When you are running an update in Ubuntu, there are plenty of problems that could possibly occur. One of them is the “Problem with MergeList… The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.“. There can be causes for this, and one of them is probably due to too many repositories in … Read more
You can’t always blame data loss on hardware failure. A clumsy user can be just as harmful. PhotoRec is a nifty little command-line based tool that can recover accidentally deleted files. To use PhotoRec effectively you need to understand how the filesystem handles files. When you delete a file, it isn’t actually zapped into oblivion. … Read more
Btrfs (pronounced ‘Butter F S’) is an advanced filesystem for Linux which can work across multiple hard disks and supports different fault tolerance models like RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10. Btrfs has been in development since 2008 and it is what is known as a “copy on write” filesystem which means that when … Read more
Although it is possible to get information about disk usage from within the various Linux desktops, those who are comfortable with the command line can get much greater detail using the df and du commands. With these two commands, not only can you discover details about the free space on the mounted file systems, but … Read more
If you’ve installed network accessible software or web apps on a server, you know what a task it can be. That’s because these web apps require a lot of infrastructure software which might take you hours to put together. This is where Turnkey Linux shines. Using Turnkey Linux appliances, you can deploy a new server … Read more
If your laptop comes with a touchpad that supports two-finger scrolling, such as MacBook Air, and you have installed Linux Mint, or the Cinnamon Desktop on it, you will find that the two-finger scrolling feature is not activated by default. Luckily, the fix is very easy. Open the “System Settings” and go to the “Mouse … Read more
Calibre is a sophisticated, but yet easy to use, eBook management application. It is great for organizing your eBooks but its real power is in its ability to create and convert eBooks. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and Calibre is the perfect tool for turning your latest creation into an eBook. If writing … Read more
Two powerful features of the Linux command line shell are redirection and pipes which allow the output (or even input) of a program to be sent to a file or another program. You may have already used this features without being aware of it. Whenever you have used the “>” sign in a command or … Read more
Wireshark is a powerful open source network analyser which can be used to sniff the data on a network, as an aide to troubleshooting network traffic analysis, but equally as an educational tool to help understand the principles of networks and communication protocols. It is readily available for just about any Linux distribution and for … Read more
If you don’t care much about fancy desktop bling, and think the keyboard is still the best means of interacting with the computer, then you’ll find yourself at home with Salix Ratpoison 14.0.1. If you haven’t heard of it before, think of Salix OS as Slackware with the convenience of a package manager. The developers … Read more