MS Virtual PC vs VirutalBox

Working on ubuntu running on top of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 started giving me lot of problems. Some of them are:
1. Need lots of tweaking during installation of ubuntu in virtual pc to provide even basic mouse integration. Need to enter additional parameters (i8042.noloop) during boot up and then need to configure some system settings to make the mouse work in ubuntu running under virtual pc.
2. No smooth mouse integration. You need to click inside the virtual operating system for the mouse to be effective inside and need to press “Right Alt” key to come out of virtual os.
3. No mouse scrolling support at all.
4. In a nutshell, virtual pc bothers least about linux environments. No addons, nothing. ( Please correct me if I’m wrong here. Thank you)

So, I started looking for alternatives.

Read the rest of this post from SolitaryGeek.

Designing a small web application using various web frameworks

I’m planning to write a small web application using various web frameworks. This will be useful for anyone who is new to web application development. Also it might help someone to choose the best web framework for their application.

Servlets are the foundation of any web framework, so i’m planning to create the application first using plain servlets and jsp. We will leverage some design patterns and best practices available.

After that i’m planning to design the same application using some popular web frameworks, notably:

- Struts (yes, the same old struts, not struts2)
- JSF
- GWT
- Apache Wicket

I hope this exercise will be helpful to understand and learn these web frameworks.

The ubuntu effect

One thing that i like very much in ubuntu is the simple and slim start menu. In ubuntu the start menu looks very much organized.

For example, when i installed eclipse and netbeans in ubuntu, the shortcuts were automatically created under the start menu item called “Programming”.

Whereas, my windows xp startup menu will always drive me mad. It use to grow big whenever i install a new application.

So i thought of following the ubuntu way to organize my windows xp startup menu.

And here is how it looks now:

Almost a mimic ubuntu start menu.

My favourite open source applications

My interest towards open source started a long way when i started using Firefox.
Actually I must say that I was forced to use firefox by one of my senior in my company. But it turned out to be an eye opener for me. I’ve never heard about the advent of open source movement before that. So that firefox was the door through which i entered the open source world.

Wow. There is almost replacement for all the commercial applications we are using in our day to day life in the open source world. Some are more than enough, where as some perform even better than their commercial counterparts.

Here are the list of open source applications i use (in no particular order) in my personal notebook:

- Firefox
- NetBeans
- Eclipse
- MySQL
- Ubuntu (running on virtual pc)
- Openoffice
- VLC Media Player (Just fell in love with this wonderful app)
- PDFGenerator (mainly as a “virtual printer”)
- Notepad++
- 7Zip

Since i’m more into programming i haven’t explored great apps like GIMP, etc.

Following are the list of proprietary applications i use:

- Microsoft Windows XP Professional
- Microsoft Virtual PC (only for running ubuntu)
- AVG Antivirus (freeware)
- Komodo Firewall (freeware)(too good a product, i wonder how come they give it as freeware)
- Google talk
- Yahoo Messenger

I read some articles about open source alternatives for antivirus & firewall, like WinPooch, Clamdin etc., but i’m still a bit reluctant to use them.

So, I feel i’m almost there.
I can knock off Windows XP, Virtual PC, AVG, Komodo from the list if I move permanently to ubuntu.

Finally i’m left with Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. I heard about open source replacement called “pidgin” but i’m not sure whether it supports all the functionalities of these applications. (for e.g. viewing webcam, group voice conference etc)

I’m dreaming about the day when everyone will prefer linux over windows and notebooks pre-installed with linux (whether it’s ubuntu or fedora or anything else..) outsell their windows counterparts.

And I believe the day is not so far.

Eclipse Vs NetBeans again (on ubuntu)

Though i’m still fighting with ubuntu gusty to get the right screen resolution, i thought of giving my favourite java ides a try on gusty.

On windows, i tend to use netbeans more than eclipse, (mainly because i work with JSF/JPA more as of now)

So i thought of seeing how these 2 friends of mine behave in ubuntu.

I love ubuntu for a lot of reasons. And the most important reason is the ease with which you can install most of the day-to-day applications.

Ubuntu has a wonderful “package manager” (similar to the childish Add/Remove programs in windows). With the synaptic package manager, you can almost install all applications you ever need.

So, i looked for netbeans first and i was bit disappointed to see only netbeans 5.5 in the repository. But i thought of downloading it, because, something is better than nothing, right?.

Downloading and installing netbeans-5.5 is a piece of cake in ubuntu. All we need to do is to open a terminal and type “apt-get install netbeans-5.5″. Whoa!

I thought of doing the otherway round, since i feel more comfortable seeing a UI than a command line, so i used the synaptic package manager to download netbeans-5.5.

Smooth. Everything went through fine, until i opened netbeans.

The font rendering was horrible. (May be because i had only jdk 1.5). But i must admit that NetBeans looked really horrible. I couldn’t spend much time with it because of the horrible fonts. Though it’s a swing issue, it gives really a bad image to netbeans.

Leave alone the font, the look and feel was even more horrible. I just couldn’t digest the default “ocean” look and feel. NetBeans looked like “odd man out” in my ubuntu desktop. I felt really sorry for netbeans, because, on windows, it’s very difficult for a non-java user to point out netbeans as a java application. But on linux, netbeans looked like an old volkswagon among new sedans like lexus. Pity you netbeans.

So, i thought of trying our beloved friend eclipse. Again installing eclipse was really really easy. No need to go to eclipse.org. Just the ubuntu package manager does the job for you. I really really like ubuntu a lot in this regard.

I started eclipse. Wowwww..It’s beautiful man. The fonts were superb and pleasing to the eyes. In the first impression itself, eclipse won my heart eventually. And the look and feel, that’s the same as i see in windows. Great job, eclipse team.

I don’t know whether it’s because of swt or not, but i really gotta love eclipse on ubuntu.

Eclipse is really the winner over netbeans (alteast in ubuntu).

(Note: I’m currently downloading java se 6 and netbeans 6.0. Let’s see how well netbeans 6.0 fare)