The Venture Cake Weblog introduces 10 uncommon terminal commands — although you won’t be needing these commands on a daily basis, they’re good to keep in your back pocket. Included in the ten is one particularly interesting command that demonstrates how to generate a random password for a new user. 5. Set a Random Initial Password, That Must be Changed There’s a lot of organizations who have nice, secure policies for passwords. Passwords stored on Windows machines. Linux is either not covered by the policy or the policy is routinely violated – people have idea about Linux authentication (most people don’t quite understand PAM, and Linux admins don’t often realize Linux can quite happily authenticate to Active Directory)... [Read more]

Popular mechanics recently compared free software with their for-pay alternatives. PC applications are becoming increasingly bloated, complex and expensive. And most users don’t even know half the features included in the software they buy. Meanwhile, open-source “freeware” applications are growing in both number and sophistication. They may not have all the bells and whistles of their for-sale counterparts but, sometimes, simpler is better. PM looks into all common office tasks including document creation, photo editing, anti-virus, DVD playback, and spyware protection. Free Software: Do You Get What You Pay For? – [Popular Mechanics] [Read more]

Linux Planet has an excellent tutorial demonstrating how to encrypt data in Linux. The tutorial requires you to install the package cryptsetup. Today let us focus on the issue of protecting sensitive data on hard drives with encrypted file systems. This is for your mobile users and anyone who needs extra data security on workstations and servers. We’re going to use cryptsetup-luks because it is easy and it is strong. We will create an encrypted partition that requires a passphrase only at mount time. Then you can use it just like any other partition. Ubuntu users can install crypt setup with: sudo apt-get install cryptsetup Protecting Data with Encrypted Linux Partitions – [Linux Planet] [Read more]

Adobe Labs announced that the Flash 9 Beta is available for Linux. Please note that before you go grabbing the Flash update, they recommend completely removing any older versions of Flash that you may have on your system. Adobe Labs is currently featuring prerelease versions of the Flash Player 9 Update software. This update includes enhancements and bug fixes for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux versions of Flash Player 9. Please see the release notes for more information regarding this prerelease technology. The prerelease program for Flash Player 9 for Solaris is closed at this time, and Solaris versions of Flash Player 9 will be available shortly from Adobe.com. Adobe Flash Player Download Center – [Adobe] [Read more]

I came across an interesting thread on the Ubuntu Forums this morning. The thread is related to why many Linux users try their damnedest to make their desktop resemble other operating systems. I’ll even admit that I’ve done it a few times myself — I used to go for the Mac OS X look. However, after years on the Linux desktop I think I’ve finally developed my own desktop look that does not resemble any particular OS. Head over to the Ubuntu Forums and check out the thread, it’s pretty interesting. Any of you ever go for the Other OS look out there? Please share in the comments. Why we use Mac/Vista Themes – [Ubuntu Forums] [Read more]