Archive for the 'distros' Category

Google Chromium OS!

Date: November 20, 2009. Categories: distros, google and news. 1 Comment

Today Google has announced operating system Google Chromium OS. It still not ready to end users as is under deep development but now everyone can see its concepts, benefits and nature. Astonishing news as for me. There were a lot of rumors about Google OS (gos) before it was presented to the public in real. Now it’s clear that the most promising OS these days is based on Linux kernel. Let’s see what Google just have presented in details:

  1. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

  2. Because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn’t trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code.

  3. We are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds.

  4. Chromium OS User Interface Concepts (video)

    5. Chromium OS screenshot

  5. Design Documents: Software Architecture, Security Overview

VMware Virtual Machine with Chromium OS can be found here (torrent).

GIMP to be removed from Ubuntu?

Date: November 19, 2009. Categories: applications, distros, linux and ubuntu. 9 Comments

This could be an outstanding news by its significance. The next version of Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx or Ubuntu 10.04) won’t include GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) by default due to its user interface that is too complex… What a #@^*?

Actually complex UI is not the only decision why GIMP should be vanished from Ubuntu so here is the full list:

  • the general user doesn’t use it
  • its user-interface is too complex
  • it’s an application for professionals
  • desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
  • it’s a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn’t included by default in Windows…
  • it takes up room on the disc

(taken from here)

Still sounds like fresh nonsense? What about F-Spot as a replacement? Well, an average user most probably claim that above mentioned reasons are true. Maybe that’s why GIMP already dropped from latest Fedora 12. But what should do people who use GIMP every day and loves Ubuntu???

Just execute ‘sudo aptitude install gimp‘ :)

Distribution of the week: BackTrack — Network Security Suite

Date: March 5, 2009. Categories: distros, links and linux. 9 Comments

BackTrack is Live distribution for penetration and security tests. This is how its developers describe it. But there are plenty of tools, utilities, programs behind this brief description. Let’s dig into.

BackTrack logo

This distribution started from the merge of two ones: WHAX (or Whoppix) and Auditor Security Collection (the swiss army knife for security assessments). The latest stable version (BackTrack 3) contains more than 300 tools (including such monsters as wireshark, nmap, hping and others) which will be appreciated by every security professional. All tools are categorized into:

1. Information gathering
2. Network Mapping
3. Vulnerability Identification
4. Penetration
5. Privilage Escalation
6. Maintaining Access
7. Covering Tracks
8. Radio Network Analysis (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth)
9. VoIP and Telephony Analysis
10. Digital Forensics
11. Reverse Engineering

The full list of tools with descriptions you can find at official BackTrack wiki, screenshots and documentation are here.

Download Now: CD Image, USB Image. More?

Speedlinks – 29 December, 2008

Date: December 29, 2008. Categories: applications, distros, links and news. 7 Comments

1. Linux kernel 2.6.28 was officially released at 28 Dec, 2008: ext4, graphics execution manager (GEM), TAINTed_CRAP. See First Look by arstechnica.com.

P.S. Linus “almost Santa” Torvalds’ announcement is definitely worth reading:

Listen to the cheerful grinding of your harddisk as you reboot into an all-new kernel – and I’m sure that if your computer could smile, it would have a big silly grin on its non-existent face. So as you sit there in your basement, give your computer the holiday cheer too.

2. Top 10 Coolest Open Source Applications in 2008. Well, good reading in New Year Eve.

3. Bootable FSF membership cards: USB flash drive comes with pre-installed gNewSense 2.1.

4. Sabayon Linux 4.0 is realeased (smart Gentoo based distro): 25% boot speed gain, 8500 applications, ext4, KDE 4.1.3, Gnome 2.24.2, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Firefox 3.0 and more…

5. Pidgin 2.5.3 is out. Best GTK based instant messenger is ready for downloading. Changelog.

Open .docx documents in Linux (OpenOffice)

Date: December 15, 2008. Categories: applications, centos, debian, distros, docs, fedora, howtos, links, suse, tips and ubuntu. 4 Comments

Well, as for now it is not a problem anymore to open Microsoft Office 2007 .docx documents in any Linux distribution coming with OpenOffice suit. It may be Ubuntu (Feisty, Gutsy, Interpid whatever), almost any version of Fedora/RedHat/Centos, *SUSE, Mandriva and of course Debian (as per my personal opinion it’s the best one).

What is .docx actually? It’s Microsoft’s file format representing word processor documents and named OpenXML (as an attempt to create open and free international standard). Today .docx is default format for Microsoft’s word processor Word.

There are myriads of online converters between OpenXML and OpenOffice formats including .docx, .xlsx, .odt and many etc but sometimes it’s much more better to just open received .docx file in Linux offline (if there is temporarily no Internet connection or for security/private reasons etc).

So, just download the following package to certain directory like /usr/src, here are the commands to do it:

1. cd /usr/src
2. sudo wget http://blog.mypapit.net/imej/odf_filter.tar.bz2

The next step is to unpack the contents of the archive (.tar.bz2 is definitely well compressed file) and copy 3 files to OpenOffice’s system directories:

3. sudo tar -xvjf odf_filter.tar.bz2
4. sudo cp OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/
5. sudo cp MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/
6. sudo cp MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

As you can see from picture below now it’s possible to natively open .docx files in openoffice under Linux. Of course such “native” support may imply some artefacts in opened files due to file formats incompatibility so it’s also a good option to ask your friends to convert .docs into .pdf before sending you :)

openoffice openxml .docx

P.S. Thanks to guys from mypapit.

P.S. Here are several online converters .doc(x) <-> .odf <-> .pdf:

1. ZAMZAR (possibly the best converter), 2. http://docx-converter.com/.

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 My name is Artem Nosulchik (artiomix AT gmail DOT com) and I'm Linux/Unix, Cisco systems engineer. The main idea of Linux Screw is to share relevant knowledge, skills and observations over The Web. Here you can find a lot of information related to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, IOS as well as a other Open Source around staff. Read more ››