If you want to do a thorough system security audit on a Linux machine what do you use? Cobble together a few of the pre-installed tools? Search through the numerous locations for a tool that might give you enough information to determine if your system is safe? Or, do you open up a terminal window [...]

Tags: linux auditing, security auditing, security reporting tools
Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Security, troubleshooting

Open Office 3.2.0 Final has been released and is currently distributed to mirror ftp servers worldwide to ensure a smooth delivery once the release notifications will be added to the project’s homepage. Five release candidates and numerous betas have made available before the developer’s of Open Office decided to release the final version of the [...]

Tags: office suite, open office 3.2, open office update, open-office
Categories: Linux, Mac, Windows, software

One of the things I’ve always liked about using Linux is the feeling that my input is actually important. Either by way of giving input to the developers directly or (more importantly) reporting bugs that inevitably appear on a system. It’s the latter of the two that help Linux (as a whole) to take great [...]

Tags: bug reporting, bugs, bugzilla, strace
Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Tutorials Basic, software

For many Linux users one area where Linux needs some improvement is money management. Yes there is the very powerful GnuCash (check out GnuCash in my article “GnuCash: Open source Accounting/Financing goodness“). But many users find GnuCash to be too much power for what they need. There is also the slick KMyMoney, but that depends [...]

Tags: accounting, bank, financial software
Categories: Advice, Linux, Mac, Open Source, Windows, software

Let’s face it, we sit at our computers for hours on end. Be it administrating, working, or just plain killing time. Everyone knows that the interwebs is a sure-fire time killer. But what happens, gasp, when those interwebs are down and you’ve no way to pass time? You shrivel up and die right? No! You [...]

Tags: arcade games, Games, linux games, rubiks cube
Categories: Entertainment, Games, Linux, Mac, Open Source, Windows, software

I have a ton of various music files on my machine that are in various states of migrating from .mp3 to different formats. The primary reason for this is because of the issue of licensing between Linux and the MP3 format. And although there are GUI tools to do nearly every job you need, there [...]

Tags: mp3, mp3 conversion, mp3 encoding, ogg, ogg vorbis, wav
Categories: Advice, Linux, Music and Video, Open Source, Tutorials Basic, software

This morning I woke up to find one of the sites I administer down. The error on the page was very clear in that it could not connect to the database due to a corrupt table. I had two choices, recover from a backup or attempt to repair the corrupted tables. I opted to try [...]

Tags: database, mysql, table corruption
Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Tutorials Advanced, troubleshooting