Ubuntu 12.04 LTS gets major kernel updates

Time to run sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade if you are a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS user like me.

Their have been some major updates that solve a lot of security holes and bugs.

Softpedia covered it well:

"Canonical does a good job at protecting its supported Ubuntu Linux distributions by releasing security updates from time to time. On December 3, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS received a major kernel upgrade that fixed twelve vulnerabilities discovered in the upstream Linux 3.2 kernel by various developers (eight of them were discovered by Kees Cook).

The first security issue is an information leak discovered in the Linux kernel's IPv6 network stack – it could allow a remote attacker to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) attack and obtain sensitive information, and the second one was a flaw in the Linux kernel’s Xen subsystem – it could allow a privileged user in the guest OS to destroy data on the disk.

The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth security issues were discovered in the Linux kernel’s HID (Human Interface Device) subsystem, allowing a physically proximate attacker to cause a DoS (Denial of Service), execute arbitrary code, obtain sensitive information from kernel memory.

The eleventh security issue was discovered by Alan Chester in Linux kernel’s IPv6 Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) – it could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information, and the twelfth one was discovered by Dmitry Vyukov in the Linux kernel's handling of IPv6 UFO (UDP Fragmentation Offload) processing – it could allow a remote attacker to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

As usual, these security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) system(s) to the linux-image-3.2.0-57 (3.2.0-57.87) package(s). To apply the kernel update, run the Update Manager application or follow the detailed instructions provided by Canonical on this web page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.

Users are urged to update their Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) systems as soon as possible. Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade!" -Softpedia

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Whisker Menu, an excellent XFCE menu option

--- Updated December 4th, 2013 ---

While looking up an article about the changes to Xubuntu 14.04, I saw they where adding a program called "Whisker Menu".

Being the curious cat that I am, I downloaded it.

I loved it at first glance. Beautiful, simple, and quick. Which is what I have come to expect from anything designed to work with XFCE.

Here's a pic of my Whisker Menu:

I could have changed the colors to reflect the XFCE panel bar on top, but I personally like the set up already. Very easy to read.

Here's a blurb from Whisker Menu's about section:

"Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce. When you open it you are shown a list of applications you have marked as favorites. You can browse through all of your installed applications by clicking on the category buttons on the side. Top level categories make browsing fast, and simple to switch between. Additionally, Whisker Menu keeps a list of the last ten applications that you’ve launched from it.

Favorites are easy to add and reorder. When browsing through your applications, right-click on any of them and select “Add to Favorites”. Simply drag and drop your favorites list to arrange them to suit your needs. You can remove them at any time from another right-click option.

If you’re not sure exactly where a program is listed, instead of browsing through each category you can simply enter a search term. The search field is focused when opening the menu, so you can just start typing. Application descriptions as well as names are searched, which allows you to find a program by using a general word (such as “browser” to find all web browsers installed on your computer)."
-http://gottcode.org/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin/#about

To download and install it in Xubuntu, paste these into your terminal application one line at a time:

(pasting into terminal is done with Control Shift V)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin

*this repository/ppa only works with XFCE 4.8. to install one that works with 4.10, check this out:
https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/xfce-4.10

Once installed, I had to add it manually to the XFCE panel.

I did that by first right clicking the top panel bar, and then choosing panel > add new items

Then I scrolled down to the Whisker Menu option in the Add New Items box

Then I clicked on the Whisker Menu option, and then clicked add.

Then I put the menu where I wanted it. The menu will show up on the far right. If you want it on the far left, then you will have to choose "move" by right clicking the Whisker Menu

and then click and drag it to where you want it.

Last but not least, since there is no point in having 2 menu's, I removed the standard XFCE application menu by right clicking it and choosing remove.

This is just a taste of what we can expect with Xubuntu 14.04 LTS. I am looking forward to it.
-Denny

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Irssi - The client of the future

It feels strange calling Irssi the "Client of the future"... but in many ways it is.

First off, let me explain what Irssi is. "Irssi is a terminal based IRC client for UNIX systems. It also supports SILC and ICB protocols via plugins." -Irssi.org

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and has been around since 1988. It's used for many reasons, from group chat to one on one chat to even file transfer.

I use IRC a lot for Ubuntu problem solving with the official Ubuntu IRC group, found at irc.freenode.org, channel #ubuntu.

The reason I feel strange about calling Irssi "the client of the future" is because of the fact that it runs from a terminal.

In other words, it would fit right in with a movie about computing in the 80's with black and green non color, non graphics computers.

Here's a screenshot to give you a sense of what I mean:

Don't let the "low tech" appearance fool you however. Irssi is a rock solid reliable, easy to use and complete IRC client. It is my client of choice.

As stated on the Irssi "About" page, here is just a taste of what Irssi has to offer:

"Autologging

Irssi will automatically log any channels, queries or special windows that you want. The logfiles will be separated per IRC network, and even log rotation is supported. Log file formats, themes and destination directories can be easily configured with the Irssi log settings.

Formats and themes

Theming is a popular item in todays desktop enviroments, it's an easy yet powerful way to customize your Irssi client's look and feel. Irssi's formatting is modular which means you can just change the appearance of the objects and all items contaning that object will change into that format.

Configurable keybindings

This feature is a piece of art; it allows you to modify the default keybindings and create your own so you can customize your client. If these keybindings are tuned, you can switch through the windows in no time, execute commands and even complete objects with these bindings.

Paste detection

If you have ever pasted a bunchload of text into a wrong channel, you know how hard the consequences can be. Irssi tries to detect when you are pasting large amounts of text, by looking at the speed that characters are entered; if such pasting is detected [TAB]-characters are sent as-is instead of being tab-completed and eventually ending up in a wrong destination window. When Irssi detects such a pasting, you will get the option to either abort the paste or execute the paste, this way you have total control of the pasting.

Perl scripting

Perl is one of the most used programming languages around the globe and integrating Perl into applications means flexible and powerful scripting capabilities. The entire behavior and appearence of Irssi can be modified within these Perl scripts. Irssi provides a script archive with many contributed Irssi scripts which provide both useful extra features and the required assistance to make your own scripts.

Irssi-proxy

This is much more than just a bouncer, Irssi-proxy is a plugin which allows to bind a port to each IRC server you are connected to. This means that instead of having to remember to identify with a password, you can just connect to the Irssi-proxy with a server password. The copy of Irssi running the proxy works just as a normal client which you can use, but you can also connect one or more clients to it to share the connections. Using Irssi as a proxy has the major advantage of Irssi's power as an IRC client. You never have to worry about losing your connection to IRC. Even if you don't want to use Issi as a client, I can strongly recommend it as a proxy because you can just connect to it with any IRC client by just connecting to the specified port instead of SSH-ing to the machine that your Irssi is running on.

Upgrades

Upgrading your Irssi client to the latest version can be easily done without losing the connections to the IRC servers and without restarting Irssi. You can use the UPGRADE command to load the new Irssi binary and restoring your connections."

In my personal set up, I create an icon with Alacarte. In the icon, my command looks like this:

terminator -x irssi -c irc.freenode.org -n (nickname) -w (password)

In this case, terminator (arguably the best terminal emulator available for Linux) starts up Irssi. Irssi then takes these commands from terminator, and logs me into the freenode.org server under my Freenode registered nickname and password.

This makes freenode, and by extension the #ubuntu channel, a mouse click away.

(A nickname and password set up is not required by Freenode, it is just an option if you want a specialized nickname. Nicknames are used to distinguish one user from another, that's all.)

Here's my Freenode access icon, thanks to Alacarte:

I also have a bash script with the name freenode in my home directory.

It looks like this: irssi -c irc.freenode.org -n (nickname) -w (password).

That way i am just a ./freenode away from chatting it up with #ubuntu.

* These scripts do not work the first time Irssi is started up, because at first launch Irssi has a "welcome to irssi" screen that takes precedence.

You can get Irssi in Ubuntu by Synaptic, the Ubuntu Software Center, or with apt-get via sudo apt-get install irssi.

There is also a Windows version, check http://www.irssi.org/ for more details.

Well, I have said just about everything I have to say about good ole' Irssi.

If you are looking for a client, or are looking for something better, give Irssi a try.
-Denny

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Steam based Linux gaming machine to rival XBOX, Playstation

Valve, the company behind the game software "Steam" is making great strides in an attempt to be a real player in the console gaming industry.

Basing their new operating system on Linux, they have been able to get very impressive frame rates out of their new hardware package.

The thing is, this hardware package isn't the greatest gaming machine out there. It's very good hardware, just not the greatest.

And yet that have successfully reached a standard of 60 frames per second at 1080p, which is very impressive.

This is the hardware in the prototype model:

- GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
- CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
- RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
- Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
- Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
- Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

To add to this impressive feat is that the starting machine price will be at around $499.

"If prototypes, like the one from iBuyPower, manage to stay in direct competition (from a quality point of view) with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, while providing a huge array of games from the Steam library, Valve and its Linux-based SteamOS will soon rule the living-room." -Softpedia

I have to admit that while I am not a gamer, I am proud to see Linux taking yet another computer genre position.

-Denny

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MOC is a rock-solid audio player

I use MOC as my default audio player. It has a lot of wonderful features. My favorite option is the "set it and forget it feature", i.e. start up MOC, choose your audio to play, then quit MOC and it will still play your audio, leaving the console open for other uses.

I use MOC with a terminal emulator to play my audio. (Look below for my set up using Terminator.)

"MOC (music on console) is a console audio player for LINUX/UNIX designed to be powerful and easy to use.

You just need to select a file from some directory using the menu similar to Midnight Commander, and MOC will start playing all files in this directory beginning from the chosen file. There is no need to create playlists as in other players.

However if you want to combine some files from one or more directories on one playlist, you can still do it. The playlist will be remembered between runs or you can save it as an m3u file and load it whenever you want.

Need the console where MOC is running for more important things? Need to close the X terminal emulator? You don't have to stop listening to the music - just press q and the interface will be detached leaving the server running. You can reattach it later, or you can attach one interface in the console, and another in the X terminal emulator, no need to switch just to play another file.

MOC plays smoothly, regardless of system or I/O load because it uses the output buffer in a separate thread. It provides gapelss playback because the next file to be played is precached while the current file is playing.

Internet streams (Icecast, Shoutcast) are supported.

Key mapping can be fully customized.

Supported file formats include: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Musepack, Speex, WAVE (and other less popular formats supported by Sndfile), MOD, WavPack, AAC, SID, MIDI. Moreover most audio formats recognized by FFMpeg/LibAV are also supported (e.g. MP4, Opus, WMA, APE, AC3, DTS - even embedded in video files). New formats support is under development.

Other features:

Mixer (both software and hardware) and simple equalizer

Color themes

Searching playlist or a directory

Configurable title creation from filenames and file tags

Optional character set conversion for file tags using iconv()

OSS, ALSA, JACK and SNDIO output

User defined keys

Cache for files' tags" -About MOC

You start MOC with the mocp command.

I use MOC as my regular audio player. I even went as far as to build an icon for the menu using alacarte.

I did this by using Terminator. my command looks like this: terminator -e mocp

Add an icon of choice, and you can gain access to your audio player from the menu any time. Here's my pic of the menu entry I made for MOC. (Yeah, I stole the Midnight Commander icon for MOC) ;)

Here's my screenshot of MOC:

Click to enlarge

While you can access the list below in MOC using "h", I thought I would include here all the default keys used with MOC.

q              Detach MOC from the server
ENTER          Start playing at this file or go to this directory
DOWN           Move down in the menu
UP             Move up in the menu
PAGE_DOWN      Move one page down
PAGE_UP        Move one page up
HOME           Move to the first item in the menu
END            Move to the last item in the menu
Q              Quit
s              Stop
n              Play next file
b              Play previous file
p SPACE        Pause
f              Toggle ReadTags option
S              Toggle Shuffle
R              Toggle Repeat
X              Toggle AutoNext
TAB            Switch between playlist and file list
l              Switch between layouts
               Switch on/off play time percentage
a              Add a file/directory to the playlist
C              Clear the playlist
A              Add a directory recursively to the playlist
Y              Remove playlist entries for non-existent files
<              Decrease volume by 1%
>              Increase volume by 1%
,              Decrease volume by 5%
.              Increase volume by 5%
RIGHT          Seek forward by n-s
LEFT           Seek backward by n-s
h ?            Show the help screen
M              Hide error/informative message
^r ^l          Refresh the screen
r              Reread directory content
H              Toggle ShowHiddenFiles option
m              Go to the music directory (requires an entry in the config)
d              Delete an item from the playlist
g /            Search the menu
V              Save the playlist
^t             Toggle ShowTime option
^f             Toggle ShowFormat option
o              Play from the URL
G              Go to the directory containing the currently played file
i              Go to a directory
U              Go to '..'
^g ^n          Find the next matching item
^x ESCAPE      Exit from an entry
]              Silent seek forward by 5s
[              Silent seek backward by 5s
M-1            Set volume to 10%
M-2            Set volume to 20%
M-3            Set volume to 30%
M-4            Set volume to 40%
M-5            Set volume to 50%
M-6            Set volume to 60%
M-7            Set volume to 70%
M-8            Set volume to 80%
M-9            Set volume to 90%
'              Mark the start of a block
"              Mark the end of a block
!              Go to a fast dir 1
@              Go to a fast dir 2
#              Go to a fast dir 3
$              Go to a fast dir 4
%              Go to a fast dir 5
^              Go to a fast dir 6
&              Go to a fast dir 7
*              Go to a fast dir 8
(              Go to a fast dir 9
)              Go to a fast dir 10
UP             Go to the previous entry in the history (entry)
DOWN           Go to the next entry in the history (entry)
^u             Delete to start of line (entry)
^k             Delete to end of line (entry)
x              Toggles the mixer channel
w              Toggles the software-mixer
E              Toggles the equalizer
e              Reload EQ-presets
K              Select previous equalizer-preset
k              Select next equalizer-preset
J              Toggle mono-mixing
u              Move playlist item up
j              Move playlist item down
^u             Add a URL to the playlist using entry
T              Switch to the theme selection menu
F1             Execute ExecCommand1
F2             Execute ExecCommand2
F3             Execute ExecCommand3
F4             Execute ExecCommand4
F5             Execute ExecCommand5
F6             Execute ExecCommand6
F7             Execute ExecCommand7
F8             Execute ExecCommand8
F9             Execute ExecCommand9
F10            Execute ExecCommand10
L              Display lyrics of the current song (if available)
P              Toggle displaying full paths in the playlist
z              Add (or remove) a file to (from) queue
Z              Clear the queue

In closing I would like to say that I know there are a lot of other options.

I only bring MOC out because I like the feel of the app, I find it useful, and I find it to be the audio player with the very least fan fair.

MOC is the underdog of the Linux/Unix audio player world. And yet it works beautifully, and has many options that make it a great replacement for bulky audio players like Rhythmbox and Banshee.

-Denny

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Joli Os, we bid you a farewell

It was announced today that the Jolicloud Desktop OS will be discontinued In December.

While the Jolicloud people gave good reasons, it's sad to see as unique a distribution as Joli go this way.

The company's reason is that they are going "to entirely focus on the web with Jolicloud 2".

You will still be able to use the operating system for some time, but updates will no longer be supplied.

The company will now take JoliDrive and rename it to Jolicloud 2. The reason given was that JoliDrive has a very large user base, and so obviously that is where they should put their attention.

“JoliDrive is growing to the point where a lot of the actions that used to require an OS no longer do”, Jolicloud’s communications guru Zak Kaufman told OMGUbuntu's Joey-Elijah Sneddon via e-mail.

“Things like file management, music and video playback, can all be done using Jolidrive, available from any web browser on almost every platform”.

I personally liked the directions they where going. Joli's desktop OS was intended to feel like the online version, and yet to function well offline.

The two "desktops" merged pretty well together.

Joli OS desktop version had at one point made me reconsider my current fave, Xubuntu 12.04 LTS.

-Denny

P.S. Here's a screenshot in case you wanted to just get a glimpse at what the desktop looks like.

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NSA asked for backdoor to Linux

"Far from being a rumor, word of the approach comes via Linus’ father, Nils Torvalds.

As a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Nils was present at recent committee inquiry held on the “Mass Surveillance of EU Citizens”. Here, representatives from a number of companies named in documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden were questioned about their own (alleged) involvement.

Following a question put to a Microsoft spokeswoman by Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström on whether the company willingly include “backdoors” for the NSA in their system, Nils Torvalds MEP said:

When my oldest son [Linus Torvalds] was asked the same question: “Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?” he said “No”, but at the same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer …everybody understood that the NSA had approached him.

If that sounds familiar to you then you might have seen the snippet on YouTube. Linus went on to insist that he was joking, and that the NSA had not approached him.

But, speaking at November 11th’s inquiry, his father seems to think otherwise.

Following on from allegations that Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and, indeed, Microsoft are among the many companies wilfully cooperating with the agency to provide “backdoor” access to their systems, this revelation is far from earth-shattering. In fact, is makes sense in the grand scheme of things." -OMGUbuntu

I don't think I can add to this... I now realize just how serious the NSA is about gaining information..

Any hole the NSA has added to our software is just another hole others can exploit.

I get why they would want these holes.. I wonder though if they realize the damage they might be causing to those of us who are in the line of fire.

The everyday person just going on the internet, checking their email, and maybe watching youtube or netflix are more vulnerable because of these actions by the NSA...

-Denny

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