Journal of a Tech Enthusiast

FOSS.my

You may have already heard of / been to FOSS.in, which inspired the first FOSS.my.

Quoted from FOSS.my:

FOSS.my 2008 is Malaysia’s premier Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. Whilst this is our first go at it, we aim for this to be an annual event bringing together professionals and enthusiasts from Malaysia, Singapore, Asia and the rest of the world for a two day grassroots driven FOSS conference.

Check out the website and see how you can participate, either by presenting a talk, volunteer for them good folks, as an exhibitor, sponsor, or as a delegate! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it.

I would like to thank the organisers for making this possible

The 2008 FOSS.my will be held on the 8th-9th of November 2008, from 9am to 6pm, at Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (venue details).

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HOWTO Get Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) Running (on Linux)

Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) was released a few months ago.

I have been working on the studio project on my laptop, using Eclipse (3.3 Europa) along with the Aptana plugin, RadRails plugin and Subclipse plugin.

The version of Eclipse that is in Hardy Heron’s repository is 3.2.2 or so, which is a few versions behind. So I decided, instead of installing from the repository, I should really install the latest available version.

Eclipse Ganymede comes in many different packages, and each package has downloads for different operating systems (namely Windows, Mac OS X, Linux 32bit, Linux 64bit). Since I am installing on my desktop (Ubuntu), I chose Eclipse Classic 3.4 (151 MB) (Linux 32bit).

After the download completed, I extracted it to /home/hantu/development/:

mv eclipse-SDK-3.4-linux-gtk.tar.gz ~/development
tar xvf eclipse-SDK-3.4-linux-gtk.tar.gz

Note: Initially, I wanted to install it under /opt/, but there is an issue regarding the file permission which I am not able to figure out. Something along the lines of .filetablelock Permission Denied. I’ll figure this out eventually, someday..

Surprisingly, Eclipse just works!

Next, without repeating what others have already documented, install Aptana Studio as a plugin of Eclipse. Don’t forget to install the Ruby on Rails support from Aptana’s Start Page (Help -> Aptana Studio Start Page…).

Subclipse is a plugin to work with SVN, instead of the default CVS support of Eclipse. Subclipse might not work with Eclipse 3.4, but I followed the instructions offered by a good man, so far, things are working perfectly.

More notes: I said ‘on Linux’ because I assume it is the same, for different distros, since downloading from Eclipse’s website does not require you to compile from source. Correct me if I am wrong.

Posted in Monash, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Ubuntu | No Comments »

VirtualBox Kernel Driver Not Installed

Remember my previous posts about installing VirtualBox on Ubuntu Hardy Heron?

It has been a while since I last played with it, due to other commitments. So, I wanted to install Windows XP on VirtualBox, and I stumbled across this error: VirtualBox kernel driver not installed.

Not sure what went wrong, could be some updates in between broke it, if anyone know the exact reason for this, let me know.

To fix, follow the instruction:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

* Stopping VirtualBox kernel module
*  done.
* Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module
*  done.
* Starting VirtualBox kernel module
*  done.

And I tried to start my VM again, it works.

Posted in Ubuntu, Virtualisation | No Comments »

Kota Kinabalu Linux User Group

It was just 2 days ago when I spoke to nbliang (one of the founder of KuchingOSC), and he asked me whether there is any Open Source community in Kota Kinabalu (KK). I have no idea if there is any, because in my few years of exposure to Open Source, I have not heard of any related communities in KK. Of course, he asked me to start a community that is based in KK so we can promote FOSS. Unfortunately, I am unable to do so, due to the fact that I am currently not based in KK, so it will be a little harder for me.

So, I was reading through Google Reader, and stumbled across a post by drizad. He started Kota Kinabalu Linux User Group (KKLUG). Hopefully this effort can gather as many Linux / Open Source supporters in KK, and be one of the gateway to promote FOSS in the state. Thanks for that, drizad.

Maybe BarCamp KK?

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BarCamp Malaysia

At the time of writing, BarCamp Malaysia is going on now in KL. It’s a pity I am 8 hours flight away.

So what is a BarCamp you may ask? According to Wikipedia,

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences - open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants - often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

From my understanding, it is a user-generated conference, requires contributions from the participants to share ideas, knowledge and information. It is also known as an “unconference“.

If you have registered before-hand, have fun, and make sure you blog (or share in any way) whatever you have learned, or found interesting in the event. For those who have not registered, if I am not mistaken, they do allow walk-ins, but not sure about the capacity, go and have a look, who knows

July 26-27, 2008
Saturday 10:00 AM-6:00PM (official section)
Hangout time 6pm to Sunday morning
Sunday 10:00 AM-2:00PM

xTrain Sdn Bhd
Unit E-7-1, Block E
Megan Avenue 1
189 Jalan Tun Razak
50400 Kuala Lumpur

Also, have a look at the schedule, I sure find a lot of them interesting!

BarCamp Malaysia has a Twitter account, Facebook group, and Google group!

Alright guys (and girls), have fun, meet new friends and learn new stuff!

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