Automatic Keyboard Input with xvkbd Automating keyboard input is useful for repetitive tasks, but Linux lacks obvious built-in solutions compared to other systems. xvkbd is available but not purpose-built for this. Still, it works effectively when you understand its options. A Practical Example: Auto-Refresh Browser Say you need to refresh a webpage every 5 seconds…
I tried to flash my HP Compaq CQ35-240TX’s BIOS to F.15 but unfortunately failed. The computer turned to white screen. When I restarted (powered off then boot again), this is no response any more: the hard disk and caps lock’s LED keep blinding. I thought “Oh my God! I must send it to HP to…
This post collect the reference resource for x86-64 (also know as Intel 64, AMD 64) ISA / assembly language programming. x86-64 is a 64-bit extension of the Intel x86 instruction set. ==x86-64 Assembly Programming== Introduction to Computer Systems Resources (15-213 Introduction to Computer Systems Resources from CMU) Lots materials for learning machine-level programming on the…
Installing and Configuring Xen on Fedora Xen remains relevant for certain production workloads, particularly in cloud infrastructure (AWS EC2, Citrix Hypervisor) and enterprise environments requiring strong VM isolation. However, most Linux distributions now default to KVM for virtualization due to simpler setup and broader ecosystem support. If you’re evaluating hypervisors, consider KVM or container-based solutions…
Changing the Hostname on Fedora Linux Fedora has evolved its hostname management over the years. Modern versions use systemd and the /etc/hostname file, while older releases relied on /etc/sysconfig/network. Here’s how to handle both scenarios. Using hostnamectl (Recommended) The most straightforward method on current Fedora is using hostnamectl, which handles hostname changes through systemd: sudo…
Checking Firmware Version in Linux 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…
GNOME Easter Eggs: “free the fish” and “gegls from outer space” 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…
Creating Fedora Live USB Media A Fedora Live USB lets you boot directly into a Fedora environment without modifying your hard drive. You can use it to test Fedora, troubleshoot your system, or perform a fresh installation. This guide covers modern tools and workflows for creating bootable USB media. Back up any data on your…
Linux Port Forwarding Using iptables Port forwarding allows external hosts to reach services inside a private network by mapping traffic from a public address to an internal one. On Linux, this is implemented through iptables rules that modify packet headers as they traverse the kernel’s netfilter framework. Common use cases include exposing HTTP/HTTPS servers from…
Guake: A Drop-Down Terminal for GNOME Guake is a drop-down terminal emulator for GNOME that brings the Quake-style console experience to Linux desktops. When you press a hotkey (F12 by default), a terminal slides down from the top of the screen. Press it again and it retracts. It’s fast, minimal, and designed purely around keyboard…
Minimizing Thunderbird to System Tray Keeping Thunderbird running constantly makes sense for monitoring incoming mail, but leaving it on the taskbar consumes screen real estate. System tray integration is cleaner—minimize to a small icon and optionally display unread message counts. Thunderbird’s addon ecosystem provides platform-specific solutions for this. Note that addon availability and compatibility can…
Overview Colossus is Google’s successor to the Google File System (GFS), designed to handle the massive scale of data storage across Google’s infrastructure. While GFS was documented in detail in the 2003 SOSP paper, Colossus information remains sparse in academic literature—much of what we know comes from talks and interviews with Google engineers. Colossus serves…
Historical Archive: This post lists conferences from 2012. The submission deadlines and venues are no longer current. For up-to-date conference information, check the official conference websites or resources like Conference Alert and CCF Deadlines. I am trying to find out the top conferences that have the largest average number of citations in the last 5…
Foundation Papers Understanding distributed systems and cloud computing starts with the literature. These papers form the foundation for anyone working in the space — they’re not just historical artifacts, they’re still actively referenced and their design principles remain relevant. Internet-Scale Systems and Datacenters The Google cluster architecture paper remains essential reading. It laid out the…
Historical Archive: This post lists conferences from 2012. The submission deadlines and venues are no longer current. For up-to-date conference information, check the official conference websites or resources like Conference Alert and CCF Deadlines. This post lists important conferences related to Cloud Computing in year 2013. SOSP 2013 SOSP’13: The 24th ACM Symposium on Operating…
Historical Archive: This post lists conferences from 2011. The submission deadlines and venues are no longer current. For up-to-date conference information, check the official conference websites or resources like Conference Alert and CCF Deadlines. This post lists important conferences on Cloud Computing in year 2012. OSDI 2012 10th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and…