Three Wise Men

TorrentFlux – The Best Torrent Client in the Galaxy

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File sharing has a long history and I will start with the time when I first got into it. At that time I was using ZX Spectrum 48k and games were distributed mostly on magnetic tapes packed in plastic boxes more commonly known as compact cassettes¹.

Twenty years ago, give or take a few, violation of copyrights² wasn’t really a big issue in a country behind the iron curtain. Getting a new game involved borrowing the tape from a friend, going back home and copying that tape with a double cassette recorder that supported high-speed dubbing.

The other a more sophisticated way of getting a game was to tune your FM radio to a certain local radio station. Then you had to put a blank tape in a cassette recorder and press Record when they started airing the games³. Yes, the local radio station was in fact airing all sorts of ZX Spectrum games and you were able to record them on tape. This was the first method of file sharing that I encountered and by today this is the only one that is limited only by the range and not by the bandwidth. A billion clients can connect at the same time and perform a download.

Read on if you want to know more on how to set up the best BitTorrent client in the Galaxy. ;)

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1. Back then piracy was not for soft-hearted types, it was for real men — it was almost a hardware business. [↩]
2. Piracy. [↩]
3. Storing data as a bunch of chirps and beeps on the audio tape was something very common. [↩]

Network boot and install of Ubuntu Linux

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You tried everything, booting from CD, DVD, USB, and in your desperate attempts you already started to look if there is a floppy drive laying around the house, just to get the damned thing to boot. The very same thing happened to me today. Computer, simply, would not boot. The only thing left to do is booting your computer from the network. Sounds scary, I know, but in reality this can be a trivial thing to acomplish. I have a Linksys WRT54 router that is running DD-WRT and it serves me as a DHCP server. DD-WRT is using dnsmasq which can provides DNS, DHCP and TFTP services! Great news, since this is all that you need for network boot. Unfortunately TFTP server is disabled and not really usable if you don’t have any extra storage where you could put the tftp files. You will have to use an alternative tftp server, in my case Ubuntu Workstation. Continue reading for the whole recipe …

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Webcam and Linux – GStreamer tutorial

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Nowadays almost every laptop comes equipped with the camera that is sitting a little bit above the LCD screen, staring at you. Desktops are a different story since monitors with built in cameras are not that common. Unless you’re one of those fruitcakes and you own the Cinema Display. However getting a camera isn’t all that difficult and you will be overwhelmed by the offer. Cameras connected to computers are mostly called webcams¹ and they come in various shapes, sizes and prices. Prices range from $10 up to $100 and there is a real difference between $10 camera and $100 one.

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1. Term coined in mid 90’s, before YouTube existed. [↩]

Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala preview

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Time sure flies when you’re having fun and now we are about ten days from final release of Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala. What kind of stew did Ubuntu guys cook for us this time? Four days after the FinalFreeze stage in the Ubuntu development cycle means that what didn’t make it in the distribution will be left out and that we will get the Release Candidate in three days. I decided to install Kubuntu 9.10 which differs from Ubuntu regular in primary desktop environment and installation program. Instead of Gnome based desktop you will get KDE based desktop. Is KDE 4.3 up to the task? Let’s dig in and see how Koala tackles the legendary horned rabbit! ;)

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Linux Tips Aggregated – 1

So far I posted ten Linux tips on Twitter as @BigWhale,  now reposting them here with a little more explanation and insight why things work that way. I am writing tips mostly out of my own experience about something I am currently working on. I will touch basics of most Unix like operating systems, bash shell and Unix utilities. All the tips I publish are tested on my computer and they work for me. Before using them on some data that you actually need, make sure that you test them on your computer with your operating system and with your environment. Data loss is something that you want to avoid and I don’t want to take any part in it. ;) All the feedback is appreciated and more than welcome.

Just to be sure, another friendly warning: Some of this commands are and can be used in a lot of very destructive ways. Make sure you are always working as non-root user (unless the task requires root access) and that you always double check what you wrote before you press enter. Seriously, first hand experience here … ;)

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