Ubuntu problems

I was down with cold and throat infection all weekend and yesterday. And while I was in bed on saturday, I thought I should fix up the ubuntu installation on my machine. I have two other OS installations, RHEL 4.4 for work, Windows XP for all the PC only software (iTunes, Picassa uploader, Flickr uploader etc). I did install Ubuntu 7.04 on a 8GB partition on my HP 6400 laptop. I did install well, but the wifi just wouldn't work. I tried a bunch of things including ndiswrapper and followed numerous howtos on the net and still couldn't get it to work.

For me, Ubuntu was going to be primarily a home use OS and since I have wifi installed at home, and running wires is a strict no-no from my wife, using a OS where wifi doesn't work is useless for me. For that matter, even RHEL 4.4 doesn't support wifi, but thats where my teams develops and hence couldn't avoid. Instead, I avoid using RHEL at home!!

So, on Saturday, I got a install DVD of Ubuntu 7.10 and tried installing it. Shockingly, I could not even get it to install. The problem seems to be with the kernel module - linux-generic. After try a couple of times, (and screwing up my GRUB bootloader), I switched to trying and installing the kernel module - linux-server instead. Somehow that install did get done, but I still could not get XServer working, forget wifi. I eventually did lose hope. Decided to leave the installation is as is, reconfigured GRUB loader and made RHEL 4.4 as the default boot OS.

For those who have heard me harp about Ubuntu being the first "Linux for human beings" blah blah comments, this should come as a surprise, but alas, Ubuntu has again made me work with all these dirty hacks to get it going. I loved the idea of Ubuntu working off the box, but if it doesn't, then I am not the one to try hacks after hacks, recompilation after recompilation to make it work. This week, I am gonna try Fedora 7 or 8 and see if that works. If anybody had similar or contrasting experience, drop a comment or email.

Traffic for this blog

I had installed StatCounter on this blog sometime back. The prime reason was that I wanted to feel good about the high traffic that I was hopefully receiving. Turns out, I don't have bad traffic coming in. Thanks to you all for that. Whats interesting is that StatCounter allows you to check out where the traffic came from. Here is a quick summary:

• 25% came directly. I do put the link in my email signature. Didn't know it makes that much impact. :-)
  
• 21% from Web Searches on:
• Arijasoft, my senior Kapil's startup
• Jindal Aluminium, on whose job ad, I had put up a humurous post
• IITK MTech CSE Thesis, I did present a thesis at IITK-CSE
  
• Ugenie Bangalore, I worked there!
• Ritesh Gulabani, a very close friend of mine
• Malaika Nach Baliye, on which I did a post sometime back
• Shreeniwas Iyer, which is my name
• 12% from my LinkedIn private or public profiles.
  
• 10% from my Orkut page.

BTW, I did make $2.15 from Google Adsense on this blog. I guess none of you guys find any interesting ads to click on... But anyway, thanks for all the traffic. Keep reading the blog and putting in comments.

Moving On..... to Y!

Its been ages since I blogged. I have been busy with a key transition - changing my employer. I moved on from Ugenie to Yahoo! last week. Ugenie continues to be a fantastic place to work and I deeply enjoyed my 15 month stay there. I did some good work and was appreciated/recognized for the same. I also made some great friendships out of my stay there. But there were reasons for me to move on. To discuss more, lets meet up over a cup of hot adrak-wali-chai.

Why did I chose Yahoo? Firstly - I only considered large organizations, publicly listed and having good work to do in the Internet space. Mindshare among developers and presence of smart people were almost mandatory. Along with that, opportunity to continue in Bangalore, extend my experience in Java, and good money would have been a bonus. As it happens, Yahoo and me were the only combination that worked out to my preferences.

So here I am. I have joined the PacMan team in LMC group at Yahoo's EGL office in Bangalore. If you are a Yahoo, look me up at backyard by the name of "Shreeniwas Iyer" and stop by for a chat.