All posts by vyom

YU Yuphoria Review

Technology, ,

I got the opportunity to get my hands on a new YU Yuphoria phone last week. Following are my observations and review first hand.
YU Yuphoria released in the May 2015 as a successor to the phone Yu Yureka which was released in Jan 2015 by Micromax. YU Yureka was the first phone released under the YU tag. At the price point of Rs 8,999, Yureka provided many features to be found in only high end phones. Yuphoria, released after a few months is kind of a down scaled version of the Yureka but have its own strengths to boast on.

Hardware

YU Yuphoria
YU Yuphoria

As a owner of Moto X (1st gen), the specs of Yuphoria baffled me initially. Yuphoria had similar specs as that of Moto X 1s gen but cost only Rs 6,999. That’s 3.5 times less price than that of Moto X 1st gen with similar features. Lets see the specs at a glance.
Yuphoria is a 4G phone with 5 inch screen size, have a layer of Gorilla glass 3 and sports a pixel density of 294 ppi with its 720p resolution. It’s powered with Snapdragon 410, Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 chipset which contains graphics capability of Adreno 306. Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s first 64 bit SOC. In terms of storage it comes with an internal memory of 16 GB (of course less for actual use) but is expandable to 32 GB. The phone contains 2 gigs of RAM enough to never let you go out of memory when playing high end games (for a couple of years at least).
Yuphoria Back
Yuphoria Back

It’s 8 mp primary camera have autofocus, flash and can shoot up to 1080p video. It can snap upto 3264 x 2448 pixels in image resolution. The front cam is 5 mp and seems impressive. The phone is supplied power through a 2230 mAh Li-Ion battery, which boasts of upto 160 hr of standby time on 3G, and 7 hrs of talktime. Continue reading YU Yuphoria Review →

Auto Mounting Drives in Ubuntu

Technology,

If you are using Ubuntu in dual mode with Windows you must be having a few partition that are NTFS. By default these NTFS drives are not auto mounted. So while you have the partitions, you won’t be able to access them if you don’t mount it.
As you already may know that in Ubuntu (and Linux in general) there are no drives. Combine it with the fact that the root directory starts from a forward slash (/). Every drive in Linux is ‘mounted‘. So when you insert a DVD disk the content of the disk may be mounted to a directory /media/username/DvdLabel. Here DvdLabel is the name of the mounted directory which was taken from the label of the disk.
Similarly if you have a partition with the label, say, Documents when you click the Documents partition, it is then that the Documents partition (or drive) is mounted to /media/Documents.
By default Ubuntu doesn’t mount the partitions when it starts. You have to click the partition in Nautilus (or Files, the file explorer) once so that it can be mounted. This can be irritating since when an application starts which requires a partition they will result in error. Eg, if you have set dropbox to sync to files to Documents drive or Transmission to download files to Multimedia drive.
You can make these NTFS drives automount with Ubuntu by various method as described in this page. But its a long and complicated read. So here is the method explained simply.

Find out Label and UUID

First you need to know the exact Labels and UUID of the drives. Consider UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) as a unique identifier for the drive which will never change (unless you format the drive, re-partition it, or manually change it). To know the Label and UUID you need to use the command blkid command. This command when used with sudo will give you a list of all the partitions along with its Label and UUID. Like below:

vyom@VyomNix:~$ sudo blkid
[sudo] password for vyom:
/dev/sr0: LABEL="Alpha_0515" TYPE="udf"
/dev/sda1: UUID="30986b83-1234-4eeb-a30a-482223df145f" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="WinServer" UUID="3F1234AB1233423C" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Recovery" UUID="A12345E12345AF1B" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda4: UUID="0659-9A568" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda6: UUID="b1234321-ad5f-4ddd-89ac-eed1234c56c7" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Digital" UUID="33FA6E12GA6DF687" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda9: LABEL="Entertainment" UUID="123FHE3E3N98BF65" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda10: LABEL="Documents" UUID="37MME50B21B7C65B" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda11: LABEL="Spare1" UUID="654EF123456CAF7E" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda12: LABEL="Spare2" UUID="68D774EB5DBFPOOI" TYPE="ntfs"
vyom@VyomNix:~$

Continue reading Auto Mounting Drives in Ubuntu →

Creating a Startup Application Script in Ubuntu

Technology,

If you are new to Ubuntu and have installed various softwares, eventually there comes a time when you want the applications to start automatically just after the system boots.
Following are two ways to add applications to startup list. First is Windows method, while the second method is geeky way (as you must have guessed, it’s my favourite).

Easy method

Just like Windows have a startup folder where you can place shortcut files and which would let you start the applications when user logs in, in Ubuntu there is a ~/.config/autostart folder where you can place the shortcut files. (Just to recall ~/ is your home folder. So ~/.config = /home/username/.config).
You can also use the Startup Applications tool (ships inbuilt with Ubuntu) which lets you add startup applications to that folder. Shortcut files in Ubuntu are files which ends with .desktop. The folder where you can find most of the .desktop files is /usr/share/applications. So you can just find the desktop file related to the particular application and copy the .desktop file into the ~/.config/autostart folder.
If you want to start the application for every user then you would need to copy the .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart folder.

Starup Applications Folder and Tool
Autostart Folder on the left and Startup Applications Tool on the right

Continue reading Creating a Startup Application Script in Ubuntu →

How Ubuntu screwed me over and why I still love it

Technology,

As humans, memories have a special place in our heart. Nothing can prepare us if something goes wrong and god forbid you lose them. It’s hard but imagine losing months of snaps that you shot over the trips you made across city or continent, documents accumulated over the course of your research on some project, also those rare songs and movies you got your hands on. It could be a frustrating experience if you didn’t have a backup of the data you lost.
Something like that happened with me over the last week. I was playing with Ubuntu Operating System from last few months but in a virtual environment. On one fine weekend I thought I am ready to finally install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a dedicated partition and to use it as my primary OS. I created a bootable USB and rebooted PC. Ubuntu asked me if I want to “Replace the OLD Ubuntu” with the new one. I thought, “Ok, Cool, sure do. I don’t need old Ubuntu”. And it did remove old Ubuntu and nicely completed the rest of the installation.
When the Unity desktop showed up, it was all too familiar since I have been working on it for quite some time. Except when I tried to watch an episode of “The Flash” kept on my Multimedia drive. I couldn’t find it. I was like, “Why isn’t my other drives showing up? Are those not mounted?”. I was use to unusual things over my time with playing Ubuntu in virtual environment. But nothing could prepare me for what lay ahead. It was when I opened the “Disks” application that the reality hit me hard. Ubuntu had not only replaced old Ubuntu, but it had also wiped the existence of every other partition and the data along with it while installing itself.
Do you know that feeling? At first you feel numb. You think, “WTH just happened?“. The denial phase, “No, it can’t be happening”. Then the shock overtakes you. “NOOO, MY DATA!”. It soon turns into rage, “WTF Ubuntu, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS?”. You try to remember,“Did I do something wrong?”. Then you realize you didn’t. You just selected the automated install as opposed to let you choose your own partition. It’s then when you realize you DID made a huge mistake by choosing the automated install. Finally, you try to remember when was the last time you did a backup. Eyes wide open, “It was long time ago!“.
I had backed up my data about 3-4 months before. 3-4 months was a long time. A lot had happened since then. “I must have my data back”, I thought with a determined look in my face. The following week I used my secondary PC to recover the data back from the HDD using application known as MiniTool Power Recovery. It took it’s time. Juggling day job in the morning I only had nights to work on the recovery. Complete night to scan for partitions and data. Next two nights to actually recover the data. Another night to make sure I had not left anything else.
As I found out later that Ubuntu wiping out whole of the physical HDD and all its partitions without so much so as a warning “You are going to loose ALL YOUR DATA”, was actually a bug in the version I was using: 14.04.1. This bug was discovered about a year ago and all it required to fix it was probably just to reword the statement “Replace Old Ubuntu” with something like, “All your disk is going to be wiped out. Please make sure you are not installing this OS while drunk”. Let me tell you, that would have made a lot of difference. Had Ubuntu said something like that, I could have chosen the custom install instead. This bug was recently fixed in the update 14.04.2 but only after making a lot of people who trusted “automated install” to get pissed in the process.
Anyway, what happened couldn’t be roll backed. But I did manage to recover all my data. Though all the software that I had accumulated as giveaways were lost, along with all the customization that I had on my Windows Server 2008 R2 OS, but those can be acquired again.
This incident taught me quite a few important lessons. Of course the first one is not to trust “Automated installations”, especially when it comes to installing a complete OS. Other was to keep regular backups. Importance of cloud backup is especially important considering that it happens automatically once you set it up.
Let’s see what things I had already backed up. I had all my:

  • Documents backed up to Dropbox,
  • Firefox Add-Ons/Passwords backed up via Firefox Cloud,
  • Firefox Speed Dials backed by via EverSync cloud backup,
  • Other Multimedia related stuff like, Movies and Pictures (until last year) backed up to external HDD.

So, the recovery program allowed me to recover all the data that was not synced to the cloud, and which probably couldn’t be synced either since those were very large files (especially with the kind of quality of Internet that we get in our country).
With recent accident of unlocking my phone’s bootloader without taking backup, this incident of wiping my PC off, April has been one hell of a month. And it’s not over yet. So I will try not to bite more than I could chew for the rest of the month.
In the end, Ubuntu did screw me over but it was mostly my fault. I takeaway a lot from this experience. Had I not faced it, I would probably be less careful while experimenting on Ubuntu. And that’s why I have started to like Ubuntu even more for it taught me that software isn’t perfect. To always have a backup plan is probably the best way to keep yourself and your data, out of harm’s way.

Concept of Installing Applications in Ubuntu

Technology,

Until now we have discussed how to install Ubuntu, concepts around files, keyboard shortcuts to navigate easily and various ways to customize Ubuntu with Gnome shell. Today I am going to discuss how to install applications in Linux along with the various ways to do them, and will end with a special note that would explain how “running” applications in Ubuntu is fundamentally different than Windows.
You must be used to installing softwares in Windows by downloading .EXE files or .MSI installers. You open these files and click Next -> Next and viola. Installing applications in Ubuntu is a bit different and safer than Windows in some cases. But before we get into the steps its important to understand the concept of Packages in Ubuntu.

What is a Package?

A package can be considered a collection of files bundled into a single file. Package contains among other things, the installation script which tells where the files will be copied and what settings needs to be changed once the package is installed.
In essence, the output of a package is equivalent to .exe or .msi installers, that is they install a software on the OS. There are many ways to install a package on Linux. You can install a package using Package manager which itself are categorized in Low-Level and High-Level package managers. You can also download packages over the Internet and use it to install it on the system (more on this later in this article).
Low level package managers are dpkg (for Debian based Linux like Ubuntu) and rpm (for SUSE and Fedora). While high level package managers are apt-get (for Debian), zypper (for SUSE) and yum (for Fedora).
Packages can depend on other package to be installed first. Say if you want to install some software which was written in PHP, you may need to install the PHP package first. This concept is called dependency and is usually taken care of itself if you are using a high level package managers.

Advanced Packaging Tool (APT)

The underlying package manager in Ubuntu (or any Debian based Linux) is APT. You can use the command apt to install or remove packages on your system. APT is also used in background in GUI based package managers like Ubuntu Software Center and synaptic.
EDX have a pdf which lists some basic commands to using package managers. Download it here.

What is Source and Binary?

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Weird thoughts on a Monday night

Personal,

My dear friends,
When the clock struck 23:23 today on the 2nd last day of March of the 15th year of 21st century since the time we started to measure time in positive numbers, I started to have these weird thoughts. I started to think how I am inside this box made up of concrete and mortar, and sitting on top of an industrial plastic moulded in the shape of a chair.
How am I pushing my fingers on buttons made of plastic which is passing signals to a box built with metal and semiconductors, which is translating electrons to photons on screen and being represented as a character.
I am not really sure why am I here on this 3rd rock orbiting around the sun also rotating around on its own axis, in this milky way of millions of bodies like our own sun, which itself is among millions of similar kind of galaxies, separated only by time.
I am a product of a countless number of impossibilities, few among which are the impossibility of life, impossibility of my parents being met, impossibility of my selection among thousands of sperms, and impossibility of me being conceived successfully in the womb of my mother.
Here am I wondering what is the purpose of such a product of life, which statistically doesn’t even exist in all it’s form, like so many things which doesn’t exist, like straight circle, or colorless red orange, or Mobius road on a 2D plane.
Here am I wondering what is the purpose of Time? Is it really to prevent happening of everything all at once, or for us to make sense of the only constant in our life, the change. Just like it’s hard for an ant to think about 5th dimension, can Humans really think about higher dimensions, dimensions that we can’t even think of? For us, to be a part of a simulation is a highly probable scenario statistically, but can we even think of the possibility of something we can’t even fathom to think of?
With all these thoughts in my mind today I can safely conclude that I haven’t even begin my journey towards understanding the rationale behind trying to understand the fact that I can probably never truly decide whether I have started my journey.
I probably don’t even exist, which begs the question, does my creator feels the same way, that ‘it’ can’t really ever know, whether his creator feels the same way about it’s creator?
What if I have lived this life, sat in this exact box made of exact same concrete and mortar, sat on this exact chair made of this exact industrial plastic, pressing the exact same keyboard buttons, and thinking these exact thoughts before?
What if this continuum of time is repeating itself again, and again and again.. like a pendulum moving to and fro in vacuum so that no single continuum can know what was it’s origin, and when would be it’s end? What if the big bang and big crunch were to be the two ends hanging at the either side of that pendulum motion?
Can we ever escape this reality? Or simulation? Can we ever be ‘free’ in the truest sense? Can we celebrate ‘Independence day’ where we would have achieved the freedom from motion of this cosmic pendulum?
I probably will never know and will probably write these exact things again after the big crunch, and the big bang, and even after that. I don’t know if whatever I said, make sense, but I do know, it must make sense to ‘something’.
Maybe if we can just find a way to pass information during two cosmic pendulum swings, after the end of one ‘period’? I will be searching for a way to do that. Would you?
– Your’s weird, Vineet.

The User Experience of using Ubuntu

Technology

In previous articles we installed Ubuntu, learned how to use Gnome shell on Ubuntu and customize it as per needs. In this article I would be dealing on some more points which makes it easier to understand the aspects of Ubuntu for those who are still deeply wrapped up in the world of Windows. Then we will learn how you can use keyboard shortcuts to improve the User Experience of using Ubuntu. In the end we will see how you can use built in ways to help yourself if you ever needed to learn more about Ubuntu and Terminal commands.

Philosophy of Linux over Windows

There are a few structural changes one notices when they migrate to Linux based OS like Ubuntu as compared to Windows. Following is a list that explains some of them:

1. Disk System

In Windows each partition of the HDD is referred as Disk1, Disk2 etc. While in Ubuntu it is termed as sda1, sda2. Here sda stands for one physical hard disk. And sda1 stands for Storage Device “A” partition 1 on a single physical HDD.

2. File System Type:

Filesystem is a way for the OS to keep the data on the HDD and a way to access it. Windows user would be familiar with NTFS and FAT32 but on Ubuntu, EXT3 or EXT4 is used primarily while EXT2 and XFS are also common.

3. Drive Naming Convention:

In  Windows people are too familiar with drives named on alphabet like C, D, E and F. It’s the C: drive which is the root drive and where OS is installed. Ubuntu is radically different  where the naming convention is considered.
In Ubuntu, root is a single forward slash. That is, “/“. So suppose I create a directory (another term for “folders”) called home in the root folder. The path for that would be /home.
Due to this convention, the way removable drives are handled is also different in Linux. A CD you insert with label projectone in the CD drive will be “mounted” and can be accessed from say, /media/username/projectone.
Lastly, in Linux, file and folder names are case sensitive. So, /home/user is different from /home/User and /home/USER.

A typical Directory Structure in Linux
A typical Directory Structure in Linux. Image Courtesy: edx.org

Continue reading The User Experience of using Ubuntu →

Lotus Temple

Personal

Lotus Temple, also called Bahá’í House of Worship is a construction which is famous for its architectural design which is in the shape of a Lotus flower. It’s located near Nehru Place, in South Delhi, which is widely considered as major information technology hub of South Asia.
I have visited Lotus Temple many times before, but this I was able to capture this 360 degree sphere, under cloudy sky. Caution: A few legs would be missing in the panorama. As it turns out I am still a newbie when taking a Google Sphere is considered.

Click here to open this in Full Screen.