying to
dissuade you; I am just trying to prepare you for what you might face
if you do choose to pursue this.
All the best!
--
Manish
PS: I am willing to contribute a reasonable sum towards legal fees if
it does come to that.
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Re: [ilugd] How bios detects hard drive
Rajveer Singh said on Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 09:58:29AM +0530,: By going through the above points, I understood that kernel uses the drivers which gives features like udma, pagged r/w, caching etc. whereas the bios way to access the disk is restricted to specific track and sectors. So if we don't require these features like udma, pagged r/w, caching etc. and only needed the restricted access to specific track and sectors then kernel may detect the new disk(SATA/ATA/SCSI/SAS etc) the same way as the bios without specific drivers. Correct me if I'm wrong. Well, I again say, there is no such thing as the kernel accessing a disk. The kernel accesses the chipset, which in turn accesses the disk. That is more accurate way of putting it. If the kernel does not support the disk controller chipset, there is no way the disk can be accessed. I doubt that the kernel can do anything like the restricted access the BIOS does. There are lot of holes in how I understand things, but I guess while the BIOS uses some feature / minimal set of requirements for bootup to access the hard disk, the kernel access the controller chipset, which in turns control the disk. Here is a small homework for you. Issue this command, preferably as non-root user. lspci -v -v |grep -i ide lspci lists the various PCI devices on the MoBo. -v -v makes it extra verbose; and the output is filtered case insensitively (grep -i), searching for the letters ide. The output I get here is 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP]) 00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2) (prog-if 85 [Master SecO PriO]) 00:08.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2) (prog-if 85 [Master SecO PriO]) You will of course, get different output. This tells me that the Mo-Bo has a disk controller from nVidia Corporation, and the chipset model is MCP61. There is no way my kernel can access the Samsung/ WD / LG / Seagate disks connected to this MoBo unless the kernel supports the nvidia MCP 61 controller.(of course, it is supported here). If the chipset was not supported, no way I can access the same disks. It is rare to find disk controller chipsets not supported by the kernel; the problem usually occurs with the graphic controllers. But as I said, I have had trouble with IDE controller chipsets. YMMV. Problems, if any, is usually with RAID controllers, rarely with IDE / SATA. If you have problems with IDE / SATA, chances could be that it is because the module was not built / loaded / included in the initramfs. When you encounter such problems, you may be better off talking to the list / forum / IRC channel of the respective distribution. You can repeat the lspci command above as super user with grep -i -C3 to get a 3 line context. You need to be suepr user, else you will find access denied errors. Will show you the kernel modules in use. And again, I am no kernel / HW guru. I have not installed on systems which I have not used, which is probably less than the number of years I have been using GNU/Linux. -- Mahesh T. Pai || http://[paivakil|fizzard].blogspot.com ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
Hi subodh, This is very reasonable question. Even i wanna know if it is possible to have a laptop without windows. Some one told me that we have a that kind of choice in ACER laptops but for DELL i have now idea. So do let me know if you get the answers. Since, even i am thinking of buying a DELL laptop and i want FOSS on my machine.:) Regards Aman Thakur ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
On 12/24/10, Aman Thakur aman.thakur.1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Rakesh, I agree with the Mahesh in his both the above messages. I think there should be a different /home partition. I don't think she would probably have different /home partition. And for fixing your broken ubuntu system, you should try to go in rescue mode and reinstall the grub. If unsuccessfull then try to goto into the grub command line fix it as mahesh said above We already tried to solve it through grub command line but didn't work.. But i am not sure whether it works out for you or not. Since problem came during update, so it might a problem of broken packages. So try fixing grub first then let us know the output..so that we can have more idea of the problem. Now i think it might be a bug or some thing else (like broken package etc). Because while searching on internet, similar type of results were shown to me. Few of them have solved it but most of them couldn't and so many people have reported the same problem. I have always been updating and upgrading my ubuntu (any version except 10.04) so suggested her to do same. Might be she wouldn't have read the instructions carefully. Regards Aman Thakur ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd -- Regards RAKESH Allow Your Own Inner Light to Guide You ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
Hi, 1: No matter whether you buy a Dell laptop with or without windows, it will support Linux in either ways. 2: Yes dell provides laptops with Linux preinstalled and definitely it will reduce cost. On 12/26/10, Aman Thakur aman.thakur.1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi subodh, This is very reasonable question. Even i wanna know if it is possible to have a laptop without windows. Some one told me that we have a that kind of choice in ACER laptops but for DELL i have now idea. So do let me know if you get the answers. Since, even i am thinking of buying a DELL laptop and i want FOSS on my machine.:) Regards Aman Thakur ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd -- Regards RAKESH Allow Your Own Inner Light to Guide You ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Buying a New Dell Laptop Without Windows
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Aman Thakur aman.thakur.1...@gmail.comwrote: Hi subodh, This is very reasonable question. Even i wanna know if it is possible to have a laptop without windows. Some one told me that we have a that kind of choice in ACER laptops but for DELL i have now idea. So do let me know if you get the answers. Since, even i am thinking of buying a DELL laptop and i want FOSS on my machine.:) One of my friend bought a Dell laptop without windows few days back. So, I am sure that you can get a DELL laptop without pre-installed windows. Regards Aman Thakur ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd -- Regards, Shrey Sinha ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Ubuntu 10.04 got crashed
On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Narendra Sisodiya wrote: On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Mehul Ved wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Narendra wrote: On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Rakesh Kumar wrote: Hi, One of my friend was using ubuntu 10.04. Today she tried to update my observation rule number one 1) never upgrade Ubuntu , always reinstall.. Stupid rule. I repeat - golden rule, follow it or get trouble.. http://www.google.co.in/search?q=ubuntu+upgrade+10.04+to+10.10+failed Google says - 1,96,000 Results. , http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=enq=ubuntu+%2B+upgrade+%2B+failed Google says - 15,00,000 Results I guess u are lucky,,, please add me to the lucky list. i have been upgrading ubuntu since 8.04 to 10.10 without any trouble (except thinkpad specific features breaking but then there are kind souls that share workarounds / solutions on thinkwiki.) may be running no exotic harware and upgrade only after a few weeks of release might have something to do wit hit. ;-) cheers! -- manish ___ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
