Yesterday, Opera software didn’t release a UNIX build of Evenes simply because, it wasn’t polished enough to be usable. Opera has long been criticized due to the lack of a native interface for UNIX and Mac. With Opera 10.5 for Mac, the developers have tried to address this issue by switching to the Cocoa framework. Similar treatment is planned for the Linux build too.

With Evenes, Opera Software will be ditching the QT framework. Yes, you would no longer need to have QT libraries installed in order to use Opera. This is expected to make Opera smaller and faster.

Opera 10.5 will be using X Window (X11) drawing primitives. However, it will also support native styling for both Gnome and KDE. The KDE build isn’t yet ready but we do have a few screenshots for GNOME users.

So, when will Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Linux be released? When it’s ready.

The post Opera 10.5 For Linux: What We Know appeared first on Techie Buzz.

I was recently researching about claims that Ubuntu could sync with the iPhone, even the non-jailbroken ones. I was a little skeptical about this. What I found was libimobiledevice, and the iPhone Ethernet driver for Linux. I’ll write on libimobiledevice at a later day.

Let’s have a look at the USB Ethernet driver: The iPhone USB Ethernet driver was written by Diego Giagio, and is a kernel driver which adds support for iPhone tethering through USB cables. Like libimobiledevice, the driver doesn’t require you to jailbreak your iPhone, so bonus marks here.

Let’s start on how we can achieve this. This post is written from a Ubuntu/Debian system perspective, if you’re using some other distribution, the steps should remain same, with the exception of getting the packages via your favorite package manager.

First: Get the source from Diego’s git repository. If you don’t have git installed, open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install git-core

Once git is installed, get the source for the drivers

git clone git://github.com/dgiagio/ipheth.git

The output should be something like

sathya@shaman:~$ git clone git://github.com/dgiagio/ipheth.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/shaman/ipheth/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 10, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
remote: Total 10 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (10/10), 8.11 KiB, done.
sathya@shaman:~$

Now, compile the pairing program.

cd ipheth/ipheth-pair

make

You should get an output like:

sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-pair$ make
gcc -Wall -O2 ipheth-pair.c -o ipheth-pair -liphone

Next, type:

sudo make install

You should get an output like:

sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-pair$ sudo make install
install -m 0755 ipheth-pair /lib/udev/
install -m 0644 90-iphone-tether.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
/sbin/udevadm control –reload-rules
sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-pair$

Compile the Kernel driver:

cd ipheth/ipheth-driver

make

You should get an output like:

sathya@shaman:~$ cd ipheth/ipheth-driver
sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-driver$ make
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28-15-generic/build M=/home/sathya/ipheth/ipheth-driver modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-15-generic’
CC [M] /home/sathya/ipheth/ipheth-driver/ipheth.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
CC /home/sathya/ipheth/ipheth-driver/ipheth.mod.o
LD [M] /home/sathya/ipheth/ipheth-driver/ipheth.ko
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-15-generic’
sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-driver$

The kernel module is ready. Now load the module.

sudo insmod ipheth.ko

We’re all set to try the new driver out. Now connect the iPhone. The iPhone should get detected, as shown in the picture.

To confirm that the USB Ethernet driver is in use, open the terminal and type

dmesg | grep iPhone

You should get an output like:

sathya@shaman:~/ipheth/ipheth-driver$ dmesg | grep iPhone
[22871.808469] ipheth 2-2:4.2: Apple iPhone USB Ethernet device attached

Yay! That means the USB Ethernet driver is ready. Lets switch on Tethering on the iPhone.

Lets see what happens. Prior to installing the driver, I would get no notification and nothing would happen. Not now.

To confirm that we have indeed connected using iPhone let’s have a look at Network Manager connections:

And there you go, iPhone tethering on Linux!

Notes:
1: You need to have tethering option enabled with your service provide to use this tip. From what I know, tethering is not officially allowed under AT&T’s plan, so I don’t think this method will work.
2: I tested this on my iPhone 3G running on iPhone OS 3.1.2. Although mine is a jailbroken iPhone, the author mentions that jailbreaking is not required.

The post Getting iPhone Internet Tethering Working in Linux appeared first on Techie Buzz.

Something putty lacks though is a bridge between the windows and Linux boxes.

To overcome this I have been using Cygwin which brings in a Linux OS like functionality within my Windows machine, wherein I can copy files from my Windows machine to a Linux box without using a graphical interface like WinSCP or and FTP client, use Linux command from within my windows machine, and lots of other Linux based functionality like Vim etc.

Now for you to use Cygwin you will have to do a complete install, and mind you when I say complete install I will stress on it.

As when you install cygwin it just installs the default version without scp (Secure file copy), ssh (secure file transfer) and lots of other features. You can get a very indepth tutorial on using cygwin from Lifehacker.

Now if you just want to use cygwin to upload files then installing cygwin is not the only solution you have and you can simply use PSCP which is a software from the creator’s of Putty to use that functionality.

PSCP (Command line secure file copy) requires no installs and can directly run from your windows prompt, if you add it to your classpath then it makes it much more easier.

Here is how you can use PSCP to copy files from your windows machine to your Linux boxes.

Download a copy of PSCP and place it on any drive of your windows machine, assuming you copied the file to C:\downloads\pscp.exe, I will start this tutorial here.

1. Open a command prompt in your windows machine

2. If PSCP is not in your classpath you can run command to add it set PATH=%PATH;C:\downloads\

Note: adding %PATH; will ensure you do not lose the old path’s for the command prompt you are on, windows command prompt’s are session based and If you close this command window again all manual set path’s will disappear and you will have to set the same thing starting again from step 1.

3. It will open to your default specified location, just navigate to your folder where you have the file placed to upload, assuming you have placed it in C:\upload, type cd C:\upload.

4. Issue this command

C:\uploads>C:\pscp.exe filename.extension username@domainname.com:directory/subdirectory -pw password

Simply issuing this command C:\whichever directory>C:\pscp.exe will output you with a help menu for usage of pscp as given below

C:\service>c:\pscp.exe
PuTTY Secure Copy client
Release 0.58
Usage: pscp [options] [user@]host:source target
pscp [options] source [source…] [user@]host:target
pscp [options] -ls [user@]host:filespec
Options:
-V        print version information and exit
-pgpfp    print PGP key fingerprints and exit
-p        preserve file attributes
-q        quiet, don’t show statistics
-r        copy directories recursively
-v        show verbose messages
-load sessname  Load settings from saved session
-P port   connect to specified port
-l user   connect with specified username
-pw passw login with specified password
-1 -2     force use of particular SSH protocol version
-4 -6     force use of IPv4 or IPv6
-C        enable compression
-i key    private key file for authentication
-batch    disable all interactive prompts
-unsafe   allow server-side wildcards (DANGEROUS)
-sftp     force use of SFTP protocol
-scp      force use of SCP protocol

You can download copies of PSCP for your usage free and start uploading now without need for any Graphical user interface.

Part 2 sneak peek: Downloading files from Linux to windows, downloading files on Linux box, Zipping, taring, unzipping files and emailing files using putty, cygwin on a Linux box.

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In this post we will show you, how you can change the default SSH port from the world known 22 to something else.

Note: Having your SSH running on port 22 does not mean that you are running a insecure system, this tip only makes it a bit harder to guess on which port SSH is accessible from.

To change your default SSH port from 22 to something else you will need to have root access (you can read our earlier article on disabling direct root access and claiming it for any user) before you make any of the changes.

Once you have root access open the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and search for Port, it should show 22 as the default value. Change 22 to any port you want that is not already being used on the system.

Once you have made the change to use a different port, save the file and issue the command /etc/init.d/ssh reload. That’s it your default SSH port should be disabled now, you will need to setup your SSH clients to reflect the changes, or else you may see Permission Deniederrors.

While logging in from another server, instead of typing ssh servernametype in ssh p portnumber servername, replace the portnumber with the port number you setup in the earlier steps.

If you are using putty just change the default port from 22 to your new port and save the settings.

The post How To Change Default SSH Port in Ubuntu? [Linux Tip] appeared first on Techie Buzz.

Wifi-broadcom

To install Wifi for Broadcom on Ubuntu, follow the steps below.

If you have a working Internet connection of any form, other than the non-functional Wifi, you can select to install the package named b43-fwcutter, which will do the Wifi driver installation along with the installation of the package itself. Your Wifi should work fine after a restart.

If you  do not have a working Internet connection, then download these two files [ wl_apsta and broadcom-wl ].

Now, open a terminal and install the driver with the commands,

sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
tar xfvj broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter –unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta_mimo.o

Finally, restart your computer to verify if the Wifi is installed.

The post Wifi On Ubuntu: Installing Broadcom Drivers appeared first on Techie Buzz.

GNOME Shell is a whole new take on the concept of the desktop and Compiz, one of the most amazing Windows managers (at least in terms of eye candy), had no place in GNOME Shell. KDE SC too already have their own windows manager, KWin, to provide most of the bling that Compiz provided. It seemed that Compiz was doomed to become “a project without a cause”.

Well, Mark Shuttleworth made an announcement which ensures that Compiz will live on. In the Ubuntu Developer Summit – Natty, while announcing that Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop will come with the Unity interface, he also announced that Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 will use Compiz.

Currently, Unity is available in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10. It is based on Mutter, the same technology which GNOME Shell uses. Unity in UNE 10.10 is heavily criticized for a lot of things –  from being too confusing to being slow. According to Canonical, Unity’s slowness is because of Mutter and Mutter is not capable of providing a good enough performance. So, for the next release they will replace mutter with Compiz.

It is good to know that Compiz finally has a proper backing. Although, I have never been a fan of Compiz, it is one of those things which attracts a lot of people to Linux.

The post Compiz To Live On With Unity appeared first on Techie Buzz.

However, we can across another Easter Egg in Google Chrome where users can teleport goats from the Task Manager. This is basically available on version 4.0.266.0 of the Linux version of Chrome.

I was unable to confirm this on a Windows 7 machine, however here are some screenshots from a Linux version of Google Chrome.

To experience the Easter egg, follow the steps given below.

1. Open Google Chrome and a few tabs
2. Press Shift+Esc to open the task manager
3. Right click on any process and click on “Goats Teleported”
4. Restart the browser and open the task manager again to see the number of Goats teleported for each tab.

This currently only works on Google Chrome for Linux, we are waiting to see if this Easter egg makes its way to Windows and Mac versions. Looks like Google was in a hurry to teleport the goats to the penguins first

The post Google Chrome “Goats Teleported” Easter Egg for Linux appeared first on Techie Buzz.

However not many people are familiar with the syntax of Crontab, to help them out there is a excellent service that will allow users to generate the syntax, by providing with a wizard interface.

You can use the wizard to get the syntax for the cron by inputting the command name and choosing the frequency you want to run it at.

Once you have selected the settings, click on Create Crontab Line button, the service will automatically generate the syntax for the cron.

You can then copy the syntax and use the command crontab eto edit cron jobs and insert the new syntax. Can’t get any simpler than this.

The post Crontab Generator appeared first on Techie Buzz.

The folks at Reddit continue to amaze me. This thread at Reddit tells us how to hide porn effectively using Linux. I will quote the exact talk excerpt for you to have a good ROFL moment.

<Pryoidain> What are you trying to hide?
<asaph> Nothing that needs encryption, I juAst want it to be tricky to find.
<Pryoidain> got a separate /tmp partion?
<asaph> of course.
<Pryoidain> unmount it then copy shit to /tmp. It will actually copy it to the /tmp directory on the ROOT filesystem. then when you remount /tmp, the directory becomes a pointer, pointing to the real one, but without removing any of your files in the physical directory on the root system.
<Pryoidain> No one will ever find them unless /tmp fails to mount, or they’re looking for it. even if they’re looking for it, they’ll see them in /tmp and assume their garbage, that is if you name them right.
<asaph> …that’s fucking genius.
<Pryoidain> I know, I’ve been hiding my porn under the /boot directory for about 3 years now.

The talk goes on to explain how effective the method is in hiding stuff you want to remain unseen. Now, that is what I call geekiness and it is the best abuse of the Linux file system. Worried about the files appearing on search? Well, another solution talks of doing a chmod 700 on the directory. See the thread here.

So, what is your preferred method of hiding porn? Believe me; I do not want to know.

The post How to Hide Porn in Linux? This is Hilarious and Ingenious at the Same Time appeared first on Techie Buzz.

Did you all know, Avatar used graphics designed by a four time Academy Award winning visual effects facility based at New Zealand. It has done graphics for X-Men, did it for I Robot and now, it has also done it for Avatar.

To my surprise, the company uses all non-windows software to achieve all these cutting edge graphics. The systems used to render these graphics were all using RHEL as their OS and were all HP Blade server clusters. All these systems are 64 bit and the cluster at Weta Digital is one of the world’s largest Linux clusters. It is ranked #193 amongst the top 500 supercomputers of the world with processing capabilities of 10 Gigaflops.

It is great to know that most of the software used to render these graphics were all Linux software like SoftImage, CompTime, Cine-Paint etc.

Weta Digital has won four Academy Awards and BAFTAs. Did you see the movie Avatar? If you liked it, you can also check the Avatar Windows 7 theme.

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