Tagged with open source

Banshee for Mac: Not Ready To Replace iTunes Yet

Banshee for Mac is not ready for primetime, and unfortunately can’t replace iTunes as your primary media player because, as it stands, the beta does not have support for iPod syncing, does not import playlists correctly, doesn’t read audio CDs and crashes frequently.

Banshee for Mac Beta 1.8.0

However, there are good things to say about Banshee. It will import your iTunes library, even correct and add metadata such as BPM and cover art automatically in the background. It supports plugins such as Last.fm, eMusic and Amazon which are killer features from my point of view. Using the Last.fm plugin you can view related artists and tracks as well as listen to your personalised radio stations.

The interface is clearly something they need to overhaul. It wouldn’t hurt to use default OSX UI elements instead of the default Gnome resources. Its simplicity however is commendable. If you’re so inclined, download it and help the developers kill some bugs. If you want to have a good alternative to iTunes, one that’s free and open-source, this is what has to be done.

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Can A Linux OS Get Infected By Viruses, Malware?

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding viruses, the security of Unix based OSs, even in more tech savvy groups. So, what’s the deal with viruses and Linux?

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MinWin And Small Linux OS’s Will Replace Windows In 5 Years

The demise of Windows will most likely not come from the desktop linux emergence, but from cloud operating systems. This article is far from being another flamebait making baseless predictions – I will explain step by step what lead me to my conclusion.

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Dreamlinux 3.5: Back to the Roots

In today’s article we review a fresh version of Dreamlinux, a linux distribution that promises to be good-looking, lightweight yet fully featured, with useful extras available out of the box – making it an attractive package for new users.

The default desktop is quite good-looking – considering it is a RC release and based on XFCE.

First Impressions

My first contact with Dreamlinux was on their oficial website – which isn’t a design marvel – but does a good job convincing the visitor to give Dreamlinux a try. You’re greeted with a series of pretty good-looking screenshots, and a everything you need to know about the OS before jumping in:
Dreamlinux 3.5 RC4 can be run from either LiveCD, DVD, USB Stick or installed to the hard drive.The DVD version includes all the codecs necessary for playing popular music and video formats.A neat feature for the more ‘nerdy’ crowd, MkDistro LiveRemaster allows to custom build the OS to suit your specific needs:Its main goal is to make it possible for any user, when running Dreamlinux as a LiveCD, to customize the distro and then regenerate a new iso image mirroring the customizations made.

One of the screenshots posted on Dreamlinux official website, showcasing a Mac OS X Leopard themed Avant Window Navigator Dock and Google Gadgets for Linux.
User Interface
You’ve got to give credit to their full-on approach, from the bootloader-to the desktop, everything has the same clean ‘feel’, except for the verbose-mode being enabled by default at boot-up, which is most certainly just an RC ‘feature’.
The interface is clearly inspired by Mac OS X Aqua, with the translucent dock, shiny icons and windows borders. But the team behind Dreamlinux is working on more than just the surface – touching stuff like the control panel and making it look and work like its Mac counterpart – making it very easy and straightforward to change settings even for non-technical persons.

Admittedly its current implementation is far from perfect and it breaks down at the second step, opening a new window instead of allowing you to make the changes from inside the Control Panel app. This will be probably one of the kinks which will be ironed out before the final release.
Another thing worth mentioning is window environment: XFCE. It’s a lightweight engine which provides most of the functionality of Gnome or KDE, while cutting down on the bells and whistles. The developers said:
In this release candidate, Dreamlinux returns to its origin and comes with the XFCE Desktop only, since we are still aiming to produce a CD-sized ISO image.
Altough their goal is understandable – I really wonder why they didn’t include Gnome, a better, more refined window manager – after all Ubuntu fits on a single CD and Dreamlinux doesn’t include a lot of extra apps that would take that much space.

Overall I would say their approach to UI is a good idea, while it is currently rough at the edges.
Performance and Hardware
Dreamlinux boots up a little faster than Ubuntu with our timer stopping at 48 seconds from boot-up to desktop.
Like most linux distributions it has quite a few misunderstandings with WiFi cards – neither one of the integrated Atheros 5007EG or the external SMC stick was recognized, prompting for a 5 minute trip to the terminal and custom madwifi drivers. On the other hand, we have the ndiswrapper tool installed by default – which makes it a breeze to install wifi drivers for most cards.
No luck with the integrated Bison webcam either, something that Ubuntu 8.04 got out of the box using video4lin driver.
We couldn’t convince ALSA to work with the with the ATI chipset for audio in – but most of these problems are strictly related to our test hardware, an Acer laptop with some weirder components.
If you bought your computer with Ubuntu in mind, choosing compatible hardware, or have Ubuntu working perfectly out of the box you’ll be okay with Dreamlinux. Remember you can always use tutorials written with Ubuntu in mind because you’re using the same base: Debian.
Applications

Apart from a few useful addtions to the usual suspects, Dreamlinux doesn’t bring anything ground-breaking:
Multimedia: Rhythmbox, Mplayer, Gxine, SoundJuicer, SoundConverter, Avidemux.Internet: Pidgin Instant Messenger, Gftp, Thunderbird Mail Client, Iceweasel (Firefox)FlashPlayer, Java.Graphics: Inkscape, Gimpshop, Gthumb, Xsane.Open Office, Evince and SciTe.It’s based on Debian Lenny, which means you get the APT package manager (and the graphical interface to it, Synaptic Package Manager), .deb compatibility allows you to install a wealth of apps easily. It’s an easy switch for anyone used to working on Ubuntu – which is also based on Debian.

Conclusion

Dreamlinux is a linux distribution which promises a lot for future versions – especially on the user interface side, as developers have more time to tweak the details – for that perfect user experience.
Right now, I wouldn’t recommend installing Dreamlinux – because it just about halfway to becoming a really different, good linux distribution.

For someone looking for eye-candy and user-friendliness I would recommend gOS3 and Linux Mint, the former which I use as my primary operating system. Visit the official website here.

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Backtrack Linux: Can Security Testing Get Any Easier?

I have dealt with a lot of Linux distros since I first learned the power of my newfound penguin friend. He was free unlike a Microsoft or Apple product, had thousands of available programs (also free), and looked damn classy while he was in control of my computer.

My first forays were using live Linux CDs on an old 1998 Gateway computer, then I experimented with installing Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian. However, after a while I started to stray from my new friend and I found myself going back to old habits, using XP and eventually embroiling myself in the OSX86 project and experimenting with Tiger and then Leopard. I gave up on Linux for a while and divided my OS use between my hackintosh and Vista boxes.

Choices
I was perfectly content with my two choices up until I started experimenting with network security. Sure, you can get network security tools for both of the major systems, but they are nothing compared to the plethora available when you choose Linux as your auditing operating system. I started with Kubuntu and customized my installation with as many security apps as I could find. This was a bit of a heavy-handed approach to things, and it took up a good size of my laptop hard drive. What I needed was a more portable solution.
Backtrack
I found everything I could ever want and hope for when a friend of mine introduced me to Backtrack. He performed a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack on a sample LAN, replacing every photo URL that I browsed for in Firefox with one of a skull and crossbones. I had never seen such pirate witchcraft done so easily, so I asked him what other things this Linux distribution could do. He basically told me that nearly everything you could ever want for wardriving, penetration testing, vulnerability testing, privilege escalation, and just all-round mayhem could be performed with this distribution. And the best part about the whole deal is that it is a live cd distro. You don’t need to install it to your hard drive in order to perform security tests, for that matter it doesn’t even have to be your computer! Just have the CD with you and you are good to go.
Backtrack is developed by the remote-exploit community over at remote-exploit.org. When I was first introduced to Backtrack the latest iteration was Backtrack 2, and I loved what I saw. Backtrack 3 has since come out and looks spiffier than ever with more tools and updated software.
Is it good?
I’ll sum up my feelings for Backtrack in one simple statement: This is the only Linux I use. It has exactly what you’re looking for. The only thing that it does not have that might be useful to me is Open Office.

Now, I’d love to list in detail all of the lovely tools that Backtrack has, but you would be scrolling for quite a while and and this article probably wouldn’t have gotten done until sometime around 2010. Don’t fear though! Here is the link to the Backtrack wiki page that details the tools that can be found in Backtrack’s arsenal.
Now, you might ask yourself, “What’s better than a live cd Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing I’d ever want?”. I will answer that question with: A live USB thumbdrive Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing you’d ever want.
Creating the thumbdrive
You only need the following to create a keychain portable Linux OS:
Requirements:
1GB or bigger thumbdriveBacktrack .iso fileNifty little program called UNetbootinIn order to guarantee a clean installation of Backtrack, be sure to format your thumbdrive to clean out any files. I suggest using FAT32 when you are formatting it, simply because I know that it works and I’ve never had any problems. The Backtrack .iso file can be downloaded here.
Because your thumbdrive is 1 GB, it can handle the USB version that has a bit more stuff packed into it. That is the version I suggest downloading.

UNetbootin
UNetbootin will take any .iso file and “burn” it to your thumbdrive painlessly and especially fast. It will do this with ANY Linux distro, not just Backtrack. I love this program and I’ve used it dozens of times. Its interface is pretty much self explanatory:

Click the … next to the ISO text field and select the Backtrack (or any other Linux distro) .iso file, make sure that the correct USB drive is selected in the Drive: drop down menu, and then click OK. UNetbootin will now copy over the operation system from the .iso file and burn it to your thumbdrive. Once its done copying the files, it will install a bootloader to your USB drive, and then prompt you for a restart in order to load Backtrack. This part is obviously optional, but if your a little zoned you you might just click ok and lose whatever you may have been working in in other windows, so try to be careful.

Conclusion
It’s as simple as that, you now have Linux on a thumbdrive that can travel with you wherever you go. Be careful how you use your new found power, a lot of the apps on Backtrack are useful for security testing, but could be twisted for use on the dark side of things. I don’t condone using Backtrack for nefarious deeds, and I suggest that you do not follow that path.

If you would like some tutorials in how to use the features found in Backtrack, IronGeek has a few videos available that can help you along.

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Google Gadgets for Linux: Eye-Candy or Useful?

Released in June,  Google Gadgets for Linux provides about the same functionality of Vista sidebar or Mac OS X dashboard. While other solutions like ‘gdesklets’ are pretty popular within the linux crowd, Google’s’ platform provides compatibility with both gadgets written for the Windows version and the huge repository of web-centered gadgets (Universal Gadgets on iGoogle). Let’s take it for a spin and see if it’s worth installing.

gadgets1

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Linux Mint: A better Ubuntu

Linux Mint, while relatively new, has gained a lot of fans from the linux community, and is now the third most popular on DistroWatch, slowly crunching on openSUSE lead. It brings something a lot of distro have tried: simplicity, functionality, and of course looks. Let’s see what makes Linux Mint fresh and if it’s worth switching from Ubuntu.

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Ubuntu: Why is it so popular?

Ubuntu has become the most popular Linux distribution, with polls putting it as high as 60% of the linux marketshare – and the hottest linux community since 2005. But what makes it so popular?

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In this article, we’re going to look at the top reasons behind Ubuntu’s success and discuss what’s next for the linux community.

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Newbies: 7 Useful Ubuntu Tips

In this article we’re going to look at 7 useful tips to make your Ubuntu experience even better. This is particularly aimed at newbies, and shows you step by step how to tweak Ubuntu with some must have extras.

1. ubuntu-restricted-extras – Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (gstreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts,
Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files),
and DVD playback.

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