Various Linux Related Links ….and other vestigial wing-notes
Useful Linux Tips and other good stuff
● A series of several dozen short youtube tutorials on shell-scripting: Madhurbatia89
●http://www.thelinuxblog.com/
A Great Resource for Linux-Related News:::::
● Linux Today
Amusing & Informative:::::
● dedoimedo – The Great Linux World Map, and other fun and informative stuff
IT, WWW, Other:::::
● Sandfox – Sandbox Firefox
● YaCy – Decentralized Web Search
● EtherApe – View your traffic with a multi-protocol GUI network monitor (Extremely useful, and catches a lot that your firewall might miss)
● Nmap – Uhm.. Great for getting the attention of your ISP? Good stuff!
● Aircrack-ng – Play with wireless, play more with wireless, and then some. (WPA, WEP Security Auditing) Contains a suite of very effective and useful applications, (Airodump-ng is similar to Kismet but does not require the installation of Wireshark, which is buggy and might start chowning your files to root *which sucks*)
● BleachBit – Sanitize your hard-drive, eliminate hidden data on “empty” space.
● UNetbootin – Create Live USB Bootable Drives
● MUTE – “Anonymous” File-Sharing
● Nuhe – Rule-based logging for security
● VirtualBox – I used it to install Windows Server 2008 in Ubuntu. Yeah, pretty cool, and it actually works, but networking is a bitch. It is also great for testing other distros without much risk of damaging anything. You can take “snapshots” of your virtual system state, maim the hell of your distro of choice, then simply revert to your snapshot state. Fun for Linux vandals, and just about anyone else.
● Change your MAC with - Macchanger | Click here for a little script to conveniently change your MAC. It works in Ubuntu, and of course, you can edit it to suit your NIC’s interface (wlan0, eth1, etc.). You will need to make it executable as well. *Install Macchanger first.
Distro:::::
● Arch Linux – Also: www.archlinux.org/news/the-canterbury-project/
● BackTrack Linux – PenTesting distro, cram-packed with tools, and a bug or two. WICD did not work the last I checked.
● Back Box – www.backbox.org/content/download (Pen Testing)
● www.dynebolic.org/ Bootable
● Linux Mint – Ubuntu based, but more professional (compared to uNITY), and a fabulous Linux distro altogether!
● Ubuntu “Linux” – An easy to use distro that is convenient for those who wish to abandon Microsoft, but have minimal to no experience in Linux. I recommend the LTS only. I would recommend Windows, or even abstinence over Unity. If there is ever a Linux “Bitch” distro, it will be based on Unity and the latest Gnome. I will say however, that Lucid Lynx LTS was as good as it gets for GUI desktops. I will miss it in 2013.
● Tinfoil Hat Linux – My kind of distro 
● Tails – “Privacy for anyone anywhere” – Excellent little distro for a USB drive, and soon to support persistent changes. Definitely check this one out.
● PuppyLinux
● Tor-Ramdisk – check it out!
Desktop Interfaces::::::
● www.xfce.org/ – Damned near excellent, but not perfect.
● lxde.org/ – Bitch-slap Unity with little more than “apt-get install lxde”, simplify your Desktop, try something new. *Could use some improvements, but is still worth a try.
● cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ – A fantastic balance between the glitter of newer, and usuability of older window managers/desktop-environments, yet retains functionality and aesthetics. Has some serious bugs, but it is still definitely worth a try and will only improve with time.
● mate-desktop.org/about/ – The answer to Gnome3. More like Gnome2, with a few minor differences. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_%28desktop_environment%29
● awesome.naquadah.org/ – Quite different, so much so that I can only say “tiles!” for now. Will certainly be looking further into it soon.
Image Editing:::::
● GIMP – Used to make/alter all the images in my front-page posts. Can do much, much more in experienced hands.
● imagemagick
Linux Router Firmware:::::
● DD-WRT – Excellent open-source firmware for many different routers. I use it on my Cisco router, and aside from a bug in the logging, it is great firmware. ~However, after learning a bit more today, I am now switching to open-wrt and tomato.
● openwrt.org/
● www.polarcloud.com/tomato
Video Converters, Editors, & DVD Burners
● winff.org/html_new/ – WinFF Video Converter
● www.k3b.org/ – K3B DVD Burner, Creator
● www.kinodv.org/ Kinodv Video Editor
● avidemux.org/ – Avidemux Video Editor
● cinelerra.org/ – Cinelerra Video Editor
● www.kdenlive.org/ KDEnlive Video Editor
● lives.sourceforge.net/ LiVES Video Editor
● www.pitivi.org/ PiTiVi Video Editor (would be useful if it didn’t crash with such consistency)
● trac.videolan.org/vlmc/ VideoLAN Movie Creator (VLMC)
Music Production in Linux::::: Free Software That Works! Well, sort of works, sometimes.
For those impatient folks who want to make sounds instantly, I recommend the following two links to get started quickly with MIDI:
● zynaddsubfx – Software synth, which will make noise with haste. (A big THANKS to Nasca Octavian Paul for this awesome free app!) *I’d have given up long ago without it.
● Jack Audio – Tough to Explain; basically it is necessary (especially for MIDI). Sync audio interfaces of multiple applications? Anyway, see for yourself – I have found it essential myself. I actually had to remove jackd to get LMMS to work – it wouldn’t load until I did so.
Music production in Linux has been buggy enough to use the word “swarm”. LMMS frequently crashes, Jackd freaks out and becomes immutable, and other apps simply never even try. If you have an even temper (or a straitjacket) and refuse to use Windows like myself, then music production is possible. Expect a few challenges and counter-intuitive interfaces, and be ready to exert efforts to stabilize things. I have not tried everything listed below, so please, inform me of anything that works well enough to mention.
● Ardour – Digital Audio Work-Station, MIDI, Recording
● LMMS Linux Multimedia Studio – Sequencer, Arpeggiatior, MIDI. Watch a great tutorial here.
● Rose Garden – Sequencer, MIDI, Notation
● Audacity – Editing, Recording
● The Open Octave Project – Editing, Sequencing, MIDI, *Really Cool!*
● Denemo – Music Notation Editing
● Muse Score – Music & Notation Software
● Renoise – Digital Audio Workstation *Not Free – I considered removing the link, but am keeping it for info’s sake
● VMPK – Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard
● Qtractor – Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer
● A great list of software suggestions for recording music in Linux
Other:::::
● Coder’s Rights
● FreeBSD
● “Patent Trolls and You: EFF Virtual Boot Camp for App Developers”
Website CMS, WordPress alternatives:::::
● www.joomla.org/ – not for me
● drupal.org/
● www.concrete5.org/
droppings in the permafrost:::::
WTF is this: zeitgeist-project.com/ ????
Bitcoin::::: – Digital Currency; Keeping Depend® in business by making certain people nervous
● bitcoinharbor.com/ – Buy items with, sell items for, and trade items in Bitcoins!
● BitCoin – Learn About Bitcoin Here – Watch an informative interview about BitCoin >>here<<
● Mt Gox – 24/7 Bitcoin exchange, buy and sell bitcoins
