Posts Tagged ‘basic’

Getting Console and Graphical hardware system information on Linux with cpuinfo, neofetch, CPU-X (CPU-Z Unix alternative), I-nex and inxi

Tuesday, September 17th, 2019

getting-console-information-and-graphical-hardware-system-information-Linux-cpuinfo-neofetch-cpu-x-i-nex-1

Earlier I've wrote extensive article on how to get hardware information on Linux using tools such as dmidecode, hardinfo, lshw, hwinfo, x86info and biosdecode but there are few other hardware reporting tools for Linux worthy to mention that has been there for historical reasons such as cpuinfo as we as some new shiny ones such as neofetch (a terminal / console hardware report tool as well the CPU-X and I-Nex  which is Linux equivalent to the all known almost standard for Windows hardware detection CPU-Z worthy to say few words about.
 

1. cpuinfo

 

Perhaps the most basic tool to give you a brief information about your Processor type (model) number of Cores and Logical Processors is cpuinfo

I remember cpuinfo has been there since the very beginning on almost all Linux distributions's repository, nowadays its popularity of the days when the kings on the Linux OS server scenes were Slackware, Caldera OpenLinux and Redhat 6.0 Linux and Debian 3.0  declined but still for scripting purposes it is handy small proggie.

To install and run it in Debian  / Ubuntu / Mint Linux etc.:

 

aptitude install -y cpuinfo

/usr/bin/cpu-info

 

Linux-get-processor-system-info-in-console-cpu-info

 

2. neofetch

 

The next one worthy to install and check is neofetch (a cross-platform and easy-to-use system information
 command line script that collects your Linux system information and display it on the terminal next to an image, it could be your distributions logo or any ascii art of your choice.)

The cool thing about neofetch is besides being able to identify the System server / desktop hardware parameters, it gives some basic info about number of packages installed on the system, memory free and in use, used kernel and exact type of System (be it Dell PowerEdge Model XX, IBM eSeries Model / HP Proliant Model etc.

neofetch-OS-hardware-information-Linux-ascii-system-info-desktop-notebook

neofetch info generated on my home used Lenovo Thikpad T420

neofetch-OS-hardware-information-Linux-ascii-system-info-pcfreak-home-server
neofetch info from www.pc-freak.net running current machine

neofetch even supports Mac OS X and Windows OS ! 🙂

To install neofetch on Mac OS X:
 

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"


or via Mac ported packages using brew

brew install neofetch


neofetch-screenshot-from-Mac-OS-X

neofetch is even installable on Windows OS that has the scoop command line installer tool installer manager with below PowerShell code in cmd.exe (Command line):

powershell Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -scope CurrentUser
iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')
scoop install git
scoop install neofetch

neofetch-microsoft-windows-hardware-command-line-report-tool-screenshot


By the way Scoop was quite a finding for me and it is pretty handy to install plenty of useful command line Linux / UNIX tools, such as curl, wget, git etc. in the same easy straight forward way as a standard yum or apt-get on Windows (without explicitly installing things as GnuWin and CygWin).
 

3. CPU-X graphical user interface hardware report Linux GUI alternative to Windows CPU-Z


The packages for CPU-X are a bit outdated and even though there are rpm packages for Fedora, OpenSuSE and .deb package for Debian for Debian, Ubuntu and ArchLinux (pacman), there is no up to date version for Debian 10 and the package builds distributed for different Linux distros are a bit outdated.

Thus to install CPU-X on any Linux distribution it is perhaps best to use the portable version (static binary) of CPU-X.
It is currently available on https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X/releases

To install latest portable version of CPU-X

wget https://github.com/X0rg/CPU-X/releases/download/v3.2.4/CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.tar.gz

mkdir CPU-X
cd CPU-X

tar -zxvvf CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x yohan/users 4563032 2019-01-13 22:15 CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.bsd64
-rwxr-xr-x yohan/users 5484968 2019-01-13 22:15 CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64

 

cp -rpf CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64 /usr/local/bin/
ln -sf /usr/local/bin/CPU-X_v3.2.4_portable.linux64 /usr/local/bin/cpu-x


Next run as superuser (root)
 

hipo@jeremiah:~$ su -c 'cpu-x'

 

As seen from below screenshots cpu-x reports a lot of concrete specific hardware data on:

  • Processor
  • Motherboard
  • Memory
  • System
  • Graphic card
  • Performance

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-CPU-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-caches-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-Motherboard-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-memory-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-system-info

cpu-x-cpu-cpu-z-alternative-linux-screenshot-graphics-info

CPU-X can be installed also on FreeBSD very easily by just installing from BSD port tree sysutils/cpu-x/
It is also said to work on other *BSDs, NetBSD, OpenBSD Unixes but I guess this will require a manual compilation based on FreeBSD's port Makefile.

4. I-Nex another GUI alternative to CPU-Z for UNIX / Linux

I-Nex is even more useful for general hardware reporting as it reports many hardware specifications not reported by CPU-X such as Battery type and Model Name  (if the hardware report is on a laptop), info on USB devices slots or plugged USB devices brand and specifications, the available Network devices on the system (MAC Addresses) of each of it, Installed and used drivers on Hard Disk (ATA / SATA / SCSI / SSD), HW Sector size, Logical Block size, HDD Sectors count and other specific Hard Drive data as well as information on available Audio (Sound Blaster) devices (HDA-Intel), used Codecs, loaded kernel ALSA driver, Video card used and most importantly indicators on Processor reported CPU (temperature).

 

To install I-nex

Go to https://launchpad.net/i-nex or any of the mirror links where it resides and install the respective package, in my case, I was doing the installation on Debian Linux, so fetched current latest amd64 package which as of moment of writting this article is i-nex_7.6.0-0-bzr977-20161012-ubuntu16.10.1_amd64.deb , next installed it with dpkg
 

dpkg -i i-nex_7.6.0-0-bzr977-20161012-ubuntu16.10.1_amd64.deb

 

As the package was depending on some other .deb packages, which failed to install to install the missing ones I had to further run
 

apt –fix-broken install

i-nex-cpu-info-linux-hardware-info-program

 

hre

I-Nex thermal indicators about CPU temperature on a Linux Desktop notebook

i-nex-gpu-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-mobo-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-audio-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-drivers-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-system-info-linux-hardware-info-program

i-nex-battery-info-linux-hardware-info-program

 

There are other Hardware identification report tools such as CUDA-Z that are useful to check if you have Nvidia Video Card hardware Installed on the PC to check the status of CUDA enabled GPUs, useful if working with nVidia Geforce, Quadro, Tesla cards and ION chipsets.

If you use it however be aware that CUDA-Z is not compatible with 3rd-party linux drivers for NVidia so make sure you have the current official Nvidia version.

 

5. Inxi full featured system information script

 

Inxi is a 10000 lines mega bash script that fetches hardware details from multiple different sources in /proc /sys and from commands on the system, and generates a beautiful looking console report that non technical users can read easily.

inxi-10-k-mega-bash-shell-script-reporting-on-installed-system-computer-hardware

 

inxi -Fx

 

 

inxi-report-on-installed-hardware-on-my-lenovo-thinkpad-home-laptop

Each of the pointed above tools has different method of collection of Hardware information from various resources e.g. – kernel loaded modules, dmesg, files like /proc/meminfo /proc/version /proc/scsi/scsi /proc/partitions.
Hence some of the tools are likely to report more info than otheres, so in case if some information you need regarding the system plugged in hardware is missing you can perhaps obtain it from another program. Most Linux distribution desktop provided GNOME package are including Hardinfo gui tool, but in many cases above mentioned tools are likely to add even more on info on what is inside your PC Box.
If you're aware of others tools that are useful not mentioned here please share it.

Installing usual Software Tools and Development header files and libraries on a newly installed Debian Server

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

installing-usual-software-tools-and-development-header-files-and-libraries-on-newly-installed-Debian-Ubuntu-server
Today I start my work as a system administrator for a new IT company.
My first duties include configuration and installation of some usual programs
used in everyday's sys admin job.
In that manner of thoughts I have long ago realized there is a common group of
tools and software I had to install on almost each and every new configured
Debian GNU / Linux running Server.
Here is a list of packages I usually install on new Debian systems,
even though this exact commands are expected to be executed on Debian (5.0) Lenny
I believe they are quite accurate for Debian Testing and Debian Testing/Unstable,
bleeding edge distributions.
Before I show you the apt-get lines with all the packages, I would advice you to install
and use netselect-apt to select the fastest Debian package mirror near you
So to install and use run the following commands;

aptitude install netselect-apt
netselect-apt -n lenny

Now as netselect-apt would have tested for the fastest mirror and created sources.list
file in your current directory, open the sources.list file and decide what should enter your
official /etc/apt/sources.list file or in other words merge the two files as you like.
Good, now as we have a fast mirror to download our packages let's continue further with the
packages to install.
Excecute the following command to install some of the basic tools and packages:

# install some basic required tools, software and header files
debian-server:~# apt-get install tcpdump mc ncurses-dev htop iftop iptraf nmap tcpdump apache2 apachetop
mysql-server-5.0 phpmyadmin vnstat rsync traceroute tcptrace e2fsprogs hddtemp finger mtr-tiny
netcat screen imagemagick flex snort mysql-server-5.0 sysstat lm-sensors alien rar unrar util-linux curl
vim lynx links elinks sudo autoconf gcc build-essential dpkg-dev webalizer awstats

Herein I'll explain just a few of the installed package and their install
purpose,as they could be unknown to some of the people out there.

apachetop - monitors apache log file in real time similar to gnu top
iftop - display bandwidth usage on selected interface interactively
vnstat - show inbound & outbound traffic usage on selected network interfaces
e2fsprogs - some general tools for creation of ext2 file systems etc.
hddtemp - Utility to monitor hard drive temperature
mtr-tiny - matt's traceroute great traceroute proggie
netcat - TCP/IP swiss army knife, quite helpful for network maintance tasks
snort - an Intrusion Detecting System
build-essential - installs basic stuff required for most applications compiled from source code
sysstat - generates statistics about server load each and every ten minutes, check man for more
lm-sensors - enables you to track your system hardware sensors information and warn in CPU heatups etc.

I believe the rest of them are no need to be explained, if you're not familiar with them check the manuals.
So far so good but this is not all I had to install, as you probably know most Apache webservers nowadays
are running PHP and are using a dozen of PHP libraries / extensions not originally bundled with PHP install
Therefore here are some more packages related to php to install that would install some more php goodies.

# install some packages required for many php enabled applications
debian-esrver:~# apt-get install php-http php-db php-mail php-net-smtp php-net-socket php-pear php-xml-parser
php5-curl php5-gd php5-imagick php5-mysql php5-odbc php5-recode php5-sybase php5-xmlrpc php5-dev

As I said that is mostly the basic stuff that is a must have on most of the Debian servers I have
configured this days, of course this is not applicable to all situations, however I hope
this would be of use to somebody out there.

Why don’t you use Window Maker GNU Step to improve your computer interaction performance

Monday, October 30th, 2017

Why-dont-you-use-Window-Maker-graphical-environment-for-your-GNU_Linux-FreeBSD-desktop

If you're pissed off too already of GNOME 3 Unity / GNOME 3 Flashback and KDE Plasma  as I am you perhaps are looking for something more light weigth but you're not okay with default Debian Cinnanom GUI environment or you don't feel confortable for system administration jobs and programming with XFCE then perhaps you would like to give a try to something more old school but build with good design in Mind.

Those who are fans of the evil genius Steve Jobs (as Richard Stallman use to call him), definitely Remember NeXT company and the revolutionary Graphic Environment they tried to develop NeXT Step then you'll be happy to hear about GNUStep  which historically was called AfterStep and is a Free Software remake of NextStep graphical environment for Free and Open Source operating systems (FOSS) such as GNU / Linux and FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD etc.

Amanda_the_panda_mascot_of_window_maker-graphical-environment-system

Amanda the Panda is the mascot of Window Maker. She was designed by Agnieszka Czajkowska.

The good thing about Window Maker and the complete bunch of desktop environment GNUStep is it much lighter and less complex than the more and more becoming bloated modern Free Software graphical environments, it definitely easifies the way the user interacts with basic browsing with Firefox / Opera, terminal code writting or command system administration and basic chat functionalities such as with Gajim or Pidgin and basic email writting operatins be it with some text email client such as Mutt or with Thunderbird. Its great also to reduce the overall load the Operating System puts on your brain so you can have more time to invest in more useful stuff like programming.

windows-maker-increase-performance-of-work-with-your-computer-howto-wmaker-screenshot

After all simplicity in Operating System is a key for an increased productivity with your computer.
Besides that stability of Window Maker is much better when compared to GNOME and GNOME 2 fork MATE graphical environment which nowadays in my opinion is becoming even more buggy than it used to be some years ago.

Below is how Window Makers site describes Window Maker:

"Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment. In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP user interface. It is fast, feature rich, easy to configure, and easy to use. It is also free software, with contributions being made by programmers from around the world.

Window Maker has a stable user interface since many years and comes with a powerful GUI configuration editor called WPrefs, which removes the need to edit text-based config files by hand. It supports running dockapps which make everyday tasks such as monitoring system performance and battery usage, mounting devices or connecting to the internet very easy. Please see the features section for more specifics on what Window Maker can do, and how it compares with other popular window managers."

Window Maker is bundled with a number of useful applications which gives ability to put Dock applets easily for easily intearcive desktop update of current Weather Report, Monitoring Network Traffic, TV Player (video4linux), laptop battery info dock, CD player and Volume control management app, text editor, pdf viewer, integrated Mail application, Calculator, RSS Reader, GNUStep games and much useful things to customize from the desktop resembling many of the basic features any other graphical environment such as GNOME / KDE Provides.

The User Interface (UI) of Window Maker is highly configurable with an integrated WMaker tool called

WPrefs

Why-dont-you-use-Wmaker-for-better-desktop-performance-Windowmaker_colour_preferences

All generated settings from WPrefs (Window Maker Prefernces) GUI tool are to be stored in a plaintext file:
 

~/GNUstep/Defaults/WMRootMenu

All Wmaker configurations are stored inside ~/GNUstep/ (Your user home GNUStep), so if you're to become its user sooner or later you will have to get acquired to it.

Wmaker is very minimalist and the performance is killing so Window Maker is perhaps the number one choice Graphical Environment to use on Old Computers with Linux and BSD.

Below is a full list of all packages installed on my Debian GNU / Linux that provides WMaker / GNUStep great functionalities:

root@jericho:/home/hipo# dpkg -l |grep -i wmaker; dpkg -l |grep -i gnustep
ii  wmaker                                        0.95.8-2                             amd64        NeXTSTEP-like window manager for X
ii  wmaker-common                                 0.95.8-2                             all          Window Maker – Architecture independent files
ii  wmbattery                                     2.50-1+b1                            amd64        display laptop battery info, dockable in WindowMaker
ii  wmcdplay                                      1.1-2+b1                             amd64        CD player based on ascd designed for WindowMaker
ii  wmifs                                         1.8-1                                amd64        WindowMaker dock app for monitoring network traffic
ii  wmnut                                         0.66-1                               amd64        WindowMaker dock app that displays UPS statistics from NUT's upsd
ii  wmpuzzle                                      0.5.2-2+b1                           amd64        WindowMaker dock app 4×4 puzzle
ii  wmrack                                        1.4-5+b1                             amd64        Combined CD Player + Mixer designed for WindowMaker
ii  wmtv                                          0.6.6-1                              amd64        Dockable video4linux TV player for WindowMaker
ii  wmweather                                     2.4.6-2+b1                           amd64        WindowMaker dockapp that shows your current weather
ii  wmweather+                                    2.15-1.1+b2                          amd64        WindowMaker dock app that shows your current weather
ii  addressmanager.app                            0.4.8-2+b2                           amd64        Personal Address Manager for GNUstep
ii  agenda.app                                    0.42.2-1+b7                          amd64        Calendar manager for GNUstep
ii  charmap.app                                   0.3~rc1-3                            amd64        Character map for GNUstep
ii  charmap.app-common                            0.3~rc1-3                            all          Character map for GNUstep (arch-independent files)
ii  cynthiune.app                                 1.0.0-1+b4                           amd64        Music player for GNUstep
ii  dictionaryreader.app                          0+20080616+dfsg-2+b6                 amd64        Dict client for GNUstep
ii  edenmath.app                                  1.1.1a-7.1+b1                        amd64        Scientific calculator for GNUstep
ii  gnumail.app                                   1.2.2-1.1                            amd64        Mail client for GNUstep
ii  gnumail.app-common                            1.2.2-1.1                            all          Mail client for GNUstep (common files)
ii  gnustep                                       7.8                                  all          User applications for the GNUstep Environment
ii  gnustep-back-common                           0.25.0-2                             amd64        GNUstep GUI Backend – common files
ii  gnustep-back0.25                              0.25.0-2                             all          GNUstep GUI Backend
ii  gnustep-back0.25-cairo                        0.25.0-2                             amd64        GNUstep GUI Backend (cairo)
ii  gnustep-base-common                           1.24.9-3.1                           all          GNUstep Base library – common files
ii  gnustep-base-doc                              1.24.9-3.1                           all          Documentation for the GNUstep Base Library
ii  gnustep-base-runtime                          1.24.9-3.1                           amd64        GNUstep Base library – daemons and tools
ii  gnustep-common                                2.7.0-1                              amd64        Common files for the core GNUstep environment
ii  gnustep-core-devel                            7.8                                  all          GNUstep Development Environment — core libraries
ii  gnustep-core-doc                              7.8                                  all          GNUstep Development Environment — core documentation
ii  gnustep-devel                                 7.8                                  all          GNUstep Development Environment — development tools
ii  gnustep-games                                 7.8                                  all          GNUstep games
ii  gnustep-gui-common                            0.25.0-4                             all          GNUstep GUI Library – common files
ii  gnustep-gui-doc                               0.25.0-4                             all          Documentation for the GNUstep GUI Library
ii  gnustep-gui-runtime                           0.25.0-4+b1                          amd64        GNUstep GUI Library – runtime files
ii  gnustep-icons                                 1.0-5                                all          Several free icons for use with GNUstep and others
ii  gnustep-make                                  2.7.0-1                              all          GNUstep build system
ii  gnustep-make-doc                              2.7.0-1                              all          Documentation for GNUstep Make
ii  gomoku.app                                    1.2.9-2+b2                           amd64        Extended TicTacToe game for GNUstep
ii  gorm.app                                      1.2.23-1                             amd64        Visual Interface Builder for GNUstep
ii  gridlock.app                                  1.10-4+b2                            amd64        Collection of grid-based board games for GNUstep
ii  grr.app                                       1.0-1+b2                             amd64        RSS reader for GNUstep
ii  gworkspace-common                             0.9.3-1                              all          GNUstep Workspace Manager – common files
ii  gworkspace.app                                0.9.3-1+b2                           amd64        GNUstep Workspace Manager
ii  helpviewer.app                                0.3-8+b3                             amd64        Online help viewer for GNUstep programs
ii  libaddresses0                                 0.4.8-2+b2                           amd64        Database API backend framework for GNUstep (library files)
ii  libaddressview0                               0.4.8-2+b2                           amd64        Address display/edit framework for GNUstep (library files)
ii  libgnustep-base-dev                           1.24.9-3.1                           amd64        GNUstep Base header files and development libraries
ii  libgnustep-base1.24                           1.24.9-3.1                           amd64        GNUstep Base library
ii  libgnustep-gui-dev                            0.25.0-4+b1                          amd64        GNUstep GUI header files and static libraries
ii  libgnustep-gui0.25                            0.25.0-4+b1                          amd64        GNUstep GUI Library
ii  libpantomime1.2                               1.2.2+dfsg1-1                        amd64        GNUstep framework for mail handling (runtime library)
ii  libpopplerkit0                                0.0.20051227svn-7.1+b9               amd64        GNUstep framework for rendering PDF content (library files)
ii  libpreferencepanes1                           1.2.0-2+b2                           amd64        GNUstep preferences library – runtime library
ii  librenaissance0                               0.9.0-4+b6                           amd64        GNUstep GUI Framework – library files
ii  librenaissance0-dev                           0.9.0-4+b6                           amd64        GNUstep GUI Framework – development files
ii  librsskit0d                                   0.4-1                                amd64        GNUstep RSS framework (runtime library)
ii  mknfonts.tool                                 0.5-11+b5                            amd64        Create nfont packages for GNUstep
ii  price.app                                     1.3.0-1                              amd64        Image filtering and manipulation using GNUstep
ii  projectcenter.app                             0.6.2-1                              amd64        IDE for GNUstep Development
ii  renaissance-doc                               0.9.0-4                              all          GNUstep GUI Framework – documentation
ii  systempreferences.app                         1.2.0-2+b2                           amd64        GNUstep preferences application
ii  terminal.app                                  0.9.8.1-1                            amd64        Terminal Emulator for GNUstep
ii  textedit.app                                  4.0+20061029-3.5+b1                  amd64        Text editor for GNUstep
ii  viewpdf.app                                   1:0.2dfsg1-5+b2                      amd64        Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer for GNUstep
ii  zipper.app                                    1.5-1+b2                             amd64        Archive manager for GNUstep

Well yes it is true Window Maker is not a spoon for every mouth, those who want to have more confortable desktop environment better look out at other options as Window Maker is Unix / Linux graphical environment that fits better hackers, computer developers and system administrators.

Anyhow if you have some old family member that has to use an old computer architecture and the person is only to use mainly just browser to check email, youtube and basic surfing then Wmaker will be a great choice as it will consume little CPU and Memory much less than the heavy and computer resources sucking GNOME and KDE.

I've historically used Wmaker also with its teminal emulator rxvt (VT102 terminal emulator for the X Windows System) which is a kinda of improved version of xterm (the default terminal program bundled with Xorg server), but for those who are already used to Gnome Terminal nice tabs perhaps that would be not the terminal of choice.

rxvt was build to match well the look and feel of AfterStep and consequently Wmaker, its scrollbar was aiming to very much resemble NeXTStep style scrollbar

windowmaker-bind-run-application-to-make-alt-f2-work-like-in-gnome

Most "custom" shortcuts are used to launch specific applications. To add your own keyboard shortcut for an application, go to the "Applications Menu Definition" panel in the Preferences app.  Select the application item in the menu for which you want to create a shortcut, then use the "capture" button to capture the keystrokes you want to assign to that item.  In the screenshot, I've assigned Mod1 + W to open Firefox.

Above  screenshot shows how to map the Run Application keyboard bind to behave like GNOME Run application ALT + F2

window-maker-run-command-like-gnome-run-screenshot-gnu-linux-unix-freebsd

Customizing background of Window Maker

Because WMaker is so simple made and targetting more of a developer audience for use it doesn't have a special graphical interaface to set a Background if you like so, but instead you need to use a wmsetbg command to do so:
 

wmsetbg -s -u filename.jpg

 

WMSetBG command stands for WindowMaker Set Background


If you're too lazy to install and start configuring wmaker, there is a Window Maker LiveCD, you can run Window Maker through LiveCD in Virtual Machine such as VirtualBox to get feeling what you're about to get if you install and start using Wmaker on your Computer.

window-maker-livecd-screenshot-synaptic+wprefs
 

Well at first with Window Maker you might feel confused and quickly irritating missing the already established way to work with your computer, but that's just for a starter sooner you will realize, that for using a limited number of applications for work wmaker, makes you much more efficient. Moreover using your computer with Wmaker can rewire your brain circuits to think a little bit different.

Once you switched to Window Maker you will likely want to have a graphical option to connect to Wireless Networks especially if you're using Wmaker on a notebook it is convenient to not always manually do scan for networks with
 

Iwlscan


commad and use wpasupplicant command to connect instead you can just install wicd and stop default Gnome Network Manager (called Network Manager), you can do so by running as root:
 

service network-manager stop
apt-get install wicd wicd-gtk
service wicd start
wicd-gtk &

 

Unique MenuetOS – Free Software 32 / 64 bit OS entirely written in assembly language

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

 

unique operating-system menuetos written-in-assembler-programming-logo

Something very unique, I stumbled on some time ago and worthy to mention and recommend for everyone to test is MenuetOS. Can you imagine, someone might write an operating system entirely from scratch in 32 / 64 bit Assemler? Idea sounds crazy and impossible but in fact developers of MenuetOS already achieved it!

Unique OS - menuetos asm free os start-menu screenshot

Normally every modern operating system nowadays is based on some kind of UNIX / Linux / or NT (Windows) technology or at least follows some kind of POSIX standartization.
 The design goal of MenuetOS since the first release in year 2000, is to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS. The more the layers more complicated the programming behind is and therefore this creates bugs more bugs. MenuetOS follows the idea of KISS model (Keep It Simple Stupid). Its amazing what people can write in pure asm programming!! 64 bit version of menuet is also backward compatible with 32 bit. MenuetOS supports mostly all any other modern OS does. Here is list of Supported Features:

 

 

 

 

  • – Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, multiprocessor, ring-3 protection
  • – Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1920×1080, 16 million colours
  • – Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
  • – SMP multiprocessor support with currently up to 8 cpus
  • – IDE: Editor/Assembler for applications
  • – USB 2.0 HiSpeed Classes: Storage, Printer, Webcam Video and TV/Radio support
  • – USB 1.1 Keyboard and Mouse support
  • – TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
  • – Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
  • – Hard real-time data fetch
  • – Fits on a single floppy, boots also from CD and USB drives

MenuetOS has fully functional Graphic interface (environment). Though it is so simple it is much more fast (as written in assembler) and behaves more stable than other OS-es written in C / C++.
Its bundled with a POP3 / Imap mail client soft

menuetos assmebly OS mail client
As of time even some major legendary Games like DoomQuake, Sokoban and Chess are ported to MenuetOS !!!

doom2-id-games-running-on-menuetos-operating-system-in-assembler-from-scratch

MenuetOS Doom

quake legendary game running on Menuetos asm free OS

Quake I port on MenuetOS

Below are some more screenshots of Apps and stuff running

Maniac Mansion running on MenuetOS assembler build free Operating system

The world famous Maniac Mansion (1987)

Prince of Persia running on 32 64 bit assembler written GPL free-OS

Arcade Classic of 16 bit and 8 bit computers Prince of Persia running on top of dosbox on MenuetOS

For those who like to program old school MenuetOS has BASIC compiler, C library (supports C programming), debuggers, Command Prompt.

It even supports Networking and has some  most popular network adapters drivers as well as has basic browsing support through HTTP application.

unique-os-menuetos-browsing-with-httpc-browser

You can listen music with CD Player but no support for mp3 yet.
To give MenuetOS a try just like any other Live Linux distribution it has Bootable LiveCD version – you can download it from here
MenuetOS is a very good for people interested to learn good 32 bit and 64 bit Assembler Programming.
Enjoy this unique ASM true hacker OS 😉

Learn Basic Serbian language in Video lessons (Serbian English Lessons)

Monday, November 5th, 2012

learn-serbian-language-in-video-lessons-serbian-cyrillic-alphabet

I'm trying to learn some basic Serbian. It is rather ridiculous, we are not being tought even basic Serbian in Bulgarian primary and high schools. Serbia is just one border away and besides that we Bulgarian and Serbs share same Orthodox Christian faith and similar existence. Over the last 10 centuries, we Bulgarians and Serbians was both under Turkish Yoke. Even nowdays most of the problem of Serbians and Bulgarians are very similar. Both of us are trying to survive and earn basic money for their daily living. Culturally our two nations are very similar too, thus I decided today to take little time and learn some basic Serbian. Learning Serbian for Bulgarians seems to be a generally easy, I listened from friends who speak Serbian a Bulgarian can learn talking some Serbian in just few weeks time, this is logical as both our languages share the same etymological roots from Cyrillic ( Glogolic / Glagolica ).
The reason I want to learn some Serbian is Serbia in the time is I now in Holland and go to Serbian Orthodox Church in Nijmegen

Besides that I really liked Serbians as people and since in future hopefully public relations between Serbian and Bulgaria might come it might be "strategically" wise to speak a bit of Serbian 🙂
One other reason is I'm very interested nowdays in Antrophology and from anthropological perspective, speaking or at least in basic understanding Serbia as closest nation Language helps understand more about Slavonic language and early language structure and gives more knowledge on language history.
For my quest to learn some basic Serbian I've as usual checked in Youtube and found a bunch of Serbian -> English teach yourself guides. It is rather ridiculous I have to learn Serbian (A Slavonic Language), translating myself from (English – Latin) to Serbian and then to Bulgarian. So far my experience with Serbian culture shows Serbian and Serbs can understand each other in many of the cases without even having a clue on Serbian or Bulgarian. Actually about probably 50% of words in Serbian are Ancient Church Slavonic (Ancient Bulgarian). Thus for older Bulgarian people who have heard or speak using more older words communicating with Serb will be much easier. I have noticed younger Serbians, just like younger Bulgarian know little about Serbian (Slavonic) language origin as well as speak very little old Slavonic words, thus younger serbs understood less when I try speaking with them using some kind of Bulgarian, however with most older people, most of the time they understand whether I speak in pure Bulgarian language 🙂

It is worthy to mention that as I heard from my Serbian friend Andrea, Serbians nowdays are mostly writting in Latin and rarely use Cyrillic (Church Slavonic). However in the Church and among people who try to live a true Christian life, use of Cyrillic is more widespread.

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 1 – Serbian Alphabet
 

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 2 – Words Pronounciation

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 3 – Basic Phrases

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 4 – Christmas Special

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 5 – Numbers

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 6 – Animals

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 7 – Colours

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 8 – Places

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 9 – Rooms

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 10 – Cyrilic Alphabet

Learn Serbian – English Lesson 11 – Verb "to be"

Learn Serbian – Egnlish Lesson 12 – Vocabulary (1)

Learning Serbian / Croation language lesson one (Study Serbian English part 1
 

Learning Serbian / Croatian language lesson two (Study Serbian English part 2

 

Learning Serbian / Croatian Language lesson three (Study Serbian English part 3 (Travel Words)

Learning Serbian / Croatian Language lesson four (Study Serbian English part 4

 

Learn Serbian – English Colours and Clothes

Serbian Phrases – Greetings, part 1

 

Serbian for children – Learn Serbian Quickly

 

Learn Serbian 101 – How Old Are You ?

There are plenty of others Videos in youtube. Just browse through https://www.youtube.com/user/Learnserbian/videos?view=0  After you complete all the videos you should be ready to understand and speak Basic serbian 🙂

Pc-Freak Anti Microsoft Phreak, Hack Crack Organization crew short history timeline

Monday, April 9th, 2012

 

pC Freak Crew Hacking Cracking Anti Microsoft Organization Glowing Logo prepared with GIMP

 

 

Pc-Freak used to be anti-Microsoft Phreak / Hack / Anarchy Cracking (PHACK) magazine at a times, whether cracking was still a "craft". Pc-Freak started by a small crew of two persons Dark Doomer and Hip0.
Dark Doomer was the main magazine editor of Pc-Freak and the person who was ahead in computer technology, back at the distant 1995.
The project was simply started as a fun and aiming to help us, get better understanding on computer technology. The basic aim of it wasto gather a group of people who hold interest in Information Technolgy Telephone cracking and security cracking. At a point Dark Doomer resigned as he didn't believed in the project anymore and Hip0 took the lead of the project.

During his leadership, he created and maintaned a small IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel in UNIBG – nowdays reachable via (irc.data.bg port 6667) this used to be around the years 1999 – 2006. The most active years of Pc-Freak were not in publishing text file format (txt) magazines, but in mostly discussion related to Computer Security, Ethical Hacking, Cracking and shared love for computer science. Around the year of 2001 a notable member joined Pc Freak, a person under the alias of ORDER. ORDER was mostly interested in how credit card processing works this is how he took the pseudonim. He used to have a good knowledge on CCs and how this kind of Credit Card processing operates. ORDER used to also like a back bone for the Pc-Freak and was the second person in line thanks to him the crew existed. A bit later a very notable members joined Pc Freak. A personal with an IRC alias STRASHARO. He used to be an(an amazing Windows XP cracker) and used to be known for his great cracking skills. STRASHARO and the rest of the crew planned and organized a number of cracking for fun sessions. Some of the other important person for development of PC FREAK as a crew , were the members  SICSTATIC, Nomen, Alex and FREAX. FreaX was the one that left pc-freak the earliest as he decided to completely quit being a computer and pc-freak activist.

 

Nowdays PC-FREAK  has changed a lot.
The person who gave birth to Pc-Freak (hip0)
Still maintains a personal website under the name PC-FREAK.
The Pc-Freak creator is active computer hobbyist 
and part time hacker.

However Pc-Freak Organization doesn't exist any more as a structured body the magazine is not published for a very long time and people who used to be involved somehow in the project are rarely in touch. During the PC-Freak life only 3 issues were published and actually the base idea of the magazine never came to reality. What is important is Pc-Freak used to play key role for the development and existence of current www.pc-freak.net website.

PC Freak currently contains plenty of information related to computer of security, old exploit codes, little hacks on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD (on hip0s) blog, as well as plenty of information on Orthodox Christianity and generally to Christian Faith. On www.pc-freak.net today, there are also plenty of resources on Computer Security, System Administartion, Business Administration, E-Marketing and Business Consutancy.

Change Skype for Business UI to Lync – Skype for Business Lync Theme / Remove Skype for Business coloroful UI and Switch to Lync simple interface

Wednesday, February 17th, 2016

Revert-skype-for-business-Lync-User-Interface-change-skype-for-business-theme-skin

If you are working in a large corporation such as (HP or HPE – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE is the new splitted company brand name for the Software and Servers division of ex-HP) / IBM / Dell or any other company with the size of top fortune companies and you Computer Domain admistrator has forced your work PC to already use Skype for Business instead of the good tested Lync Client along with the goodies and PROS of having the newer Skype for Business (S4B) as usual for old fashened users like me and the avarage employee the New S4B interface will turn into nightmare with all this circled names and more buttons and the annoying Skype Blue Theme.

For anyone who has even basic idea of design and aesthetics, I believe the default Theme of Skype For Business  will be evaluated as a serious "interface downgrade" compared to the simple looking Interface and White Skin of Lync Client.

With this said it will be logical for the end user like me to desire to customize a bit default S4B Skin to make it more elegant looking like Lync 2013 client but guess what there is a Surprise if you google around, Skype For Business just like the regular Skype client doesn't have integrated support for Skins / Themes.
To make the horror complete, many big corporations are choosing to migrate their Email infrastructure from the classical and well tested Windows Domain with Exchange Server to  Microsoft Office 365 (Cloud services),
which makes the dependency on M$ products even bigger and in the long run control and spying on people's email and information (people's data security even worsers) as you know how hackable Windows prooved to be over the years.


Well for those who remember the good old times of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and ICQ (I seek you) 🙂 and even Jabber when chatting emerged and boomed into popularity all the chat clients nomatter whether it was a free software under GPL / BSD license or it was a Proprietary licensed software, there was always alternative on the Interface Outlook of the Chat clients and on practically all popular Chat / Audio / Video communication Standards / Protocols, there used to be some option for the users to use either a different client or to customize the outook of the program.

Well now the big surprise with Skype Protocol which was purchased by Microsoft some years ago back is this terrible already M$ program doesn't have any option for changing the Theme and even basic customization besides the ones provided by default by Microsoft. For my surprise such a trivial and everybody used program like Skype with perhaps already 1.5 or 2 Billion or even more users doesn't have even basic support for customization !!!
To make the Skype program use horror story even worser Microsoft does upgrade the Skype client agressively and for the last 3 or 4 years Skype is owned by Microsoft the interface gets changing slightly or even completely with every next release.

Now with latest Skype versions since a 1.5 year or so the agressiveness of the program even increased further as it wants you to automatically upgrade, every time you run Skype.
With this in mind and the fact, I have to spend about 8 to 10 years on the PC with Skype for Business switched on on my notebook with no option to use Lync for communication because of the Domain Exchange forcing the changes to all of the users within our EMEA.

So after some serious digging on the Internet, the only work around to change the Skype For Business Theme available by a couple of sources is to Revert Back the Skype User Interface to Lync 2013 Client by changing a value to the Windows registry and get back the good old elegant Lync interface instead of S4B.

The Windows registry value that needs to be changed is:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]


The default value there is:
 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]
"CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00

 

The value has to be changed to:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync]
"CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001
"CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00


restart_lync_screenshot-ms-windows

The value "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00 – instructs so Skype for Business UI is used:
"EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00 – instructs S4B to revert back to Old Lync interface

For a little bit more on the value check out also articles – Alternate Between The Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business
and Managing the Skype Client UI in Skype for Business.

To modify about registry setting you will either have to manually run regedit from Start -> Run ->  cmd.exe or use Windows button + R and type inside run box:
 

regedit


Or even better just use and Run (Click over twice) on this skype.reg (download) sciprt which will modify registry

Because the Domain administrator has forced a policy to automatically offer Change of Lync Interface to Skype for Business on every notebook boot to disable EnableSkypeUI registry value and make Skype appear in the good old Lync UI, I've created also a tiny Batch script lync_ui.bat with following content:
 

cd \
cd \Users\georgi\scripts
 regedit /s skype.reg
exit


You can download lync_ui.bat from here

Note that both skype.reg and lync_ui.bat should be existing in my case in C:\Users\georgi\scipts , change this path to whatever your username is and create scripts folder in your User Home dir.
If unsure about the home directory name you can check it from command prompt with:
 

C:\Users\georgi> echo %HOMEPATH%
\Users\georgi


To make the lync_ui.bat (script invoking skype.reg)  be executed on every PC boot, you need to add it to:

Start -> All Programs -> StartUp

https://www.pc-freak.net/images/how-to-add-script-to-windows-startup-screenshto-microsoft-windows-7

Well this is it now you will have back the Lync UI, Enjoy! 🙂

 

Windows batch read variable – equivalent of Linux read line command

Wednesday, March 12th, 2014

bat-file-icon-windows-read-variable
If you need to do some basic batch scripting sooner or later you will have to insert input from command line to a variable. In Linux this is done with read command, i.e.:
$ echo -n "Type a password for admin:";
$ read line;
$ echo $line;

So here is how to do the same if you need it for a Windows Batch (.BAT) file

C:\\Users\\> Set /p string='What do you want to ask?:'
'What do you want to ask?:'

This will define the string variable, to later print out the variable use:
> echo %string%
variable input output

Make picture transparent with the Gimp on Linux

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

GIMP Logo make picture transparent with GIMP on GNU / Linux
I’m trying to learn some basic design this days as an attempt to fill my huge missing gap of knowledge in graphic processing.
I’ve always been not too good with visual stuff and always been focused on the command line and console, however since
some time design started being quite interesting thing to me and I found it quite handy and challenging to learn some basic designing.

I’m not really a Windows guy and thus my Photoshop skills are next to zero.
Since The Gimp is the substitute for Photoshopfor Linux users and I had a task for one of the websites I’m developing to make some pictures for the website transparent, therefore I had to learn how to make pictures transparent with The Gimp
After some reading online and some experimenting with GIMP it appeared to me it’s very easy to actually make pictures transparent with the GIMP.
So I’ve come with a small article here on how to make image or a picture transparent with Gimp in simple steps in order to help people who are trying to achieve the same easy task:

1. Open Gimp and place your mouse cursor on the picture

Here, Press the 2nd or 3rd mouse button to show menu.

2. Select Layer -> Transperancy -> Alpha to Selection

In that menu select Select Layer -> Transprerancy -> Alpha to Selection

Gimp Alpha to Selection Menu

3. Use Fuzzy Select Tool and select the picture background

Gimp fuzzy select background

4. From Gimp Window pane main menu choose the Clear option

Edit -> Clear (Delete)
gimp edit clear menu

That’s all now your picture background should be removed if some parts of the picture still needs to be purged just follow the above step and remove them.
I should say I thought making picture transparent with GIMP would be a more complex task than it really was, quite nice one more step in my development as a designer 🙂