Abobe released yesterday the first beta of Flash Player 11 for Linux 64 bit.

I've put together a small script that takes care of installing it on Ubuntu:

#!/bin/bash
# Script  created by
# Romeo-Adrian Cioaba romeo.cioaba@spotonearth.com

echo "Stopping any Firefox that might be running"
sudo killall -9 firefox

echo "Removing any other flash plugin previously installed:"
sudo apt-get remove -y --purge flashplugin-nonfree gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla libflashsupport nspluginwrapper
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

echo "Installing Flash Player 11"
cd ~
wget 'http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11-2/flashplayer11-2_p1_install_lin_64_102611.tar.gz'
tar zxvf flashplayer11-2_p1_install_lin_64_102611.tar.gz
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
sudo cp -r usr/ /usr

echo "Linking the libraries so Firefox and apps depending on XULRunner (vuze, liferea, rsswol) can find it."
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so  /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins/

# now doing some cleaning up:
sudo rm -rf libflashplayer.so
sudo rm -rf usr/
sudo rm -rf flashplayer11-2_p1_install_lin_64_102611.tar.gz

A very interesting application that comes bundled in this release is the "flash-player-properties" app which allows us to finally be able to set permissions to mic/camera on websites.

sudo apt-get install enscript
enscript lorem.txt -o - | ps2pdf - lorem.pdf

There is also the unoconv, which converts between any document format that OpenOffice understands. It uses OpenOffice's UNO bindings for non-interactive conversion of documents.
Supported document formats include Open Document Format (.odt), MS Word (.doc), MS Office Open/MS OOXML (.xml), Portable Document Format (.pdf), HTML, XHTML, RTF, Docbook (.xml), and more.

Features:

Converts between different document formats that OpenOffice understands
OpenOffice can export to about 100 different document formats
Can be used for batch processing
Combines with asciidoc and docbook2odf/xhtml2odt to create PDF or Word (.doc) files
Can apply custom style templates during conversion (to enforce corporate identity)
Autostarts OpenOffice for processing if necessary
Can be used in a client/server environment to process documents centrally
Can influence OpenOffice filters during import and export
Supports OpenOffice on Linux, Windows and MacOSX

CLI instructions (these will take care of removing OpenOffice.org and installing LibreOffice):

Add the PPA and install LibreOffice:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice

For GNOME integration (for people running default Ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

or for KDE Integration (for people running Kubuntu):

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

As of Ubuntu 11.04, LibreOffice will replace by default OpenOffice.

sudo apt-get install tk8.5
sudo update-alternatives --config wish
# a list will show up and you need to type in the number that corresponds to tk8.5 (in my case was 3) then hit enter.

That's it. You can now reopen gitk and see the difference.

grep -r --line-number "string_you_search" path/where/to/look

Note the -r tells grep also to look into all subfolders recursively.

Since you don't have any control over the connection, what one can do to protect himself is to use a VPN. With a VPN, you are creating a secure (encrypted) point-to-point connection between your PC and the VPN server. Translated, that means that all the Internet traffic you are doing, is going through that secure channel, which can't be hacked that easily.

Here us how to setup a vpn server using openVPN

The server

1. Install openvpn and openssl

sudo apt-get install openvpn libssl-dev openssl

2. Configurations

cd /etc/openvpn/
cp -r /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/2.0/* /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/

3. Create server certificates

cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/
source vars
./clean-all
./build-dh
./pkitool --initca
./pkitool --server server
cd keys
openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key
cp server.crt server.key ca.crt dh1024.pem ta.key /etc/openvpn/

4. Create client certificates

cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/
source vars
./pkitool hostname

For each new client that connects to the VPN you'll need to create new client certificates using step 4

5. Create server configuration file:

cp /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/sample-config-files/server.conf.gz /etc/openvpn/
gzip -d /etc/openvpn/server.conf.gz

After editing your file should look like this:

dev tun
proto tcp
port 1194

ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh1024.pem

user nobody
group nogroup
server 10.10.0.0 255.255.255.0

persist-key
persist-tun

client-to-client

push "redirect-gateway def1"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.222.222"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220"

6. Enable routing and MASQUERADE for your VPN by placing the following in your /etc/rc.local

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.10.0.0/24 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

7. Start the server

/etc/rc.local
/etc/init.d/openvpn restart

The Client

1. Ubuntu (all modern linux?)
I'm using an Ubuntu machine as a client. To use openvpn in Ubuntu just install the openvpn plugin for NetworkManager:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn

A reboot is recommended.

You can now go and add your connection in Network Manager

2. Windows - to come
3. Mac OS X - to come

Adobe® Flash® Player "Square" is a preview release that enables native 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems, as well as enhanced support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta.

I'm glad to see Adobe has is finally embracing the way it should the 64 bit Platform. This release is a milestone as far as i know, as is the first one that's released in the same time for win, mac and linux. I've put together a small tutorial on
how to install adobe flash player square on linux:

#!/bin/bash
# Script  created by
# Romeo-Adrian Cioaba romeo.cioaba@spotonearth.com

echo "Stopping any Firefox that might be running"
sudo killall -9 firefox

echo "Removing any other flash plugin previously installed:"
sudo apt-get remove -y --purge flashplugin-nonfree gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla libflashsupport nspluginwrapper
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

echo "Installing Flash Player Square"
cd ~
# 64 bit
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer_square_p1_64bit_linux_091510.tar.gz
tar zxvf flashplayer_square_p1_64bit_linux_091510.tar.gz
# 32 bit
# wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer_square_p1_32bit_linux_091510.tar.gz
# tar zxvf flashplayer_square_p1_32bit_linux_091510.tar.gz
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

echo "Linking the libraries so Firefox and apps depending on XULRunner (vuze, liferea, rsswol) can find it."
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so  /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins/

# now doing some cleaning up:
sudo rm -rf libflashplayer.so
sudo rm -rf flashplayer_square_p1_64bit_linux_091510.tar.gz

To check if the install did it's job, you need to check about:plugins in your address bar. It should show you this for flash player:

Shockwave Flash

File: libflashplayer.so

Version:

Shockwave Flash 10.2 d161

As usual, I've wrapped everything mentioned before into a script to easily install flash player square on Linux

If this version doesn't work out that well for you, you can still check my other tutorial on how to install native 64bit flash player on Linux
Happy browsing!

You can install it easy:

sudo apt-get install ncdu

Issuing ncdu inside the folder you want to check will open a cool ncurses interface, really easy to use

The most popular disk image formats i've had to deal with are: iso (which Ubuntu handles by default perfectly), CloneCD/IMG (used by CloneCD), CUE/BIN, MDF (created by Alcohol 120%), NRG (Nero images) and last but not least DMG (format used mainly by Apple).

Since Linux handles very well .iso files, the idea is to convert any of the image types listed into iso and then the job is easy. For all of the formats there are tools to do just that. You can install them as follows:

sudo apt-get install ccd2iso bchunk mdf2iso nrg2iso dmg2img

Example usage:

# ccd
ccd2iso /path/to/example.img /path/to/example.iso
# bin/cue
bchunk /path/to/example.bin /path/to/example.cue /path/to/example.iso
# mdf
mdf2iso /path/to/example.mdf /path/to/example.iso
# nrg
nrg2iso /path/to/example.nrg /path/to/example.iso
# dmg
dmg2img filename.dmg

Some of those formats can be also mounted using the CLI:

# ccd/img
sudo mount -o loop example.img /media/example
# nrg
sudo mount -o loop,offset=307200 /path/to/example.nrg /media/example
# dmg
dmg2img /path/to/example.dmg /path/to/example.img
sudo modprobe hfsplus
sudo mount -t hfsplus -o loop example.img /media/example

So we decided to install Zend Server CE as it has more or less the same settings over different platforms. I've had some bad experiences installing ZSCE on a system that already had apache installed via apt, but after a clear install of Karmic, ZF was running like a charm. The install process described in the online documentation works great.

After install is done, make sure to symlink php, pecl, pear and phpize so you can access them system wide:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh /usr/sbin/zendctl
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pear /usr/sbin/pear
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pecl /usr/sbin/pecl
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/php /usr/sbin/php
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/phpize /usr/sbin/phpize

At this point you should be able to run php -i in terminal and the phpinfo will be displayed.

Next step is to install xdebug via pecl by running:

sudo pecl install xdebug

If all went well you should have the xdebug library located at /usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions/xdebug.so . If you don't have it there, then something went wrong and you should NOT continue reading. This issue must be sorted first.

Next you need to comment out the 1st line of /usr/local/zend/etc/conf.d/debugger.ini so it looks like this:

#open editor
gksu gedit /usr/local/zend/etc/conf.d/debugger.ini

# this is how the 1st two lines should look afterwards
; register the extension to be loaded by Zend Extension Manager
;zend_extension_manager.dir.debugger=/usr/local/zend/lib/debugger

Xdebug needs to be loaded before Zend Extension Manager, that's why you need to add the following line just on top of the /usr/local/zend/etc/ext.d/extension_manager.ini

#open the editor
gksu gedit /usr/local/zend/etc/ext.d/extension_manager.ini

#add this line on 1st line:
zend_extension=/usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions/xdebug.so

#save the file

Restart zend server by running:

sudo /etc/init.d/zend-server restart

You can check if xdebug is working like so:

php -i |grep xdebug

The output should be something similar to this:

xdebug
xdebug support => enabled
xdebug.auto_trace => Off => Off
xdebug.collect_includes => On => On
xdebug.collect_params => 0 => 0
xdebug.collect_return => Off => Off
xdebug.collect_vars => Off => Off
xdebug.default_enable => On => On
xdebug.dump.COOKIE => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.ENV => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.FILES => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.GET => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.POST => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.REQUEST => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.SERVER => no value => no value
xdebug.dump.SESSION => no value => no value
xdebug.dump_globals => On => On
xdebug.dump_once => On => On
xdebug.dump_undefined => Off => Off
xdebug.extended_info => On => On
xdebug.idekey => mimir => no value
xdebug.manual_url => http://www.php.net => http://www.php.net
xdebug.max_nesting_level => 100 => 100
xdebug.profiler_aggregate => Off => Off
xdebug.profiler_append => Off => Off
xdebug.profiler_enable => Off => Off
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger => Off => Off
xdebug.profiler_output_dir => /tmp => /tmp
xdebug.profiler_output_name => cachegrind.out.%p => cachegrind.out.%p
xdebug.remote_autostart => Off => Off
xdebug.remote_enable => Off => Off
xdebug.remote_handler => dbgp => dbgp
xdebug.remote_host => localhost => localhost
xdebug.remote_log => no value => no value
xdebug.remote_mode => req => req
xdebug.remote_port => 9000 => 9000
xdebug.show_exception_trace => Off => Off
xdebug.show_local_vars => Off => Off
xdebug.show_mem_delta => Off => Off
xdebug.trace_format => 0 => 0
xdebug.trace_options => 0 => 0
xdebug.trace_output_dir => /tmp => /tmp
xdebug.trace_output_name => trace.%c => trace.%c
xdebug.var_display_max_children => 128 => 128
xdebug.var_display_max_data => 512 => 512
xdebug.var_display_max_depth => 3 => 3

Note the xdebug support => enabled on line 2.

Hope that helps