Integrate C code within Java code using Java Native Interface in Ubuntu

Java and C are two of the most widely used high level programming languages today. As a result of which there is often a need to incorporate the two in a single application. Like say for example, we have some legacy code written in C or C++ and we want to use certain features of the powerful Java platform within our application without rewriting the legacy code in Java.

This is where JNI or Java Native Interface comes riding in from the darkness on a fine steed and helps save the day.

This post serves to illustrate how to write a simple HelloWorld application using JNI wherein a certain function written in C will be invoked from a Java driver class.

And oh, this is for the Linux user. So if you are on Windows you should be better off Googling the same issue.

Prerequisites:

Needless to say, your system should have Java installed. I do not wish to digress and explain installing Java on Linux, there are a host of tutorials that will help you with the same.

So first up, we write a tiny Java code, and then analyse it’s anatomy to see how it’s different from the usual Java code.

import java.io.*;


class HelloWorld {
private native void nprint();
public static void main(String[] args) {
new HelloWorld().nprint();
}


static {
System.loadLibrary(“HelloWorld”);
}
}

It’s a simple HelloWorld class with a few striking features.

1. private native void nprint(); This statement is crucial here. What it does is, it declares a native method, nprint(). (hence the n in the beginning) What is a native method? A native method is one that is implemented in some other native language (in this case, it will be, in C)
2. public static void main(String[] args)  – the usual driver method. It invokes the aforementioned method nprint()
3. System.loadLibrary(“HelloWorld”) locates a native library corresponding to the name “HelloWorld” and loads the native library into the application. It shall be clearer as we progress.

Now we compile this class. So head over to your terminal and type

javac HelloWorld

Now we need to create a native header file that we can include in our C program. Doing that is simple. Another line in the terminal:

javah jni HelloWorld

Now if you do an ls -al, you shall see the original HelloWorld.java file that you’ve written, the HelloWorld.class file that was produced after compilation and HelloWorld.h – the header file that just got created.

If you check the contents of the header file, you’ll see this line

JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_HelloWorld_nprint

  (JNIEnv *, jobject);

Java_HelloWorld_nprint(JNIEnv *, jobject) : This is the C method that we implement. All the fanciful names in the function name – forget them for the time being, and proceed with the task at hand.

Also, this is important. The header file is system generated. So DO NOT EDIT it. Right, with that caution in mind, we move to the remaining part.

Now we write the native code in C.

#include jni.h

#include stdio.h

#include “HelloWorld.h”

JNIEXPORT void JNICALL

Java_HelloWorld_nprint(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj) {

printf(“Hello JNI World!\n”);

return;

}

Do not blindly copy this code! Thanks to Blogger’s adeptness at parsing everything within angular brackets as html and not displaying the same I have been unable to include the header files in their proper syntax. Simply enclose jni.h and stdio.h within angular brackers and we’re done.

Also notice that the function that we’ve written is the same function whose prototype we saw in the header file. This function isn’t difficult to comprehend – save for the high sounding names, but let us leave that there.

Now we need to compile the C code and create a native library . We shall use our favourite compiler and all it takes is a single line in the terminal.

gcc -I/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/include  -o libHelloWorld.so -shared HelloWorld.c

This command compiles HelloWorld.c and also creates a native library called libHelloWorld. You will find the newly created library file libHelloWorld.so within your current working folder.

Now we are all set to run our Java program. There is however one thing we need to take care of. We need to define the native library directory path. To do that we run the following two commands.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.

(This is because the native shared library is contained within the current folder ( . ) )

and then

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

That is it. Now we are all set to run our first JNI program.

 java -Djava.library.path=. HelloWorld

If all goes well, you’ll see the output.

Hello JNI World!

There you go. Your first working JNI program!

To sum up, here’s a screenshot from my terminal, that shows the sequence of shell commands (click for bigger picture).

Setting up OpenCV 2.3 and Eclipse on Ubuntu 11.10

This post seeks to help you in installing OpenCV and Eclipse and setting them up on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric so that you can begin development straight away.

What is OpenCV? OpenCV is a library of programming functions (in C and some C++ classes) mainly aimed at real time computer vision and image processing. It is a cross platform library, first developed by Intel and now supported by Willow Garage, and is free for use under the open source BSD license.

What is Eclipse? Eclipse is a multi-language software development platform comprising an IDE and lots of plug ins to help you develop applications in several widely used programming languages.

This walk through is aimed at helping you to set up OpenCV 2.3 (the latest version as of January 2012), and Eclipse CDT (Eclipse with the C Development Toolkit) on Ubuntu 11.10.

Ubuntu 11.10 does come with OpenCV 2.1 in the repositories, but we want OpenCV 2.3 … so we first begin with adding a PPA for OpenCV 2.3.

Head over to the terminal and type

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gijzelaar/cuda
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gijzelaar/opencv2.3
$ sudo apt-get update

Now, do the usual apt-get to get OpenCV. Note that the usual Ubuntu repos have a package called libcv-dev, however with the new PPA we are looking for a package called libopencv-dev.


$ sudo apt-get install libopencv-dev

This installs OpenCV on your computer. You will find the package files in /usr/include/opencv/

Now for Eclipse. You can do the usual apt-get (sudo apt-get install eclipse) to get Eclipse or you can download from the official website. I recommend the former. At the end you should have the following packages installed on your machine. ( I further recommend you install Synaptic Package Manager (sudo apt-get install synaptic) and then check for the individual packages.)


eclipse
eclipse-platform
eclipse-rcp
eclipse-platform-data
eclipse-pde
pdebuild
eclipse-cdt


Now you should be able to launch Eclipse. So do that and then create a new C or C++ project.


We shall write an introductory OpenCV program in C++ in this project, so we name the project ImageDisplay. (Note that I have created a C++ project and not a C project. While Ubuntu comes with the default gcc compiler for C, it does not have the GNU C++ compiler, g++ by default. In case you also wish to use C++ instead of C, do a sudo apt-get install g++ to install the g++ compiler on your computer).

We now have a C++ project called ImageDisplay. To enable us to use the OpenCV libraries in this project we need to include these libraries. To do that, right click on the ImageDisplay project in the Project Explorer on the left and select Properties. Go to C/C++ build in the left menu and then Settings, in the dialog box that appears.

The Configuration bar should be set to Debug [ Active ]. In the Tool Setting tab, select Directories in the GCC C++ Compiler menu and add the path

/usr/include/opencv

Now go to Libraries under GCC C++ Linker and add the libraries that you would need. Typically you would definitely need opencv_core and opencv_highgui. The other libraries that you can add are


opencv_imgproc
opencv_ml
opencv_video
opencv_features2d
opencv_calib3d
opencv_objdetect
opencv_contrib
opencv_legacy
opencv_flann


Lastly, in the Library search path, add /usr/lib.


Make sure that you add these paths and directories for the Release build as well (in the Configuration bar).


Now we are all set to write our first OpenCV program.


Before that let us once run through what all we’ve done.

• Installed OpenCV.
• Installed Eclipse.
• Installed G++.
• Created a project called ImageDisplay.
• Configured the libraries and paths with our project.

Now for the program.


Create a file within your ImageDisplay project called main.cpp. Also, copy an image (.jpg format) to your project workspace folder. (You had set your workspace folder when you had started Eclipse. If you do not remember, then it mostly is in your home folder, and it’s called workspace. There’ll be a folder within the folder corresponding to you current project called ImageDisplay. So copy the image there. Call it image.jpg)


Double click main.cpp in the Project Explorer and write the following piece of code. If all goes well, when you compile and run this program, you should see a window and your image.jpg should be displayed in it.
Just replace the quotes in the include statements with angular brackets.


#include “cstdlib”
#include “cmath”
#include “cv.h”
#include “highgui.h”

int main(int argc, char *argv[])

{

cvNamedWindow( “Example1”, CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE );

IplImage* img = 0;

img=cvLoadImage(“image.jpg”);

cvShowImage(“Example1”, img );

cvWaitKey(0);

cvReleaseImage(&img );

return 0;

}

–

Now save this file (Ctrl+S) and compile the code (ie “build” the project with Ctrl+B). Now click on the green arrow in the Eclipse toolbar to run the code.


You should see a window pop up called Example1 and your image.jpg should be in it.

You might face an error during compile time / run time that looks something like this :

Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: “pixmap”,

This is because you do not have a package in your system. To install it, just head over to the terminal and type

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-pixbuf

That should be it. If you face any problem reread this post again and follow it carefully. Else of course, you can drop me a mail.


—


Also a very Happy New Year. Why I don’t get all gaga on New Year’s can be summed up nicely in the words of Mark Twain.

New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion

So there.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot : how to set it up right.

I had been using Ubuntu 10.10 for the past one year, and to be honest, I liked it a lot. Save for a few problems in the very beginning , it worked seamlessly and survived every inch of stress I subjected it to, from screwing around with device drivers, and (unsuccessfully) trying to enable multi-touch in an Inspiron 1545.

I had a myriad desktop environments as well, apart from the usual Gnome. There was KDE, Xfce, Unity, Unity 2D, as well as the new Gnome, Gnome 3, and when 11.04 Natty released last April, I contemplated  a lot on whether to upgrade or not. Then wisely chose not to. Several of my friends did, and while the new Unity interface took getting used to (not for me, I had already been using Unity alongside 10.10) there were many other issues that dissuaded me from upgrading.

Now however, with 11.10 Oneiric out a couple of weeks back or so, I finally decided to take the step. Installing was the easiest part of setting up Oneiric on my computer. But then, a quick and easy install has always been Ubuntu’s forte. (You can refer to this post of mine to help you out if you face any problems. Agreed, the post explains with Ubuntu 10.04 in mind, but it’s really not different with 11.10).

The messy part begins once the installation is over. Setting it up here in the BITS Pilani network is quite of a bother, given the first bummer of 11.10 that is the lack of Synaptic Package Manager. Synaptic had always been the crux of one’s Ubuntu experience in the LAN that exists on our campus, having provided the metaphorical shoulder to weep on when something has plagued us. Hence the lack of Synaptic is initially difficult to come to terms with. But no worries, here’s how it is done.

The first part of this post helps you to set it up here in BITS, while the latter half is generally solving the post-installation problems that any Ubuntu user might encounter.

I’d advise you NOT to read up on the BITSFOSS site, because the steps mentioned therein are pretty confusing and don’t quite work out the way they’re meant to. Instead, follow the steps in the following order.

1. open the /etc/apt/sources.list file, using (sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list), and then replace http:// in every line with http://172.19.1.5:3142/
2. REMOVE the /etc/apt/apt.conf file (sudo rm /etc/apt/apt.conf)

Yes, now your apt-get and your Ubuntu Software Center are both synced with the seemingly infinite BITSFOSS repositories.

Now head back to the terminal, and update and upgrade your system with the new software sources in place. Run the following two commands, one after the other.

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get upgrade

Upgrade will usually take some time, so be patient. Once that is done, you can use apt-get or Software Center to install anything you want. First up, we want our metaphorical shoulder-to-weep-on to come back. Hence run a sudo apt-get install synaptic and presto, there’s your good old Synaptic back in action. Check the BITSFOSS site on how to sync it with BITSFOSS, and there you go. Everything’s the same again. 🙂

Media codecs can be installed in a jiffy, as can be your wireless and trackpad drivers (from the Additional Drivers application that comes built into Ubuntu, that searches and find the drivers that you’d need.)

Now moving onto the post-installation problems. I had two major problems. One was installing VLC, via apt-get. I encountered the following error : 

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)

The solution to this was pretty simple. Remember the famous adage – no head, no headache? This was a fine application of that. Since the problem was with the /var/lib/apt/lists/lock file, I chose to remove the lock entirely. So,

rm -f /var/lib/apt/lists/lock

Tada!

The next problem was the installation of Google Chrome. Apparently, the fine folks at Google haven’t yet launched a tailor made Chrome for the new kernel ( Linux 3.0, that 11.10 comes with) So if you download the .deb file from http://chrome.google.com and then proceed to install it by clicking on the file (the usual way you install debs), the error you’ll get looks something like this

Internal Error”The file google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb can not be opened.”

The ‘no head, no headache’ adage won’t obviously work here, so I scoured the internet for a solution and  finally came across this.

So what they’re saying here, is to head back to your terminal and type in the following commands.

sudo dpkg -i /home/subhayan/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb

Obviously, you’d need to change the file path name to wherever you’ve downloaded the .deb file to. Now, this command when run, will throw an error, but no issues. The next command will successfully install Chrome on your system. And this is the one.

sudo apt-get install -f

There, that’s done it. You can now tap the Super Key (that’s the one with the Windows logo on it) and type Chrome to start up Google Chrome.

These are the problems I have faced with 11.10 till now. There’s one more, that I’ve had with Banshee, viz, with the cover art plug-in. My music collection is album-art-less and hence, looks staid and boring. Disabling and enabling the cover-art plug in hasn’t worked, as hasn’t a fix I found on the internet. Will update further on this post itself, if I solve this more and manage to solve any other problem that may arise. Keep checking!

As it is now, 11.10 seems very nice and refreshing. Let’s see how long it remains that way.

By your leave now, the festivities beckon me. Here’s wishing all of you a very happy Diwali. Cheers!

Creating a partition in WIndows 7 or Vista and installing Ubuntu

Thanks to a some changes in the BITS academic system, our beloved campus is experiencing, much to my delight, a Linux revolution. People who were so very anti-Linux till a few months back or so are now gladly shifting either completely or opting for a dual-boot system. This post of mine is fueled by a few tens of phone calls and requests by my friends who want their computers converted to dual boot systems. Since it’s not possible to explain to every one individually, I write this post dedicated to all you guys 8)

This walk through however is meant for Windows Vista/7 users. If religiously followed, you should not lose your data, but IF you do, I am … well … not responsible. 😛

1. Create a partition

To create a partition in your hard disk in Windows, you need to open the disk management window. Right click the ‘computer’ option in the right pane of the start menu. And select “manage” from the menu that pops up. You will see a window like this. Select “Storage” as highlighted in the screenshot below.

You should see something similar to this.

Now you need to a be a bit careful. Choose the drive which you believe has enough enough disk space to accommodate Ubuntu. We need some 10 GB at the least to play safe. The different columns you see in the lower half of the window are the different disks and drives that exist on your computer. Right click on the one (column) which meets the 10 GB requirement This is also the one whose space will be used to make space for Ubuntu. A menu like the in the pic that follows should pop up.

In this menu, click on the “Shrink Volume” option. The following screen pops up.

Enter the amount of disk space you want to shrink the drive by. You can safely shrink the volume by the size of the ‘available shrink space (in MB)’ as mentioned in the second line of the window.

Click on “Shrink”. And wait. The waiting time can be anything from a few seconds to several minutes so don’t get panicky.

After the shrinking part is done, new free space is created which you can then see. Right click on it and choose ‘New Simple Volume’. Or if you see “Unallocated space” instead of free space do the same there too.

Click “Next” when the pop up window … erm .. pops up. And you see a “new simple volume wizard” window like this. Follow the instructions that appear. In the Simple Volume Size in MB enter the volume you wish to set aside for Ubuntu. We are playing safe remember so we enter 10000 MB.

In the next window, click on the third option, do not assign a letter or drive path. By default you will be asked to format this newly created volume before you can do anything on it. And remember to format with the NTFS file system .

The formatting could take any amount of time depending on how big your new partition is. But once over, you have a partition ready to install Ubuntu in it.

             2. Installing Ubuntu in the partition just created.

This is the easier part, thought it may not sound so, and the entire installation process hardly takes 15 minutes (all hail Ubuntu).

First up, you need a bootable pendrive or the Ubuntu live CD. To make an Ubuntu CD you can just download the latest version of Ubuntu ( viz 10.04) as in .iso image. And burn it in an empty CD. Insert the CD in the CD drive and reboot your computer.

When your laptop make splash screen comes up .. showing Dell or Vaio or HP or whatever just enter the correct F-button to enter the boot set-up mode. For Dell, it’s F-12.

You will see a primitive kinda screen giving you options as to what you intend to use … use the arrow keys to select the CD/DVD option and press enter.

You will soon see the purple splash screen of ubuntu and the “build-up” to the  installation will soon begin underway. The following screenshots will guide you.

From this point onwards, you need to exercise a certain degree of caution else your hard disk can get really screwed and your Windows partition totally formatte and all data lost.

When this window (the one above) comes up, you select the LAST OPTION viz Specify Partitions manually (advanced) and click on Forward.

Clearly identify the partition you have created from the multi-coloured bar. Check the size, the file system (ntfs) to ensure that you select the right one (from the list that follows the coloured bar) … and click forward.

You would see something like the following after it.

Remember to set the Use as option to Ext4. If you are however installing Ubuntu 9.10 … select Ext3. Check the ‘Format the partition’ box and set the Mount Point as / (which means root).

Now click OK. In the screen that next comes up, enter your personal details and click Forward.

Sit back and watch as Ubuntu gets installed. The process is very fast and they also give an overview of all that’s there within Ubuntu to enjoy.

After the installation completes, you’ll be asked to restart your machine. Do that.

And well … that’s that. Enjoy Ubuntu. 🙂

screenshots credits : 

http://blog.eches.net/tips/how-to-create-partition-or-new-drive-in-windows-vista/


and


http://techie-buzz.com/foss/ubuntu-10-04-lts-installation-guide.html

Finally, an environment free of doors, Windows, and Gates

I have a very ill-reputation in my hostel, for being an evangelist for open-source software and OSes – so much in-fact, that my wingies actually use my preferance for Open-source over “normal”ware to my disadvantage. While the entire world goes gaga over Bill Gates and his Microsoft products and of course Windows, I choose to be a passive spectator to all these phenomena and maintain my indifferent attitude to the same with a certain degree of nonchalance. For example, when the latest sensation hit the computer industry in the form of Windows 7, I was, to say the least, thoroughly annoyed. Why? Because it was sensational, for the wrong reasons. It was sensational because it was good. Now seriously, after the hugely disastrous failure of Microsoft Corporation in the earlier Windows Vista, you cannot actually expect them to come up with a poor OS again, and still charge a hefty amount for it! It’s got to be good. Or to rephrase it, it better be good! MS had to ensure that Windows 7 did not turn out to be a let-down, like its precursor had, and hence they had to take that extra step to ensure that this one was indeed of top-notch quality. And so Windows 7 was born: a very good, capable, and quality OS from the overlords of the OS industry: Microsoft Corporation. I have used it, though not on my machine, and have found it very good indeed.

You must be wondering by now about my allegiance: whether I am a Winboy or an Openboy. You’ll get the answer soon enough.

While on one hand, we have Windows and Gates and doors and latches and … other objects associated with civil engineering … on another hand we have a completely different set of tools and gadgets which are radically different from the aforementioned category. This is openware, an alternative set of tools and devices that are built upon the spirit that “that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they need.”

In this world, things are quite different. Windows 7 (or XP or Vista for that matter) ceases to exist. In comes Linux with it’s wide range of Operating systems: Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, OpenSUSE etc. Windows Media Player has no significance in this world. On the contrary we have Rythmbox, VLC, Totem, Sound Juicer and other marvellous freeware. Microsoft Internet Explorer loses all ground (if it hasn’t already on Windows itself 😀 ) to be replaced by Mozilla Firefox and Opera and Google Chrome. There is nothing called MS Office here, and all Office work is brilliantly handled by the radical Open Office. This is, in short a completely new and different environment, and once you’ve used it, I can guarantee, you will think twice before reverting to Windows.

My new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 15.5” 3 GB machine, which I got yesterday, I am proud to say, has been perfectly configured with this new environment … Open and free and totaly legal. I have used Linux before on a tiny HCL netbook (or as the HCL guys put it, a myleap) and liked it a lot. The only glitch there had been the hardware shortcomings (a nearly negligible quanitity of RAM and hard drive memory, no CD drive, a tiny screen and other failings), and a very primitive version of the Ubuntu OS (7.10), which I must say is not one of the best OSes around.

The new one however, is properly equipped and makes up for the previous shortcomings, and loaded with the latest version of Ubunbu (Ubuntu 9.10) it sure means business. Here’s a brief walkthrough:
You press the boot button on the laptop, and in 15 seconds the splash screen followed by the login screen comes up. You give your password, and the desktop appears. The machine is fully operational within 20 seconds … provided of course you are snappy at entering your password :D. This after all uses only 256 MB of RAM to load as opposed to Windows 7 that uses all of 1 GB. The desktop is pretty neat, with two panels: one on the top (by default) and one at the bottom. The one on the top has the Ubuntu equivalent of the ‘Start’ button on Windows, and other system indicators and appliction shortcuts. The one on the bottom is the taskbar where you can see all your running applications. You can add as many panels as you want on the desktop, place them wherever you want, and have whatever you want on them at the click of a mouse button, but I am satisfied with the two default ones, and shall stick to those.

The top left corner of the screen is adorned by the Ubuntu icon, which comes as a breath of fresh air from the traditional blue Windows icon on the bottom left. Several other things catch your eye the moment you look about. One is the multiple workbench icon on the bottom right, beside the trash icon (the equivalent of a Recycle Bin). The multiple workbench feature is a rather smart and chic feature of this OS. Workbench basically refers to desktop, and in all versions of Ubuntu, you can actually maintain multiple desktops at the same time. Advantages? Suppose you have too many applications running on one desktop. To reduce the clutter, you can just shift a few to another desktop, and make the place look cleaner. The “shifting” part is real fun … 😀 shall come to that later. You can have as many desktops as you want in a tabular manner and can shift between them by clicking on the desired compartment in the workbench icon or by using Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys.

Now comes opening and running applications. The Applications button hides all the programs and executable applications installed on the machine, categorised as Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound and Video, System Tools and Wine. Let us try the Open Office Writer (the Open Office equivalent of MS Office Word). As the screen comes up, you look at it and can’t help feeling good. It has everything that Word has and that too in a fresh new interface, while retaining the basic navigability and get-up.
But I am not going to describe every application because I don’t really want to. They are all best experienced than heard or read about. But the striking feature that I want to mention is the amazing graphics and visual effects. The different windows, (note: not Windows) can be maximised or restored by just dragging the top panel of each window to the top of the workbench, and believe you WILL love the amazing rubbery/bubbly motion as you drag the windows from here to there. You click twice on a maximised/minimised window it gets restored in a remarkably bouncy and hilarious manner, which you can’t help adoring. And as for shifting from one workbench to another just grapple one window with your mouse and drag it out of the screen and it enters the next workbench. The motion of the windows on and between the workbenches are so awesome that you actually need to see it to believe it. Moreover, the workbench theme, appliction window, fonts are all customisable via system>preferences>appear on the top panel.

So much for visual effects. What else is cool on Ubuntu? Everything. There is/are alternative(s) available for every Windows application one uses for use on Linux Ubuntu. And the best part is all of these applications are free and open source, so you don’t really need to think twice before using it or bothering about piracy issues. Also, legally free and open source drivers exist for all hardware devices … webcam, bluetooth, external hard drive, pen drives … you name it, it has it. The next remarkable feature about Ubuntu are the software updates and installation. The Applications tab on the top panel has another option in the drop down menu called the Ubuntu Software Centre … which is essentially your portal to all software available around the globe for use on your Ubuntu machine. You double click on it, and you are pleasantly surprised at the sheer number (hundreds and hundreds) of software which you can install at the click of a button. There are tens of free and snazzy media players, hundreds of educational software, Programing IDEs, graphical software, Internet applications, Accessory software, games and loads and loads of other amazingly varied applications. Be it CD burners, rippers, format converters, graphing, mathematical, E-mail utilities, chat/messengers, image editors, photo managers, animation software, Gmail notifiers, more free browsers, blogging clients , PDF readers, text editors, Prism for every Google service, clients for DC++ … even obtusely far-fetched software like satellite trackers, weather trackers, chemical element analysers, algebra solving programs, PDF readers devoted to E-books, formula editors, dictionaries, thesauruses, character maps, virtual keyboards, gaming packages, alarm clocks, personal diary managers, time-table generators, notifiers, translators even mouse-clickers!!! That was just a teeeny weeny glimpse of what is actually in that Ubuntu Software Centre … believe me, it’s truly fascinating.

Select the application you want and just click install … and it’s done. No setup wizards, no clicking on ‘I Agree’, no clicking on ‘Next’ or ‘Finish’ … no notices which say ‘your so and so was successfully installed.’ … because very simply, nothing can go wrong while installing a software from Ubuntu Software Centre onto an Ubuntu machine. Even better is the fact that the Ubuntu Software centre is updated daily with the latest free and open source software from all around the world and you are kept updated with the latest and the best freeware from around the planet.

Next we come to the directory structure and file manger, which works like a breeze. The Places tab on the top panel gives you a drop down menu. The Places tab is analogous to the My Computer/Explorer on Windows machines. There is absolutely no clutter in the menu and no additional partitions into C drive/ D drive and so on. Just the ‘Home Folder’. This home folder does not encroach into the system’s executable files/software region etc. It just gives access to your documents, pictures, music, videos, and downloads. It creates a level of abstraction and hides all the installed applications from your view, letting you access them only through shortcuts on the Applications tab. If you really want to access them/uninstall them, click on the Computer option in the Places drop down menu. There, you’ll find other directories and folders that hide these details. Your Home Folder, you’ll see is actually one such folder, directly accessible through Places>Home Folder via the top panel. Call it user-friendliness to the maximum!

This extremely fun-to-work-with OS has the additional benefit of completely free online support and help should you need it. Added to this is the additional security you get from 99.9% of viruses around the planet, solely because all viruses/trojan horses and elephants and other malware are designed specifically for Windows owing to its popularity. Inspite of all this protection the Ubuntu Software Center has loads of Ubuntu specific anti-viruses which you can install. Small additional perks that come along with the OS include a pair of “eyes” which you can keep on your top panel that follows your cursor movement by rolling its eyeballs, and a tiny Fortune telling applet called Wanda the Fish that keeps ranting out funny quotes when you click on it. Yet another advantage is that, being open-source and being completely customisable by local users it has all resources necessary to cater to all communitites. The wireless Broadband modem setup specifically shows just the three services available when you specify your country as India, ie Reliance Netconnect, Tata Indicom Photon, and Tata Indicom Photon+ … this portion I presume, having being developed by Indians themselves. Not surprisingly the regional font range on Ubuntu is way more comprehensive than Windows because of the same region. Fonts for Indian scripts like Bengali, Telegu, Tamil were developed much earlier on Ubuntu than on Windows.

And yes, finally an OS that does NOT consider Subhayan Mukerjee to be a spelling error because it’s the name of the user, and doen’t give suggestions like Subhuman Mockeries!

Whatever. All done, and you click on the Shut Down option. In less than 5 seconds, your laptop screen darkens and the Ubuntu icon fades away … call that snappy.

Believe me, you really need to experience Ubuntu. It’s more than just an OS. Its a way of life.

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