desktop Archives - Page 8 of 16 - Yet Another Linux Blog

Are You Secure?

When I was little, I was afraid of heights (to a degree, I still am). Therefore, you hardly ever caught me climbing trees or swinging high…anytime anyone wanted to elevate past my head level in any shape and form I was grounded..literally. The feeling of security given when my feet touched the ground was comforting. I knew from experience that the ground would be there…it wasn’t going to swallow me up whole (didn’t know much about earthquakes at this time). There were no pitfalls that I was aware of.

Fast forward to today.

I still get a sense of security by the ground being under my feet…this time with my operating system. I know that Linux doesn’t have any pitfalls, no security breached backdoors…because I can SEE the code. It’s like I am Indiana Jones being given a map of every single boobie trap before he enters the temple to get the artifact.

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Thoughts on Package Management

The Change in Distro-Land

Distros have changed. In the past, they were made up of a small, tightly knit group collaborators working toward a common goal. With distributions today we now have an informal, large group of collaborators…some of which may not even be aware of the main goal of the distro. That informal collaborator may just want package foo version 2.2 included in his/her distribution so that he/she can use it on their desktop. How does that informal collaborator become empowered? How can the developers reap what that collaborator sows and harness the collective collaboration of thousands of informal contributors? The answer for many software projects is version control. But how can this system benefit package management?

What If?

What if you could combine SVN/CVS/git behavior and packages? What if when you build the package properly, it is checked into the software development tree. You’d be eliminating an entire step in the process (i.e. working more efficiently) and you’d reap all the benefits of version control (diff, merge, shadow, exports, rollbacks, tags, logs) with the actual software packages without losing the benefit of working with source or binaries. Thousands of contributions could be made in the form of ready to install packages that are CERTIFIED (see how this is possible later in this post) to work on the distribution. The contributions would come in on a version control branch designed by the distribution developers…say 1-contribs (much like a contribs rpm server would be)…but unlike most distributions, they would be certified to run on your distro before they even hit the contribs server/branch. Imagine the impact that this would have for bug testing alone.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. It’s Conary and it is getting ready to go to version 2.0. Let’s take a look at some advantages that conary has over traditional package management and how it can empower the end user.

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Alltray in Foresight

I’ve recently packaged up Alltray, a handy tool for keeping items minimized to the gnome task bar, in Foresight Linux. For those of you who new to my blog…I’ve recently switched jobs to from the state of Virginia (project management) to work for rPath, Inc. rPath is responsible for some innovative software development tools centered around the Conary package manager and also creates a minimalistic linux distribution that serves as source for Foresight Linux. I’ve recently become active in helping develop the KDE Version of Foresight Linux.

I’m by no means a programmer. I’ve been hired on as a documentation specialist. Yet, Conary is simplistic enough that I can roll my own packages. I’m quite impressed by it’s simplicity and power. If you’d like to help out or are curious about KDE Foresight or the Conary package manager, visit us on freenode #foresight-kde

For those of you wanting alltray goodness…update via Packagekit by searching for alltray OR:

sudo conary update alltray

Botnets: Storm, Rbot, and Bobax – How to Beat Them

If your Windows based computer is running slow, having random popups, and doing all sorts of weird things…chances are you’re a member of a botnet. Hackers are using your computer to email, spam, and infect other computers and users around the globe. You’re being used by these people to make money on the misfortune and deception of others. There is hope though…you can be rid of this. You can win against them.

Install Linux on your computer today and all that will disappear. Linux doesn’t have botnets. Linux doesn’t have viruses (only a few known and you have to actually type a command to start the virus running). Linux has no spyware. If you’re just getting your start, I recommend PCLinuxOS, SimplyMEPIS, and Ubuntu.

If you don’t want to install Linux, you can buy a computer with it preinstalled from various vendors here at the Pre-installed linux vendor database.

Once you are set free from having to worry about being infected by some virus, you’ll be able to concentrate on getting things done. No worries, no hassle. Join the thousands of us who are already there. Compute on your terms, not ones dictated to you by a product full of security holes or a virus author. Take back your computing!

Remove Root from PCLinuxOS Login Screen

Just a quick tip on how to remove the root user from the PCLinuxOS login screen. This should work for most if not all KDE based distributions.

Go to the Kmenu >> Run Command >> kdesu kcontrol

Enter your root password when prompted for it. You should now see the KDE Control Center. The difference here is that you’re running this as the root user so changes will be made at the root (super user) level. Go to System Administration >> Login Manager. You should have something similar to the screenshot.

Next up, go to the ‘Users’ tab and look in the center. There you can see all the system users. Check the box for root. This will hide the root user from the front KDM Login Screen. This won’t prevent you from logging in as root, but it will prevent it from displaying by default.

More PCLinuxOS tips and tricks coming soon 😀

KDE and Xorg, Fonts and DPI

Today, I’d like to share a tip I found out while working with a beta release for a distirbution of Linux with KDE’s 3.5.7 version. As many readers of this blog know, I use PCLinuxOS 2007 as my main desktop and have done so since about 2005. The font configuration in PCLinuxOS is quite nice. I have a 19 inch LCD Monitor at home with 1280×1024 resolution. I notice no problems with the font on that monitor.

Working on a separate 20 inch monitor with a distribution in development however is another story. The fonts didn’t look beautiful at all. After some installation of custom fonts, things looked better, but the resolution is a bit higher on this LCD at 1400×1050. Easy to fix right? Just increase the DPI in the KDE Control Center to 120 right? Not so fast…even when it’s set to 96×96 there, it isn’t always set to 96×96. So let’s take a look at how you can force KDE to run at the correct DPI for your monitor which will, in turn, make your fonts look MUCH better. For those of you who are satisfied with your fonts, you might want to check out the commands below to see if you’re running at the DPI you think you are.

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