Air India direct flight to San Fransisco has flown through China today.

 My sister in law left for San Fransisco by AI 173 flight which flows over North Pole. I tracked that flight on flightstats.com till it landed in SFO. That flight did enter Atlantic Ocean and moved Northward till it terned South East towads international Date line. The route is through Pakistan, Tazkistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhastan, Russia, Atlantic Ocean, Russia.

I decided to follow the flight path for couple of days.

To my surprise today the flight was headed towards Siachen Glacier and entered China,  then Russia. It remained on Land in Russia. Here is the flight path.

This is surprising news.

Creating signed Form 15H file using pdftk and Drive app.

 I had invested in NCDs because there was no TDS on interest income on NCD. But from the current FY 2023-24 there is TDS on interest on NCD.

If you don't want deduction of TDS you need to send Form 15H (applicable for Senior Citizens). You can download Form 15H in pdf which is a 4 page document. First page is to be filled and signed and there is declaration on second page which is also to be signed. The remaining 2 pages are for the use by the company who pays the interest.

PDF forms can be filled on Firefox. For saving the filled form you have to press Ctrl+c. The first 2 pages can be filled and printed for signing.

The filled and signed pages can be scanned as pdf using Google Drive app on Android phone.

Open the Drive app Click on + then on Scan. Scan page 1 select OK cick on + icon on bottom right and scan page 2 select OK and save to My Drive.

Download the Scanned PDF from Drive to your Linux Desktop/Laptop.

Download and install pdftk.

Extract page 3 and 4 from 15H Form in pdf with following command.

$ pdftk Form15H.pdf cat 3-4 output Form15Hp3-4.pdf

Combine Scanned PDF with page 3-4 with following command.

$ pdftk Scanned.pdf Form15Hp3-4.pdf output Filled_Form15H.pdf

Filled_Form15H.pdf can be sent to the Company or the agency who manages form 15H on their behalf.

Running frugal install of Easy OS.

 Recently I came to know about Easy OS, a Linux distribution developed by Barry Kauler who developed Puppy Linux and gave it to community. I downloaded the .img file of easy 5.4.5 from this page and checked md5sum.

I created a folder EasyOS on root of the Ubuntu Linux I was running, mounted the .img file and copied its content (easy.sfs, initrd, vmlinuz) to EasyOS folder.

I added the following menu entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom

menuentry 'Easy OS 5.4.5' {
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59
linux /EasyOS/vmlinuz rw wkg_uuid=1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59 wkg_dir=EasyOS
initrd /EasyOS/initrd
}

and updated grub.

I could boot into Easy OS Desktop.

I opened Package Manager (pkg) and clicked on Flapi.

I added Gnucash in Flapi by clicking on Customize button.

 and clicked on Add. It opened GnuCash page on flathub and asked me to confirm that it was the right application. After confirmation it downloaded the flatpak package and installed it.

Here is the default Desktop of Easy OS

What I discovered about calls from 5G phone.

 As written in previous post I upgraded to 5G phone. As per Welcome offer I am getting unlimited 5G data from Jio.

When 5G network is available (it is available most of the time in my area) there is 5G icon on top panel.

When I call someone or there is incoming call the 5G icon vanishes and the call goes over 4G LTE network.

After searching on net for this issue I discovered that my phone is not having VoNR or Vo5G calling feature. You can read about what is VoNR or Vo5G on the following website:

What is Vo5G or VoNR? Everything you need to know

Vo5g is available on Jio since it is SA (Standalone) network but Airtel has no plans to launch SA network.

I conclude that 5G has arrived in India only for data and calling will take place on 4G LTE network even on so called 5G phones.

I bought 5G Phone.

Since the launch of 5G networks by Airtel and Jio last year I was looking to upgrade my 4G phone to 5G.

I bought Samsung Galaxy M13 5G model which was delivered today on 16 March 2023. I exchanged my POCO C3 phone.

My service provider is Jio. After updating the Operating system Jio network detected that it was 5G phone and sent invite of Welcome offer.

Initial setup of the new phone was done on WiFi network. I installed MyJio app and logged in and saw the Welcome offer. Jio asked me to switch to mobile data and I could see the 5G icon on top panel.

I checked the network speed and found 180 Mbps speed.

I made couple of phone calls and voice was very clear.

Enjoying the free 5G network.

Endless OS 5.0.0 Gnome 41.3 on Wayland

 I have switched to Endless OS for last six months. Today I updated to latest version Endless OS 5.0.0

There are new features:

Multiple Workspaces

Swipe left/right with three fingers to switch between workspaces

Two finger scrolling.

 

Remove snap packages including Firefox on Ubuntu 22.04, install gnome-software, add Flatpak repo and install Firefox Flatpak version.

Ubuntu 22.04 comes with Ubuntu-Software which is snap store and Firefox comes as a snap package. If you don't like this set up you can remove all installed snap packages including Firefox and install gnome-software with flatpak plugin, add flatpak repo and install Firefox Flatpak version.

$ sudo snap remove --purge firefox
$ sudo snap remove --purge snap-store
$ sudo snap remove --purge gnome-3-38-2004
$ sudo snap remove --purge gtk-common-themes
$ sudo snap remove --purge snapd-desktop-integration
$ sudo snap remove --purge bare
$ sudo snap remove --purge core20
$ sudo snap remove --purge snapd
$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
Paste the following:

    # To prevent repository packages from triggering the installation of snap,
    # this file forbids snapd from being installed by APT.

    Package: snapd
    Pin: release a=*
    Pin-Priority: -10

Save and refresh package cache

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt install gnome-software
$ sudo apt remove --purge gnome-software-plugin-snap
$ sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
$ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Restart

Open gnome-software and install Firefox