J_K9 @ Linux

Support For Open Source Should Be Better

There is nothing that irritates me more than when developers or administrators make something OS-, and in particular Windows-specific. They know that they can just as easily make whatever they are doing work on other Operating Systems as well, yet they persist on making it functional for Windows alone. Yet, funnily enough, I encounter this kind of thing every day.

Continue reading Support For Open Source Should Be Better…

Yeti Sports

While this blog has nothing to do with Yetis at all, it does have a lot to do with penguins - and what better way to waste your office time than smacking a penguin with a club, a flamingo, or the tip of your crazy surfboard?

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Why Windows Sucks

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but since when does Microsoft contract sponsors to host its updates, or write them for that matter? Even if the sponsors had access to the source code (which we all know would never happen), Microsoft would never distribute a third-party patch (as everyone vulnerable to and aware of the recent WMF exploit might have discovered).

Ok, to be fair, I could talk for hours about the topic proposed by the post’s title. So, I’ll say this is just one reason why Windows sucks… you can probably work the rest out for yourself anyway.

AntiOnline Tutorials

I have been a member of the AntiOnline forums for over a year and a half now, and over this time I have learnt a lot about security - from the threads, tutorials, and other members. So, I thought I would share the wonderful world of AO with you! I have chosen the general security tutorials, and also the Linux-related ones.

First of all, there are the undeniably amazing video tutorials by Irongeek. You can find them all on his website - they range from a simple penetration test on a web server to using nmap.

Then there are the in-depth tutorials by thehorse13. You can find them all here. I highly recommend his nmap and hping tutorials, but they are all very informative and good reads.

Tony Bradley - editor of the Internet/Network Security section on About.com - also has a good set of introductions to the background info on vulnerability scanning, firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems, sniffers and the like. The rest of his tutorials are aimed at Windows XP users, but the mentioned ones are universal. Click here to see them.

Finally, the King of Operating Systems, gore himself. You’ll find tons of tutorials on installing different flavours of Linux, and also some security tutorials for SUSE. If you are ever having trouble, you might want to check out his tutorial list - chances are that the solution is in one of them.

There is a plethora of other great information in the Security Tutorials and Other Tutorials forums, and I cannot name all the members, but some more are: Tiger Shark, Ennis, catch, and Soda Popinsky. Why not become a member yourself to learn more?

Google’s Desktop Linux

Many of you will already have heard rumours of Google’s upcoming Operating System, “Goobuntu”. As its name suggests, it is going to be based on Ubuntu, but obviously with Google’s magic touch (whatever that is).

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Shell Hack - Simplify Your CLI

This cool ‘tweak’ (if it can be called that) is very useful, and I only came across it a few days ago (possibly in a mailing list, butI can’t remember). In a shell (eg. bash), once you have typed in a series of commands, you can recall them because they are stored in your history - this is standard. But, wouldn’t it be even slicker if you could view the last parameters you issued to a command without having to wade through all you history? Well, here’s the solution.

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Valentine’s Makeover

As you will all know (it’s quite hard not to with all the propaganda), it is Valentine’s Day. The day you go out and spoil your partner rotten with presents, kisses, roses and all sorts. But this isn’t a love blog, so I’ll wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day and then we can continue.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Good, now we can move on. As I have nothing better to do today, I will be giving this blog a complete makeover - yup, I’m going to slave away at the keyboard (and mouse) until I can get this to look as unique as… as Jordan’s breasts. That’s the phrase I was looking for.

Q. So, what will be changing?

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Making Your KDE Look Like Mac OS X

I am sorry to reblog this, but I think it’s worth a mention. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to make Linux look like OS X, but this article on Linux Gangsters explains how to do it quite well!

But, the final result is missing one important feature - OS X wallpapers. Two things, in fact. Anyway, I began digging deep down into my LaCie external hard drive and what do I find? That’s right, and they’re yours to download (if you really want them, that is). See below to get those beauties - you know, the ladybirds, slugs and whatnot….

The other thing that’s missing are OS X cursors, and I know I’ve got them somewhere, but I can’t remember for the life of me where the heck I put them. There are some OS X cursors ported to Windows XP available here, but I’m not sure if they’ll work on Linux…. If I do find the originals though (or I can find a way to get them off my Mac), then I’ll post them up here for you.

#Update: Here they all are (I’ve had to split them up):
Standard
Abstract
Black & White
Nature
Plants

Ark Linux 2005.2 & Arch Linux 0.7

I have always been interested in Ark and Arch Linux - the former slightly more though, as it looked quite decent in screenshots. I thought that Arch was a few paces behind and not as in touch with its updating side. Having tested them both, I can now say that I had made a pretty good judgement (even if it was originally by their covers!)

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Nmap 4.00 Released

I am finally able to post here! Anyway, it is with great pleasure that I (re-)announce the release of nmap 4.00! I have tested it and it is not only faster than its predecessor, but also has more accurate OS detection. Here is part of Fyodor’s interview on this new release:

You just released Nmap 4.00 after two years of work since 3.50. What are the most exciting changes?

Fyodor: Well, the Changelog shows more than 230 improvements since that release, so it is hard to choose just a few favorites. But some really do stand out. The port scanning engine has been rewritten to be much faster and (after the “diet Nmap” project) more memory efficient. The low-level packet sending subsystem has changed dramatically as well. Nmap can now send and route raw Ethernet frames rather than rely on the host’s raw sockets implementation. This is critical for Windows, since Microsoft disabled raw sockets as of Windows XP SP2. And all platforms benefit from the new ARP scanning and MAC address spoofing functionality that this change allows.

Nmap 4.0 has new, better organized and more comprehensive documentation, including a rewritten man page available in seven languages. Huge improvements have also been made in version detection, which offers many new features and saw its signature database triple in size.

Many Nmap users pick runtime interaction as their favorite new feature. If you find yourself staring at the screen wondering when Nmap will finish, just press [enter] for an estimate. If you forgot to enable verbose mode, press ‘v’ to enable it. Or press ‘V’ to turn it off. Packet tracing and debugging can be enabled or disabled on a whim as well.

Read more at SecurityFocus