Long back, when I was running a Windows only PC, a firewall utility was always among the first software that I used to install on a newly formatted machine. Along with an Antivirus, a firewall used to be considered a must for any Windows installation that was in any way connected to the outside world.

Of course, times have changed now. I use Linux almost exclusively and rarely see the Windows login prompt. Most Linux distributions are far more secure than Windows, out of the box, but the threat is still there and having a good firewall protecting your computer is still a good idea.

For those who have read my review of Aptana and wish to install it in Ubuntu 8.10, here is how you can do so. While the installation is not as straightforward as it should be, the overall process is not that difficult either.

The instruction below is meant for 32-bit machine. If you are using a 64 bit machine, you’ll have to install Eclipse with the Aptana plugin.

One thing that gets debated over and over in Linux is the need for the command line. Many say that you should never need to access a command prompt to get things done, others are of the opinion that the power of the Linux shell is one of the things that makes Linux so great. While I would fall into the latter category, I can certainly understand why people can get frustrated with having to learn complex and seemingly obscure commands to get their computer to work right. Even if you hate the command line, you often have no choice but to open it once in a while to get the job done. Today, we’ll be covering various ways to make it a little easier to navigate.

If you have set your Ubuntu machine to auto-login everytime you start your computer, you will find that as soon as you reach your desktop, the keyring manager will automatically pop up and ask you for the password to unlock itself and retrieve the key to connect to the wireless connection.

The keyring manager is integrated with Gnome such that when you login from the main screen, it will automatically unlock itself as well. However, if you use the auto-login function, Gnome will skip the keyring manager process and log the user in without unlocking the keyring manger.

To get rid of this annoyance, what you can do is to set a blank password for the keyring manager so that it won’t prompt you  for password everytime you login.

Do bear in mind that setting a blank password for your keyring manager will expose all your passwords to anyone that use your computer.

If you have attempted to tamper with your screensaver in Ubuntu, you will know that other than selecting the screensaver, there is nothing you can do about it. The default Gnome-Screensaver in your system does not allow you to change any of the screensaver’s setting. If you are looking to make the ball rotate slower, or to get it to display a different line of text, you’ll have no luck there.

On the other hand, the popular XScreenSaver gives you more choices of screensavers and also allows you to change the setting and configure it to your liking.

Have you ever come across a situation where you wanted to convert a video from one format to another in your Linux machine and you have absolutely no idea how to do it? What about playing DVD on Ubuntu or rip your favorite VCD to mpeg file?

Below, I have come up with a great list of software that you can use to handle your video/audio files in Linux. All the software listed are compatible with any of the Linux distros out there. The installation instructions and screenshots are based on Ubuntu, so if you are on a different distro, you will have to change the command accordingly.

What do you get when you put a stable operating system, an innovative desktop manager and plenty of eye candies together? You get nothing short of a beautiful and functional OS.

Elive is a Debian-based Linux distro, customized with Enlightenment e17 desktop manager. It is designed with the aim of providing a stable, fully functional and beautiful operating system that can run with minimal hardware requirement.

The current stable version is based on Debian-etch while the version that is under development is based on the recently released Lenny. Knowing the stability and versatility of Debian and the elegant and simplicity of Enlightenment, there are little things that Elive can go wrong.

Quite possibly the most distinguishing feature of Debian-based Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) is their package system – APT. Also known as the Advanced Package Tool, APT was first introduced in Debian 2.1 in 1999.  APT is not so much a specific program as it is a collection of separate, related packages.

With APT, Linux gained the ability to install and manage software packages in a much simpler and more efficient way than was previously possible. Before its introduction, most software had to be installed either by manually compiling the source code, or using individual packages with no automatic dependency handling (such as RPM files).  This could mean hours of  “dependency hell” even to install a fairly trivial program.

In this article, we are going to highlight some of APT’s best features, and share a few of the lesser known features of APT and its cousin dpkg.  Believe it or not, APT can even be used to solve Sodoku puzzles!

Almost two years after Etch, Debian is putting the much-anticipated Lenny release on the proverbial shelves.  There are some pretty nice new features in this release. In this article, we’re going to cover installation, basic setup, disk encryption, and try out some of Lenny’s new moves.

If you’ve never used Window Maker on your Linux desktop, you’re missing out. I’ve dabbled in nearly every window manager/desktop environment out there, and while all have their pros and cons, I always go back to Window Maker.

It’s elegant, functional, flexible, and FAST!  For those who like screenshots, this link is a Google Image search for Window Maker.

Window Maker was originally developed as a clone of the NeXTstep desktop, an ancestor of OSX.  NeXTstep was considered one of the most productive and innovative desktop environments of its time, and Window Maker has extended this legacy to modern hardware and software platforms.

Enough with the history, let’s get down to business.  For starters, you’ll want to get Window Maker installed.  Depending on your choice of Linux distribution, these first few steps can vary somewhat.  For the sake of this article, I’ll assume you’re running Ubuntu or another Debian derivative.