• Difficulty: Easy
• Application: KStars

You may already have played with KStars, but how about creating a KStars backdrop image that’s updated every time you start up?

KStars can be run with the –dump switch, which dumps out an image from your startup settings, but doesn’t load the GUI at all. You can create a script to run this and generate a desktop image, which will change every day (or you can just use this method to generate images).

Run KStars like this:

kstars --dump --width 1024 --height 768 --filename = ~/kstarsback.png

You can add this to a script in your ~/.kde/Autostart folder to be run at startup. Find the file in Konqueror, drag it to the desktop and select ‘Set as wallpaper’ to use it as a randomly generated backdrop.

Open an SVG directly

• Difficulty: Easy
• Application: Inkscape

You can run Inkscape from a shell and immediately edit a graphic directly from a URL. Just type:

inkscape http://www.somehost.com/graphic.svg

Remember to save it as something else though!

Editing without an editor

• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Application: Various

Very long files are often hard to manipulate with a text editor. If you need to do it regularly, chances are you’ll find it much faster to use some handy command-line tools instead, like in the following examples.

To print columns eg 1 and 3 from a file file1 into file2, we can use awk:

awk '{print $1, $3}' file1 > file2

To output only characters from column 8 to column 15 of file1, we can use cut:

cut -c 8-15 file1 > file2

To replace the word word1 with the word word2 in the file file1, we can use the sed command:

sed "s/word1/word2/g" file1 > file2

This is often a quicker way to get results than even opening a text editor.

Backup selected files only

• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Application: tar

Want to use tar to backup only certain files in a directory? Then you’ll want to use the -T flag as follows. First, create a file with the file you want to backup:

cat >> /etc/backup.conf
# /etc/passwd
# /etc/shadow
# /etc/yp.conf
# /etc/sysctl.conf
EOF

Then run tar with the -T flag pointing to the file just created:

tar -cjf bck-etc-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.tar.bz2 -T /etc/backup.conf

Now you have your backup.

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On this page we will explain how to install Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source. We assume you have some Linux knowledge. We will start with Counter-Strike: Source.

Installing Counter-Strike: Source (SRCDS)

First, lets create a directory where we will run the hldsupdatetool, run the following command:

mkdir srcds

Now we switch to the srcdswe just created and download the hldsupdatetool.bin

cd srcds wget http://www.cstrike-planet.com/dls/hldsupdatetool.bin

If all goes well you should now have the hldsupdatetool.bin in the srcds directory. Now we change the permission of hldsupdatetool.bin so we can execute it and extract the contents from hldsupdatetool.bin

chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin ./hldsupdatetool.bin

Note: after you run ./hldsupdatetool.bin you will get a prompt to agree with the terms and conditions, simply type yes and hit enter.

If all goes well, you should now have two files in the srcds directory, the hldsupdatetool.bin which we downloaded earlier, and a steam file the hldsupdatetool generated, this is the file we will use to install Counter-Strike: Source.

Note: if you receive a ‘uncompress: command not found’ message it means your server does not have uncompress installed. You have two options to easily work around this, try the following while logged-in as root: code: ln -s /bin/gunzip /bin/uncompress Then try to run ./hldsupdatetool.bin again. If that does not work, or you do not have root privileges you can download the binary file we have available: code: wget http://www.cstrike-planet.com/dls/steam

Now that you have the steam binary file, Type the following command to begin installing CS Source

Read full story.

If you are familiar with CentOS, you know that out of the box, it is not really designed as a desktop distribution. Stella changes all that, as it is primarily aimed at desktop users, while retaining the core enterprise features and capabilities of CentOS.

And you can see that just by looking at the package manager. The package categories tell you that everything you can find in CentOS is also available in Stella. Plus desktop applications that you will not find in any default installation of CentOS. For example, an application listed in the screen shot below, is ROSA Media Player (ROMP), the default media player in ROSA Desktop, a distribution based on Mandriva Linux.

Because it is loaded with desktop applications and media codecs not available in CentOS, you can play most audio and video file formats out of the box. Here it shows a favorite online video playing in Firefox.

The next few screen shots show what the desktop looks like and some of the applications accessible from the menu. This one shows installed Internet applications.

Installed Office applications.

Installed multimedia applications.

Updates manager.

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Oil Rush

Type: Real Time Strategy
License: Commercial
Price: 19.95 USD
Latest Version/Release Date: 1.07 / March 13, 2012

I start with the most awaited game I’ve ever seen in the Linux gaming world. Oil Rush offers stunning graphics and amazing optical realism and for that only, I can say it is the mark of a new era for the Linux gamers. If a new graphics card lives inside your system, then this game is one of the few that will take advantage of all its features. The gameplay is a bit out of the “classic” RTS style, but it is easy to learn and very enjoyable. Offering an amazing campaign, unique scenarios and competitive multiplayer action, Oil Rush is a must play for all of you Linux gamers out there.

Oil Rush Website

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Flight Gear

Type: Simulation
License: GPL
Price: Free
Latest Version/Release Date: 2.6 / February 20, 2012

Flight Gear is the most successful and sophisticated open source simulation project. Although its developers don’t consider it being a game, I choose to put it here because of the nature of this simulator. Flight Gear has been taking us to the skies since 1997, and it is now mature, stable, packed with airplanes, weather realism, beautiful scenery, flight dynamics engine designed by NASA and Boeing engineers, extremely useful for research projects and very enjoyable for us gamers. This year’s version, brought many things to be happy about, and there will be one more major release (version number 2.8) this year, so I believe this is a must for all simulation fans.

Flight Gear Website

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Heroes of Newerth

Type: RPG
License: Commercial
Price: Free
Latest Version/Release Date: 2.5.14 / March 09, 2012

Heroes of Newerth is an action RPG game, based on the popular Warcraft III mod map named Defence of the Ancients (dota). It may be the only choice for linux dota lovers, but thankfully it is the best we could have. This game offers the best “dota” experience, using beautiful graphics and optical effects, atmospheric sounds and music, stable multiplayer with a lot of choices for the player and above all it is free to play (you can buy some extras with real money). This game is evolving with constant update packs every week, and is now already very mature and linux-supportive. It will only get better through this year…must-play.

HoN Website

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Trine 2

Type: Puzzle Platform
License: Commercial
Price: 14.99 USD
Expected Release Date: April, 2012

Trine was a magnificent, mind seducing, wonderful tale. Trine 2 is going to be 4 times that. Using better graphics, more advanced physics, more satisfactory puzzles, more challenging obstacles and the multiplayer cooperation mode, this game is a must play for all Linux gamers this year. The only complain that we can have, is that Frozenbyte already released this game for other platforms…

Trine 2 Website

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Wakfu

Type: MMO RPG
License: Commercial
Price: Free
Latest Version/Release Date: 1.0 / February 29, 2012

Wakfu is a unique tactical MMORPG that continues the story of Dofus. In Wakfu, the player can choose between 14 different character classes all with different characteristics and abilities. There are four nations in Wakfu that rule their respected territories, have their own law system and clima. A player can be whatever he/she chooses to be, and their nations will be what their citizens choose them to be. This game is like a living ecosystem giving everyone the freedom of choice, but nothing comes without consequences whether these are positive or negative. Enter the magical world of Wakfu, and enjoy a game that brings character evolution and multiplayer cooperation to a new level.

Wakfu Website

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Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Type: Horror Adventure
License: Commercial
Price: Unknown
Expected Release Date: Halloween 2012

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs will be the second episode of the Amnesia series. This episode is not connected directly to the first one, but it takes place on the same universe. This time we will be in the shoes of a rich industrial tycoon named Oswald Mandus, who collapses from a feverish nightmare in which he sees a mysterious dark machine… After having played the Penumbra series and the first episode of the Amnesia series called “The Dark Descent”, I am 100% sure that whatever horror related story is inside the minds of Frictional Games developers, it is going to be once again simply unforgettable.

Amnesia Website

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Xonotic

Type: FPS
License: GPL
Price: Free
Latest Version/Release Date: 0.6 / March 8, 2012

Xonotic is a first person arena shooter with fast and intense gameplay. The game is developed by former Nexuiz developers, and after quite some time of hard work from these talented people it has evolved into being better and more advanced in all sectors, making it the best FPS game on the Linux platform. Xonotic uses a heavily enhanced version of the Quake engine named DarkPlaces, that offers modern graphics and optical effects that will meet the requirements of even the hardest to please. Singleplayer and multiplayer fun, with balanced futuristic maps and more than enough different game modes to choose from. It may not be finished yet (version 0.6), but it surely is the best of its kind and a must play for all Linux users this year.

Xonotic Website

Re-blogged from.

Selinux is good security feature of Linux stop you to execute malicious applications. But it need to disable when you need to run your self developed application. You can check the selinux status by using following command:

# cat /selinux/enforce

1

If it will show 1, that means selinux enforcing is enabled.

You can disable that selinux temporarily or permanently. Use following methods to disable it.

Disable Temporarily:

To disable selinux temporarily set the 0 to /selinux/enforce file.

# echo 0 > /selinux/enforce

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Most of you are very familiar with ping command which is most commonly used to check any network device is alive or not. A very simple and useful command. And if we can add date/time stamp in it, it will be more helpful to generate a good statistics. It is very easy in Linux without doing any extra development, simply need to combine few commands to work together.

You can combine few commands, to tweak the ping command as follows:

ping localhost | xargs -n1 -i bash -c ‘echo `date +%F %T`” {}”‘

For more information, Click here.

Linux Explore stats month September 2012

1. wall:

This command is used to broadcast a message on all terminals.

For e.g.:

wall "Hello, message testing"

or

cat msg.txt | wall

2. write:

This command is used to send message to a user & selected terminal of a user.

For e.g.:

echo "Hello, message testing" | write rahul

or

echo "Hello, message testing" | write rahul pts/0

or

cat msg.txt | write rahul pts/0

or

write rahul pts/0 << EOF
Hello, message testing
EOF

3. echo:

echo command can also used to send messages on selected terminal.

For e.g.:

echo "Hello, message testing" > /dev/pts/0

4. cat:

cat can also write on a selected terminal similar to echo command.

For e.g.:

cat /dev/pts/0
Hello, message testing
CTRL+D

5. notify-send:

It can send the desktop notifications.

For e.g.: From gnome terminal,

notify-send "Hello, message testing"

From any terminal

export DISPLAY=:0 && notify-send "Hello, message testing"

From SSH,

ssh <host> export DISPLAY=:0 && notify-send "Hello, message testing"

top is a handy utility for monitoring the utilization of your system. It is invoked from the command line and it works by displaying lots of useful information, including CPU and memory usage, the number of running processes, load, the top resource hitters, and other useful bits. By default, top refreshes its report every 3 seconds.

Most of us use top in this fashion; we run it inside the terminal, look on the statistics for a few seconds and then graciously quit and continue our work.

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