Debian non-free firmware package interfering with USB HID devices.

I recently installed the firmware-linux-nonfree package on my Debian Squeeze installation and after a re-boot, the USB keyboard and mouse has stopped working. Even my old PS2 mouse would not work. I have chrooted into my Debian installation from Linux Mint 12 and after looking in the /var/cache/apt/archives folder, I have found the name of … Read more

Linux nostalgia posting. Looking back at the old Linux goodness.

The SUSE Yast configuration panel had many features for configuring every aspect of your Linux system. I wish that the modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu & Mint would have something like this. The Mandrake Linux 9.2 distribution had the Drakconf control panel that was also very comprehensive in terms of all the various hardware you … Read more

Installing printers with the CUPS web interface in Debian Linux.

I recently had to add a printer to my Debian System and the System Settings -> printers dialog in the Gnome 3 System Settings application would not detect my Canon MP150 printer. Therefore, I started the CUPS interface by visiting: http://localhost:631 in my web browser and I was then able to add my printer. This … Read more

Listing hardware on a Linux system. And using the UUID drive identifiers.

Listing hardware on a Linux system. This is easy when using the Linux command-line. In the olden days, you would use the cat /proc/pci command to list hardware installed on the PCI bus, but this /proc file is deprecated and does not exist on modern Linux systems. The lspci command is the modern way to … Read more

Hosting your website on a VPS for extra speed and security.

Hosting a website on a Virtual Private Server, or VPS for short is a good way to enjoy the benefits of your own domain name and large amounts of server space for all of your valuable content. Now that we have SSD solid state disks offering even more speed than a 7200 RPM conventional hard … Read more

CDE UNIX desktop available on Debian 6.0 Squeeze.

UNIX CDE desktop available for the Debian Linux distribution. The old UNIX CDE desktop is a very interesting and useful desktop environment. The modern desktop environments such as Gnome 3, Unity and the KDE 4 desktops are focused more on eye candy instead of actual fast and usable window management that the older window managers … Read more

Creating a new user on a Linux workstation with the shell.

Creating a new user with the Linux command-line is very easy, the command-line adduser command is easier to use than the useradd command and automates a lot of the steps involved in creating a new user and their home directory. The sequence shown below is the simple task of creating a new user and shows … Read more

Debian Gnome Shell desktop now very stable indeed. and HDMI sound.

The Gnome Shell desktop on Debian Testing is working very well now, I managed to get the HDMI sound working with the audacious music player using the alsa output. Below is my /etc/asound.conf file containing the settings I am using to listen to my music. Gnome 3 is actually a good desktop environment, I was … Read more

Installing Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy and the Gnome 3 desktop.

Installing Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy and the Gnome 3 desktop. How to install the Debian Wheezy distribution with the Gnome Shell desktop using the Debian 6.0 installation media. This is how to install the Debian Wheezy distribution alongside Windows and have a nice dual boot system for experimenting with Linux.

Compiling a vanilla kernel tarball from kernel.org on Debian Testing.

Compiling a vanilla kernel tarball from kernel.org on Debian Stable/Testing. Firstly you need to download a vanilla kernel tarball from the kernel.org website. Once you have the tarball downloaded, type tar -jxvf linux-3.3.tar.bz2 and then follow the sequence below. This sequence of commands will build a pair of Debian *.deb packages in your home folder … Read more

Debian distribution awesomely fast and Google eavesdropping.

The Debian distribution I am using is working very well compared to the Ubuntu and Linux Mint distributions that I was using before. I have installed a 3.3 kernel with the Debian kernel packaging commands and built a kernel tarball and a headers tarball that I was then able to install with the dpkg -i … Read more

How to set the correct time with the command-line on Debian.

Setting the system time with Debian Linux is very simple, using the date command, you may display the current date/time, then copy this to the date -s “” command and then edit it to the proper value. This is the easiest technique to set the Linux system time. This is the existing date. root@deusexmachina:/home/neo# date … Read more

E17 desktop available for the Debian Testing repository.

The enlightenment E17 desktop window manager is now available for the Debian testing distribution, now all of those complex steps that were formerly required to install this window manager are a thing of the past. I have installed the enlightened window manager as it is a nice complement to the Debian testing distribution. I used … Read more

Using Linux commands to see information about your hardware.

Using the vmstat command to see which hard disk partitions are the busiest is very easy. Use the vmstat -p /dev/sda1 command and your hard disk information will be printed showing the number of reads and writes for each partition. On my Ubuntu system, the /dev/sda1 partition is the busiest. john@deep-thought ~ $ vmstat -p … Read more

Installing Enlightenment E16 on Ubuntu 12.04.

The Enlightenment E17 desktop window manager is very unstable when I use the packages supplied with the Ubuntu 12.04 release. I have installed the Enlightenment E16 window manager using a source tarball from this website and after installing the libimlib2-dev package I installed the source thusly. ./configure ; make ; make install And then I … Read more

Gnome 3.2 available in Debian Testing.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=75463. The Gnome 3.2 desktop is available in the Debian Testing repository. This means that any Debian user who wishes to install and test out this new desktop may do so by switching to the testing repositories and installing the required packages. This forum post has some information on how to install the Gnome 3 … Read more