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Linux Journal's Flickr pool regularly brings in fun photos from readers around the world.

What is Your Favorite Linux Gadget?

* Nokia N810 Tablet * Amazon Kindle * OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner * Acer Aspire One * Dash Express GPS * Netflix Player * Motorola U9 * Asus EeePC * Tom Tom Navigation System * Tux Droid * Kangaroo TV * Other Netbook

Posted On: November 6, 2008 at 11:37 AM PST

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Bash: Preserving Whitespace Using set and eval

If you don't care much about whitespace bash is great: it normally turns multiple whitespace characters into one and it breaks things into words based on white space. If on the other hand you'd like to preserve whitespace bash can be a bit difficult at times. A trick which often helps is using a combination of bash's eval and set commands.

Posted On: November 5, 2008 at 12:28 PM PST

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Back in August 2008, at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the big buzzword was "Cloud Computing". It's a neat concept, but after a week of hearing folks talk about "in the cloud", I was about at the end of my rope.

List Open Files

If you try to unmount a partition and get a message like this:

# umount /media/usbdisk/
umount: /media/usbdisk: device is busy

use the lsof command to find out what programs are using what files:

Posted On: November 4, 2008 at 12:01 PM PST

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Once upon a time, one computer was all you needed. All of your documents lived on that computer, or a stack of floppies or CD-Roms nearby, and nowhere else. Those days are gone, much like the one-car, one-TV, and one-iPod days.

Getting Past Telco 1.0

It's time to start fixing telecom, even as we're moving past it. If ideas are weather systems, that's the squall I'll bring to the Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London tomorrow and Wednesday. This is my first time at one (it's the fifth in their series), and I'm looking forward to it.

Posted On: November 2, 2008 at 11:01 PM PST

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I have decided to let the geeks out there solve a problem for me. The problem is writing a quick and dirty solution to a temporary problem. I have an idea but I am interested to see what others have to say.

Ubuntu 8.10 Charges Up the Mountain

The hot story-of-the-week this week is, of course, the ninth release of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, officially designated Ubuntu 8.10 but far more recognizable by its colorful code-name, Intrepid Ibex. The release comes with much more than just a flashy name, though.

Posted On: October 31, 2008 at 1:48 PM PDT

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The October 30th edition of Linux Journal Live focused on Horror Stories in the computer world. We discussed the ghostly ipchains, the dreaded rm -rf, and even the sinister dd dilemmas we've faced over the years. If you missed the live show, be sure to watch the recording... before it accidentally gets erased! (Just kidding, we learn from our mistakes, the video is totally backed up!)

NVidia Fan Speed Revisited

One of the comments to my last post about adjusting the fan speed on your NVidia graphics card was that what was needed was a script to adjust the speed based on the temperature. The script presented here does just that.

Posted On: October 30, 2008 at 2:31 PM PDT

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Earlier this year I discovered Jonatan Liljedahl's AlgoScore, a Csound-based program for sound and music composition. Alas, at that time I was unable to run AlgoScore on the machines here at Studio Dave. My builds of Csound use double-precision numerics, and AlgoScore was not compatible with that build option. However, Jonatan recently took another look at the problem, resolved it (with a little help from Victor Lazzarini and other friends on the Csound Developers mail-list), and I can now compile and run AlgoScore with double-precision Csound.

It's All Like... What?

Google phrase searches can produce results that seem like random answers to a Rorschach test—only more amusing. Here are the top results (on a day in July 2008) for “The Internet is like...”:

“a vast uncataloged library”
“a vagina”
“Joey Bishop”
“a series of tubes”
read more

Posted On: October 29, 2008 at 1:16 PM PDT

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Recently I asked you for ideas on creative recycling of waste server heat. The inspiration came from a University of Notre Dame project that warms a botanical garden with waste heat. This edition of The Green Penguin covers your own creative ideas.

This idea came from Lorenz in Germany:

Sometimes, Control-Z Just Isn't Enough

This week on Linux Journal Live!, Kyle Rankin and I are talking about all the horrifying mistakes we've made as sysadmins. It may be a two part show. :)

Anyway, we were thinking about what sort of contest we should have, and figured maybe we could solicit your horrible stories from the field. So here's the deal:

Posted On: October 28, 2008 at 1:11 PM PDT

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Time's running out to get your hands on this cute little green dude that runs gOS Linux.

Psst! Get Crossover Office or Crossover Games Today. FREE!

Remember when I reviewed Crossover Games (cxgames) back in April? If you have been pining for your very own license ever since -- today is your lucky day.

Posted On: October 28, 2008 at 9:53 AM PDT

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I have an original Asus EeePC 701 4G. I've talked about it and written about it before. I tend to like a full operating system on the Eee, and have had several different Linux distributions installed on it. I'm constantly looking for the best mix of form and function.

Copying a Filesystem between Computers

If you need to transfer an entire filesystem from one machine to another, for example, when you get a new computer, do the following steps.

1) Boot both PCs with any Linux live CD (for example, Knoppix), and make sure they can access each other via the network.

Posted On: October 27, 2008 at 1:38 PM PDT

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The OpenMoko project recently released a much-needed update to the official software stack of the Neo FreeRunner. I've had a FreeRunner for a few months and during that time I have used it to run everything from Debian to Qtopia (now known as QT Extended), so when OpenMoko announced the OM2008.9 update I eagerly upgraded to see what it had to offer.

Call for Articles: Desktop

Let's do Desktops a bit differently this time: instead of looking at what's on our Desktops, let's get underneath the desk and see what's going on.

Posted On: October 24, 2008 at 9:07 AM PDT

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The October 23, 2008 Linux Journal Live! Editor Shawn Powers and Linux Journal author (and long time KDE contributor) Jes Hall discuss the ins and outs of mini notebooks, and compare several models.

Thanks to our sponsor: Silicon Mechanics

Netbook Showdown on Linux Journal Live!

Join editor Shawn Powers and Linux Journal author (and long time KDE contributor) Jes Hall this Thursday evening, Oct 23 at 7:30pm Central, when they discuss mini notebooks and which one you should buy. Remember to bring your questions and ask them in the chat room on the side of the video -- Shawn and Jes will interact with the audience throughout the show. See you there!

Posted On: October 23, 2008 at 9:41 AM PDT

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A while ago (a year?) I wrote about my attempts to get an IPv6 address block and start using IPv6. My carrier, Verizon, did not seem to know what I was talking about.

Adjust the Fan Speed on Your NVidia Graphics Card

If you've got an NVidia graphics card and it has a fan that sounds like a jet engine, or, if as in my case your fan starts at full speed when the computer boots but then turns off after 20 seconds or so, you need nvclock.

Posted On: October 22, 2008 at 3:24 PM PDT

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