Hope to have more people from KK joining in and be a Linux evangelist. I know it is a long journey ahead, but still, it needs to start somewhere.

Interested in Linux and you are in KK? Join us here:

KK LUG

Visit this group

1. When pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete did not show me task manager. After some time, I discovered that I could customize how my notebook will react when I did it in Ubuntu…
2. Waiting for daily schedule of antivirus update at 8.45am every morning. And get used to it.
3. Running Spybot Search & Destroy once in a while to detect spyware, malware and adaware, in which sometimes took more than half an hour of slow notebook.
4. Registry cleaning. Where should I clean my Ubuntu registry???
5. Pressing right mouse click and “Refresh” my LCD screen. Where the hell is my “Refresh” in Ubuntu???
6. Restart your computer every time after update& install new software. Why Ubuntu do not have to restart after apt-get?
7. No more trip to pirated software vendor at Center Point. Yes, they still running.
8. Blue screen of death.
9. Worry about any .exe file that I accidentally download from the net, thinking that it will install a good file.
10. Spending money for software…

BTW, I just found out the wonderful world of aptitude…

I had to screen my computer with Spybot Search & Destroy, which found the culprit. As I saw it running in my memory, deleting the files manually will not eradicate the malware. I was surprised that my AntiVir did not able to detect it (I used free version).

So what I did was logged out, boot into my Ubuntu, and deleted the files from Ubuntu. As usual, the files were situated inside C:Windows\system32.

When I restart my Windows, Spybot did a good job by running a scan before the malware were loaded into the memory. Luckily, it did not found it anymore as I have deleted it from Ubuntu.

At about the same time, I found out about IEs4Linux, a Linux application that could run Internet Explorer in Linux using Wine. For your information, the only thing that avoided me from fully migrating to Ubuntu years earlier was because I still need to use IE to submit my patient’s claim through third party electronic medical service provider, in particular ING, FOMEMA, Metronics I-Care and Mediclinic.

I don’t know why, they all need me to use IE to submit my claims. But after getting more confidence with IEs4Linux, I just did it - I wiped out both partition in my notebook, Windows & UbuntuME - and installed Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS cleanly into it. I received Hardy Heron’s DVD with Linux For You magazine June 2008 edition.

I was really surprised when it automatically downloaded a driver for my wireless card, without the need of me to look for it. Now I have to admit that Ubuntu is the No.1 Linux distro for desktop user.

Oh, good bye XP…

You even gain something by involving yourself in the projects to the community by testing and submitting bugs to the development teams.

I have been using both  - FF and OO - from their 1.x version donkey years back, and never regretted that I migrated. I think you should do the same also.

By the way, it’s a release candidate for FF and beta version for OO.  Get it now here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html

http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/

I decided to give him a hand on bug tracking, after installing, and managed to chat with him. Apparently, he lives in Mexico, a software engineer who’s married with a kid.

I am planning to run this software in my clinic, and hopefully it could track all the patients’ database.

Any doctors who would like to give a hand on helping Mike with his SmartExp, you are invited to do so.

Who knows we could package it following Malaysian general clinic set up and share it with all the doctors in all part of Malaysia?

Another handy tool for Palm OS user. Track your fuel expenses with this handy program. With pFuel, you could track your fuel mileage spending of your car (or cars) on the go. I own a 2001 Proton Wira Sedan, which I have been using for the past 7 years. I was not aware on how many km/L of its fuel consumption until I use this program (of course, I knew its rough estimation).

pFuel could even track your expenses for maintenance of your car like servicing, repair, wheel balancing and alignment, and almost anything that you could relate to your car.

For your info, my car currently runs around 13-15km/L of petrol, depending on the road and journey that I took. Not sure about the standard consumption of fuel for WIRA generally…

pFuel

pFuel is an enhanced version of the “FuelLog” program for the Palm that records fuel purchases and computes statistics and creates graphs related to the fuel consumption for each vehicle.You can also set alert for the maintenance of your car. pFuel works in Metric (Km/Litre) or Standard (Miles/Gallons).

Data from pFuel can also be easily exported to and imported from a memo pad record.

I must say that it is very intuitive, interactive and attractive to my son. The advantage of GCompris compared to Disney Channel is interactivity - while he could only watch and learn from Disney, with GCompris, he could interact using simple mouse gesture and sometime keyboard.

GCompris

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

• computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, …
• algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, …
• science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation …
• geography: place the country on the map
• games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku …
• reading: reading practice
• other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, cartoon making, …

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 100 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

And don’t worry. GCompris can be installed in almost any operating system (Linux, Mac & Windows) and has more than 40 language translation. Now give your child some good and free education!

It was quite difficult at the beginning, and I decided to migrate to a stand-alone FTP client program just when I get use to transferring files to the server. I used FileZilla in my Windows for quite sometime, but it seems that the transfer time gets slower as time goes by. gFTP is used while I am in Ubuntu.

Because of FileZilla slowness (and I did find some bugs in their beta version), I decided to go back to FireFTP. It has been 6 months since I migrated to FireFTP, and the program has matured to give me the best service of transferring files to my servers. As it is also cross platform, I don’t have any problem while working in my Ubuntu.

What do you use?

It was the era of Windows Notepad when I started to hand code my own HTML files with the help of N|vu. But with its limited features (and boring black characters on white background), it easily made me boring after few minutes of using it.

I used jEdit initially, but I don’t feel it suits me, until I found Notepad++. I have been using it for the past one year, and I am really comfortable with it.

Notepad++ is a free (free as in “free speech”, but also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

Oh, the best thing about Notepad++ is that they have their own Notepad++ Thong. No, it is not a joke. You could get your piece from cafepress.

I was not bothered to look for solution on blocking porn from my internet browsing activities while I was single, but after having children, it seems that I could not avoid from having one.

My 4 years old boy now is more brilliant than his mother on using computer. He could switch on my home PC (which I installed Ubuntu Gutsy), type in the user name and password - and know how to get to YouTube for his favorite Jay Chow’s Initial D video clips. I know, if I don’t educate and control some of the content in the internet to get to his viewing, sooner or later he will surely be exposed to stuff that is not suitable for him.

As I use Ubuntu on my PC at home, Net Nanny will be out of the question. ParentalControl Bar, a free public service that helps concerned parents prevent their children from accessing adult-oriented Web sites was only made to be use with Internet Explorer 7. As Firefox and Ubuntu hardcore, I could only find one solution to get porn and adult content out of my son’s eye view for this moment - OpenDNS.

I have been using OpenDNS for different purposes for the past 3 years, which are navigating the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliably than ever before, but I just notice recently that they could also provide content filtering, phishing protection, adult site blocking and domain blocking.

As it is free and open source, I just get it set up on my Ubuntu PC and after some registration and follow their how-to guide, I now have secured my Firefox browser for my son’s browsing activities.

Yes, I know that blocking this adult content from my son is not going to be the total solution for him. I still need to educate and teach him on the lesson, as he will surely be exposed to those thing one day in the future.