Linux Articles

I guess all Linux users, especially Ubuntu ones, have used or at least heard about Automatix, an application that can install and uninstall the most used and popular programs. From multimedia codecs and archiving tools, e-mail clients and web rowsers, to audio/video ripping and burning software, Automatix could do them all. Unfortunately, a few months ago, Automatix died (it was actually sold to the Pioneer Linux).

Today we are pleased to announce the Automatix replacement: Ultamatix! It is actually based on Automatix, therefore it looks and acts exactly the same. The good news is that Ultamatix is designed to work with Ubuntu Ultimate Editon 1.8, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and the unstable branch of Debian Linux.

How does Ultamatix work? Well, instead of searching all day long through thousands of applications in Synaptic, in order to make your newly installed Ubuntu system exactly how you dreamed of, you can use only one software to install them all, in one single easy step. For example, you need all the multimedia codecs and all the archiving tools available out there – what are you going to do? Are you gonna spend 1 or 2 hours (or even more) on the Internet, searching for different guides or in front of Synaptic, wondering what else you may need? With Ultamatix, you can install all the multimedia codecs, archiving tools and the Adobe Flash Player for Firefox, and it will all take you 5 minutes and 3 mouse clicks.

OK, OK... now you're anxious and you are wondering what the applications that Ultamatix can install are. Below is a list with some of the most widely used programs and the dozens of games that Ultamatix can install:

Audio/Video Ripping and Burning tools
• DVD Ripper (DVD ripper tool)
• DVD Styler (DVD authoring system)
• K9copy (DVD backup software)
• Man DVD (DVD-Video generator)
• xDVDshrink (DVDshrink clone)

Chat clients
• Pidgin + All its plugins
• AMSN (MSN Messenger client)
• Kvirc (IRC client)
• Skype (Voice Over IP software)
• XChat (IRC client)

E-mail clients
• Checkgmail (system tray GMail checker)
• Swiftdove (Thunderbird clone)

Eye Candy tools
• Avant Window Navigator (Mac OS X dock-like)
• Gdesklets (desktop widgets)
• Screenlets (desktop widgets)
• Ultimate Edition themes

Office software
• Acrobat Reader (PDF viewer)
• Gourmet (recipe manager)
• Google Earth
• Google Picasa
• Microsoft Office OpenXML Translator
• OpenOffice Clipart

Audio/Video Players and Editors
• Amarok 2 (versatile audio player)
• Banshee (audio player)
• Dragon Player (video player)
• Lives (video editor)
• Totem-Xine
• Songbird (iTunes like music manager)
• VLC (video player)
• iLinux (iLife alternative)

Programming tools
• Glade 3
• Quanta Plus
• Screem Editor
• Bluefish Editor
• Anjuta IDE

Not convinced yet? Ultamatix can also install all the multimedia codecs, archiving tools, Nautilus scripts, Adobe Flash 9, Sun Java 1.6 JRE, Wine, NTFS read/write support, Ubuntu Tweak, Acetone ISO 2, Frostwire, Startup Manager, Sysinfo, Firestarter, Clam Anti-virus, extra fonts and themes and the KDE, XFCE or Enlightenment environments.

Still not convinced? Take a look at the following games that can be installed, with only a few mouse clicks, on your Ubuntu operating system:
• Return to the Castle of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
• America's Army
• Alien Arena 2007
• Amoebax
• AssaultCube
• ATanks
• Nexuiz
• Glest
• Tremulous
• The Battle for Wesnoth
• Open Arena
• Warsow
• Vdrift
• BzFlag
• Orbital Sniper
• Neverball
• Urban Terror
• Vegastrike
• Scorched 3D
• FooBillard
• Wormux
• World Of Padman
• Frozen Bubble
• Flightgear
• Globulation 2
• UFO: Alien Invasion
• Warzone 2100

How do I install it?
We've tested Ultamatix on the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04.1 LTS. The installation process is the same for both i386 and AMD64 machines, and requires you to download the .deb file from Softpedia. When the download is over, double click the ultamatix-1.8.0-3_all.deb file, enter your password and install it. That's it! Now you can find Ultamatix under System Tools -> Ultamatix. Use it wisely!

Supported operating systems:
• Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) LTS
• Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) LTS
• Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 1.8
• Debian Unstable










By: Marius Nestor, Linux Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)

Gibraltar Firewall 2.6, a Linux firewall distribution based on Debian, was launched yesterday as announced by Rene Mayrhofer. This will be the last release that will use the Linux kernel 2.4, as the next Gibraltar editions will use the 2.6 kernel. Among other things, this edition of Gibraltar offers improved traffic shaping performance (the iptables marking rules were re-ordered and the pre-defined traffic classes were improved), and allows SSL Explorer plugins to be installed.

Snort version 2.7.0, a NIPS (Network Intrusion Prevention System) and NIDS (Network Intrusion Detection System) solution, is now officially supported. Gibraltar also comes with full integration of the Puresight Enterprise edition for user-based authorization and reporting. Also, a web interface module was created to configure Snort as IDS. A brand new spamassassin module for language classification was added, and it can be configured through the web interface, just like the others.

Starting with Gibraltar 2.6, full WLAN access point functionality will be added gradually so the forthcoming releases will come with complete 802.1x support. Right now, Gibraltar supports Atheros-based cards, which can be configured through the web interface. Besides this, madwifi-tools were installed and the kernel modules were updated to version 0.9.4 to improve even more the access point capabilities.

Transparent virus scanning for the HTTP, FTP and POP3 protocols was added, and it works even without a hard disk. This can be done thanks to some modifications in config files and improved management of a temporary /var storage area. Gibraltar Firewall was created to verify and secure the network traffic, while it also protects an internal network against attackers.

About Gibraltar:
Dr. Rene Mayrhofer created Gibraltar in 1999 as an open source project and since 2003, it is developed by eSYS Information System GmbH and Dr. Rene Mayrhofer in Austria.

Download Gibraltar Firewall 2.6 right now from Softpedia.
By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)

The CentOS 5.2 i386 LiveCD was released by the CentOS Development team yesterday, as announced by Patrice Guay. The LiveCD is based on the CentOS-5.2 i386 distribution, and it also offers the possibility to perform a netinstall thanks to the "Network Install" option.

You can use the CentOS 5.2 LiveCD as a workstation, with the applications provided, such as OpenOffice.org 2.3.0, Firefox 3.0, Pidgin 2.3.1, Scribus 1.3.3.2, K3b 0.12.17, Gimp 2.2.13 and more.

The Live CD can be used as a rescue CD with these applications:
• memtest86+-1.65
• A complete set of LVM and RAID command line applications
• QTParted
• Nmap and NMapFE
• traceroute
• samba-3.0.28 with cifs kernel support to connect to Windows shares
• System Log Viewer
• GUI Hardware Device Manager

There are some known problems related to this LiveCD, including the fact that it cannot boot successfully from a SATA CD-ROM drive, and you will encounter some error messages you should ignore, such as:

memory for crash kernel (0x0 to 0x0) not within permissible range
udevd[xxx]: add_to rules: unknown key 'ATTRS{media}'

About CentOS:
CentOS supports the same architectures as its ancestor, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, does: Intel x86- (32-bit), Intel IA-64 (Itanium 64-bit), x86-64 (64-bit, AMD's AMD64 and Intel's Intel 64), PowerPC/32 (Apple Macintosh PowerMac running the G3 or G4 PowerPC processor) ("beta" support), IBM Mainframe (eServer zSeries and S/390). Additionally, CentOS supports other two architectures not supported upstream: Alpha and SPARC ("beta" support). CentOS' preferred software updating tool is based on yum, although support for use of an up2date variant exists.

You can download this edition of the CentOS LiveCD now from Softpedia.
By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)

The Final Release of Gentoo Linux 2008.0 Is Now Available - Features a brand new Portage! After a long time in development, Gentoo Linux 2008.0 was finally released and it seems that its developers gave it a funny code name – "It's got what plants crave" – as Donnie Berkholz announced on the official Gentoo site.

Gentoo's installer was upgraded and it can only perform networkless installations by using the ebuild tree and packages on the LiveCD. The devs have not released any LiveDVDs yet, but this might change in the future. The most important thing related to Gentoo 2008.0 is the migration to the 2.6.24 Linux kernel that brought with it a lot of fresh drivers and improved hardware support.

Portage – "the heart of Gentoo" and its software distribution system – was updated to version 2.1.4.4 and brings with it some more new things like gcc 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1.


The profiles were restructured, thus allowing the cleaning of redundancies, and providing a cleaner and easier to maintain system. The difference a regular user would notice is the fact that the profiles now appear in /usr/portage/profiles/ under default/linux rather than the old default-linux/ folder.

Xfce took GNOME's place on the LiveCD to save some more space, as Xfce is somewhat smaller than GNOME. If you install Gentoo on your hard disk from the LiveCD, you will get Xfce as default desktop environment, while GNOME and KDE can be built from source. Xfce's latest version, 4.4.2, will be featured on the LiveCD.

The development team decided to cancel the release of Gentoo LiveDVDs for x86 and x86_64 for the moment, as there were some problems in their generation. Don't worry, they might be released later and the devs will make sure you find out about the new LiveDVDs.

To enjoy this powerful distribution, download Gentoo Linux 2008.0 right now from Softpedia.

By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor

Ubuntu Muslim Edition or UbuntuME has just reached version 8.04 and it is our pleasure, here at the Softpedia Labs, to introduce you to the new features to be found in this version of UbuntuME. Not only does it come with the regular installable Live CD and a second disc with some additional packages, like Quran recitations, Arabic language packs and the OpenOffice.org Suite, but the Ubuntu Muslim Edition 8.04 is also available as an installable DVD, which includes more Quran recitations and a very smart script that will convert any standard Ubuntu 8.04 installation into a genuine UbuntuME!

Ubuntu Muslim Edition is yet another free and open source operating system based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. What makes this one special? Well, it comes customized with Islamic software, like prayer times or an Arabic learning software. This special edition of Ubuntu Linux also features GUI improvements, a customized splash screen, GDM login, a wallpaper, and comes with Firefox bookmarks for the Islamic community. "Ubuntu is a great distro, easy to use for a beginner user, with the most-used Office, Internet, Graphics and Video applications already installed. So we think that for Muslim users it could be great to have "out of the box" Islamic softwares and tools installed as well." - says the Ubuntu Muslim team.





Highlights of UbuntuME 8.04
• WebStrict, a parental control utility enabled by default for a safe Internet browsing session;
• Zekr 0.7.0, an application to help you study the Quran. It is installed and set-up to play Quran recitations;
• Mozilla Firefox browser comes packed with the Minbar and Firefox "Pray Times" add-ons;
• Monajat, a software that displays Islamic prayers;
• Thwab, an encyclopedia software;
• Updated artwork for the boot splash, login screen, desktop wallpapers and GNOME theme.





Ubuntu Muslim Edition is based on version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) of Ubuntu Linux. It includes only open source applications, which have been changed in such a way as to help Microsoft Windows users migrate to a 100% FREE Linux-based operating system.

You can download Ubuntu Muslim Edition 8.04 now from Softpedia.

By: Marius Nestor, Linux Editor (news.softpedia.com)

Sabayon Linux 3.5 was launched, as announced by Fabio Erculani on the official forums. The popular distro is available for x86 and x86_64 architectures, featuring the Linux kernel 2.6.25.9 with extended wireless, laptop and filesystem (including unionfs, aufs, squashfs, ext4 and NTFS-3g) support.

Sabayon 3.5 was codenamed "Ibex Poacher", for certain a pun on Canonical's future release, Intrepid Ibex. The "Ibex Poacher" boasts a faster boot time that will take something around 30 seconds, depending on your computer and an easy to setup 3D desktop with out of the box hardware detection.

The default desktop environment set is made up of KDE 3.5.9 (and KDE 4.0.5 available as a separate download), GNOME 2.22.2, Xfce 4.4.2 and Fluxbox 1.0. Moving on to office applications, we get OpenOffice 2.4, the free and open source office suite. For web browsing and filesharing, there's Firefox 3.0 and aMule 2.2.0 respectively. Flash 9 and Java 1.6 will make your web browsing experience a better one, as they come by default with Sabayon and you won't go through any more installation processes.

You get a lot of popular games, including Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, Quake 4, Warsow, Savage and Wesnoth, backed up by the AMD/ATI Catalyst 8.6 and NVIDIA 173.14.05, 96.43.05 and 71.86.04 drivers with X.org 1.4.2, that can configure automatically input devices with the help of HAL.

Wine 1.1.0 will help you run Windows applications on Sabayon, and VirtualBox 1.5 will allow you to test different operating systems on a virtualized platform. The package installation is made easy by Entropy 0.15.23.7, Sabayon's fast and user-oriented package manager. Probably one of its most important features is the fact that it is compatible with Portage, Gentoo's package manager.

Download Sabayon Linux 3.5 right now from Softpedia.
By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor (news.softpedia.com)

Kernel Vulnerability in Ubuntu 7.10, 7.04 and 6.06 LTS. Upgrade Now! - The flaw could lead to loss of privacy! A security vulnerability was discovered yesterday in the Linux kernel packages of the Ubuntu 7.10, 7.04 and 6.06 LTS distributions (also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu). This kernel vulnerability could allow a local attacker to access sensitive kernel memory, leading to a loss of privacy. The security flaw can be fixed if you upgrade your system to the following packages:

For Ubuntu 6.06 LTS:
linux-image-2.6.15-52 2.6.15-52.67
For Ubuntu 7.04:
linux-image-2.6.20-17 2.6.20-17.36
For Ubuntu 7.10:
linux-image-2.6.22-15 2.6.22-15.54
Don't forget to reboot your computer after this upgrade!

ATTENTION: Due to an unavoidable ABI change, the kernel packages have a new version number, which will force you to reinstall or recompile all third-party kernel modules you might have installed. For example, after the upgrade to the above version of your kernel package, a software such as VirtualBox will NOT work anymore, therefore you must recompile its kernel module by issuing a specific command in the terminal. Moreover, if you use the Linux-restricted-modules package, you have to update it as well to get modules which work with the new Linux kernel version.

About Ubuntu:
Ubuntu (an African word meaning 'Humanity to others') is the ultimate operating system developed by an entire open source community. Ubuntu is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It includes all the software you will need, from web browser, e-mail client and word processing, to games, programming tools and web server software. Ubuntu OS can be used at home, in a business environment, in public schools, hospitals, etc. The best part of all this is that Ubuntu is and will always be free of charge.

Get the latest version of Ubuntu right now from Softpedia. Don't forget to share it with your friends and family.

By: Marius Nestor, Linux Editor (news.softpedia.com)