March 2012 | Linux Blog

A Hierarchical Note Taking Application - Cherrytree

Cherrytree is an hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.

Cherrytree Features:
* rich text (foreground color, background color, bold, italic, underline, strike-through, small, h1 and h2)
* syntax highlighting (only when the rich text is disabled in the current node)
* images handling: insertion in the text, edit (resize/rotate), save as png file
* lists handling (bulleted, numbered, to-do and switch between them, multiline with shift+enter)
* simple tables handling (cells with plain text), cut/copy/paste row, import/export as csv file
* codeboxes handling: boxes of automatically highlighted text into normal rich text
* alignment of text, images, tables and codeboxes (left/center/right)
hyper-links (links to web-pages, links to nodes/nodes + anchors, links to files, links to folders)
* intra application copy/paste: supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a

Movie Creator from Photos and Video Clips - ffDiaporama

ffDiaporama is an application for creating video sequences consisting of
* titles, fixed or animated.
* images or photos, fixed or animated.
* movie clips
* music

These sequences are assembled into a slide show by means of transitions of sequence to produce complete videos. The following options are available:
* Refocusing of images and photos
* Cutting of video clips
* Notes (addition of text) for images, photos, sequences and animations
* Graphical filters on the images and the videos (conversion into black and white, dust removal, equalization of colors, etc.)
* Creation of animation by zoom, rotation or Ken Burns Effect on images or photos
* Correction of the images and the videos during animations (luminosity, contrast, gamma, colors, etc.)

Ottawa Linux Symposium Invites all Linux Enthusiasts [June 26-29]

Since 1999 the Linux Symposium has always tried to provide a comfortable collaboration environment for technical people working on all aspects of the Linux Project. Linux Symposium have done best to provide a vendor neutral academic-style conference where developers, administrators, and users all feel at ease and are able to work together towards a common goal.

One major change for 2012 is that Linux Symposium will be making the requirement of a formal paper an option for presenters. Presenters who do elect to submit a formal paper will receive an additional free-attendance pass to allocate to any co-authors or co-workers who also wish to attend the event.

Ottawa Linux Symposium invites all Linux enthusiasts to attend the event in June 26-29.
Please, refer to the the section "Call for participation" for details on event format and submission procedure.

Accelerate HTTP/FTP Downloading Process using Axel under Linux

Axel does the same thing any other download accelerator does: it opens more than one HTTP/FTP connection per download and each connection transfers its own, separate, part of the file. It may sound weird, but it works very well in practice. For example, some FTP sites limit the speed of each connection, therefore opening more than one connection at a time multiplies the allowable bandwidth. Be forewarned that some FTP operators don't like it when you do this. It is better to open the additional connections on several servers and download from all of them simultaneously. Axel supports this. You may either specify a list of mirrors to use or tell the program to search for mirrors.

The difference between Axel and other (mostly Windows-based) accelerators is that it does not write data to separate files and join them later. Axel puts all the data in the right file, in the right order, at download time. This is possible, because most Unix file systems allow you to write data after the end-of-file. Axel is console-based and uses few system resources.

Stressful Application Test - Stressapptest

Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results or the system crashes.

Stressapptest is a user-space test, primarily composed of threads doing memory copies and directIO disk read/write. It allocates a large block of memory (typically 85% of the total memory on the machine), and each thread will choose randomized blocks of memory to copy, or to write to disk. Typically there are two threads per processor, and two threads for each disk. Result checking is done as the test proceeds by CRCing the data as it is copied.

Installing Stressapptest:
Download Stressapptest - here

Molecular Graphics and Modelling System - Avogadro

Avogadro is a molecular graphics and modelling system targeted at molecules and bio-molecules. It can visualize properties like molecular orbitals or electrostatic potentials and features an intuitive molecular builder.

Avogadro Features include:
* Molecular modeller with automatic force-field based geometry optimization
* Molecular Mechanics including constraints and conformer searches
* Visualization of molecular orbitals and general isosurfaces
* Visualization of vibrations and plotting of vibrational spectra
* Support for crystallographic unit cells
* Input generation for the Gaussian, GAMESS and MOLPRO quantum chemistry packages
* Flexible plug-in architecture and Python scripting

Build Your Own Ubuntu based GNU/Linux Distribution - Ubuntu Builder

Ubuntu Builder is a simple tool to build your own distribution. It allows to download, extract, customize in many ways and rebuild your Ubuntu images. You can customize i386 and amd64 images.

Ubuntu Builder Installation:
You can install Ubuntu Builder by downloading the latest version package (here) and installing it using Ubuntu software center by double-clicking on the deb file.

After successful installation, you can open the Ubuntu Builder from Unity 'Dash"

How to use apt-cache under Ubuntu Linux

apt-cache performs a variety of operations on APT's package cache. apt-cache does not manipulate the state of the system but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output from the package meta data.

showpkg displays information about the packages listed on the command line

apt-cache showpkg firefox

Stats displays some statistics about the cache

apt-cache stats

Dump shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is primarily for debugging.

apt-cache dump firefox

Security Auditing Utility for C, C++, PHP, Perl, and Python code - RATS

RATS is a security auditing utility for C, C++, PHP, Perl, and Python code. RATS scans source code, finding potentially dangerous function calls. The goal of rats is not to definitively find bugs (yet), but to provide a reasonable starting point for performing manual security audits.

The initial vulnerability database is taken directly from things that could be easily found when starting with the book, "Building Secure Software" by Viega and McGraw.

Installing RATS:
Open the terminal and type following command to install RATS:

sudo apt-get install rats

Security Check for Application Binary - BFBTester

BFBTester is great for doing quick, proactive, security checks of binary programs. BFBTester will perform checks of single and multiple argument command line overflows as well as environment variable overflows.

BFBTester can also watch for tempfile creation activity to alert the user of any programs using unsafe tempfile names. While BFBTester can not test all overflows in software, it is useful for detecting initial mistakes that can red flag dangerous software.

BFBTester Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install BFBTester:

sudo apt-get install bfbtester

Linux Remote Desktop Client - Remmina

Remmina is a remote desktop client written in GTK+, aiming to be useful for system administrators and travelers, who need to work with lots of remote computers in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks. Remmina supports multiple network protocols in an integrated and consistent user interface. Currently RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP and SSH are supported.

Remmina is free and open-source software, released under GNU GPL license.

Remmina project comes with two separated packages.
Remmina main program:
* A pure GTK+ 2.0 application!
* Maintain a list of connection profiles, organized by groups
* Make quick connections by directly putting in the server address
* Remote desktops with higher resolutions are scrollable/scalable in both window and full screen mode
* Viewport full screen mode: remote desktop automatically scrolls when the mouse moves over the screen edge.
* Floating tool bar in full screen mode, allows you to switch between modes, toggle keyboard grabbing, minimize, etc.
* Tabbed interface, optionally managed by groups
* Tray icon, allows you to quickly access configured connection profiles

Remmina plugins: RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP, SSH, Telepathy

Complete Linux Media Player - Guayadeque

Guayadeque is a music management program designed for all music enthusiasts. It is Full Featured Linux media player that can easily manage large collections and uses the Gstreamer media framework.

Some of Guayadeque Features
* Play mp3, ogg, flac, wma, wav, mpc, mp4, ape, ...
* Configurable crossfader engine
* Configurable Silence detector to avoid listening to silence between tracks
* Read and write tags in all supported formats
* Allow to catalogue your music using labels. Any track, artist or album can have as many labels you want
* Smart play mode that add tracks that fit your music taste using the tracks currently in play list
* Ability to download covers manually or automatically
* Suggest music using last.fm service
* Allow fast access to any music file by genre, artist, album, etc
* Play and Record shoutcast radios
...And many more

OpenSource Weblog (Blogger, WordPress and others) Client - BloGTK

BloGTK is a weblog client that allows you to post to your weblog from GNOME without the need for a separate browser window. BloGTK allows you to connect with many weblog systems such as Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, and more. BloGTK is written using Python and PyGTK, and is designed to be fast and simple to use.

BloGTK is open-source software released under the BSD license, which means that it is completely free for use.

Here is a list of weblog platforms known to work with BloGTK 2.0:
* Blogger/Blogspot
* WordPress and WordPress.com
* Movable Type/Open Melody
* b2evolution
* Windows Live Spaces
* Habari
* LifeType
* Expression Engine (autoconfiguration does not work)
* Serendipity
In general, BloGTK should work with any weblog package that supports the Movable Type API, the MetaWeblog API, or the old Blogger API.

Download Videos from YouTube, TED, Dailymotion and other online video sites - Movgrab

Movgrab is a command line application to download video's from all those pesky sites that insist you use a big fat browser that runs flash in order to see their content. It's a command-line app written in straight C and does not require to install any other dependency packages.

Download and Install Movgrab:
Download the latest Movgrab source tar file - here
Open the terminal and type following command to compile and install Movgrab:

tar -zxvf movgrab-1.1.8.tgz
cd movgrab-1.1.8
./configure
make
sudo make install

Network Scanner (Discovering and Managing Application) - AutoScan-Network

AutoScan-Network is a network scanner (discovering and managing application). No configuration is required to scan your network. The main goal is to print the list of connected equipments in your network.

AutoScan-Network Features:
• Automatic network discovery
• TCP/IP scanner
• Wake on LAN functionality
• Multi-threaded Scanner
• Port scanner
• Low surcharge on the network
• VNC Client
• Telnet Client
• SNMP scanner
• Simultaneous sub-networks scans without human intervention
• Real-time detection of any connected equipment
• Supervision of any equipment (router, server, firewall...)
• Supervision of any network service (smtp, http, pop, ...)
• Automatic detection of known operatic system (brand and version), you can also add any unknown equipment to the database

Create Your Own Customized Ubuntu System - Remastersys

Remastersys is a tool that can be used to do 2 things with an existing Debian, Ubuntu or derivative installation.

* It can make a full system backup including personal data to a live CD or DVD that you can use anywhere and install.
* It can make a distributable copy you can share with friends. This will not have any of your personal user data in it.

The resulting ISO file can be used on any other PC that still meets the original minimum requirements of Ubuntu or Debian. Things like the graphics card and other hardware will be configured and setup automatically and you do not have to use identical hardware. Ubuntu's live boot tool, casper, currently blacklists Nvidia and AMD proprietary drivers so they will not be available on the live system and will need to be reinstalled after installation of your custom system.

Currently there is a size limitation imposed by the genisomage tool in Ubuntu and Debian. This tool is used to create the ISO file. This limits the maximum single file size for the ISO to be set at 4GB which means the entire compressed filesystem.squashfs file (your complete compressed system) must fall under this size. If it does not then the ISO file will not be created.

Record / Play Keystrokes and Mouse Movements - Xmacro

The XMacro package contains two simple, C++ programs (xmacrorec and xmacroplay) for recording and replaying keyboard and mouse events on an X server. This functionality is achieved through the XTest extension. The programs are heavily based on the xremote utility of Jan Ekholm (chakie at infa.abo.fi).

xmacrorec:
Grabs all the control over your local display and send the mouse and keyboard events to the remote display. In the meantime it emits KeyStrPress, KeyStrRelease, ButtonPress and ButtonRelease lines to the standard output. It emits MotionNotify lines only if the event struct of the above four events contains different coordinates than the previous event or a mouse button is pressed during the movement.

xmacroplay can be used to playback recorded events or send any other mouse/keyboard events you choose. It is very handy for scripting an X display - for example running some smoke tests on the GUI application.

E-Mail, RSS Feed and Tweets Notification Application - CloudSN

Cloudsn is a gnome application that check for new mails, tweets, feeds etc. It is developed for Gnome and tested in debian and ubuntu. Cloudsn try to implement the MVC pattern and it separates the providers, configuration, indicators and notifications

The providers check accounts against different services. Currently cloudsn has these providers implemented:
* GMail
* GReader
* Pop3
* IMAP
* Twitter
* Identi.ca

The indicators are a list of accounts and its unread items indicating the state of every one. Currently you can choose between use one of these:
* Status Icon: Show the cloudsn icon and a list of active accounts with the information
* Indicator-applet: Uses the indicator applet to list the accounts with the information

Open-Source Folder Comparison and Synchronization Tool - FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync is an Open-Source folder comparison and synchronization tool. It is optimized for highest performance and usability without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces.

FreeFileSync Key Features:
* Detect moved and renamed files
* Copy locked files (Volume Shadow Copy Service)
* Detect conflicts and propagate deletions
* Binary comparison
* Full support for Symbolic Links
* Run as a batch job
* Multiple folder pairs
* Support very long path names > 260 characters
* Transactional file copy
* Cross-platform: Windows/Linux
* Access variable drive letters by volume name (USB sticks)
* Native 32 and 64-bit builds

GUI Interface to Compress & Optimize Image Files - Trimage

Trimage is a cross-platform GUI and command-line interface to optimize image files via optipng, advpng, pngcrush and jpegoptim, depending on the filetype (currently, PNG and JPG files are supported). All image files are losslessly compressed on the highest available compression levels. Trimage gives you various input functions to fit your own workflow: A regular file dialog, dragging and dropping and various command line options.

Trimage Installation:
If you're on Natty (11.04) or oneiric (11.10), Trimage is available in the official repositories:

sudo apt-get install trimage

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