Riding Linux

With default installation of Mandriva 2007 in KDE environment, all networking setup will be automatically refers to DHCP server. This include the machine’s hostname. They maybe cases where the user wants a complete control his own hostname without needing to consult DHCP server admin to specify the hostname.

Root password of the particular workstation will be needed. The user could either change the needed parameters using terminal console, file editor or using Madriva Control Center. To change the hostname using Control Center, launch the tool from the menu by going to:-

System > Configuration > Configure Your Computer

Provide the pc’s root password

Select Network & Internet > Setup A New Network Interface (LAN, ISDN…)

Select Ethernet and click next

Select the network interface to configure (use the one selected by default if you are not sure)
Click Next

Choose either Automatic Or Manual (use automatic if you are not sure)
Click next

Un-check the “Assign host name from DHCP address”
Enter your new hostname
Click Next

Click next

Click Next

Click finish.

You have completed the process. To be on the safe side, reboot your pc.

Popularity: 10% [?]

While using windows I mostly doing file transfers to & from any linux desktop/server by using Winscp. The application is quite handy and fulfill all my requirements. Now I have migrated to a linux desktop and of course Winscp is not an option anymore.

So, what can I use now? Luckily in linux, there are alternative approaches to use. These approaches might even better than using Winscp in windows mainly due to the ability browse remote folder within the same file manager view without depending on third party file management interface. Imagine browsing remote folders via SSH/SFTP protocol directly in your existing file manager (windows explorer) without needing to launch Winscp.

In KDE we can use fish. Simply launch your file manager, in this case ‘Konqueror‘. Type the below command in the location bar.

fish://username@remote_address
eg: fish://root@10.20.20.15

The above command will open up SSH connection to the remote machine using the particular username.

Provide your password and…

You can now browse the remote machine and do any kind of modification you wanted as long as your account is permitted considering that not all of us could log in as root.

The above process is about the same if you are using GNOME. The file manager in GNOME which is called Nautilus also have the ssh tunneling capabilities. Simply open the file manager, hit Ctrl-L to open up location editor and type

ssh://username@remote_address
eg: ssh://root@10.20.20.15

Provide your password

UPDATE

Follow up of this article can be found here :
Krusader - the Winscp alternative in linux

Popularity: 43% [?]

One major aspect to consider whenever we decided to migrate from using Windows as desktop to fully linux environment is finding what software to replace our commonly used existing windows application. Being a windows user for a very long time, we might have nurtured a certain practices and favors a quite number of applications in our works.

Migrating to a linux desktop means that we would miss a quite number of applications as most of them are designed to work only on Windows platform. Applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Ms Office, Windows Media Player is suitable to be used on a windows system. Even though there are ways to install and use those applications on linux (using Wine is an option), the works are somewhat tedious to some people and portability is not guaranteed 100%.

So, why not using any alternative softwares that are built specifically for linux environment in the first place. Most of the applications are designed to be as close as it can be to match the features, look & feel, and functionality of the win32 applications. Some of the also have the ability to import existing saved files from the windows applications.

Below are some applications that I have identified to be the closest to the commonly used windows application.

• Microsoft Office
  • Open Office (http://projects.openoffice.org)
• Microsoft Visio
  • Dia (http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/)
• Adobe PageMaker
  • Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/)
• Adobe Photoshop
  • Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/)
  • GimpShop (http://gimpshopdotnet.blogspot.com/)
• Dreamweaver
  • Nvu (http://www.nvu.com/)
• Maya 3D
  • Blender (http://www.blender.org/)
• ACDSee
  • XNView (http://www.xnview.com/)
• Yahoo Messenger (YM)
  • Kopete (http://kopete.kde.org/)
  • Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/)
• Ms Outlook => *KMAil (http://kmail.kde.org/)
  • Evolution (http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/)
  • Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
• Internet Explorer
  • Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)
  • Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org/)
• Winamp
  • Xmms (http://www.xmms.org/)

Popularity: 8% [?]