The Open Source Advocate

Introduction Have you ever wondered which Linux distro is the most popular? Many people will point to the statistics at DistroWatch.com. These statistics are generated by the number of "hits" for each distro page at DistroWatch. Unfortunately, this allows the possibility of "ballot-stuffing" by making multiple visits to distro page that you like. Therefore this data cannot be considered scientific, and it is has a high probability of being inaccurate. Even so, it still has some value. We can tell which distro has the most (real visitors + "ballet-stuffers"), which will roughly correlate to the actual popularity of the distro. Here are some interesting long-term trends: 2002: Top 5 Distros Mandrake Red Hat Gentoo Debian Sorcerer Suse Comments: I have never even heard of Sorcerer Linux ! Year 2002 statistics could be very inaccurate since DistroWatch.com was not well-known at the time. Also, I included Suse in position #6 so that we can see how it far...

Introduction I created this post to document all of the small things I do on my Ubuntu systems to make them customized for me. My hope is that people who want to do similar things will learn from my experiences. Add a password to the screensaver (a common policy at work) System > Preferences > Screensaver Select the screensaver you want to use (you can also choose "Random" or "Blank Screen") Use the slider to choose the amount of idle time before the screensaver starts Check this box: "Activate Screensaver" Check this box: "Lock screen when screensaver is active" Make "List View" the default in the File Browser (Nautilus) Places > Home Folder Edit > Preferences Find "View new folders using:" and select "List View" 4. After you change this setting, you can browse your files like this: Increase the Terminal scroll-back history Applications > Accessories > Terminal Edit > Current Profile Click on t...

Introduction A firewall is a necessary piece of software on most operating systems. This is not true for Ubuntu, because the default install doesn't include any services that accept connections from the network. You can confirm this by running this command: sudo netstat -plut Services that accept connections from the network will include an asterisk symbol or an IP address in the field labeled "Local Address". Services that only accept connections from the local system will include the word "localhost". If you later decide to install a new service such as SSH or Remote Desktop (VNC), you will probably want to control who can access these services by installing a software firewall. Searching in Add/Remove Applications for "firewall" does not return any results. Searching in Synaptic Package Manager for "firewall" will provide you with 116 results. Obviously, these are not the best ways to find the right application. Firestarter Firewall (b...