Linux | Technology Blog

Get Vertical Titlebars in E16 Themes

January 6th, 2009

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I bet you didn’t know that you could change the placement of your Enlightenment titlebars. Although not necessarily pracitical, it does make for some impressive desktops, and it allows you to quickly differentiate between windows. Say, for example you have aterm and rxvt both open and are using one for admin work and one for standard work. You certainly don’t want to accidentally issue a standard user command (one that could do harm to your system) as the root user. Problem is, by default, both terminal windows pretty much look identical. What if, however, the terminal for root work always had vertical titlebars and the terminal for standar user had the default horizontal title bars? Pretty quick means of differentiation eh? In this article you will see how simple it is in Enlightenment to make your desktiop even more unique.

Understanding Linux /etc/fstab

January 4th, 2009

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The fstab file has a very key mission for your Linux system. What it does is map devices to directories so those devices can be used. If you plug in an external drive or a device like such as an iPod you are going to have to take advantage of fstab. In this article you will learn how to create a proper fstab entry to make mounting devices simple.

What fstab does

As said earlier, the /etc/fstab file is a means to map devices to locations so the devices can be used. Typically when you plug in an external device that device will show up as a device in the special directory /dev. Most externally connected usb devices will show up as a variation of /dev/sda. But if you try to access that device through the /dev directory you’ll have no luck. Instead you have to map the device to a regular, mountable directory so the device can be used. Without the fstab file only the root user would be able to do the mounting and the mount command would always be something like “mount /dev/sda2 /media/mp3″. When the root user mounts a device in this way only the root user

Ubuntu Privacy Remix

January 4th, 2009

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Ubuntu Privacy Remix is a live CD that is based on Ubuntu 8.04 currently. The sole purpose of this Ubuntu spin off is to create a secure working environment for private data. This is achieved by several measures that distinguish the Ubuntu Privacy Remix distribution from any other.

The operating system will only boot from CD which means that its data cannot be altered by malware or other forms of malicious software. It furthermore ignores local hard drives completely so that no data can be read or written to those storage devices.

A modified system kernel ensures that no network hardware can be activated which means that there is no possibility for connections to the Internet, local area network or other types of external connections. The only way to work with data is by using extended True-Crypt volumes which can be used to save system configurations and user data. (read working with extended True-Crypt volumes for additional information)

Add Youtube Videos to Your iPod with Floola

January 3rd, 2009

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Some would say the fact that Linux can even communicate with an iPod is remarkable. And the way Apple keeps everything secreted away, I could easily buy that sentiment where it not for an intimate understanding of the resolve of the typical developer. Although not open source, Floola typifies this resolve, and then some. At first glance Floola is just another music manager for the iPod. Upon closer inspection, however, Floola is much more than that. The “more” couldn’t be better illustrated by Floolas’ ability to add videos to your iPod from youtube.com. Oh, and it manages your music really well too!

First things first, you’ll need to download the Linux binary of Floola from the Floola download page. Once you have the tar file downloaded unpack it with the command tar xvzf Floola-linux.tar.gz which will create a new directory called Floola-linux. Move into that new directory and, as the root user, issue the command cp Floola /usr/bin/. Copying the Floola binary into /usr/bin will allow Floola to be run globally.

Add Youtube Videos to Your iPod with Floola

January 3rd, 2009

No comments

Some would say the fact that Linux can even communicate with an iPod is remarkable. And the way Apple keeps everything secreted away, I could easily buy that sentiment where it not for an intimate understanding of the resolve of the typical developer. Although not open source, Floola typifies this resolve, and then some. At first glance Floola is just another music manager for the iPod. Upon closer inspection, however, Floola is much more than that. The “more” couldn’t be better illustrated by Floolas’ ability to add videos to your iPod from youtube.com. Oh, and it manages your music really well too!

First things first, you’ll need to download the Linux binary of Floola from the Floola download page. Once you have the tar file downloaded unpack it with the command tar xvzf Floola-linux.tar.gz which will create a new directory called Floola-linux. Move into that new directory and, as the root user, issue the command cp Floola /usr/bin/. Copying the Floola binary into /usr/bin will allow Floola to be run globally.

Collaborate in Real Time with Gobby

January 2nd, 2009

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If you do any collaborative work you know how difficult some collaboration tools can be. With both MS Office and OpenOffice you can collaborate with notes and track changes. But what about collaborating in real time? What if you are wanting to quickly collaborate on a simple text document with multiple editors? Fortunately there is a simple to use collaboration tool that is cross platform and very user friendly. The tool? Gobby.

Gobby was released in 2005 by the Ox539 developer group and features a client/server architecture that allows for easy remote connection between two peers. Gobby contains its own server (Sobby) so there’s no secondary installation or configuration.

Getting and Installing

As Gobby is very common, it is generally in repositories for every distribution. This makes installing Gobby simple. Open up your distributions’ Add/Remove Software application and do a search for “gobby” (no quotes). Once you find Gobby, select it and click Apply.

Once Gobby is installed you should find the executable entry in the Internet menu.