I switched to Mepis GNU/Linux on my office system today. Just one word – Beauuuu—ti—ful!

I had earlier tried Mepis at home but had to switch back to Fedora Linux because of a stupid program provided by Sify Broadband, without which I cannot use the internet.

Ironically, I just had to switch from Fedora because of its numerous problems. For example, yum is a real PITA. Also, using the CDROM drive has become problematic – I have to actually change permissions of /dev/cdrom before I can play Audio CDs! Another issue is that Fedora startup is real slow.

So, I had to switch and I chose Mepis. MEPIS is an acronym for Managerial, Educational and Personal Information Systems.

First, I backed up the existing stuff on my Fedora box – my mail, my code and all other important stuff on to a CD as well as a remote system. I then downloaded the single-CD SimplyMepis 2004.06 and burnt it to a CD.

I rebooted the system, popped in the CD, the LiveCD system started running. Imagine using a complete operating system and all the software without even installing it on your hard disk! I was shocked to see that I was able to access internet already (it had used DHCP to set up the network). Really slick. Everything’s running so good and pretty fast, I could easily just boot off the CD for daily work! But it would be boring to do that everytime. Also, all my settings can be saved on a hard disk installation.

I clicked on Menu -> System -> MEPIS Utilities -> MEPIS Installation Center. Click on ‘Install MEPIS on Hard Drive’, asked MEPIS to use the hard disk any way it wants, clicked on Next and installation was done in 4-5 minutes! Yikes. The tips displayed during the installation are extremely useful, even for a long-time Linux user like me.

Once the installation was done, I configured the network to have my proper static IP address, etc. Then, I see that only the Mozilla suite comes with Mepis, not Firefox and Thunderbird. Okay, time to read up on apt-get, the package management system that comes with Mepis. It allows you to download and install software with a single command. No fuss, no muss. The manual was really simple and remarkably up-to-date as well, but then I then noticed the ‘Package Management’ tab in the MEPIS System Center – so I chose to use the Japan mirrors for packages and then tried KPackage to install Firefox. Didn’t work. It gave me some error 300 or something like that.

So, had to go back to apt-get on the command line. First, I used apt-cache search thunderbird, it seems ‘mozilla-firefox’ is what I need. Next comes apt-get install mozilla-firefox and apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird. Bam! 10 minutes later, I copied over my old mails and I had my mail and browser ready to go. After some more customization, my system was totally ready and that too within an hour!

What amazed me most of all is how easy MEPIS really is. If anybody says that Linux is tough, point them to Mepis and give a big grin. Yep, that’s how easy it is. Even Windows asks more questions during installation! MEPIS comes with all the multimedia stuff ready as well – RealPlayer, Xine, MPlayer are all there. The browser plugins are properly configured as well. Even Java is installed. It has one of the fastest startup times that I’ve come across. This is truly Linux for the desktop.

I have mentioned all the pluses, so here come the minuses. First off, the default theme sucks. Yes, I plan to change it later on. Second, how do I enable services (specifically ssh daemon) ? Fedora had a GUI for that. Oh well, a symlink in the current run level directory did the trick. Another question is why are Firefox and Thunderbird not part of the standard install ?! It definitely should be. Another gripe is Synaptic should be part of the standard install as well.

Also, the Mepis website is simply confusing. It doesn’t have a ‘Start Here’ section like it should. Also, what’s the difference between SimplyMEPIS and ProMEPIS? I still haven’t found out the answer to that one.

Synaptic and apt-get as a system totally rocks. I needed to install my beloved VIM on my system. So click on Start -> System -> Synaptic Package Manager. Enter the root password. Click on ‘Search’, enter ‘VIM’ and press Enter. It shows up a list of packages that are related to VIM. Double-click on vim and click ‘Apply’ . DONE. Its that easy.

I am really wondering why the Fedora community still hasn’t brought yum to the same level of polish as apt-get.

To finish off, I am really surprised why I haven’t tried Debian before. I guess, old (Red Hat) habits die hard. Mepis, which is based on Debian, is so user-friendly that I had to switch. I accept, I am a convert.

Sidenote : Yes, I know about Ubuntu Linux but I am a KDE user. So, MEPIS is the one for me.

Update : Advice to Mepis users in India : Use the ‘au’ i.e. Australian mirror, I find it to be the fastest for me.

Have you seen the Google Maps! The UI is really cool. Left click, hold and drag the mouse, the map actually moves! Google keeps obliterating the assumption that the web is not about just HTML, dynamism is the in-thing.

I am really surprised that others have not done such Web UIs before. Or maybe I’ve missed something.

Update : Just got to know there is a Google India Code Jam 2005 competition. The first prize is 3 lakh rupees! Wow.

Update : Simon Willison explores how Google Maps is working.

Yippee! Qt 4.0 will have a full GPLed edition for Windows!

Imagine quickly writing awesome Qt apps and running it on Linux as well as Windows. Beautiful. Maybe this means we will soon have KDE running natively on Windows? Not that I would use it but that would be cool.

(Thanks to Pradeep for the tip-off)

Update : Should I start saying ‘One toolkit to rule them all!’ a la LOTR ? I better stop it before the GTK fanboys start flaming me…

The news is that Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines. I just hope it doesn’t become yet another good service that is bought by a big company and then goes downhill…

Update : Russell Beattie echoes my sentiments as well.

Update : It’s official! : Excerpt: "We want to assure you that the Bloglines service will continue to grow and thrive. Like other companies in the Ask Jeeves portfolio, we will operate as a standalone, separate service — the Bloglines name will remain, as will our URL, www.bloglines.com. We will support our current features and services, so please continue to log in to Bloglines to search, subscribe, publish and share RSS news feeds and blogs. All users will continue to be governed by the Terms of Service you agreed to when you registered for Bloglines."

I have redesigned ByteOfPython.info and now have a nice and clean theme based on Negen.

The theme had the right combination of the two things I look for : simple and attractive. I usually like to hack up a theme myself just like I did for my blog, but this one was too cool to let go

The content on the website has been reorganized and updated as well.

The BangPypers group was created just 10 days ago. There has already been 202 messages by 44 members! Just goes to show that Python is alive and kicking in Bangalore. BangPypers rule! Uhh.. I mean they sing well

Interfaces are now available in C++ … I really wonder – Do we need this? I am a beginner to the big bad world of C++ code but I don’t see what an interface would do in C++ that an abstract class can’t do… I guess its one of the those things that only Bruce Eckel or Lippman could understand/explain.

Yahoo! Japan now has blogs. More at SearchEngineJournal.

I searched for aspect oriented programming on Google and it showed me an ad to join Google! Yet another demonstration of clever marketing by Google.

Searching on Yahoo gave almost exact list of results (except for the job ad ). Its amazing how the Yahoo search engine has caught up with Google, it seems to be almost at par nowadays.

On a related note, Bangalore.Yahoo.com currently has a huge list of open positions – send a resume if you’re interested.

Programmers are always on a never-ending quest for proper design of software. One of the buzzwords in this area is aspect oriented programming. I have heard of AspectJ and other stuff before but never cared/understood enough to take a look at it.

Recently, I came across the TreeCC program used in DotGNU and was amazed by its simplicity. Rhys Weatherley has written a neat and simple essay on TreeCC – it was an eye-opener for me on how proper object oriented design doesn’t always mean proper inheritance hierarchy or proper method overriding – it simply means a clean separation of concerns and concepts. This essay is a must-read for any programmer interested in good design, especially in compiler writing.