Best operating system to run older configuration PC – Lubuntu

Choosing Lubuntu:

LatelyI was pushed to use my 7 year old PC for an emergency which had Windows 7 in it. It was very tough for me to use the old PC as compared to my latest one, even though it had 1.5GB or RAM and Dual Core Processor. I even had thoughts to install Windows XP to achive better performance.

Before starting anything, did some research to if I can find a Linux distro that could consume very less resources. I was always fond of the Ubuntu distros for as long as 10 years.
I was very fond of receiving the Ubuntu distro CDs that was transported freely to my remote village earlier in 2004 or 2005.
With that fondness I searched the latest distro and then came the Lubuntu (Lite-Ubuntu). I installed it in my PC with dual boot configuration. I should say that the performance is very impressive.

About Lubuntu:

Lubuntu is a good operating system for many old computers, but not for all of them.
Some computers have too little horsepower or memory. A rule of thumb is that the computer should not be more than 10 years old.
Lubuntu is recognized as a member the Ubuntu family by the developers of Ubuntu and has the same release nomenclature.

System Requirements, as per Lubuntu site:

We have done many tests and we've found out that Lubuntu can be installed on a Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MB of RAM, but such a system would not perform well enough for daily use.
With 256MB - 384MB of RAM, the performance will be better and the system will be more usable.
With 512MB of RAM, you don't need to worry much.

If you like to use the system for normal activities like general browsing, viewing mails etc., the above config would be great.
But if you intend to use it for video watching like using Youtube, I must warn you, the browser you use could eat up all all memory.

Differences between Lubuntu and Ubuntu:

1. Different Desktop Environment (DE) – Lubuntu uses LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) while Ubuntu uses Unity as the default DE.

  • Both Lubuntu and Ubuntu share two major important things: same Core System and same Repositories.
  • Lubuntu and Ubuntu belong to the same family and talking about each as totally different two systems is not correct since they have some things in common.
  • They even share the same Forum Area and share many Wiki Pages. Other than that, they are the same.
  • The DE is what makes Lubuntu a lightweight OS, and of course the selected applications too because we make sure to use the lightest applications which are not resource hungry.
  • However, you are still free to use any application available in Ubuntu’s repositories, as long as your computer can run it.

2. Different Default Applications

Lubuntu Application Function
Xpad Stickies
Evince PDF Viewer
Gnumeric Spreadsheet
Abiword Docs
Simple-scan Scanner
Gnome-disk-utility Partition Editor
Light-locker Screensaver
Guvcview Webcam Utility
Gucharmap Character Map
Scrot Screenshot
Hardinfo System info
Mtpaint Image Editing
Xfburn Cd Burning
Pcmanfm File Manager
Gcalculator Calculator
Audacious Audio Player
Gnome-mplayer Video Player
Transmission Torrent
Pidgin Instant Messaging
Sylpheed Email Client
Mozilla Firefox Web browser
Leafpad Editor
File-roller (De)Compress files
Lxterminal Terminal
Gpicview Image Viewer

Download Lubuntu:

http://lubuntu.me/downloads/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/GetLubuntu

Official Websites:

http://lubuntu.me/
http://lubuntu.net/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu

Famous Short URL services

URL shortening is a technique used to make the URLs substantially shorter in length and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is very short in length, which links to the web page that has a long URL.

URL shortening is also used for beautify a link, track the url activity, in some cases to used to disguise the underlying address for legitimate purposes.

Some of the famous URL shortening services are follows:

1. Adf.ly
2. Bit.ly
3. Goo.gl
4. Is.gd
5. Tinyurl.com
6. V.gd

Top things to look at before developing a Web Site – Part 2

  1. Web Hosting: Once the domain name is selected the hosting account has to be selected. There are different hosting types available. Most commonly used hosting is Shared web hosting. Even though the Free web hosting is used most of the users prefer the Shared hosting and VPS hosting. Beginners can start with a free web hosting account and go for the Shared and the VPS hosting types based on the budgets.
  2. Development tools: After all the above elicitationsare done the development process can be started. The below tools can be used to make the development faster.
    1. Search domain name here and check if it is already registered. If it’s already registered the site might display set of alternative domain names available.
    2. Set up a local environment and test your website. Use XAMPP, IIS, Tomcat to setup Local environments with PHP, .Net, Java languages respectively.
    3. Use Komposer, Amaya to develop the PHP type websites. Obviously only the Visual Studio is used to develop .Net type websites. I prefer using the Eclipse and its plugins to develop the PHP and Java type sites. They provide a very good interface to design, develop and test, integrating with the Local servers.
    4. Use FTP clients like Filezilla, Net2Ftp to upload the tested local files to the web servers.
    5. Many Open source tools that are alternative to the proprietary software are available Here and Here.
  3. CMS tools: Instead of developing a whole website from scratch, there are a lot of Content Management Systems available in the market to make the development time easier and faster. Some commonly used CMS tools are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. The WordPress is most widely used CMS for blogging. Similarly select a tool to that suits the site type.
  4. Testing for Browser support: Once the development of the site is completed the testing phase comes in place. Even though the testing is one of the Development Life Cycle step, the Browser support check is a most important thing to deliver your website to your clients as you wish them to be. This is one of the important advantages when using the CMS tools. Because the development community takes care of all these things so that you don’t need to put your time in. The IE Tester is used to check test the website display in the Internet Explorer versions from IE6 to IE10 While writing this article. Alternatively there are a lot of online tools to do the same. The Browsershot.com takes the screen shots of the website in all the versions of the browsers including different operating system.
  5. Get noticed: After all the above said steps, it is very important to get your site to viewers to whom it is intended to be. This set is commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The SEO plays a very important role in making your website popular. I Intent to write a separate article on SEO. But I am placing a simple step to start the SEO.
    1. Submit your site to popular Search engines like Google, Bing.
    2. Once the site is placed the search engine will index the site from there on. As your site’s content becomes unique and popular they will be shown in the search results and visitors will start pouring in.

Top things to look at before developing a Web Site – Part 1

  1. Content Type (Static or Dynamic): The First and foremost thing a Web developer must look at is the “Content type”. Take a justified side between static and dynamic content when you go for the web site. If the site contains only a 5 to 10 pages with just few contents that may not have new change then the web site will be a Static that does not need much of server side support. But if you go for a site with Dynamic contents what may change in time and needs customization then you are onto a Dynamic site which needs immense Server support. Most of the sites now days are dynamic contents which need the servers support.
  2. Development Language: The Language in which you are going to develop the site is very important after selecting the content type. The widely used Language or the scripting for the web developing is PHP. Other famous technologies .Net, Java, Python, Perl etc. Every language has its own pros and cons. The developing languages have to be selected as per the need and knowledge. Usually scripting languages are easier to learnt and develop faster for beginners.
  3.  Web Servers: The web servers are the next thing we should care about. All the Web servers support the static content sites with just the HTML contents in it. When we look for the Server side scripting the Web Servers play a major role in providing the support for them. Web servers can be selected based on the Language by which you wanted to develop the websites. Even though the web servers can support any of the language with a set of customization, it’s better to go for a Web server which can natively support your development Language.  Because usually the customization never comes with less cost. Here are the widely used Web servers in market.
    1. Apache – For PHP natively and with Java support
    2. IIS – For .Net natively and PHP and Java support
    3. Tomcat – For Java natively and PHP support
  4. Domain name: The domain name is the one which is going to show up your stuffs to the World. They play a very important role and they are the entry point that visitors use to view your website on the web. The domain name can be of any length, but my personal opinion is to keep it as simple as possible and less than 8 characters. Choose a domain name that is very relevant to your site content, short, simple, crisp and easy to remember. If you could not specify your theme in just a work keep an abbreviation of the theme as domain name.
  5. Selecting a TLD: A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. In other words, the domain names ends with the extensions like .com, .edu, .org, .web, .net etc which are knows as TLDs. Select a TLD which is related to your Site theme, locations and other factors.
    1. Examples: If your site is related to education, select TLD as .edu, If yours is a big Organization select .org, if the service you provide is country specific then select a country level TLD like .us, .ca, .in, .ph, co.in, .co.ca, co.in etc.
    2. Make sure you select a reasonable TLD and also consider the cost factors. Some TLDs are very costlier.
    3. If you could not find a specific TLD for your site theme just select the .com, which is most widely used.

Open Source Micro blogging applications

Twitter is the most famous Microblogging site used by users all over the world. There are some famous Open source microblogging site available. Following are few among the Open source PHP scripts.

1. StatusNet: Previously Laconica, is the engine which runs the popular microblogging site Identi.ca. You can download the same from here.

2. PageCookery: PageCookery is the first public offering of single-user version of the open source microblogging program, PHP + MySQL based architecture is a set of safety, efficiency and stability, to “share”, “discovery” for the concept of Web 2.0 solutions to micro-blog. Click here to download.

3. JaikuEngine: Jaiku was the microblogging site of Google. However, they decided no longer to develop the code but make it open source under the name JaikuEngine.

4. Sharetronix: Sharetronix is the world’s favorite opensource microblogging platform. Sharetronix enables people to exchange ideas and multimedia in real-time. Click here to download.

5. Storytlr: Storytlr offers a single touch point for your online life in your own style. Easily post anything you find interesting, import your web 2.0 stuff and share your life online. Storytlr is an open source lifestreaming and micro blogging platform. You can use it for a single user or it can act as a host for many people all from the same installation. Click here to download.

6. Jisko: Jisko is a light-weight open-source microblogging system that allows you to stay in contact with the people you want. Click here to Download.

7. WordPress: The WordPress is a popular blogging tool. But the Power of wordpress can be derived to work as a Microblogging application with the help of a simple theme. P2 WordPress Theme converts the Powerful WordPress into a Microblogging tool. Click here to download.

8. Yonkly: Yonkly Open Source twitter-clone and microblogging platform developed on the asp.net mvc framework. It is the famous Open Source app available in the Dot Net side other than the PHP scripts. Click here to Download.

WordPress Blog hacked, All admin username changed to “CIHAN” and Emails deleted

I felt embarrassed when I found my WordPress blog was hacked. Here is what happened. It was on August 26th, 2012 at around 10 PM IST, I tried to login to my wordpress blog and found that my WordPress Admin account was unable to login. After some investigations i found that the usernames, email address of the WordPress administrator accounts have been changed.

Usually I have two users as Administrators. I tried with both, but failed to login. I ran through some basic steps/tests with the assumption that I would have lost the password, which I ended up as password lose was not the reason.

Sequence of the steps I followed:

1. First I tried to reset my password with my email id: result: WordPress gave a message that my Email id is not valid. And for other admin email I did not receive any password reset mail.
2. Since my email Id was stated as invalid. I suspected a Hack and logged into Hosting cPanel.
3. Opened phpMyAdmin and shocked to see that my username and email were changed. I found both the usernames were changed to “cihan”, the email address was deleted for one user. but the other email remained same.
4. I updated the DB and reset my password using WordPress. Still I am unable to receive mail to my Yahoo account because of some problem with my hosting account.

My Observations:
1. I have logged into my account and updated a comment on 8th August 2012 for the last time.
2. I have a plugin which send a email on every 404 error page to the Administrator email address (the email which was deleted in the Hack). The last email which was send to the Admin mail id is on 10th August 2012 – The day after 10th should be the ideal hack time.
3. WordPress does not allow any user to edit/delete username from its control panel, so this is either updated directly in the Database or it should be done through a Script from the web page – But I do not find any scripts or files updated in these days.
4. I changed my hosting accounts password and other details just few days back to the Hack suspect date. I updated the password from my laptop, which is very personal. There was no body using my Lap and my password is brand new which nobody could easily guess, I did not login in any other public machines. so I don’t think this to be hack based on Password Theft of cPanel.
5. I do not find any other changes in the settings or passwords or data loss in my website/Account/cPanel.
6. I do not find any moto of data stealing.

Atlast I backup all my data from the webserver to my local and put the site into maintenance, Sent a detailed mail to my service provider. Few days back I received a mail stating that they do not find anything suspicious in logs but they insisted to changed My custom wordpress Theme as they suspected it. Later i updated removed all my custome stuffs from the site and updated the site completely. I lost few contents from my site at the time of migration and I’m working on it get them all back.

If some one out there faced the same kind attacj on your WordPress site please contact me.

Tired of Social Network Sites and useless fake virtual friends

   Are you tired of the time wasting Social networking sites like Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and MySpace.com etc. Is it frustrating to go online because of the unknown contacts. Stop all those non sense by committing suicide online and learn to be lively in the real World with the help of Web2.0 Suicide Machine!!.

   This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alter ego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moderator is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. The service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Click here to Commit Suicide NOW!

Get fonts from images

Have you seen some pictures with great wordings in great fonts?. Do u want to get the Font and try your own.

Jus go to http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont and download the fonts. Here are the steps to do it.

1. Note that the image should have enough spacing around the corners and legible.

2. Use characters that have distint shape in the image.

3. Let the height of the fonts be atleast 100 px.

4. The text in then image should be horizontal.

5. Make sure that the characters are not touching each other. Dont try for the text that have cursive letters or Hand written characters.

6. Now upload the image or give the url of the image and click upload.

7. You will get set of images with characters similar to the characters in the image. Look at each image and make sure the text box agrees with the character highlighted in the image. Leave character boxes blank if no valid character is highlighted, and press continue.

8. Thats it, you will get a set of fonts that are very similar to the characters in the image.