MaximumHoyt

Binary Compression If you need to save space on your Flash-drive-based Linux OS. you might consider UPX , self-described as the "Ultimate Packer for eXecutables". UPX is free and provided under the terms of the GPL . It uses a proprietary compression algorithm, the NRV compression library , but can be used with reduced efficiency with the UCL compression library . It offers very fast in-place decompression and is available for several platforms other than Linux , including ARM , MIPS , PowerPC , DOS and Win32 . For Win32 platforms, there is a GUI version ( download here ), but it uses an older version of UPX as its base which should not be a problem if all you are only compressing Win32 binaries. The command line version works on all supported executable formats in all OS versions. Data Compression If you just need to compress non-executable files, 7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program only supports the 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2...

Here's an amusing way to tell someone, essentially, to RTFM. I saw this link in a Slashdot story about malware and virus removal , but the offered link was identified as a Linux solution. Anyway, it's easy to see how the URL is crafted, so now you can pimp slap someone who should have Googled it in the first place. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=live+cd+windows+antivirus And lmgtfy stands for "Let Me Google That For You" in case you missed the joke. Funny. Useful. Satisfying. BTW, the Linux solution would be a LiveCD version of Knoppix using BitDefender . Here's the main site . And the link to the RPM and DEB downloads . And the link to the current LiveCD . The MD5SUM of the ISo image is 2404d4abeb23532ef842d940ccc3aeaa. Of course, you could build your own LiveCD . But even better, use TRK,  the Trinity Rescue Kit , a bootable Linux CD that offers several virus scanners as well as Windows cleaning, password and rescue utilities plus a Linux distro...

Mageia now provides a few meta-packages , which are small RPM files that contain only the dependencies needed for the application(s) they address. Essentially, a package of package names to be installed. The meta-packages all begin with the name task- and are found in the repositories. For example, using urpmi to install task-kde4 will install all the files needed for a full KDE desktop; task-kde4-minimal installs a minimal desktop; task-gnome installs the full GNOME desktop; likewise task-e17 , task-xfce and task-lxqt easily install those desktops. There are task- packages for Blackberry and Nokia syncing, and task-lamp installs a full Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP server plus ProFTP . You can use urpmq -d task- package to see what dependencies will be installed. All the task- packages have a .src.rpm and that can be installed, modified and compiled to change things. I have experimented with the LAMP module to NOT install Apache so I can try the nginX web server . On...

The popular Firefox web browser has a few "hidden" features accessed by the " about: " URL. MozillaZine has an article about them and the actual code can be viewed here . The about:robots URL is an Easter Egg, or hidden joke. Another Easter Egg was attempted but was thwarted: someone wanted to include an about:kitchensink joke. There is a humorous discussion here (Comments #119 and #120 are the most important) and you can see a demonstration of the joke here . If you are interested, there are several about: extensions available for Firefox here .

From Brett Charbeneau of the Tidewater UNIX Users Group : Verizon was adjusting the M aximum T ransmission U nit of all packets on the fly on their routers - and they stopped doing that recently. Some sites, Microsoft Update in specific, demand that the MTU be between 1400 and 1536 or they simply won't interact with a browser. Any browser. At all. Packets that have a frame size larger or smaller than that are ignored or otherwise mangled beyond recognition by any browser I know of. So, if you are like me and have several locations sharing Verizon DSL circuits between lots of Windows users via an iptables -based firewall/router, Microsoft Update, mail.yahoo.com , and a bunch of other sites suddenly became inaccessible on February 9, 2009 for no apparent reason. The fix is to set a "clamp" on packet size via a variety of iptables commands, I like to do it in the FORWARD chain like so (all one line): # iptables -I FORWARD -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags SYN,...

Microsoft Outlook looks for a special email header, X-Message-Flag , and if found, will display a message to the user in the message dialog along with a red flag. If you mail client (MUA) permits the creation of custom headers, you can create an X-Message-Flag header and assign some arbitrary text string to it. Only users of Microsoft's Outlook will see the message. Some of the messages are funny, some pro-Linux, some anti-Microsoft, some informative, some just stupid. A few example messages are: Warning: Outlook transmits Viruses! Upgrade to Linux Now! Using Microsoft software might be a security risk. If you can read this, you're too close! Message text blocked: VIOLATION OF US 1201(a)(3) Warning: message not sent with a DRM-Certified client User-Agent. Warning: Your mail program does not comply with RFC 1855. Magic 8-Ball says Outlook Not Good. Outlook : A program designed to spread viri, but it can do mail too. Linux : The choice of a GNU generation. OUTLOO...

You know that there are lists of PCI and USB devices that Linux uses to identify those devices? The files containing the lists are named pci.ids and usb.ids . It seems that I have some hardware on my Linux box that is "unknown". How does that get fixed or changed? Over time, those devices will get added to a list that Linux uses to identify devices. Here's how to add new hardware to the list and how to get the most current lists to drop in you own Linux box. PCI The list is maintained by The PCI ID Repository . You can download the most current file from there or submit new devices or discuss changing old entries. Download it with: wget -nd http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/v2.2/pci.ids To locate where on your system the files are located, use the find command and then copy the new files to that location. This works on my system: sudo mv pci.ids /usr/share/ USB The USB list lives at Linux-USB.Org . You can download the most current file from there or submit ...