zedomax.com » Linux

Ubuntu Hack – How to Restore GRUB Boot Loader After Installing Windows!

max — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:41:14 +0000

Here’s a quick one, how to restore GRUB boot loader after installing Windows for those of you Ubuntu users. I used to know how to do this but keep forgetting, hence the point of this post.

This tutorial will explain how to restore Grub after installing Windows 7/Vista/Xp.If you are using dual boot PC with windows,Ubuntu for some reason you reinstall your windows now you may not see your grub 2 is loading because your windows installation might have been over written MBR (Master boot record).

via ubuntugeek

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Ubuntu Hack – How to Restore GRUB Boot Loader After Installing Windows!

Linux Hack – How to Sync your iPhone/iPod Touch on Linux!

max — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:39:55 +0000

For those of you who need to sync iPhone to your linux (and only God knows why Apple doesn’t support Linux out of the box), you might want to read up on this guide on which packages to install and how to do it. (well, coming soon really…)

As an avid linux user, I think this is something Apple must definitely look at as there are more linux users, Linux is still the most widely used operating system for websites including this one, that should give them some clue.

Well, I’m happy to say that all of this is coming to an end and that Linux will finally get quite complete iPhone/iPod Touch syncing support soon, thanks to the work of many dedicated people. This is what the software stack looks like:

via hackaday

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Linux Hack – How to Sync your iPhone/iPod Touch on Linux!

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Launched!

max — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:34:54 +0000

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is introduced today, I might have to try it out soon. I don’t think there’s too many upgrades from the last version but according to Engadget, the Ubuntu features:

featuring a faster graphical boot sequence (no more scary text scrolls), a revamped audio framework that improves sound control across multiple applications, and a new Software Center that visually simplifies the Add/Remove Applications tool. These are just a few of the user-centric improvements meant to have a “transformative effect” on the OS experience and help bring “the world of open source closer to the user.”

Not bad I think, probably a much better option than Windows 7, that’s for sure.

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Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Launched!

Samsung TV Hack – How to Hack Samsung’s Linux Firmware!

max — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:32:10 +0000

The new Samsung LCD TVs run Linux for their firmware I guess and here’s some guy who has hacked it so the Samsung TV can do other things such as networking and file share.

Their modified Samsung firmware is available as SamyGo but you will first have to learn to enable telnet into your Samsung TV.

I think this opens a lot of doors for people like me who love hacking linux-based systems. Perhaps you can even install a Wordpress blog on your Samsung TV sorta like the Palm Pre.

SamyGO is a project for reverse engineering Samsung TV’s Firmwares which is partially Open Sourced. ( Literaly Samsung TV Firmware Hacking Project )
We try to fix problems that in the firmware. We don’t want money from you. We make this modifications for us and ourself but you are allowed to join us.

via hackaday

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Samsung TV Hack – How to Hack Samsung’s Linux Firmware!

Ubuntu DIY – How to Install Opera Web Browser in Ubuntu!

max — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:10:17 +0000

I know installing browsers with flash support in Ubuntu sometimes can simply be a pain in the rear, especially if you are running on non-standard CPUs.
Well, here’s how to install Opera web browser for Ubuntu, with support for flash and java. The new Opera browser has proved to be super-fast btw, from what I hear.

sudo dpkg -i opera_10.00.4585.gcc4.qt3_i386.deb

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin ubuntu-restricted-extras

I think these tips will be very helpful for those who are having trouble installing Opera on their Ubuntu.

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Ubuntu DIY – How to Install Opera Web Browser in Ubuntu!

Wordpress Hack – How to Run a Wordpress Blog on Lighttpd!

max — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:02:40 +0000

For the last couple months, I have been playing around with a lot of different web servers. Because my web servers kept going down, I had to find a new solution to help minimize my on-growing web server hosting costs.

About 2 years ago, one of the tech support guys at the dedicated server hosting company told me there’s a lighter web server called “Lighttpd”.

Well, I digged all the information I could on Lighttpd and found pieces of information that could let me run Zedomax.com on Lighttpd. (I also did find many other good web server alternatives like Nginx and Cherokee but I won’t go into that today, I will keep experimenting and reporting over at WebServerHacks.com, my new blog for that subject.)

Anyways, after 2 days of no sleep and digging the internet and trying on my test web servers, I finally mastered the art of running Lighttpd on my Wordpress blog.

Yes, this blog now runs Lighttpd, no more Apache. It runs waaay faster, handles waaay more web traffic, AND I saved a bunch of money on web server upgrades.

Anyways, I’ve detailed every step as best I can on how to run a Wordpress Blog on Lighttpd, step-by-step over at my new Web Server Hacks Blog, so check it out if you are running Wordpress blog and you need to save money/run sites faster.

In my recent conversions, my web servers are now able to handle about 2-3 times more web traffic than before using Lighttpd.

Before, my servers went down every couple days because of too much traffic.

Now, my servers “almost” never go down.

…

…

My web hosting costs went down from $1500 a month to $600 because my web servers now can handle 2-3 times more traffic. Over a year, that’s about $8,000 in savings. It made enough of a difference where I could use the money saved for other things in my blogging business.

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Wordpress Hack – How to Run a Wordpress Blog on Lighttpd!

Linux DIY – How to Record Desktop Activities!

max — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:51 +0000

In Windows, there’s free desktop recording software like CamStudio. For linux, you might want to consider using RecordMyDesktop to record your desktop activities. For that, check out the tutorial by Shibuvarkala, he also details instructions on how to convert .ogv to .avi. These instructions are for Ubuntu, which many of you use but should be similar for many other Linux distros using yum, rpm, or something other than apt-get.

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Linux DIY – How to Record Desktop Activities!

FREE Linux GNOME Wallpapers!

max — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:08:01 +0000

GNOME is a popular GUI choice for linux users, here’s a bunch of free linux GNOME wallpapers you can download.

Of course, you don’t need to use to download these, you can also simply use FTP to download to your Mac/Windows computer too.

First you need to create a directory in your home directory, lets call it Wallpapers
mkdir ~/Wallpapers

Now you need to connect to gnome.org ftp servers
ftp ftp.gnome.org
Next you will be asked to enter a username and password. “anonymous” will be your username and just press enter when prompted for the password.
Now lets navigate to the wallpapers on their servers
cd cd /pub/GNOME/teams/art.gnome.org/backgrounds
You will also need to turn prompting off, you don’t want it bugging you asking you if you want to download each single file
prompt off
Now lets download all 1280×1024 (assuming thats your resolution)
mget *1280x1024.jpg

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FREE Linux GNOME Wallpapers!

Linux Hack – How to Add a network-monitor VFD display to your Linux Computer!

max — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:23:38 +0000

For those of you who need another smaller display for monitoring stuff such as network load and status on your linux computer, here’s a great DIY on how to add a MatrixOrbital VFD display. I see a lot of great uses on this, will have to make one myself soon.

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Linux Hack – How to Add a network-monitor VFD display to your Linux Computer!

Linux Hack – How to Install Linux on ZipIt!

max — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:31:25 +0000

ZipIt is a WiFi IM device but here’s Hunter Davis who has hacked it to run linux. (via make, hackaday) This is definitely very interesting and might be a good unit to study linux on instead of breaking bank on a real computer.

I walk you through the process of flashing a stock Z2 to the newest linux kernel and aliosa27 userland. Mp3 (alsa)audio, fluxbox, mouse emulator demonstrated.

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Linux Hack – How to Install Linux on ZipIt!

Mac Hack – How to Clean CPU Fan and Replace Hard Disk on a PowerBook G4!

max — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:17:50 +0000

Recently, one of my friends who is a plumber in San Francisco, gave me an old PowerBook G4. Well, since I am not an Apple fan boy (sorry Apple fan boys), I’ve figured I can install Windows XP.

I ran into the big problem that Windows XP is not supported on a PowerPC CPU, which is what the PowerBook G4 has. Since I do also run a bunch of linux machines at my home, I figured I could run some linux on the PowerBook. It turns out there’s a bunch of PowerPC-supported linux systems including Ubuntu, which I ended up installing. (I should have a HOWTO guide on that coming up pretty soon so watch for that!)

Of course, this Powerbook G4 has more problems as the hard disk was dead so I had to replace the hard disk. I also figured I could take some shots on how to replace the hard disk while I was doing it.

Most laptops are pretty easy to disassemble once you get the hang of it. You simply remove all the screws and most of the time, the laptop comes apart pretty easily.

So here it goes, step-by-step instructions on how to take an old Powerbook G4 apart. (other Powerbooks should be similar)

Note this is the very first time I have worked with Mac laptops in my whole life but I did it my first time so it must be easy. (and you should be able to do it too)

Tools required:

couple small screw drivers. (You can get a set of these at your dollar store by the way)

1 1.5mm hex screw driver.

Step By Step Instructions

1) You will need to get the battery out, simply use a coin and turn the big metal thing until the battery pops out like below:

2) Now, unscrew the 4 screws that hold the memory compartment in the middle of the laptop.

3) Pull the metal tabs on the left and right side of the memory. The memory should pop out easily.

4) Take all the memory out, usually no more than two since there’s two memory slots.

5) Take the four long screws at the top(where the LCD screen is connected to).

6) Also take the 2 screws off near where the memory slots are. (Oops, I lost one of the screws while trying to take a pictures. Don’t worry too much about lost screws when you open up a laptop, I find that you don’t have to be so perfect, your laptop will still function fine with couple lost screws.)

7) Next take the two screws off one of the sides of the Powerbook G4.

Take the three screws on the other side of the Powerbook G4. Don’t you just love Macs? They are so easy to disassemble.

9) Take the four screws on the top of the Powerbook G4.

10) Now using the hex screwdriver thingee and open the two hexa-nuts at the front of the laptop where your keyboard is.

11) The top of the Mac Powerbook G4 should pop right out easily like this.

12)Now jiggle the keyboard a little (being careful not to pull the too attached lines) and the whole thing should be fully detachable from the main board.

13) Set the keyboard laying against the LCD, and gently pull the orangish looking line, it should pop right off. (This is the touchpad connection to your Powerbook’s motherboard btw.)

14) Now, pull the side tabs off the keyboard connectors. The white-striped keyboard connector should slide out easily.

15) Now you have the keyboard/touchpad module completely detached! Yey, you can now pretty much access most of your PowerBook G4’s internals including the CPU fan (Left arrow), graphic card fan (Right arrow), hard disk (blue arrow), and more.

16) Since the hard disk was broken, I figured this Powerbook must be super old and checked out both the CPU and graphic card fans. (I found out that there were already super clean but this should be a handy guide for you if you have an old Powerbook that makes a lot of CPU fan noise and need to clean them.)

You can skip to Step 27 here if you simply need to swap out your hard drive on the Powerbook G4 but if you want to clean/check your CPU fans, keep going.

How to Clean the Graphic Card CPU fan

First, I decided to check out the graphic card fan (the one on the right), simply pop off the LCD connector horizontally. It should pop right off pretty easily.

17) Pull the LCD connector and stickers away from you. (Yes, VOID the warranty, you probably don’t have it on this old Mac anyways!)

18) Pull the fan connector out.

19) Unscrew the two screws and the fan assembly should be “bent” out. Check the metal fins to see if there’s any dust piled up and if it is, CLEAN! After cleaning, re-assemble the graphic fan card reversing the steps from this step to Step 16. (then continue)

20) Next, we can take a look at the CPU fan to see if dust has piled up. CPU fans are #1 cause of laptop failures these days so…

How to Clean the Main CPU fan!

Pull the metal connector thingee (the copper lookin thingee) up, it should pop right out. I am not sure what this is for but oh well…

21) Next, pull the CPU fan connector out.

22) Take the connector next to it out so you can access the CPU fan case.

23) Unscrew the four screws holding the CPU fan.

24) Clean the metal fans if it’s dirty. Like I said, mine was super clean. I think someone just dropped the Powerbook G4 on the ground and broke the hard disk.

25) Clean the fans, metal fins and put it back together by reversing steps from this step to Step 20.

How to Replace the Hard Disk!

Next, we will replace the broken 60GB hard disk with a new 80GB hard disk.

Simply pull the harddisk connector on the top of the harddisk.

26) Unscrew the 2 big screws on the left of the hard drive of the Powerbook G4.

27) Pull that thing out of the way…

28) There’s two screws on the right side of the hard disk you need to unscrew (red circles) and pull the metal tab thingee out.

There’s also two screws on the left side of the hard disk you need to unscrew a little (blue circles), you don’t need to take them out completely, just unscrew them so they are loose and you can pull the hard disk out. Also note to take the connector out (red arrow) if you have hard time accessing the screws.

29) Jiggle the hard disk out, it should come out. If you get to this step, swapping the new hard drive you be a piece of cake. Simply swap the harddisk connector and the plastic isolation thingee to the new drive and reverse steps from this step to Step 25.

30) Now you have done it! Give yourself a thumbs up for replacing the hard drive! Mac Powerbook is a really, really old laptop from the stone ages but the new Macbooks should actually be a lot easier than this. (or any other laptops for that matter)

Most of the new laptops also allow easier access to the harddisk and the CPU fans without disassembling most of your laptop. You might void warranty but if you learn to disassemble laptops, you should be able to open up most laptops today with a screwdriver. I find disassembling laptops addicting now, I didn’t know it was this easy.

31) Assemble everything back by reversing steps from Step 16 through Step 1.

32) Boot your laptop to make sure everything is working and you didn’t forget to connect any connectors. If you did, you will have to repeat and go into vicious cycle until you get it right. Just take a deep breath and take everthing SLOWLY. Don’t need to be in a hurry ever.

33) If you are like me, just install Ubuntu PowerPC version of Jaunty 9.04, which works well right out of the box including Touchpad, keyboard, LCD, Wifi, and sound.

This is the very first Mac laptop I own and disassembled, and of course, it doesn’t run Mac OSX. (will have to wait another 20 years before I consider doing that. But there’s Hackintosh for those of you who want to run Mac OSX on PCs… and why would I want to do that???)

(Breathing new, fresh open-source life into the old Mac Powerbook G4 with Ubuntu Jaunty…yey go Linus! Now I have 2 mobile linux devices, a Palm Pre and a Powerbook.)

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Mac Hack – How to Clean CPU Fan and Replace Hard Disk on a PowerBook G4!

Linux DIY – How to Build your Own Open Source DropBox Storage Server!

max — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:07:19 +0000

Here’s a great way to build your own open-source storage server just like the commercial version DropBox. (btw, is a great service!)

Basically this will allow you to build easy-to-use linux storage server for private companies as an example.

If you like tinkering with Linux like me, you might be very interested in this, so take a look!

So a few months ago they made headlines on supporting Linux as they released the client as open source. While this got hopes up for many, it was only the client that was open source, the server is still proprietary. While slightly disappointing, this is fine, they’re a company trying to make money. I don’t fault them for this, it’s just that a free, portable service like that would be a killer app.

via fak3r

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Linux DIY – How to Build your Own Open Source DropBox Storage Server!

Mac DIY – How to Install Ubuntu Linux on your Mac!

max — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:52:02 +0000

Tuaw has a great tutorial on how to install Ubuntu Linux on your Mac machine. This uses Sun’s VirtualBox, which essentially lets you install any kind of operating system. This is a great way to have another operating system under your main machine. Of course, this isn’t a real install since it’s virtual but it still is a great way to have another operating system on your Mac without re-installing your main OS.

You can also use this on PCs in a similar way and works just as well FYI.

Why would you want to run Linux on a Mac? There are probably a few good reasons — learning about a different OS, using software that’s not available on the Mac platform, or for a Linux class in school. While you can create a bootable partition on your Mac and boot Linux from it, I prefer to do things the lazy way. In this short how-to post, I’ll demonstrate how I installed Ubuntu Linux 9.04, also known as “Jaunty Jackalope.”

via tuaw

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Mac DIY – How to Install Ubuntu Linux on your Mac!

Linux Hack – How to Resume SCP Transfers after Interruption!

max — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 07:32:17 +0000

For those of you who need to “resume” SCP file transfers that have been interrupted, there’s an easy way to resume them using rsync command.

Use this:

alias scpresume="rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh"

For Ubuntu or Debian add sudo:

alias scpresume="sudo rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh"

This is great since you won’t have to restart your file transfers if you happened to be transferring files around 100GB.

Perks include understanding the same user@host:path syntax as scp as well as being able to resume a broken scp download (Note: I’m not guaranteeing this, but after downloading 90% of 400MB I was able to pick up the rest using this).

via panela

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Linux Hack – How to Resume SCP Transfers after Interruption!

Linux Ubuntu DIY – How to Setup DDNS on your Ubuntu!

max — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 06:32:09 +0000

I have a nice little Linux Ubuntu box I setup here in my apartment with a KVM switch but most of the time, I use command lines to SSH into my linux box.

When I am away from from home and I want to access my linux box, I can access it (SSH into it) using DDNS (dynamic DNS). This is great since I have my own backup server plus I can test out my web servers on my linux box before going live.

Anyways, if you are looking for easy solution on how to setup DDNS on your Ubuntu machine, ddclient is probably the easiest. You can check out detailed instructions from MexPolk, who has a great step-by-step tutorial on how to accomplish this.

And also, you need to either set your linux box to “DMZ” mode if you have a router at home. Or better, just set your port forwarding so port 22 doesn’t get blocked. (port 22 for SSH)

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Linux Ubuntu DIY – How to Setup DDNS on your Ubuntu!

Top 5 Palm Pre Hacks To Do on Your Palm Pre!

max — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:45:39 +0000

I admit it, I’ve been a Palm Pre whore ever since I got the Pre couple weeks ago. For me, having Sprint’s EDVO fast connection and a linux-based smartphone is like heaven. Trust me, it’s faster, better, and more reliable than proprietary iPhone. Yes, I support the open source community Linux.

So, if you ever get a Palm Pre, what’s the Top 5 Palm Pre hacks you need to do to your Pre?

Hack your Palm Pre to act as a WiFi Router. – This is what I did to my Palm Pre the very second day I got it. Don’t forget, you can tether using USB too. Sprint so far has been pretty nice about this so you shouldn’t worry about them “tracking” you, just don’t abuse it by connecting your mom and sister’s computer to the Pre wifi.
Learn how to SSH into your Pre. – Since Palm Pre is based on Linux, there exists literally MILLIONS of linux software you can install. The first thing you need to do is install SSH (secure shell access), so you can install all types of linux software.
How to run a Wordpress Blog on a Pre – Once you have SSH installed, you can learn how to install a Wordpress Blog on your Palm Pre. (Yes, you can host a BLOG like this one on your Pre!!!)
How to Setup GPS Tracking on your Pre – You can also learn to install GPS tracking on your Pre so you can find it if you lose your Pre or someone steals your Pre.
How to Tweet your Palm Pre’s GPS location to Twitter – This is the more advanced GPS tracking method so the world can track where the hell you are, even if you are stuck in the mountains in the snow.

More coming soon, I am currently trying to get over some Swine-Flu-like cold right now (if it isn’t) and working on a new ecommerce site but should be back in full force next week. (hopefully)

GOOD BYE!!! (I am waving to you, will you wave back? Thanks, you can wave back in the comments line.)

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Top 5 Palm Pre Hacks To Do on Your Palm Pre!

Amazon Hack – Kindle 2 Hacked to Run Ubuntu Linux!

max — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:56:59 +0000

It looks like Jesse Vincent has hacked an Amazon Kindle 2 to run a custom version of Ubuntu Linux! Well, the Kindle 2 does run on ARM, there’s a lot of linux software out there that’s running on ARM including the Palm Pre but this is pretty amazing indeed.

I could not find any further details on how to accomplish this but I can say one thing, if you can make use of Kindle 2’s EDVO connection, you might just have hacked a “free” per-say, linux computer that uses very little energy. Jesse tells not to think about it but I say go ahead and try it out, why not? (Turn the GPS off before you do and setup anonymous proxies.)

This guy makes it sound too easy, maybe it is?

What you see there is a Kindle 2 with the Ubuntu 9.04 port to ARM running in a chrooted environment. On the screen you see xdaliclock in front of an xterm with the remains of a “top” command and a few mildly embarrassing typos.

To open up the Kindle, I used the USB networking debug mode Amazon left hanging around when they first shipped the Kindle 2, a statically linked telnetd and a cross-compiler to bootstrap myself. From there, I built a daemon that can convert DRM-free PDFs and ePubs into something Amazon’s reader on the Kindle can deal with.

After that, I started to get curious about what else might be possible. It only took a few evenings to get a moderately usable Ubuntu environment running.

Mostly, the Kindle is a lovely little Linux box. Getting X working took a bit of hacking, but everything else “just works” with very little configuration.

via gizmodo, boingboing

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Amazon Hack – Kindle 2 Hacked to Run Ubuntu Linux!

New Nokia N900 based on Linux!

max — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:19:43 +0000

Here’s some great news that the new Nokia N900 is based on Linux, similar to the new Palm Pre.

The new Nokia N900 comes with ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 1GB of application memory, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB with a MicroSD card), and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

That’s very similar to the Palm Pre, same processor but 4X more memory and 4X more storage. Plus, I have to say having a Mozilla browser is a definite plus. If it’s available anytime soon in the U.S., I will definitely be one of the first get this cool new phone.

FINALLY, Nokia gets on the bandwagon and implements Linux. This might be THE Nokia phone to get. I have to say though, I don’t like the keyboard coming out sideways, I rather have it vertically so I can type one-handed.

I don’t think this will ultimately compete with iPhone and Palm Pre but it’s a good start for Nokia, who has been forgotten for the last couple years.

Running the open-source Maemo 5 software, it can provide more of a PC-like experience on a small device, according to Nokia. The Maemo OS lets people juggle several applications at the same time.

“The Nokia N900 shows where we are going with Maemo, and we’ll continue to work with the community to push the software forward,” Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive vice president for markets, said in a statement. “What we have with Maemo is something that is fusing the power of the computer, the Internet and the mobile phone.”

via cnet

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New Nokia N900 based on Linux!

Palm Pre Hack – How to “Tweet” Your Palm Pre’s GPS Location to Twitter!

max — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:44:57 +0000

Well, I digged a bit further with my Palm Pre GoogleMaps GPS tracking app and made a new app that will track your Palm Pre’s GPS location via Twitter.

This is a better way to keeping a record of where you have been traveling in the past with your Palm Pre.

Here’s a screenshot of my latest update @trackmypalmpre:

If you go type the location on GoogleMaps, you will get the following:

Incredibly, I am actually right under that tree in my car near the Monarch Bay golf course in a public parking lot, writing this very blog post using my netbook and my hacked Palm Pre WiFi Router.

LMAO, I will have to turn off the updates eventually, I don’t want everyone to know my location. (OR I can set my Twitter updates to private so only I can see…)

But I will leave them up for now, you can track me @trackmypalmpre.

Click here for Full step-by-step directions on how to tweet your Palm Pre’s GPS location.

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Palm Pre Hack – How to “Tweet” Your Palm Pre’s GPS Location to Twitter!

Palm Pre Hack – How to Make GoogleMaps GPS Tracking on Your Palm Pre!

max — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:25:55 +0000

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Over this weekend, I’ve cooked up some really great Palm Pre hacks, one of which shows you how to setup a website on your Palm Pre and track your phone via GoogleMaps GPS. This means that if you lose your phone or someone steals it, you will know exactly where it is.

Details over at the Palm Pre Hacks blog. Enjoy~

A lot of carriers now offer the ability to track your kid’s cellphones to track where they are. Well,you can do that on the Palm Pre too.

Here’s how you can setup a “website” on your Palm Pre and secretly track your Palm Pre, whereever it is in “real-time”.

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Palm Pre Hack – How to Make GoogleMaps GPS Tracking on Your Palm Pre!

Palm Pre Hack – How To Install a Wordpress Blog Website on a Palm Pre!

max — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:40:57 +0000

You know, I haven’t had this much “hacking” fun since I first started this site. I just figured out how to install a Wordpress blog on my Palm Pre! It runs really well btw but I can’t tell you the domain name since Sprint might cancel my contract if too many people start accessing it.

Anyways, I’ve written a detailed DIY guide over at Palm Pre Hacks Blog, make sure to check it out if you plan on taking your website with you at all times.

P.S. I am sure there will be one day technology gets so good that my blog will run on a cellphone.

And yes, it’s 11:38PM saturday night, life doesn’t get better than this. hahaha.

Since the Palm Pre is based on Linux, I figured that you could probably run a Wordpress blog on the Palm Pre. Well, after about 3 hours of research, I found a way to run a wordpress blog using Optware Lighttpd and MySQL server. (Lighttpd is a “light” version of Apache pretty much and would be perfect candiate for the Palm Pre since its hardware isn’t made for full-fledged websites rather for a smartphone.)

via palm pre hacks blog

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Palm Pre Hack – How To Install a Wordpress Blog Website on a Palm Pre!

Palm Pre Hack – How to SSH into a Palm Pre!

max — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:49:02 +0000

Here’s a write-up I did over at my new Palm Pre Hacks blog on how to SSH into a Palm Pre. Check it out if you got a Palm Pre and ahead of the curve.

The second day I got the Palm Pre, I was able to SSH into my own Palm Pre and also make it into a WiFi Router. Of course, this is usual business for me as I manage about 30+ web servers on a daily basis. If I see a linux machine, the first thing I want to do is SSH into it.

via palm pre hacks blog

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Palm Pre Hack – How to SSH into a Palm Pre!

The Best Grid, VPS, and Dedicated Server Web Hosting Review!

max — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:38:30 +0000

Over the last couple weeks, I have been doing a little “host” shopping, jumping from hosting company to another, thus Zedomax.com went down a lot. (Sorry about that, sometimes in life, you need to keep searching until you find the best deals.)

So, I’ve actually narrowed it down to 3 companies that provide the best “cloud/grid”, “VPS”, and dedicated servers.

This review is based on the 30+ blogs I manage, each of blogs getting anywhere from 100 to 20,000 pagesviews each.

In the end, I found that each hosting company had its strengths and weaknesses. Depending on what kind of web traffic you get and what kind of resources you need from a web server, you will have to choose your web hosting company “wisely”.

For the moment, I am using 3 hosting companies, MediaTemple, GoDaddy, and SingleHop, the ones I highly recommend to host your websites.

This web hosting review is for those of you who are serious about getting the best value/speed from your web server.

So, let me break it down by each company and what I’ve experienced.

Godaddy Grid Beta

This is the first time I have ever tried Godaddy’s web hosting services although I have used them in the past for all of my domain management. (Btw, GoDaddy is the best for Domain names, there’s no doubt about that.)

The GoDaddy Grid is actually in its beta phase and I was able to score a deal for $4.99/month for the first 3 months and $19.99 thereafter. I was sorta worried that the service seemed too cheap but in the end, the GoDaddy Grid is very reliable once you have your websites set up.

The GoDaddy Grid is probably the best option for anyone who wants to run a Wordpress blog for stability, price, and speed. I would highly recommend this over any other shared web hosting companies out there.

Btw, shared web hosting companies are the worst. You might pay like $100 for one year but trust me, shared web hosting companies are not reliable by any means if you are serious about getting your website up and running. I have tried BlueHost, DreamHost, you name it. The thing with shared hosts is that they are “shared”, you never know if you are going to be sharing your website with 10 other websites or 50.

Besides sharing the server, shared web hosting companies also share 1 dedicated IP address among those different websites. Meaning if that IP gets blacklisted for someone “spamming”, you will get affected too, even if they change the IP address.

Just stay away from shared hosting companies, they are the worst.

Pros

Grid offers “unlimited” resources. Grid is basically like a Cloud web hosting service, it can ramp up and provide your website with extra bandwidth up to 1000GB per month. That’s a lot of bandwith and the Godaddy offers great stability, especially if you are on a plane to Hawaii and your website gets digged or slashdotted.
SSH – Godaddy’s SSH is pretty functional for doing a lot downloading/uploading via wget or scp command. This comes in handy for busy webmasters like me who need to move 30+ websites in a matter of hours. Without SSH, it would take about 3 days to do the same thing. This is the number one reason I chose Godaddy over other cloud service providers like Rack Space Cloud.
I’ve loaded about 10K uniques/day on this grid server, it allows you to add about 20 websites. This is a really good sign, I am actually putting all my crappy sites with smaller traffic on Godaddy. You can check out DeClubz Blog, which gets about 3000 uniques/day, hosted on the GoDaddy Grid. (I was rather surprised the Grid didn’t crap out at all and runs flawlessly.)
You can load up to 20 websites/20 MySQL databases, this is the perfect server if you plan on making/running multiple websites in the future.

Cons

I’ve noticed that there’s some kind of automatic “throttling” by the Grid when you try to download/upload files over 100MB. This is normal on most cloud/grid/VPS servers as they need to protect the system against DoS attacks and whatnot. I still prefer fast downloads on pure dedicated as they waste less of my time, which is highly valuable to me. But again, this isn’t something that’s going to affect your website after you have set it up, it’s only going to be a little pain to restart your downloads.
Godaddy’s uses separate MySQL database, meaning you can use “localhost” as database domain. This can become quite a lot of pain for custom-coded sites but stuff like Wordpress shouldn’t be easy.
I found that some PHP coding didn’t go through as well with the Grid. There’s no ability for you to install/manipulate the core PHP files in the server. This is not a good thing for developers but if you are just running Wordpress, not a big deal at all.

For the regular price of $19.99, you can’t really get better than GoDaddy’s Grid service, especially since they provided a limited SSH, which is crucial for moving/setting up your sites in time.

Overall, I found that GoDaddy has the best bang for your buck for any sites getting between 100 to 10,000 pageviews/day, especially Wordpress blogs.

GoDaddy Grid Beta Hosting ($4.99/month for 3 months and $19.99/month thereafter) – Click Here and Go to Hosting->Grid Hosting.

MediaTemple

MediaTemple isn’t a cloud nor grid web host, they run something very similar to it, a Virtual server utilized by Plesk, which is probably the most reliable virtual server system out there. I run Plesk on all my dedicated servers and it was easy for me to migrate all my websites to MediaTemple using Plesk, which has a native “import” tool so you can do a “1-click” migration when moving servers.

MediaTemple provides 3 different levels of service, the Grid(gv), the Dedicated Virtual(dv),and Dedicated Nitro(dpv).

The Grid(gv) I know have had some issues in the past so I didn’t even sign up for that, especially since you are also CPU-limited by the number of processing power you use. Although MediaTemple even gave money back to their customers in the past, I would highly avoid the grid, especially if you are serious about getting your website up and running 24/7. If there’s been problems with MediaTemple’s grid in the past, I am sure it will happen again. (Murphy’s Law) If your want to go grid, I would probably suggest GoDaddy’s Grid.

The Dedicated Virtual(dv) is the one I signed up for. It’s basically like a dedicated server except your server is virtualized within a number of servers.

There’s 3 different levels of the DV service:

Base – This is the most basic DV service you can get at $50/month. I have about 10 of my lower-end websites running on it. I could probably compared to a dedicated server with Dual-Core Xeon processor but you are going to be very limited by memory resources.
The most web traffic it can handle – around 3000 pageviews/day. I loaded couple sites but once I got over 3000 pagesviews/day, the server kept hitting its memory resource limits.
Rage – This is the second-tier DV service you can get at $100/month. I had most of my medium-end website running on it with about 10,000 pageviews/day. It ran fine but did experience some hiccups once I got over 10,000 pageviews/day. I think that is pretty much its limit. I did however upgrade to Extreme “instantly”. The best part about these DV servers is that you can upgrade your hardware instantly, I mean literally within seconds, no rebooting needed.
Extreme – This is the best DV service you can get at $150/month. You can also upgrade your RAM up to 512MB. I did find the Extreme server able to handle about 15,000 pageviews/day but again, my site (Zedomax.com) came to a crawling. I even tried hooking up Zedomax.com to 2 of these Extreme servers with 1 HTTPD and the other MySQLD. The major problem I faced was that there was no way to “locally” connect the 2 extreme servers. Without being locally connected, my ping times between the 2 servers averaged from 0.5ms to 10ms. This caused a havoc on the HTTPD server and load would go out of control. But don’t get me wrong, if you have less than 15,000 pageviews/day on your website, this is a really great server. I have most of my 3000 pageviews/day blogs running on the Extreme now.

Nitro – The Nitro is the next step up from the DV servers. I found that the price wasn’t worth the features as much as the DV servers. For $750/month, I could get 3 quad-core dedicated servers, which would probably be much better investment. I even talked to Tony at MediaTemple, who told me the same thing.

Room for Improvement?

MediaTemple needs to provide a medium point between its DV Extreme servers and the Nitro. For me, Nitro was an option but I wasn’t sure if that was even going to solve my problems since my blog has been always running on 2 quad-core dedicated servers. I wish there was something between the Extreme and Nitro.

You can clearly see that there’s an obvious gap between the price points of Extreme($150) and Nitro($750), that’s about $600!!!

If MediaTemple provides something in the mid-range so customers can pay like $300 and get somethine in-between, I am sure they would have more customers and also customers who need something in-between doesn’t have to overspend on a Nitro.

Another point is that even if a customer gets a separate DV Extreme server for database, MediaTemple does not provide a local switch between the 2 servers. This is a serious issue for sites like this as it’s a difference between me going out finding a job or keep running my blog and making a living from it.

Other than those 2 issues, MediaTemple is awesome virtual servers that perform.

Overall, I found that MediaTemple has the best bang for your buck for any sites getting between 3000 to 15,000 pageviews/day on the Dedicated Virtual servers. I am still using them on most of my medium-trafficked blogs, they are very reliable so long as your web traffic doesn’t get out of control.

Check Out MediaTemple Here

SingleHop

If you are serious about getting your high-trafficked website up and running “FAST”, SingleHop is probably the best place to go as I have found their hardware, prices, and customer service excellent over all the other dedicated server hosting companies I have tried.

I have tried many other dedicated servers but SingleHop has the best prices for hardware.

If you get over 15,000 pageviews per day and you need multiple servers to run just one website (such as Zedomax.com), you will want to take advantage of SingleHop’s great deals on quad-core servers that come with default DDR2 8GB of memory. (Anything below 5000 pageviews/day, I do recommend MediaTemple for price.)

I actually got 2 of these servers to run this very site (Zedomax.com). It’s running and humming faster than ever and I have to say the best part about SingleHop is that they offer “gigabyte” switches between your servers as one of its basic add-ons. My site has been plagued before by slow MySQL server connections. I have talked to numerous people at hosting companies telling me that their “datacenters” are fast and I don’t need a local connection between servers. Yeah, well, anything above 1ms is NOT FAST for mission-critical blogs like this one. If my life depended on it (which it is), I would try using a gigabyte switch between servers.

I’ve experienced about 0.05 ms average of ping times between my servers at SingleHop using the gigabyte switch versus 5 ms average of ping times over at MediaTemple. (That’s about 100 times difference in MySQL speed!!!)

The end result?

My site loaded in about 5 to 30 seconds while on 2 MediaTemple DV servers while it took about 1 second while on 2 SingleHop dedicated servers. Well, it’s not a fair comparison since MediaTemple is much cheaper but I did learn my “expensive” lesson as Zedomax.com plummetted to like 9,000 pageviews instead of its normal 20,000 pageviews during the week of testing. (I could have paid for 2 dedicated servers for that loss…bummer.)

Check out SingleHop Dedicated Server Here

RackSpaceCloud

I did try RackSpaceCloud before trying GoDaddy and MediaTemple. In the end, I had to cancel my service because they did not provide SSH service plus FTP uploads took way too long. To move 30+ of my websites, that’s about 30 gigabytes of data, it would have took at least 24 hours on RackSpaceCloud while SSH would cut that down to about an hour. I simply don’t have much room for margin here, I am work against time, one man managing 30+ sites, I need it fast. Time is money, especially when it comes to moving servers. And the faster I can move my blogs, the more time I have for blogging and concentrating on my blogging business.

I have heard great things about RackSpaceCloud and if you don’t have much data and don’t mind uploading via FTP, go ahead and try RackSpaceCloud.

As for me, I decided to wait until RackSpaceCloud has SSH in the future. It simply doesn’t work for me if there’s no SSH. Everything should be fast as possible.

There’s also a “cloud server” which is bare-bones system for people like me but I don’t like paying my server by the hour, it doesn’t seem like a smart choice if I get “digged” suddenly one day and my bandwidth bill skyrockets above my profits.

Final Thoughts on Web Hosting

If you run multiple websites/blogs, you should NEVER to rely on one web host. My advice is to use at least 2 or 3 different web hosting companies so you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s inevitable that every hosting company will have its “downtime”, whether that happens once every 100 years or 3 months, it’s something you cannot control.

If that “disaster” happens to your web hosting company, at least you will have other hosting companies to resort to while that “disaster” get resolved.

One time, all my websites were hosted with Aplus.net, I lost couple thousand dollar easy as Aplus.net was down for almost a WEEK! I did however move after Aplus.net was slow for couple days. Aplus.net did not offer me any kind of credit after that incident nor did they say they were sorry. I later found out that Aplus.net executive management team did that INTENTIONALLY so they can save themselves some money but not their customers. All they had to do was tell their customers that their servers are going to be down for another week and they would give money back for that month. I am not bitter though, they did take a nose-dive after that anyways and got bought by another company.

I am much more experienced now and smarter. Whatever web hosting companies you use, make sure they are reliable, fast, and priced competitively.

Feel free to ask me questions via the comments below, I do like talking about web hosting companies. But please do not spam the comments line with web hosting company ads, they will immediately be marked spam and my right index finger can move much faster than you can think, already.

Some Tips on Using wget with SSH

The main reason I use hosting companies with SSH access is because I can transfer files between web servers, which is about 100 times faster than trying to upload files from your own computer. If you are a webmaster and you still don’t have a clue about SSH and using FTP for all your file transfers, I highly suggest you to dig into SSH more as it can ultimately save you enough time to go play golf instead of waiting for files to transfer.

One such command I use often is “wget” linux/unix command, you can easily download any files on any website via the HTTP protocol.

Simple usage:

wget http://mysite.com/myfile.zip

You can actually “resume” a download file if you happend to “stall” while using linux command wget. Just make sure to add “-c” at the end like this:

wget http://mysite.com/myfile.tar -c

This comes handy for those cloud/grid/VPS servers where you might stall often due to its throttling mechanism.

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

The Best Grid, VPS, and Dedicated Server Web Hosting Review!

Web Server Hack – How to Use DDoS Deflate to Protect Against DoS Flooding!

max — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:58:30 +0000

I have been using DDoS Deflate, which is a simple script that will automatically help you against DoS attacks on your server. Basically it works by killing any HTTPD processes/banning IPs that reach more than set number of TCP connections.

It’s a great script since it’s free, simple, and works well against DoS attacks. Yes, forget paying that extra hundred dollars to your server company, who’s going to probably install this script anyways.

The real gem of the DDoS Deflate script lies in configuration. Depending on how you configure the DDoS script, you can protect yourself in number of different ways.

To install, simply follow these directions on your SSH command prompt in the linux server:

wget http://www.inetbase.com/scripts/ddos/install.sh
chmod 0700 install.sh
./install.sh

After installing, go to the directory /usr/local/ddos, where the configuration files are.

If you open up ddos.conf file using your favorite editor, you can edit the following settings for getting the most out of the script:

NO_OF_CONNECTIONS=150

This is the number of connections before your server kills/bans that IP address for a set amount of time. I think 150 works well but if you are suddenly getting attacked from smart hackers with many, many IPs, you could probably adjust this to a very low number.

BAN_PERIOD=600

You can adjust the BAN_PERIOD setting to set amount of time to ban that IP since you don’t want to ban the IP permanently, there could be other innocent visitors sharing the same IP.

You can first use the default settings in the beginning and play around a bit.

The script will also e-mail you under the default domain name root@mysite.com whenever an IP reaches beyond the maximum number of allowed connections. Make sure you set the e-mail correctly so you receive those alerts if you want them by editing the EMAIL_TO variable in the ddos.conf.

Using More than 1 server?

For example, you can also “whitelist” IP addresses that might be connected to your server such as your MySQL server by editing the file ignore.ip.list file under the same directory. By the way, I’ve accidently forgot to whitelist my MySQL server before and my website started showing “Database Connection Error”, don’t let that happen to you.

Well, that’s about it, this script is pretty good against DoS flooding so you don’t have to be manually messing with your iptables or whatnot. I install this script on everyone of my VPS/dedicated servers and you should too just in case some hacker decided to flood you with garbage.

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Web Server Hack – How to Use DDoS Deflate to Protect Against DoS Flooding!

Web Server Hack – How To Auto Restart HTTPD service script!

max — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:45:23 +0000

Here’s a simple script I made up that will auto restart your HTTPD service if it reaches a high load.

The script will actually stop your HTTPD server when your load is higher than the maximum load settings and will re-start when the load is back to zero.

If you are on a server that’s overloaded, this script can help you “temporarily” get by instead of your web server dying and you manually rebooting your web server.

There’s also an extra “mail” feature that will email you whenever the server is stopped or restarted. (Code after the first one)

Download the test.txt here (Save it as test.sh)

Download the mail.txt here (Save it as mail.php)

Save both files as test.sh and mail.php, respectively, and put it in the same directory such as /root/ in your linux server where it can’t be seen by the public.

Then run a cron job every couple minutes, something like this in your /etc/cron.d/mycronjob file:

*/10 * * * * root sh /root/test.sh

(This will run every 10 minutes.)

The second code is a simple PHP file that will e-mail. It actually takes the first argument as part of its subject so you can use this PHP code for many other things for notifying you when something happens to your web server.

For test.sh script, you can change the 20 in this line to the maximum load settings before the HTTPD server shuts down:

if [ "$thisloadavg" -ge "20" ]; then

You can also change this line to higher value if you don’t want your server to wait until it reaches load of 0 before restarting:

elif [ "$thisloadavg" -le "1" ]; then

For mail.php, make sure you change the e-mail addresses to your e-mail address for it to work correctly.

You can probably play with this script and come up with something better. Let me know if you do!

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Web Server Hack – How To Auto Restart HTTPD service script!

Linux Time – How to Set the Time and Date using Command Date!

max — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:33:28 +0000

I just noticed that my web server’s time was ahead by 10 hours for some reasons. If you run linux dedicated servers, you will want to know how to do this. I know there’s many ways to do it but this is the simplest/fastest method.

Here’s a really simple way to set time and date on any linux/unix system:

date – Would list the date and time of the server. Below is an example of the output.

Thu Feb 8 16:47:32 MST 2001

date -s “11/20/2003 12:48:00″ – Set the date to the date and time shown.

date ‘+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME:%H:%M:%S’ – Would list the time and date in the below format:

DATE: 02/08/01
TIME:16:44:55

via computerhope

(Image Credit)

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Linux Time – How to Set the Time and Date using Command Date!

Linux DIY – How to Create an SSH Tunnel and Share Internet Through Another Computer!

max — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:03:55 +0000

Well, I am in the process of creating a local tunnel connection between two of my web servers from MediaTemple (thanks Eric for the help btw), I stumbled across this cool Linux DIY that shows you how to create an SSH Tunnel between two linux computers and share the internet via proxy port number 2020.

This might be very useful if you happen to run a bunch of linux machines and run out of ethernet lines. (and you are not using WiFi)

To create a tunnel you need to check that ssh service is running on the computer that you want to connect.
For Ubuntu or Debian based distribution: sudo /etc/init.d/sshd start

For fedora or other RedHat based distribution: /etc/init.d/ssh start

On the machine or the computer that you will use to browse the internet. Open a terminal window and type the following:
ssh -fND 2020 username@192.168.xxx.xxx

To start the proxy, SSH will ask you for the authenticity of your host, just type “yes” and enter your password. It will look as nothing has happened but SSH tunneling is already working.

via raxso

(Image Credit)

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Linux DIY – How to Create an SSH Tunnel and Share Internet Through Another Computer!

Palm Pre Hack – How To Tether USB Modem out of your Palm Pre!

max — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:52:01 +0000

Download latest version of Flash to view video!.

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Well, I’ve gone a little Palm Pre crazy over the weekend, using it as my new WiFi Hotspot. It turns out the My Tether app I used yesterday also has USB tethering capabilities.

To my surprise, the USB tethering worked beautifully, you can read up on how to tether your Palm Pre as a USB Modem here.

P.S. I got the paid-version of the My Tether. Shout out to Raja for the wonderful app, Sprint should really consider adding app to their default apps, that would be a HUGE advantage over the iPhone.

Amazon is now selling the Palm Pre for $199 with contract and $499 without.

Sprint has secretly took out the USB Modem function couple weeks ago but do not worry as My Tether can do this for you. I don’t think they realize that this very function of being able to use the Palm Pre as a USB Modem will help them more in the long run rather than hurt them. Personally, I think if Palm Pre allows it, they will get more favorable ratings on the phone, nevermind make all the early-adaptors like me very happy. I don’t know why they would not allow it, especially since my previous Sprint Blackberry 8830 did it too.

via palm pre hacks

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Palm Pre Hack – How To Tether USB Modem out of your Palm Pre!

Download Fedora 11!

max — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:48:05 +0000

I have to tell you, Fedora is still the best Linux out there. It’s so good, even this blog itself runs on a Fedora server. I know there’s stuff like Ubuntu but Fedora has always been at the top of my list for Linux. (Before that, I used to favor RedHat but Fedora is basically the open-source version of RedHat after they went commercial.)

Anyways, download Fedora 11 here and screenshots: (via lifehacker)

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Download Fedora 11!

Linux Desktop GUI GNOME 2.26 Released!

max — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:23:54 +0000

Gnome 2.26, one of my favorite Linux GUIs, was released today. Take a look and see how it is.

GNOME 2.26 is the latest version of the GNOME Desktop: a popular, multi-platform desktop environment for your computer. GNOME’s focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalisation and accessibility support. GNOME is Free and Open Source Software and provides all of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, such as e-mail, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia, and games. Furthermore, GNOME provides a flexible and powerful platform for software developers, both on the desktop and in mobile applications.

via gnome

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Linux Desktop GUI GNOME 2.26 Released!

Linux Hack – How to Batch Image Resize!

max — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:39:49 +0000

Well, one of the worst things you can encounter is to individually resize hundreds of images for a future blog post.

I am not sure if Windows or Macs have free software to do this but if you have access to a Linux computer like me, you can get stuff done much faster using Image Magick, a free open-source image auto-resizer also used on many web-platform programs.

I assuming that you have installed Ubuntu Gutsy:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

After ImageMagick installation, you can use mogrify. For example, I have a folder called “holidays” locate in “/home/user/photos/“. I have to change my path, make a thumbs folder and copy original images on “thumbs folder”. After that I can start image resizing process:

cd /home/user/photos/holidays
mkdir thumbs
cp /home/user/photos/holidays/* /home/user/photos/holidays/thumbs/
cd thumbs

mogrify -resize 640 *.jpg

Now I can see on “/home/user/photos/holidays/thumbs/” every my image file resized to 640 of width. If you want force resizing to a particulare size without mantaining original aspect ratio you could change mogrify options:

mogrify -resize 640×480! *.jpg

Good Job Man! I hope this howto will be useful for you.

via smokinglinux

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Linux Hack – How to Batch Image Resize!

Top 5 Geek’s Linux Distros!

max — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:39:55 +0000

Call me old school but I tend to like Fedora and Ubuntu for Linux distro of my choice but here’s a good list and explanation of the Top 5 geek’s linux distros.

Of course, now I might have to try them all out and see which one is actually the best. My Ubuntu has been failing as of lately on my spare desktop, everything is SLOW!

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Top 5 Geek’s Linux Distros!

SheevaPlug Tiny Linux Box!

max — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:12:13 +0000

Here’s an awesome tiny linux box called SheevaPlug, basically super-tiny Linux box running on ARM processor and minimal hardware. The linux box can connect easily to your network and USB devices while only using 5 watts of power.

This will be a great tool for linux tinkerers and hackers, who should be able to make most of this device.

I can already think of dozen ideas on how to apply this for security systems, alarm systems, etc…etc…

The platform is built using Marvell’s Kirkwood series system-on-chip (SoC) design with a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva™ CPU processor equipped, 512Mbytes of FLASH and 512Mbytes of DRAM. The plug also features a 2.0 USB port to allow users to run applications that require a hard disk or other peripheral.

via gizmodo

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SheevaPlug Tiny Linux Box!

G1 Hack – How to Run Full Blown Linux Desktop on your Android device!

max — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:47:31 +0000

F-aye, someone figured out how to run a full-blown linux desktop on your Android G1 Phone! This is tight, basically you can have a linux desktop machine on your G1 Phone! I think this will do some wonders for other Android devices including the Movit that’s coming soon too.

This will definitely void your warranty though, but you live only once right?

It’s official you can run X-Windows and your choice of GUI (Gnome, KDE, IceWM etc on an Android device!

via hackaday

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G1 Hack – How to Run Full Blown Linux Desktop on your Android device!

Linux Boot Hack – How to Password Protect GRUB!

max — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:11:34 +0000

If you are a linux user like me, you know the value of being able to password-protect your GRUB entries so even if your whole PC gets stolen, no one should be able to access your valuable, classified data. (or porn?)

When talking of security in computer systems one often needs to analyse the situation one is in and choose the appropriate options. If you have hackers getting physical access to your computer system the GRUB security measures won’t last a second (pretty much nothing would do). Your best bet in such a situation is to keep the hard drive encrypted, or if your hard drive can be password protected, use that option.

However, the majority of us don’t have to worry about hackers with physical access as much as our not-so-computer savvy relatives and friends fiddling around with the system. That is what we have the log in passwords for (they are not secure enough for hackers, trust me!), and that is the situation where you would be wise to make use of GRUB security features.

via makeuseof

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Linux Boot Hack – How to Password Protect GRUB!

Linux Hack – How to Turn Linux Box into a Streaming Media Center!

max — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:37:15 +0000

Here’s a quick guide that shows you how to turn your linux box into a streaming media center. It might be helpful for some of you Linux-addicts (like me). Some people were complaining this is GUI but heck, GUI is the next step for Linux so it can go more mainstream, no beginners can deal with Linux command prompt, I believe it’s waaay harder than DOS.

This guide assumes that you have a Linux-based computer available and are ready to begin the installation process immediately. If this is not the case, you should set up a Linux-based environment to use. It doesn’t really matter which distro you are using, but for the sake of simplicity, we are going to use Ubuntu in this demonstration since Ubuntu has a large following and the needed software is already in the repositories. If your distro does not have a pre-compiled package of GNUMP3d available, you will need to compile it yourself.

via maximumpc

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Linux Hack – How to Turn Linux Box into a Streaming Media Center!

OLPC Hack – How to Run OLPC on any Laptop!

max — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:16:12 +0000

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), can now be run on any computer via a USB flash drive. If you wanted to get your child one of these OLPCs, you no longer have to buy an OLPC. Just get a used laptop for 50 bucks then simply stick one of these Sugar on Stick USB flash devices that will run OLPC operating system.

There are two versions of Sugar on a Stick available at the moment. One is based on Fedora 10, while the other is basedo n Ubuntu 8.10. I tried out the Fedora version, which also makes it easy to create persistant storage space on the flash drive, which means you can save any changes to the USB stick. In other words, while Sugar on a Stick boots like a LiveUSB, since you can save changes you can treat it like a portable operating system. You can carry it with you and plug it into any computer to pull up your operating environment.

via liliputing

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OLPC Hack – How to Run OLPC on any Laptop!

Wii Hack – How to Make Wii Remote work in Ubuntu!

max — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:29:48 +0000

Here’s a cool Wii hack that some of you Ubuntu hackers might want to do, how to make Wiimote work in Ubuntu. As a Ubuntu user myself, this could come handy if you are thinking of making your own Ubuntu/Wiimote multi-touch device.

Open up a terminal (Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal) and enter the following command

sudo aptitude install wminput wmgui lswm

Next, we need to find the bluetooth device address of your Wii remote, this will allow you to connect to your Wii remote faster in future, and will let you know if your system can connect to your Wii remote via bluetooth.

In a terminal type the following command

lswm

And press buttons 1 & 2 on your wiimote to put it in discovery mode.

If you don’t see something that looks like 00:2A:34:95:FE:B0 then keep on running lswm / pressing buttons 1 + 2 on your Wii remote until you do.

Please note down the number that lswm returns (that looks similar to 00:2A:34:95:FE:B0), this is your Wii remote bluetooth address (Keep in mind that the number given here is an example).

Check to see if all the capabilities of your Wii Remote (and extra controllers) work

Start up wmgui (Applications –> Accessories –> Wmgui).

wmgui is an easy application that’s good to use for simple diagnostics on your wiimote, nunchuk and classic controller.

Full instructions here

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Wii Hack – How to Make Wii Remote work in Ubuntu!

Ubuntu Hack – How To VPN from Ubuntu 8.10!

max — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:43:27 +0000

Here’s a little Ubuntu hack that might help you VPN on a Ubuntu 8.10:

I started off by clicking on the network icon on the top-right of the menu bar and then Configure VPN (under VPN Connections). The VPN tab had the Add button disabled so I went to the command prompt (Application, Accessories, Terminal) and typed the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install network-manager-pptp

I then entered my password (for the sudo), after which it downloads and installs PPTP support. To make sure Add button under VPN is now enabled, I also type the command:
sudo NetworkManager restart

Now, I simply click the network icon (from the top-right of the menu bar), click Configure VPN (under VPN Connections), I click the Add button, type in the IP address of the VPN server for the Gateway, my ActiveDirectory (from the Windows domain) username and password, followed by the domain name. I click the Advanced button and check the “Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE)” checkbox and click Ok on both dialog boxes.

To connect to the VPN, I click the network icon and under VPN Connections, I select the VPN connection that I just created.

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Ubuntu Hack – How To VPN from Ubuntu 8.10!

Blog DIY – How to Make a Wordpress Blog in 2 Hours!

max — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:57:42 +0000

Well, I started writing a DIY on how to make a Wordpress Blog over at my Ad Optimization blog and it got rather long. But I do tell you how to make a Wordpress blog with all the bells and whistles in just 2 hours and also what “skills” you’d need to do it that fast.

If you are thinking about designing blogs for a living, this will definitely of great help in getting things done faster.

Here’s an excerpt:

1. I go to GoDaddy.com and register domain. As soon as I register, I point the DNS to one of my dedicated servers. As long as you set the IP within 5 minute time frame, your domain will be live in less than 5 minutes. I find that GoDaddy is the best domain company out there today and part of the reason I can do this fast is that their systems run fast too. (Don’t use Network Solutions btw, they are one of the worst I’ve used)

Time to do this for me: 10 minutes

2. I SSH2 into my dedicated server, download the latest Wordpress software, load all the plugins, activate the blog, do various setup for the blog.

Time to do this for me: 15 minutes

3. I load one of my blog themes and customize the CSS layout and colors.

Time to do this for me: 15 minutes

4. Design a logo, favicons on Photoshop, load it onto the blog as quickly as I can.

Time to do this for me: 30 minutes

5. Do 5 blog posts.

Time to do this for me: 30 minutes

Well, that’s total of 1 hour and 40 minutes to setup a brand new blog with a brand new design.

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Blog DIY – How to Make a Wordpress Blog in 2 Hours!

Ubuntu Linux Hack – How to Install Fresh Copy of Ubuntu without Losing your Current Program Settings!

max — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:42:32 +0000

If you are a hard-core Ubuntu/Linux supporter like me, you will need to learn how to save your programs when you install a fresh copy of Ubuntu.

Here’s how to do it:

Configuration

Keeping your configuration intact is pretty straight forward and obvious. Just backup your /home folder onto an external drive or whatever. Make sure you also grab the hidden files, don’t do my mistake!
Applications

Now for the current applications. Basically we just need to make a full list of the installed apps.
sudo dpkg –get-selections > /home/user/package.selections

Of course don’t forget to backup package.selections on the external hard-drive. Also you should backup your /etc/apt/sources.list file since you probably have some extra sources listed over there. Now you can go about your business and do a fresh install.
Restore

Once your done with the fresh install, copy the file package.selections into your home. Then copy your sources.list file into /etc/apt/ and update it to match your current distro (e.g Gutsy –> Intrepid) you can use CTRL + H in gedit for that. Then do a “sudo apt-get update” ,and finally invoke:
sudo dpkg –set-selections /home/package.selections && apt-get dselect-upgrade

apt-get will now start downloading all your apps, this will take some time depending on the number of apps you have installed.

Once that’s done, just copy your backup-ed /home over the current /home (again don’t forget hidden folders).

Log out and log back in to your shiny new fresh install!

source

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Ubuntu Linux Hack – How to Install Fresh Copy of Ubuntu without Losing your Current Program Settings!

Download New Ubuntu 8.10!

max — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:33:37 +0000

As a person who dislikes Apple and Microsoft’s deceptive advertising practices, I am glad that the new version of Ubuntu 8.10 is now available for download. Although I have too many apps working on my Windows PC, I will be trying out Ubuntu 8.10 on my spare laptops and see how well it performs. Maybe I might even swap out my main PC too soon.

Productivity tools: Ubuntu supports all of your favourite web-based mail programs like Yahoo(TM) or Gmail (TM). But for the office, Evolution provides all the calendering, contacts and full function office email you need. Pidgin IM also puts you in instant touch with colleagues and integrates with your personal IM services simply and easily.

Browsing: Includes Mozilla’s Firefox 3 as the default browser. Faster, safer and themed browsing for users.

Photos: Upload from your camera or phone to F-Spot and manage, tag, share and sort your photos and upload easily to you favourite social networking sites.

Music and video: Plug in your PSP, iPod, MP3 player; share playlists with your friends; buy in the creative commons online music stores, stream more live radio and content from the BBC and plug in more devices with UPnP.

Office applications: Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations can all be delivered through Open Office. And, they completely integrate with the proprietary office applications out there. The big difference is that they are free.

Accessibility: At the core of the Ubuntu philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone and access should be free and complete whatever your economic or physical circumstances. Ubuntu is one of the most accessible desktop operating systems around.

Download Ubuntu HERE

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Download New Ubuntu 8.10!

Interview with Inventor of Linux, Linus Torvalds!

max — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:17:45 +0000

I’ve read books of 2 of the most unique creators of operating systems, that is Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft Windows.

Of course, I did get the feeling that Bill Gates was a money-hungry, arrogant, geek-vampire from his book while I got the feeling that Linus Torvalds had bigger things in mind like creating open-source operating system platform and spread of free knowledge. I think when I was growing up, Linus Torvalds was one of my heroes while Bill Gates too, but Bill kept making bad operating systems for money.

If it wasn’t for Linus, I don’t think we would have Firefox, Google Chrome, and pretty much open source software in general. (or at least they won’t be as popular) This is that one guy who made the best open-source operating system and boosted the open-source community by gazillion miles.

Well, to cap it off, here’s an interview with Linux Torvalds on his thoughts with Linux as of lately:

I’ve used different distributions over the years. Right now I happen to use Fedora 9 on most of the computers I have, which really boils down to the fact that Fedora had fairly good support for PowerPC back when I used that, so I grew used to it. But I actually don’t care too much about the distribution, as long as it makes it easy to install and keep reasonably up-to-date. I care about the kernel and a few programs, and the set of programs I really care about is actually fairly small.

And when it comes to distributions, ease of installation has actually been one of my main issues – I’m a technical person, but I have a very specific area of interest, and I don’t want to fight the rest. So the only distributions I have actively avoided are the ones that are known to be “overly technical” – like the ones that encourage you to compile your own programs etc.

Yeah, I can do it, but it kind of defeats the whole point of a distribution for me. So I like the ones that have a name of being easy to use. I’ve never used plain Debian, for example, but I like Ubuntu. And before Debian people attack me – yeah, I know, I know, it’s supposedly much simpler and easier to install these days. But it certainly didn’t use to be, so I never had any reason to go for it.

via oreilly

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Interview with Inventor of Linux, Linus Torvalds!

Debian Hack – How to Setup your Mirror!

max — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:39:15 +0000

This might not be for all of you but for those Linuxers out there, here’s an example of how to setup your mirror:

(Mirror is a way of replicating one server to another btw if you didn’t know.)

To download the mirrors I use this script:

To setup the permissions I use this script:

And then to pull it all together I have thefollowing directory structure (mirrors left out as it’s a ling list of files)
/home/debian-mirror/
|-- debian
|-- debian-backports
|-- debian-multimedia
|-- debian-security
|-- debian-volatile
|-- scripts
|   |-- permissions.sh
|   `-- sync_mirror.sh
`-- scripts.d
    |-- mirror_backports -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_debian -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_multimedia -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_security -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- mirror_volatile -> ../scripts/sync_mirror.sh
    |-- permissions_backports -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_debian -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_multimedia -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    |-- permissions_security -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
    `-- permissions_volatile -> ../scripts/permissions.sh
And then I just setup a cronjob:
0 0     * * 0   root    /bin/run-parts --verbose /home/debian-mirror/scripts.d | /usr/bin/mailx -s "`uname -n` - Debian mirror sync completed" root
This was to disable the mirroring of one of the repositories I just need to remove the symlink from the scripts.d folder

via nighthawk

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Debian Hack – How to Setup your Mirror!

Ubuntu Hack – How to Make Ubuntu run Super Fast!

max — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:25:18 +0000

For those of us who are anti-Windows and anti-Mac, we will benefit from learning how to make Ubuntu run super fast.

Here’s some great tips on minimizing processes to make your Ubuntu run faster than ever:

1. Remove Network Manager if you do not need it “sudo apt-get remove network-manager”. If possible give yourself a static IP in /etc/network/interfaces like so:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.100
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.1.1

Having a static IP helps with boot time as your machine doesn’t have to communicate with the router/dhcp server as much to obtain an address.

2. Also remove firestarter or whatever graphical firewall frontend you’re using. Learn to control iptables at boot up and shutdown. It’ll be much snappier.

3. Install bum, “sudo apt-get install bum” and run it with root access. Shut off all unnecessary services. If you’re not sure about a service research it before shutting it off. Also, install sysv-rc-conf. Run the application as root. This will allow you to control, in an easy way, what services start at which run level. It’s like bum, but more detailed. Be very careful with which services you are removing from which run-level. If you don’t know what you’re doing here, research it or don’t touch it. After you do this you may want to reboot to make sure you didn’t break anything.

4. Turn off usplash in grub. (Mind you, you’re bootup won’t be as pretty as the splash will go away).

vim /boot/grub/menu.lst

on the kernel line delete the words “splash” and “quiet”

Reboot to see the changes.

5. If you have a dual core processor, you can decrease your boot time with concurrency.

sudo vim /etc/init.d/rc

and find the line CONCURRENCY=none and change it to: CONCURRENCY=shell

Reboot to see the changes. (tired of rebooting yet?)

6. Remove some TTYs

I could easily do this by editing /etc/inittab and then commenting the extra TTYs there. With the new upstart mechanism in place, things are a little different.

You have to edit /etc/default/console-setup file. This file defines how many ttys should you get.

Change ACTIVE_CONSOLES=”/dev/tty[1-6]” to the number of consoles you want. Lets say, 3 ttys, then change it to “/dev/tty[1-3]“.

And then goto /etc/event.d/ and change the ttyx files that you DONOT want. Edit them and comment lines starting with “start on runlevel”. So, in this case, you’ll comment the start line in tty4..tty6 files.

Rebooting shoud minimize the number of consoles for you. Worked for me!! Good luck, NOTE: Even though you’ve reduced the tty number, X is still on Alt-F7. Again, go ahead and reboot to make sure you didn’t break anything.

more via tuxtraining

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Ubuntu Hack – How to Make Ubuntu run Super Fast!

Linux Server Hack – How to Limit Bandwidth with Linux, TC, and iproute2!

max — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:40:28 +0000

Remember I did a quick post on how to write a load-balancing script (or bandwidth throttling)?

Well, today I found another cool script for limiting bandwidth. I believe this one if more complicated but if you need it, it might be greatly helpful.

Here’s the code via Adamsinfo.com:

# Set some variables #!/bin/bash EXT_IFACE=”eth0″ INT_IFACE=”eth1″ TC=”tc” UNITS=”kbit” LINE=”10000″ #maximum ext link speed LIMIT=”5000″ #maximum that we’ll allow

# Set some variables for individual “classes” that we’ll use to shape internal upload speed, i.e. shaping eth0
CLS1_RATE=”200″ # High Priority traffic class has 200kbit
CLS2_RATE=”300″ # Medium Priority class has 300kbit
CLS3_RATE=”4500″ # Bulk class has 4500kbit
# (We’ll set which ones can borrow from which later)

# Set some variables for individual “classes” that we’ll use to shape internal download speed, i.e. shaping eth1
INT_CLS1_RATE=”1000″ #Priority
INT_CLS2_RATE=”4000″ #Bulk

# Delete current qdiscs. i.e. clean up
${TC} qdisc del dev ${INT_IFACE} root
${TC} qdisc del dev ${EXT_IFACE} root

# Attach root qdiscs. We are using HTB here, and attaching this qdisc to both interfaces. We’ll label it “1:0″
${TC} qdisc add dev ${INT_IFACE} root handle 1:0 htb
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IFACE} root handle 1:0 htb

# Create root classes, with the maximum limits defined
# One for eth1
${TC} class add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:0 classid 1:1 htb rate ${LIMIT}${UNITS} ceil ${LIMIT}${UNITS}
# One for eth0
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:0 classid 1:1 htb rate ${LIMIT}${UNITS} ceil ${LIMIT}${UNITS}

# Create child classes
# These are for our internal interface eth1
# Create a class labelled “1:2″ and give it the limit defined above
${TC} class add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:1 classid 1:2 htb rate ${INT_CLS1_RATE}${UNITS} ceil ${LIMIT}${UNITS}
# Create a class labelled “1:3″ and give it the limit defined above
${TC} class add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:1 classid 1:3 htb rate ${INT_CLS2_RATE}${UNITS} ceil ${INT_CLS2_RATE}${UNITS}

# EXT_IF (upload) now. We also set which classes can borrow and lend.
# This class is guaranteed 200kbit and can burst up to 5000kbit if available
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:1 classid 1:2 htb rate ${CLS1_RATE}${UNITS} ceil ${LIMIT}${UNITS}
# This class is guaranteed 300kbit and can burst up to 5000kbit-200kbit=4800kbit if available
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:1 classid 1:3 htb rate ${CLS2_RATE}${UNITS} ceil `echo ${LIMIT}-${CLS1_RATE}|bc`${UNITS}
# This class can is guaranteed 4500kbit and can’t burst past it (5000kbit-200kbit-300kbit=4500kbit).
# I.e. even if our bulk traffic goes crazy, the two classes above are still guaranteed availability.
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:1 classid 1:4 htb rate ${CLS3_RATE}${UNITS} ceil `echo ${LIMIT}-${CLS1_RATE}-${CLS2_RATE}|bc`${UNITS}

# Add pfifo. Read more about pfifo elsewhere, it’s outside the scope of this howto.
${TC} qdisc add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:2 handle 12: pfifo limit 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:3 handle 13: pfifo limit 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:2 handle 12: pfifo limit 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:3 handle 13: pfifo limit 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:4 handle 14: pfifo limit 10

### Done adding all the classes, now set up some rules! ###
# INT_IFACE
# Note the ‘dst’ direction. Traffic that goes OUT of our internal interface and to our servers is out server’s download speed, so SOME_IMPORTANT_IP is allocated to 1:2 class for download.
${TC} filter add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip dst SOME_IMPORTANT_IP/32 flowid 1:2
${TC} filter add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip dst SOME_OTHER_IMPORTANT_IP/32 flowid 1:2
#All other servers download speed goes to 1:3 – not as important as the above two
${TC} filter add dev ${INT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip dst 0.0.0.0/0 flowid 1:3

# EXT_IFACE
# Prioritize DNS requests
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip src IMPORTANT_IP/32 match ip sport 53 0xffff flowid 1:2
# SSH is important
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip src IMPORTANT_IP/32 match ip sport 22 0xffff flowid 1:2
# Our exim SMTP server is important too
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip src 217.10.156.197/32 match ip sport 25 0xffff flowid 1:3
# The bulk
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT_IFACE} parent 1:0 protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip src 0.0.0.0/0 flowid 1:4

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Linux Server Hack – How to Limit Bandwidth with Linux, TC, and iproute2!

Linus Torvalds – Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free

max — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:05:21 +0000

I remember first hearing about Linus Travolds back in the early 90s and I thought Linux was going to be a hit in year 2000.

Well, it turns out I was right, just about 10 years early. You have to admit, Linux is really taking over the world right now with web servers (including this one) and Eee PCs and other laptops that come loaded with Linux.

Anyways, I don’t want to bore my readers, here’s the 15 Great Quotes from the Linus Travolds and Stallman:

1. “To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software.”
-Richard M. Stallman

2. “Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free.”
-Linus Torvalds

3. “Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. ‘Don’t bother us with politics’, respond those who don’t want to learn.”
-Richard M. Stallman

4. “Software patents are a huge potential threat to the ability of people to work together on open source. Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat.”
-Linus Torvalds

5. “If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”
-Richard M. Stallman

6. “One of the questions I’ve always hated answering is how do people make money in open source. And I think that Caldera and Red Hat — and there are a number of other Linux companies going public — basically show that yes, you can actually make money in the open-source area.”
-Linus Torvalds

7. “Control over the use of one’s ideas really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.”
-Richard M. Stallman

8. “It just makes it even harder for people to even approach the (open source) side, when they then end up having to worry about … public humiliation.”
-Linus Torvalds

9. “I founded the free software movement, a movement for freedom to cooperate. Open source was a reaction against our idealism. We are still here and the open-source people have not wiped us out.”
-Richard M. Stallman

10. “When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.”
-Linus Torvalds

11. “If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it.”
-Richard M. Stallman

12. “Anybody who tells me I can’t use a program because it’s not open source, go suck on rms. I’m not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that’s _my_ choice, dammit.”
-Linus Torvalds

13. “’Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech,’ not as in ‘free beer’.”
-Richard M. Stallman

14. “I’m doing a free operating system just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu for 386 (486) AT clones.”
-Linus Torvalds

15. “Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.”
-Richard M. Stallman

via junauza

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Linus Torvalds – Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free

Wine Version 1.1.5 Now Available for Download!

max — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:58:01 +0000

Wine, a Linux application that lets you run Windows programs, has now released version 1.1.5: (Go knock yourself out now, drink too much wine!)

The Wine development release 1.1.5 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Substantial JavaScript implementation.
  - Partial support for layered windows.
  - Support for Unicode file export in Regedit.
  - Proper exception handling in widl-generated code.
  - Asynchronous requests and cookies support in WinHTTP.
  - Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

  http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.1.5.tar.bz2
  http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.1.5.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

  http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

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Wine Version 1.1.5 Now Available for Download!

Eee PC Hack – How to install Ubuntu Eee for ASUS Eee PCs!

max — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:57:21 +0000

In case you have bought an ASUS Eee PC with Windows, there’s a special version of Ubuntu, customized just for the Eee PC models.

This allows you to install the Ubuntu on Eee PCs without too much headache as it has already been configured for the factory hardware.

Ubuntu Eee is not only Ubuntu optimized for the Asus Eee PC. It’s an operating system, using the Netbook Remix interface, which favors the best software available instead of open source alternatives (ie. Skype instead of Ekiga). Sounds great! How can I help out? Please consider contributing with knowledge or money. And while you’re at it, please become a fan on Facebook and add yourself to the map of users

Here’s some resources for Ubuntu Eee for all you Eee PC lovers:

Ubuntu Eee Official Site

How install Ubuntu Eee

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Eee PC Hack – How to install Ubuntu Eee for ASUS Eee PCs!

DIY – How to Make your own Lunchbox Linux Firewall!

max — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:19:57 +0000

As an avid fan of Linux operating systems ever since I took Minix class, which Linux was born from, I love to hear about cool little DIYs on making a Linux firewall out of a lunch box.

The greatest thing about Linux operating systems in comparison to Windows or any other operating systems is that it can be easily custom tailored to do one thing whether that’s a web server, firewall, file server, or any type of server that requires stability at “no cost”.

This simple DIY shows us the things that are possible with open source and free software.

Heck, you could probably make a lot of money putting these Lunchbox Linux firewall boxes to production as they are as good as an over-priced Cisco router.

It’s a plastic Thermos brand Hot Wheels lunchbox circa 2007. Black plastic, white handle, but no Thermos inside. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would become a computer case, so I bought it, brought it home, and started digging in the parts box. Grabbed one of my Via C3 embedded 3.5″ boards, a cheap 4GB compact flash card, a small 5V, 8A power supply, and my exacto knife and files.

via technabob

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DIY – How to Make your own Lunchbox Linux Firewall!

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