MYNITOR.COM

There are a wide range of remote desktop applications that are available that can be used to connect to Windows environment but there aren’t too many that can be used to remote desktop from Linux to Linux or Windows to Linux. With this I mean, getting entire desktop of remote Linux environment on your local workstation.

Most people who are used to a Unix-style environment know that a machine can be reached over the network at the shell level using utilities like telnet or ssh. And some people realize that X Windows output can be redirected back to the client workstation. But many people don’t realize that it is easy to use an entire desktop over the network. There are a several of open source applications that can be used to achieve this.

1)  VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a remote display system which allows the user to view the desktop of a remote machine anywhere on the internet. It can also be directed through SSH for security.

Basically you install VNC server on the server and install client on your local PC. Setup is extremely easy and server is very stable. On client side, you can set the resolution and connect to IP of VNC server. It can be a bit slow compared to Windows remote desktop and also has the tendency to take more time refreshing over low-bandwidth links. All in all VNC is an amazing piece of free software that gets the job done.

There is RealVNC , TightVNC and UltraVNC. Each has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Most popular one is RealVNC but if you’re upto it, experiment with all three and choose the one that works for you best. By default, communication between client and server is in clear text on port 5900. However, you can easily route all traffic via SSH tunnel. Here is a quick way of setting it up if you have access to command line shell:

ssh -ND 5900 <user>@remote.server.com

When you get prompted, enter your password. Pop open VNC client and connect to ‘localhost’. This’ll route your connection to VNC server on remote machine.

You can download VNC from:

• http://www.realvnc.com/download.html
• http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
• http://www.uvnc.com/

2)  Then there is FreeNX. FreeNX is a system that allows you to access your desktop from another machine over the internet. You can use this to login graphically to your desktop from a remote location. One example of its use would be to have a FreeNX server set up on your home computer, and graphically logging in to the home computer from your work computer, using a FreeNX client. It provides near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links.

FreeNX can be configured to run via SSH without any tunneling. It binds to your existing SSH install. Instead of guiding you through the installation of FreeNX in this article, you can visit the following URLs that’ll guide you through the installation on Ubuntu:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=97277&highlight=freenx
• http://freenx.berlios.de/ (FreeNX homepage)

3) The third free application is 2X Terminal Server for Linux. 2X TerminalServer for Linux is an Open Source project, licensed under the GPL and is free of charge. As far as performance goes, NoMachine’s technology is on par with Windows’ own Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) suite, better than VNC. Both X2 and FreeNX is based on NoMachine technology.

Here are some quick links if you’re interested in using this software:

• Download at http://www.2x.com/terminalserver/download.htm
• Forum is at http://www.2x.com/forums

4) Then there is is XDMCP. The X Display Manager Control Protocol uses UDP port 177. Compared to the list above, it’s not as easy to setup for remote desktop but it’s the original way of doing this on Linux. You can get setup instructions and other tips in the following URL:

• http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/intro.html

5) CygwinX. A complete Linux emulation on Windows. You’ll find every tool and app that you have on Linux on Cygwin.

• Get it from http://www.cygwin.com/

6) XRDP. RDP server that runs on Linux, thus allowing you to use Windows Remote Desktop Client or rdesktop to connect.

• Get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xrdp/

7) x2vnc – great little utility that allows you to tie a linux and windows (or anything that can run the vncserver) together with a ingle keyboard/mouse, avoiding the need for a switcher box. Mousing cross screens transparently switches between machines, and cut and aste works.

• Get it from http://fredrik.hubbe.net/x2vnc.html

8 ) Xming – t’s a great and lightweight implementation of X11 for Windows that allows you to connect to a Linux box.

• You can read about it at http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Xming

9) KDE Desktop Sharing (formerly krfb) – part of KDE since version 3.1. It is located in the kdenetwork package. If your distribution splits the KDE applications into separate packets, you may find the client as ‘krdc’ and the server as ‘krfb’. Also uses VNC technology.

10) X-Win32 - Top rated PC X server solutions for Windows PCs connecting to remote Unix and Linux host systems. Works well over SSH.

• Get it from http://www.starnet.com/products/xwin32/

11) Single Click UltraVNC – In case you would like to remote control without any software installed on the target computer you need UltraVNC SC. The user on the to be controlled computer needs to simply click on a web page and remote controlling begins.

• Get it from here http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/addons/singleclick.html

12) CrossLoop – CrossLoop is a FREE secure screen sharing utility designed for people of all technical skill levels. CrossLoop extends the boundaries of VNC’s traditional screen sharing by enabling non-technical users to get connected from anywhere on the Internet in seconds without changing any firewall or router settings.

• Get it from http://www.crossloop.com/

13) Thinstation – Although not a remote desktop app but worth mentioning here. Thin client linux distro for terminals using std. x86 hw. It can boot from network, pxe, syslinux,loadlin, CD, floppy or flash-disk and connect to servers using VNC, RDP, XDM, SSH and etc.

• Get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinstation

14) rdesktop - an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services, capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user’s NT desktop. rdesktop currently runs on most UNIX based platforms with the X Window System, and other ports should be fairly straightforward.

• Download from: http://www.rdesktop.org/

While you’re at it, get grdesktop from (http://www.nongnu.org/grdesktop/). It is a GNOME frontend, for rdesktop. It can save several connections (including their options), and browse the network for available terminal servers.

15) ssh -X – You can check out this great article written by a slashdot user sometime ago.

• Read it here http://slashdot.org/~Trolling4Dollars/journal/69740

Windows to Mac / Mac to Windows

1) RDP Client for Mac allows you to connect to a Windows-based computer and work with programs and files on that computer from your Macintosh computer.

• Download it here

2) OSXVnc – Vine Server is a full featured VNC server for Mac OS X providing remote access to the GUI, keyboard and mouse using Vine Viewer or any other VNC client.

• Download it from http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine/server/vineosx/index.html

3) Chicken of the VNC – A VNC client allows one to display and interact with a remote computer screen. In other words, you can use Chicken of the VNC to interact with a remote computer as though it’s right next to you.

• Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

Unfortunately I was not able to find too many available to connect to Mac from Windows other than VNC. I think Windows need to support RDP into Mac. Many people would benefit from this.

If I am missing anything from the list, please let me know.

Tiny Linux Command Reference
ls	List files/directories in a directory
cat <filename>	Read a file.
cp	Copy a file
mv	Move a file
rm	Delete a file
chmod	Changes file access permissions
chown	Changes file ownership
grep	Looks for patterns in files
ln	Create’s “links” between files and directories
wc	Word count
find	Find files and directories.
locate	Locate a file name/directory
file <filename>	Guess type of file
touch	Create an empty file
od	View binary files and data
pwd	Print working directory
hostname	Print name of localhost
whoami	Print login name
id	Print user id
date	Print or change date on system
time <command>	Determine the amount of time it takes for a process to complete
who	Check who is logged on the system
last	Show users last logged-in
uptime	Check system uptime as well as load average details
ps	List process run by user
ps auxw	List all the process on the system
top	Keep listing currently running processes
uname -a	Info about your local server
lsmod	Show the kernel modules currently loaded
dmesg	Print kernel messages
tail	Similar to cat, but only reads the end of the file
head	Similar to tail, but only reads the top of the file
more	Llike cat, but opens the file one screen at a time rather than all at once
less	Like more, but less. (LOL *BURP*)
netstat	Shows all current network connections.
ifconfig	Display info on the network interfaces
ping	Sends test packets to a specified server
nslookup	Lookup a host/domain.
dig	Similar to nslookup.
sudo	You know, sudo.
kill	terminate a system process
killall	Kill program(s) by name
du	Shows disk usage.
free	Memory info
man	Display the contents of the system manual pages
reboot	Reboot the machine.
tar	Creating and Extracting .tar files
gzip	Compress in gzip
zip	Compress in zip
unzip	Uncompress a zip file
compress	Compress files .Z
uncompress	Uncompress .Z files
bzip2	Compress files in bzip2 forma

Also check out The Ultimate Linux Reference Guide for Newbies

I came across this neat application called Userful Desktop Multiplier. It is a virtualized X server that turns one computer into ten “workstations” by using extra video cards, keyboards, and monitors. This approach offers significantly higher performance and lower hardware costs than Thin Client or LTSP.

It installs on most popular Linux distributions (Red Hat, Novell/SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Xandros, Linspire, Ubuntu, etc.). It supports USB touch screens (Elotouch, Microtouch), card-swipes, barcode scanners, as well as all virtually all video cards supported by X. It features easy setup and graphical configuration. Download it from here.

PHP is great for writing quick dynamic stuff for your website. Just a couple of lines of code can be written in 2 mins to insert or retrieve data from db. But with ease there is also some pain… the downside is that each request for a dynamic page can trigger multiple db queries, processing of output, and finally formatting to display on browser. This process can eventually be slow on larger sites or slower servers.

In this article, we’ve put together the list of caching plugins and techniques which can be used to improve your website performance.

1. Caching output in PHP – Caching of output in PHP is made easier by the use of the output buffering functions built in to PHP 4 and above.
2. PHP Caching to Speed up Dynamically Generated Sites – Instead of regenerating the page every time, the scripts running this site generate it the first time they’re asked to, then store a copy of what they send back to your browser. The next time a visitor requests the same page, the script will know it’d already generated one recently, and simply send that to the browser without all the hassle of re-running database queries or searches.
3. Alternative PHP Cache – A free and open opcode cache for PHP. It was conceived of to provide a free, open, and robust framework for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code.
4. PHP-Cache-Kit – Dramatically speed up your site with this easy-to-use PHP caching kit. A slim little PHP class which allow you to quickly and easily implement module-level caching into your PHP projects.
5. Unearth PHP Cache Engine – A flexible, easy-to-use system for caching PHP pages. It is really intended to cache a series of parts of a single page independently, each with its own refresh requirements. Caching of this sort can dramatically decrease page rendering time.
6. PHP Cache Class – A PHP class that caches output generated by PHP files and uses the cached version instead of generating the content again and again. Cache files expire after a specified amount of time.
7. PHP Accelerator – A plugin PHP Zend engine extension that provides a PHP script cache and is capable of delivering a substantial acceleration of PHP scripts without requiring any script changes, loss of dynamic content, or other application compromises.
8. gCache – A PHP class that can be used to capture and cache Web page content. It can store cached content in files of a given directory.
9. Skycache – A free, lightweight, and fast page cache for PHP 4 and PHP 5. Once a dynamic page has been computed, it is stored in a page cache. If a query for the same URL is made afterwards, the content is immediately served from the cache instead of processing the script again. The end result is a significant speedup and a slightly reduced server load.
10. eAccelerator – A further development of the mmcache PHP accelerator and encoder. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in a compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated.
11. PHP FastFileCache – Caches output from dynamic PHP scripts, and stores them in files for fast retrieval under high server load. It supports a global timeout setting for maximum cache age, as well as per-file timeout overrides. It also implements file locking, to prevent data corruption and unnecessary processing.
12. CacheIt – A PHP class designed to facilitate caching.
13. Turck MMCache for PHP – A free PHP accelerator, optimizer, encoder, and dynamic content cache. It increases performance of PHP scripts by caching them in a compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated.
14. TinyButStrong – A template class for PHP that allows you to generate HTML pages using MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite in native, and any other databases.
15. Boost website performance in 5 seconds! – Not exactly caching but simple enough to implement a quick fix.

Did we miss something? Please let us know in the comment area.

A large percentage of small to medium sized websites depend on Mysql server to support their db infrastructure. Working with it is as easy is saying it and for some reason there are numerous web and non-web administration software written specifically to manage a Mysql server and sites running on it. This article lists quite a few of them which you may find useful.

1. NG-Admin – designed for the content management of MySQL databases. It allows the user to browse, add, edit, and delete data. It is somewhat similar to phpMyAdmin, but specializes in editing the content of Web sites, not the database structures. Its features are very easy to use and highly tunable.
2. PHP Mini SQL Admin – a light, standalone script for accessing MySQL databases. It is intended for Web developers.
3. FlashMyAdmin - Flash-based MySQL administration project. It features multiple database management, import/export (SQL, XML, CSV), internationalization, and help. It also allows video, audio, images, and movieclip files to be shown directly within the interface.
4. phpMyAdmin - a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. It can create, rename, and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, create dumps of tables and databases, export/import CSV data and administrate one single database and multiple MySQL servers.
5. jspMyAdmin – a clone of the very popular phpMyAdmin, but written in JSP. It provides MySQL database administration over the Web.
6. RUIDB – a simple tool for working with MySQL using a Web browser. It was made to enable users with little knowledge of MySQL to add/edit/delete/view table rows. It is also a nice tool for admins or Web site authors.
7. KooDB – a MySQL database administration frontend that features an intuitive interface. It aims to give substantial control over MySQL without adding all the complicated options of phpMyAdmin.
8. MySQL Administrator – a powerful visual administration console for MySQL, which allows the user to easily administer their MySQL environment, and gain better visibility of how their databases are operating. It is available with native GUI interfaces for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

There are others but who cares once you get used to administration via command line, nothing comes even close to beating it.

In this article, we’ve put together the top 101 most powerful links of CSS tips, tutorials and examples which most recently has gained recognition.

Many people use CSS but probably aren’t using it to it’s best capability. The list below we’ll help find over one hundred and one different ways to get you to take advantage of CSS to serve your purpose.

Most Popular CSS Links

1. CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
2. 25 Killer Code Snippets Every Good Web Designer Should See
3. 30 Dark Designs You Should’ve Seen
4. 50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006
5. CSS Live — Watch a page come together
6. JavaScript + CSS = Nice Picture Display
7. 100% CSS Rounded Corners WITH anti-aliasing. No images. No JavaScript.
8. The (only) Ten Things to Know About CSS
9. TOP 69 CSS Menus with Tutorials and Downloads
10. The RIGHT way to convert your Photoshop design to XHTML and CSS Layout
11. 15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use (but perhaps should)
12. 71 CSS Menus for free
13. A Handy Little CSS Cheat Sheet
14. 12 Useful CSS Templates
15. CSS tips and tricks!
16. Free Design Templates
17. 12 Basic CSS Templates
18. Awesome: Pure CSS Image Gallery
19. CSS-Based Forms, Modern Solutions
20. Tutorials Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL and Much More
21. Howto: Square Corners with CSS
22. 25 Killer Code Snippets every Good Designer Should See
23. Tableless forms
24. A Cool CSS Effect to Dim the Screen (Dashboard Style)
25. Top 10 CSS image gallery tutorials
26. CSS Speech Bubbles
27. CSS Basics
28. 10 CSS Tips from a Professional CSS Architect
29. Over 100 CSS demos
30. Rounded corners without images
31. Holy Grail of CSS layouts
32. More Rounded Corners with CSS
33. COMPLETE Tutorial on CSS & HTML – Beginning up to Expert
34. CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit
35. CSS Frames
36. CSS Trick: Using Fewer Images
37. Clean CSS
38. Time Sensitive CSS Switcher
39. Handy CSS layout generator for web developers
40. CSS Library Launched
41. List of CSS Tools
42. Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps
43. Style your forms with CSS
44. CSS Optimization: Make your site load faster for free
45. CSSPlay.co.uk | tons of cascading style sheet ideas
46. How to create a StyleGuide for your HTML & CSS
47. Most Useful CSS Properties with Examples
48. Top 10 CSS Tutorials
49. Learn HTML or CSS fast
50. CSS Mastery: Fixed-Width, Liquid, and Elastic Layouts and Faux Columns
51. A great way to preload images on your site with CSS
52. Top Ten CSS Gallery/Showcase Websites
53. Over One Hundred page layouts, One CSS File
54. CSS: Getting Into Good Coding Habits
55. CSS Galleries
56. 10 CSS Tips to Make Your Life Easier
57. CSS-Based Navigation Menus: Modern Solutions
58. The only CSS layout you need
59. 20+ CSS Menus
60. CSS Techniques Roundup – 20 CSS Tips & Tricks
61. 5 Worthy CSS Tips
62. CSS Layout Tutorial for beginners
63. Quick ‘n easy CSS borders/shadows
64. Nice CSS How-To and Template site
65. How to Nail a Sexy Layout
66. Sample CSS Page Layouts
67. CSS SuperDouche
68. 5 Steps to CSS Heaven
69. 12 CSS Articles/Tricks of 2005
70. CSS Print Stylesheet Tips and Tricks
71. css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
72. Web Developer’s Handbook | CSS, Web Development
73. CSS Beauty | CSS Design Showcase
74. CSS Vault » The Web’s CSS Site
75. Cascading Style Sheets
76. Dynamic Drive CSS Library- Practical CSS codes and examples
77. Layout Gala: a collection of 40 CSS layouts
78. CSS Cheat Sheet
79. CSS Import™ | The CSS Gallery
80. CSS Techniques Roundup – 20 CSS Tips and Tricks
81. Clean CSS – A Resource for Web Designers – Optmize and Format your CSS
82. centricle : css filters (css hacks)
83. CSS Basics – Making Cascading Style Sheets Easy to Understand
84. 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding | Smashing Magazine
85. CSS Remix: CSS-Based Website Gallery
86. intensivstation :: CSS Templates :: Templates
87. HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, Articles and News
88. CSS Mania
89. 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
90. Spiffy Corners – Making anti-aliased rounded corners with CSS
91. CSS Showcase | CSS Navigation Menus, Tabs and CSS Navigation Techniques
92. CSS Drive- Categorized CSS gallery and examples
93. How to make sexy buttons with CSS
94. Great CSS Editors for Linux
95. CSS Debugging Tools and Tricks
96. Free CSS Editors
97. CSS, Accessibility and Standards Links
98. Behaviour : Using CSS selectors to apply Javascript behaviours
99. 12 Basic Free CSS Templates – 12 Starting points for your CSS based website
100. Dynamic Drive CSS Layouts- Tableless, CSS based templates
101. All CSS Properties Listed Alphabetically

…

In this article, we’ve put together a short list of torrent tools available to make your torrenting experience more interesting.

1. Torrent Episode Downloader – a smart tool for using BitTorrent to automatically download the newest episodes of TV shows that you choose. It has built-in support for “24″, “Lost”, “The Simpsons”, “South Park”, and many more. You can also define new shows to download. It checks feeds from TorrentReactor, Mininova, TVRSS, The PirateBay, Mr. Twig, Isohunt, and MyBittorrent for new episodes of TV shows.
2. Torrent Pouncer – an automatic torrent downloader for periodic releases of TV shows, series, and similar. Contrary to popular RSS-based torrent downloaders, it searches various torrent search engines like Mininova and Pirate Bay. For user convenience, it keeps databases of downloaded torrents and associates them with shows and season and episode numbers.
3. TorrentSniff – Reports current status information on a BitTorrent torrent including what files it contains and the current number of seeds (machines sharing the complete torrent) and leeches (machines still downloading the torrent). It is useful for comparing multiple potential sources of a file to find the best-seeded torrent.
4. Torrent Swapper – A sociable peer to peer file-sharing client based on the BitTorrent protocol. It has a basic understanding of human friendships, of user tastes in content, and of Internet connectivity between users. Torrent Swapper boasts unique features like Amazon-like recommendations to get interesting files, doubling the download speed by using the upload capacity of friends, real-time P2P file sharing with P2P video streaming, and showing the locations of seeders and leechers of the same content with city-level accuracy on a world map.
5. Bitflu – BitTorrent client designed to run non-stop as a daemon. It does not provide a graphical interface, but offers a telnet interface and can handle multiple torrent downloads

If you’re thinking of switching to Ubuntu from Windows, don’t waste your time thinking too much. Switch to Ubuntu now and you’ll never think about going back. Windows maybe more popular but Linux isn’t too far behind and Ubuntu distro is one of the main reasons.

Ubuntu is the simplest, easiest, and a very stable Linux distribution to switch to from Windows.  This is an older article I had written sometime ago on my other blog and since that domain got expired, I’ve been bringing over my older articles over to this one.

The 101 list below has gained recognition as very helpful tutorials. Everyone can benefit from it so for this reason we’ve compiled all our favorites into one page.

1. Official Ubuntu Home Page
2. Official Ubuntu Forums
3. Official Ubuntu Guide
4. Wubuntu – Ubuntu Web Edition
5. Windows to Ubuntu Transition Guide
6. 10 Advantages of Ubuntu over Vista
7. 30 Days with Ubuntu Linux
8. 60 Days With Ubuntu
9. Installing Ubuntu Linux!
10. FREE Linux Books online
11. The Ultimate Linux Reference Guide for Newbies
12. Top 10 Linux commands for Absolute Newbies
13. The Ultimate Linux Network Reference Guide for Newbies
14. Install and run Ubuntu without disturbing Windows
15. Basics to Linux Explained
16. Windows Desktop Software and The Linux Alternatives
17. The best reason yet to use Ubuntu
18. How to install Anything in Ubuntu!
    
19. How to Build Triple Boot (XP, Vista, Ubuntu) with single Boot Screen
20. Windows Based Ubuntu Installer – Screenshots and demo
21. Instlux: Install Linux while still in Windows!
22. Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop — Ubuntu Linux
23. Ten tips for new Ubuntu users
24. 13 Must Do things on new Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installation
25. Hack Attack: Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks
26. How To Set Up A Ubuntu/Debian LAMP Server
27. The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn
28. The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu Studio 7.04
29. The Perfect Setup – Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04)
30. How To Install Internet Explorer On Ubuntu
31. Change the menu bar and main menu logos in Ubuntu
32. How To Compile A Kernel – The Ubuntu Way
33. How to Configure an $80 File Server in 45 Minutes
34. Installing Popular Applications On Your Ubuntu Desktop With Automatix2
35. Bandwidth Monitoring Tools for Ubuntu Users
36. Running Internet Explorer in Ubuntu Linux
37. How To Use NTFS Drives/Partitions Under Ubuntu
38. Installing The Native Linux Flash Player 9 On Ubuntu
39. Mount a Remote Folder using SSH on Ubuntu
40. Clone Your Ubuntu installation
41. Speed Up Firefox web browser
42. Install Popular Applications in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Using Automatix2
43. How to Install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in Ubuntu
44. How to Install Beryl with latest nvidia drivers in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
45. How To Install VMware Server On Ubuntu 7.04
46. DNS server Setup using bind in Ubuntu
47. NFS Server and Client Configuration in Ubuntu
48. Dual Monitors with NVidia in Ubuntu
49. Howto Set Flickr images as Ubuntu desktop wallpaper
50. Sharing Internet Connection in Ubuntu
51. 10 must have programs for a new Ubuntu user
52. 10 minutes to run every Windows app on your Ubuntu desktop
53. How-To: Ubuntu Media Server
54. How-to: Cheap Ubuntu Media Server Part 2
55. HOWTO Encrypt CD/DVDs in Ubuntu
56. How-to: Installing Ubuntu Linux on a usb pendrive
57. Install KDE Desktop in Ubuntu
58. Set Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu
59. Official Ubuntu Linux Desktop Guide
60. 100+ Ubuntu Tutorials and Growing Fast!
61. Ubuntu and wireless – now better than Windows!
62. LifeHacker Top 10 Ubuntu applications
63. Running OSX and Windows XP/Vista on Ubuntu
64. Awesome Ubuntu Apps you might not know about
65. Completely mod Ubuntu to look like OS X
66. Cracking WEP with Ubuntu
67. 6 Best Ubuntu Tweaks out there
68. 100 Useful Ubuntu Links – Everything you could ever need!
69. Ultimate Ubuntu performance tweaking guide
70. Transform Your Ubuntu’s Look
71. Ubuntu tricks – how to mount your WinXP partition, make it read/writabable
72. HOWTO: Ubuntu Customization Guide Part I
73. Cleaning up a Ubuntu GNU/Linux system
74. Super Fast Internet for Ubuntu
75. Speed up the Internet in Ubuntu
76. How-to: Theming your Ubuntu desktop
77. 11 Things You Haven’t Seen Yet in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
78. 300+ Easily Installed Free Fonts for Ubuntu
79. Ubuntu Performance Guides
80. Ubuntu Tutorials
81. 10 most popular Ubuntu sites on the net
82. Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Performance Guide
83. Set-up a Ubuntu webcam security system
84. Instructions to install NTFS-3G in Ubuntu Dapper
85. How to achieve native NTFS write support under Linux
86. Hacking Ubuntu to Improve Performance
87. Ubuntu and Your iPod…
88. How to Access Your Ubuntu Remotely
89. How to make OpenOffice run faster in Ubuntu
90. Dual Monitors HOWTO
91. DvdShrink For Linux – How To Install On Ubuntu
92. 13 Applications to Install on Ubuntu/Linux running on Slow Computer
93. How to Setup Your ubuntu Computer to be a Router
94. Improve performance in Ubuntu
95. How to gracefully reboot your Ubuntu/Debian system if all else fails
96. Good Ubuntu Networking Tutorial for Beginners and advanced users
97. Top 10 Ubuntu Tips
98. Scheduling for Absolute Beginners
99. Building a Linux home media center
100. Ubuntu Customization Kit
101. Remote Desktop for Linux

There is so much more. If you’re new to Linux and Ubuntu, go with the first 20 items to get you up to speed.

Bash is probably the easiest and most user friendly shell that many beginners start up with.  Many veteran UNIX guys such as myself still use bash because it makes moving around a unix system and writing scripts effortless for some reason. I also like the history and command completion of bash and in my opinion compare to other shells, majority of the Linux users love bash too.

Recently I came across bash programmable completion which basically enhances command completion feature of bash even more.  “Imagine typing ssh [Tab] and being able to complete on hosts from your ~/.ssh/known_hosts files. Or typing man 3 str [Tab] and getting a list of all string handling functions in the UNIX manual. mount system: [Tab] would complete on all exported file-systemtis from the host called system, while make [Tab] would complete on all targets in Makefile.”

You can download it here and read more about loads of other cool features it comes with.

There are so many different tools available for network troubleshooting such as tcpdump. However, in this article, I’ll discuss something that’s easy to learn but powerful enough to troubleshoot real-time traffic in and out of your Linux server.

ngrep uses the libpcap library, and can also take hexadecimal expressions for which to capture network traffic. Before installing, make sure you have the libpcap library and of course ngrep. You can run ngrep only as root and running without any option, it will listen to all traffic on the current interface.

Below are some examples:

# ngrep '' udp

- Print packets matching a particular protocol, in this case only UDP. You can exchange udp to tcp to grap tcp data.

# ngrep '' port 53

- Shows all DNS requests

# ngrep 'SSH' port 22

- Displays all connections to port 22

# ngrep 'user' port 110

- Grabs pop info on ‘user’.

# ngrep digg.com port 80

- With this command running in bg, you can tell which user is access digg.com as well as if digg.com is connecting to your server.  This becomes handy if for example for large hosting site.  If one of the sites on your server is getting is under digg effect, instead of going through every site’s access_log, this short-cut will lead you to the culprit in no time.

# ngrep -qd eth1 'www' tcp port 80

- Look only at the tcp packets of port 80 via interface eth1 for anything matching ‘www’.

# ngrep -iq 'rcpt to|mail from' tcp port 25

- With the above command, you can monitor current email transactions and print the addresses.

# ngrep -q -t port 21

- The above command captures all traffic to the FTP server (port 21).

# ngrep -t '^(GET|POST) ' 'src host 192.168.136.55 and tcp and dst port 80'

- Displays all outgoing web requests from 192.168.136.55.

# ngrep -t 'USER' 'tcp and port 110'

- Displays in clear text, who is logging in to their pop accounts.

# ngrep -iq 'user-agent' tcp port 80

- Displays the browser type the client host is running.

And finally doing a man ngrep and ngrep –help provide much more options and explanations on best ways to use ngrep.  Ngrep is a great tool but it has it’s limitations which is why tools like tcpdump and others come into the picture to help out.