An Open Letter to Richard Stallman

Tags

GNix, GNU/Linux, Linus Torvalds, Linux, Richard Stallman

Dear RMS,

A few days ago Guillermo Garron wrote a piece on his website after seeing you speak live. A link to that article was posted at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux, where a discussion ensued. During the course of that conversation, I thought that maybe it was about time that we started using a less bulky nomenclature for the GNU/Linux operating system. I posted a few suggestions, but I think I like GNix the best.

A worthy contraction of terms, I think. While I’ve always tried to refer to my favorite operating system as GNU/Linux in my public articles and other posts around the Internet, I often lapse into the shorthand version of “Linux” that is commonly misused by most everyone else in this community; mostly because of the bulkiness of GNU/Linux.

No Windows fans, that I know of, go around calling their operating system Microsoft Windows whatever version. They just call it “Windows”, usually. They know it’s Microsoft. They’re just lazy, as are most of us in the GNU/Linux community of users. So, my thoughts are let’s call it GNix (pronounced g’nicks).

I doubt Linus would mind. He might like it, too. You never know. A marriage of the Linux kernel and the GNU operating system should have a worthy moniker. Maybe now is that time for it to be.

I’m running Slackware GNix as my primary OS on all my machines, but I also have Debian GNix and Fedora GNix installed as testers. Hmm… that rolls off the keypad pretty nicely, I think.

Regards,

~Eric

Playing w/ My Conky

Tags

Conky, Gkrellm, hddtemp, KDE, lm_sensors, system monitors

Some friends over at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux got me started playing with Conky the other night.

I used to be a Gkrellm fan until transparency failed to display properly a while back. I didn’t feel like messing around with feh and lib workarounds, so I just quit using it. Sad. It was a wonderful system monitor app, too.

The past  couple days, I’ve wasted hours of my life tweaking and experimenting with Conky config codes and colors. Yes, it is addictive. I was warned. Here are some of the results of my descent into Conky tweaking oblivion:

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done with this neat little app. It was fun, though, but I really need to go back to studying now. You folks can have fun with your Conky, too. Just go to SourceForge and read all about it. Oh, for you Slackers, there is a SlackBuild for Conky.

Well, I’m off to go stick my nose back in this baby for a while:

Later…

~Eric

Addenda I: I just had to make a blue version of that dragon.

SSH – Can It Be More Secure?

Tags

remote login, RSA key pairs, security, Slackware Documentation Project, ssh

Yes, actually. There are ways to harden your ssh implementations that aren’t that difficult.

An example of a simple way to increase your security when using ssh is to utilize the public/private key security rather than using your remote system’s user passwords to access the device. By using RSA key pairs, you can initialize your remote connection without ever having to expose your remote login’s password to the transfer at all.

I recently reinstalled my Slackware on my main machine (It’s a long story for another time, maybe). One of the things I needed to do was to reestablish my ssh connections between the machines on my local network. I settled in this evening to do just that. I ended up having some laughable issues while attempting to get all my machines talking again. We won’t go there, though.

In the process of troubleshooting my issues with ssh, I ran across Noryungi‘s excellent how-to at the Slackware Documentation Project. This place is really shaping up, no thanks to me. I haven’t been too active there because of my other pursuits lately. However, the dedicated folks who contribute there on a regular basis are kicking ass!

Anyway, using this tutorial, I easily set all three of my machines to use RSA public/private key exchange to initiate my ssh connections. I don’t have to sling my user’s passwords around the Ether anymore. Now anyone sniffing packets will only see the public RSA key bouncing around.

Ain’t technology wonderful?

Well, back to studying tomorrow. My Cisco ICND2/CCNA examination is rapidly approaching. Gotta’ go study up on those pesky routing protocols before bedtime.

Later,

~Eric

Happy Spring (Northern Hemisphere)!

Tags

Cisco, CompTIA, computer networking, industry certifications, IT, networking security, spingtime

Yes, it’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve been busy.

I just wanted to stop by for a moment on this beautiful spring day here in Florida, USA to say hello and let all my faithful readers know that I am still breathing. You may remember that I was going to be distracted from writing by my intense study schedule initiated for the purpose of gaining some industry certifications (Cisco, CompTIA, etc.).

Well, the initial study paid off. I’m now Cisco certified (CCENT) with another examination coming in the next few weeks (ICND2/CCNA), so the studies continue. I’m learning all that fun networking stuff about switches, routers, spanning tree protocol, VLANs, etc. FUN!

Once the Cisco certs are attained, I’ll be brushing up on networking, hardware, and my Linux fundamentals in order to grab the CompTIA Network+, A+, and Linux+ certs. I may, depending on how I feel by then, also pursue a Cisco Security endorsement and a CompTIA Security+.

All this is for my own personal satisfaction, but also to ease me into a new career in networking. I have a hardware and electronics background already, but the jobs are definitely in IT; networking/security, in particular. I’m hoping to break into this sometime very soon.

Wish me luck!

~Eric

On the state of Windows on the desktop – A Reblog

Tags

Branko's Thought Dump, humor, Linux, MS Windows, parody, reblog

This is a reblog of a hilarious (and true) article from Branko’s Thought Dump.

On the state of Windows on the desktop

I have this Linux system on my PC which has become a bit boring (no, it’s not crashed or anything… I just got a bit bored), so I decided to replace it with Windows 7 (some friends told me to not even try Windows 8 because it has an advanced interface nobody was able to figure out yet).

I really did not set the bar too high: I just hoped to have a nice user-friendly interface and recover the email I have in Maildir, and maybe watch my video collection on an external hard drive. You know, the usual stuff I do on Linux every day.

Please note that this article is a parody of what some Windows users write about Linux. The events described here have not actually taken place. However, the article is based on author’s experiences with the Windows 7 operating system.

I didn’t want to commit and install a new operating system right off the bat. I just wanted to try it first. So I typed “Windows Live” in my browser’s search box to find a live version, preferably an USB image. Ok, so Windows Live wasn’t a live version of windows but some kind of service you must sign into. I guess it’s something like Ubuntu One. Not sure. Moreover, it turned out I’d have to actually buy it first before I could do anything with it. And there is not real live version of Windows 7.

Read the rest of this entertaining article HERE.

*Special thanks to pal SecurityBreach/Comhack for posting this at Scot’s Newsletter Forums this morning. It will be my Laugh of the Day for today, for sure!

Later…

~Eric

P.S. Certification studies going well.

2012 in review

Tags

2012 Stats

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 24,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Cyber-life Interrupted by Real Life

Tags

ccna, certification, Cisco, hiatus, studying

Hello happy readers, commenters, lurkers, etc.

Beginning very soon, like right away, I’ll be somewhat absent from here. The reason for this is that I’ll be spending most of my waking hours (and some of my sleeping ones) for the next 8 or so weeks studying for my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) examination.

If all goes well, I well have that coveted industry cert and those spiffy letters after my name sometime in March of 2013; with a good job to follow shortly thereafter, hopefully. 13 is a good number for me; maybe it’ll be a good year, too. We’ll see…

In the meantime, carry on. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone.

Later…

~Eric

Porteus – Another Excellent Choice for the Thumb Drive Toolbox

Tags

flash drive, portable Linux, Porteus, Slackware, SLAX, thumb drive

A few years ago, I wrote a little article called My Thumb Drive Toolbox for Linux.com.

In that article, I explain how to install Slax on a thumb drive. I also mention Puppy Linux as being usable for that purpose also. It’s very useful to have a full-featured Linux OS on a thumb drive, particularly when repairing corrupted MS Windows systems, as I did earlier this evening for a client.

Over at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux, a topic came up regarding the porteus.org website possibly being down. Hamza from porteus.org dropped in to respond to the issue. After we resolved the issue, I went to the porteus.org website to snoop around a bit. I was, of course, already familiar with Porteus, but I had not visited the new site nor had I used the distribution recently.

My old (ancient, really) version of Slax on my thumb drive toolbox was still functioning, but I had been wanting to update to the newest version of Slax for a while. I’d been waiting for v7.0 for a while. I decided to kill two birds and all that…

I downloaded and installed both Slax and Porteus earlier this afternoon. I’ve had the chance to evaluate them both this evening. Slax is very nice, even with KDE 4. However, this article is about Porteus, which I installed with my favorite desktop environment –> Xfce. I first burned the .iso to a CD (directions on Porteus’ download page) and then booted that CD to use the Porteus Installer app to install it to my thumb drive. It worked wonderfully.

I specifically chose to use the 32 bit version because many of the systems that I would need to boot it from are older 32 bit machines. It’s best to have a diagnostic Linux distribution on a thumb drive that is functional with older machines if you’re in the fix-windows-for-family-and-friends business. HA!

Visit the website, snoop around the forums, then give Porteus a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. This is a quality portable media distribution, with a good documentation and support network. You know I’m going to like Porteus. It’s only natural…

from the Porteus forums:

Porteus is a light-weight, highly configurable and flexible live distribution based on Slackware…

Oh, and don’t forget… if you have the resources available, run it from RAM. It’s GREASED LIGHTING FAST!

Have fun!

~Eric

Slax 7.0? It’s About Time!

Tags

KDE, SLAX, thumb drive Linux

Many of us have patiently waited for this:

New Design for Slax.org, Preparing Final Release

at 17:40 Posted by Barnaby |

Just in time for the expected final release of Slax 7.0 on Monday after all this time the web site has had a makeover as well to serve as a visual reminder that a new age for Slax has truly arrived.

Read the article at Linux, BSD, and everything else…

Hmm… KDE, huh? Well, I’ll deal with that if necessary.

Happy Slaxxing!

~Eric

Think Your Passwords Are Secure?

Tags

brute force, password hacking, security

Maybe you should read this article from PhysOrg:

Password-cracking feats at blistering speed shown in Oslo

Researcher Jeremi Gosney, the founder and CEO of Stricture Consulting Group, was the thinker behind the hardware and software setup that could make 350 billion guesses per second. The result was that eight-character passwords could fall in hours; some passwords could be had in minutes.

Scary, huh?

Later…

~Eric