Linux Solutions

The article will provide a user with information on System 76 Starling Netbook version 2. Linux system builder System76 created a successor to their 1st generation Starling Netbook with improved hardware specifications running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04.

The 2nd generation Starling netbook has an HD WSVGA Super Clear Ultra-Bright LED backlit display, is powered by an 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N455 processor, and equipped with 2GB RAM, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100, VGA port, 3 x USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jack, SD card reader, a built-in 0.3 MP webcam, Kensington lock, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, and 10/100 Mbit Ethernet.

The base hardware configuration comes with an obsidian black finish, a 250GB hard drive, and a 3 Cell Lithium Ion battery. A model with a coral red soft rubber finish, a larger hard drive up to 640GB or SSD options up to 160GB, as well as an extra 6 cell smart Li-ION battery are available at additional costs.

The Starling netbook ships with Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), one of the most advanced netbooks operating systems available today, offering a host of free applications for mobile computing needs.

The 2nd generation Starling Netbook was upgraded by system76 with a dual core Intel Atom N570 chip and the 11.04 64-bit version of the Ubuntu operating system in Q2 2011.

Specifications
Let’s have a look at the specifications.

Processor
CPU:
Intel Atom N455
Clock Rate:
1660MHz

RAM
RAM Technology:
DDR2
Installed Size:
2048MB

Storage
Hard Drive:
250GB

Display
Screen Size:
10.1″
Display Type:
Backlit LED
Max. Resolution:
1024×600

Appearance
Width:
10.5″
Depth:
7.3″
Height:
1″
Weight:
2.0lbs
Colours:
Obsidian Black
Coral Red

Networking
WLAN:
WiFi 802.11b/g/n
LAN:
10/100 Mbit Ethernet

Input Devices
Keyboard
Touchpad
Video Camera
Connectivity
USB
SD Card reader

By reading the article a user would have gained knowledge and understanding about System76 Starling Netbook version 2.

The article will educate a user and reader about YlmF Operating system. Let’s have a look at YlmF OS’s system enhancements.

System Enhancements:
1. CCSM - short for CompizConfig Settings Manager, is a configuration tool for Compiz Fusion.
2. ailurus - an application which makes Linux easier to use.
3. p7zip - the Unix port of 7-Zip, a file archiver that archives with very high compression ratios.
4. Ndisgtk a graphical frontend for ndiswrapper.
5. Samba - an open source software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients.
6. Some Nautilus context menu items:
o (1)Open as Administrator
o (2)Open in Terminal
o (3)Make link o desktop
o (4)Refresh Desktop
7. Leafpad - a simple GTK+ based text editor.
8. gmount-iso - a tool that ease for Desktop users the CD Image files.

Multimedia:
1. SMPlayer - a complete front-end for MPlayer, able to play the most known video & audio formats without any codecs.
2. Audacious - audio player with support for many formats, and it has support for third-party plugins.
3. mid3iconv - converts ID3 tags from legacy encodings to Unicode and stores them using the ID3v2 format.
4. PiTiVi - a free software non-linear video editor.PiTiVi is designed to be a simple video editor to meet the needs of users in the GNOME desktop environment.
5. gThumb - an image viewer and browser for the GNOME desktop.
6. cheese – uses the webcam to take photos and videos, applies fancy special effects and lets you share the fun with others.

Internet:
1. FireFox enhancements:
o (1) Downthemall - Download in just one click all the links or images contained in a web page.
o (2) FlashAX plug-in - the universal rich client for delivering effective Adobe Flash experiences across desktops and devices.
o (3) Ease link - can auto fix and decode Thunder, QQ Xuanfeng, Flashget, Rayfile, Namipan and QQ Temporary Chatting links.
o ThunderBird - a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

2. Empathy - a messaging program which supports text, voice, and video chat and file transfers over many different protocols.
3. aMule - a free peer-to-peer file sharing application that works with the EDonkey network and the Kad Network.
4. Iptux - an IP Messenger client for Linux.
5. gFtp - a free/open source multithreaded FTP client.
6. Xchat - a popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.
7. Emesene - a python/Gtk Instant Messenger for the Windows Live Messenger network.
8. Transmission - a fast, easy, and free bitTorrent client
9. vinagre - a VNC client for the GNOME desktop environment.

Office:
1. OpenOffice - the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and more.
2. chmsee - an HTML Help viewer for Unix/Linux.
3. Evince - a document viewer for multiple document formats.
4. Gnote - a free and open-source desktop notetaking application written for Linux.
5. Simple scan - a simple scanning application
6. Stardict - the best free dictionary program in linux.

Other:
1. Bluefish - a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners.
2. Geany - a lightweight cross-platform GTK+ text editor based on Scintilla and including basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE) features.
3. Vim - a text editor

By reading the article, a user would have learnt about YlmF OS.

The article will educate a user about Ophcrack. It will also provide information and guidance on how to install it to USB and also how to create a bootable Ophcrack flashdrive. Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms.a href=’http://www.linuxsolutions.fr/wp-content/uploads/shafkatworkphoto.jpg’>

Features:
Let’s have a look at Ophcrack’s features.
• » Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, …
• » Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
• » Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista.
• » Brute-force module for simple passwords.
• » Audit mode and CSV export.
• » Real-time graphs to analyze the passwords.
• » LiveCD available to simplify the cracking.
• » Loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition, Vista included.
• » Free and open source software (GPL).

Install Ophcrack to USB – Windows Password Cracker
Now, let’s hav e a look at how to install Ophcrack to USB.
Password Crackeror Windows Login Password Recoverytool uses rainbow tables to retrieve Windows login passwords from password hashes. The tool is available in two versions (Vista Ophcrack and XP Ophcrack).
USB Ophcrack flash drive creation essentials:
• Windows Computer (Windows XP or Vista)
• 1GB or larger flash drive (fat32 formatted)
• ophcrack-xp-livecd-2.3.1.iso
• Universal USB Installer
• tables_vista_free.zip

How to Create a bootable Ophcrack flash drive:
In order to create a bootable Ophcrack flash drive, a user has to go through following steps:
1. Download the Ophcrack XP Live CD ISO
2. Insert theUSB Flash Drive
3. Download and run Universal USB Installer, select OphCrack XP, and follow the onscreen instructions
4. Create a folder named vista_free inside the tables folder on the USB Flash Drive
5. Download and unzip the tables_vista_free. zip to thetables/vista_free folder on theUSB Flash Drive
6. Reboot the PC and set the system to boot from the USB device
Please note that Ophcrack is launched automatically after the system has booted. A user should now be able to recover both Windows XP and Windows Vista login Passwords using this single USB tool.

After reading the article a user would have gained knowledge and understanding of Ophcrack.
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The article will provide a user with information on SliTaz GNU/Linux. SliTaz GNU/Linux is a mini distribution and live CD designed to run speedily on hardware with 256 MB of RAM. SliTaz uses BusyBox, a recent Linux kernel and GNU software. It boots with Syslinux and provides more than 200 Linux commands, the lighttpd web server, SQLite database, rescue tools, IRC client, SSH client and server powered by Dropbear, X window system, JWM (Joe’s Window Manager), gFTP, Geany IDE, Mozilla Firefox, AlsaPlayer, GParted, a sound file editor and more. The SliTaz ISO image fits on a less than 30 MB media and takes just 80 MB of hard disk space.1.

In the world of small size distributions, SliTaz is one of the most remarkable. Not only does it have one of the smallest download images, but it can also run on modest hardware while offering graphical applications with familiar interfaces. SliTaz ships as an installable live CD and features an attractively configured OpenBox window environment. Expected elements are in place on a lower panel such as an application launcher, system tray, task manager, pager, and traditional menu system. SliTaz offers graphical applications for many tasks.

The SliTaz Package Manager is a graphical tool to install various software applications. It’s appearance is similar to Sayabon’s Sulfur and it offers many of the same functionalities found in other popular graphical software managers such as Synaptic. SliTaz repositories have lots of great software to outfit a user’s newly installed SliTaz. The hard drive installer is a bit more text-based in appearance and does run in a terminal window, however, it is a wizard and asks the same sort of questions as found in other installers. A user will want to pre-partition the hard drive before starting the installer though.

Some other applications featured in SliTaz include mtPaint, Viewnior, Transmission, AlsaPlayer, Osmo personal organizer, Zoho document viewer, Nano, Leafpad, and a few scripts to install media players, Abiword, and such. Perhaps of equal importance is the toolbox of system utilities included. A user will find tools for partitioning, viewing logs, managing files, configuring hardware and networking settings (including wireless), burning media, mounting devices, and lots more.

Features
• Boot scripts rewritten and faster (super-fast booting)
• All home-made boxes improved (tazctrlbox, tazhw, wifibox, burnbox, mountbox, netbox, serverbox, installer)
• Switch to Xorg from Xvesa
• Switch to Midori as the default web browser
• Better hardware support - wifi cards, webcams, 3G-modems, printers, scanners
• Better themes and desktop integration
• Faster virtualization with lguest
• SliTaz pro: OpenERP, LAMP, GLPI and more
• Easier to customize LiveCD and LiveUSB (tazlitobox and tazusbbox)
• Tazpkg supports new features including the conversion of deb/rpm/arch/slackware/ipk packages to Slitaz native format
• Packages are now automatically built by a build bot (Tazbb)
• More contributors and stronger community
• 900 packages added to the database and many updates

After reading the article, a user would have gained knowledge and understanding of SliTaz GNU/Linux.

The article will educate a user about Peppermint Linux Operating System. Peppermint OS One is a web-centric Ubuntu remaster that passes up common desktop applications like OpenOffice.org in favour of web-based alternatives such as Google Docs. Peppermint OS One integrates video sites like YouTube and Hulu right into the desktop experience.

LXDE and Prism
Peppermint OS One uses LXDE for its desktop environment. This means that it’s very fast and should work well even on machines with limited CPU and graphics horsepower. Mozilla’s Prism is used to integrate web applications into the desktop. When a user clicks on a web app in the applications menu, it will open in a desktop window. Prism lets web-based apps run even if a user is not using the browser.

A user can also click Prism on the Internet applications menu to create his/her own launchers for other web-based applications.

Cloud based applications
Peppermint OS One comes with a good selection of cloud based applications:

Editor by Pixlr
Facebook
Hulu
Last.FM
Pandora
Seesmic
The Cloud Player
YouTube
Google Calendar
Google Docs

Although the cloud is definitely the focus of Peppermint OS, there are installed applications included as well:
Firefox
Drop-Box
Exaile
Prism
X-Chat
Transmission

In addition to the cloud and desktop applications as mentioned, Peppermint OS also comes with the following:
Linux Kernel 2.6.32
Xorg 7.5
Openbox 3.4.10
PCManFM 0.9.5
LXSession 0.4.3
Linux Mint and Peppermint OS

Peppermint OS also makes use of some of Linux Mint’s tools such as mintInstall (software manager) and mintInput. If a user pulls up the Update Manager, both of these are at the top of the update list.

Facts:
Now, let’s have a look at the facts of Peppermint OS One
• Peppermint OS consists of two versions, One and Ice. Peppermint is a fork of Lubuntu, which is based on Ubuntu with a LXDE desktop environment.
• Peppermint OS Ice is “…by definition, a Site Specific Browser [SSB] that Peppermint creator Kendall Weaver wrote himself as a means to launch Web Applications and/or Cloud Applications [SaaS - Software As A Service, PaaS - Platform as a Service] from the new Peppermint Ice OS” while One is the ‘normal’ version that a user can install to ard drive.

By reading the article, a user would have gained knowledge and understanding for Peppermint OS .

The article will educate a user on Kaspersky Rescue Disk 2010. Kaspersky Rescue Disk is a useful bootable antivirus and is recommended as the most safety way without risking the computer’s OS getting infected. It is an emergency kit to remove virus from a computer hard drive

It is also able to remove known viruses, trojans, worms and other malicious software similar like desktop Kaspersky antivirus. Any computer equipped with CD ROM can boot Kaspersky rescue disk to scan the computer hard disk.

The Kaspersky Rescue Disk 2010 is loaded with the latest Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 and able to update virus definition if any Internet connection is supported on the computer. It is a multi-language bootable antivirus and it supports languages such as English, French, German and Russian.

Creating Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 as Bootable Antivirus
Let’s see how to create the Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 as a bootable antivirus.

1. A user can simply Download Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO file or can create Kaspersky Rescue Disk using Kaspersky Antivirus

2. After the download is successfully done, a user can then burn the Kaspersky Rescue Disk ISO image to a CD media using CD/DVD burning software.

3. After the Kaspersky Rescue Disk is successfully burnt into bootable disk media, a user can then insert Bootable Kaspersky Rescue Disk CD into CD ROM and boot the computer by loading CD ROM media first.

4. After the Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 GUI is loaded, a user will notice a message appearing on the screen: A use can now press any key to enter the menu. After pressing a key a loading wizard will start. If a user does not press any key in 10 seconds, the computer will boot from hard drive automatically.

Startup methods
A user has got a choice now to select one of the start up methods. These methods are presented below:

1. Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Graphic Mode loads the graphic subsystem. This option is recommended for beginners.
2. Kaspersky Rescue Disk. Text Mode loads the text user interface represented by the Midnight Commander (MC) console file manager. This option is suitable for an advanced user.
3. Hardware Info (Display computer hardware information)
4. Boot from Hard Disk.

After reading the article a user would have learnt about the Kaspersky Rescue disk 10.

The article will educate a user with information on Recovery is possible Linux. RIP is a Slackware-based Live OS.

RIP can be used for various tasks like maintenance, troubleshooting, rescuing an installed system, or even as a Live OS for browsing the Internet, communicating with friends or relaives, listening to music or watching movies. RIPLinux comes in different versions (X, non-X, Grub, Grub2, PXE) and it’s a lightweight distro, only requiring 256MB of RAM and a 586 CPU to run.

Recovery tools
There are quite a few tools included that can help a user diagnose a faulty system.
• system monitoring: lshw, atop, htop, dmesg, dmidecode, mount utility (of course, these tools come with most of the Linux distros today but they could be useful to detect I/O errors, BIOS warnings, damaged partitions)
• partitioning: fdisk, cfdisk, Ghost For Linux, GParted, Grub, Partimage, Testdisk (the list of supported partition types includes EXT4, Reiser4 and NTFS)

• QEMU emulator (boot ISO, HDD or floppy images)
• F-PROT antivirus (can be used to scan mounted Windows partitions)

Other tools
RIPLinux includes a network configuration tool. It supports both wired and wireless connections. Having Internet access while troubleshooting is important, following applications are considered helpful:
• remote connection clients (ftp, ssh, telnet, rdesktop)
• IM/IRC (Gaim, XChat)
• mail (Fetchmail, mutt)
• newsreaders
• Internet browsers (Firefox, Links)
• online and offline documentation

Installing RIP Linux to USB from Windows
RIP Linux can be booted into an X Window environment or run without a GUI. Both 32bit and 64 bit kernels are available within the same installation.

Prerequisites to Easily Install RIP Linux to USB
• A Windows PC to perform the USB Install
• A 128MB or larger USB Flash Drive
• RIPLinuX-10.x.iso
• Universal USB Installer
• A PC that can boot from USB

How to Install RIP Linux to a USB Flash Drive
1. Download the RIPLinux-10.x.iso
2. Download and run our Universal USB Installer, select RIP Linux from the drop down list and follow the onscreen instructions
3. Once this USB Installer for RIP Linux has finished, restart the PC and set the BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device, save the changes and reboot

After reading the article, a user would have gained knowledge and understanding for Recovery Is Possible (RIP) Linux.

CentOS is a free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System. CentOS is the most popular Linux distribution for web servers with almost 30% of all Linux web servers using it.

Structure
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available only through a paid subscription service that provides access to software updates and varying levels of technical support. The product is largely composed of software packages distributed under either an open source or a free software license and the source code for these packages is made public by Red Hat. CentOS developers use Red Hat’s source code to create a final product very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat’s branding and logos are changed because Red Hat does not allow them to be redistributed.

CentOS is available free of charge. Technical support is primarily provided by the community via official mailing lists, web forums, and chat rooms. The project is not affiliated with Red Hat and thus receives no financial or logistical support from the company; instead, the CentOS Project relies on donations from users and organizational sponsors.

Versioning scheme
CentOS version numbers have two parts, a major version and a minor version. The major and minor version numbers respectively correspond to the major version and update set of Red Hat Enterprise Linux from which the source packages used to build CentOS are taken. For example, CentOS 4.4 is built from the source packages from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 4. Since mid-2006, starting with version 4.4 (formally known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 update 4), Red Hat has adopted a versioning convention identical to that of CentOS, e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5.

Architectures
CentOS supports only the x86 architectures:
• x86 (32-bit)
• x86-64 (AMD’s AMD64 and Intel’s EM64T, 64-bit)
The following architectures are not supported by CentOS (as of version 5):
• IA-64 (Intel Itanium architecture, 64-bit) (beta support since CentOS 3)
• PowerPC/32 (Apple Macintosh and PowerMac running the G3 or G4 PowerPC processor) (beta support since CentOS 3)
• IBM Mainframe (eServer zSeries and S/390) (not CentOS 5)
• Alpha (CentOS 4 only)
• SPARC (beta support since CentOS 3)

Bootable media version• A Live CD version of CentOS is available at mirror.centos.org.
• A Live USB of CentOS can be created manually or with UNetbootin.

History
In July 2009, it was reported that CentOS’s founder, Lance Davis, had disappeared in 2008. Davis had ceased contribution to the project but continued to hold the registration for the CentOS domain and PayPal account. In August 2009, the CentOS team reportedly made contact with Davis and obtained the centos.info and centos.org domains.

After reading the article, a user would have gained knowledge and understanding for CentOS.

The article will provide a user with information on SARDU. SARDU is a free software that can build one multiboot support CD, DVD or a USB device (USB stick/pendrive and all removable are supported). The name is the short of Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility. The disk or USB device may include comprehensive collections of “antivirus rescue cd”, collections of utilities, popular distributions of Linux Live, the best known Windows PE , recovery disks and Install of Windows XP , Windows Vista and Windows Seven .

SARDU includes a few utilities, but is primarily a tool for managing the software (ISO image files) that a user can download from other companies and developers.
SARDU has multilanguage support. At startup it checks to see if a system language exists, then sets the software language accordingly. If a system language does not exist, the language is set to English.

Software manageable by SARDU
The user must download all the ISO image who wants to integrate in the support. Downloaded the ISO images, have to be placed inside the “ISO” folder. Alternatively user can select a different path by selecting the “ISO icon” at the top of the GUI.

SARDU’s menu is divided into four categories:
• Antivirus
• Utility
• Linux
• Windows

User-friendliness
With a few clicks the media is ready. If a user wants to make a multiboot USB a user has to press the ‘Search USB’ button. The software will then look for all devices with FAT32. Only FAT 32 is supported. The device can be chosen from the combo box. By default the combo boxes of devices are disabled, and is activated only when one (or more) devices with FAT32 are detected. In the tab `Report` a user can find details about the selected USB: Type (Removable or Hard Disk), Serial, Label, Space used and free.

Pressing the button with the ‘USB icon’ causes SARDU to extract the needed files from one ISO at a time. After a careful examination it builds the menu and makes a multiboot USB device. If a user wants to make a multibootable CD or DVD a user will have to press the button with `disk`. SARDU then extracts the needed files one ISO at a time and, after a careful examination, builds the menu and makes a multibootable ISO. The ISO must then be burned to disk using the burning software or the burn option of SARDU.

If a user has read the article then he/she would have learnt about SARDU.

The article will provide a user with information on controlling Tor with Vidalia. It will cover network map information and also new identity feature. Vidalia is an anonymity manager. Basically this means that it can be used to control Tor, and is automatically launched on network connection.

As soon as the Tor client managed to establish a route to the Tor network, Vidalia hides as an onion icon on the upper right corner of the screen. By right-clicking this icon displays a configuration menu.

Please note that vidalia menu proposes essentialy two features:
• a Network map which displays a window showing a map of the Tor network, a list of Tor relays and a the list of currently used routes and their status.
• a New identity entry, which will make Tor use a different route for future connections, so that they will appear to come from a different address. A user should be careful as some software might still continue to use the old route, depending on how it behaves with network connections. If a user wants to be sure a software is using a new route, a user may want to close it, hit the New identity button, and then start the software again once the popup window disappears.

The network map
Now, let’s have a look at the network map. All the Tor nodes in the Tor network are listed, as are all a users circuits and connections that go through the Tor network. All this requires a bit of technical knowledge of how Tor works in order to understand and use, but it is not at all necessary. From the connection listing it should at least be relatively easy for a user to see which exit node and country it appears a users connections come from. Right-clicking on any established circuits enable a user to close it in case this one is too slow.

The New identity featureA user will not a very useful thing when he/she is working with Tor is the following option, found in the Vidalia menu that a user can get by right-clicking its systray icon.

By clicking on the “New Identity” option will tear down all users current circuits and build new ones which means that the set of computers a users route his/her Internet traffic through will exchanged by some others. This is very useful if a user experiences bad performance or even time-outs accessing some Internet resource as a user might have better luck with the new circuits that are built.

If a user has read this article then he/she would have learnt about controlling Tor with Vidalia.