What is open-source software? Open-source software is software which is under a special type of license in which the source code, which is usually copyrighted, is instead open to all. Specifically, this refers to code which meets the Open Source Definition for code licensing or is released to the public domain, and thus available without [...]

I recently discovered Ubuntu has home directory permissions default to world readable. In other words, any unprivileged user, including guests users, are able to access and read the home directory data for any other user. For those who store sensitive information on a multi-user computer, this can be a significant security problem or at least [...]

Ubuntu 9.04, known during development as Jaunty Jackalope, features a major new notifications system known as ‘notify-osd’. The new notifications are graphically very nice and appealing, however some features are not necessarily desirable to everyone. I came across certain issues with the new notifications system and have made some modifications which I would like to [...]

I recently received the an e-mail from Scott James Remnant on behalf of the Ubuntu Technical Board, regarding their Position on Mono. Here is an extract. “…the Ubuntu Technical Board sees no reason to exclude Mono or applications based upon it from the archive, or from the default installation set. Since the Mono stack is [...]

For those who haven’t heard, Ubuntu’s One Hundred Paper Cuts is an initiative of sorts, to fix 100 minor usability bugs in Ubuntu (and Kubuntu). It is being working through over a period of 10 weeks with 10 bugs scheduled to be fixed in each one week long milestone. These ‘paper cuts’ are described as [...]

The general update policy of Ubuntu states that application versions will be kept stable during each Ubuntu release other than in exceptional cases. Obviously security patches are still applied when available. This does mean however, with the recent release of Firefox 3.5 that Ubuntu users will have to wait until Ubuntu 9.10 until officially receiving [...]

Linux is a general term to describe operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Linux is best known for its use in servers (most often web servers) and integrated devices, especially network equipment such as routers, managed switches and such. However, Linux has, quite recently, gained a significant boost as a desktop operating system. This [...]

Getting Spotify’s links to work in Linux is pretty simple. At the time of writing this, there is no native Linux Spotify client available, and these instructions assume you are using the Windows version of Spotify via Wine. If you are unsure as to what Spotify is exactly, stop right there and read what I [...]

Wine is essentially a Windows compatibility layer for Linux, allowing Linux users to run Windows applications in a much more direct manner than full operating system virtualisation. More information about Wine is to come shortly. If you wish, you can visit the official Wine website to get more details about this excellent free piece of [...]

In Windows, you can find your uptime via one of the following two methods commands. To enter these commands open a command prompt from the Start Menu or just execute cmd.exe systeminfo | find “Up Time” net statistics server (Note that this command displays actually shows the last boot time from which the uptime can [...]