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FreedomBox 0.1 released

Sep 012012

FreedomBox is an interesting project whose mission is the creation of a small, cheap and simple computer that serves freedom in the home, so also not-techie people can use advanced software to achieve privacy and security.

This is their Vision statement:

Vision Statement

We live in a world where our use of the network is mediated by organizations that often do not have our best interests at heart. By building software that does not rely on a central service, we can regain control and privacy. By keeping our data in our homes, we gain useful legal protections over it. By giving back power to the users over their networks and machines, we are returning the Internet to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.

In order to bring about the new network order, it is paramount that it is easy to convert to it. The hardware it runs on must be cheap. The software it runs on must be easy to install and administrate by anybody. It must be easy to transition from existing services.

How to install NSD Instead of BIND as name server on Linux to save Memory

Guides 4 Responses »

Aug 312012

A name server is a server that hosts a network service for providing responses to queries against a directory service. It maps a human-recognizable identifier to a system-internal, identification or addressing component, the program BIND is the most famous name server available on Linux, it can be used to do everything you need from a name server, but sometimes you need less.

Maybe you have a VPS and you want just to manage your DNS name, for this use you could check NSD a great alternative to BIND, it does not do DNS forwarding, it only serves its own domains. but this could be enough for your project.

NSD uses BIND-style zone-files; zone-files used under BIND (named) can usually be supplied unmodified in NSD once declared in the nsd.conf configuration. NSD manages zone information compiled via ‘zonec’ into a binary database file (nsd.db) which allows lightning fast start up of the NSD name-service daemon, syntax structural verification and flagging of errors at database compile-time. All this before being made available to NSD service itself.

Let’s see how to install and configure it.

Understanding the Top command on Linux

Guides 17 Responses »

Aug 282012

Article by AlexioBash published on his website about ArchLinux in italian.

Know what is happening in “real time” on your systems is in my opinion the basis to use and optimize your OS. On ArchLinux or better on GNU/Linux in general the top command can help us, this is a very useful system monitor that is really easy to use, and that can also allows us to understand why our OS suffers and which process use most resources. The command to be run on the terminal is:

$ top

And we’ll get a screen similar to the one on the right:

Let’s see now every single row of this output to explain all the information found within the screen.
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3 Tower defense games for Linux

Articles, Reviews 6 Responses »

Aug 262012

This is a genre I like and usually I play this kind of games in their flash/java online version but there are some nice Tower Defense games that can be downloaded and installed on Linux systems, today I’ll present you 3 of my favorites: Creeptd, Target Defense and Revenge of the Titans

But first a small introduction to what’s a Tower defense game:

The goal of tower defense games is to try to stop enemies from crossing a map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities, costs, and ability costs. When an enemy is defeated, the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers, or upgrade the number of money or points that are earned, or even upgrade the rate at which they upgrade.

3 DRM-Free Bundle running in these days

News No Responses »

Aug 222012

I’ve just discovered that beside the “usual” Humble Indie Bundle, featuring this time some games for Linux, Windows and dedicated to Android Games, there are also 2 Book Bundle, while they are not related to open source or Linux topics, I like initiatives that propose DRM free products, donate a part of the cash to charity and allow the customers to make a good deal.

The first Book-Bundle is from StoryBundle and is composed by Sci-Fi books while the second book bundle come from http://snugnugget.com/ and includes mainly Novels.

Let’s take a closer look at these Bundle, some of them end in a couple of days so this could be your last chance to get them !.
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