Since my original post in May of this year and my follow up post in August of this year, a significant number of Linux users have lifted their voices and poured them onto clacking keyboards pushing back against the tide that is the child-like interface of Unity and Gnome 3.x. (For those who may find my [...]

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Well, recently we’ve seen some interesting developments. Canonical (makers of Ubuntu Linux) have come out with their latest version of Ubuntu (11.04), featuring their new default desktop interface called Unity. Meanwhile, the folks over at Gnome have also come out with Gnome 3, replacing the amazingly popular Gnome 2.x style interface. Boy, they look pretty [...]

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When you want the current weather conditions without having to visit a graphically busy weather website, or without the benefit of a GUI (say working a shell), a great app will give you the weather conditions in no time, just by typing weather at the command prompt. Simply sudo apt-get install weather-util, and set up [...]

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For those that prefer detachable Screen sessions with multiple windows in shell and want to run instant message chat sessions in CLI without the hassle of Xwindows … CenterIM is for you. CenterIM is a pretty robust instant messaging client that runs entirely out of your command prompt. Simply sudo apt-get install centerim and you’re [...]

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With modern filesystems securely deleting files isn’t always easy, but one approach which stands a good chance of working is to write random patterns over all unused areas of a disk – thus erasing the contents of files you’ve previously deleted. We all know that when you simply delete a file, it’s possible to recover [...]

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Ext2Read is an explorer like utility to explore ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions. It also supports Linux LVM2. It can be used to view and copy files and folders. It can recursively copy entire folders. It can also be used to view and copy disk and file system images. It also supports external USB drives. Works on all [...]

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CPULimit is an application for Linux that can limit the CPU usage of a process. It is useful if you want to restrict a particular application from taking up too much CPU resources and thereby crashing the system. This can also be useful when you need to run several intensive programs simultaneously. This application runs [...]

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When a PC or server is running Linux, you often want to know exactly what sort of hardware is actually running inside the box and more importantly whether it is supported by the kernel. Here is a list of commands which should help you to learn about your system and some of its specifications. In [...]

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Source: The Original Developer. (Launchpad link): A dynamic tunnel SSH multiplexer. When heavily using a Dynamic SSH tunnel, this application will open concurrent SSH tunnels to multiplex the load. This is useful when using torrent connections locally, or when using your computer to share internet access via the dynamic proxy. To install on Ubuntu Karmic: [...]

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By default, the newer versions of Ubuntu (9.04 and up) now auto-edit the MOTD. This annoyed me, so I researched how to stop that, since I prefer my own MOTDs and I’m quite particular about what I am presented with when SSH’ing into a box. Ubuntu is running an application called “landscape-common”. More on this [...]

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For Debian-based distros, this utility (not related to the ‘nice‘ command) will limit the cpu usage of a program. It works with multiple cores as well. Simply sudo apt-get install cpulimit. More info can be found here.

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Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (the shortcut which was used to restart the X server) has to be enabled in a different way starting in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Using GNOME Get to the System->Preferences->Keyboard menu. Select the “Layouts” tab and click on the “Layout Options” button. Then select “Key sequence to kill the X server” and enable “Control [...]

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Repost: Source: Ubuntu Geek. People sometimes have to do a reinstall of their Ubuntu system for various reasons (been playing/experimenting with configuration/drivers/other packages or just because something is badly broken) but remembering all the extra packages you have installed can be a chore – but here is the simple solution: On your old system (assuming [...]

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REPOST: Source: Only Ubuntu Linux: Bonding is creation of a single bonded interface by combining 2 or more ethernet interfaces. This helps in high availability and performance improvement. How to setup dual-dual bonding (two bonds of two interfaces each) on Ubuntu as quickly as possible. 1. Add two lines to /etc/modules bonding bond0 -o bond0 [...]

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Even Linux can be vulnerable to attack, especially on a fresh install where all settings are left at defaults. This is an excellent article from IT Security on how to shore up security on a fresh Linux install. I am not sure if the anti-virus recommendation is required at this time, I think that might [...]

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From Tech Republic, worth reading if you’re new to Linux system administration. One of the most common mistakes is not checking log files (reason #10). I often find it hard to keep up and sometimes parse the variety of system logs on a system. A great tool for managing this is called LogWatch. While not [...]

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Great python script, makes life very easy: UbuntuZilla.

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This tutorial will explain how to add Ubuntu 8.04 desktop to win server 2003 Active Directory using Likewise Open. Likewise Open is a free, open source application that joins Linux, Unix, and Mac machines to Microsoft Active Directory and securely authenticates users with their domain credentials.

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Source: UbuntuGeek The GNU MP3/Media Streamer is a simple application which makes it possible to navigate through your audio and video collection via a browser, and stream playlists across a network.GNUMP3d is a streaming server for MP3s, OGG vorbis files, movies and other media formats.The software supports browsing, searching, and streaming all via your browser [...]

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Extract the files in the .ISO to a USB stick and boot off that, then on-bootup, install from the USB key, quite simple. Here’s the full howto.

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..if some want to try Ubuntu, but wants to jump right in to video editiing, audio recording and high end graphics work, there’s a version of it called Ubuntu Studio, which scripts a lot of the things one often has to do once Linux is installed. I personally would not use this edition of Ubuntu, [...]

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Having recently acquired MySQL and Innotek (makers of VirtualBox, the open source VMware) SUN is clearly reading the tea leaves and can see the trends. SUN has been a friend to the open source community for years, having forged Star Office, the forebearer of OpenOffice and releasing the source code for Solaris OS. They’re also [...]

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I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that, in the age of live-cd distros and dual-booting options, but some people running high end boxes may enjoy the best of both worlds, running a full Ubuntu distro ontop of windows. This unique distro is called andLinux. From the andLinux site: andLinux is a complete [...]

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