Category Archives: How-To

What NOT to do with your old computers

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Peter Loshin

Why throw away your old obsolete PCs when you can re-purpose them as a file/print server, firewall or some other single-purpose appliance? People have been doing this forever–at least since about 1988, when those old dual-floppy IBM 5150 PCs started … Continue reading →

Posted in Command Line, How-To, Upgrades | Leave a comment

Encryption with Ubuntu, Two Looks

Posted on January 22, 2008 by Peter Loshin

There are tons of reasons to use encryption on your computers, especially if you store sensitive information on them. But I won’t go into that stuff right now. I will point you to a couple of how-to pages that explain … Continue reading →

Posted in How-To, Security/Cryptography, Ubuntu Linux | Leave a comment

Power user tips for Firefox

Posted on January 4, 2008 by Peter Loshin

I do a lot of websurfing, so when I see a headline like this one, Five Firefox Tips You May Not Know About, I’m always skeptical. But in this case, there actually were five tips that I didn’t really know … Continue reading →

Posted in Firefox, How-To, How-to Websites | Leave a comment

Snapshot backups in Ubuntu, with Timevault

Posted on January 2, 2008 by Peter Loshin

Here’s a good one from HowtoForge: Creating Snapshot Backups Of Your Desktop With Timevault On Ubuntu 7.10. From the TimeVault UbuntuWiki entry: TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of … Continue reading →

Posted in Backup, How-To, Ubuntu Linux | Leave a comment

Doing DVDs with Linux

Posted on December 26, 2007 by Peter Loshin

DVDs are kind of a problem, sometimes, in Linux because DVD players are supposed to be "licensed" to "decrypt" the "encryption" that most DVDs use for "protection". All those quotation marks are meant to signify that DVD "encryption" is really … Continue reading →

Posted in How-To, Multimedia, Ubuntu Linux | Leave a comment

More about swap partitions…

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Peter Loshin

Swap space is one of those things that you’ve never heard of if you use WIndows or OS X, but that you’ll hear about the first time you try to install Linux. There are two approaches to swap space: simple … Continue reading →

Posted in How-To, Linux Tech Talk, Performance Tuning | Leave a comment

Keeping the world cleaner with Linux

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Peter Loshin

 Here’s yet another reason that Linux makes more sense: according to CNN, Switching from a Windows-operated computer to a Linux-operated one could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50%. It’s just nicer–and cheaper–to keep older computers working, rather than have to … Continue reading →

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Ever Wondered about the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy?

Posted on November 12, 2007 by Peter Loshin

The Linux filesystem hierarchy (link to Wikipedia/Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) can be confusing: just what is all that stuff, and how does it work? Making things even more confusing are the slight (or not so slight) variations in the hierarchy that … Continue reading →

Posted in How-To, Linux Tech Talk, Utilities | Leave a comment

Red Hat Magazine

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Peter Loshin

Who better to have a great Linux/open source software oriented web magazine than Red Hat: it’s called Red Hat Magazine and it’s got some pretty good articles and news items. Not a super-high volume site, the better to keep up … Continue reading →

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How to Install Ubuntu, With More of What You Want

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Peter Loshin

Writing an article about "how to install Linux" is easy, because the basic installation of just about every Linux distribution I’ve ever seen is easy: choose your language, keyboard, time zone, choose the disk/partition to install it on, choose your … Continue reading →

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