Konqueror

I was using the Mozilla browser that comes with Ubuntu. It is quite good, and very useful compared to Windows IE. Its useful features such as multiple tabs, search sub window, highlight feature, are very handy. But I had a problem, while reading Tamil web sites and blogs. Those web sites were displayed, but not so friendly readable format. All the "ooharams" in Tamil were misspelled. Then I came to know about the Konqueror. It is the browser that comes along with KDE. It has rich fonts support for displaying unicodes in native format. Nowadays, reading Tamil blogs became easy. Thanx Konqueror!

BOSS linux

BOSS - Not the Shivaji's "Bachelor of Social Service".
I just came across this new BOSS. It is "Bharat Operating System Solutions" Linux distribution by CDAC, Chennai. CDAC is Indian government controlled software development organisation. BOSS has lot of special packages in regional languages. Currently its fully functional versions are in Hindi and Tamil (latest completely localized tamil version of BOSS 2.0). CDAC's ultimate goal is to have in all the 22 indian offcial languages. BOSS also comes in live CDs. And all this for free ! Got to try out when I get free time space. www.bosslinux.in

Installed Ubuntu

I wanted to install a linux OS in my laptop (pet name cyberayya). Cyberayya had single partition 100GB in C:. I know it is foolish to have such arrangement, but, thats what CircuitCity gave me, when I bought it.
I tried to resize the partition and install Ubuntu in the newer partition.
I chose Partition magic for that. Some website offered a free download of it. I did not notice that it had a disclaimer "Demo version. Non functional". Literally, it was a demo with GUI and the actual resizing did not happen.
Then started searching for some free tools. My friend suggested the Gnome partition tool (gaprted). I downloaded from gparted.org. Created a live CD and then tried to resize using it. But unfortunately it did not recognize the NTFS file system, which housed 100 GB.
I somehow managed to get a copy of partition magic from the neighbourhood software installer. The resize operation in PM failed with error 983. Later I learnt from Web that it is due to the errors in the hard drive. I used chkdsk \R utility in windows XP to check the disk. This command will even fix the errors if any in disk. Then I retried the resize of Partition magic. Bingo. It worked and resized the partition.
Then installed the Ubuntu OS. Currently using Ubuntu for all the day to day computer activities. I shall blog more abt Ubuntu later. For now, Ubuntu rocks !