Thanks to Chris Schlaeger for this awesome picture, taken during Japan Linux Symposium 2009. I’m nominating this as the picture of the year!

Larger version of this picture is available here under a CC license.

BLUA Documentation Team has published a beginners guide on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) in Bengali, which is available for download from http://linux.org.bd/go.php?link=ubuntuguide (PDF file, 2.7 MB).

If you’re new to Ubuntu Linux and want to learn more about it, then this guide should be helpful to you. The topics covered are installation, package management, network and Internet connection setup, customization, proprietary hardware driver and multimedia support, troubleshooting, and much more.

Please pass on this message to your friends and colleagues who might be interested in using Ubuntu.

Microsoft finally made it to Twitter. Big shots like Google and Yahoo are already on Twitter, but it took Microsoft quite some time to decide whether they really want to join or not! (Come on, we all know that they are slow!)

Anyway I found it really interesting, and thought like to welcome them via my account @Linux. I did, and it was awesome to see that people found it hilarious! They started retweeting right away, and as I’m writing right now after an hour, people are still making fun of it.

Here they are, @Microsoft on Twitter. Give them a follow if you like to!

Update:

• In a surprising event, they replied and said thanks!
• This story has been TechCrunched!

I’ve been using the Unicode based Bengali fonts of Ekushey for a long time, specially SolaimanLipi which I use almost everywhere. To make these fine fonts easily available on Ubuntu, I’ve made a package of all of them called ttf-ekushey. Users of Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint can use this package too.

Font list:

1. SolaimanLipi
2. Rupali
3. Ekushey Lohit
4. Ekushey Sharifa
5. Ekushey Punarbhaba
6. Ekushey Sumit
7. Ekushey Durga
8. Ekushey Saraswati
9. Ekushey Puja
10. Ekushey Azad
11. Ekushey Godhuli
12. Ekushey Mohua

(Twelve for now, but whenever they releases a new font I’ll update my package too.)
Continue reading…

My Ubuntu membership application has been approved today by the Asia and Oceania membership approval board by unanimous votes.

It’s a recognition of significant and sustained contribution to the Ubuntu community, and I’m really glad to get the status. I hope to continue contributing for this great project.

The delete key on my Acer Extensa 5620 wasn’t working on Ubuntu 8.04 out of the box, and I experienced the same problem on Ubuntu 8.10. It’s already filed as Bug 181057 and I hope it’ll be fixed on the next release.

Anyway, here’s how to fix this problem:

1. Open the following file as root: /etc/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86
2. Find the line <DELE> = 107
3. Replace it with <DELE> = 242
4. Find the line <I72> = 242
5. Replace it with <I72> = 107
6. Save and reboot, delete key will now work

This problem has been reported on other distributions too, and effects Acer Extensa 5210, 5220, 5620 and possibly other models that I’m not aware of.