ksymeon

About two years since my second post on installing a Linux distro on VMWare Workstation , I think it's time for a new update. Today, I got hold of an ISO image of Zesty Zapus ( Ubuntu 17.04 64-bit ) on the cover disk of Linux Format (June '17) and went immediately to "work"... What follows is my latest "recipe": Ingredients a downloaded ISO image of your favourite distro a newly created virtual machine with 4-8GB of RAM, a 40-60GB disk and a couple of CPU cores Installation Mount the ISO image to your VM's optical drive and boot it up, then follow the instructions to install your distro selecting your preferences (timezone, keyboard layout, etc.). For accessing your VM via ssh from your host, it helps if your Linux account has the same username as the one on your host OS (Windows, OS X). Once the installation finishes and the VM boots up, log in with your newly created user account and password and admire the new clean desktop. It wo

It's been now several times that I plugged in my iPhone to download my pictures into Lightroom and the device is not showing up on "My Computer". When launching iTunes the iPhone is there, fully operational, sync-able, etc. I've got the latest iTunes, the latest update on the phone, everything! What's going on? The iPhone simply seems to either operate as an MTP USB Device which makes it visible under "My Computer" or as an Apple Mobile Device which makes it visible in iTunes. Switching between the two modes is simple: iPhone working in iTunes, not visible in "My Computer" Device Manager -> Portable Devices -> right-click on Apple iPhone -> Update Driver Software... -> Browse my computer for driver software ->  Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer -> MTP USB Device -> click Next. iPhone visible in "My Computer", not visible in iTunes Device Manager -> Universal Serial Bus control

I'm not an avid PC gamer, these days I mostly play puzzle games on my mobile phone during my commute. In terms of PC/console games I play probably one game a year and in the last few years I don't even remember staying true to that rule. This year however, a game that I have been anticipating for a while is already out and it's a marvel called "The Witness"  by Thekla Inc. and the iconic designer of Braid , Jonathan Blow . I have managed to finish the game in just over 21 hours (over a period of around 2 weeks - parents don't get that much consecutive time you see) and I must say that the puzzles are a joy to play. The variety of rules and combinations around a simple path-in-a-maze concept are unbelievable. Jonathan & friends are clever blokes, no question about that. Early views What struck me most though is the ability to explore the island pretty much unconstrained and the sheer beauty of the environment. As an amateur photographer, my eye

It's been 2.5 years since I posted an installation guide of installing Ubuntu 12.10 on VMWare Workstation but the release of Linux Mint 17.1 has prompted me to write an updated guide. This is the third of my guides, acting mostly as a memo for a quick install of new distros on VMWare, my first one written in 2009 ( Linux on VMWare with later additions of other posts full of little hints and reminders (e.g. fonts, keymaps)). Ingredients Please note that these instructions work for most distros, although this post focuses on Mint 17.1 A downloaded ISO image of your favourite distro ( Mint , Mint LMDE , Ubuntu , Debian ) A newly created virtual machine with 2-8GB of RAM, a 40-60GB disk and a couple of CPU cores. Installation Mount the ISO image to your VM's optical drive and boot it up, then follow the instructions to install your distro selecting your preferences (timezone, keyboard layout, etc.). For accessing your VM via ssh from your host, it helps if your Lin

Go back twenty years, let's say 1994. You've got a new computer, you get your stashes of CDR disks and floppies, and start installing software. One after the other, OS first for some of us, a bit of config, then utilities, some word processor, some painting package. A compiler, an editor. You'll run them all at least once, reboot multiple times, etc. Now, go back ten years, 2004. You've got a new laptop. You install OS, create user account, setup language, regional settings. You "plug the internet" in, download software, install, configure and so on. Most of your software still comes from CDs or DVDs maybe, installation, serial numbers, you know the drill. Today, 2014. You've got a new tablet. You boot it up, log in to the WiFi. Go to app store, login. Start downloading your already purchased apps, run, log in, Chrome, GMail, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Flipboard. Every app needs a password, every app needs preferences, notification co

For a few years now I use Windows, Linux, OS X daily. For years, I've been looking into a language/framework/product that will allow me to build (desktop) applications that can run on all of these OS's. I've looked into QT , PyQT , Java Swing and others. I've looked into the cloud , PaaS , web applications but I couldn't find something that I liked. Of course, HTML5 has gained a lot of momentum and I've been following it from the very first day, so I was "double" happy when I found out about the Chrome Packaged Apps that look and behave like desktop apps, they can however live perfectly in the cloud and are built purely with web technologies. The fact they can run on my Chromebook too, is the cherry on top. Hello World! No time to lose, I jumped into the proverbial Hello World app, which run on my stable Chrome 27.0.1448.0 without a glitch. You have to follow instructions on the previous link to enable the Experimental Extension APIs on chro

Some of you may be familiar with the bitmap (raster) fonts that I have created a few years back or the Raster Font Editor software that I've written for MS Windows. I've been using Linux quite a lot recently so I decided at some point to convert them to BDF (Binary distribution format) files. Here's a quick guide on how to download them and install them: Download Fonts You can either download from here or type this from a terminal window: wget http://www.cylog.org/files/fonts/cylog_fonts_bdf.zip Unzip and Copy fonts In a terminal window type the following: unzip cylog_fonts_bdf.zip mkdir ~/.fonts mv *.bdf ~/.fonts cd ~/.fonts ls ...and ensure you can see the *.bdf files listed. Convert the BDF files to PCF To do the conversion we use the command line utility bdftocpf , and then we remove the BDF files: bdftopcf -o leros10.pcf leros10.bdf bdftopcf -o leros.pcf leros.bdf bdftopcf -o lini.pcf lini.bdf bdftopcf -o yamahana.pcf yamahana.bdf bdftopcf -o ya