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Monthly Archives: October 2007

25+ Sources For Royalty Free Creative Commons Content and Resource

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in design & development, multimedia .

We’ve talked about about all the ways to design and build your site, but where are you ever going to get content to fill it with? We’ve gathered 25+ sources of content licensed under Creative Commons. Enjoy!

Audio

    ccmixter

ArtistServer.com – Thousands of MP3s for you to download and try out smaller bands.

ccMixter.org – A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

Jamendo.com – A music site providing free, full-length albums for you to download. You pay the artists what you want, or just spread the word about them.

PodShow.com – A site filling your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music, that allows you to discover old and new music alike.

SoundClick.com – A site for bands, both signed and unsigned, to be promoted. Offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

TheFreeSoundProject – A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

General Searches

    Yahoo cc search

Archive.org – Known mainly for their “Wayback Machine” as a means for seeing old pages on the net, they have also collected together a huge collection of free-to-use recordings and texts.

Freebase.com – A community powered search engine to search the web for CC licensed work for you to use.

Google Advanced Search – Google gives you the option to include forms of licensing in your search.

Wikimedia Commons – The central clearing area for the Wikimedia projects CC files.

Yahoo Creative Commons Search – Yahoo allows you to search the entire web for what you need based on the licenses attached to the content.

Images

    everystockphoto.com

DeviantArt.com – A site for artists to display their works. Some are nice enough to license under CC for your use.

EveryStockPhoto.com – Indexes over 1.4 million Creative Commons photos for your use.

Flickr Creative Commons search – Search Flickr for all the derivatives of the Creative Commons licensing.

Geograph.org.uk – An attempt to photograph the entirety of the British Isles, and at the same time, license all the photos under the CC.

OpenClipArt.org – An archive of free-to-use clipart numbering around 11,000 pieces.

PhotoEverywhere.co.uk – A travel & tourism photo site offering stock photography for everyone’s use.

TakeIdeas.com – Share your photos, or find ones that inspire you.

TravellersPoint.com – A wiki for travellers with a large collection of CC licensed travel photography.

Yotophoto.com – Indexes photos in the public domain and free-to-use licenses.

Texts

    unearthtravel

IntraText.com – A site featuring thousands of texts from 900 B.C. to this decade. Most works are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

UnearthTravel.com – Read travel guides about your favorite destinations.

Videos

    lulu.tv

Blip.tv – Allows video makers to assign multiple types of licenses to their content, users can search on each type.

Lulu.TV – A CC license site with embeddable videos

OurMedia.org – A video specific service run by archive.org, allowing users to host their videos under the Creative Commons license.

Revver.com – A video upload site very like YouTube, but all content defaults to the Creative Commons license.

SpinXpress.com – Share your video, audio, and images through various versions of the CC license.

3 Comments .
Tags: creative commons, free content, free creative, free resource, wayback machine, wikimedia commons .

Puppy Linux. The small but powerful distro.

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in linux/unix/os distros, other distros, review/preview/tests .

Yesterday, Barry Kauler, the founder of Puppy Linux announced its latest version Puppy Linux 3.00. He said that this version is the massive upgrade to its predecessor Puppy Linux v2.17.1.

What exactly is Puppy Linux?

If you dont know what am I talking about…read this:”Puppy Linux is the Slackware 12 based Linux distribution designed especially for low-end computers and because of its small size (80-100 MB) it can run from live CD or from USB stick”. It is based on Slackware than it doesn’t mean that it is a clone of Slackware but it is totally a different distribution from base. And if you run this from USB stick then it will transfer caching and flush data to RAM in every 30 minutes and hence will not affect your USB.

Whats new in 3.00?

Here is the list:

  1. All base packages upgraded, including glibc v2.5, gcc v4.1.2, GTK v2.10.13.
  2. Application upgrades (incomplete list): pptp v1.7.1, Isomaster v1.1, KP2 v0.2 (gray), Pbdict (zigbert), pure-ftpd (getnikar), trashcan (disciple), Pbackup v3.0.0 (zigbert), Network Wizard (Dougal, tempestuous, BarryK), JWM v2.0.1, Xvesa Wizard (gray, BarryK), Burniso2cd (BarryK), Busybox v1.6.1, TkDVD v4.0.6, various small utilities (gray), Pidgin v2.0.2, SeaMonkey v1.1.2, Xorg v7.2, Unionfs v2.1.2, Pfind v2.4 (zigbert), PDF-printer v0.8 (jcoder24), WakePup2 (john doe, dgi), v1.6.9pre7, NoteCaseHomeBank v3.5, Universal Installer (BarryK), Pmirror v0.2 (zigbert), PRename v0.6 (plinej), partview (PaulBx1).
  3. Massive improvements achieved with new boot and shutdown scripts, including pup_save file custom naming, frugal install into a subdirectory, correct recognition of multiple pup_save files at bootup, pup_save file resizing.
  4. New kernel: 2.6.21.7, configured with ‘tickless’ option. Initrd.gz is now a cpio archive.
  5. NetSurf web browser v1.1 as our internal HTML viewer.
  6. True flushing for Flash drives (andrei, BarryK). Finally.
  7. Also a great number of bug fixes.

Resources:

For more information on Puppy Linux go here
For announcements and release notes click here
Download the ISO image from here (size=97.63 MB)

Some screen shots:

Here I put some Puppy Linux screen shots for you to see[Obviously :D].



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Tags: distros, linux, puppy linux .

New Linux Desktop Environments Face-Off: Gnome 2.20 vs KDE 3.5

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in desktop environments, gnome, kde .

Introduction

With the new features that Gnome and KDE (K Desktop Environment) are adding, each desktop environment is challenging the other for a larger share of the market. If Linux-like operating systems come with one desktop environment, the user has the option to add to the other. Because of the ever-increasing sophistication of the new features, some latest versions of the operating system are including packages for both desktop environments, allowing users to have the option of switching from one desktop environment to another. In this article I will briefly talk about the new features of both Gnome and KDE, and then look at some similarities and important differences between the two desktop environments.

Gnome’s New Features

In September 2007, the Gnome Foundation released the latest version of the GTK+ widget toolkit. More significantly, the foundation has launched the Gnome Mobile initiative, along with a software development platform to create user experiences across a wide range of device profiles. This initiative will allow you to use, develop, and commercialize Gnome components on a mobile and embedded user experience platform.

Let’s take a look at the major changes for the users, administrators, and developers of Gnome 2.20.

What’s New for Users

Want to be notified of a new email while you do other tasks? Evolution, Gnome’s email and groupware client, can do this for you by sporting an icon in your panel’s notification area when you get email. Evolution’s Microsoft Exchange support includes access to Exchange’s delegation feature, so that a colleague can handle your work while you are away.

Need to get help faster? The Gnome help browser (yelp) pages now appear more quickly, as individual pages are now loaded on demand instead of the entire manual being parsed unnecessarily. In Epiphany, the integrated web browser, you will find inline completion in the address bar is now more intuitive. When you select an item from the drop-down list, you will see your selection in the entry box.

Need quicker access to basic information and metadata for your images? You can do this with the new properties dialog of Gnome’s image viewer. It includes XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) data that your camera or software may store in your image files, along with the existing EXIF data. You can easily open an image in another application, such as the GIMP, by using the new “Open with…” menu item. When you’ve made your changes and saved the file, then your picture will be updated in the image viewer automatically.

Ever wanted a viewer to allow you to enter information into an interactive PDF form? Try the Evince viewer, which also can save and print the resulting form. To make it easier for you to find keywords in your code, Gnome’s simple text editor, gedit, has a new syntax-highlighting system for scripting languages such as PHP and Ruby, even when embedded in HTML. It highlights text such as “TODO” or “FIXME” inside code comments, and gtk-doc source code documentation

You can synchronize notes between your machine and remote servers to relieve you of repeating the task of copying notes. The note-taking application Tomboy can now do this for you. Tomboy allows you to use WebDAV or SSH to connect to a remote server.

Your wish not to enter passwords over and over is fulfilled with the Gnome Keyring system. It remembers your passwords for networked servers and web sites. The keyring is unlocked automatically when you log in and when you unlock your screen. You can now also change your keyring’s master password via the Encryption Preferences control panel.

The Power Manager now saves profile information about your batteries, so you can look at it later. It even knows about many battery models that have been recalled by their manufacturers. Your screen is locked and you want to let other people leave you a note? The screen saver can now do this for you, by allowing others to click the “Leave Message” button. You’ll see these messages when you log in.

What’s New for Administrators

Suppose a live, interactive, nested Gnome session is running. You, as the administrator, want to set up user profiles inside a session. The Sabayon User Profile Editor is here to do the job. When you create or edit a profile, a nested Gnome session is started up. The editor allows you to change configuration defaults and mandatory keys in their own Gnome session. Gnome Display Manager now uses RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to control access to the Shutdown, Reboot, and Suspend features.

What’s New for Developers

Want to create third party applications? The Gnome 2.20 Developers’ Platform allows independent software developers to develop applications for use with Gnome. It uses version 2.12 of the GTK+ UI toolkit API, which adds new features and important bug fixes. The largest changes are a new volume button widget, for use by media players, a new recent action class to provide recent-files menu items and the new Builder API to build user interfaces from XML descriptions. You can right-click on widgets to make changes more conveniently. The new Accessibility Explorer allows you to check whether your application provides the information needed by accessibility tools such as Gnome’s Orca screen reader.

Gnome has a new documentation web site, library.gnome.org. It lists all the latest tutorials, manuals, and API references. For offline documentation, you should use the built-in DevHelp utility, particularly when searching for function or class names.

KDE’s New Features

KDE is similar in nature to desktop environments found on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Since KDE is a X11-based environment, a GTK+ application can run on top of the desktop if the libraries the program requires are installed. Kdevelop uses an external compiler such as GCC to produce executable code and supports many programming languages.

Let’s take a look at some of the major changes for the users, developers and administrators of KDE 3.5. Then we will talk about KDE 4.0, which will include KOffice 2.0 with innovative features.

What’s New

Ever wanted interactive weather forecasts? This can be done by clicking the weather widget in SuperKaramba, a built-in feature of KDE. This program provides other widgets that you can use on your desktop to perform other tasks. Some examples are a system monitor showing CPU, RAM, hard drive usage and kernel version, new mail notification and news tickers. If you can’t find the widgets you want, you can get them from the site http://www.kde-look.org/ in the Karamba section.

Have you found Kopete, a software instant messaging client, limited? No more. Kopete is now multi-protocol, supporting audio and video devices, and thus MSN video conferencing. It adds support for Yahoo! messages in Rich Text format, AIM chat rooms, .Net Messenger Service, AOL Instant Messenger, and Novell Groupwise. It has a new toolbar (widget) in the main window to edit your global identity.

Want to block ads on your web browser? Konqueror, the core part of the KDE, now has adblock features. Along with being a web browser, Konquerer is a file manager and file viewer designed as a core part of the KDE. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

Kmail has a new feature: Lotus Notes structured text import filter for your email. A FAX-Viewer plugin is available for the KviewShell (document viewer).

Looking for new applications for education? KGeography, a geography learning program has been added. Kalzium is also available, it can be used to calculate weight of molecules and solve chemistry equations.

What Do We Expect in KDE 4.0?

As you can see, new features in KDE 3.5 are few. That’s because effort has mostly been expended in developing many new features for KDE 4.0, scheduled to be released for deployment in December 2007. KDE 4.0 is delivered in two portions: the KDE Development Platform 4.0 and the KDE Desktop 4.0. Highlights of KDE 4.0 are a new visual appearance through Oxygen and new frameworks to build multimedia applications, and improved user experience, and tools for developers and administrators to make their jobs easier. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

KOffice 2.0 is a free office suite of productivity, creativity, management, and supporting applications. Productivity applications include KWord, KSpread, KPresenter, and Kexi (an integrated environment for databases). Supporting applications includes KChart, KFormula, and Kugar (to generate business quality reports). At the time of this writing, KOffice 2.0 is in the alpha stage, and will be part of KDE 4.0 when it is ready for release

The KDE games developer community has considered which games should stay in the kdegames modules for KDE 4.0. Those that can be resized and scalable on high resolution have been kept. Those that cannot resized have been discarded.

Similarities

Both Gnome and KDE are aimed at achieving the goal of making the desktop environment more user-friendly and the development tools more accessible and more modular. They also try to help administrators perform their tasks without overrunning their budget and time. Gnome and KDE offer the same functionality: theming, file management, device management, email management, web browsers, and so forth. It’s up to you to pick the desktop environment that works for you. It’s also possible for you to choose both, so you can switch from one desktop environment to another.

KDE’s SuperKaramba’s widgets are similar to gDesklets for Gnome (as well as Yahoo! Widget Engine for Windows and Max OS X, DesktopX for Windows, Dashboard for Mac OS X, and also the gadgets subset of Google Desktop for Microsoft Windows).

A GTK+ application for Gnome can run on top of KDE. Just make sure the libraries the programs required are installed on the KDE.

Differences

Generally, KDE focuses on offering as many features as possible with as many graphical ways as possible for configuring those features. KDE with its KOffice, is more “Windows-like” than Gnome. Gnome is becoming more scalable on high-resolution screens.

KDE highlights the functionality it has. However, the KDE menus lack the simplicity that Gnome has. Gnome often hides certain configuration options in order to achieve the simplicity that allows the user to get stuff done. However, it lacks certain functionality that KDE has. In Gnome, user preferences and configuration are done through the System menu, user preferences are in the Preferences menu, and system-wide administration is done through the Administration menu and usually requires your super-user password. Unlike Gnome, KDE has one place where all your settings live, it’s called System Settings.

Gnome has tabs for each category of removable drives and media, with checkboxes for the behavior you want and fill-in-the-blank slots for commands you wish to execute for that media device.

KDE has a storage media drop-down menu for each type where you can add and remove various action types; each action (Open a New Window, for example) has an accompanying command and a set of options for which it will be available as an action type.

In Gnome’s file manager, called Nautilus, you can rename files by doing two spaced-out single-clicks on the name. Gnome’s renaming will focus on the name of the file, but not the file extension. In KDE’s file manager (Konqueror), since it defaults to single-click behavior, you have to hold down the Shift key and then do time spaced-out clicks to rename files with your mouse. You can, of course, change KDE to double-click behavior if you want. KDE will highlight the entire file name, including the file extension.

Conclusion

You’ll have to decide which tradeoffs between the KDE’s functionality and Gnome’s simplicity will make your work easier, in isolation or by collaborating with others. The type of collaboration you choose; email, instant messaging, or chat rooms; will influence the desktop environment you are running. If you need the features of both desktop environments, you can always switch between KDE and Gnome.

There will always be competition for market awareness between the two desktop environments, as new technologies, such as higher resolution screens and USB portable physical disk of much higher capacity, become more prevalent. Each desktop community is attempting to increase market awareness of its free programs. For instance, KDE focuses on creating market awareness for KOffice 2.0 for KDE 4.0. Meanwhile, Gnome is pursuing a Mobile initiative, as an attempt to catch up with KDE’s instant messaging client, Kopete.

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Tags: colleague, commercialize, desktop environment, desktop environments, device profiles, evolution, gnome components, gnome foundation, gnome help, groupware client, gtk widget, initiative, kde, microsoft exchange, new email, new features, notification area, software development platform, widget toolkit, yelp .

No more virtual terminal in Gutsy

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in uncategorized .

Since I’ve upgraded to Gutsy, some months ago already I no longer had virtual terminal. I came across the bug tty[1-6] are active but display nothing in Gutsy thanks to the blog entry Common bugs in gutsy with workarounds by b-initials.

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How to make your site Search Engine Friendly with 301 Redirect

Posted on October 24, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in guides, how to, tips, tutorials .

301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. Also it is essential for SEO purposes to redirect your “domain.com” address to “www.domain.com”, I will explain why in the www redirect section below. The code “301” is interpreted as “moved permanently”.

 

IIS Redirect

  • In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
  • Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
  • Enter the redirection page
  • Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
  • Click on ‘Apply’

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>

 

PHP Redirect

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

 

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.new-url.com/”);
%>

 

ASP .NET Redirect

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.new-url.com”);
}
</script>

 

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.new-url.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>

 

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(“http://www.new-url.com/”);

 

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers[“Status”] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.new-url.com/”
end

 

Redirect Old domain to New domain

It is essential to redirect your “domain.com” address to “www.domain.com”, because search engines will see these url as two separate sites, therefore your link popularity will be split between the two site and possibly get penalized for duplicate content on your site. To implement the redirect, just create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

 

Redirect to www

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

 

How to Redirect HTML

Please refer to section titled ‘How to Redirect with htaccess’, if your site is hosted on a Linux Server and ‘IIS Redirect’, if your site is hosted on a Windows Server.

Test your redirection

You can Test your redirection with this simple Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

Or to be 100% sure and see the redirection in action use the HTTP Server Header Checker. This tool will show you whether the 301 redirect is being provided by the server. This is what a search engine will see when it visits the site. The result should look like the following areas in red:

 

#1 Server Response: http://example.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 22:49:28 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.4.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_ssl/2.8.14 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Location: http://www.example.com/
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Redirect Target: http://www.example.com/

 

#2 Server Response: http://www.example.com/
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 22:49:28 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.4.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_ssl/2.8.14 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

 

 

5 Comments .
Tags: .net redirect, 301 Redirect, apache redirect, asp redirect, cgi redirect, cold fusion redirect, html redirect, iis redirect, jsp redirect, moved permanently, perl redirect, php redirect, Redirect, redirect www, ruby on rails redirect, search engine friendly, SEF, sef redirect, SEO, seo redirect .

How to create an animated favicon

Posted on October 24, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in cool stuff, guides, how to, random stuff .

What is a favicon?

A favicon (short for “favorites icon”), also known as a page icon, is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon, and many graphical web browsers —such as recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, iCab, AOL Explorer, Epiphany, Konqueror, and Flock—can then make use of them. Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser’s URL bar, next to the site’s name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page’s title in a tabbed document interface.

Guidelines

The following are guidelines for displaying a favicon on your website:

  • The link elements must be inside the head element (between the opening and closing head tag) in the HTML.
  • The image can usually be in any image format supported by the web browser, the major exception being IE, which only supports ico.
  • The .ico file format will be read correctly by all browsers that can display favicons.
  • Use the appropriate color depths (ICO: 16X16;4, 8, 24 bpp—i.e. 16, 256 and 16 million colors GIF: use 16×16 in 256 colors PNG: use 16×16 in either 256 colors or 24-bit).
  • I have found that you do not have to place html on your website.  You can just place a favicon.ico in the root directory of your website, but it may take longer to show up in some browers.
    • http://pipa.ws
    • http://www.pod1.com/
    • http://schestowitz.com/
  • Creating an animated favicon

    Animated favcons are easy to create.  After following the guidelines from above, you just need to create an animated gif and rename it: favicon.ico.  It is currently not supported in Internet Explorer.

    Examples of sites that have animated favicons:

2 Comments .
Tags: animated favicon, favicon, favicon ico, how to create favicon .

Mythbuntu 7.10 is now available!

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in debian/ubuntu based, linux/unix/os distros .

Mythbuntu is an Ubuntu derivative focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV system similar to Knoppmyth or Mythdora. Currently, it is a recognized as a community supported project by Canonical. Mythbuntu can be used to install a stand alone Frontend, Backend, or combination machines. Unlike similar projects, Mythbuntu keeps close ties with Ubuntu and all development is given back to the Ubuntu Community. This allows easy conversions from a standard desktop to a Mythbuntu machine and vice versa. The development cycle of Mythbuntu closely follows that of Ubuntu, releasing every six months shortly after Ubuntu releases.

Desktop

Mythbuntu uses the XFCE4 desktop. All unnecessary applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution, and a full Gnome desktop are not installed for a Mythbuntu installation. At any time, a user may choose to install ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, or xubuntu-desktop and add a full desktop onto their installation. This is done via the Mythbuntu Control Centre.

Mythbuntu-Control-Centre

The Mythbuntu Control Centre is a GUI used to configure the system. From here you can select what kind of system (Backend, Frontend, Both) you want. You can also install different desktops such as ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop. Install Plugins, configure MySQL, set passwords, install proprietary drivers, proprietary codecs, setup remote controls, and a range of other bells and whistles all from one convenient program.

Live Frontend

A Mythbuntu CD can also be used as a live frontend. This is great if you want to turn a laptop or desktop into a quick frontend or quickly test hardware compatibility. The live frontend provides a GUI to mount network shares, configure a remote, hostname, location of your master backend and a place to save settings. All settings can be saved directly back to a flash drive for easy portability.

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Top 13 Reasons Why Linux Should Be on Your Computer

Posted on October 20, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in quotes & thoughts .

Only a couple of years ago, Linux as a desktop was a pimply adolescent with half-baked ideas. Today we see a handsome, well-dressed grown-up who handles a range of tasks with confidence and even performs some fancy tricks. No longer do we need to make allowances for his dress sense or his strange habits.

The timing couldn’t be any better. Vista is a Wagner Opera that is usually late to start, takes too long to finish. Mac OS X Leopard, meanwhile, is the late show in an exclusive nightclub where the drinks are way too expensive. In contrast, the Linux desktop is the free show in the park across the street — it imposes some discomforts on the audience, but provides plenty of quality entertainment.

The first challenge is getting hold of the tickets, since you can’t just choose your new PC and then tick the Linux box in the list of software options. The good news is that installing Linux is no longer a challenge that rivals splitting the atom. With a handful of mature linux distros designed for average users, the benefits Linux offers are much easier to experience. And there are plenty:

  1. Cost — Linux is free, and that includes most of the apps. On the other hand, Vista Home Premium and Ultimate cost hundreds of dollars, even when upgrading from Windows XP. Moving up to Office 2007 involves handing over another bundle of dollars.
  2. Resources — Even the most lavishly equipped Linux distros demand no more resources than Windows XP. Vista is greedy: a single-user PC operating system that needs 2GB of RAM to run at acceptable speed, and 15GB of hard disk space, is grossly obese.
  3. Performance — Linux worked faster on my Dell Inspiron Core Duo than XP, at least the way XP worked out of the box. After cleaning out the bloatware and trading McAfee’s Abrams Tank for the lightweight NOD32, XP and Linux (with Guarddog and Clam-AV) perform at similar speed.
  4. No bloatware — Linux is free from adware, trialware, shovelware, and bloatware. Running Linux is like watching the public TV network.
  5. Security — Last year, 48,000 new virus signatures were documented for Windows, compared to 40 for Linux. Still, most distros come with firewalls and antivirus (AV) software. Programs like Guarddog and Clam-AV are free, of course.
  6. Dual booting — The best Linux distros make dual booting a simple affair, along with the required disk partitioning (so you don’t need to buy partitioning software). Windows on my Dell laptop is still intact after installing and uninstalling a dozen distros.
  7. Installation — Anyone who’s done it once knows that installing Windows from scratch takes hours or even days by the time you get all your apps up and running. With Linux, it can take as little as half an hour to install the operating system, utilities, and a full set of applications. No registration or activation is required, no paperwork, and no excruciating pack drill.
  8. Reinstalling the OS — You can’t just download an updated version of Windows. You have to use the CD that came with your PC and download all the patches Microsoft has issued since the CD was made. With Linux, you simply download the latest version of your distro (no questions asked) and, assuming your data files live in a separate disk partition, there’s no need to reinstall them. You only need to re-install the extra programs you added to the ones that came with the distro.
  9. Keeping track of software — Like most Windows users, I have a shelf full of software CDs and keep a little book with serial numbers under my bed in case I have to reinstall the lot. With Linux, there are no serial numbers or passwords to lose or worry about. Not a single one.
  10. Updating software — Linux updates all the software on your system whenever updates are available online, including all applications programs. Microsoft does that for Windows software but you have to update each program you’ve added from other sources. That’s about 60 on each of my PCs. More icing on the Linux cake is that it doesn’t ask you to reboot after updates. XP nags you every ten minutes until you curse and reboot your machine. If you choose “custom install” to select only the updates you want, XP hounds you like a mangy neighborhood dog until you give in.
  11. More security — These days, operating systems are less vulnerable than the applications that run on them. Therefore a vital aspect of PC security is keeping your apps up-to-date with the latest security patches. That’s hard manual labor in Windows, but with Linux it’s automatic.
  12. No need to defrag disks — Linux uses different file systems that don’t need defragging. NTFS was going to be replaced in Vista, but Microsoft’s new file system didn’t make the final cut. Instead, Vista does scheduled disk defragging by default, but the defrag utility is a sad affair.
  13. A wealth of built-in utilities — The utilities supplied with Windows are pretty ordinary on the whole, that’s why so many small software firms have made a nice living writing better ones. Linux programs are comparable with the best Windows freeware, from CD burners to photo managers, memory monitors and disk utilities. PDF conversion is built-in, both into OpenOffice Writer and into the DTP application Scribus. All you do is click a button on the task bar.
1 Comment .
Tags: linux, linux desktop, reasons, switch to linux, top 13 reasons .

How to build the Perfect Server – with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10)

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in applications/software, debian/ubuntu based, guides, how to, servers .

This tutorial shows how to set up a Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

I will use the following software:

  • Web Server: Apache 2.2
  • Database Server: MySQL 5.0
  • Mail Server: Postfix
  • DNS Server: BIND9
  • FTP Server: proftpd
  • POP3/IMAP: I will use Maildir format and therefore install Courier-POP3/Courier-IMAP.
  • Webalizer for web site statistics

In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

  • the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon server CD, available here: http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10/ubuntu-7.10-server-i386.iso
  • a fast internet connection.

2 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

3 The Base System

Insert your Ubuntu install CD into your system and boot from it. Select Install to the hard disk:

The installation starts, and first you have to choose your language:

Then select your location:

Choose a keyboard layout (you will be asked to press a few keys, and the installer will try to detect your keyboard layout based on the keys you pressed):

The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware, and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:

Continue reading →

1 Comment .
Tags: lamp server, perfect lamp, perfect lamp server, perfect server, perfect ubuntu, ubuntu, ubuntu server .

Vixta – A Fedora Linux-based Vista clone

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in funny stuff, linux/unix/os distros, other distros, random stuff .

Vixta could be the Linux distribution with the smallest possible target audience ever: Linux users who love the look and feel of Windows Vista and wished their Linux desktops could look more like Windows.

Vixta

Vixta is a Fedora-based distro with a custom KDE-based interface. You get widgets, a Vista-like start menu and taskbar, and evil looks from your die-hard open-source buddies.

1 Comment .
Tags: vista like linux, vista linux, vista theme linux, vixta, vixta linux .
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