TuxCentre

Hi every one…I think i might have helped many using this blog. But this time i might need some help. Actually i have been using Compiz fusion almost since it was released. I have gone through many ups n downs with it ( ups could be when i was amongst the first to see new features been added and downs would be when i was amongst the first to see all the bugs and crashes that came with the new versions). But all was well i was actually enjoying the ups and downs and was using the version 7.2.0 fairly well…and then i updates and the effects stoped working. Actually i got a command line instead of the login screen whenever xgl was on….i thought this bug will be sloved with yet another update but 3 updates came past me but it stilled didnt work out….my problem remained the same…no login screen… Then i thought it might be a problem with some plugin so i turned off all the plugins and sill the same problem. Then i reverted back to the oldest version of XGL that was available in the OSS repo of openSUSE 10.3 ( Oh! sry i forgot….i m using openSUSE 10.3 with 768 mb ram n intel 915gm board). Well after reverting back to the oldest XGL i got the login screen but after logging in compiz crashed. This made me realise that maybe XGL in the XGL repo of open suse is not up-to-date with the compiz fusion i m using. Does any one know a work around for this problem i m facing…. and if someone realted to openSUSE comes across this problem please Fix this bug….Its been more than a week since i havent seen any of that beautiful desktop effects on my comp

As we all know the size of flash-based solid-state drives( SSD’s ) are increasing day by day and their prices are decreasing at the same rate. Will this cause a pain for the companies making conventional hard disks?? well to some extent its causing a level of worry but not much as big players like Seagate and Western Digital (WDC) have already grabbed many patents which wont let SSD’s replace hard drives easily. But don’t u think if u can get better performance for such low cost isn’t it better??

The advantages of SSD’s are —

• Faster startup – as no spin-up is required.
• Typically near-instantaneous random access – since there is no read/write head to move.
• Extremely low read and write latency times – SSDs seek times are orders of magnitude smaller than the best current hard disk drives.
• Lower power consumption and heat production – at least for small SSDs. High-end SSDs and SSDs larger than 64GB may have a much higher power consumption.
• No noise – Lack of moving parts makes the SSD completely silent, although high-end SSDs and large SSDs may include cooling fans.
• High mechanical reliability – Lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of mechanical failure.
• Better able to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and temperatures – SSDs are tougher than traditional hard drives.These features are useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions.
• Relatively deterministic performance – unlike hard disk drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because seek time can be constant, so file fragmentation has less impact on performance than on physical drives.
• For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size – size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form factor. Up to 64GB, SSDs are lighter than hard drives for the same size.

So the question is should the upcoming technology of SSDs be prometed and speeded up or not??

Well now most of the distros give full NTFS read/write support by default (after the release of NTFS-3G) but in openSUSE (and maybe others distros too) i faced a problem — whenever i connected an external drive with ntfs partition, it got mounted but only with read support. To be able to write on it i had to first unmount it and then mount it again using ntfs-3g and only then i could get a write support.

Well the solution to this problem is quiet simple. U just need to use a software “ntfs-config”. This package can be found on openSUSE one click install page. It contains a very simple GUI. Open the software when no external device is attached to you comp. (if external device is attached it writes its entries to /etc/fstab and makes it dirty ). Select “enable write support for external devices” and the task is done. Just attach an external device and test the its writable now.

Good news for all voice+video chat lovers… Skype 2.0 is finally out as a stable version.

• Hardware requirements
• 1 Ghz processor or faster
• 256 MB RAM.
• 20 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
• Microphone and speakers or headset.
• Internet connection (broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection). .
• Video card driver with Xv support.

• Software requirements
• Qt 4.2.1+
• D-Bus 1.0.0
• libasound2 1.0.12

Skype 2.0 supports both video and voice chat support. all you need is a webcam and its drivers installed. The other requirements are listed above.

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/choose/

Skype allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet to other Skype users free of charge and to landlines and cell phones for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer, short message service, video conferencing and its ability to circumvent firewalls.

For Linux Skype came with a full voice support and an friendly interface made in Qt.

And now video support has also been added and is comming with the new beta version available at :–

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/beta/

Actually i couldnt find a direct like on the Skype site to download this beta version so i thought givibg this link might help many Linux voice chat aspirants.But please beware its a beta version and have many bugs so expect many surprises, though its good that both voice and video chat can be done using a single software ( unlike previously when i had to use skype for voice and amsn for video to chat with the same person).

Compiz fusion and compiz have been updated to version 0.7.2  with the following updates —

Compiz:
- Translation support in gtk-window-decorator.
- Updated translations.
- Added wrapable session functions to core. This allows to provide a full
session save/restore in a plugin.

Compiz Fusion:
New Plugins:
compiz-fusion-plugins-main:
- session: Communicates with session manager to save/restore window state
- bs: Change window brightness and saturation with key/button bindings
- mousepoll: Provides a generic system for other plugins to get the current
mouse position
- mag: Provides a magnifying glass under the mouse pointer with 3 different
display modes (simple/image overlay/fisheye)

compiz-fusion-plugins-extra:
- 3d: Adds depth to your desktop by raising windows in layers off the cube
- loginout: Provides a simple system to implement login and logout animations
- maximumize: Resizes a window to fit within the available empty screen space
- notification: Displays error messages on the screen with libnotify
- shelf: Shrinks a window to a preset size for monitoring many windows at once
- showmouse: Paints particle emitters that orbit the mouse pointer to make it
more visible

compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported:
- atlantis: Renders an aquarium inside of the transparent cube

Configuration manager changes:
ccsm:
- Action settings were split into button, key, and edge settings, each using
its own widget.

simple-ccsm:
- New settings manager focused on simplicity and aimed at end users

I just came across a new distro called Parted Magic. This distro is made to handle partitions efficiently. I think this can be very helpful for offline partition handling for all types of partitions.

The latest version of  Parted Magic is 2.1 and an be downloaded from –

http://partedmagic.com/wiki/PartedMagic.php?n=PartedMagic.Downloads

Other details (including screen shots ) can be attained from  — www.partedmagic.com

Kiba dock is a beautiful application dock that uses the Akamaru physics engine to render
complex interactions. Its a MAC style dock that i built for Linux. It works on Linux with graphics effects turned on. Can be used with both KDE and Gnome. Well what more can be said…the with the video below you can see it all for your self…

Installing Kiba Dock :–kiba dock source can be downloaded form its svn server using the command “svn co https://kibadock.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/kibadock/trunk kiba” which will copy the files to kiba directory in the directory you execute this command. Then you will have to install it normally by using the commands — make , make install and intall.
If you are using openSuse simply use 1 click install option from the link www.software.opensuse.org/search.

Debian has updated libicu (arbitrary code execution).
Fedora has updated phpMyAdmin (F7, F8: information disclosure), ghostscript (F8: buffer overflow).
Gentoo has updated mantis (cross-site scripting), splitvt (privilege escalation), sword (shell command injection), paramiko (information disclosure).
Mandriva has updated wireshark (multiple vulnerabilities).

Ever wondered how people make Such wonderful figures out of various ASCII characters ( like ! , @ etc.)??

Well the process is not as tedious as it seems to be. Don’t worry you don’t have to waste your brain think when character to use when. Simply use LINUX and a command in it.

The command “asciiview” converts an image to ASCII character sequence.

usage:

asciiview path_to_image_file

example:

asciiview /root/1.jpg

After you get the ASCII image in a new window press “s” to save it and if that doesn’t work simply take screenshot.