A Couple of screenshots.

eh. No I don't do too much eye candy. That 'Macslow clock' is not a regular feature. I keep 3 desktops, in a prism configuration.

I do use Compiz for some effects. I do not use macslow, or awn, or that monitor thing etc. Hey it's a laptop and I don't need all that stuff.

Theme : Slickness-Black.
Icons etc: Black-white 2.

I keep most of the stuff dark on the laptop, with the contrast between black - n - gray.. helps keep the eye-strain to a minimum.

QuteCom softphone - the perfect Linux VOIP / SIP phone.

About a year back I started using voip phones. Now I can't live without it. I travel a lot, and I carry my laptop with me. All I need is a connection to the web and viola.. I'm in touch with all my family n friends.

Back in the day Ekiga softphone came with most of the linux distros. Ekiga communication suite is an offshoot of gnomeeting, which originated as the answer to microsoft netmeeting. The beauty of opensource is that while microsoft was busy with the bullshit Digital Rights Management (or.. in other words.. putting clampdown on your computer) linux programmers were busy improving the practicality and functionality. Ekiga 2.0.12 was a fully functional and easy to operate phone, and it came with many distros.. like the one I used to use .. Ubuntu 8.04 (long time support version).

Something came over me. Ok.. frankly it was the problems with Hybernate / Suspend .. that made me switch to Ubuntu 9.10. New kernel, no problems with hybernation or suspend.. however it came with Ekiga 3.2. The problem with Ekiga 3.2 is that it just does not work. After spending 3 odd days trying to figure out how to make Ekiga 3.2 connect to my voip provider, or find and install the older version of Ekiga that actually worked, I finally gave up.

After some research and stumbling upon various softphones that had one issue or the other, I finally found QuteCom. It was in the ubuntu respositories / launchpad. I installed it and it works perfect.

Not only is QuteCom a fully functional softphone, it's a complete communications suite with msn / aol / yahoo etc everything built-in. I have not seen a more powerful, more useful single utility for communication.

So .. mucho respect goes towards Mbdsys for making this gem of a software. Thank you.

For more information on QuteCom : http://www.qutecom.org/

If you are using Ubuntu 9.10:

1. go to https://launchpad.net/~cavedon/+archive/qutecom

2. Copy the links for the sources lists and add them to your software sources (menu|system|administration|software sources|third party)

3. add the key (use 'follow the instructions' thing on that page)

4. go to terminal .. type " sudo apt-get install qutecom ".

What's it about.

It was 1999. Armed with an old 486 desktop PC and a strange looking cd from RedHat I had my first adventure with Linux. It was a very brief encounter, lasting merely days of pulling hair trying to get anything done on the Gnome desktop. That did not last very long. In 2000 I went back to school for my Masters. From 2000 till 2005 I stayed busy with school, working with Windows computers that needed complete reformatting every six to eight months.

Today I have to have a very good reason to start a Windows desktop, and watch windows dictate my usage instead of the other way around.

Yes it is a pain to learn, Having controlled by M$, we forget how to control ourselves. That is perhaps the first stumbling block when you move from windows to linux. Breaking it is easy. Configuring it is hard. Temptation is overwhelming... you want cairo-clock, AWN, Compiz, Gnomenu. You want to play with KDE, Gnome, Xfce, everything that you can get your greasy mitts on. However if you are not very very careful you will break the system in less than one week. With freedom comes responsibility.

Back to the point.. boy I have a severe case of ADD.

It is going to be a general blog of my raves and rants, of kudos and disses, of little things that I have learnt from people in the know, of stumbling and rising up, of installations and removals, of making it work.

Over time I have played with different distros, versins of Fedora Core, Mandrake (Mandrivia?), Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Debian etc. I want to thank the developers, the hard working programmers, the providers, the enablers, the leaders for leading the way in this software revolution.