This is a pretty good tip. The default style irritates me to no end. Check out the full post, there are some great tips, especially if you’re new to Nautilus like me.

Ever since some distros started their attempt to become more “user-friendly” and gaining the nice looks, some default features got changed.

In this case, it’s the location bar. Instead of it they got some buttons that shows the location and let you navigate through the directories! So, if you’re using one of these distros and want to pop up the location bar, all you have to do is to hit Ctrl+L. However, if you’re like me and like to have it always there, each time you fire it up, you canchange the default value of it in gconf-editor, or alternatively use this following command in the terminal

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_location_bar --type bool 1

via anxiousnut’s playground

Ext2Read is a Free & Open Source Software which allows you to browse your Linux partitions in a very Windows Explorer-esque interface. Unlike other tools Ext2Read also supports ext4 filesystem, even if extents feature is enabled. Like the name suggests – Ext2Read can only read, not write to the partitions – so in case you are paranoid about the tool causing data corruption to your Linux partitions, you can drop those fears.

via techie-buzz

It seems Oracle is hellbent on destroying whatever good Sun had done to the Open Source Ecosystem. The latest product to get the axe seems to be none other than the Flagship Virtualization program xVM VirtualBox.

[....]

All tests show that VirtualBox 3.2 lacks any semblance of stability, crashing any operating system running on it randomly. VirtualBox 3.1.8, using the binary-only release for Linux, works like a charm. It is also apparent that VirtualBox 3.2.6 is a lot slower and sometimes unresponsive, as compared to version 3.1.8.

A fresh install of VirtualBox 3.2.0 on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition even managed to completely crash the Windows Networking Subsystem, necessitating the uninstallation of VirtualBox

via Is Oracle trying to kill VirtualBox? | Muktware.

The article is either a bunch of baloney or the test system as got some serious hardware/software compatibility problems. Oracle VirtualBox 3.2 has been absolutely rock solid, smoother than ever before. Seamless mode is awesome, and I managed to resurrect my dead Windows installation by installing a Windows 7 VM using Oracle VirtualBox and then making a bootable Windows 7 USB pen drive (long story worth a blog post, will do soon!). The article doesn’t mention how many test systems were used to test the software – if its a single box then drawing a conclusion that Oracle is killing VirtualBox based in just one system is pretty stupid.

And heh, the author calls himself “BaloneyGeek“. Go figure.

If you check the latest versions of IronRuby, IronPython or the Dynamic Language Runtime you will see that Microsoft has now relicensed the code from the Microsoft Permissive License to the Apache 2 License

via Microsoft Licensing Changes for IronRuby and IronPython – Miguel de Icaza.

Couple of days ago, there was a huge debate (argument ?)  between Matt Mullenweg  - developer of WordPress and Chris Pearson – developer of Thesis premium theme over twitter which then extended to Mixergy.

Crux of the argument is the disagreement amognst the two over the licensing terms. Matt believes that Thesis should adopt GPL which as Wikipedia states:

The GPL is an example of a powerful copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft.

Chris, on the otherhand disagrees with this. The full transcript of their discussion is available on Mixergy, here are some quotes which I found interesting:

[...]

openSUSE 11.3 is based on Linux kernel 2.6.34 and has KDE Software Compilation 4.4.4 as the default desktop environment. A GNOME version is also available and it uses GNOME 2.30.1. In terms of the default applications, it comes with Thunderbird 3.0.5, Firefox 3.6.4 and OpenOffice 3.2.1 to name a few. openSUSE 11.3 also gives the user the choice of using Btrfs during installation.

You can view the complete changelog here or read the release note. A screenshot tour of openSUSE 11.3 have also been put up.

via openSUSE 11.3 Released – Download Now.

My favourite distro gets an update.

A whole linux distro, Slackware based I believe, to train you in the dark arts. This distro is deliberately insecure, containing out of date packages, mis-configured apps, and loads of training material. It comes as a live dvd download, so you can run it up as and when you want to practice your skills.

via Damn Vulnerable Linux.

Will be interesting to check it out.

1: The pager

I am always shocked at how few people actually use the Linux pager. It’s been around forever and has always served the same functionality — it offers the user multiple desktops to keep the desktop better organized. I employ the pager like this: With four workspaces, I dedicate each workspace to a different use. My layout looks like this:

* Desktop 1 is for networking tools.

* Desktop 2 is for writing/office tools.

* Desktop 3 is for graphics or video.

* Desktop 4 is for miscellaneous items.

This layout pretty much covers it for me. I’m sure you could find a four-desktop scheme that would better suit your needs.

via Five tips for a more efficient Linux desktop | Five Tips | TechRepublic.com.

More or less my pager usage too.

A quickie:

I wanted to change the default application from Banshee/Totem for my media files to VLC ( since I didn’t have proprietary codecs installed, and VLC does). Searched all of YaST/Settings and couldn’t find where to change the default application.

[...]

Well it’s no secret that I’m a music fan and love to keep my music organized, and neatly tagged. ( Well, if you didn’t – now you do ). I’d posted quite sometime ago on how to keep your music well tagged and organized, so there’s pretty much no way that my files wouldn’t be tagged.

Of course, there exceptions here and there but majority are tagged. So I was rather surpised today when Amarok , during playback wasn’t showing any metadata. To verify – I installed id3v2, a CLI tool to view/edit ID3 tags for mp3 files using zypper and – guess what- it showed the meta data correctly.
[...]