Most of the computers in our house run Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10. This is of course the KDE desktop version of the popular and capable Ubuntu distro.

Today, Kopete, the multiprotocol instant messaging client stopped working. It would not even launch. When I rebooted, KDE's login did not complete either.

It was stuck at "Initializing system services ..." for several seconds, then the login would display again.

I use the Linux dump program to do backups. I use a set of scripts making the process as unattended as can be. The scripts send me an email with the result so I am informed of the outcome.

Viewing today's email status message in Gmail had a hilarious surpise in it. Look at the ad on the right hand side.

Google thought that the email subject and text here has "Dump" in it, an display an ad about "She dumped me" ... "Get your girl back".

On servers, and to some extent desktops, it used to be a common geek sport to brag about uptime.

Now, on a Linux laptop, I am getting 5 weeks of uptime, as per the commands here: 

# who -b
system boot  2007-12-21 15:22
# date
Sun Jan 27 01:26:17 EST 2008

While this is true, it is due to the fact that I put the laptop to hibernate every day, and do not reboot it that often.

Still looks cool though ... 

For the last two years, I have been running a Xen based VPS which has Ubuntu server on it. Up to last week, it was running Feisty Fawn (7.04), and it was time to upgrade it to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), the latest Ubuntu version.

The upgrade had some complications, so I am documenting them here in case someone has the same problem.

Procedure for upgrade

On Debian and earlier versions of Ubuntu, the procedure for upgrading consisted of entering the commands:

The OLPC has started deployment to schools in some countries.

The way the students interact with it, learn how to use it, and interact to each other is already amazing. There are stories of school drop outs coming back to school for the sake of the laptop, aggressive kids who become experts in the OLPC, and help others out using it, and more.

Two recent reviews of the XO One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) are very interesting. The first is by a 12 year old, and the other is by a 9 year old.

According to ABI Research, Linux will be the fastest growing smart phone operating system over the next five years, and will grab about one third of market share by then.

Will RIM change their proprietary operating system to Linux? Not now, but eventually they will have to.

The Nokia N810 is due to come out on October 23 (next Tuesday). It runs a variant of Linux Debian. It was even made to work in Arabic by M Sameer.

A Toronto company put out a job on Monster.com for Flash developers. The candidate should know Lynux though. What exactly is that?

If everyone pronounced Linux the way Linus does (Lee-nooks), rather than the Anglicized (Lie-nooks) this would not have happened.

Two wireless providers in Canada started offering laptop access via PC cards.

Bell Canada has introduced laptop cards that provide internet connectivity anywhere in coverage areas. The ads tout the fact that they can be used in a cab or on a train.

These cards use the mobile phone frequencies and data infrastructure (EVDO).

The monthly unlimited plan is $75 which is reasonable.