Connect to FTP server through Windows Explorer

Im one of those guys who say we hate Windows. Its fair enough since we are developers and developing web and other applications on Windows does suck big time. But most of the time our hatred or abuse of Windows comes from ignorance. I left windows years back and started using Linux for development but now in my new job I am having to use windows to develop with the RhoMobile studio. And everytime I use Windows I find out some cool feature that I did not know it existed. Maybe this is an obvious feature for all you Windows users out there but I never knew you could connect to an FTP server right from Windows Explorer. I do this all the time from Nautilus in Ubuntu and I always wished things would be as simple as that in Windows. But I knew windows had a ftp client in it and I thought it can be accessed only via the command line.

Today I got frustrated with Filezilla and thought of using ftp.exe and I googled for some documentation when I found out that I could use Windows Explorer directly. All I had to do was just enter the server’s URL in the address bar and that’s it! So I typed ‘ftp://steve@ftp.myserver.com’ and it opened up a window to ask for my password and I could now browse the server through Explorer.

Neat is it not? So I learned a good lesson to not to blindly hate an OS or anything without properly using it. But at the end of the day Windows does suck for development unless you’re doing something with .NET 😀 I use Powershell + Console2 and Sublime Text to make life slightly better.

Installing Ruby, Rails, MySQL and Apache on a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 installation

The first challenge I faced when I started using Ubuntu was moving my Wubi installation inside Windows to a separate partition. Thats when I understood how one should find his/her way around the problems they face using Linux. Linux has one of the biggest support base on the internet. You can find solutions to almost all problems you face in the web. The only thing you need to do is a simple and proper Google search and you’ll fix whatever problem you have in not time at all! But unfortunately many who are new to this whole idea find it really difficult using Linux. This is because they are completed immersed in and used to the way Windows works. And so whenever they face some problem in Linux, like a dependency issue, they call you or text you and ask you to fix their problems. Unlike in windows where you get generic error messages with an error code, Linux provides verbose details about the kind of error that has occurred. People must make use of this information to find solutions to their problems.

Okay enough said! When I started learning Ruby I wanted to install Ruby on my Ubuntu 11.10 installation. But I really didnt know that I already Ruby pre-installed! Not knowing this I started installing Ruby and I faced a lotta issues. I had no idea what was happening. Then I tried removing Ruby. Then after my failed attempts to remove Ruby completely I installed RVM. Then I installed a Ruby version via RVM. But then gems like rails etc just wouldn’t install. Me being a Linux beginner back then found it really irritating and annoying to the extent that I considered dumping the whole idea of learning Ruby. But the pure elegance of Ruby and the thirst to learn Rails made me keep pushing. Finally after two days I got Ruby and Rails working on my PC without re-installing Ubuntu :P. Since then I’ve made several Ruby and Rails installations on many computers. I faced a lotta issues, especially dependency problems when installing Ruby, Rails, MySQL etc. So I decided to write this post to tell those beginners out there, the stuff they would need to properly install Rails etc.

Skype listening at port 80!

I was working on adding a forum to Tech-Coders.com today and I started my WampServer to test it locally. Before that I was in conversation with a friend over skype and I left skype open. And as usual I opened up ‘localhost’ on my browser and to my surprise the default index.php of wamp didn’t show up! I knew for sure that I did not meddle with any of the configurations of Wampserver and it worked perfectly just days ago. I looked at the system tray and noticed that the Wampserver icon was in orange color meaning that server is not able to start.

I was puzzled as to why Wamp was behaving this way. I sought for help online and found that one of the main reasons for the orange indicator is that wamp couldnt successfully start its service on the HTTP port 80. So I assumed that something else is occupying it. So I ran a netstat and to my surprise, it was SKYPE! Omg! I never ever expected skype to be using port 80. I did some reasearch about this and found that skype intentionally listens on port 80 so as to by-pass firewall and other restrictions. Clever 😉

Anyway, I promptly closed skype and restarted Wampserver and everything was normal again. And I also learned that you could prevent skype from using the ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) easily by opening up “Options” from “Tools” menu. Then you need to navigate to the “Connection” section under “Advanced” and uncheck the checkbox that says “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections”. Its as simple as that. Now you dont have to worry about running wamp and skype together. But there is also another solution. You could run Wamp as a windows service and thus it would be always started before skype. But I think the first solution is a better one particularly if you dont use Wamp very often.

Steve

Kubuntu anyone?

From what I saw with GNOME, its way too simple and most of the features have been hidden to promote simplicity. Well, after using Windows, using GNOME was way way too toy-like. Hence I decided to switch to KDE (Kubuntu) based on advice from a friend. I first thought I would have to remove Ubuntu completely and then install Kubuntu. But he said, its kinda easy to switch over to KDE without having to install ubuntu all over again. And the process was kinda easy. I just had to install the kubuntu-desktop package and reboot. And voila! I had both GNOME and KDE. The login manager allows you to select where GNOME or KDE must be used for the session. It was as simple as that.

Just use this command,

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

About 175 Mb will be downloaded and it will ask whether you want to use the KDE login manager or the default GNOME login manager. I liked the GNOME one, so I selected the default Ubuntu login manager (GNOME). And now the UI was more like windows and I finally found the font anti-aliasing option that I was searching for. The text rendered by the broswers were too blurry and gave me headaches. Windows uses clear-type to render fonts properly. After enabling it the fonts looked better!

Anyway from what I read online about differences between KDE and GNOME, If you’re a serious developer or a techie I’d recommended KDE. GNOME is like having advanced settings hidden in Windows. Not for me 🙂

Cheers!

Correcting display issues in Ubuntu

I recently decided to start using Ubuntu inspired partly by an Open-Source mag that I read in my college Lib and partly by a friend on twitter who had a lot of great things to say about Ubuntu. So I decided to install it and I’m running Ubuntu 11.10 right now. And to be honest, it feels really great! But my start with Ubuntu was not necessarily an easy one. My display did not look proper because it was set at a lower resolution that the one Im used to with Windows. And the other problem I faced was my monitor went on flickering in regular intervals and that kinda frightened me. I’ve managed to solve these issues using help from the vast number of Linux and Ubuntu forums and after reading ’em I realized that 80% of the people face these issues. So I decided to write an article about this. Here’s how I fixed the issues…