Guide to faster Ubuntu

Posted on July 20th, 2008 in Ubuntu by admin

Ubuntu is already pretty speedy compared to some bloated OSes out there, but here’s a way to make it a bit faster.

The chage command

Posted on July 17th, 2008 in Basics, Commandline Tools, Security by admin

chage changes the number of days between password changes and the date of the last password change. This information is used by the system to determine when a user must change her password. The chage command is restricted to the root user, except for the -l option, which may be used by an unprivileged user to determine when her password or account is due to expire.

A nice conky file, for all

Posted on July 17th, 2008 in Applications, Tweaks by admin

Screenshot here, config file below:

Have a nice customized .bashrc file

Posted on July 16th, 2008 in Applications, Commandline Tools, Tweaks by admin

Screenshot

Right Click the file below and save it to your home folder.

Backup your current bash profile by  “mv .bashrc .bashrc.bak

then mv bashrc.txt .bashrc

File: bashrc

Kudos goes to ayoli for this.

Installing & Using Gnome-Do

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Applications, Gnome by admin

GNOME Do (Do) is an intelligent launcher tool that makes performing common tasks on your computer simple and efficient. Do not only allows you to search for items in your desktop environment (e.g. applications, contacts, bookmarks, files, music), it also allows you to specify actions to perform on search results (e.g. run, open, email, chat, play). Want to send an email to mom? Simply type “email mom.” Want to listen to some music? Simply type “play beatles.” Do provides instantaneous, action-oriented desktop search results that adapt to reflect your habits and preferences. For example, if you use Firefox web browser often, typing “f” in Do will launch it. Or, if you visit The New York Times webpage often, Do will open it if you simply type “nyt.” Unlike other search tools that present search results as flat, homogeneous lists, Do provides familiar graphical depictions of search results that assure you that your intent is being realized correctly; searching for “mom” will show a picture of mom, and searching for “beatles” will show a Beatles album cover. Do has many more powerful and exciting capabilities that must be seen to be appreciated.

Installing & Using TimeVault in Ubuntu/Debian

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Applications, Debian, Ubuntu by admin

TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the ‘Previous Versions’ tab.

Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default. The super-user can delete intermediate snapshots to save space, but files and directories that existed before or after the deletion will still be accessible.

A snapshot is a copy of a directory at a certain point in time. Snapshots don’t use space for the files that haven’t changed but instead simply increment the link count for them. On Linux, when a file is deleted, the link count is decremented, but it isn’t actually removed until the link count hits zero.

Only files are hard-linked this way. Directories have to be recreated for technical reasons (since a hard-link is actually the file it points to, you would find yourself in a completely different path if directories were hard-linked).

How to turn off Firefox 3’s “awesome bar”

Posted on July 13th, 2008 in Applications by admin

In Firefox 3, the Location Bar received a number of improvements. Among those improvements was the move to a XUL richlistbox widget for the auto-complete dropdown. This allowed styled URL/title information, favicons, and highlighted match information. This preference determines how many entries should appear (at most) in the dropdown.  Many find Firefox 3’s “awesome bar” quite annoying.  Luckily  this is easy to disable.

First, in the address bar type:   “about:config”  (without the quotes).

In the about:config search bar type:  Browser.urlbar.maxRichResults

The default value is set to 12.  If you set this interger to 0, nothing will display in the “awesome bar” any longer.

Quick: How to Hide Mounted Drives on Gnome’s Desktop

Posted on July 13th, 2008 in Gnome by admin

I prefer a clean desktop with no icons cluttering it up, but by default most Gnome based distros adds icons to the desktop for every single removable drive that you attach to your system.

Ultimate Bit Torrent Tutorial for Linux

Posted on July 10th, 2008 in Security, Uncategorized by admin

Want to avoid throttling? Hide your location from peers connected to the same torrent? Block Comcast’s TCP packet resets? Or use PeerGuardian blocklists in your torrent client? Then read on.

Secure the Hell Out of your Windows Box

Posted on July 7th, 2008 in Security, Windows by admin

A while back I wrote a piece about how to Secure the hell out of your Linux box, and I thought I’d follow up with the same but for the Windows world. Yes yes, this is a Linux blog and this kind of post won’t happen all that often, or possibly never again, but security I feel is far more important than technological allegiances.

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