Applications

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 This distro is deliberately insecure, containing out of date packages, mis-configured apps, and loads of training material.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.

digiKam supports watermarking, this feature is hidden so well that you might not even realize that it’s there. This is because the watermarking function in digiKam is tucked under the Batch Queue Manager tool which you can use to watermark multiple photos in one go. Here is how this works in practice. Choose Tools | Batch Queue Manager (or press the B key) to open the Batch Queue Manager tool.

Mixxx is described as a complete package for amateur and professional DJs alike, providing everything you need to create and perform live mixes. It can run without connecting turntables and mixers, which makes it a replacement for traditional DJ setup. For professionals, it supports advanced features like comprehensive MIDI controller support, vinyl control, and multi-core CPU support. via Virtual DJ Software for Linux: Mixxx | TechSource. Seems nice. Packages are available only for Ubuntu, though.

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. The solution was pretty simple, just right click the file(type), click on Properties, and Open-With tab Just choose the default application, or click on Add and select VLC, and you’re done!

I love MusicBrainz Picard. It keeps my music collection organized, tags and renames them, and heck even fetches the cover art for (almost) all songs. Picard is just brilliant. And the icing on the cake - its FOSS & cross platform. And it was working fine - till couple of days ago. Eager to try out the RC of the upcoming 4.4 release of KDE, I upgraded it. Later on I got a bunch of music files from Ankit, and I set to tag ’em correctly.

Seems like lot of openSUSE Gnome users don’t like the new Gnome panel, which is radically different interface from the traditional Menu bar with Applications/Places/System entries. Personally I prefer the new style, perhaps because I’m used to the openSUSE Kickoff panel, and I really dig the search feature You can go back to the default Applications / Places / System panel pretty easily. To do this: Right click the bottom panel and choose add a panel Now right click the top panel and choose Add to Panel In the search input box type “menu”, and you will see about six entries, one of which is “Traditional main Menu” Add the menu to the panel, move it to where you like, and delete the “original” menu.

I wasn’t aware of this tiny little thing - the filesystem in the file created by a Wubi install can be easily mounted as a loop device. To do so, just open the Terminal and type the below: mount -o loop This will make the kernel auto detect the filesystem type and try to mount it. Alternatively, if you’re sure of the filesystem type, mention it explicitly mount -t -o loop

I’ve been using Dropbox pretty extensively ever since its private beta days and just love its simplicity and ease with which I can keep all my files in sync across multiple computers. Even more awesome is its simple web interface - just upload a file and boom, the file you uploaded gets sync’d across all your computers. This coupled with Transmission‘s ability to start downloading torrents automatically when a torrent file is available in a folder means you can start torrent downloads from anywhere, even if your computer is not accessible.

Not many know of this, but as of KDE 4.2, Kwin, the window manager has a nifty little feature - it can grab videos of desktop much like a screencasting tool such as Camtasia. This functionality requires Kwin’s composition mode to be enabled (ie, you must be using Kwin’s desktop effects). Below video shows where and how you can enable the video recording feature. Note this video was recorded using KWin.

Consider this situation. You have multiple programs installed for a particular file type. Now double clicking it opens an application, but you want it to open in another application. For example, you want your images to open in showFoto instead of Gwenview, so how do you go about doing this? Let me show you how to do so! First, launch KDE settings, by clicking on the K menu and then Configure Desktop.