In this article I will show you how to find out various networking information on your Linux system. All of these tasks can be handled by any skill level of user, so don’t think you have to be an ubergeek, hacker-type in order to gain this information.

IP Address

Figure 1

Let’s start off with the IP Address. Of course, before you do anything, you need to open up a terminal window. Once you have that open you can then issue the necessary command. The command for finding your IP Address is ifconfig. When you issue this command you will receive information for every network connection you have available. Most likely you will see information for both the loopback (lo) and your wired network connection (eth0). If you have a wireless connection that will be listed, most likely, as wlan0. The reported information will look like that shown in Figure 1. As you can see, you not only get the IP Address, but the Broadcast address, the Subnet Mask, and the IPv6 Address.

Hostname

From that same command line, if you enter the command hostname you will see the actual hostname of your machine. In the case of my test machine, I see Ubuntu-desktop.  For more information on using this command, take a look at my article “Set your hostname in Linux“.

DNS Address(es)

There is no actual command to see your DNS addresses. You don’t really need one. All you need to do is examine the /etc/resolv.conf file with the command less /etc/resolv.conf, at whichpoint you will see something like:

nameserver 208.67.222.222

nameserver 208.67.220.220

Gateway address

Figure 2

Now let’s find out what the Gateway address is. The command used for this is the netstat command. This command does quite a bit more than just discover your gateway. What the netstat command does is print network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, and multicast memberships. But to find the gateway address you would issue the command netstat -nr and you will see something like that shown in Figure 2. You can probably guess it, but the Gateway address is 192.168.1.1. The flags you used in that command are n (for numeric addresses) and r (for route).

Of course the netstat command can do much more than that (we’ll cover that in another article).

Final thoughts

Yes, there are a lot of tools that can be used in Linux. It all depends upon how you want to get your information. In both the GNOME and KDE desktops there are outstanding GUI tools you can use for all of this. But knowing the command line route makes you much more versatile.

One of the more popular form factors to have incorporated a multitouch enabled surface is the all-in-one desktop. After Asus and Sony, now it’s Gateway’s turn to churn out an all-in-one system for the mass market. The form factor that was popularized by Apple iMacs, is now seeing a sudden upsurge in the market. From the comparatively lower cost solutions like Asus’ Eee Tops to high-end systems like Sony’s Vaio L series, you can see this form factor in almost every segment.

So now we have two more such systems in the pipeline and this time they are from Gateway. The two models are numbered as ZX6800 and ZX4800 respectively. The former is to have a 23-inch display and a 1920×1080 resolution while the latter is to have a 23-inch display and a 1600×900 resolution. Both their displays will be multitouch equipped and both will be running Windows 7. Gateway won’t be shipping these devices with just the OS either. They will be putting in custom applications for photos, music, videos, etc. that are designed to take advantage of the touchscreen.

They will be quite powerful too. The Zx6800 will be powered by a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor with 8GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD470 graphics, 1TB HDD (storage only) and a 64GB SSD (for the OS and the applications). Connectivity will be through the WiFi (b/g/n), Gigabit Ethernet while everything else would take care of by the eSATA and DVD super drive. It will also come with a hybrid TV tuner and 5.1 surround sound audio output.

The ZX4800 will be the lower powered version, hence also the cheaper. It will have a 2.1GHz Pentium dual core processor with 4GB RAM, Intel GMA X4500 graphics and 750GB of storage. Everything else remains the same as the faster model except the TV tuner and SSD.

The ZX6800 and Zx4800 are expected arrive shortly after the worldwide launch of Windows 7. So they should be here by early November.

Another form factor that uses multitouch is the tablet. May be I should say will be using because there aren’t that many true tablets (not those convertible ones) with multitouch around. We are all hearing the rumors about Apple’s tablet and there is the Crunchpad, but they are nowhere near the consumer market. But still, there are smaller companies that are planning to bring out their own tablets before the big cats do. One of them is LBook and theirs is the T9 multitouch slate.

This slate has a spacious 8.9inch touchscreen and will be running Windows 7. It will be powered by the Intel Atom and there is word on market that it will carry 2GB of RAM and 120GB of storage. But the main talking point is the price.

There have not been any official announcements so far but a price range of $350-$375 was received by the folks at the UMPC Portal. If LBook can really get the slate in to the market for that price with may be an optional 3G connectivity, it is likely to become quite a popular device. Given of course that the touchscreen works as it is expected to.

The device has a webcam and multiple USB ports too and also something that from the picture looks like a memory car reader.