It’s been quite a while since I managed to write something here, partly because of work and study, and partly because I didn’t know exactly what to write about. But the muse seems to have returned, hopefully staying that way.

So, first off, I wanna welcome our new linux guru jack, really enjoyed your posts so far.

Which brings me to writing this one. For years I’ve been using varying versions of Windows as a so-called power-user, starting off with Windows 3.11 and hitting every single OS Microsoft has thrown at us since then. And of course, I have some resentments of my own regarding the redmonds and their – seemingly inferior – products. But I learned it to be that way, and that’s not easily cast aside.

Come as it may, some years ago I first took a peek into the world of UNIX, and some of its more popular offsprings, namely the Debian, SUSE and – much later – Ubuntu distributions. I never kept one for too long, though.

So, after reading jacks post about the differences between Windows and Linux, I started to wonder again why I didn’t manage to stay on, say, Ubuntu, which is in my biased and narrow-minded opinion by far the most suitable distribution for migrators.

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Tags: Debian, Linux, migration, ubuntu, Windows
Categories: Linux, Operating Systems, Windows

If you happen to use an e-mail provider that’s offering an IMAP-server (or you are boosting your own (mail-)server), this might be for you, because chances are if you are using IMAP, you’re the “portable” type of user.

As some of the more regular readers may know, I’m all into the whole ‘portable’ thing, and am constantly looking for ways to use stealthy software, sync my data or access it wherever I go. So it’s not surprising I stumbled across the SyncKolab Thunderbird extension some time ago looking for a possibility to sync my contacts across different computers as easy as my bookmarks using Foxmarks. Didn’t turn out that time, I just couldn’t get it to work.

But now, you may have guessed it already where this is heading, version 1.0 is out and, what can I say, it works like a charm, and not only for my contacts, but for my lightning-powered to-do’s and calendar items as well!

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Tags: calendar, contacts, kolab, lightning, synchronize, syncKolab, thunderbird
Categories: Email, Mobile Computing, software

I have watched the steps of Mandrake-Founder Gaël Duval since he (was forced to) quit the company, not because I was such a big fan of Mandrake (or Linux in general ^^) at all, but because of the announcements and plans he made for his new company, Ulteo. At that time I was investigating so-called ‘online desktops’ to achieve my goal of total portability, and Ulteo seemed like another nice competitor – and one with some experience – to offer a *NIX Desktop-in-a-Browser-solution. Turned out Online-Desktops didn’t grow to meet my expectations, so I turned away from them.

All except Ulteo, to be precise, which hovered at the edge of my attention with their OpenOfficeOnline-Beta, for example. Now they’re back with a piece of software called “Virtual Desktop“, which can be confusing judging from the name, or at least I expected something different from it. But it turned out to be another solution to run Linux-software seamlessly in a windows environment, just like the recently extremely popular andLinux (In fact, both are based on the same core, coLinux, a portation of a Unix-kernel to windows). But since Ulteo’s Virtual Desktop uses less disk space in comparison to andLinux’ full-featured ubuntu (2,5-4,5 GB), I decided to give it a try.

Installation was quick, and since I already had an Ulteo-Account (which is not required unless you wanna sync your local data to your online desktop), I didn’t encounter anything unusual at all.

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Tags: andLinux, coLinux, desktop, ulteo, virtual, virtualization
Categories: Linux, Operating Systems, Windows

The concept of RSS or newsfeeds in general seemed quite appealing to me the moment I first heard (or read?) about it. But I never managed to find a possibility of utilizing them in a way I liked. I tried standalone-readers like FeedReader, and since I am a FF-enthusiast, I tried Firefox extensions like Sage and Wizz, as well as scroll-readers like infoRSS and took a look at the FeedDemon, but none really seemed to satisfy my needs. I wanted a common view for all unread entries, sorted by date or anything, I wanted it to be lightweight, and I didn’t want it to be another program than my Firefox, so I eliminated all contestants pretty quick.

Luckily, I came across the small Brief Firefox extension which fulfilled all of my wishes. It’s lightweight, it’s a firefox extension, and it has the “unread”-folder as well as a nice and elaborate handling. It’s content-view is skinnable (though I have yet to come across a skin that suited me better than the original one), there are a handful of reasonable options, and it integrates with the Firefox-RSS-capabilities as well using it’s dynamic bookmarks system.
It’s just as the synopsis on the homepage says: “Brief is a light-weight feed reading extension for Firefox. Designed to be easy to use and streamlined, with exactly the right set of features.” – ’nuff said.

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Tags: extension, FeedDeamon, FeedReader, firefox, InfoRSS, rss, sage, Wizz
Categories: Browsing, firefox

After my last post about the powers of PuTTy in conjunction with an SSH-enabled router, I started thinking about tutorials.

I am not a big tutorial-fan, cause I always can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m doing something here I have no particular knowledge of. And depending on what I do, this bothers me. A lot. Take sewing for instance (yes, I do indeed enjoy the fun of sewing, at least as long as it is fun); in the beginning I only did pre-set tutorials. I got to see some achievements, pretty fast as well, and was happy. But the clothings didn’t fit that well, more often than not I had to make corrections to be at least a bit satisfied with my work.

By now, I do most of my sewing patterns myself by taking bits from tutorials and knowledge and putting them together, and it works just fine for me. My point is, tutorials are often brief, giving appealing results in a short time, but often lack some of the necessary theory. Ever happened to you that you did something with a tutorial that just would not work? And after going through the complete text again, looking at all pictures, you realize there’s a small mistake in it, or something you wouldn’t have thought of, which the author took as given?

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Tags: port forwarding, proxy, putty, socks, ssh, tutorial, vnc
Categories: Knowledge, Mobile Computing, Open Source, Tutorials Advanced, software

Since Martin constantly manages to cover all ongoing news regarding cryptography and security I myself planned on writing about “any time soon”, I had to look for other topics on the subject I could cover. So I decided to make good use of all the time I spend studying this kind of stuff and share this knowledge with you. And I would be very grateful, if someone could tell me in return how to defeat shirred fabrics with my sewing machine… but that’s a whole different matter.

So for the first Part of this – hopefully ongoing – series, I decided to look at the MD5 hash algorithm. It’s one of the most commonly used cryptographic algorithms out there and I would claim that nearly everyone has a password somewhere that is stored with an MD5 or similar hash.

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Tags: aes, DES, hash, md5, ophcrack, sha, Theoretical Cryptography
Categories: Knowledge, Security

If you set up some kind of SSH Connection on a windows computer over the past few years, be it to connect to the university’s network or to secure a line for an insecure FTP Transfer,you have probably encountered the program PuTTy on the way to salvation. It’s easy to use, free and OSSish powerful. What many people don’t know about PuTTy though, is what other powers aside from or better in addition to SSH slumber inside the little executable.

I was no exception to this when I decided to fool around a bit with my AVM Fritz!Box (Broadband Router quite common in Germany and Austria that runs with Linux) and installed – among other amusing things – the dropbear SSH Server on it. I was then able to connect to my home network from all around the world using just my dyndns-account and PuTTy, or better his cousin PuTTyPortable, which runs from thumb drives without leaving traces behind on the host system. Oh the joy!

After going through the massive troubles of installing and configuring dropbear via FTP and VM, I first started to think about the use I could get out of this.

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Tags: dropbear, etherwake, proxy, putty, socks, ssh, vpn
Categories: Knowledge, Mobile Computing, Open Source, Security, Tutorials Advanced