Enjoy a Better Web

Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours – it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.

By the way, the official date for the launch of Firefox 3 will be posted soon – so check back! Join this effort by pledging today.

I’d posted previously on How to install Fedora 8 on USB pen drive. Now that Fedora 9 is out, Kevin Purdy over at Lifehacker has post how-to do the same for Fedora 9.

A quick excerpt:

Fedora 9 Linux distribution makes putting a full-fledged desktop on a portable USB thumb drive a three-click affair. Even better, you don’t need Linux installed to create it, you can leave the data on your thumb drive untouched, and any files you create or settings you tweak remain in place the next time you boot up. After the jump, let’s create a fully-functional desktop-to-go using a simple Windows program and a 1GB or larger thumb drive.

Head over to Lifehacker for the complete article.

Debian and other debian-based distros like Ubuntu have, by default, has the root account disabled as a security measure.(thanks to Subbu and PICCORO for the clarification)

To re-enable the root account, just open the command prompt, and type

sudo passwd root

You’ll get the following set of messages:

sathya@sathya-laptop:~$ sudo passwd root
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
sathya@sathya-laptop:~$

To disable root access, just type

sudo passwd -l root

If you’re weary of using the command line(you shoudn’t ) then there’s another way:
Just head over to System > Administration > Login Window > Security > and check mark the box beside Allow local system administrator login.

DISCLAIMER: Christof Baumann mentions in this post as to why you shouldn’t fiddle with the root account:

Be aware of locking the root account if you once activated it. I activated the root account and skipped the %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL line int /etc/sudoers file because i thought i wouldn’t need it anymore. Then i disabled the root account without thinking and now had no chance to start programs with root rights. Luckily i could restore it using a knoppix live cd. Be aware of changing settings concerning the root account.

Also, read this article in Ubuntu Wiki as to why sudo is preferred over standard root account.

PS: Just incase you guys are wondering why I’ve posted this basic info so late, well I’m just getting the hang of Ubuntu.

Oracle joins the list of vendors offering free media consisting of Linux distributions – a list which includes Canonical which ships Ubuntu and Fedora under their Free Media Program. Oracle is now giving its Linux distribution, named Oracle Unbreakable Linux -  a 2 DVD set. For support you’ll have to pay extra.

Send your request for the 2-DVD kit Oracle Unbreakable Linux by heading over to this page.

In my previous post, I’d mentioned about Virtualization – what it is, how useful it is to test new softwares, distros etc. Now while working in your virtual machine, you’d obviously save some data – do some wordprocessing, or compatibility testing of your programs, just to name some, all this would mean that the data would be stored in the virtual machine.

Now you would like to have this data on your physical machine. Or alternatively you may want to transfer data from your physical machine to your VM. Of course, you could always go about using the concept of shared folders, but this would require installation of guest-additions. On a linux-based guest, this would require running scripts, and these scripts most likely require kernel-header or kernel source files. Going by my past experience, in most default installations, the header files would not be installed, or simply be missing in all of Live-CD based distributions, requiring downloading of the packages from the Internet. Is there a simpler way of going about this? Yes! Lets see how. [...]

While having a look around Fedora’s site, I came across the Free Media Program.

Fedora Free Media Program is a volunteer initiative under Fedora Distribution Project that aims to distribute Fedora Media (DVDs) for free to individuals who couldn’t afford to buy or download. Local Fedora Ambassadors or Contributors are invited to participate.

Unlike Canonical which will send you any amount of CDs, Fedora’s Free Media Program’s policy states that they will send only one media per person per release + source media if requested(which IMO is a good thing, you can always get the media copied).

In addition to ordering the media from here you can also join and participate! Yup, If you can take care of burning the DVDs and sending them, and can handle the shipping charges by yourself, then you can also Join in the program.

They also accept donations via PayPal, so if you can afford it, do your bit!

It’s the season of Linux distribution releases! Ubuntu was released about 3 weeks ago, and now it’s time for Fedora 9, aka “Sulphur”. So What’s new?

PackageKit

Much Like Ubuntu’s Add/Remove Programs, Fedora gets a similar one, known as “PacakgeKit”.PackageKit is a cross-distribution package management solution that has a complete yum backend. It has been designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier, and aims to unify all the graphical package management tools used in different distributions.

GNOME Desktop 2.22 Release

As with Ubuntu 8.04, GNOME 2.22 will power Fedora 9. GNOME 2.22 features lots of new features and improvements, such as a new Nautilus that uses GVFS as its backend. GVFS makes it possible to fix shortcomings of Nautilus such as the inability to restore files from trash, pause and undo file operations, and will make it possible to escalate user privileges for certain operations using PolicyKit for authentication. It also brings a significant performance boost to many operations.

KDE Desktop 4.0.3

[...]

While hanging out in #IndiaTwits,  Shyam aka codelust brought to my attention of this post in Kragen hacks Mailing list.

So I’m installing an OS on my laptop, and for whatever reason, the Debian Etch install disk thought it would be a good idea to initialize the whole disk to random data *before* rather than *after* the rest of the install. Writing to the whole disk takes a long time — a few hours — and so I’m left with the Debian netinst environment to play with. So I decided to IRC. Unfortunately, the only programming language I could find is sh, and there don’t seem to be any IRC clients. And I can’t get the ssh client to work — I was able to install the ssh client from the udeb on the CD-ROM with udpkg -i path/to/openssl-client-whatever.udeb. But it depends on libnsl.so.1, and I don’t know what udeb I have to install to get that. So I wrote my own IRC client in shell. The output is a little ugly, and there’s no line editing or multiple window support, but otherwise it’s just like any other IRC client to use. Almost.

Continue reading the article and get the shell script in the mailing list

Edit: Fixed the URL. Thanks to Aalaap for pointing out the error

In order to optimize the YaST partitioner module for openSUSE users the user experience team decided to conduct a small survey to figure out how you deal with hard disk configuration. The survey contains some basic questions and its results will directly influence the redesign for the partitioner module.

The survey will be online until 28th May 2008 and the results will be published on openSUSE.org as soon as possible.

Answering the questions will take less than five minutes.

Click here to take the survey

Project Neon is the codename for a nightly build service for Amarok 2.

Neon is intended to be used by everyone who wants to help us find bugs, keep track of development, join development or just wants to live on the bleeding edge. It is not intended to be used instead of a stable and full featured Amarok.

Packages for Amarok 2 for Kubuntu are available, and packages for openSUSE should be coming up soon.

To install it on Kubuntu Hardy add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/project-neon/ubuntu hardy main

check for updates, install amarok-nightly