Connecting to Exchange Server from Linux

This has been one of the problems facing me every time I tried to fully switch to Linux. I can't properly connect to the corporate email, which uses MS-Exchange Server.

Currently there are two solutions available, that can provide some functionality to that area. The first, is Gnome's built-in Online Accounts (GOA); which does, theoretically provide means to access email, contacts and calendar, and make them available for the GOA-compatible applications; and the exQuilla, which is a Thunderbird addon, to connect to exchange mail servers.

I've tried the GOA, but it seems to be working randomly. It worked with some one of my accounts, but refused to work with the other, without any apparent reason. On another distro, it works with both of them, but on occasions needed to restart once or twice to connect, and gets disconnected on next boot.

On the other hand, exQuilla provides a better way to connect to exchange server for email access.

Setting up and exchange account using exQuilla is a straight forward process using its own menu item. A good help is presented to the used following installing the addon.

Although exQuilla provides a good way to connect to exchange mail servers, it lacks the calendar and contacts integration. Also, the use of Thunderbird doesn't give you a direct way to send Outlook-compatible meeting invitations or replies to meetings.

UPDATE: looks like exQuilla is "transitioning to a be a payed service". Which takes it out of my spotted services, as I'm deeply into FOSS. The hope now is for Gnome Online Accounts to get fixed, and overcome all the bugs.

Alt+Shift for Keyboard Layout Change in Fedora 18

New installation of Fedora 18 and I know already some of the problems I need solved. The normal stuff: switchable graphics (I'm almost giving up on this one, though), flashcache, instant-on, battery life and power management.. the normal stuff.

But first thing is first, I use bi-lingual keyboard. I need my Arabic keyboard.

OK. The normal addition of the keyboard went as smooth as usual, but I couldn't get the normal Alt+Shift shortcut to change the layout. This is strange, as the system requested to have Alt+[alphanumeric]... hmmm... I wouldn't like that.

So, I remember an old friend of mine: the gnome-tweak-tool.

From Software (Add/Remove Software?), searched for gnome-tweak-tool, and installed it. A nice gesture of the Software panel is that it asked me if I wanted to run the freshly installed application, I did.

From there, I went to Typing, and from the Modifiers-only input sources switch selected the "Alt Shift".

This was even better than I anticipated, as I can now use either "Alt+Shift"'s to switch the keyboard input layout.

Facebook's FlashCache: a Linux ExpressCache?

In a previous post I was trying to get the best of my Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, with Linux. One of the points that I intended to research is how to implement the ExpressCache in a Linux environment.

ExpressCache, in Condusiv's own words, is an innovative technology developed by Condusiv Technologies to improve system speeds by incorporating SSD technology advances into Windows 7 systems.

In plain English, ExpressCache is a way to utilize the SSD storage as a caching layer to speed up reads and writes during applications runtime, among other things.

Now, in my search for how to implement such technology in a Linux environment, I came upon what I might call a shocking discovery, namely FlashCache. FlashCache is a, shockingly, facebook open source project that introduces the same concept and which was released on April 27, 2010. It seems that facebook, in sake of speeding up their data extraction, for obvious reasons, have developed this technique. It is open source, and it works greatly with Linux (actually, I believe it was developed for Unix/Linux).

Now, Implementing the flashcache is not hard. There are a couple of tutorials online, some of them are specifically for Ubuntu, and a nice Wiki on the Arch Linux Wiki page, but since I crave learning I'm planning on understanding the Block Cache on Linux, first, then implement that on my installation. I'll be fully documenting and blogging about it at a later time.

Recovering the ExpressCache on Windows

OK. I did the thing that I'm best at. Formatted my new Samsung Series 5 14" notebook (or ultrabook, though I'm totally convinced). I'm not talking about a normal system partition format, I'm actually talking about a full hard drive and solid disk drive format. To be frank, I thought I was covered, having the Recovery DVD at hand. It turned out that the Recovery DVD is merely a copy of Windows 7 Home Edition, and it didn't even recognize my network card driver!

Unfortunately, I destroyed the Recovery Partition in the process, and hence the recovery option [F4 on booting] wouldn't work, anymore.

Well, it was surprising to me that the Recovery DVD didn't have the drivers embedded, or slip-streamed, into the Windows installation, and I found myself in a very disappointing situation: no drivers and no way to connect to the internet. I tried plugging in my USB modem, but it was like dead. I looked around, and knew that the drivers for the USB 3 ports were also missing. (Later, I realized that the port on the right side of the device is a USB 2).

But to tell the truth, the Samsung web site had all the drivers and utilities needed, although in very large file sizes, which enabled me to download them and install them one by one. As tedious as it was, and feeling those bad feeling of someone working with Windows after being on Linux for quit sometime, I could revive the system to a state very similar to that it was on.

The only thing that was missing now was the instant on feature, or as I knew later, the ExpressCache. I know that this relates to the SSD installed, but I couldn't get it to work. I installed all the drivers, including the intel ExpressCache driver, and the intel ExpressCache application, among the Easy Settings and the Easy Software Manager, but nothing changed. I still don't have that feature.

The feature I'm talking about is the ability to "SLEEP" Windows, with the device going almost on no power. The normal Sleep will keep the power led blinking slowly, but with the express cache thing, it was like an instant hibernate. With setting it to turn on with the lid opening, I also had an instant-on, sort of thing.

I googled around a little, and found this article on NoteBook Review, which pointed to something I found very weird, to say the least. It turned out that for the Intel ExpressCache to work, the SSD must be in Mac Disk format!

I did just that and had the ExpressCache back on.

My next thing to do is try to simulate the same behavior on Ubuntu!

Samsung Series 5 14 inch Ultrabook -- First Impressions

Just got a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, the 14 inch, one. The device comes configured with a 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM (DDR3), a Core i5 processor and a Radeon display card.

These are my first impressions on the device, but before I start this, I must say that I was actually trying to get the 13.3”, with an SSD instead of the HDD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere in the Egyptian market, and all my trials to contact Samsung Egypt were unsucessful.

The first thing I liked about it was it's keyboard. I like the US layout over the British layout (the one with the big “ENTER” key). It's been a while since I had a keyboard to my liking which is nice.

The big touchpad is also a plus, and it feels really nice and smooth with nice “click” to its buttons.

The full VGA and HDMI ports (vs. mini and micro VGA and HDMI ports) are another plus, since the device is thick enough to accommodate them with ease. This spares me the trouble of carrying converting cables all the time, as I do lots of presentations.

Another thing I liked, although might be considered unorthodox in these devices is that it has both the mic and phones jack combined together in one. To be frank, I haven't tested it, yet, but my guess is that a headset compatible with Android phones would be recognized by the device. Another save on the cables side!

Now to the things I didn't like.

The things that I hate the most is the heat! The device does get over-heated and high on temperature to an annoying level. In fact, I couldn't keep it on my legs for more than 20 minutes, and it was starting to feel real hot.

The second annoyance is the monitor. The vertical viewing angle is very small, leading to a distorted display whenever I raise or lower my body. I had to re-adjust the monitor angle every time I shifted in my seating position.

The third thing, which I consider a disappointment, is the battery life. Fully charged, the battery lasted around 3hrs 20minutes, with the brightness set to about 70% and no USB devices connected neither a CD-ROM used. Moreover, I was connected via an Ethernet cable and disabling the WiFi!! To be frank, I don't know if this is the normal trend of the battery, or is it just my unit, but I recall reading somewhere online that this device's battery lasts for 6+hrs. (Might do a recheck that). (UPDATE: [2012-07-31]: I was able to get a battery life a little over 5 hours, today. It is probably because I installed all the drivers and used the Easy Settings Application to Optimize the Power Usage. The problem is: all this is done under Windows. Under Linux, things can't get that good, unfortunately)

The device utilized a 16GB SSD for hibernating and fast booting, which is a plus, in my opinion.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 was a breeze, and it detected everything correctly. Now I'm planning to re-install it with partition setup that would allow for fast booting and hibernate/wakeup, utilizing the 16GB SSD as boot and root partitions, but that will be the talk of another day!

Windows Azure -- Thoughts

Reading about Microsoft creating a Linux client for its web platform Windows Azure produced mixed feelings inside my brain. For once, Microsoft is actually writing software for Linux, which is a confession of the existence and popularity of such marvelous operating system. On the other hand, though, I wondered if this is an attempt from Microsoft to invade the Linux community? You see, when Gates published his book "The Road Ahead", back in the mid-90's, he had this vision that in "the future" all well have on our desks is a terminal, a minimal computing unit that is capable of only connecting to the internet, where all our files are stored and where we can rent times on the software applications we use.

Windows Azure is actually, IMHO, the realization of this idea or vision. Thinking in Microsoft's shoes, I would say that the best strategy for controlling the emerging market of the cloud would simply be by providing access to such service from all possible terminals. This will bring customers from allover, and in the same time turn all computers around, including those running rival operating systems into merely access points for my services.

I might be over-thinking this, but knowing the history of Microsoft, I can't stop myself thinking this way.

On a third hand, I recalled Linus Torvalds' famous words: If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux, it means I've won.

Sozi

A little over a year ago, I met Prezi, for the first time. For those not familiar with it, Prezi is an online tool for creating non-linear presentations. Although, the term non-linear doesn't accurately describe what Prezi has to offer, Prezi is a very good tool to produce these Flash-based presentations.

Time passed, and I didn't really use Prezi for more than two or three presentations. Probably this is because we still have the "Slides" culture, but every now and then, when I need to initiate a new presentation or renew an existing one, Prezi comes back to the front of my head. Every time Prezi pops up in front of me, I try to find some desktop tool to produce similar results, preferably Open Source (Well, I'm a Linux-only user now).

Well, today I came across this Inkscape extension called "Sozi". Sozi is an extension for Inkscape that produces animated svg's with resulting Posters or "canvas" similar to those produced by Prezi. It is pretty simple, and straight forward once you get grip of the basic concepts. A nice introductory tutorial can be found here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOuf7w_Qesk].

Sozi official website [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/doku.php]

Installation Instructions [http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:install]

OMG! Ubuntu! Conducts an Interesting Survey

An interesting survey results published to OMG!Ubunto! indicated that 51% of the Ubuntu users use Android devices. The survey also shows, among other interesting facts, that age of Ubuntu users ranges between 25 to 35 years old.

Although the survey shows that 75% of Ubuntu users also use Windows, it doesn't show for what applications they use it for (nor what applications they use Ubuntu for, for that matter), nor what percentage of that group uses both Windows and Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup.

All in all, the survey is interesting and very useful.

LibreOffice - IBM Symphone: Take Two!

In a previous post, I chose to use IBM Symphony as my office package, basically because it seemed to offer more features than LibreOffice. Today, I removed IBM Symphony after finding, statistically, that I use LibreOffice more often. It's been almost a month since I last open an application of the Symphony package. I'm not claiming that the LibreOffice is better, not in this stage, anyway, but I've came to the conclusion that anything in symphony is there somewhere in LibreOffice. To be frank, I'm starting to think that the Symphony implements pieces of the OpenOffice.org's code, if not the whole deal! (No, I'm not saying that I dived in the code and found anything, I'm just under such impression, given what I see on the surface).

So, today I removed the symphony, and happily got rid of the system tray icon for it.

Nevernote

I use evernote. For those who don't know what evernote is, it's a note taking "cloud", supported by a Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and plugins for the most of the popular web browsers. It is really useful, and I haven't stopped using it ever since I found about it.

And, yes, you guessed right. There is no version for Linux. The developers, though, at evernote.com give a nice statement about how they don't have the sufficient resources to support an OS with as small share in the desktop market as Linux.

True, or false, that statement is, an open source project called Nevernote fills the gap there. The software is very good that people at evernote.com list it as a replacement or equivalent to their application in the linux environment.

You can get Nevernote from here. It is available in both deb and rpm, for x86 and x64 computers.

One thing left to say, that the application name has  changed from Nevernote to NixNote.

Enabling RTL in Symphony and Libre Office

This one took awhile to figure out, and it was easy. I write in Arabic, my native language. Arabic is an RTL (Right-To-Left) language, which requires RTL support in my word processor.

By default, word processors do not show support for RTL directly, as their default language/languages are mostly LTR ones (English and Latin languages).

I use Ubuntu now, with both Libre Office and Symphony as my Office Packages (still trying to chose one of them permanently, and wishing it would Libre Office, since it is an Open Source Project). Again, by default, both Symphony and Libre Office Writer do not show support for RTL by default, and I had to look around a little bit to know that they include this in the CTL (Complex Text Layout) support.

Moving to Ubuntu Linux - pt.02

Being a technical editor, by day, means I do intensive document editing. I like to believe that I use the MS-Word features to the max. Even the buggy ones, like the Master Document. 

Sparing so much details, and although I tend to like the open source solutions, I couldn't find any of the available packages fully satisfying my editing needs. The closest was IBM's Lotus Symphony. It's a shame that there's not open source solution with such capabilities, but Lotus Symphony is freeware, anyway.

IBM doesn't provide a 64bit package for Symphony, but googling around brought up links to 64bit deb packaged by Dylan, in OMGUbuntu.

Symphony works just fine. It is true that it lacks some of the features, but having a macro mode helps. Personally, I would rate the experience a good 80% satisfaction for the word processor.

Moving to Ubuntu Linux - pt.01

Entirely abandoning the Microsoft Windows operating system to another platform has always seemed inapplicable. Someone like me, for instance, has been working with Windows ever since Windows 3.0. With loads of accumulated documents, software and experiences, it's really hard to start all over.

But with the Linux distributions growing more mature, I thought to give it a try and see if one can really abandon the Windows. It's been three months now, and I'm spending more than 95% of my computer time on Ubuntu, so I'm willing to say/pretend that it's a very close to entirely abandoning Windows.

Note: this experiment does not cover gaming, as I'm not a gamer, myself.

Planning

Creating a list of all the critical items in one's computer use is crucial before the starting of this process. For me, the following was the list of critical items of concern:

1. Editing MS-Office 2007/2010 documents: From my past experiences with the various Linux distros, it was never a problem dealing with the old MS-Office document formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt). Dealing with the new (.docx, .xlsx and .pptx) formats was something I must experiment with and be confident about.
2. Accessing my corporate email server (MS-Exchange Server): My company works with Exchange server [period].
3. Installing Eclipse with the Android SDK: As I'm experimenting with the Android platform these days, having my familiar IDE (eclipse with the ADK) is something I'm concerned about.
4. Accessing MS-SQL database (which resides on another server): In my work, I prepare lots of reports, mostly excel-based, that read from MS-SQL server database. It's very important for me to be able to read and modify an MS-SQL database from within my computer to produce such reports.
5. Accessing the company's VPN.

Up to the time of writing these lines, I've succeeded in the first 3 items, with various degrees, still working on the 4th item and haven't started yet on the 5th.