Featured Comments: Week of 2011 November 20

There was one comment on one post this past week, so I'll repost that one; interestingly, it was on a "Featured Comments" post.

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 November 13

Reader DarkDuck had this little tidbit of news: "Hi Prashanth, Looks like I overtook your blog by total pageviews. ;-) My counter is already at 430k. Hope to have half a million by January."

Thanks to that reader for commenting on that post this past week. I meant to have a review out this past week but couldn't do it due to the Thanksgiving holiday. (Incidentally, my holiday was great, except that traveling on Megabus was a pain, and I hope to keep future travels on Megabus to a minimum.) Therefore, this coming week, I hope to have two reviews out, but I can't guarantee anything because it'll all ultimately depend on my schedule this week with schoolwork and other stuff. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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An Update on this Blog and the Respins

Last week, I released an Openbox respin of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" called UberBang 10.04. Shortly afterwards, I emailed CrunchBang creator Philip Newborough with questions about the theming issues and related things. He very kindly answered my questions, so I've incorporated those changes (and a few others) and reuploaded the ISO file (which is slightly bigger now but is still under 600 MB). The download link is unchanged. Also, when I get the time, I'll make a wiki for UberBang like I did for the other respins.
Before that, I also released Oxidized Trinity 6 "Squeeze", a respin of Debian 6 "Squeeze" with Trinity 3.5.12 themed to look like KDE 4.1(ish). The download link is still here. Also, when I get the time, I'll update the wiki with information about this Debian-based Oxidized Trinity. (As an aside, interestingly enough, the top downloaders of Oxidized Trinity, as opposed to my other respins, use Microsoft Windows. Maybe that says something about KDE's ability to attract Microsoft Windows users. Then again, it's entirely possible that these are Linux users who just so happen to be downloading the ISO in Microsoft Windows. There's no way to know for sure.)
I haven't released a new version of Fresh OS in a while, and that's because of upgrade issues I've been having with those virtual machines. This stems from a couple of issues with upstream Linux Mint packages. Anyway, I'm waiting for the next snapshot to be released; that snapshot is supposed to have all the new features and themes of Linux Mint 10 "Julia", which may render Fresh OS "Traditional" unnecessary.
Finally, you may notice that the look of this blog has changed again. I really liked the old look, but the gadgets were starting to look weird in an old theme, so I decided to upgrade to a newer template and theme that. It didn't look quite the same, so I decided to try again. I think I've finally found something that imitates the parent theme (which, I found out after a lot of searching, is called "Subtle Beauty") well enough that I can stick with this. I hope you all like it too!

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This Blog's Template

An anonymous reader had asked for the template used in this blog. First I'm going to list out the basics from Template Designer. (All colors are given using their 6-digit hexadecimal code.) Follow the jump to see the full template.
The base template used is the "Simple" Blogger template (provided by Blogger). There is no background image.
The body layout has a main area and a sidebar split into two smaller sidebars a bit down the page. The blog is 1000 pixels wide, and the right sidebar is 320 pixels wide.
The font used throughout the blog is Droid Sans, which can be added to a blog through Google's Font API. The size is 14 point, and the color is 333333.
The outer background color is 222222, while the main background is FFF5E5. All link colors (link, visited, and outer) are 66B5FF, as are the blog title and description colors. The blog title uses the Droid Sans font at 55 point.
The tabs also use the Droid Sans font at 14 point, and the selected and unselected colors are both 333333. The selected tab background color is EEEEEE, while the unselected tab background color is FFF5E5.
The post title size is 25 point. (The font is still Droid Sans.)
The date header color is 999999, while its background is transparent.
The post footer has text color 333333, while its background and shadow colors are both FFF5E5.
The gadget font is Droid Sans at 15 point. The title color is 333333, while the alternate color is 999999.
The image background and border colors are both FFF5E5, while the caption text color is 333333.
The separator line and tabs border colors are both FFF5E5.
I have not added any custom CSS to override styles settings.
Follow the jump to see the full template.
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Class Discussion on IP

Yesterday in my web design, the lecturer was a guest speaker. This particular guest speaker is my college's IP attorney, and as we are designing websites, our professor feels that we should be suitably aware of the issues surrounding IP so as to not get sued. At first, I was highly skeptical as a similar talk my high school librarian gave last year was almost totally propaganda in favor of IP-protection and the wonders it does for creative works. That said, I listened to the whole talk, and I'm glad that the attorney delivered the facts straight without injecting too much of his own opinion into the discussion, and he made it clear that we should be aware of IP laws mainly for our own defense (and not necessarily to clog the system with more IP). Whenever he did (occasionally) inject his own opinion into the discussion, he made it fairly clear that he thinks that the current state of IP is a mess and that the current copyright term is way too long for its own good. All I want to say is that I'm glad there's at least one IP lawyer out there who understands that the status quo is bad without being blinded by the powerful interests in the field of IP.
On a totally unrelated note, I have come to the realization that the reason why some widgets on this blog don't look right is because I am using these new widgets on a very old template. I can't even take advantage of the new Blogger Template Designer to tweak it. For this reason, there is going to be an overhaul in the way this blog looks; though I will try to preserve the current look and feel, it will be a more current template so that I can use widgets without having to deal with things like overlapping text. I hope to finish this by the weekend.

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200th Post: Preview: ArchBang 2010.09 "apeiro"

Happy 200th post Das U-Blog! I hope you readers have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them! And, as always, if you have not already done so, please take a moment to click any one of the various subscription buttons to get updated on new Das U-Blog posts as they come out (either by email or in your favorite RSS/Atom reader)

Main Screen

1. This is not a typographical error.
2. This is not "CrunchBang ('#!')".
3. THIS. IS. ARCHBANG! [insert dramatic music here]

Of course, the real story is slightly more nuanced (did I use that word right?) than that. ArchBang, while not a badly-spelled version of #!, is actually inspired by (but not derived) from #!; it aims to be to Arch Linux what #! is to Debian (and was to Ubuntu before version 10 "Statler"). That's right: ArchBang is an Openbox derivative of Arch Linux. I was actually looking for other reviews of Linux Mint "Debian" when I found this article whose comments section linked to an article on #! and ArchBang. Naturally, I was intrigued upon seeing Arch's response to #!, so I went ahead and downloaded the ISO image to try it. Please do note that to better reflect this distribution's advertised capabilities as a solution for old computers, I have decreased VirtualBox's RAM allocation for this distribution to 192 MB (keeping video memory at 12 MB). Technically, the minimum requirements are 128 MB of RAM, but I think 192 MB is a reasonable stand-in for an old computer these days. Follow the jump to see how it fares in these harsher conditions.
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How I Multiplied Subscribers and Page Views in 2 Weeks

Blogger Page View Statistics

I can't claim to speak for all bloggers when I say what I'm going to say. Whatever "advice" (if that's what it is) I give will probably be applicable only to bloggers who write about Linux/free culture/open source topics, as that's what I mostly write about (with the occasional diversion, like this post).
I would like to start this post (well, it isn't technically the very beginning anymore) by thanking Linux Today for posting some of my articles (mainly Linux distribution reviews); I would not have so many comments (which I hugely value and would love to see even more of) and subscribers if it wasn't for Linux Today accepting my submission of the KDE distribution comparison test. Since then, I've been able to get a couple more articles on Linux Today's home page, for which I am equally (if not more) grateful.
Well, there's one way to do it: submit your articles to Linux Today, as you will not regret it (and your article will most likely be accepted; furthermore, once you get your foot in the door and the article is positively received by the community, your future articles are more likely than the previous ones to get accepted).
I also want to thank TuxMachines for picking up on a couple of my review posts, as this has also hugely contributed to the traffic seen on this site; I didn't even send in the submission links, so I am hugely grateful for readers and editors of TuxMachines finding my reviews. In addition, I want to thank TechDirt for accepting my story on Microsoft's shutdown patent.
I have also created a Facebook page (and a "Like" widget for this site) and a Twitter account for this blog. If you are on these social networks, please do take a moment to either "Like" this site on Facebook or follow it on Twitter. While the Facebook page's notes application isn't working quite right (I'll try to fix it soon), I update the Twitter page with posts as they are published. That said, these are relatively new additions, so I don't think they really impacted the statistics.

Statcounter Page View Statistics

The Blogger statistics show that until August 29 or so, I was getting around 30 page views a day. It's not bad, but it could certainly be better. My comparison test was posted on September 1. That was when the page views went way up. I went from 35 page views on August 28-ish to 3500 page views on September 2. The Statcounter statistics tell a similar story: I went from about 27 page views on August 30 to 2700 page views on September 3, and now I'm averaging around 400 page views or so every day. I went from about 1000 page views total then to 10000 page views now, which is an increase of a full order of magnitude.
Subscribers are much harder to retain, as most people who visit blogs do not stay long to look around at other content besides what they've just looked out (which is why I am really thankful for the readers of this blog who do just that). That said, Feedburner's statistics on subscribers does show a tripling of my subscriber level; where before I was averaging 5 subscribers every day, now I'm averaging around 15 (and there was one day when I peaked at 39).
So, to recap: if you write about free software and related news and reviews, do not hesitate to submit posts to sites like Linux Today, TuxMachines, and TechDirt. Also, please do take the time (as I have) to list your blog on Technorati, BlogCatalog, and other blog catalog sites. These will all certainly contribute to higher traffic and more subscribers.
Dear readers, thank you all very, very much!

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Classes Begin Tomorrow

Today is my last day of doing absolutely nothing, and I probably won't get a day like this for the next few months (and that's if I'm lucky). That said, I am really excited about classes starting tomorrow. What that also means is that I won't be able to write posts as often. (I have a post scheduled to be published tomorrow morning; I've already written it, so don't think I'm writing from class or anything like that. Then again, I don't have classes at that moment, so it's possible.) Oh, I'll write a post or two (maybe more if I have time) on the weekends just to relax (and possibly blow off steam), but don't expect to see any on weekdays. If I do post something on a weekday, it means I really don't have anything better to do.
Are any of you excited about the coming academic term? Please let me know in the comments!

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Das U-Blog Turns 1!

It has been exactly a year since I started this blog! Yay!
To all readers of this blog, thank you so much for reading these posts (and even occasionally commenting on them too). I hugely appreciate the time you have spent reading these posts.
So this post is for you, the readers. And I have a question for you: is there anything else you want me to write about? Please let me know in the comments section.
Thank you!

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So How DO You Promote a Blog?

Since I started writing Das U-Blog, I've been worried that I may never reach an audience who might otherwise (possibly) be interested in what I'm writing.
A lot of sites online have numerous tips on how to promote a blog to make it more successful and widely-read. Of course, I haven't even been at this for a full year (speaking of which, Das U-Blog's 1st birthday is coming up soon!). Therefore, I don't really have any experience from which to speak regarding these matters.
I personally know many of the people who read this blog. I know some of you readers only through comments in other blogs.
I actually tried making a Facebook page for this blog, but I deleted it when I realized that the page should direct readers to this site (and not the other way around); also, because I ask a lot of people in person (or via Internet IM) to check out this site, a Facebook page just seemed that much more redundant. On top of all of that, while I could import posts from the site, Facebook would import from Das U-Blog's RSS feed, so I could only get a limited number of recent posts, and the post would only contain the title (and sharing options — no content). With that, a Facebook page looked downright ridiculous.
But was deleting that page really a good idea? Or, should I be trying something else (or more than one strategy, for that matter)?
I'm just writing the material; you, the readers, certainly know better than I do as to how I should best reach new readers.
To that end, I've added a poll to this post. Please respond (and add comments with suggestions or other thoughts). I really do appreciate your input (and, as always, your readership).
Thank you!

How to Bring Das U-Blog to a Wider Audience?

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Another Look at this Blog

Some of you may be wondering what all of the various objects on this blog are. I will try to explain this to the best of my ability.
On top, of course, is the title of this blog. Clicking on the title takes you to the main blog page (or refreshes the page if you are already there).
Each post has a date, title, and content. Clicking on the title brings up the full post (with comments).
At the bottom of each post is a link to share the post to various social networking sites. These consist of Facebook, Google, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, Wordpress, Google Buzz, and Yahoo! Buzz. If you would like to see additional sites included, please list them in the comments section. I would greatly appreciate it.
Follow the jump to read more.
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