Hello World with Docker
04 January 2018
Docker is a nice and easy way to isolate and precisely define and execution environment, both for production and testing. The following includes basic setup and start-up steps for few...
Hello World with Qt 5
04 July 2017
Getting started with Qt development is rather easy. As with other C++ development discussed earlier, all tools and libraries are native in the Debian / Ubuntu repositories. The following packages...
Ubuntu 16.10 on Asus ZenBook UX330
02 April 2017
As mentioned in a previous post, I recently got the Asus ZenBook UX330 (UX330CA-FC020T, to be specific). It's a very...
How to disable the touchpad while typing
25 March 2017
Most modern laptops come with a touchpad for cursor control. It is typically located below the space-bar, which means it's easy to rest your palms on it while typing and...
Linux compatible notebooks and laptops
21 March 2017
You'd think that there would be a sizable market for a Linux based laptop, but Microsoft maintains its stronghold, and...
Linus: Hash function as identifier vs. crypto security
09 March 2017
Linus had an interesting observation last week, after it was announced that collisions could be found for the SHA1 hash algorithm. On the "Shattered" page, they declare that everything is...
Raspberry Pi headless install
29 December 2016
The minimal "lite" image of Debian 8 (Jessie) is an excellent choice for a headless Raspberry Pi. After downloading to the SD card, these notes from Dmytro Bobkov covers the...
cryptsetup basics
25 December 2016
Talking about encryption in the previous post, I realized there are a few details I keep having to look up. This is a collection of the Frequently Asked Questions about...
Linux Credit Card
17 December 2016
The Linux Foundation is offering a credit card as a way to donate to their cause. There's an initial $50 price, and then the points which normally gather dust on...
Upgrading Debian Wheezy 7 to Jessie 8
26 November 2016
Upgrading from Debian 7 to 8 is reasonably straight forward, following the official instructions. These shorter summaries are also useful references. Very briefly then, make sure you have backup. dpkg...
Add-on development for Kodi
13 September 2016
On the heels of the QNAP NAS setup notes, here's a fun integration with my home automation system for living room lights. The idea is to send the same commands...
Securing a Postfix mail server - TLS transport encryption
13 September 2016
I previously discussed SPF and DKIM setup for the Postfix mail server. Here's some notes on TLS transport encryption. (Although, maybe those articles should have come in opposite order). Using...
QNAP NAS and autofs auto mount
06 September 2016
After considering multiple options to cover a HTPC and a NAS, I finally went with the combined "living room" QNAP HS-251+ NAS earlier this year. I'll leave the reviews to...
Let's Encrypt TLS certificate setup for Apache on Debian 7
24 February 2016
Through Let's Encrypt, anybody can now easily obtain and install a free TSL (or SSL) certificate on their web site. The basic use case for a single host is very...
Open a Firefox image in a VirtualBox guest OS
31 July 2014
In my recent Ubuntu and Windows install for my father, a requirement was to open images shown in Firefox (which runs on the host Ubuntu OS) in Corel Paint Shop...
Default PDF viewer in Debian
01 June 2014
By some strange logic, the primary and default application for viewing PDFs in Debian is Gimp. If you want to edit the PDF, that might make sense, but that is...
Git branch in zsh prompt
21 May 2014
When working in a git directory, I would like to see the current branch as part of the Zsh prompt. There are more advanced use cases out there, but I'll...
Key mappings in Zsh
01 March 2014
Z-Shell is a powerful alternative to Bash, but some of the details can take time to get use to, and some things just have to be changed. For example, the...
Multiplexed SSH sessions for quicker connection
01 March 2014
If you need to open multiple SSH connections to the same host, it can get tedious to re-authenticate for every one. And even with public key authentication and no password,...
chroot to ARM
06 February 2014
chroot allows you to "run a command or interactive shell with special root directory", as the man page says. However, it is assumed that the second level root directory is...
Building XBMC on the RPi
02 November 2013
Some notes on building XBMC from source on the Raspberry Pi: I started with the Raspbian 2013-09-25-wheezy image from here. After basic setup, I switched to CLI only, set the...
Firefox plug-ins and fixes
20 July 2013
Firefox wants to be like Chrome. I'd rather just keep my old Firefox. Here's the list of fixes to restore or remove some of their blunders: Disable the “fancy” stuff....
perceptualdiff - compare images perceptually
13 February 2013
I recently found myself needing to compare bitmap images, to see if they were about the same. The images were from Gnuplot generate graphs, and I wanted to check whether...
Bodhi Linux on Nexus 7
20 January 2013
Bodhi Linux is a Debian based distribution using the Enlightenment Window Manager. They have taken the effort to make a Nexus 7 image (ARM HF), and have gone for the...
KDE Plasma Active for Nexus 7
18 January 2013
On the heels of running Ubuntu on the Nexus 7, I thought I'd try KDE's Mer based (partly derived from MeeGo) Plasma Active as well. As their documentation states: "Even...
The Do-It-Yourself Cloud
30 December 2012
"In the cloud" The buzzword "cloud" seems to be here to stay for quite a lot longer. The problem is that it is rather ill-defined, and sometimes it is used...
Ubuntu on the Nexus7
16 December 2012
I recently got my hands on an Asus Nexus 7 tablet. In it self, maybe not a groundbreaking device, if it wasn't for the fact that Canonical will use it...
USB Smart Card Reader
02 August 2012
Just got another shipment from Deal Extreme. This time a USB Smart Card Reader. It's for reading my soon to arrive Free Software Foundation Europe fellowship card. However, all I...
USB Barcode Scanner
26 June 2012
Just got my first order delivered from DealExtreame today, and must say I'm very happy with the whole experience. Some claim that shipment is slow, however, from order to delivery,...
Linux and disk fragmentation
16 May 2012
A wind of nostalgia blew past, and for some reason I remembered rainy nights in the early 90s, waiting for Norton Speed Disk to defragment a 30 MB FAT16 drive....
Tizen is out
10 May 2012
The mobile operating system with the unfortunate name was released in version 1.0 about a week ago, and Samsung is now giving away phones which run the OS (to attendees...
Firefox plug-ins and fixes
01 May 2012
Firefox versions continue to increase by one every week or so, but the more they change it, the more I'd just like it to stay the same. Here's the list...
Pipe Viewer - ETA for pipes
26 February 2012
DP has a nice write-up on the pv (for pipe viewer) command. One of his examples goes like this; also try it without the redirect to /dev/null. for i in...
UNetbootin - Create bootable Live USB sticks
20 February 2012
UNetbootin is one of those small, not well known, yet extremely useful tools which can save you a lot of time. In a few clicks, it let's you create a...
Linux Laptops
12 February 2012
If you're in the market for a laptop guaranteed to support Linux, the following companies are good places to start. System76 is on top, since that was my choice for...
Git server on Fedora
31 January 2012
This covers setting up a SSH access controlled Git server from scratch. It's assuming there is no other repository to import from. It is loosely based on the instructions from...
Cool Linux games on Fedora
08 November 2011
Linux might not be famous for its games, however there are still plenty around. You will not find the latest Call of Duty, though. Rather, there is a long list...
Mobile OS
23 October 2011
In the world of OSes for mobile phones, there have been a lot of changes lately, with some going away and others joining the race. A while back, Intel announced...
Fedora on Raspberry Pi
20 October 2011
Chris Tyler has published a video demonstrating Fedora running on the ARM based Raspberry Pi. This looks very promising, and the Fedora project is working actively to support several ARM...
Switch to Tab no more
20 October 2011
The list of annoying, unnecessary or inferior features the new Firefox versions is getting longer. To get back to where it was about a year ago, you already have to...
Is Android really free software?
19 September 2011
In an article in the Guardian today, Richard Stallman asks "Is Android really free software?" Slashdot sums it up nicely: "Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General...
Backup over ssh/rsync with rssh restricted user
03 September 2011
For a backup system to work and be of value when something goes wrong, it needs to have these properties: Fully automated: If you have to think about, you will...
MeeGo (CE) and the FreeSmartphone.Org Distributions
31 August 2011
Timo Jyrinki has an interesting write-up about free software on mobile phones. Mentioning FreeSmartphone.Org (FSO), Openmoko, Debian's FSO group, SHR, QtMoko, and MeeGo. He highlights the promising combination of GNU/Linux...
Raspberry Pi: A €30 Computer
30 August 2011
A few days ago, Raspberry Pi announced that they had gotten Quake 3 running on their ARM computer. Furthermore, their FAQ estimates the networked model will cost $35 and be...
Firefox: Old Style Status Bar
06 August 2011
In Firefox 4, the old style status bar at the bottom was removed. Instead, the URL of a link is randomly displayed left or right in a small pop-up bobble....
Switching from Gnome to Xfce
06 August 2011
I'm not the only one stalling on the new Gnome 3 / Shell UI, and looking for alternatives. Also, it seems I'm not the only one settling on Xfce as...
Firefox: Disable tab animation
06 August 2011
After the latest upgrade to Fedora 15, Firefox 5, and Gnome 3 (more about that in later posts), there are several annoying features to remove and customize. One common theme...
Useful CLI tools
22 May 2011
Kristof Kovacs has collected a neat summary of useful command line tools, some well known, others not that often seen but still great to have, including multitail, htop, iotop, iftop,...
MeeGo 1.2 Released
20 May 2011
The next version of MeeGo was released yesterday, moving to 1.2. This release seems to have focused on hand-held device features. Maybe we'll see a port to some of the...
FSF announces publication of two new books by Richard Stallman
09 May 2011
Free Software Foundation just announced that two new books by Richard Stallman are available. They can be ordered from their web site, with both for a total of 36 USD....
Parsing /var/log/secure
07 May 2011
If found an old post from the Fedora Linux Legacy blog interesting: "ssh log parsing and monitoring". It includes several grep strings and small awk scripts to extract specific pieces...
Analysing Apache Logs: gnuplot and awk
29 April 2011
The Apache http logs I wanted to make a graph on the amount of data served from by Apache server, with a bit finer granularity than AWStats could give. The...
Panorama
03 April 2011
Here is the first in a series of panorama pictures I've worked on over the past years. This is of Zurich, taken from Üetliberg. It is composed of 211 single...
Firefox, Fedora & Ubuntu: Disabling notifictaions
13 March 2011
Notifications (a.k.a. OSD) is one of those UI features which seems fancy at first, but quickly gets in your face. Possibly originated on the Mac, the annoyance has now spread...
Personal Fedora 14 Installation Guide
05 March 2011
Although a bit delayed, here's the Fedora 14 installation tips. Based on Mauriat Miranda's guide. Assuming you've gotten the DVD, and installed a fresh system, here's the initial steps to...
gconftool-2 + xvkbd = Custom keyboard shortcuts in any application
13 April 2010
I'm using gthumb as a simple image organization tool. It has the basic viewer, slide show, and even image manipulation functions. Furthermore, it allows you to catalogue files in virtual...
Arduino on Ubuntu 8.04
05 November 2009
A few days ago I set up the Arduino development kit on Fedora 11. Here the steps for Ubuntu 8.04 follow, based on this. I was using a slightly custom...
Ethernet2VGA (Arduino w/ethernet -> microVGA PICASO)
31 October 2009
I recently bought an Arduino starter kit along with the Ethernet "shield". In addition, I got a uVGA-PICASO-MD1 Graphics Controller chip, which attaches on to the PICASO Universal Base Board....
Slashdot net
13 October 2009
In the spirit of Upside-Down-Ternet, I thought I'd play some pranks with all the neighbours squatting on my wifi. I recently installed OpenWrt on my Linksys, which has a very...
Restoring MBR on Fedora Linux
05 August 2009
Yesterday I found my self in a situation which I've never seen before on a Linux system: The MBR (Master Boot Record) got wiped. I'm still clueless as to the...
Undelete files on FAT with Linux
09 May 2009
It happens to everybody: You make a small mistake, and there go all your holiday pictures. Luckily, all memory cards and cameras share a few features: JPG files on FAT/FAT32....
Mounting OBEX over Bluetooth on Linux
21 March 2009
Mounting the memory card on your mobile phone over Bluetooth is now really smooth under Fedora. Thanks to topyli's post and David's HOWTO, all you need is the one-liner below....
Modifying SELinux port for SSHD
05 January 2009
Recently I wanted to change the port for the SSH daemon (running on a Fedora 10 install), however, SELinux got in the way. After looking at these posts, I found...
Fedora 10
30 November 2008
Fedora 10 was released this week, and you can get your copy here. True to form, I post my notes of what I usually have to do to after a...
dd, mount, loop and other device image tricks
14 September 2008
Lately I have been looking into virtualization, and all the fun stuff which comes with that. Here is a collection of links related to virtual devices; how to copy block...
Copying Windows to a new drive, using DD in Linux
21 August 2008
I just installed a new and bigger harddisk in my mum's laptop, and wanted to preserve the dual boot setup, with Windows XP and Fedora. Actually, it was enough to...
Personal Fedora 9 Installation Guide
28 July 2008
Here's a repeat of a previous entry on Fedora installation, this time for version 9: "Personal Fedora 9 Installation Guide" by Mauriat Miranda (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f9.html) For the quick version: yum -y...
WINE, DOSBox, Doom and Hero's Quest
17 June 2008
WINE version 1.0 was announced today, and this got me thinking maybe I could run some of the old games I used to play some 15 years ago. Well, at...
Ubuntu 8.04 released
25 April 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 was released yesterday, and Wired has a small writeup. You can download here, or go right to the torrent files.
Tux droid
16 March 2008
"An electronics company called Kysoh aims to bring the Linux mascot to life with a unique programmable toy. The Kysoh Tux Droid is a robot that wirelessly connects to a...
Pidgin: "The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManager was not provided by any .service files"
09 March 2008
After the last yum update I had problems starting up Pidgin today. Every time I got the message in the terminal: "The name org.freedesktop.NetworkManager was not provided by any .service...
...even more buttons
04 March 2008
For completeness, here is the default mappings when the trackball is seen with 11 buttons: 1 - Left Big (LB) 2 - Left Big + Right Big (M) at the...
More Marble Mouse buttons
04 March 2008
After the reinstall, my Logitech Marble Mouse (which is a trackball), has gotten new keymappings. Using xev, I get the following default mappings (btw. it has "only" nine buttons, as...
The last bits: Skype
03 March 2008
Just a little bit more to get in. yum install qt4-x11wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-fc7rpm -ivh /tmp/skype-2.0.0.43-fc5.i586.rpm This version now includes web cam chat also for Linux. Better get a web cam then....
Personal Fedora 8 Installation Guide
03 March 2008
This morning I was just putting in the last bits after the reinstall of Fedora 8. Installing has really become a breeze with all the repositories around. For a guide...
Logitech Marbel Mouse Key Mappings
19 November 2007
The following command in the terminal will map the left, small button to middle button, making it the "paste"-button. xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 4 3 6 7 2 5...
Linux and marketing
29 March 2007
This is the best comment I've seen so far on when Linux Desktop will start to gain momentum. (Hint: It has very little to do with X, KDE or Gnome)....
Modifying group membership in Linux
13 September 2006
The task is to make one user member of a common group, and make this group the default for this user. So, let's say we have the user binladen and...
Howto: Make a DVD out of any movie
24 July 2006
Making DVDs of your home videos or those borrowed from you neighbour is child's play. Here's what you do assuming you have Fedora Core Linux installed: 1. If you don't...
Howto: Save a video stream locally
24 July 2006
With some video streaming services, it can be a bit cumbersome to save a local copy of the movie. Streams offered by mpegnation.com is an example of this. The following...
yum, transcode and libMagick
08 June 2006
I tried to install transcode through yum this morning and ran into the common problem of repository conflicts. It turns out that the ATrpms repository contains a few doughy files....
DRM, Intel and Microsoft
17 July 2005
"There will be EF devices, EF branded content and probably EF branded contraceptives to use while watching EF branded porn." "Their excuse it that they won't enter a market without...