“Our own Geek Queen Blair Mathis is back with 50 ways to increase your Linux knowledge and help you along the way to true geekdom.”

via 50 ways to impress your geeky linux friends – LaptopLogic.com.

“Moving Beyond Kubuntu

Over the years I’ve used many Linux distributions… far too many to list here without boring everyone. Needless to say, I cut my teeth on Linux during it’s early 1.2.x kernel days and I haven’t been wanting for choices over these many years.

I started using Kubuntu about two years ago when I wanted to see what the hype was all about and not only was it far easier to get going on my laptop of the time than the Debian installation I had been using, it was easy enough to use that I could recommend for new users.

So I stuck with it and I learned its myriad of quirks and all those little deviations that inevitably occur between releases as a distribution project matures. I didn’t just stick with the KDE variant either, I downloaded and used the gnome desktop. xfce, as well as the studio version and often ran the bleeding edge of everything. However, through all of it, KDE has pretty much remained my default desktop.

It seems that now… for me at least… it’s time to move on.”

More at: Moving Beyond Kubuntu

My Comment:
This is something everyone on the KDE team and everyone who makes KDE based distros needs to hear.
I’ve been struggling through KDE4 from 4.0 to 4.2.2, but when my distro started incorporating Koffice 2 and I read an article claiming 2 years before it becomes reliable again, that was just it. No more KDE, I’ve moved to Gnome and OpenOffice.

Building Packages Wiki Entry

"One of the key tools for building packages is makepkg. It does the following:

1. Checks if package dependencies are installed.
2. Downloads the source file(s) from the specified server(s).
3. Unpacks the source file(s).
4. Compiles the software and installs it under a fakeroot environment.
5. Strips symbols from binaries and libraries.
6. Generates the package meta file which is included with each package.
7. Compress the fakeroot environment into a package file.
8. Stores the package file in the configured destination directory, which is the present working directory by default."

Submitting Packages to the AUR

"Follow these steps to submit a package into the AUR:

1. Register a new account if you do not already have one.
2. Check all of the official repositories ([core], [extra], and [community]) and see if the package already exists. If it is inside any of those repositories, DO NOT submit the package. If the package is broken, file a bug report.
3. Check the [unsupported] repository for the package. If it is currently maintained, changes can be submitted in a comment for the maintaner’s attention. If it is unmaintained, the package can be adopted and updated.
4. To upload the package to the AUR, the directory containing the PKGBUILD file and any other required files must be compressed as a tarball. The archive name should contain the name of the package, e.g. foo.tar.gz.. You can easily build a tarball by using makepkg –source in the directory. This makes a tarball named pkgname-pkver-pkrel.src.tar.gz, which you can then upload to the AUR. The tarball cannot contain the binary tarball created by makepkg or the source tarball of the software. Packages that contain binaries or that are very poorly written will be deleted without warning.
5. Click the Submit link by the menu in the AUR. Choose the appropriate category for your package and upload."

KDE 4.2.0 Visual Guide

Linux guru? then switch to Arch Linux!

A good article written by Antony Williams on how to and why to switch to Arch Linux

Reference:
http://www.antonywilliams.com/2008/07/linux-guru-then-switch-to-arch-linux.html

Networking 101: Understanding TCP, the Protocol

Networking 101: TCP In More Depth

Sep 24, 2008, 23 :19 UTC ()
(Other stories by Charlie Schluting

TCP, the Protocol
ICMP
Spanning Tree
Layers
Subnets Realized
Subnets and CIDR
IP Addresses

Reference:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6534/1/
http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2008092401420PSHLNT

Many times I have found myself in need of a one line command involving ‘find ./ | xargs’, however every now and then I run into an instance where the files I’m looking at have spaces in them. Anyone who has tried this combination of commands find the result to be quite broken and disappointing.

Here is an example of how to get find and xarg to work in space handling harmony:

find ./ -iname ‘*.mp3′ -print0 | xargs -0 -i{} xmms -e "{}"

In this example I am looking for every file ending with .mp3 (case insensitive) located in the current directory, including all sub directories. The ‘-print0′ added to find will cause find to end each line with a null, as opposed to a new line. You can easily execute find ./ -iname ‘*.mp3′ -print0 and you will find the result is a long run-on list of the files you seek. This output is then piped into xarg, to which we apply the -0 argument, telling it to use null termination as a method of seperating the elements it will execute it’s command against. Then, using the -i{} replace argument, I call xmms -e (enqueue) against the file in quotes (once again protecting against spaces, as xmms would still handle xmms -e Star Trek Fanfare.mp3 as three seperate files).

In reverse order by popularity, here are the articles and tutorials readers found most interesting. IBM – Top 10 Linux articles, top 5 tutorials Includes articles on: The Kernel Bash Boot Faster Awk Linux Slab Alocator Linux Dynamic Libraries 10 Essential Tricks for Admins Inside the Linux Boot Process Reference: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-top-10.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux

Arch Linux: Why It Rocks From osnews.com posted by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 21st Mar 2005 11:22 UTC "Comparison So far Arch does not look very glamorous from my description above, but looking under the hood and at the details, there are strong reasons why it has some advantages over the big Linux players and why it has personally won me over the last few months: (disclaimer: the following comparison is based on my own personal experience with these systems over the course of 7 years of using Linux)" Reference: http://osnews.com/story/10047

Arch Linux 2008.06: Overlord

"Conclusion Basically, Arch is a do-it-yourself distro. That’s a totally different philosophy than the one used by Ubuntu, or OpenSuse, or Mandriva, or any other distribution that wants to provide an off-the-rack, works-for-everyone experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes, despite all the effort, things don’t work for everyone. Most of those times, the solution isn’t very hard, but getting under the hood of those distro’s isn’t always simple. Arch is simple. It’s not easy at first, but it’s simple…and “simple” has the knack of becoming “easy” when you’re used to it. After the install, you end up with a system that has everything you want it to have, but nothing more. That means it’s light-weight, and fast, and unique, and very easy to maintain. After the initial hours of configuration, there’s not much left to be done. Upgrade the system every day. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy. I know I will. San"

Reference: http://celettu.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/arch-linux-200806-overlord/