Wesam Alalem's Blog

In May 2010 I purchased Toshiba NB 305 Netbook, it comes with Windows 7 starter edition.
Well, it was working just fine, light and speedy, until I decided to protect my Windows with AntiVirus and Firewall application, you know, Windows’ eternal companions! That’s where it started to be slow, slow enough to make me frustrated.
Then I decided to install Kubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition since I am already using Kubuntu on my Laptop.
It’s kind of slow, but I think I’ll buy 2 GB RAM to replace the installed 1 GB.
One thing that’s quite interesting so far is the interface, it is optimized for netbooks, and looks great and handy.
It’s updating right now, and I am not sure if it will play my media files smoothly, usually, I install smplayer on Kubuntu.
For those interested, there is Ubuntu Netbook Remix, many of Internet users giving good impression about it. I am a KDE guy, so, not ready for it yet.

I was designing a logo for my Arabic website, I checked the fonts and I couldn’t find good font, I searched around and I found that I can search repositories for fonts like this:

#sudo apt-cache search ttf | grep “Arabic”

and I got:

ttf-arabeyes – Arabeyes GPL TrueType Arabic fonts
ttf-kacst – KACST free TrueType Arabic fonts
ttf-kacst-one – TrueType font designed for Arabic language
ttf-sil-scheherazade – smart Unicode font for Arabic

and installed them:

#sudo apt-get install ttf-arabeyes ttf-kacst ttf-kacst-one ttf-sil-scheherazade

And now I can start designing my logo with GIMP with these great fonts!

Finally I managed to get it to work, I purchased the domain at 27 jun 2009, and prepared a design to start with, but no enough motivation!
Even with a design it still needs a lot of development to get what I was thinking about.
Being one of the ly team since it came back to Libya, I knew a lot about it. Actually I was one of technical team responsible on the ccTLD in LTT. then left LTT, worked with another company I drifted away from ly, but when I joined Libyan Spider I returned back to the ly stuff, with the great care these guys giving to .ly domain I started feeling and thinking differently about .ly domains.
Here where it came the idea of about.ly: A website about .ly domains in general, news, articles, tools, etc… Actually, it needs a lot of work, and I am kind of lazy when it comes to a personal work! Until I found the great web application Pligg, it was what I was looking for, I submit news links, write a brief about them, people read, vote and share comments.

I started playing around with Pligg since last December, I applied new template, changed some styles, added new modules, I like it now.

I think I’ll add some tools soon to search .ly domains directly from about.ly and linking them to libyanspider.com website to purchase!

have a look at: about.ly, there’s a twitter account for those want to follow latest updates.

That was really impressive, to be able to synchronize my contacts between my Laptop and my mobile phone.

With Nokia PCSuite software image still flying around on my head, I thought that I won’t find something fill the gap for Linux! but actually there was.

I didn’t read too much about it; I just followed some tutorial and everything is up and running. It seems that there is a standard protocol that both Nokia and the software developers follow and made this possible.

First I had some issues with the Bluetooth in my laptop, the kbluetooth icon was gray, and after searching I found that my Laptop Toshiba Satellite Pro U400 has problems with bluetooth support.

A wonderful guy was there to fix it: Linux on Toshiba Satellite Pro U400

Then a Ubuntu Forums HowTo did the job: HOWTO: Sync Evolution with Nokia N95 via Bluetooth on Ubuntu Gutsy

Viva Linux 

And by the way, I just bought Nokia N86 8MP, which was the subject of the matter xD

Now when I add contacts into the mobile phone and after clicking Refersh button, I see the contacts in Evolution, and visa-versa.

I found this application while I was searching for graphics application for Linux, I used this back in Windows; it was cool, but it wasn’t free.
I read in the website that the original company made the source code available, that’s where the gurus stepped in and ported it to Linux.
I think it will make perfect tool with GIMP, as many things are missing (or actually I still don’t know about how to do them).
The installation is quite simple, download the package from the download page (I used the latest version), then change the permission of the file to make it executable, finally run the package file and follow the instructions.

The most disappointing issue, that it is not supporting Arabic, when I type in Arabic the letters appear from left to right, where they should appear Right-to-Left. They also (as a result from the first issue) appear as separate letters: In Arabic some letters should be connected to the proceeding letter with a horizontal line.
In General, I think I’ll use Xara Xtreme with GIMP when it is necessary. Until I get grasp of the GIMP.

Website: xaralx.org

[Note: they have screen shots, check them ]

Libya Ubuntu LoCoTeam  arranged the first discussion session, to discuss the experience of the attendants for the newely released Ubuntu.

The “Pros and Cons” where discussed, and some points have been highlighted. and many proivde possible solutions to those reported them.

Later, Mohamed Ayad (who arranged the session) gave us a presentation about the new default file system EXT4.

Thanks Mohamad, It was clever idea to add the points mentioned in the discussion session as Forum posts to help people solve them.

It was my pleasure to attend, Hope I see more of such activities in our beloved country, as you promised.

The first announcement (In Arabic)

The Final Report (In Arabic)

I was trying to open a mobile emulator, which was in fact a JAVA applet, and I found that JAVA plugin wasn’t installed. Following the link from Firefox add-ons website I was redirected to Sun website to downlaod JAVA runtime files.

It was about 19 MB file, after downloading and running it, I couldn’t see JAVA plugin in the installed plugin list, Googling the issue, I found that I have to symlink the plugin file into Firefox plugins directory (not copying it). After try-and -error-ing, the directory turned out to be:

/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.4/plugins

Now it is running

Distro: Linux Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

It was my pleasure to be invited to the Libya Local Team release party of Ubuntu 9.10 . The party was very exciting, and many Linux fans attended.

My colleague Mohammad Ayad, who arranged the whole event (thanx man), started with a brief about Ubuntu and some stats on how Ubuntu became the most known Linux distro, then he explained about the LoCo Team, and its responsibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

That was really amazing, Gimpshop is a wonderful alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Based on GIMP, the developer renamed and reorganized GIMP’s tools, options, windows, and menus to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop’s menu structure and naming conventions. Many of the menu options and even whole menus were recreated to faithfully reproduce a Photoshop-like experience. After running the GIMPshop hack, you’ll find that Photoshop and the GIMP are strikingly similar.

Check it here

Today, I re-formated my Toshiba laptop and installed KUbuntu 9.04. I was going to install Fedora 11 but I encountered some issues when I reach Disk Partitioning, and actually I was quite lazy to check the cause.
I’ll stick with kubuntu for while and see!
By the way, tomorrow supposed to be the release day of Microsoft Windows 7. Great OS of course, I hope all success for it. I was using the RC for the past 3 months, and I can tell it has its unique look & feel.
Actually, when I bought my Toshiba it was without OS, which cheaper with 200 LD than the one shipped with Windows Vista, Now, there is no way I go back to Vista, and I have no plans spending more money on the new Windows 7. So I decided to give it a try and have my Laptop with only Linux, something I didn’t try since my first Linux installation back in early 2004.
It’s updating now, and I feel so bored, I tried to play a movie with KMplayer, but nothing playing, I’ll wait until the update finishes and see!
I’ll start looking for an alternative to Adobe Dreamweaver, I think it will be Quanta+.
See you next time