Matrix Screensaver is a very popular screensaver based on the digital rain shots (moving text) in the blockbuster movie trilogy - The Matrix. This is available as a screensaver in popular GNU Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian with their default installations. But the default Matrix Screensaver that comes with these distributions contains only falling English alphabets. Now Santhosh Thottingal of SMC (Swathanthra Malayalam Computing) has modified this for Indic scripts and has made it available for everybody.
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Most of the web based systems that we build at Zyxware uses Drupal as the content framework. The following are the steps involved in setting up Apache, PHP, MySQL and Drupal on a freshly installed Ubuntu 8.04 system. If you follow the instructions you should be able to set it up as is but if you face problems let us know and we will try to help you.

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While installing Ubuntu on Laptops, one common problem that we have identified is that the mouse pointer movement using the touchpad is very slow with the default settings. We were hoping that this would be fixed in Ubuntu Hardy Heron but it still is not. Ubuntu allows for the configuration of the acceleration and sensitivity using the System > Preferences > Mouse menu but that too might not give the desired results always. Here is a sure shot way of speeding up your touchpad in Ubuntu.
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Setting up Malayalam on Ubuntu or for that matter any other GNU/Linux distribution like Fedora, Mandriva has been progressively getting easier thanks to the wonderful effort of the free software community going by the name "Swathanthra Malayalam Computing" or SMC in short. Most of the patches and tweaks have gone upstream to the OS trunks and most distros are already Malayalam capable. A few minor tweaks are required to set up reading and writing in Malayalam in the latest version of Ubuntu 8.04 - Hardy Heron
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The much awaited Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu - version 8.04 codenamed Hardy Heron was released on April 24th. We now have the CDs and DVDs for the different flavors of Ubuntu 8.04 available at Zyxware. You can drop by our office to write a copy for yourselves or you can use the RequestCD Service to order the CDs and DVDs online.
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Raaga.com is a very popular online music station that has a very large collection of Indian movie and classical songs. They use real media and they have a player that requires the real media player. Now the default installation of Real Media player will not allow you play music from Raaga.com and the player popup from raaga.com will stay in the 'Initializing Player, Please Wait' and 'Loading' state permanently. There is a simple work around for this situation.
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We had an opportunity recently to provide support over the phone for one of our customers for installing Ubuntu and configuring Airtel broadband on a desktop PC. The Airtel broadband was connected through a Beetel 220BX ADSL modem but the instructions should work for most broadband connections where the device is a modem router.
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Ubuntu can be installed on a USB flash thumb drive and such a drive can be used just like a Live Ubuntu CD except that it would be faster and that you can save changes back into the pen drive. The process is easy but you can save yourself the hassle of doing that order for yourselves a fully working Ubuntu Live USB Pen Drive from us.
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The full set of Ubuntu Repository DVDs (set of 5 DVDs) is now available. You can request for your copy of the Ubuntu Repositories through our RequestCD program. The ubuntu repository DVDs contain the complete set of packages under the main, universe, multiverse and restricted repositories in Ubuntu. Please note that we will mail out the DVDs only within India.
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Wordweb is one of the most useful tools for a content developer or a technical writer working on a plain old Windows machine. When somebody like that moves to Ubuntu from Windows he/she would want to have a somewhat similar functionality in Ubuntu too. In GNU/Linux there is the gnome-dictionary or the kdict application that has similar functionality as wordweb. However some minor tweaks are required to make these applications behave almost exactly like Wordweb.
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