When in school, college, the lengthy hours of (load shedding) power cuts in the evenings stealthily served a purpose - dragging us to the rooftop to gaze at the stars.

In Bangalore though, gazing at the stars is not quite the same because of the all the glow from the city side, even during a power cut. But here's a software that lets you browse through the spectacular objects in the space serving just like a planetarium but on your desktop!

What more, the software is as free as it gets (free as in freedom).

On Debian or Debian like GNU/Linux, all you have to do is this:
$apt-get install stellarium

to get it installed and running!

Note: The software is available for Windows and Mac users too.

It is the Independence day today. It is the 15th birthday of Debian tomorrow. You see the connection. :-)

On this occasion, I decided that I would switch completely to Debian (from Ubuntu) on my work Computer. And what better option than Debian testing version "Lenny"?

It was a long time since I installed debian on my laptop. Unsupported hardware issues dogged it the last time I tried it on this (which seems years back). But this time, it was really worth giving a shot.

I found Debian sleek, more nostalgic than any other present distribution. It is probably the best distribution to work with.

But the old kernel that is shipped with etch had some ACPI related issues. And sound wasn't there. I had to download and compile the latest Kernel after which everything is good. Pidgin has to be compiled if you don't fancy gaim. iwp2200 wasn't working fine, but did after installing the firmware. And that is about my log of installing Debian etch on my old laptop. :-)