Kali Linux Kali Linux is the successor of Backtrack. It follows Backtrack 5rc3 as the next version. Backtrack was based on Ubuntu, but Kali linux is based on Debian. And further more the default desktop that is gnome has been hacked and modified to a large extent. It is gnome 3.4 but is made to… Read More »
Many applications do not directly support the use of socks proxy. It is not possible to configure them in anyway to use a proxy server. Torsocks enables such applications to use the Tor Socks proxy. It automatically routes all network requests made by a certain application through the Tor proxy. The manual page defines Torsocks… Read More »
Encfs – Encrypted file system We often need to put some confidential data on the hard drive, in which case it becomes essential to have some kind of security mechanism to keep it hidden from unauthorised access of any kind. It could contain credit card numbers, bank statements and list of passwords for various online… Read More »
Password Protected Zip Files Often times we need to create secure zip files that cannot be opened by anyone other than the intended recipient. The simplest way to do this is by creating an encrypted zip file. On Linux systems the popular archive format “tar” does not support encryption natively. But “zip” format does support… Read More »
Crond is the cron daemon that is responsible for running the cron tasks of all users on a linux system. Most hosting providers provide it on the servers they sell. Cpanel is a popular server management application that can manage various such daemons and services and restart them if they shut down for some reason…. Read More »
The following error came up when I tried to run Adobe Acrobat Reader on ubuntu 12.10 error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory To fix this, simple install the package ia32-libs-gtk $ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk Now run the application again and the error should go… Read More »
Learn to use the aptitude, dpkg and apt-get commands to install,update and remove packages from the command line on ubuntu and debian based systems.
Unique identifier for each storage device UUID is the “universally unique identifier” that is assigned to devices on a linux system for the purpose of identification. For example if your hard disk has 3 partitions then each partition is a device and has a uuid. Similarly cd/dvd, usb drives etc all are assigned a uuid…. Read More »
Here is a quick trick that can speed up the main/navigation menus and menus in file manager like pcmanfm inside the lxde desktop. This trick is a setting for the gtk library. 1. Open the file named .gtkrc-2.0 in the home directory. If the file does not exist, then create one. 2. Put in the… Read More »
The lxde desktop is a lightweight desktop for linux systems. Similar to xfce but requires lesser resources than the heavier gnome and kde desktops. Many linux distros have a lxde spin as well for those who prefer the lxde desktops. For example Lubuntu is the lxde variant of ubuntu. Fedora too has a lxde version…. Read More »
Backtrack 5 rc3 is at the present the latest release of backtrack linux and is based on ubuntu. Virtualbox supports such oses very well and installation of guest additions is also very swift and smooth. So now we are going to install the backtrack distro inside Virtualbox. Get the latest virtualbox for your system (windows,… Read More »
Opensuse 12.2 by default has the virtualbox guest additions inbuilt. But if you want to reinstall then follow the steps. First install the C compiler and make utilities required to compile the guest additions. sudo zypper in gcc make Now install the kernel development packages for the current distro version Find the kernel type ~>… Read More »
LXDE Desktop Lxde (Lightweight X11 desktop environment) is a linux desktop system that is a lightweight alternative to gnome and kde desktops. I prefer it over gnome because of its simplicity and ease of use. Gnome as of version 3 has a strange user interface that is not liked by all. So if you too… Read More »
LXDE Desktop The LXDE desktop system is a lightweight desktop alternative to the Gnome and KDE desktop systems. It is an excellent choice if you are running linux on low resource hardware like an old pc or netbook. It consumes lesser RAM and CPU compared to Gnome and KDE making it ideal for systems which… Read More »
Wget is a commandline utility to download files over the http protocols. To download a file for example the syntax would be $ wget http://www.somesite.com/file.zip The above command will start downloading the file and save it in the home directory of the user. However if the download breaks, due to poor internet for example then… Read More »
Virtualbox guest additions allow better integration between the host and guest operating systems like seamless copy/paste, flexible screen resolution of the guest os etc. After installing an OS inside VirtualBox you should install the Guest Additions right away to get the best features and functionality out of it. It installs driver programs that enables native… Read More »
Download managers Download managers are gui applications that allow users to manage multiple downloads in a single place, and do things like schedule, pause, resume, control download speed etc. And also download a file in multiple parts to maximise the download speed. On linux the traditional method to download files is through the use of… Read More »
If there is a lot of content on the usb flash drive and you want to erase all of it quickly then a simple way to do it is by formatting it. There are many gui tools available on linux to view and format partitions on storage devices like ssds and flash drives. These include… Read More »
Google webfonts is an excellent resource of free fonts that is used by web developers to get better fonts for their websites. Some popular fonts include droid sans, pt sans, noto sans and open sans. They are not only used on webpages but also on desktops. I wrote a post about getting using these google… Read More »
Flareget – The flashget for linux Flareget is a featureful file download manager for linux. The conventional file download managers available for ubuntu/linux are kget, wget, curl etc. But each of them has some sort of limitation or lacks certain features not making them easy for common users. This is where flareget comes in. It… Read More »