GNU Linux

Got Atheros AR242x 802.11abg Wireless device and have problems to make it work with Ubuntu? I had this same issue while i was trying to install Ubuntu in an ASUS netbook. Finally i got it working though. Here is a detailed post on how to install Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01) driver in Ubuntu and get it to work.

The latest KDE 4.2.4 is released with much improved features and lots of bug fixes. Some of the new features include a highly improved pdf reader, Okular and and a much versatile KMail. Improved applets,  efficient and smooth window management,  breathtaking desktop effects, etc are some of the highlights of KDE 4.2. The latest release in the series, KDE 4.2.4 is probably the last release before the official release of KDE 4.3, which is going to happen some time in the month of July/August. Here is How you can update your Ubuntu/Kubuntu with the latest KDE 4.2.4.

If you are a regular GNU Linux user there is a very good chance that you will come across emails forwarded to you as .eml files once in a while. .eml is the extension used for files saved as emails from Microsoft outlook or outlook Express. It is normally just a matter of opening these files with gedit as the files are plain text files unless they have attachments. If the attached .eml files themselves have attachments you run into the problem of actually having to open these base64 encoded attachments. The default set of applications in Ubuntu does not directly allow you to do this but there is an easy work around for this problem.

The latest version of XBMC, codenamed Babylon is finally released. It has many new features and enhancements. For beginners, XBMC is an award winning Open Source Multimedia Application with eye candy and easy to use interface. Take a look at the screenshots of XBMC. All new XBMC 9.04 comes with a lot of improvements and added features. Some of the new features include support for Power PC architecture, improved FanArt support,  VDPAU hardware accelerated video decoding under Linux on NVIDIA graphics and so on.

Here are the detailed instructions on How to install XBMC 9.04 - Babylon in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and also further details on the application.

Firefox is a not only a choice, but a better alternative to Internet Explorer for GNU/Linux users. Windows version of Firefox is also available for download for free. But some sites may not at all show up properly in Firefox. This has nothing to do with Firefox, it is more or less an issue on part of the designers of the site itself. Since Internet Explorer does not have a Linux version, you will have to use wine to install and run Internet Explorer in Ubuntu. We have compiled a step by step procedure on how to install Internet Explorer in Ubuntu with useful screenshots.

If you happen to be one of those people who burn lot of iso's like we do through our RequestCD program then you would most probably have come across the dreaded checksum errors or md5sum errors. We used to get a lot of these and interestingly we found that we get consistent md5 checksum errors with certain iso images. We were almost sure that this had nothing to do with actual burning errors since they happened only for certain iso images. After hours of scouring the internet we found out the real culprit behind these errors and a way to really work around these phony error messages and actually verify if the iso was written correctly. We burn using either Brasero or K3B but this information can be applied to other cd/dvd burning software as well.

There has been certain issues with the recent updates of Firefox in Ubuntu 8.10. After installing all the recent updates in Ubuntu intrepid ibex, Firefox may start showing up some errors while trying to run the same. The most common error is the one which Firefox simply fails to start with an error message "Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9b3 and 1.9b3".

Windows Media Player is a multimedia player owned by Microsoft Corporation. It is a Windows only media player and doesn't have any Free alternative. Newbie GNU/Linux users find it difficult to find a good alternative for Windows Media Player. There exist a plethora of highly efficient media players in Ubuntu like XBMC Media Center, Amarok, Smplayer, VLC etc.

XBMC Media Center (XBOX Media Center) is an  award winning free and open source media center which is also multiplatform.  It looks stunning and is also feature rich. Apart from being an excellent  multimedia player, it has of features like visually appealing user interface, playlist playback, picture viewing, some really good skins, and even third party softwares and addons. XBMC media center is released under GNU General Public License.

Do you find your custom DNS server entries being deleted after every reboot or after every disconnection? Do you use DHCP but still want to use your own DNS servers? Do you want to use OpenDNS and ignore the DNS servers provided by your ISP? Well here is how you can do this on Ubuntu. This solution applies to Ubuntu but might very well work for other distributions of GNU Linux as well.

After eagerly waiting for the Debian Lenny release, it has finally arrived. Debian Lenny was officially released on February 14th, 2009. To celebrate this we have decided to offer one more service to our already long array of Free Software Services. We will be offering Debian Lenny pre-installed laptops and desktops to our customers from now onwards. Debian Lenny DVDs and CDs are already available from Zyxware through the RequestCD program. Now you can chose to have Debian pre-installed on your computers if you buy your computer or laptop from us.

One of the most common compression formats used in GNU/Linux and variants is tar.gz. A tar.gz file is nothing but a gzipped tar archive. These days users of GNU/Linux system seldom have to use the command line to create or extract tar.gz archives. But it is a useful command to keep in your arsenal if you are a system administrator.

Fedora is a Linux based operating system that provides users with access to the latest free and open source software, in stable, secure and easy to manage form. Fedora is the largest of many free software creations of the Fedora Project, which is a project sponsored by Red Hat to co-ordinate the development of the Fedora operating system. Founded on September 2003 as a result of a merger between the Red Hat Linux (RHL) and old Fedora Linux projects.

The openSUSE project is a worldwide community program and it is sponsored by Novell that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides free and easy access to openSUSE. It is equivent to the "SuSE Linux Professional".

We provide Oracle administration support on GNU Linux Servers. One of our customers had us set up a new Oracle XE server for them on CentOS. We set up everything and had the system up and running fine. We had also tested everything on the server and verified connection status from clients. Two days after installation we got a call from the customer that he could not open the Oracle XE web administration interface and he was getting an access denied, page not found error on http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex

Two months after the release of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, we have downloaded the complete Ubuntu Repositories for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. The full set of Ubuntu Repository DVDs (set of 6 DVDs) is now available and you can order it through our RequestCD Program. If you get the complete Ubuntu Repository on DVDs you do not have to have an internet connection to install any package that is normally available through Synaptic Package Manager.

We had a query from one of our customers to help them migrate their local mail server to Google Apps. They wanted to do this because they did not have the sufficient in-house capability nor have the funds to get paid external capability to support an internal mail server. One hurdle that they were facing was that they had around 40GB of mail left on the local mail server that they wanted to migrate to the new mail accounts they created on Google Apps.

We recently had to install GNU/Linux on 40 computers at the regional Police Training College(PTC), Trivandrum. This was part of a Free Software Training Program that PTC is conducting currently for police personnel in Kerala. Zyxware was proudly part of this initiative both in training and in setting up GNU/Linux GNU/Linux on all 40 computers in the training lab. We had also prepared Linux Mint cds to be given to the trainees given their non-technical backgrounds.

Fedora 10 has been released on Nov 25. We are now offering Fedora 10 DVD and CDs through our RequestCD program. You can order your copy of the latest Fedora 10 DVD or CDs online or you can drop by our office to get your copy. In addition to the latest version of Fedora we also have with us the previous releases, i.e. if you are interested in getting hold on one of those. Orders are already streaming in, so jump in and order your copy of Fedora 10.