Linux Blog

Here is another post from Brianne on her top 10 Android application picks for 2012. Being an Android user myself these aren’t my top 10. Mine, without descriptions are: ConnectBot, androidVNC, Sipdroid, AndSMB, ColorNote, PocketCloud, FreeMP3Droid, ViewRangerGPS, VirtualRecorder and TeslaLED. Feel free to list your top 10 or suggestions in the comments! So without further ado, here’s her take:

Stay organized on the top of your busy lifestyle with these productive Android apps. The apps on this list tend to make your life simple, easy and eliminate time-consuming procedures. Make sure to install them to increase your productivity.

1. Xbox SmartGlass

Xbox SmartGlass from Microsoft turns your android into an ideal second screen to navigate around the Xbox 360 dashboard and makes your entertainment experience more amazing. You can easily control what you’re watching with simple swipe and tap gestures. Xbox allows you to access the relevant details about a movie, game or TV show. It also lets you to easily move your purchased movies and TV shows between your PC and your Xbox 360. Xbox through its intelligently connected devices make things easier for you.

2. Soundcloud- Version 2.3.0

Soundcloud is the best app for recording interviews or your favorite music on-the-go. It lets you sync all your recordings to the Cloud so that you can share them publicly on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare or keep them as private. The latest version makes it easy to explore and post likes and comments on sounds right from your smart phone. It helps you to access user profiles and keep track of your followers and followings.

3. Opera Mini – Version 7.5

Opera mini offers the most refined browsing experience for your android phone. It’s rendering speed and efficient controls put it on the top of other browsers. Its streamlined rendering engine helps you load Webpage’s quicker than any other browser. Just as you do with your PC, you can open several pages at a time and switch between them using tabs. Opera Mini helps you save money on your phone bills by compressing data by up to 80%.

4. Cloudon

Cloudon brings Microsoft Office to your Android phone. It allows you to easily format text, change fonts, insert formulas in Excel and present your Power Point slides. It enables you to view and fill out PDFs from your workspace. With a simple tap you can have your files appear in your workplace. Cloudon lets you create copy or move files between folders. All your documents are saved automatically.

5. CamScanner

This app is a must have for android phones. If you’re on the go and need to capture documents such as interesting newspaper articles, whiteboard sketches, tickets, coupons and so on, consider using CamScanner app. This app turns your Android phone into a portable document scanner. It uses the camera at the back of your android to take the snapshots of the documents. The images scanned by CamScanner are already edited. Its in-built tools enhance the appearance of the scanned image. What’s more, you can easily convert the scanned documents to PDFs, especially when you want to share it. You are allowed to tag the scanned documents so that they are easy to locate and manage.

6. TeamViewer- Version 7.0.632

Teamviewer lets you remote control your computer while you are on the go. You can participate in meetings from your android phone, no matter where you are. Thus it helps you from missing out an important discussion. It also offers you the benefit of accessing your home PC to edit or use particular documents while you are away from home. The app helps you provide remote technical support to friends and family when they have problems with their device.

7. TRUECALLER – VERSION 2.92

Truecaller app functions as a global phone directory helping you to locate people worldwide by just entering a name or phone number. It quickly notifies you who the caller is and blocks unwanted calls. The app manages your phone book and keeps you informed of your friend’s latest Facebook pictures.

8. Fandango Movies – Version 4.1.1

This app allows you to easily browse the movies or theaters by selecting them. On selecting a movie, you can access its information like the rating, length, fan reviews, trailers and so on. If you select a theater, you will be informed of its address and phone number. You can book your seat directly from this app and step into the theater just before Showtime.

9. Zillow Real Estate

This is the best app that provides you with a better idea of current values and trends in housing. Zillow’s database helps you browse apartments and homes that are for sale or rent. The new version lets you take snapshots of your favorite homes and sync them to your online account. It keeps you updated when new homes with your criteria hit the market. Enjoy home shopping on the big screen.

10. SwiftKey 3

SwiftKey app makes typing easy and accurate over time. It saves your time and effort by magically predicting the next word before you’ve started to type. You can also personalize this app with your Gmail or Facebook accounts.

About the author: Brianne is a blogger by profession. She loves writing, reading and traveling. She contributes to Raul Antonio Gorrin

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I SSH a lot. In the past I’ve pretty much always typed passwords to log on, but when trying to SSH in using my phone, with a good password it’s a pain to say the least. I had SSH Keys setup with password-less login before but usually ended up losing the thumb drive the key was on or updating my system and forgetting to update the key. We won’t discuss the security or best practice here, that’s for another post.

Anyhow I assume you’re reading this post because you want to set up a no password SSH logon by using keys for whatever reason, this post outlines how to do it. (You can also use a pass phrase if you feel so inclined.)

(Read on …)

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Getting system information can be a tricky task, having to gather bits a bobs of information from various places. A Friend recently sent me a link to a little script called inxi. It comes pre-installed with SolusOS, Crunchbang, Epidemic, Mint, AntiX and Arch Linux but as it is a bash script it works on a lot of other distributions. Although it is intended for use with chat applications like IRC it also works from a shell and provides an abundance of information. Installation is as easy as downloading and chmoding a file so next time you find you need some information about your hardware, rather than poking around in /proc, just fire up ./inxi -F

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Linutop is a company based out of Paris that specializes in small form factor energy efficient embedded type PC’s. They have  a variety of devices with no moving parts and utilize open source software based on Ubuntu for the platform. They were kind enough to send me a Linutop 2 to review.


(Read on …)

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Tonight we have a guest post from Jason Phillips about games on Linux.

Linux is a popular OS especially for servers. It is great of open interfacing, and can be extremely efficient on processing and time. It does not have a lot of the add-ons that Windows has that can bog down the system and cause a longer boot-up. The issue that a lot of people run into when they are running the Linux OS is the misconception that it is not a good platform for a lot of the popular games. Fortunately, some clever people have created a few different ways that you will allow you to download and play Windows games on your Linux OS.

Most gamers have tried to avoid the Linux OS for that feel that playing their beloved Windows games could be near impossible on the Linux system. The early reviews of Windows 8 have not been kind, and many people are reluctant to upgrade to the Windows 8 system so that has left some of the timid gamers to research how you can play Windows games on the Linux system. It is actually a rather easy process.

(Read on …)

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This post is a guest post written by Brianne. She is blogger by profession. These days she is working on online promotion for Go Pilot

It is true that the bloggers will need some applications which will help them to connect with their blogging on the move. So the Android applications come handy in this connection. Moreover, you will keep touch always through these applications with your blog. Since, the Android applications provide the ample advantages to the bloggers. Even, these Android applications will give you an extra fillip for running smoothly your blogging habit. 

(Read on …)

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While not really a shell script as such, this is shell related and  it just so happens to be Sunday.

Find Empty Directories:

find . -type d -empty > empty_folders.txt

Find Empty Files

find . -type f -empty > empty_files.txt

The issue with these two commands is that within my jumble of unorganized mess I have an abundance of version control repositories (mostly SVN) and tons of source code with empty, but needed directories. Fear not if you have the same problem, you can filter them out by using:

grep -v empty_files.txt svn

Duplicate File Removal

There are multiple ways to remove duplicate files. I used to think a  recursive md5sum script was the way to go but that was before I found the utility fdupes.
Install via your package manager if it’s available and use recursively like:

fdupes -r [directory] > duplicates.txt

With fdupes you also have the ability to symlink or delete files, although because of the amount of source code, I’d rather review it manually.


With these utilities I was able to merge copies of photos remove a bunch of old files and empty directories and am one step closer to being digitally organized. If you have the same problem, hopefully they will help you too. If you have any cleanup or organization tools, please comment and let me know.

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Ok, I’ll admit it; I’m a digital hoarder. I’ve had this problem for a while where I can’t seem to delete stuff. Perhaps its files I’ve created, stuff I’ve downloaded, backups, or backups of backups but files seem to accumulate faster than I can keep up with organizing them. Throw this on top of system re-installs and, being the family geek backups of family members and freelance work to be honest, I’m a bit overwhelmed!

Well, it stops today! At least the start of organization that is. I’ve written in the past about spring cleaning tools, recursive md5sum scripts and tools like md5deep but nothing really came of it. It’s time to take action and get stuff organized. Now I’ve admitted it publicly, I’m sort of obligated to get in control of my digital life and so the voyage begins.

Stay tuned for more posts on digital organization techniques and tools!

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This weekend was South East Linux Fest, although I’m bummed I couldn’t make it I did learn something new from taking an LPIC level 1 self assessment. What I learned about was the application tee.

The question was something like:

“What command outputs to stdout and also writes to a file”

My answer was “echo” but that was the wrong answer. The correct answer was tee.

I’d seen it before in either Slackware or Debian’s packages list but forgot totally about it. It’s a pretty handy utility to have in your arsenal if you ask me. Usage would be something like this:

date | tee date.txt

this will echo the current date out, and also write it to date.txt. Of course, there are plenty of useful options which can be viewed in the man page which is linked below.

Enjoy! Happy Shell Scripting!

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A Bug Hunter’s Diary, by Tobias Klein, from No Starch Press is a book that caught my eye. Reverse engineering is a topic I have an interest in, if not much experience, but I am not quite ready for a comprehensive book on the topic. A Bug Hunter’s Diary seemed like a good match for my interests but, initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it.

To my pleasant surprise, I walked away with a lot of fantastic technical information; much more than I expected from a technical book that read like a story. A Bug Hunter’s Diary gives great insight into the bug hunting process. It outlines various techniques used to find bugs, and then moves on to exploitation and outlines some of the remediation techniques and processes. For each bug, a chapter is presented with necessary background information, plenty of technical information and code, a detailed explanation, and a timeline outlining the process.

Tobias Klein did a great job explaining what was being done and why, even for those (like me) who know very little about assembly language. Unfortunately, due to the laws of the country in which the author lives, A Bug Hunter’s Diary doesn’t show working exploits but he does provide links to demonstration videos online throughout.

I initially read this book on the Kindle before a hard copy arrived. It reads very well on the Kindle, with the exception of a few tables. A short and delightful read, I devoured A Bug Hunter’s Diary cover to cover in record time. Once I started reading, I would find it hard to put down. For me it was a great book that has re-ignited my interests, motivating me to learn more, and I look forward to reading it again.

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Guest Post by Brianne

Linux directory structure is not very complex but is different from the directory structure one comes across in other operating systems. The structure is so built that the different kinds of files with varied functions are effectively segregated into specific directories. The root partition and the root directory form the base of the Linux directory structure. Under the root directory, there are several directories that contain files meant for use for a particular purpose. System files are separated from the user files, so are the command and device files. Here is a detailed look at the various directories and the premise of their existence.

(Read on …)

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