Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for November 2005

Discovering… and liking Ubuntu and Kubuntu

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As read on Kubuntu’s website,

“Kubuntu is a user friendly operating system based on KDE, the K Desktop Environment. With a predictable 6 month release cycle and part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu is the GNU/Linux distribution for everyone.”

As you all know, I run Gentoo Linux at home on my AMD64 box and, after some months of tweaking, I can say I’m very very satisfied.

For some weeks now, Christina has been telling me to replace the Windoze 2000 she use at work with Linux. I decided to download the x86 ISO of Ubuntu as I didn’t want to install Gentoo on Christina’s computer as that took too much time. As I was using Jigdo, the Jigsaw Download[er], I had no trouble incrementally downloading the AMD64 ISO image of Kubuntu which I quickly installed on my home computer just to have a look.

To summarise, I’m impressed even though there are 1-2 small niggles I don’t like:

Positives:

  1. Very quick to install compared to Gentoo.
  2. Only one ISO image (1 CD) to download – the rest, if needed, is downloaded from the Internet.
  3. Kubuntu feature KDE which is very nice looking and more functional than Gnome IMHO
  4. Kubuntu is based on Debian and, therefore, features a fantastic package management tool called apt-get.

Negatives:

  1. I don’t like the fact that there are multiple official package repositories (main, restricted, universe and multiverse) and countless unofficial ones. Sure, any software, however obscure, surely exists in one of those repositories. But which one??? This is impossible to tell without a lot of Googling.
  2. In Gentoo, everything is compiled from source and, therefore, all libraries, development tools and headers files are always installed. In contrast, the installation program for Kubuntu does not install those essential components (they can be manually installed afterwards using apt-get though). As a lecturer and programmer, I find this very painful to do. For me, Gentoo Linux is out-of-the-box (if I can use that term) a fantastic programming (and experimentation) environment and this is clearly not the case with Kubuntu.

Nevertheless, Kubuntu and Ubuntu have a lot of potential. Worth a nice 8/10 I would say…

Playing the Angel by Depeche Mode

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For those who don’t know, I am a die-hard fan of Depeche Mode. I have all their albums. And many singles. And books etc. etc.

Depeche Mode is IMHO the best music band in existence. Their music is fantastic and the lyrics are very evocative for me…

As read on allmusic, “[o]riginally a product of Britain’s new romantic movement, Depeche Mode went on to become the quintessential electro-pop band of the 1980s; one of the first acts to establish a musical identity based completely around the use of synthesizers, the group began their existence as a bouncy dance-pop outfit but gradually developed a darker, more dramatic sound which ultimately positioned them as one of the most successful alternative bands of their era.”

Their new album, Playing the Angel, was released on the 18th of October and I’ve been patiently waiting for it to become available in Mauritius even though my brother had downloaded the tracks from some dubious MP3 sites one day after the launch.

And, I’ve bought it today!!! I paid Rs. 775 (about $25) which is perfectly ok as the album is currently being sold by Amazon at $20.99

By the way, I’ve bought the Limited Edition album comprising:

  • A hybrid Super Audio CD containing:
    1. one layer in Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format (which has a frequency response of over 100kHz and a dynamic range over 120dB across the audible frequency range) but which I can’t listen to as I do not have a SACD-capable player
    2. one layer in normal 44.1 KHz 16-bit Audio CD format
  • A DVD containing:
    1. The complete album in DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 format (yes!!! the album has been mixed in full surround which sounds coming from the front, from the sides and from the back — it’s awesome!)
    2. A short featured film “Making The Angel”
    3. An acoustic version (audio+video) of “Clean” (from Violator)
    4. The video of “Precious”, one of the best songs of the album

Today, I’ve listened to the whole album in 5.1 DTS and I’m very very impressed by the quality of the songs (and, obviously, by the quality of the sound)

Here is the track listing:

  1. A Pain That I’m Used To
  2. John The Revelator
  3. Suffer Well
  4. The Sinner In Me
  5. Precious
  6. Macro
  7. I Want It All
  8. Nothing’s Impossible
  9. Introspectre
  10. Damaged People
  11. Lilian
  12. The Darkest Star

Everyone has been raving about this album and now I understand why. In short, all the songs are fantastic. Listen to the album at least twice (like most Depeche Mode albums, it gets better and better and better with time). Read the lyrics while listening. You will be impressed by the songwriting!

Playing the Angel is a revelation!

Making (a little) money from my website

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I suppose that you have noticed that there is one advert at the bottom of all the pages of this weblog. The adverts are supplied by Google AdSense which (I quote) “is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.”

In addition to AdSense, my personal bookshelf also features Amazon Associates links. As an associate, (I quote) “[I] drive internet traffic to Amazon.com through specially formatted links that allow [them] to track sales and other activity. [I] earn up to 10% in referral fees on all qualifying revenue made through [my] links.”

To sum up:

  1. I earn a little money when someone clicks on a Google AdSense advert.
  2. I earn a little money when someone buys a book on Amazon.com by clicking on a link found in my personal bookshelf page.

Am I ashamed of this?

No because I think I deserve a small reward from time to time to compensate for the amount of energy I put everyday to keep this website alive :-)