The firmware (BIOS/UEFI) on your system contains critical hardware settings and boot information. Knowing your firmware version is essential for updates, compatibility checks, and troubleshooting. Here’s how to find it. Using dmidecode dmidecode is the standard tool for reading the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) table, which stores hardware and firmware metadata. Most distributions include it,…
GNOME includes a couple of built-in easter eggs that are worth knowing about, though their availability varies across versions. “free the fish” This easter egg displays a random wisdom phrase (pulled from the fortune database) in a dialog box. Modern GNOME (40+): Open the Activities menu and search for “free the fish”, then press Enter….
Xen remains a critical hypervisor in production environments—AWS EC2, Citrix Hypervisor, and other cloud platforms rely on it—but most Linux distributions now default to KVM for general-purpose virtualization. If you’re working with Xen specifically, this guide covers Dom0 and DomU setup on modern distributions. When to Use Xen Xen is worth considering if you need:…
When using KDE Plasma with GTK applications, you’ll notice the mouse cursor switches to a default style when moving from the desktop to applications like Firefox or GIMP. This happens because GTK and Qt use separate cursor theme configurations by default. Quick Fix The easiest solution is to explicitly configure GTK to use your chosen…
MAC stands for Media Access Control — a six-byte identifier (usually written as twelve hexadecimal digits) that uniquely identifies a network interface on a LAN. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) maps IP addresses to MAC addresses at layer 2. You might need to change your MAC address to: Bypass network access controls tied to MAC…
The mailx (or s-nail on modern distributions) command remains useful for scripted email delivery, particularly when you need to send alerts or notifications automatically. Gmail’s SMTP service works well for this, though it requires TLS authentication and specific configuration. Prerequisites Most Linux distributions include mailx or s-nail by default. On systems using s-nail (Ubuntu 20.04+,…
A Linux box serving as a network gateway needs two network interfaces: eth0: Connected to the local network (LAN) with IP 192.168.0.1 eth1: Connected to the upstream network (Internet) with IP 198.51.100.1 The goal is to allow clients on the 192.168.0.0/16 network to route traffic through this gateway to reach external networks. Enable IP Forwarding…
To connect to HKUST’s sMobileNet wireless network via NetworkManager, you’ll need to configure WPA2 Enterprise authentication with PEAP. This guide covers the required settings. Network Settings Configure the following parameters in NetworkManager: Basic Settings: SSID: sMobileNet Wireless security: WPA & WPA2 Enterprise Authentication method: Protected EAP (PEAP) Authentication Details: Anonymous identity: (leave empty) PEAP version:…
Converting audio tracks from video files is useful for extracting soundtracks, creating audio-only versions for podcasts, or generating files optimized for audio playback. While MPlayer was historically used for this task, ffmpeg is now the standard tool—it’s actively maintained, more efficient, and handles both extraction and encoding in one step. Installation Install ffmpeg on your…
Modern GNOME uses dconf as its configuration backend, replacing the older GConf system. Whether you’re managing a single workstation or deploying across multiple systems, understanding dconf and gsettings is essential for customizing GNOME environments efficiently. Understanding the Configuration Stack GNOME’s configuration hierarchy works like this: dconf — the low-level database storing all settings gsettings —…
Gitosis is unmaintained and shouldn’t be used for new deployments. Use Gitolite or Forgejo instead. This guide covers Gitolite, which provides fine-grained access control, is actively maintained, and handles multiple repositories under a single system user. Prerequisites A server running Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, or similar) SSH access to the server with sudo privileges A…