The Linux Mint 13 maya distribution is the best release yet of the Linux Mint distribution. I wish though it had a single repository like Ubuntu rather than using a combination of the Linux Mint and Ubuntu repositories. That would make it very easy to upgrade in place rather than having to download the ISO … Read more
The Linux sleep command will enable you to pause a Linux command for a short time. The example below has our command halting for 5 seconds before executing. The suffix s means seconds, this is useful for halting a script whilst you are waiting for something else to run. C:\HOME\FLYNN\DESKTOP> sleep 5s ; ps PID … Read more
The Gimp 2.8 is now available for users of the Linux Mint 13 distribution. I used the tips here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=101517&start=20 to install the Gimp packages and get it working. I had to uninstall the Gimp with this command: sudo apt-get purge Gimp* Then add the appropriate ppa: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp After this update the package … Read more
Power management settings. How to enable the battery icon on the Linux Mint 13 MATE desktop. This is found under the Screensaver->Power management settings. I enabled the Compiz featureset by installing the compizconfig-settings-manager package and typing compiz –replace &exit in a terminal window to replace the existing window manager in MATE with the Compiz decorator. … Read more
This code snippet will run the date command. The execl() function is very useful for executing a command within your C program.You replace the NULL identifiers with any extra arguments to pass to the program. I prefer this over the system() function. #include <unistd.h> int main(void) { execl("/bin/date", "%c", NULL, NULL, NULL); return … Read more
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/05/25/sony-patent-pauses-games-advertising The Sony corporation is planning to put advertising into their games during game-play. it is bad enough that they are dumbing down games with such releases as the Call of Duty series, but now they are putting ads into the games as well. Is the screen-shot to the right an actual example of the … Read more
There is new technology for user verification that is planned to take over from the conventional ReCaptcha tech that uses an image of words that the user has to type into a text box to pass verification and enter a comment on a blog or perform other tasks that require anti-spam countermeasures to stop the … Read more
This is the MATE Gnome 2 desktop on Linux Mint 13. Many themes are available for the MATE Desktop Environment on the art.gnome.org/themes website. The GTK themes may be found here: http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2. The eXperience theme is a Windows XP styled theme for GTK, I think it is cool to have a Macintosh or Windows XP … Read more
The Windows 8 reviews are becoming more and and more unfavorable. The interface is being dumbed down and it will end up becoming a joke in the computing world. The Linux Mint 13 distribution has been released and the 64bit MATE release of this distribution is looking very good indeed. As the image to the … Read more
This is a sample C program showing how to define a function as well as accepting input from the command-line. Hopefully this is useful for someone who is writing a console application for Linux or UNIX. #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { char *name; name = argv[1]; if … Read more
How to capture your Virtual Terminal to a png file The fbgrab application is used to screen capture the Linux frame-buffer console. Install this utility with the sudo apt-get install fbgrab command and then you may use this command to take a screen-shot of the frame-buffer console. Download the source code and then unpack it. … Read more
The Linux graphical interfaces have many interesting features that can streamline the use of the desktop. One useful feature is the use of a laptop touchpad as a scroll wheel. If you stroke your fingertip up and down the right hand side of the touchpad, it will operate as a scroll wheel to scroll up … Read more
The Google Chrome browser is reportedly logging all downloads to users computers. Google has added some new security functionality to Chrome. Every time that the user downloads a file, the browser will compare it against a white-list of known-good files and publishers. If the file is not in the white-list, its URL will be transmitted … Read more
The TOR privacy protecting network that allows confidential and private communication for citizens in countries that are under a repressive regime is under attack by the powers that be as it is used to transmit illegal material. The regular Internet is also used to transmit illegal material and that is monitored thoroughly. Sure, they want … Read more
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ready to blast off to the ISS, the issue that caused a aborted takeoff last time should be fixed now. One of the engines was not functioning properly and this necessitated an aborted takeoff in order to avoid a catastrophe. This spacecraft is the first private spacecraft to take off from … Read more
I am having trouble accessing the APT repository at archive.ubuntu.com, I found out that if I changed it to gb.archive.ubuntu.com I could access the repository again. This is very annoying though. You would expect to be able to access the repositories when ever you need to. But it works just fine when I use the … Read more
The Rasberry Pi is a computer on a single circuit board that packs 256 MiB of RAM, a SD card slot offering up to 16 GiB of storage space and a HDMI port allowing a Linux operating system to run on a simple tiny computer. The computer on a chip has an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz … Read more
Google Android has quite a good range of software available for use, the BluekeyboardJP software I have installed on Android 2.2.2 works perfectly with the Bluetooth Apple keyboard I purchased a while ago. The Blueinput software is overpriced and inserts annoying text into what you are typing. The Dolphin HD web browser is perfect for … Read more
Flynn using the UNIX machine in the TRON legacy movie. He is logging in with a user that does not have a home directory defined so the / folder is used instead. This is what happens with a Linux system as well. The second screen-shot shows the /bin/history command being used to view the command … Read more
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/tqpjk/crazy_ndaa_news_judge_issues_injunction_against/. The American Congress are currently debating the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill that will allow indefinite detention of American citizens. This means that any United States Citizen accused of terrorism will be indefinitely imprisoned, meaning that the Homeland is becoming a third world police state. Will they get the Stasi and have jackbooted … Read more