OpenOffice.org 2.0 Available

Finally, after almost 1 year of testing and debugging, OpenOffice.org (OOO) folks have released 2.0. You can download software from here.

I think this is a very good release. I have been using OOO since 2 years now. I consider it as an excellent alternative to commercial office suits. For most of the people, it contains all the office functionalities they will ever need.

OOO 2.0 also has Base,which is counterpart of MS Access. Another feature of OOO 2.0 is the support of OpenDocument from OASIS. I hope OpenDocument format really picks up so that there are no file format compatibilities issues

Unix Internals

Today I read a very good article comparing Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD kernel internals. Here is the link for that article.

SUSE 10.0 CD iso to DVD iso shell script !

#!/bin/bash

#Mount the CDs in loopback mode:
mkdir CD1 CD2 CD3 CD4 CD5

mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD1.iso CD1 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD2.iso CD2 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD3.iso CD3 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD4.iso CD4 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD5.iso CD5 -o loop

# Create a basic structure to overwrite files we need to modify for the CD (the checksums and boot files).
cp -a CD1/boot .
mkdir i586 i686 noarch

# Create the NEW MD5SUMS as one file in order to allow SuSE to validate (thus install) all of the files from every CD and not just CD #1
# For the i586 directory:
cat CD1/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD5/suse/i586/MD5SUMS > i586/MD5SUMS
# For the i686 directory:
cat CD1/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/i686/MD5SUMS > i686/MD5SUMS
# For the noarch directory:
cat CD1/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD5/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS > noarch/MD5SUMS

# Now, create the ISO:
mkisofs -o SuSE-10.0-DVD-OSS-i386-.iso -b boot/loader/isolinux.bin -c boot/loader/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -l -publisher SuSE -r -J -V SuSE-10.0-OSS-GM -x CD1/boot -x CD1/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD1/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD1/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD5/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD5/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -graft-points CD1 boot/=boot suse/i586/MD5SUMS=i586/MD5SUMS suse/noarch/MD5SUMS=noarch/MD5SUMS suse/i686/MD5SUMS=i686/MD5SUMS suse/=CD2/suse suse/=CD3/suse suse/=CD4/suse suse/=CD5/suse media.2/=CD2/media.2 media.3/=CD3/media.3 media.4/=CD4/media.4 media.5/=CD5/media.5

# Now just burn the ISO to a DVD (hint: use 'growisofs' or your favorite GUI-frontend to 'growisofs'). Optionally, you can mount this ISO like you did #above to verify it will work correctly, or if you don't want to actually burn it. Just call:
#mkdir DVD
#mount SuSE-10.0-RC1.iso DVD -o loop

# Enjoy!

Mandriva 2006 and SUSE 10

I am still confused whether to switch to OpenSUSE 10 from Mandriva 2006. I am really disappointed with Mandriva's inclusion of xorg 6.9 cvs. I cannot use my Intel on board graphics card to its full potential (24 bit depth). I am stuck using it on 16 bit depth.

On the other hand, it is taking hell lot of time to download OpenSUSE 10.0. It seems that there are very few mirrors for OpenSUSE. However, Novell's SUSE 10 (based on OpenSUSE with closed source apps) seems to have lot of mirrors. I am sticking with OpenSUSE. I will post a script which converts 5 OpenSUSE CD isos to a DVD iso some time soon (after I get it working :-) and off course borrowed from web).

I really hope Mandriva 2006 fix xorg problem. I will install OpenSUSE on my spare partition to give it a try.

On a different note, I finally received OpenSolaris T Shirt from Sun :-).

Go USC !

Last weekend was thrilling. I was in Los Angeles for USC Vs Univ. of Arizona football game.

Yes...you guessed it who won..USC beat Arizona 42 -21. Atmosphere at the Los Angeles colieseum brutally awesome. The sound of 90,000 people cheering for USC was deafening. Though USC did not play to their full potential, it was a good win.

At night we went to Garba at UC Irvine. That made the day perfect. Los Angeles life is very exciting when compared to lackluster Bay Area.

I miss Los Angeles !!!