jacob's blog

Windows 7 needs...well..to be more like Linux

An interesting article on Slashdot pointing to an article at gadgetzone.com.au which points out what features Windows 7 must implement.

I'm obviously bias, but I think the author is picking out what he likes most about Linux? It's funny how a few years ago, Linux had to be more like Windows, but now, Windows needs to be more like Linux.

Using the mail command in Linux

The mail command is a powerful command used to manage your local mail on a *nix box. I use the mail command in (k)ubuntu frequently and have root's mail forwarded to my account on my boxes.

To use mail, you'll have to install the mailx package in (k)ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install mailx

When you login to your linux box via the command line you might see a message such as this:

jsteelsmith@localhost-10:~$ ssh user@example.com
Linux jacob-desktop 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Jun 18 14:43:41 UTC 2008 i686

Rant from Bill Gates

"Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state."

--Email from Bill Gates regarding Windows Usability 2003

Full text of email can be viewed at the Seattle PI's website.

Secure remote desktop using Ubuntu Linux

Remote desktop, or using a remote session, is a very important part of advanced computing. The ability to do this securely is important as well.

Using ssh, Xephyr and a light weight desktop manager, an encrypted, secure, fairly fast remote desktop setup is fairly easy to implement.

First, you'll need to install SSH on the remote machine:

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server