Jekyll2017-06-27T15:25:54+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/Sayak BiswasTidbits on tech stuff and whatever elseThoughts on The Man in the High Castle2017-06-10T17:19:00+00:002017-06-10T17:19:00+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2017/06/10/man-in-the-high-castle-book-review<p>I had never heard about this book until I saw trailers for the Amazon show. I must say I am impressed. This book falls in the genre of <strong><span class="emphasize">alternate history/high concept</span></strong> asking ‘what-if’. This particular book asks the question what if the Axis powers won the second world war. The way PKD takes the readers through the journey of answering that question is particularly gripping. The world building that takes place almost throughout the book is very vivid and well described. The setting is the America who lost the war and has now been divided to be ruled by the Nazi Germany and Japan.</p>
<p>The characters are human, that is to say there are no heroes just ordinary people going through an extraordinary life. On one hand, this makes them a little bit relatable, I think but also hard to care about on the other. That could also have been caused by the lack of a fleshed out villain. Sure the Nazi party fills in the role of the ‘big bad’, but it does not play an active part in the story rather is just present as an artifact of the setting. There is one more nitpick, something that threw me off initially. It is that the prose describing the character’s thoughts is a bit jumpy. The sentences are broken, sometimes a single word. I found that jarring and interesting later, thinking that this may have been done to convey the speed of thoughts.
This may be a minor spoiler although it is presented pretty early in the book, there is also a plot thread about a book which describes what-if the Allied powers had won the war. The way this is handled is particularly interesting and thought provoking.</p>
<p>Overall, this was a great read and was incidentally my first read on the Fire tablet. I would recommend this book to anybody who is into speculative fiction and the history of the second world war.</p>sayakbiswasA brief review of the book The Man in the High Castle.GitHub Subtrees2016-03-10T15:51:50+00:002016-03-10T15:51:50+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2016/03/10/github-subtrees<p>I have been familiar with git ever since I started using Linux. I used ‘git clone’ quite a bit to compile and install latest versions of software, but that’s where most of my ‘familiarity’ was limited to. I did mess around with creating local repositories and committing but that’s all. We used SVN at work, so most of my version control knowledge is based on SVN. So, I am still figuring out lot of git stuff that most people probably already know.</p>
<p>So, I was looking for a way to have a single repository for a class and all my projects for that class would be stored under that repository. That’s when I came across this nifty little feature <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/about-git-subtree-merges/">here</a> called Git subtree merges, which allows you to manage multiple projects under a single repository.</p>
<p>The workflow as I understand it is as below:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>I created a repository called <code class="highlighter-rouge">advanced-data-structures</code>. This is my main repository.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Then I created another repository called <code class="highlighter-rouge">RedBlackEventCounter</code>. This holds the actual project code. Made changes, committed and pushed to this remote.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Then I added the remote of <code class="highlighter-rouge">RedBlackEventCounter</code> to the master of <code class="highlighter-rouge">advanced-data-structures</code>.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git remote add -f RedBlackEventCounter https://github.com/sayakbiswas/RedBlackEventCounter.git
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Merged <code class="highlighter-rouge">RedBlackEventCounter</code> into <code class="highlighter-rouge">advanced-data-structures</code>.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git merge -s ours --no-commit RedBlackEventCounter/master
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Copied the git data of <code class="highlighter-rouge">RedBlackEventCounter</code> repository into a new directory in the <code class="highlighter-rouge">advanced-data-structures</code> repository.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git read-tree --prefix=RedBlackEventCounter/ -u RedBlackEventCounter/master
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Commit and push the changes.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git commit -m "Added RedBlackEventCounter reference into advanced-data-structures"
git push origin master
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Now, this subtree doesn’t automatically sync with the changes made in the upstream repository. GitHub’s documentation recommends using the below command to update:</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git pull -s subtree remotename branchname
</code></pre>
</div>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">[Update - 03/15/2016]:</span> The above command seems to work properly now. I’m not sure what had happened earlier; probably some mistake on my part. Need to dig deeper. So my workflow is now:</strong></p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> git pull -s subtree RedBlackEventCounter master
git push origin master
</code></pre>
</div>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">The below is not needed anymore.</span></strong></p>
<p>But for some reason, it doesn’t work out for me. I keep getting the error</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> error: Entry %filename% overlaps with %filename%. Cannot bind.
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>So, what I do is create a temporary directory and pull in everything from subtree remote. Copy over everything from this directory to the subtree directory. Remove the temporary directory, stage all, commit and push.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> mkdir RedBlackTemp
git read-tree --prefix=RedBlackTemp/ -u RedBlackEventCounter/master
git commit -m "Pulled upstream changes"
cp -rf RedBlackTemp/* RedBlackEventCounter/
git rm -rf RedBlackTemp
git add .
git commit -m "Merged upstream changes into master"
git push origin master
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>I know it is quite cumbersome to do this everytime you make a change. I guess there is a better way that I just don’t know yet. So, if anybody has an idea, please let me know.</p>sayakbiswasUse git subtrees to manage multiple projects under one repositoryInstall Spotify in Fedora 232016-01-15T00:47:42+00:002016-01-15T00:47:42+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2016/01/15/install-spotify-in-fedora-23<p>I have had an interest in Spotify ever since it launched but never got to try out as it is not available in India. So, I never understood what the buzz was all about. But, I recently moved to US to start Grad School at University of Florida. So, finally I was able to try out Spotify for myself and I must say it is really impressive. It lets me discover a bunch of new music so easily. I find myself listening mostly to the pre-prepared playlists by Spotify like the Power Ballads, Evening Acoustic playlist etc. I quickly installed Spotify in Windows and proceeded to install it on my Fedora 23 setup. Below are the steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Add the negativo17 repo for spotify.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo=http://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-spotify.repo
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Install Spotify by running</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> sudo dnf install spotify-client
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Aaaaanddd….you are done. Launch and enjoy!</p>
<p>Until next time!</p>sayakbiswasI have had an interest in Spotify ever since it launched but never got to try out as it is not available in India. So, I never understood what the buzz was all about. But, I recently moved to US to start Grad School at University of Florida. So, finally I was able to try out Spotify for myself and I must say it is really impressive. It lets me discover a bunch of new music so easily. I find myself listening mostly to the pre-prepared playlists by Spotify like the Power Ballads, Evening Acoustic playlist etc. I quickly installed Spotify in Windows and proceeded to install it on my Fedora 23 setup. Below are the steps: Add the negativo17 repo for spotify. sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo=http://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-spotify.repo Install Spotify by running sudo dnf install spotify-client Aaaaanddd….you are done. Launch and enjoy! Until next time!GNOME - Restore default folder icons2015-12-15T13:22:28+00:002015-12-15T13:22:28+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/12/15/gnome-restore-default-folder-icons<p>Recently, my laptop battery got drained completely and the system shut down incorrectly. This resulted in my NTFS data drive not getting unmounted properly. The videos, music, pictures and documents folders in my NTFS drive are linked to the Home folder in my Fedora install. When I booted my system back up I was not able to access my music and videos. I figured, probably some issue with auto-mounting the NTFS drive at boot, so unmounted and remounted the drive and the issue was fixed. I rebooted once more to confirm and the auto-mounting was working. I had access to my music and videos again. But there was a different issue.</p>
<p>You know how the Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders all have specialized icons? Well, they were gone and were replaced with a generic folder icon. After looking around for some time, I got to the root cause. It turns out that my <code class="highlighter-rouge">/home/sayak/.config/user-dirs.dirs</code> had got corrupted. This is how the file is supposed to look like:</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code># This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>In my case, the documents, music etc. directories were pointing to $HOME i.e. XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR=”$HOME/”. Most likely, a result of the botched auto-mounting attempt from earlier.</p>
<p>To fix it, I just had to update the file to point to the correct locations. So, I deleted the file and executed the below command:</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> xdg-user-dirs-update
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>And, that fixed it.</p>sayakbiswasRecently, my laptop battery got drained completely and the system shut down incorrectly. This resulted in my NTFS data drive not getting unmounted properly. The videos, music, pictures and documents folders in my NTFS drive are linked to the Home folder in my Fedora install. When I booted my system back up I was not able to access my music and videos. I figured, probably some issue with auto-mounting the NTFS drive at boot, so unmounted and remounted the drive and the issue was fixed. I rebooted once more to confirm and the auto-mounting was working. I had access to my music and videos again. But there was a different issue. You know how the Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders all have specialized icons? Well, they were gone and were replaced with a generic folder icon. After looking around for some time, I got to the root cause. It turns out that my /home/sayak/.config/user-dirs.dirs had got corrupted. This is how the file is supposed to look like: # This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update # If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're # interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run # Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped # homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an # absolute path. No other format is supported. # XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop" XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads" XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates" XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public" XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents" XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music" XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures" XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos" In my case, the documents, music etc. directories were pointing to $HOME i.e. XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR=”$HOME/”. Most likely, a result of the botched auto-mounting attempt from earlier. To fix it, I just had to update the file to point to the correct locations. So, I deleted the file and executed the below command: xdg-user-dirs-update And, that fixed it.F23 - Printing and Scanning2015-12-09T09:42:31+00:002015-12-09T09:42:31+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/12/09/f23-printing-and-scanning<p>Recently, my parents bought this new HP Deskjet 1510 AIO for printing, scanning and photocopying stuff. I’ve never had a scanner before and the printer I used to have was a Samsung ML-1610(or something similar), which was very inconsistent in working with Linux distributions. It died long since. So, with this new deskjet, I thought I’d give it a try on my Fedora 23.</p>
<p>First up, as soon as I connected the printer to my PC, I got a helpful pop-up saying “Configuring your new Printer”. A few seconds later I got a message saying additional software needs to be installed and clicking on the pop-up opened up GNOME Software. But, alas, Software told me it could not find the needed software in the repositories. I was a bit bummed, but I though what the heck, lets give it a try anyway. So, I pulled up a document, put in a page in the printer and hit print. To my surprise, it worked flawlessly. So, was that Software bit misleading? Or was it looking for some specific software that it failed to find in the repos? Anyway, as long as it works I’m not complaining.</p>
<p>Next up, scanning. I wasn’t sure this would work as I had never tried it before from Linux. I pulled up the Activities overview and searched for “scan” to see if there was any scanner software installed. There wasn’t. But, in the results I saw Simple Scan available in the GNOME Software. <strong><span class="emphasize">How Nice!</span></strong> I clicked and it opened Software and started installing Simple Scan and was done in a couple of seconds. I launched Simple Scan, put the page I just printed into the device and hit scan. It worked perfectly, I scanned both sides of the page and saved into a pdf.</p>
<p>The whole process is so smooth and it <strong><span class="emphasize">just works!</span></strong> I didn’t have to go looking for drivers or install some extra software to configure the device. Just <strong><span class="emphasize">plug and play!</span></strong></p>
<p>Until next time!</p>sayakbiswasRecently, my parents bought this new HP Deskjet 1510 AIO for printing, scanning and photocopying stuff. I’ve never had a scanner before and the printer I used to have was a Samsung ML-1610(or something similar), which was very inconsistent in working with Linux distributions. It died long since. So, with this new deskjet, I thought I’d give it a try on my Fedora 23. First up, as soon as I connected the printer to my PC, I got a helpful pop-up saying “Configuring your new Printer”. A few seconds later I got a message saying additional software needs to be installed and clicking on the pop-up opened up GNOME Software. But, alas, Software told me it could not find the needed software in the repositories. I was a bit bummed, but I though what the heck, lets give it a try anyway. So, I pulled up a document, put in a page in the printer and hit print. To my surprise, it worked flawlessly. So, was that Software bit misleading? Or was it looking for some specific software that it failed to find in the repos? Anyway, as long as it works I’m not complaining. Next up, scanning. I wasn’t sure this would work as I had never tried it before from Linux. I pulled up the Activities overview and searched for “scan” to see if there was any scanner software installed. There wasn’t. But, in the results I saw Simple Scan available in the GNOME Software. How Nice! I clicked and it opened Software and started installing Simple Scan and was done in a couple of seconds. I launched Simple Scan, put the page I just printed into the device and hit scan. It worked perfectly, I scanned both sides of the page and saved into a pdf. The whole process is so smooth and it just works! I didn’t have to go looking for drivers or install some extra software to configure the device. Just plug and play! Until next time!Fedora 23 and screen tearing2015-12-08T15:21:06+00:002015-12-08T15:21:06+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/12/08/fedora-23-and-screen-tearing<p>As I mentioned in my Fedora 23 review, I am very happy with this new release. So, I was a bit disappointed when I notice the issue with screen tearing. Now this is probably an issue with my particular set up and a lot of people may not run into this issue.</p>
<p>I have an Acer Aspire V5 with an integrated Intel HD 4400 and nVidia GT 750M and I use bumblebee for dynamic switching. So, by default the system runs on the Intel card. I noticed that when I move any window there is some tear. Naturally, I went on google looking for a fix for the issue. And I found <a href="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/79299/screen-tearing-and-low-fps-with-intel-hd-4400/">this</a> post on Ask Fedora. Basically the fix is to create the file <code class="highlighter-rouge">/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf</code> and have the below content in it:</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> # /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>And then reboot! The issue should be fixed.</p>sayakbiswasFix for screen tearing issues in Fedora 23Thoughts on Spectre2015-11-29T16:32:27+00:002015-11-29T16:32:27+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/11/29/thoughts-on-spectre<p>Spectre, the 24th entry in the James Bond film series, is most likely the <strong><span class="emphasize">last Bond film starring Daniel Craig</span></strong> as the suave super-spy. After the serious tone of the previous three Craig starrers, this movie takes a much <strong><span class="emphasize">lighter note</span></strong>. Seriously, at one point the movie had Q (played by Ben Whishaw) telling Bond: “I told you to bring it back in one piece not bring back one piece”. That is probably one of the goofiest things I’ve heard at the movies all year. In some ways this feels like a <strong><span class="emphasize">homage</span></strong> to the Bond movies of yore with a lot of over the top action sequences set in beautiful locations all over the globe. I grew up watching Pierce Brosnan playing the character in movies that had ludicrous plots, great action sequences, beautiful women and goofy one-liners. So, when I watched Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond in Casino Royale, although that super serious, dark and broody Bond was not what I was expecting, I definitely enjoyed it. And over the next two movies the tone kept getting darker and more personal culminating in the awesome Skyfall, which is my favourite Bond film. After the doom and gloom of Skyfall, Spectre’s light-heartedness seems like the logical way to go. And it works out very well.</p>
<p>The movie starts out with an explosive chase sequence set against the backdrop of the beautifully shot Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City. It turns out he had been trying to track down an assassin that he got to know about from a video message from the late M. His investigations lead him to the evil organization SPECTRE spearheaded by Franz Oberhauser, played chillingly by the ever-villainous Christoph Waltz, all the while being chased by the imposing Dave Bautista and picking up some romantic interests along the way. Monica Bellucci is back wooing Bond again as a not-so-grieving widow. And Lea Seydoux as the Bond girl Madeleine is a delight to watch. She plays the character with a confidence and steeliness that I haven’t seen in many Bond girls from the past. The other thread of the plot has the new M, played by Ralph Fiennes and the rest of the MI6 team, fighting against C, played by Andrew Scott, to keep MI6 and the 00 program being relegated into irrelevancy. The movie even slightly touches upon the current real-world issues of surveillance and privacy invasion.</p>
<p>But the real delights in the movie comes from the <strong><span class="emphasize">very well realized and stunningly shot action set-pieces</span></strong> as Bautista’s Mr. Hinx chases Bond relentlessly through narrow urban streets, snow covered peaks and train coaches. While the train fight sequence is a definite nod to From Russia with Love, the helicopter sequence in the snow covered peaks of Austria felt like an acknowledgment of GoldenEye’s introductory sequence. Daniel Craig also seems to have taken a page out of Sean Connery’s and Roger Moore’s cool, confident and one-liner spouting Bonds. His take on the character now seems to have come full circle, starting off as a wounded, fragile and grounded Bond and now settling down as the self-assured and larger than life character that we have seen and loved so many ties before. The theme of personal Bond stories that started with Casino Royale also draws to a close in this outing as Bond discovers secrets from his past. I think this is a very fitting farewell to Daniel Craig’s Bond.</p>
<p>I understand the host of mixed reviews this movie has been getting. After the grounded approach of the previous three movies, Spectre can sometimes feel like a remnant from another era. And that can be either good or bad, depending on perspective. Personally, I loved the movie. The only complaint I have is that I felt Christoph Waltz didn’t get enough screen time. But when has any amount of Christoph Waltz screen time felt enough.</p>sayakbiswasMy review of the latest James Bond movie - SpectreFedora 23 Workstation2015-11-28T14:15:04+00:002015-11-28T14:15:04+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/11/28/fedora-23-workstation<p>What!? Two posts in a single day! That has (almost) never happened! Yes, in keeping with my promise in the previous post, here’s my thoughts on the <strong><span class="emphasize">new Fedora 23 Workstation release</span></strong>.</p>
<p>Fedora was the <strong><span class="emphasize">first Linux distribution</span></strong> that I ever used; Fedora 7 it was, I believe. I was in the first year of college and one of our CS profs asked us to put Fedora in our new college provided HP Laptops(on which we had already installed Windows XP, of course). The image was hosted on the college network. I downloaded it, went back home and got to work installing it, excited to find something new. Of course, at that point of time I didn’t know anything about installing Operating Systems outside of Windows XP. So, over the course of the installation procedure, I was appalled to find out that fedora had blown my XP partition to kingdom come along with all the data I had. The whole fiasco was my fault, of course, but I couldn’t help cursing at the Fedora developers. After that I was using <strong><span class="emphasize">Ubuntu for a long time</span></strong> (started with 7.10 if i remember correctly) and then <strong><span class="emphasize">I moved on to openSUSE</span></strong> making pit stops at Arch Linux and some Fedora versions along the way. Actually before installing Fedora 23, I was using openSUSE 13.2 and had upgraded to openSUSE Leap with KDE Plasma 5. But <strong><span class="emphasize">Plasma 5 is not yet at the stage</span></strong> that I want it to be and I suffered quite a few glitches, crashes and annoyances. So I started looking for a GNOME distro, which led me to Fedora 23 Workstation. Okay enough rambling, lets get this beast of a review/impressions started.</p>
<p>A disclaimer before I start – this is not going to be a review or how-to in the traditional sense. I am just going to document my experience of using F23 over the past few weeks; things that nagged me and things that I liked. I downloaded the Fedora 23 Workstation 64-bit image via torrent and proceeded to install it on my <strong><span class="emphasize">Acer Aspire V5-573G</span></strong>.</p>
<p>Fedora 23 uses a (GTK3 based?) <strong><span class="emphasize">Anaconda</span></strong> as its installer. It is a very good looking setup program and differentiates itself from other OS installers by being <strong><span class="emphasize">non-linear</span></strong> in nature. By non-linear I mean that once you launch the installer, it throws you into a screen which can be basically considered a hub. From this screen you can launch other screens for changing your keyboard setup, setting up time zone, creating a user and setting up your partitions. You can do all this in any order you like. While I didn’t have any problems with this, I can understand how new users might find this a bit wary. Something like Ubuntu’s installer which takes you through all the same screens one after the other is likely to be much more conducive to the people new to Linux. But then again, both the distributions seems to have very different target audiences. While Ubuntu is almost universally agreed to be the newbie distro, Fedora with its Workstation version over the past few releases has been <strong><span class="emphasize">targeting the developer user base</span></strong>. The only complaint I have with the install process is with regards to the <strong><span class="emphasize">partitioner</span></strong>, which seems plain <strong><span class="emphasize">confusing</span></strong> at times. Case in point: Before installing Fedora, I had a dual-boot setup comprising Windows 10 and openSUSE Leap 42.1 installed with the BtrFS for the root directory and a /data directory where I had mounted my NTFS data partition to be shared between Windows and Linux distros. Now anaconda showed me all my openSUSE partitions grouped together under the banner “openSUSE”. Under this group also listed was my /data partition and this data partition was listed again under the “Windows”(or “other”?) group. Since I had decided to replace openSUSE with Fedora, I deleted all the openSUSE partitions and created / and swap partitions for Fedora. But I was stumped for a few moments as I couldn’t decide what I should do with the /data that was still showing under openSUSE. If I deleted it, would it just remove the mount point or delete the entire partition? If I kept it, would I be left with some remnant of openSUSE in the installation e.g. the GRUB menu or somewhere else? I realized that would not be the case, since I was removing the entire openSUSE partition and GRUB wouldn’t find it when it scans for installed operating systems. The installation went smooth after that and sure enough, I didn’t find any remnants of openSUSE. The point is I realized this but new users may not. They might get confused and end up deleting their data and whatnot. What could be done to improve this is to group only the OS related partitions(say the / and /home partitions) under the OS-name banner and keep other custom created partitions separate. One other thing that might add to the usability of the partitioner is if they can provide a <strong><span class="emphasize">graphical display of the partition structure</span></strong> like Ubuntu and openSUSE do. That will definitely add to the feedback process from the system to the user regarding their actions.</p>
<p>After the installation process completed, I rebooted my PC and was greeted with a black and white GRUB screen. The fedora GRUB correctly detects my Windows installation to be Windows 10 and titles it as such unlike openSUSE which thought it was Windows 8. A very minor observation but very important to the usability perspective nonetheless. Fedora 23 comes with <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME 3.18</span></strong> which is the latest and greatest GNOME release. I had been a GNOME user when I started using Linux, then moved to openSUSE/Arch Linux + KDE 4 when GNOME started shipping on GNOME Shell and Ubuntu started shipping Unity. Back then I found GNOME Shell to be too unstable and feature-less and Unity, well frankly, I found Unity to be boring. So, coming back to GNOME after all these years, I am pleased to say that <strong><span class="emphasize">I love it.</span></strong> It is stable and properly usable out of the box, although I did add a few extensions. I never completely understood the what Activities were meant for in KDE4, but I should say I really like the Activities workflow in GNOME probably because the entire shell is based around it instead of just being an extra. You press the Super(Windows logo) key(or you could just click on the top left corner where it says Activities)to land into the <strong><span class="emphasize">Activities overview screen</span></strong> to get an OS X Expose like view of all your active windows.</p>
<p><img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-13-04-14.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 13-04-14.png" /></p>
<p>Here you can start typing to search for an application you wish to launch and you are presented with a filtered list of installed application. Also, if the application is not installed you are presented with matching applications from the repositories, clicking on which will open GNOME Software allowing you to install it. <strong><span class="emphasize">NEAT</span></strong>! The whole process feels very intuitive, slick and snappy aided in no small part by the fluid animations of Windows moving about, search results popping up and the like. There is also the Edge Tiling feature popularized by Windows 7. I guess it is now a part of all major Desktop Environments. One gripe I have about the GNOME UI is that there is <strong><span class="emphasize">no Minimize button</span></strong> by default. Looks like they never added it back once they removed it back in the early days of GNOME Shell. I agree that since there is no taskbar, it is now of little use. But seeing as all other environments and OS’s have this feature, they should keep it even if it just pushes the current backward into the stack. See, I still use Windows very frequently, as do a lot of other users I’d wager. Coming from there and booting up GNOME, I find myself moving my mouse to the top right and finding no Minimize button. I find this a bit jarring. Not having a maximize button is okay with me as I can maximize windows by double clicking the title bar and this is how I do it in other environments as well. Of course, it can be easily fixed by using the bloody brilliant GNOME Tweak Tool.</p>
<p>Fedora comes with the usual repertoire of LibreOffice, Evolution, Videos, Rhythmbox, Shotwell etc. that you find installed by default in a myriad of other distributions.</p>
<p><img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-12-47-57.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 12-47-57.png" /></p>
<p>The first thing I did after booting into Fedora was install the <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME Tweak Tool.</span></strong> I don’t understand why this is not installed by default. This application allows you to install gnome extensions, apply new themes and some general tweaks(like adding a minimize button!) with simple clicks. This is useful for beginners and power users alike and every GNOME distribution should ship this by default.</p>
<p><img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-13-22-13.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 13-22-13.png" /></p>
<p>Also I installed <strong><span class="emphasize">Fedy</span></strong> from <strong><a href="http://folkswithhats.org/">here</a></strong>, a really nice post-install tool which makes installing non-free codecs, microsoft fonts, google chrome, steam etc. a simple one-click affair. <strong><span class="emphasize">Cool stuff!</span></strong></p>
<p><img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-13-24-32.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 13-24-32.png" /></p>
<p>And now, a list of miscellaneous tweaks, additions, deletions, observations, likes and dislikes that I made from my usage.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I removed Rhythmbox and installed <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME Music</span></strong> in its stead. Somehow, I feel Rhythmbox doesn’t really gel well with the GTK3 look and feel and GNOME Music was enough to cater to my Music listening needs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I removed Shotwell and installed <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME Photos</span></strong>. I will concede that I did just to get the complete GNOME feel :P</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I installed Bumblebee along with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers from <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee">here.</a> I did run into an issue where I installed just the 64-bit bumblebee libraries and Steam was refusing to start. It turns out Steam needs the 32-bit libraries to work. So, I installed the multilib bumblebee stuff and it got fixed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Installed the <strong><span class="emphasize">Inconsolata</span></strong> and PT fonts.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Also installed <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME Todo, Calendar, Transmission and Builder</span></strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Installed the below extensions from extensions.gnome.org</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Messaging Menu</span></strong></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Chat Status</span></strong></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Removable Drive Menu</span></strong> – make life so much easier if you are switching between external drives</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Media Player Indicator</span></strong> – A must have extension for me.<img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-13-51-22.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 13-51-22.png" /></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">User Themes</span></strong> – Need this to install new GNOME-Shell themes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Battery Percentage</span></strong></p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>As I mentioned earlier, I use a <strong><span class="emphasize">DATA partition</span></strong> to share stuff like Music, Videos and Pictures between Linux and Windows. So, usually I automount my data partition at boot-up on to a folder called /data with rw options. Then I would create symlinks of the folders from the /data location to my home folder. Previously, I used to edit the /etc/fstab file to accomplish this. This time I used GNOME Disks to do the same. <img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-13-55-39.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 13-55-39.png" />So basically, you open Disks select your partition, click on the gears icon, click Edit Mount options and you will be presented with the above screen.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Switch off Automatic Mount Options, check the Mount at Startup and Show in User Interface boxes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the options</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> uid=<your user id>, gid=<your group id>
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>You can get the ids by running</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> cat /etc/passwd | grep <your username>
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>I would love to be able to get this information somewhere from the GUI, say the Users section in the Settings app.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Change the default mount point to whichever directory you want to mount your partition, /data for me.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Click OK and you are good to go.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Then I created symlinks from /data partition to my home directory by running commands similar to:</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> ln -s /data/Documents /home/sayak
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>Dolphin has this feature where if I right-click drag a folder to another directory, it asks me if I want to create a link. I would like to see something similar implemented in Nautilus as well.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>Suspend and Resume seemed to work just fine. But I couldn’t find any option to put my system into <strong><span class="emphasize">Hibernate mode</span></strong>. If anybody knows how to do it, I would really love to know.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I was pleased to find that Videos now has the option to enable a plugin which allows you to download subtitles from the app itself. This is one feature that makes SMPlayer(on Linux) and PotPlayer(on Windows) my favourite video playback applications.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Another gripe regarding the GNOME’s UI design. It seems that as part of GNOME 3.16, the developers overhauled the <strong><span class="emphasize">file copy dialog</span></strong>. Now when you’re copying a file you get a tiny circle at the top right section of Nautilus’ header bar. This circle fills up with black as the copy operation progresses.
<img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-16-07-00.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 16-07-00.png" />
If you click on the circle, you get more details as in the shot below.
<img src="http://sayakbiswas.github.io/assets/images/post-images/screenshot-from-2015-11-28-16-07-05.png" alt="Screenshot from 2015-11-28 16-07-05.png" />
This looks pretty sexy if you are working in Nautilus all the while the file is copying. But if you are working on a different application during this operation you would have no way of knowing the progress other than alt-tabbing back to Nautilus. This has been talked about before by others as well and the solution seems to be taking this dialog off of Nautilus and placing it in the top right System Status menu, similar to KDE and Unity. This will make sure that the progress notification is always visible to the users.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A new feature that arrived with GNOME 3.18 and one that I like quite a bit is the <strong><span class="emphasize">Google Drive integration.</span></strong> So, if you’ve added your Google account via the Online Account configuration section in the Settings Panel, you will find that the file manager now has a section with your gmail ID and a network icon on the left side. Click on it and you can access all your google drive stuff from here.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>One thing that is missing and is useful for laptops is auto-brightness dimming when you lose power and you system is running on battery. On that note, I have also installed “<strong><span class="emphasize">tlp</span></strong>” which has been known to improve battery life on laptops. With tlp installed, my laptop gave me a run time of almost 5 hours on battery. It included watching an hour long episode of Doctor Who and listening to music on speakers while writing this review. Heck, I had even booted up my CentOS VM for a few minutes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>While on the topic of VM’s, I would like to say that <strong><span class="emphasize">Boxes</span></strong> is a potentially great tool. Although it needs some more polishing to become something I can recommend without any reservation. I have set up two Virtual Machines using Boxes, one for openSUSE Leap and other for CentOS 7. The setup was a breeze especially the one for CentOS 7. As soon as I selected the CentOS 7 iso, Boxes gave me the option to set up a preconfigured VM, asking me just for the username and password I would like to use. Once I provided those details, Boxes started the install procedure automatically. Next thing I knew there was a notification at the top of my screen saying CentOS box is ready to use. It didn’t ask me for anything else. I was like – WOW! May be this is something to do with the Fedora and CentOS relationship. I would definitely like to see similar features for setting up other, at least major, systems like openSUSE, Mint, Ubuntu and Debian. But everything was not peaches while using Boxes, there were times when I would launch Boxes and it would not show any of my two VM’s. I would need to relaunch the application for the VM’s to show up. Also, if I select an ISO from my NTFS drive for setting up a VM, the application fails and shows the error: “Box Creation Failed”. Wonder what’s going on there.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Another complaint relates to the update management. This is handled by <strong><span class="emphasize">GNOME Software’s Update</span></strong> module. Most of the time Software doesn’t show any available updates even if I manually hit the Check for Updates button. But then I go and do a</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code> sudo dnf update
</code></pre>
</div>
<p>in the terminal or check for updates in Yumex, and I can see a whole bunch of software updates just waiting to be installed. I am not sure if there is some filter in Software that strips out some updates from the result list or something else is at work here, but it sure is weird.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong><span class="emphasize">Touchpad Issues</span></strong> – My laptop came with an Elantech touchpad. When I installed and booted Fedora for the first time the touchpad was very jumpy, to the point that I was unable to properly close any window. I just couldn’t aim for the X button. I didn’t run into this issue in openSUSE Leap KDE. It could be a regression in the new 4.2 kernel series, though that’s just me speculating. I searched for this issue in google and came across the below fix in <a href="https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/69254/fedora-22-touchpad-cursor-slags-and-jumps/">Ask Fedora</a>.</p>
<div class="highlighter-rouge"><pre class="highlight"><code>su
dnf install xorg-x11-drv-synaptics
cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/
ln -s 50-synaptics.conf 99-synaptics.conf
reboot
</code></pre>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Also, tap to click doesn’t work in the log in screen. If anybody knows a solution to this problem, please feel free to let me know.</p>
<p>In conclusion, I will say that Fedora 23 Workstation has been working really well for me. This is probably the most polished Fedora release I have ever used. Looks like their approach of focusing on three core products is working out quite well for them. I am <strong><span class="emphasize">really satisfied</span></strong> with this. The only thing I miss from openSUSE is the YaST control center. Oh Well! Maybe I should give Leap with GNOME a try.</p>
<p>Until next time!</p>sayakbiswasRead my experience of using the new Fedora 23 Workstation release with GNOME over the past couple of weeks.Whoa..it’s been more than a year!2015-11-27T19:14:38+00:002015-11-27T19:14:38+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2015/11/27/whoa-its-been-more-than-a-year<p>A year and six days to be precise, since I last blogged (about Interstellar). This should not be as surprising as I haven’t done a very good job on keeping the blog posts flowing in the past and have had even more extended periods of gaps in between posts. But it is surprising to me because I had decided to do more posts, just after posting the Interstellar review and then completely forgot about what I had decided. I’m hoping I can remedy that going forward. See, I do love the concept of blogs, but I just plain suck at documenting and recording stuff unless that task is forced upon me. I have decided (yet again!) to maintain this blog better. Let me start by documenting what has transpired in my life in this one year duration.</p>
<p>Quite a bit!</p>
<p>Sometime last year, after 3 years of working in the IT Service industry, I realized that I wanted to pursue education a little more. That led to me preparing for and writing GRE and TOEFL, writing SOPs, applying to colleges, requesting Letters of Recommendation. Finally, I did get into University of Florida for MS in CS. So, I hit the pause button on my job and prepared for starting school in Fall. Everything was in place when, I got diagnosed with having gall bladder stones. So, pause button on starting school as well. I requested the University to defer my admission to Spring 2016 as I proceeded to get my Cholecystectomy done. And now I am preparing for Higher Education - Take II. So, this was majority of 2015 in my life. Also, I got a little better at guitar. Oh yeah, I have been trying to learn the guitar on and off over the past year. See, stuff like this is what I should be blogging about and yet I haven’t. That’s just laziness I guess. And I have a new laptop which lets me game a little more smoothly. Its an Acer Aspire V5-573G with an i7-4500U, 8GB RAM, 4GB NVIDIA 750M Graphics and 1 TB HDD storage. It’s a pretty great machine and I am happy to say runs Linux almost flawlessly. But that’s a review for another time. For now let’s move on to what’s coming.</p>
<p>So, I have plans for a few blog posts in the coming weeks. An overview of Fedora Workstation 23, a review of Wolfenstein: The New Order and a review of Spectre. Now, me being me, I can’t say for sure that all this is going to come to fruition, but I hope that it will.</p>
<p>Until next time!</p>sayakbiswasA year and six days to be precise, since I last blogged (about Interstellar). This should not be as surprising as I haven’t done a very good job on keeping the blog posts flowing in the past and have had even more extended periods of gaps in between posts. But it is surprising to me because I had decided to do more posts, just after posting the Interstellar review and then completely forgot about what I had decided. I’m hoping I can remedy that going forward. See, I do love the concept of blogs, but I just plain suck at documenting and recording stuff unless that task is forced upon me. I have decided (yet again!) to maintain this blog better. Let me start by documenting what has transpired in my life in this one year duration. Quite a bit! Sometime last year, after 3 years of working in the IT Service industry, I realized that I wanted to pursue education a little more. That led to me preparing for and writing GRE and TOEFL, writing SOPs, applying to colleges, requesting Letters of Recommendation. Finally, I did get into University of Florida for MS in CS. So, I hit the pause button on my job and prepared for starting school in Fall. Everything was in place when, I got diagnosed with having gall bladder stones. So, pause button on starting school as well. I requested the University to defer my admission to Spring 2016 as I proceeded to get my Cholecystectomy done. And now I am preparing for Higher Education - Take II. So, this was majority of 2015 in my life. Also, I got a little better at guitar. Oh yeah, I have been trying to learn the guitar on and off over the past year. See, stuff like this is what I should be blogging about and yet I haven’t. That’s just laziness I guess. And I have a new laptop which lets me game a little more smoothly. Its an Acer Aspire V5-573G with an i7-4500U, 8GB RAM, 4GB NVIDIA 750M Graphics and 1 TB HDD storage. It’s a pretty great machine and I am happy to say runs Linux almost flawlessly. But that’s a review for another time. For now let’s move on to what’s coming. So, I have plans for a few blog posts in the coming weeks. An overview of Fedora Workstation 23, a review of Wolfenstein: The New Order and a review of Spectre. Now, me being me, I can’t say for sure that all this is going to come to fruition, but I hope that it will. Until next time!Interstellar - Boldly goes where no movie has gone before2014-11-22T11:25:08+00:002014-11-22T11:25:08+00:00http://sayakbiswas.github.io/2014/11/22/interstellar-boldly-goes-where-no-movie-has-gone-before<p>I am a big time Christopher Nolan fan. The Dark Knight and Inception are my favourite movies. Ever since I heard that Christopher Nolan’s next directorial venture was going to be Interstellar, I have been waiting impatiently for it. Of course, the trailers didn’t help at all. Every time they released a new trailer, I would find myself going “Enough, just release it already”. So, when I went to watch it last week, I went in with some unparalleled hype and the fear of the movie not being able to live up to the hype. But by the time the credits rolled, all those fears had been dispelled and all that remained was “WOW” and a strong desire to rewatch it.</p>
<p>Now let’s talk about the movie for a bit. Don’t worry I won’t give out spoilers. This three hour ride of climate change, dust storms, wormholes, black holes, time travel, space colonization is stunning to look at. There is a scene in the movie where you get a shot of a spaceship passing a tiny speck of dust against the backdrop of a huge Saturn. Space has never looked so magnificent and frightening at the same time. Complementing the visuals is the soundtrack which will evoke a sense of grandeur as the characters voyage through the wormholes and the black holes.</p>
<p>At the center of the special effects extravaganza lies the love story of a father and a daughter. Set in the near future, Interstellar shows Earth reaching its end of life where dust storms are everyday occurrence and blight has killed off most of Earth’s food supply. Engineers, scientists have retired and have taken up farming as their day jobs. Cooper, the father played by the ever so stellar Matthew McConaughey(no pun intended) is a similar engineer turned farmer living with his daughter and son. Somewhat later in the movie Cooper has to leave his daughter Murph on Earth and into the unknown space to find an inhabitable planet where humankind can settle. Their struggle to get back together is what drives both the characters for the rest of the film. There is also a robot called TARS who has hopped onto the spaceship for the travel. With its humour setting at 100%, TARS provides a lot of comic relief in an otherwise serious movie.</p>
<p>This movie fulfills science fiction cinema’s promise - to fill our hearts with gleeful wonder all the while giving us something to ponder and think about.</p>sayakbiswasI am a big time Christopher Nolan fan. The Dark Knight and Inception are my favourite movies. Ever since I heard that Christopher Nolan’s next directorial venture was going to be Interstellar, I have been waiting impatiently for it. Of course, the trailers didn’t help at all. Every time they released a new trailer, I would find myself going “Enough, just release it already”. So, when I went to watch it last week, I went in with some unparalleled hype and the fear of the movie not being able to live up to the hype. But by the time the credits rolled, all those fears had been dispelled and all that remained was “WOW” and a strong desire to rewatch it. Now let’s talk about the movie for a bit. Don’t worry I won’t give out spoilers. This three hour ride of climate change, dust storms, wormholes, black holes, time travel, space colonization is stunning to look at. There is a scene in the movie where you get a shot of a spaceship passing a tiny speck of dust against the backdrop of a huge Saturn. Space has never looked so magnificent and frightening at the same time. Complementing the visuals is the soundtrack which will evoke a sense of grandeur as the characters voyage through the wormholes and the black holes. At the center of the special effects extravaganza lies the love story of a father and a daughter. Set in the near future, Interstellar shows Earth reaching its end of life where dust storms are everyday occurrence and blight has killed off most of Earth’s food supply. Engineers, scientists have retired and have taken up farming as their day jobs. Cooper, the father played by the ever so stellar Matthew McConaughey(no pun intended) is a similar engineer turned farmer living with his daughter and son. Somewhat later in the movie Cooper has to leave his daughter Murph on Earth and into the unknown space to find an inhabitable planet where humankind can settle. Their struggle to get back together is what drives both the characters for the rest of the film. There is also a robot called TARS who has hopped onto the spaceship for the travel. With its humour setting at 100%, TARS provides a lot of comic relief in an otherwise serious movie. This movie fulfills science fiction cinema’s promise - to fill our hearts with gleeful wonder all the while giving us something to ponder and think about.