Debian GNU/Hurd on VirtualBox
Posted on February 1, 2015
| 2 minutes
| 240 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
One of the great things about Debian is the wide range of kernels it supports can run. This gives the user the flexibility to not spend time on the common userland stuff. For example, most apps, package management and system admin tasks are common across all Debian platforms.
These platforms may not be optimal at par to Linux, but still, choice is good.
For long, I had used Debian GNU/Hurd, only on a KVM hypervisor.
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Linux Containers and Productization
Posted on December 26, 2014
| 3 minutes
| 595 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
Linux has improved many many things over the last couple of years. Of the many improvements, the one that I’ve started leveraging the most today, are Control Groups.
In the past, when there was a need to build a prototype for a solution, we needed hardware.
Then came the virtualization richness to Linux. It came in 2 major flavors, KVM ( Full Virtualization ) and Xen ( Para Virtualization ). Over the years, the difference of para vs full, for both the implementations, is almost none.
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Linux Desktop in 2014
Posted on December 26, 2014
| 7 minutes
| 1348 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
We are almost at the end of 2014. While 2014 has been a year with many mixed experiences, I think it does warrant one blog entry ;-)
Recently, I’ve again started spending more time on Linux products / solutions, than spending time focused on a specfic subsystem. This change has been good. It has allowed me to re-cap all the advancements that have happened in the Linux world, umm… in the last 5 years.
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Laptop Mode Tools 1.66
Posted on September 27, 2014
(Last modified on November 12, 2014)
| 1 minutes
| 94 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
I am pleased to announce the release of Laptop Mode Tools at version 1.66.
This release fixes an important bug in the way Laptop Mode Tools is invoked. Users, now when disable it in the config file, the tool will be disabled. Thanks to bendlas @github for narrowing it down. The GUI configuration tool has been improved, thanks to Juan. And there is a new power saving module for users with ATI Radeon cards.
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Windows 7 Profile Synchronization
Posted on December 18, 2013
(Last modified on November 12, 2014)
| 3 minutes
| 518 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
Lately, for my day job (to be more efficient for the time I spent), I am required to use Windows, back again. :-)
It is great to be back. By back, I mean using Windows for some of the workflows. All these years, I’ve been using Linux based tools (Debian, Kontact | IceDove, Konq | Chromium | IceWeasel etc) to get my job done. It is great to try back Windows for some of the workflows.
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Power consumption on Linux 3.10
Posted on July 23, 2013
| 2 minutes
| 416 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
The power consumption on the Linux kernel 3.10 is pretty bad.
On kernel 3.10, with the follwing config, the PowerTop results are:
#
# Timers subsystem
#
CONFIG_TICK_ONESHOT=y
CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON=y
# CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC is not set
CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y
# CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL is not set
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y
CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS=y
PowerTOP v2.0 Overview Idle stats Frequency stats Device stats Tunables
The battery reports a discharge rate of 28.0 W
The estimated remaining time is 23 minutes
Summary: 1785.5 wakeups/second, 0.
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I am so indebted to the community
Posted on March 1, 2013
| 2 minutes
| 416 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
As someone who learned computers on his own, I always acknowledged the value that the Free Software movement has brought. The accessibility of these topics, which are only supposed to be part of text books and schools, is available for anyone and everyone who has the resource and passion to do it.
But this past week, 2 things made me pretty impressed with the maturity and quality of work that we do.
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apt-offline - 1.3
Posted on December 31, 2012
(Last modified on November 12, 2014)
| 1 minutes
| 66 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
It is still 2012 in this part of the world and the world is still intact.
Since nothing major happened, I thought of spending the new gifted time to add
a long pending item to apt-offline. As shown in the screen shots, apt-
offline’s GUI now has support to detect and display the downloaded offline bug
reports. 
This is part of the just released, version 1.3.
Reporting bugs with Apport - III
Posted on October 19, 2012
(Last modified on November 12, 2014)
| 2 minutes
| 234 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
Hello World. This is the follow-up to the last [2](http://blog/report-bugs- with-apport) updates on the state of apport in Debian.
A lot has changed since the last update on Apport. Currently, in Experimental, we have version 2.6.1-2. With this version, and going forward, there will be no hacks to make it work for Debian. Thanks to Martin Pitt, with his assistance, Apport now has a very basic crashdb in place for Debian.
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Laptop Mode Tools - 1.61
Posted on May 17, 2012
(Last modified on January 31, 2013)
| 1 minutes
| 184 words
| Ritesh Raj Sarraf
Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.61, has been released and will land up soon for Debian. This is the version that would be targetting Wheezy.
This release includes many bug fixes and should make power savings much better on your machines.
This is mainly a bug fix release. Some parallel module execution approach has been used which could show runtime improvements.
Changelog:
1.61 - Thu May 17 17:44:26 IST 2012
* Handle devices with persistent device naming.
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