If you have some Debian machines already installed, and you plan to install some others, you maybe are going to use the net-install CD, which is the most common way to install Debian.

That may take a long time, to install all the Desktop Gnome or KDE, all the applications or servers, etc, and if you have just installed your apt-cacher server as me, you will not be able to use it this first time .... unless you populate it.

I just stumbled on this site, it is a promotional site devoted to Ubuntu, you might be thinking, "well yet another Ubuntu site" but I think this one deserves a visit, it does not have how-tos, or such kind of info, it is mainly promotional, it has some information about Ubuntu's, Flexibility, Speed, Simplicity, Appearance, Stability, Freedom, Security and Community, which are the columns where Ubuntu rests.

As a matter of fact, I made myself that question more than a few times, but never took the time to try to find an answer, because Ubuntu is a relatively new Distro, it comes from Debian when Mark Shuttleworth, who was part of the Debian project decided that Debian was not focused on the final user as it should, and made its own distribution.

Well, I have found an article which touches some facts about why is Ubuntu so popular today, and we have to say that, in less time than RedHat, Suse, or Debian.

wget is a command line tool used to download files, or complete webpages, it is a great utility with lots of options, as you can see if you read the wget man page

Some months ago, I have written about how to download files with wget, now I want to add some other tips to those already explained that day.

Resume a download

There is some behavior of your Linux Operating System which is easy to change, but not too common to know how.

The things you can change are:

• Frequency to erase /tmp/ directory
• Use UTC or local time
• How Verbose are the boot messages of your Linux
• If a disk error should be always repaired while booting automatically

There are more than those, but I will touch only those, for the rest, you can enter:

man /etc/default/rcS

Yesterday, I wrote about apt-cacher, and when you first install it, its database is empty, and of course the server where it is installed could have a lot of .deb files, in the /var/log/apt/archives/, so it would be great to use those packages in our new ATP proxy.

To do that we need one of the perl scripts that come with apt-cacher, and that are stored in:

/usr/share/apt-cacher

The right script for this task is: apt-cacher-import.pl , so run:

If you want to use the fastest mirror to download the .deb files you may need to upgrade or update your Debian machines, you have to remember that not always your nearest server is the fastest one, and that could be because not only the distance the server is from you but also the network congestion is a factor when talking about network speed.

For instance, your ISP may have a direct satellite connection to another country, and thus your nearest server should be in that country, to avoid you the hassle to get that info, Debian give you some tools, I will touch two of them here.

If you have more than one PC using Debian or Ubuntu, you know that upgrading them makes most of the time download the same files more than once, and that is not good for your bandwidth.

I usually forward my requests to my Squid (in my office) and to my Personal proxy Polipo at home, it works, but apt-cacher may be a better approach as the way it decides if a file stays or is erased from the cache is more appropriate for .deb package than in Squid or Polipo, as they are optimized for web surfing.

Well, after that introduction, lets go to the interesting part of the post.

I like to play with simulators, and I have found a good car race simulator, that works great under my Debian, the game come in autopackage binary format, or at least that is the one I have downloaded.

Download your package from VDrift page, I got the full version for Linux, once you have the .package file make it executable and run it as root, If you have installed an autopackage software before you can run:

It is always useful to know how much bandwidth you are using, also to check if your provider is honoring the contract you signed with them.

At my office I have installed Cacti and as I have a layer 3 SNMP capable switch, I can graph the bandwidth that all my office's PCs uses, and also the main pipe to the Internet (My ADSL connection), but at home, I do not have such an expensive switch (and I do not need it), and my ADSL modem is not SNMP capable, so Cacti is not a solution, but with Linux Operating System there is always a solution, and the one for this kind of problem is vnstat.

Some months ago I have posted an article showing how to use audacity to edit mp3 files with Linux, this time it is almost the same but we will use our Linux Operating system command line to do that.

We are going to see two different options:

1. mpgtx

To install this program under Debian

sudo aptitude install mpgtx

Now if you want to trim a mp3 file into 10 pieces just enter this command

mpgtx -10 input.mp3 -o output

I own a Motorola L6 phone, I have been trying to connect it to my Linux (Debian Lenny) to upload some .mp3 files to be used as ringtones.

I have found in my search Moto4Lin which is a software written using QT, and it works great!, well lets see how to install and use this program.

As I am running Debian it is really easy to install

sudo aptitude install moto4lin

The Debian menu systems really saves you a lot of time, when you are trying to find a new installed software.

Yes you can run the applications from the command line, as I was doing these days on my Laptop with Fluxbox, but if you are using Debian or Ubuntu you can automatically create the menus using the Debian Menu System.

To install it (if you are using Debian might be installed)

sudo aptitude install menu

Xen Virtualization Is a real good book for beginners to intermediate users looking for Xen documentation, it is written in an easy language, with examples which are easy to follow, and from which you can learn how Xen works, and also how to use it, but lets now go to the review.

Chapter 1: Introduction

I have received an email from Ulteo yesterday, and they are good news, now using your Ulteo account, you can sync your documents between your office, your home, and any other PC (even a work with them at a public PC).

Yes I know you can also do this with Google, or other tools, but if you prefer Ulteo, which is a whole Linux desktop online, instead of only some applications, this is for you.

Because the use of Java, Ulteo Desktop is slower than other applications but still a good option.

Here is the email I got, check it yourself.

Hello!

Today, I was "playing" with the Linux configuration (as usually) and using tasksel on my Debian I remove the Desktop section, and installed it again, when I tried to use startx I just could not, there was no startx command.

After reading a while I found that I needed to install xinit package to have startx in my machine.

so:

sudo aptitude install xinit

The replacement for Dapper Drake 6.06, is going to be released today, Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions, I has grown real fast ported from the also very popular Debian, is one of the most important candidates to be a replacement for Microsoft products, specially in the Desktop arena.

As some of you may know tomorrow April 22nd is the earth day, and if you are thinking in a way to contribute, you can do by splitting your PC into two, using Linux.

This way your children or spouse will not need an extra PC to work while you are using your PC.

I think that Linux philosophy has a lot to do with earth conservation, and ecology, as we think that software and knowledge should be free, also the nature should be free, free for anyone to enjoy it, but preserving it for future generations, and only for its own use and benefit.

There are six different runlevels in Linux, there could be more than six, but for compatibility reasons six are the default.

I have used RedHat and Debian based Linux, more specifically Fedora and Ubuntu and Debian itself, I have noticed that there is a difference in the runlevels on this different Linux distributions.

Well but first let's define the runlevels:

Runlevels in Linux are seven and they are:

- 0 = halt
- 1 = single user
- 2 = CLI, multi-user, no net
- 3 = CLI, multi-user, networked
- 4 = open
- 5 = GUI, multi-user, networked
- 6 = reboot

cpufreqd is a Linux daemon, that lets you control the speed of your CPU(s), depending on some variables, or also be set manually, you can set it to act dynamically or manually, you can define a lot of profiles and rules, which will control your CPU speed, the variables could be the temperature of your CPU, the amount of charge in your battery if AC is connected or not.

First thing you need to do is to install the daemon, in Debian / Ubuntu

sudo aptitude install cpufreqd