desktop Archives - Page 2 of 16 - Yet Another Linux Blog

Would You Like a Native Client for Google Drive?

If you’re like me, you think that the more native applications that are available to Linux users, the better. In the case of Google Drive, there isn’t a native synchronization enabled client for Linux. This is especially sad if you think about how Google got to where it is today…building its entire search infrastructure on the backs of customized Debian servers. Not to mention that Android…which is powered by Linux…has a native client available in the Google Play store.

Why would we want a native client for Google Drive when we can just use unofficial software to do it or mount it like a command line commando would? The answer is simple…uniformity and solidarity. The experience that is already present for Windows and Mac users should be present in Linux as well…instead, Linux continues to be the ‘red headed stepchild’ of the desktop experience.

There are some people who feel this same way and they have started an online petition asking Google to release a native Drive client for Linux. You can sign the petition here if you’d like to. As of the writing of this post, there were 15,648 signatures…let’s see if we can push above 20k shall we? I think online petitions are sometimes silly but Google might not. Hopefully, we’ll get that native client and uniform experience for Linux desktops everywhere.

Sony Violates the LGPL3 and Steals KDE Icon

Looks like Sony has gone from prosecuting pirates to becoming one. Only days after the PS4 announcement too.

Over at the KDE Blog, Jonathan Riddell explains that Sony is using a KDE icon in violation of the LGPL3 license under which it is released:

“Nowhere on their website terms of use does it list the LGPL 3 licence it may be copied under (It does say “Any unauthorised use or copying of site content, or use of site content which breaches these Terms (or their spirit) may violate trade mark, copyright and other proprietary rights, and have civil and criminal consequences” although it also says “You must seek and obtain the written consent the operator of this site before creating any link to this site” so I don’t give that page any legal credit.)”

The page in question is a ‘Choose your Vaio‘ webpage on the Sony UK site.

What does one do in cases like this? It seems that legal action would be a waste of time and money…hopefully, Sony takes note of this and corrects the issue. They’ve been heavily invested in Linux and Open Source for many years now with their platforms and I’d like to think they’d have learned from their rootkit debacle that you should act quickly to fix things before they blow up on the internet.

Comic Books, Linux and KDE 4

Sometimes I read comic books. I would hope that some of you do as well. I collected the paper version of comic books when I was a kid (Mostly Superman and Spiderman) and I’ve graduated up to the digital version now. Comic books in digital format usually use the .cbz or .cbr file extension. To read these in Windows or on my Linux desktop (I was running XFCE for the year or so) I had to use a specialized application…a comic reader…to do this.

The program I used in Linux was called Comix and it did a great job when I used XFCE. I know you can also use Evince and I’m sure it does every bit a good job as Comix does. Both are GTK applications though. Since I now use KDE 4 on my primary workstation, I wanted to see if there was a Qt application that I could use and I was very disappointed when I didn’t find any. So, there I was with comics in my Home Directory collecting dust with nothing preferable (read: Qt based) to open them up to read them. I double clicked on one of them in frustration….and I was surprised when it opened right up.

Okular, the do-it-all reader for KDE4 opens up every comic book I throw at it. I was saved…rather, my comic collection was saved. Very handy that the KDE4 devs put in such a great tool to open so many formats. So if you’re looking for something that can handle your comic collection, look no further than Okular which comes preinstalled with most KDE4 based distributions.

Security 101 – Passwords for the Web

In the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize 2 things. First, the collegiate football (American) offseason is somewhat boring…bring on the SEASON! Second, people’s Gmail accounts are getting hacked….a lot. I’ve seen 2 of my friends have their accounts hacked in the past month and a half.

While there is nothing I can do about the first one, there is something I can do about the second.

I figured it might be a good idea to share how I generate passwords for web resources like Gmail and any other web based service. I can do this in ANY browser…Opera, Chromium, and Firefox…and any operating system; because I use a tool called LastPass.

LastPass is a password vault for your browser. It can remember any password you type on the web and it can also fill out forms for you (if you’d like). I’ve been using it for about years now but have only recently taken advantage of their handy tools to generate passwords. I’m going to walk you through setting it up in Firefox and generating passwords. Hopefully, this will inspire you to change your password to something a little more complex to thwart hackers.

First of course, install the add-on/extension. This process will differ depending on your browser. Once LastPass is installed, make sure you sign up for an account or sign in to your existing one. Remember, LastPass allows you to use a master password to keep a lock on your entire array of of websites you visit. It takes security a step further by way of password generation.

Password Generation

You already have passwords for email, Facebook, Twitter, and other places on the web. Is your password complex enough to thwart hackers attempts to crack it? Most likely the answer is no…and if that’s the case, it would be a great idea to change your passwords to randomly generated ones and use last pass to remember it. Imagine your password being the following:

hank65yankees

With LastPass it can become

S&Wllj98oCDFZ*

Which one seems harder for hackers to figure out to you? So let’s get started. During the installation for LastPass it should have told you how to access the menu…either through a standard menu or perhaps a button. Once you access the LastPass menu, look for ‘tools’ and then choose ‘Generate Secure Password’.

This should bring up the LastPass password generation tool. It will look something like this:

As you can see, the generator is ready to randomly generate more passwords for you by clicking the ‘generate’ button and you can copy it to your clipboard with the ‘copy’ button. However, 8 digit passwords (default setting) may not be good enough for you. In that case, click the ‘Show Advanced Options’ toggle. This will bring up the following options:

As you can see, you can increase the number of digits for password length…I’ve increased mine to 14 characters…and you can increase the Minimum Digit Count. I’ve done so and moved it up to 2 digits. Customize it however you like and once you have it set the way you like it, you can click ‘close’. The options will save for the next time you go to generate a password.

Changing the Password

Now it’s time for us to actually change a password. How do we do this? Well, if you already had a LastPass account, you can visit your password vault and search for the site you would like to change. Once you find it, you can open up the password generator and generate a new password…then edit the site inside your password vault and paste the new password. Your job isn’t over yet though as you need to go to the actual site and change the password there as well.

If you haven’t used LastPass before, just visit the site you would like to change the password at and login. LastPass will detect that you’re logging in and will ask if you want to remember the site you just logged in to. You should select ‘save site’.

After you’ve logged in, go to whatever password change link the site provides and go ahead and change the password using the LastPass password generation tool pictured above. LastPass should detect that you’re changing the password and ask if you want to update the site. Remember, you can always manually edit the password inside the LastPass Vault.

Why Generate Passwords

I’ve shown this process to people I work with in Information Technology and they scoff at this idea of having randomly generated passwords. They often say ‘how will I remember the randomly generated password?’ and that’s the beauty of LastPass. It remembers so you don’t have to. Once I tell them this, they generally move onto the question ‘well, what do I do if LastPass isn’t installed on the computer I’m using?’ and once again, the solution is LastPass. Just head over to www.lastpass.com and login using your account details. You’ll be redirected to your online password vault. You’ll be able to fully manage everything as if you were using the extension in your browser. You’ll also be able to copy and paste passwords by clicking ‘edit’ on the sites and ‘show’ beside the password field. Sure it’s a bit more work…but it’s also quite a bit more secure.

Don’t put your trust in things you think are difficult for hackers to guess…chances are, it isn’t that hard for them to do so…allow LastPass to randomly generate them for you. That way, you’ll never have your email account hacked like my friends did these past few months…unless you really do want to support the sale of pharmaceuticals or would like to enhance certain appendages. I hope this helps you to use secure passwords in the future! If you have questions, please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them! Thanks for reading!

Mozilla Firefox, From Darling to Enemy in One Release

What is wrong with everyone in Linux land bagging on Mozilla Firefox and their 5.0 release?

Complaints pretty much have one thing in common: They claim there isn’t enough ‘new and shiny’ things inside FF5 to warrant a major version. This is illogical thinking because major version means NOTHING when it comes to usability of software. I’ve noticed that I can browse and use FF5 just as easily as I could FF4 and FF3 before it…I still type in URL’s and websites display. My plugins all still work. It starts up a bit faster and websites seem to load just a bit faster…which is good. So why all the whining and complaining?

The silliest thing about this is that the same people complaining about Firefox 5 say that Chrome and IE are going to overtake it and that this is the beginning of the end for Mozilla and Firefox. Poppycock! Chrome and Chromium have been using Agile programming and the SAME EXACT METHODOLOGY BEHIND releases and version numbers that Firefox is doing now. So where was the flack for Google and Chromium when they released often and incremented all the way up to version 10 and then version 12??

It is my opinion that the people shouting from the rooftops that Mozilla and Firefox are a sinking ship doomed to fail while using Chrome/Chromium in the background have no clue what Agile Programming (or in Google’s case, Agile-like programming) is or what it sets out to accomplish…and they’re showing how hypocritical they are. If you’re one of these people, where were you when Chrome and Chromium was ratcheting up their version numbers without noticeable improvements and features?

Sad that Firefox and Mozilla, who championed one of the first fantastic browsers on Linux, has went from Linux Darling to Public Enemy Number One in a single release in some peoples eyes. Hopefully, people will realize how silly it is and stop complaining? Well, one can dream right?

Let’s look at the quality of the software when levelling complaints instead of being upset that the version number doesn’t jive with what we think it should. Thus far, my experience with FF5 has been pretty darn fantastic. Thanks go out to Mozilla…you’ve done a great iteration of software yet again.

Radio Tray – A Radio Player That Fits In System Tray

Radio Tray is a very simple application that plays your favourite radio stations and it does so from the system tray, meaning any station you want to listen to is only two clicks away. Naturally you’ll need to add your favorite streams to this program before it will actually be useful. Most websites offering streaming will give you access to a “.pls” file. Copy the link to this file and you can add it to Radio Tray. It supports most media formats as well as PLS, M3U, ASX, WAX and WVX playlist format. You can even bookmark the stations you really like for easy access, which is pretty nice too. To install Radio Tray in Ubuntu Linux, launch Ubuntu Software Center from Applications menu (at the top) and search for “Radio Tray”. From the results, select “Install” and you are all set to use this amazing piece of software.

Radio Tray can be launched from “Sound & Video” menu under “Applications”. It will appear in the system tray area. This is the beauty of this software that as it runs in system tray so it does not consumes much system resources as it does not require any browser window or any other heavy application to function. Radio Tray will launch in system tray and will not automatically play any station. To play the radio station, click on the Radio Tray (tray) icon and select the station from drop down list (you may require extra plugins for proper functioning of the application e.g gstream libraries).

Perhaps the pre-configured radio stations may not interest you. You can not only add your favourite channels but even Remove or Edit any existing channel. To Add/Remove channel(s) in Radio Tray, Right Click on the tray icon and Select “Configure radios…”. A dialogue box will appear. Here you can Add new channels, Remove or Edit existing channels and Move the Channels UP or Down in the list. Lets, now add a radio station to Radio Tray. Go to: http://www.shoutcast.com/ and search for some radio station (say, rock). From the results, just copy the link of any radio station. Now come back to “Configure Radios” and Click on “Add” Button. In the “Radio name” box enter any friendly name (say Soft Rock) of the radio station while in the “URL” paste the link of the radio station.

Your new radio station is now added into the channel lists of Radio Tray and you can listen to it just by selecting it from the drop down list of Radio Tray.

If your favorite station doesn’t have a standard M3U or PLS playlist posted on their web site, you can always find the stream’s URL by other means. Radio Tray isn’t incredibly feature-filled, but on those occasions you just need a simple unitasker, it’s perfect for getting the job done and staying out of your way. Its a perfect substitute for proprietary radio softwares and not only available in .deb format but also in source format.