Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu September 16, 2007 Posted by Carthik in looks and feel, microsoft, packages, ubuntu.

Posted by Carthik in guides Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts for Vista are great. The fonts include Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara and Consolas.

Getting them installed in Ubuntu is a breeze, thanks to a script I found.

To install the Vista ClearType fonts in Ubuntu, you need to install cabextract first. Cabextract is a utility found in the universe repository, so before you run the following command, make sure you have universe enabled in your repository list. Once this is done, install cabextract using:

$sudo apt-get install cabextract Then, once that is done, use this script to install the Vista fonts. Create a file called “vista-fonts-installer.sh” in your home (~) directory.

Then open up a text editor and copy and paste the script into that file.

Do a chmod a+x ~/vista-fonts-installer.sh to make the file/script executable.

Then run the script using:

$ ~/vista-fonts-installer.sh The script downloads the Powerpoint Viewer installer from microsoft.com, and then extracts the Vista cleartype fonts using cabextract. These fonts are then installed in the ~/.fonts directory. Please remember that the ClearType Vista fonts are not free as in they are not GPL-ed or made available under a re-distributable license. Since you are downloading the fonts from the MS website, and since you might already have a Windows XP/Vista license, this is not a crime, but consider yourself warned against the perils of supporting closed systems 🙂 Update:: Looks like the use of these fonts are restricted to only Microsoft Windows/Vista operating systems according to the terms of the license. I am sorry, but you’ll be installing them at your own risk. Also, please make sure you use the bash shell, or change the first line of the code to #!/bin/bash In retrospect, this was a bad post – I think we’re better off not using stuff folks don’t want us to use – let’s use the better, freer, easier to install fonts.

End of a Love Affair with Acer September 12, 2007 Posted by Carthik in reviews, ubuntu.

Posted by Carthik in Friends Etc. I was in love with Acer laptops. I bought my first one, an Acer Travelmate 290 LMi in my second year of grad school. I did pay ~ $1200 for it, but it was awesome, right until the moment there were errors with the hard disk controllers about 3 years later. When I sold it for parts on ebay, it still retained more than 3 hours worth of charge in it’s battery. The finish and the quality of parts spoke loud and clear. I liked the simple looks, the ruggedness, and above all, the dependability. So when I had to find a replacement, and was short on time and money, I settled for another Acer. An Acer Aspire 5003 LMi. Piece of junk. The plastic looks cheap. The “Aluminum” next to the keyboard is poorly spray painted plastic. The area next to the touchpad, and the left-click button have lost all their paint due to repeated use, and then look white. All within a year. For the last few days, occasionally, I would open up the laptop, and the display wouldn’t work properly. Loud cracks can be heard at the hinges when I open it up. I’d usually fix the display problem by opening the lid to an angle where the display worked. Today it failed completely. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the display to display anything coherent. The quality of the parts, and the “casing”, is terrible. I admit, this was a cheap laptop, but it had what I needed at a minimum. I am not someone who buys the cheapest thing around. I buy computers with exactly the minimum I need. This one has a Broadcom wireless card, but I thought I could live with that for a bit. I don’t need a separate video card – I never play games. I do need a large screen, and a DVD-burner – well, you get the point. I would have gladly paid $250 more to Acer for the same laptop with better quality. Personally, I have vouched for Acer laptops, and have directly influenced my friends into buying at least 3-4 Acers. Now I feel like an idiot. I have to try something new. I don’t like how ThinkPads are designed with the recessed screen and clunky looks and all. The Sony Vaios I have known through friends and others have all been terrible – each of them making the trip back to Sony at least once. That leave the glitzy HPs and the Dells. I’d rather have a MacBook or the Pro, which looks infinitely cooler. Wish I had the money for a new MacBookPro. It has way more features and power than I need, though. Anyways, I feel much better having written this – may those that I recommended Acers to find it in them to forgive me!

Ubuntu’s Audience Defined August 21, 2007 Posted by Carthik in

Posted by Carthik in ubuntu I read the impressive growth and traffic details for WordPress.com at Matt’s Blog. WordPress has always been very dear to me, and it makes me happy to note that the WordPress team grows from strength to strength, without compromising on values, and while keeping things open, almost entirely so. However, the stat freak in me got another tool, and the results are surprising! I did not have any clue that the number of 45-65 year olds that visit my site are above the average numbers for the internet by around 25-45%. Also, most of my visitors are as poor as I am, with an income of less than $30K a year. That is surprising when you realize that college graduates outnumber any other kind of visitor, based on education. Finally, the male-female disparity is not too high – I get 25% less female visitors, and 25% more male visitors than the average site. Here’s my quantcast report. Now, like me, you must be thinking, what about ubuntu.com?

Maybe Canonical should sign up for the quantcast setup like WordPress.com and then we could start fixing the problem where, right now, my blog seems to get more visitors than ubuntu.com. Clearly, quantcast is orders-of-magnitude off with the numbers. Let’s hope the percentages are right when it comes to the demographics. If they are, then then, again, Ubuntu seems to attract a middle-aged, may I say “mature” crowd. Ubuntu.com attracts more Asian, Hispanics and “Others” than the average website out there. Also, “linux drivers” seems to be leading the charge of visitors to Ubuntu.com. It would be good to put something related to drivers – perhaps an article with links peppered throughout to the various compatibility resources and hardware profiling tools somewhere on the front page of help.ubuntu.com which seems to be quite a popular destination. Of course, if I had a say in how Ubuntu’s websites worked, I would first ensure that the help pages show up where they belong on Google searches. Somehow, I can’t seem to end up at the Ubuntu help wiki after a web search. I suspect the wiki software’s intricacies, and the “https://” (now why does a help wiki have to be served over https?), are partly responsible for that issue. You get the idea that shipit must be doing something right, since it seems to be quite a popular destination. Also, OpenSuse, FreeSpire and Damn Small Linux seem to the other Linux distributions that are popular among those that visit the Ubuntu website. Scanning the quantcast results might help lots of folks involved with planning, developing and marketing Ubuntu – whether it is deciding what/who to focus on, or finding out how meta-plans are working out.