PCTips3000 » Linux

Linux System Monitor, Comin’ Up!

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:03:09 +0000

As more and more people start using computers, Linux is slowly gaining market share. I don’t care about the reasons, since I could go on and on and on about them – I simply look at what’s happening and act accordingly. Leaving aside music/video players and other really popular tools, Linux system monitors also are facing an increased demand, and today we’ll take a quick look at Conky.

Why Conky? The name is funny, it’s lightweight, has support for a bunch of popular music players, IMAP/POP3, and can even be extended using Lua support or any of your own pieces of code. Sounds pretty cool, right? Sure, you may say that this is a program for experts, but that is completely wrong, since Conky works great out of the box, although you may want to take a closer look at its documentation to take full advantage of all the goodies coming in the box…

This is the free Linux system monitor I have for you today, and if you want to see more screenshots, just go to this page. That’s all, folks!

System Rescue CD

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:11:39 +0000

What’s strange with the system troubleshooting CDs is the fact that you never have enough of them. How’s that? Think about data recovery, for example – you never know which software tool will be able to revive your defective hard drive, despite the fact you did this a hundred times already, so all that you need to do is try, try, try again. Hopefully, you’ll get lucky sooner or later…

… but since everyone is looking for freebies these days, let’s move on straight to System Rescue CD (SystemRescueCD, if you want). What about it? Oh, well, you can run it from a CD or even some USB stick, as long as your system is capable of booting from such a device (if it’s not really ancient, that shouldn’t be a problem), and if you want to download the latest version, you should go here.

The official mumbo-jumbo looks like this: “SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It comes with a lot of linux software such as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, …) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It requires no installation. It can be used on linux servers, linux desktops or windows boxes. The kernel supports the important file systems (ext2/ext3/ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, btrfs, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), as well as network filesystems (samba and nfs).”

If you’re not scared of Linux, you should grab this at once. After all, you can easily troubleshoot Windows-based systems with it, and there’s plenty of documentation for beginners. Oh, yeah, and I should also remind you that we’re talking about a freebie, don’t you think? That’s all, folks, good luck!

AVG Rescue CD – Keep It Close, Just In Case…

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:36:51 +0000

Problems with viruses? As far as I know and my antivirus claims, my computer is as clean as possible, but since some of my friends had issues with various viruses lately, I think today’s find is just perfect. After all, what could be better than a rescue CD for cleaning your system after you boot a Linux distribution containing an up to date antivirus and a bunch of other tools?

The AVG Rescue CD 9.0 package is freely available to anyone using a computer, and it comes without any OS limitations. All you need is at least an Intel Pentium 300 MHz processor, 512MB of memory, and no free disk space, although it is recommended to have a processor twice as fast as the one I just mentioned.

More than just a rescue CD, you can also create a bootable USB stick to clean your system. Next to the AVG antivirus and its well-known capabilities, this toolset also offers Midnight Commander, Windows Registry Editor, TestDisk, Ping and a bunch of common Linux tools, such as vi, OpenSSH, ntfsprogs and others.

What should you to do get this one? Just go here and pick what you need. No hidden spyware, no ads, no limitations, only a pure free-to-use piece of code that will surely come in handy some day. Hopefully, you’ll have to help a friend, and not help yourself…

Spheres Of Chaos – Forget About Zuma!

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:50:31 +0000

I never managed to understand Zuma players, no matter how hard I tried. I even played that game for an hour or so, but still couldn’t figure out what’s so special about it. Probably that’s exactly what most people like about Zuma – its simplicity, and if this one won’t ever gain a place in my heart, Spheres Of Chaos, despite its obvious age, may just do that…

I usually hate quoting stuff, but this time, I think the official description should say it all, since I don’t know how else to say “A Pyschedelic (woot! this is how they put it on the official page, this is how I put it here…) arcade game,” and the screenshot above should also give you a clue. Basically, it’s like one of those many games that appeared in early 1990s where you were in charge of some kind of spaceship, and your task was to shoot incoming asteroids and/or avoid them. Pretty cool, huh?

To me, for a long time, the arcade genre was almost dead, but seeing games with ancient graphics and sound like Spheres Of Chaos that still manage to look great over a decade after their release makes me wonder if the gaming industry doesn’t need to return to its roots. Anyway, leaving these thoughts aside, I think that Zuma and Solitaire players should try and taste Spheres Of Chaos – this one leaves any thinking and planning aside and turns it all into a battle for survival!

I know, I know, if you go ahead and click for a Spheres Of Chaos download, this may not improve your productivity at all, but weekend is coming, and this freeware game works like a charm even on computers built before Windows 95 came along, not to mention that there are also versions for Linux, PS2 running Linux, or even the obscure Risc OS. Sure, you may face some problems on modern computers (I think movement was a bit strange on mine, for example), but if you really want to enjoy a psychedelic visual feast, hang on in there and destroy asteroids for a few minutes… Good luck!

Best Internet Browser – The Show Goes On!

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:04:50 +0000

If I think well, virtually any forum on the Internet involving discussions about computers and software can’t avoid a topic about the best Internet browser, or at least one starting with a poll asking you about the browser you’re using. Now, this is nothing out of ordinary – there are also a lot of silly topics on every forum involving questions about sex, for example, but at least those can be really fun, while here, there’s only one answer that you should remember well: there’s no such thing as “best Internet browser,” all right?

Some time ago, I made the mistake to overlook the capabilities of a browser who was far from version 1.0, but some of my friends recommended as being one of those very strong newcomers, and I won’t do that mistake again. The newcomer I didn’t even try some time ago was Flock, now one of the browsers I use on a regular basis, and the one I won’t overlook today is Midori.

Simply described as “a lightweight web browser” on its homepage, Midori comes with all the features most Internet users need and – everyone pay attention here, please! – offers fast WebKit-based rendering and pretty smart resource management, making it an ideal choice to those who are tired already of looking for a browser that won’t expand to chew all available memory as soon as two-three tabs have been opened!

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this browser to my mom, as I wouldn’t recommend my father to jump into a Corvette and drive away without attending some special driving courses for powerful rear-drive cars, either. Why am I saying this? Well, Midori for Windows is only labeled 0.1.8 for now, and is still far from perfect, as I was able to notice while playing with it.

Speaking about problems, let me tell you about a strange one – while it obtains 88/100 when running the Acid 3 Test, Midori fails in displaying Wikipedia’s home page properly! Even more, while I have the Adobe Flash Player installed and working properly, Midori won’t display Flash content, either. I am talking about the browser out of the box here, without touching any settings or adding any modules yet, so if you feel like playing with some early code, don’t be afraid and jump right in!

If you like to tune your browser, let me tell you that Midori currently supports user script, user styles, and it also has theme support, next to the things you’d expect from a decent browser anyway, like tabbed browsing and session management.

Obviously, this is a free Internet browser, and while it may be still far from being a very good one, I think Midori is one of those piece of code we should check on a regular basis, since you never know where the best Internet browser could be hiding! Oh, yeah – here’s one more thing you should know – this interesting piece of code is also available for Linux, so if you’re one of those using it, be sure to give it a try, I am sure your PC will love it, especially if it’s low on resources!

Name A Star With Stellarium!

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:27:33 +0000

Back when I was a kid, counting stars was one of the best things to do at night, if we put aside sleeping, of course. When I saw some kid that knew to name more stars than I did, I usually tricked him by coming up with some names of my own. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I was the one getting owned, but even now I like to check the stars in the sky. What I would really like to do is name a star, but since there aren’t any stars without a name that one can spot without some giant telescope from the future… I guess that playing with Stellarium should do just fine!

While Stellarium only reached version 0.10.2 recently, it was over three years ago when I saw it for the first time. I can’t remember the version number that was carried by it back then, but I can surely recall the fact that it was like a breath of fresh air playing with it. Now, Stellarium remains the same free open source planetarium for Windows, Linux, and even Mac OS X, but with a default catalogue of over 600,000 stars, and extra ones with no less than 210 million (!!!).

Once you install it and fire it up, Stellarium feels like home – all you need to do is enter the coordinates of your location (you can also search for the name of your town, of course) and enjoy the view of the sky without going out… and with extra-powerful zoom capabilities!

Additional features of the program include fisheye projection for planetarium domes, and even spheric mirror projection for your own home low-cost dome, with extensive keyboard shortcuts support, telescope control, and a wide range of visualisation options, like eclipse simulation, equatorial and azimuthal grids, skinnable landscapes, and many more.

In the end, all you need is a decent computer, and since Stellarium is completely free to download and use… your only excuse for keeping the distance is that you really hate astronomy, and consider that watching the starry sky is a thing for emo kids and dreamers. Anyway, no matter what you may think, everyone should be a dreamer from time to time… so why not name a star with Stellarium?

How To Delete File Contents In Linux

Csaba Kissi — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:02:39 +0000

I am sure you know that situation when you need to delete file contents in Linux. Just think about it – you have some log files on your Linux workstation or server, and their size just keeps growing and growing… Sometimes, it’s really necessary to delete the content of the file, but keep the file itself. So… how can you do that?

In Linux, deleting file content while keeping the file is quite easy! Just use the following command from command line:

cat /dev/null > YOURFILENAME

I recommend you to backup the file first, because you never know when something bad can happen… Personally, I use this command quite often on my servers, and it works like a charm every time.