Category: Linux

Linux is my primary operating system. I used it on the servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and even mobile phones since approximately 1997. I’ve tried a number of distributions over the years, and even created a couple myself. I still look around sometimes to see what others are up to. But most of my machines are running some sort of Red Hat – either a quick and easy Fedora Linux, or a stable and secure Red Hat Enterprise Server, or a cheaper CentOS alternative.

And while by now I am very comfortable in the Linux environment (both graphical and command line), I still discover a lot of new and interesting things about it. When I come across something worthy, I usually share it with the rest of the Open Software world, using this category.

Google services via command line

I don’t know how I missed the announcement and why there is no noise around this release, but here it goes.  GoogleCL is a tool that you use from the command line to access Google web services.  I just installed it on my Fedora 13 laptop and its awesome!

Here is what you need to do to intall

$ sudo yum install python-gdata
$ wget http://googlecl.googlecode.com/files/googlecl-0.9.7.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf googlecl-0.9.7.tar.gz
$ cd googlecl-0.9.7
$ sudo python setup.py install

Here are some of the things that you can do.  And I guess more is coming shortly.

The first time you’ll connect to any of the Google web services using this tool, you’ll need to authenticate and grant access to the application.  After that – it’s all pure honey.

Missing main menu bar in Gnome applications

I had this problem for quite some time now.  It’s been haunting me from computer to computer and from account to account.   I went through all configuration options I could find.  I started my Gnome and GTK profiles from scratch a few times.  And nothing seemed to help.  I even abandoned Gnome over this and switched to KDE and other desktop managers for some time – that’s how annoying it was.  And the worst thing, whenever I tried to Google for a solution – a totally different problem was coming up in the search results.

The problem was that in all of my Gnome applications main menu was missing.  The menu bar, which has File, Edit, View, Help, and such – never showed up.  Be that a video player or GnuCash or anything else.   Today I finally found a solution to this major annoyance.  Just in case the original will disappear, I quote for generations to come:

The problem was not in the .gnome or .gtk sub-directories, as I suspected.  Instead two packages installed were the problem.  gnome-globalmenu-common    and   gnome-applet-globalmenu were the culprits. There are two options if these are installed.  The first is to use the applet on one of the Gnome panels either top or bottom of hte screen.  This interesting applet will insert the ‘missing’ menu bar from the currently focused application into the bar the applet is a part of.  This will be VERY handy on the netbook, where real estate is an issue. The other option is to remove them.

Thank you, Daniel and mutk from #fedora IRC channel.  You sirs have saved my sanity.

To all those who complain of Linux being hard to use

Being a Linux-only user for many years now, I don’t even keep up on the never-ending flame wars of Windows vs. Linux.  But sometimes a sentence or a paragraph would catch my attention in a totally unrelated article.  Here is something that I think a lot of people will find surprising:

There’s an awful lot to be said about the simplicity and usefulness of installing software on Mac or Linux. In the latter case, you simply drag a file to your Applications folder, and you’re done. Linux package managers do all the heavy lifting without any user intervention. If a Linux program requires additional libraries, the package manager finds them and installs them automatically. In both instances, I can install new applications in a fraction of the time it takes to install something on Windows.

Read the rest of the article to put the quote in context.  Read comments to the Slashdot story too.

Copy SSH key to remote machine

Those of us who use secure shell (SSH) for logging in to remote machines, already know about key authentication, which is so much easier and sometimes more secure than password authentication.  We also know that in order to make it work you need to:

  • generate a pair of keys with ssh-keygen command
  • copy public key from the local machine to authorized_keys file on the remote machine
  • fix the permissions of the .ssh/ folder and authorized_keys file on the remote machine

And that’s just what we have been doing.  Or at least me.  Today, after approximately 10 years of using secure shell, I’ve learned that there is a ssh-copy-id command, which will automatically add your current public key to a remote machine’s authorized_keys file and arrange for correct permissions.   Wow!

Thanks to @commandlinefu and top 10 one-liners blog post.

Lenovo G550 laptop

A couple of days ago I bought two Lenovo G550 laptops – one for me, one for my wife.  After spending a day browsing all the online shops and driving around all computer outlets in the city, I decided that this is the best option available.

Specifications: Dual-core 2Ghz Intel CPU, 15.6 inch glossy screen (WXGA, maximum resolution 1366×768), 4 GB of RAM, 250 GB hard disk, a bunch of USB ports, HDMI out, DVD writer, WiFi, and all the standard stuff, weighting at around 2.7 kilograms. Battery life is around 4 hours. Price: 500 EUR + 15% VAT = 575 EUR.

Both machines are running Linux (Fedora 12) already, even though they were coming with some Windows pre-installed.  I wouldn’t know which one since I haven’t even booted into that once.  Fedora Linux installation was straight-forward and everything worked, except for the wireless networking, which needs an extra step to enable those Broadcom drivers.  Gladly, the required step is widely covered in the blogosphere. – basically, enable RPM Fusion yum repository, install kmod-wl package, and reboot your machine.

Everything is working find and I really enjoy the laptop, except for a few things that annoy me with its keyboard.  The layout is somewhat weird.  First of all, I am not used to having a number pad on a laptop keyboard.  But that’s OK – if there is space, then why not, right?  Well, there is space, but I think it would have been utilized better for Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys.  As they are now, PgUp and PgDn are located next to navigation arrow keys and Home/End keys are only accessible through a Fn key, which is really strange.  On top of that, Insert and Delete keys are in a different part of the keyboard – on top of the Backspace key.  And while I don’t use Caps Lock all that often, some people will notice that Caps Lock indicator is missing, as well as NumLock and ScrollLock.  What can I say?  That’s one weird keyboard layout.

Other than that though there is nothing that I can complain about.  The machine is nice and cool and pleasant to use.  My wife seems to enjoy it as well.