Most GNOME users may be using one or more extensions for the GNOME Shell. These extensions allow extending functionality for the shell, or modify default behavior, to suit the taste of many users, who may want more than the default. Having flexibility to customize the desktop to ones personal need is a great feature, and the extensions help achieve them.

The GNOME Shell Extensions distribution mechanism is primarily through the web. I think they aspire to achieve something similar to Chrome’s Web Store. Up till recently, the ability to install those Shell Extensions was a) Through your distribution channel, where your distribution may have packaged some of the extensions. b) Through the Firefox web browser. GNOME Shell Extensions installation from the web, to most of what I’m aware of, until recently, only worked with Firefox browser.

I’m pleased to announce the release of Laptop Mode Tools, version 1.70. This release adds support for AHCI Runtime PM, introduced in Linux 4.6. It also includes many important bug fixes, mostly related to invocation and determination of power states.

Changelog:

1.70 - Sat Sep 24 16:51:02 IST 2016
* Deal harder with broken battery states
* On machines with 2+ batteries, determine states from all batteries
* Limit status message logging frequency. Some machines tend to send
ACPI events too often. Thanks Maciej S. Szmigiero
* Try harder to determine power states. As reports have shown, the
power_supply subsystem has had incorrect state reporting on many machines,
for both, BAT and AC.
* Relax conditional events where Laptop Mode Tools should be executed. This
affected for use cases of Laptop being docked and undocked
Thanks Daniel Koch.
* CPU Hotplug settings extended
* Cleanup states for improved Laptop Mode Tools invocation
Thanks: Tomas Janousek
* Align Intel P State default to what the actual driver (intel_pstate.c)
uses
Thanks: George Caswell and Matthew Gabeler-Lee
* Add support for AHCI Runtime PM in module intel-sata-powermgmt
* Many systemd and initscript fixes
* Relax default USB device list. This avoids the long standing issues with
USB devices (mice, keyboard) that mis-behaved during autosuspend

I am happy to mention the release of apt-offline, version 1.7.1.

This release includes many bug fixes, code cleanups and better integration.

• Integration with PolicyKit
• Better integration with apt gpg keyring
• Resilient to failures when a sub-task errors out
• New Feature: Changelog
  • This release adds the ability to deal with package changelogs (’ set ’ command option: --generate-changelog ) based on what is installed, extract changelog (Currently support with python-apt only) from downloaded packages and display them during installation (’ install ’ command opiton: --skip-changelog , if you want to skip display of changelog)
• New Option: --apt-backend
  • Users can now opt to choose an apt backend of their choice. Currently support: apt, apt-get (default) and python-apt

Hopefully, there will be one more release, before the release to Stretch.

Recently, we had the User-Mode Linux suite out of Debian, which included user- mode-linux, user-mode-linux-doc and uml-utilities package. We are happy that we were able to bring it back into the archvie quick, and hope to maintain it active.

For many who may not know about UML, here’s a discription from its website:

User-Mode Linux is a safe, secure way of running Linux versions and Linux processes. Run buggy software, experiment with new Linux kernels or distributions, and poke around in the internals of Linux, all without risking your main Linux setup.

User-Mode Linux gives you a virtual machine that may have more hardware and software virtual resources than your actual, physical computer. Disk storage for the virtual machine is entirely contained inside a single file on your physical machine. You can assign your virtual machine only the hardware access you want it to have. With properly limited access, nothing you do on the virtual machine can change or damage your real computer, or its software.

Most of the use cases mentioned here are achievable with Containers today. The big difference UML provides in, is with a separate kernel. UML is an implementation of Linux as an architecture of Linux itself. It supports x86 and x86_64 architecture. And given that it is the port of the kernel, you can do many of the tests and experiments of the regular kernel, safely inside a confined UML environment. As with other virtualization implementations, the limitation comes in if you are working on physical hardware.

I finally made full switch to SSL for my website. Thanks to [this](https://hblok.net/blog/posts/2016/02/24/lets-encrypt-tls-certificate- setup-for-apache-on-debian-7/) simple howto on Let’s Encrypt. I had to use the upstream git repo though. The Debian packaged tool, letsencrypt.sh, did not have enough documentation/pointers in place. And finally, thanks to the Let’s Encrypt project as a whole.

PS: http is now redirected to https. I hope nothing really breaks externally.

During my recent travel, I had quite a long layover at the Doha International Airport in Qatar. While killing time, I watched an interesting programme on the Al Jazeera network.

The program aired on Al Jazeera is Lifelines. This special episode I watched, covered about “Leprosy in India”. After having watched the entire programme, I felt the urge to blog about it.

First of all, it was quite depressing to me, to know through the programme, that the Govt. of India had officially marked “Leprosy” eradicated from India in 2005. As per Wikipedia, “Globally in 2012, the number of chronic cases of leprosy was 189,000, down from some 5.2 million in the 1980s. The number of new cases was 230,000. Most new cases occur in 16 countries, with India accounting for more than half.”

For Debian Jessie, the version of apt-offline available is: 1.5.1. This version has had some [issues](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=apt-offline;dist=unstable).

My very 1st backports is available in the form of [apt-offline 1.7 for ](https://packages.debian.org/source/jessie-backports/apt- offline)[Debian](https://packages.debian.org/source/jessie-backports/apt- offline) Jessie Backports. For Debian Jessie users, this should fix most of the issues.

Dasha (Ten) Mahavidya – Part I

Posted by VIBHOR MAHAJAN on [JANUARY 6, 2016](https://vibhormahajan.wordpress.com/2016/01/06/dasha-ten- mahavidya-part-i/)

There is a deep quintessential need in the human psyche for a mother. It is said; the Goddess was humankind’s earliest conception of divinity. Among the Shakthas who worship Mother Goddess, the source of all existence is female. God is woman. She is the principle representation of Divinity. She is that power which resides in all life as consciousness, mind, matter, energy, silence, joy as also disturbance and violence. She is the vibrant energy that makes everything alive, fascinating and wonderful. She is inherent in everything and at the same time transcends everything. Her true nature is beyond mind and matter; she is not bound by any limitation. She is Arupa. When she is represented in a form, her intense representation is a Bindu the dimensionless point about to expand immensely. The Bindu symbolizes her most subtle micro form as the universal Mother, womb, yoni, creator, retainer and also the receiver of the universe.

Narada Curse Lord Vishnu–Part II

Posted by VIBHOR MAHAJAN on [MAY 14, 2012](https://vibhormahajan.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/narada-curse-lord- vishnupart-ii/)

As Narada moved on from Lord Vishnu’s adobe, he suddenly saw a beautiful city like he had never seen before. Curiously he entered the city and asked a passerby, “Who is the ruler of this big and charming city?”

“It belongs to the glorious King Sheelanidhi”– replied the passerby.

Hearing that Narada had come to visit him, the king came out to receive him and welcomed him. Just then a beautiful girl came and bowed before Narada. The beauty of the girl took Narada. She was King’s daughter Shrimati. A Swayamvara was being planned for her.

Narada Curse Lord Vishnu – Part I

Posted by VIBHOR MAHAJAN on [MAY 14, 2012](https://vibhormahajan.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/narada-curse-lord- vishnu-part-i/)

Once Narada practiced severe austerities in the Himalayas. Indra (King of Gods) became suspicious of Narada and decided to tempt him with worldly pleasures to break his penance. With this in mind, Indra asked Kamadeva (God of love) to break Narada’s penance.

Kama came to the spot where Narada was sitting, deep in meditation. As he shot the first arrow the scene suddenly changed into a beautiful valley and a beautiful damsel appeared before Narada. She began to dance before him. But Narada’s eyes where closed to her charms.