Potrace: Raster to Vectore conversion

Potrace(TM) is a utility for tracing a bitmap, which means, transforming a bitmap into a smooth, scalable image. The input is a bitmap (PBM, PGM, PPM, or BMP format), and the default output is an encapsulated PostScript file (EPS). A typical use is to create EPS files from scanned data, such as company or university logos, handwritten notes, etc. The resulting image is not "jaggy" like a bitmap, but smooth. It can then be rendered at any resolution. Potrace can currently produce the following output formats: EPS, PostScript, PDF, SVG (scalable vector graphics), Xfig, Gimppath, and PGM (for easy antialiasing). Additional backends might be added in the future

Fedora 9 Sulphur released

It is yet time for another major release of Fedora Linux. The latest avatar of Fedora namely version 9 is code named Sulphur. If you are piqued by the strange names of Fedora, then you should read this article to get a better perspective. So what is in store for all Fedora fans out there ? Quite a few things really.

For starters, Fedora has got what is known as PackageKit. This is a cross distribution package management solution which has a complete Yum backend. Then Fedora ships with the latest and greatest Gnome Desktop namely version 2.22. KDE 4.0.3 is also in the repository and can be installed by the hard core KDE fans. But the greatest news is that Fedora now ships with the Sun's Java as Sun has released Java under an open source license. To know the full set of features, read this article which explains all the features in more detail.

And after reading through the features, if you are excited enough (which you will be), then visit the download page and start downloading your favorite Linux distribution aka Fedora 9 Sulphur.

GIMP Tutorial - The User Interface

React OS open source implimentation of Windows NT

ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system based on the Windows NT architecture design, providing support for existing applications and drivers and an alternative to the current dominant consumer and server operating systems. more>>

Started Using GIMP hehehe !!!!!!!!

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Gimp is one of the best open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop

Download GIMP 2.4 from http://www.gimp.org

Creativity and Innovation !!!!!!!!

A letter by a father

When Sergey Brin co founder of Google inc. was celebrating a birthday in his twenties, his father wrote him the following poem.

You are growing stronger
In body, spirit and mind.
I am getting older
Leaving decades behind.

You are tough, you mine data,
You surf first and think later,
And you crawler fast as light
Wanders madly in the night.

You work hard to squeeze a thesis
From the world wide web of feces.
You live abroad on the sunny coast
To you, my son I propose a toast.

In the stately oval office
Clinton grimly counts his losses,
Plummy interns taking turns,
Many wonderful returns.

Source:- The Google Story by David A. Vise

Only great minds can read this

This is weird, but interesting!

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

if you can raed tihs forwrad it

Linux: A Search Engine's View

In May’s issue of Linux Journal, their segment “LJ Index” featured some tidbits or trends about which countries are actually Googling “Linux.” It is always interesting where Linux is gaining public interest, which countries are falling behind. (Source: Google Trends)

• Russia claimed the top spot
• India came in second
• Number of Asian countries in the top ten: 3
• Number of European countries in the top ten: 7
• Number of North American countries in the top ten: 0
• Position of Russian among all languages: 1

.

I then decided to play around with Google trends on my own, here are some interesting results:

• Recently, the two terms “Ubuntu” and “Linux” became almost at par:

• Norway leads in searching “Ubuntu”:

• Over the years “Microsoft” and “Linux” are almost at par; with a slight edge for Microsoft since 2005:

• Ubuntu is trailing behind Mac and Vista:

Unix Tool Box

A unix/linux/BSD commands and tools nicely written and maintained by Colin Barschel. ... its a must for system admins and contains frequently use commands and utilities.....

Here is the .xhtml version

for pdf version use .pdf instead of .xhtml
and for booklet version use .book.pdf

Virtual linux console that can be used online for practice specially for beginners

16 Ways to Keep A Razor- Sharp Focus at Work

Focus is something of a novelty these days. We’ve got cellphones for texting and calls, IM, Twitter, Email, RSS feeds, Facebook, Myspace… the list goes on and on. If you don’t have ADD before you start working online, it seems it’s almost inevitable thanks to these inputs. If you’re a web worker who uses the Internet for the majority of the day, you’re especially at risk for losing focus.

Read this article at Zenhabits

Slackware 12.1 is released!

Which Linux user wouldn't know about the venerable Slackware ? The same one which has been elevated to cult status through the efforts of a single person Patrick Volkerding. Over all these years when flashy Linux distributions like Ubuntu rule the roost, Slackware has been successful in retaining its followers. Nay, Slackware user group comprises of a passionate set of Linux users who are keen on configuring their Linux box the old fashioned way namely editing plain text files. And these users have invariably mastered the art of configuring their Linux OS inside out.

If you negate the latest versions of the packages that are bundled with Slackware 12.1, I believe not much has changed as far as installing it on your machine and configuring it. To know what are the changes in this new release, do read the official announcement.

Miniature Linux Pc targets military apps

Mercury Computer Systems announced a Linux-based engineering development kit (EDK) for a 7-10 pound computer that targets small ground, naval, and air vehicles. The "ruggedized" PowerBlock 50 (pictured at left) supports multiple processors to provide "well over 100 GFLOPS of processing power," according to Mercury.

Linuxdevices.com has the full scoop on this story.

Linux file system hierarchy

I have been asked by many people to explain the file system hierarchy in Linux because they find the file system in Linux quite different from what they are used to in Windows. To put it simply, it can be visualized as a tree with its roots and all. At the top of the hierarchy is invariably the root path which is represented by '/'. All other directories are created beneath this root path. And each of the sub directories have a specific purpose. For example, '/etc' contain the configuration files, the '/opt' directory is used to install third party software, '/boot' contain the grub files and the Linux kernel and so on.

Today I came across this very beautiful image which explains the Linux file system in lucid detail at linuxconfig.org.

Fig: Linux file system hierarchy

Guide to adding a new partition or drive to an existing system

Suppose you are required to create a 10 GB partition on you running Linux, you have got two options namely.

• Create a partition from the unpartitioned space on your machine or
• Add a new drive.
  

If you are opting for the latter then it is a simple thing of plugging in the new drive, letting the system detect it, using a partitioning tool to create the requisite partition, formating the newly created partition and finally mounting it. But if it is the former namely, creating a partition from unpartitioned space, then the task gets a bit trickier.

Joey Prestia explains the exact steps needed to add a new partition to an existing system. The task can be broken down into the following steps :

1. Determine what partitions need to be created and where.
2. Create the partitions (I use 'fdisk' here but any Linux disk partitioning tool should work)
3. Re-read the partition table either with 'partprobe' or by a reboot
4. Make a filesystem on the partition, label it, and create the necessary mount points
5. Add the appropriate entries to '/etc/fstab' so the partitions are mounted upon reboot
   

Check out Joey's notes to know the exact commands used to accomplish the above task.

30 blogs for every open source enthusiast

1-Jono Bacon is an Ubuntu community manager at Canonical. What’s nice about this blog is that it’s not very technical, any non-techy could actually read it without any problems. You won’t find a “sudo” here or an “apt-get” there. Just simple observations and commentary about Linux and Open Source.

2-Be The Signal is brought to you courtesy of Jeff Waugh, the winner of the Google/O’Reilly Open Source award for Best Evangelist in 2005. So he definitely knows his stuff! You might as well read his blog.

3-Numerodix Blog gets half the recognition it actually deserves. Maybe because Numerodix is just blogging for his self gratification, and not really interested in marketing it. But he definitely has a lot of insightful open source articles. You must check it!

4-Mark Shuttleworth Do I really need to explain this one? Oh well what the heck. Mark is the founder and creator of the Ubuntu distro. He is well known and recognized all around the open source kingdom. Nuff said!

5-Aaron Seigo is the king of KDE, he mostly blogs about Plasma, ie his new shiny new desktop and about KDE policy /marketing issues.

6-HowtoForge While this isn’t exactly a personal blog, but it’s a great reference to 100’s of very comprehensive howto’s and guides. From setting up the perfect Ubuntu or Fedora box to building a simple home file server. You should always keep on eye on this one, you never know when it inspires you to a “why didn’t think of doing that” moment.

7-Ubuntu Geek As opposed to Howtoforge, Ubuntu Geek gives you quick tip and howto’s, it’s more focused on quick fixes or tweaks making it less comprehensive. True, that it’s Ubuntu oriented, but that doesn’t really mean the tips can’t be applied to other distros

8-Foogazi is a pretty nice blog, Adam Kane provides his readers with tips, tricks, and opinions. He usually holds competitions, and handing out Amazon gift cards, which is a nice touch. Simple questions like “How would you set up a recurring task of “task.sh” to run every day at 8:00am?” are asked, the most straightforward and complete answer wins!

9-Groklaw Pamela Jones, or PJ, is extremely dedicated to this site. This blog is an award-winning website that covers legal news of interest to the free and open-source software community. To us mere morals, it’s just a big bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, but if you just read the headlines, you will get a good idea on what’s going on in our fight.

10-PolishLinux is originally a Polish blog that focuses on distro reviews and helping people choose the proper distro. Their main goal is to “help you polish your GNU/Linux by using the tips and tricks we provide”. Pun probably intended

11-Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney @ ZDNet In old fashioned ZDNetesque professionalism Dana and Paula brings you the latest buzz in the Open Source and Linux community, providing you analysis and opinions.

12-Android Developers Blog If you are like me, and totally dissatisfied with what the current mobile industry has to offer, then you are proabably very excited about Google’s Android. So keep an eye on their blog, to see what the guys got up their sleeves!

13-Google Open Source Blog Who doesn’t love Google for their Open Source backing? Well if you work for Microsoft you probably don’t but everybody else does!

14-Fsckin W/ Linux brought to you by Wayne Richardson, one of my favorite Linux bloggers out there. Recently Wayne has been hired by Ars Technica to write for them. I think that’s enough of a testament on his quality of work!

15-Ubuntu Unleashed To me this is another “aha why didn’t I think of that” kind of blog. UU, as it name hints, focuses on Ubuntu, providing tips, howtos and guides. But I think a lot of the stuff on there is applicable on other distros.

16-Mozilla Blog No Open Source list would be complete without Firefox! Keep this blog on your RSS reader, trust me, you won’t regret it

17-Linux Screw Here you will find tips, tricks, docs, manuals, hacks and more relating to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris as well as much more Open Source around information.

18-Tombuntu I know I know, there are other distros out there other than Ubuntu. But tbh Ubuntu is the most blogged about, and Tombuntu is one of the better ones out there.

19-The Open Source Advocate brought to you by Tristan Rhodes, and pretty much blogs about what I blog about. Open Source is good Closed is evil. He provides lots of howtos, observations, and very informative articles. Thanks Tristan!

20-Open Ended brought to you by Ars Technica is one of the best Open Source blogs out there. I don’t think you can go wrong with Ars’ professionalism now can you?

21-Debian Package of the Day If you are adventurous like me, you probably need to keep an eye on this blog. As the name implies, this blog reviews a package (program) everyday ,well at least on paper, I have noticed that it’s more of a weekly cycle, but it is a great blog nonetheless.

22-Phoronix Get the latest news on Linux hardware, especially displays, graphic cards, motherboards, and processors from this great resource.

23-Boycott Novell The name says it all! This blog is lives on criticizing Microsoft and Novell on their deal a couple of years back. This blog is very much concerned about legal matters, such OOXML, patents, intellectual property and whatnot.

24-Kernel Trap provides you kernel news, a must read for Linux hackers out there. A bit too technical for my taste, but it has to be mentioned!

25-Planet KDE I know I have promised that I will step away from aggregators, but this one is definitely worth mentioning because it pretty much brings you all the KDE news. It links you to tons of blogs of KDE developers and hackers, which would probably bring you irrelevant blogs about the developers’ life, but still those can be interesting also.

26-Planet GNOME Same as Planet KDE but for GNOME

27-Debuntu A great blog about .deb packages providing articles, howtos and guides.

28-Firefox Extention Guru Is concerned mainly on Firefox and it’s extentions. However, it also brings you a lot of general tech news.

29-Copyrighteous Is a combination of short reflections (often humorous) and essays that tend to focus on issues of free software, copyright, and issues of free culture and knowledge. Brought to you by Benjamin Mako Hill the Debian hacker and Open Source activist..

30-Royal HeHe2-ness Last and definitely least, yours truly Rami Taibah. I have started this blog as a personal one writing about my interests such as gaming, football, tech, and of course Linux, however over the course of 6 month, it has diverged mainly into a Linux advocacy blog. Happy reading

That’s it! I am sure there are plenty out there! What are your favorite? Tell me