I am using Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) as my primary desktop OS, and I wanted to install some tools for doing development work. At the same time, I thought I might run through the steps and post them for anyone else that might be looking to do the same thing. I’ll walk you through what I am doing, it’s your typical Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP) stack.

First off, you can use sudo to run these install commands as your own local user, by putting sudo before each command, but I find it easier and more concise to simply use sudo to become root and install that way. I will write this article from that perspective, so if you don’t want to do this as root, simply put sudo before each command here.

You can become root by using this command from a terminal session:

sudo su -

Now that we are root, let us install MySQL which will be our database server:

apt-get install mysql-server

Next, let’s install Apache for our web server:

apt-get install apache2

In my case, I am developing in PHP, so we need to install PHP for Apache:

apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Last but not least, if you want a nice database manager, get phpMyAdmin:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

If this is not a box that you have KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) access to, and you will be connecting remotely, you will need to install the OpenSSH server so you can ssh into the server. Do this like so:

apt-get install openssh-server

Once installed, you should be able to log into the server with your user account. Please note that by default, you cannot log in as root via ssh. There you have it, now start writing some cool code!

Anyone that saw how cool Beryl was on older Ubuntu releases will appreciate this.  It appears that Beryl has merged with Compiz and thus isn’t available for Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) like you might be used to. That’s because it’s actually enabled by default!  If your system has an Nvidia card, and you have the “Restricted drivers” in use, you can right click on the desktop and choose “Change Desktop Backround”.  On the “Visual Effects” tab, you can enable the “Extra” settings.  This gives you some great effects for your windows and desktop by default, but what if you are like me and want more, especially to dig in and tweak it just the way you want it?  Glad you asked …

Pull up a command prompt and install the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings manager, after making sure you are fully up to date:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Once complete, this should add the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings icon to the System -> Preferences menu.  Click that puppy and go crazy!  You can setup all kinds on nifty stuff now, enjoy.

This is just a quick tip for anyone that uses VNC, expecially on Linux.  This works in TightVNC and maybe others too, it might be a VNC standard.  When using the VNC viewer or client on Windows, you can right click on the title bar of the window to get some extra options, like sending Ctrl-Alt-Del to the host to log into a Windows box.  When using this on Linux, right clicking on the title bar had no effect.  Uh oh, how was I going to login to my Windows box?  Well, I found that F8 will bring up the menu and allow you to do various things, including sending keystrokes to the host you are connected to.  So, there you have it.  When in doubt, try F8 when using the VNC viewer.

I wanted to share something that I observed recently on my own PC.  I am running Vista Home Premium, it came on my Alienware box.  I had some directories shared so I could hit them from some of my other PC’s, and the share names had underscores (_) in them.  Well, I recently installed Vista’s SP1 and afterwards, I noticed that my network shares were not working.  Hmm, that’s strange.  Skip ahead and what I found out was that after the SP1 install, my share names were renamed to the same thing, only without the underscore.  Well now, how about that?  So I had something like share_name, and then it became sharename without me changing it.  Not that big of a deal, but I thought I would share just in case anyone else was having the same troubles.

It appears that if you are running Windows XP Service Pack 3 and using ZoneAlarm firewall software, when you install patch KB951748 (MS08-037) that came out yesterday’s “patch Tuesday” bunch, it breaks ZoneAlarm. You cannot access the Internet until you either uninstall the patch or turn off ZoneAlarm. This patch is related to the DNS poisoning exploit that came out recently, so it should be applied. What to do? Well, one suggested workaround (other than the two mentioned above) was to lower the security settings to medium in ZoneAlarm. At least then you don’t have to disable it entirely. Another suggested fix has been to leave ZoneAlarm at High and set the Internet Security Zone to Custom and add the following rule “Allow outgoing TCP Ports:80,443″. I cannot verify that these fixes work, I don’t use ZoneAlarm myself, but others hit by this problem have had success with them.

Here is the Microsoft link with information about the patch:

http://www.microsoft.com/ … /ms08-037.mspx

Here is the official link from ZoneAlarm about the problem:

http://download.zonealarm.com/ … /LossOfInternetAccessIssue.html

Let me start this post by saying that I am a game addict, and not just video games either. Yep, years ago I was a pen and paper RPG nerd, and still am although I don’t really play much anymore. I love the books though, I love the stories, and therefore I have gravitated to computer games. What does this have to do with this site? Well, when I find something really cool, especially if it has to do with computers and/or related technology, I want to share it.

I played both Diablo and Diablo 2, including the expansions, and I don’t think anyone can argue that the Diablo series set the bar for many other games. How often have you seen games out there that were pretty much blatant Diablo rip-offs? From the GUI to the gameplay, they were trying to ride that same wave and catch some of the masters glory. Never seemed to work, did it? Just like World Of Warcraft is setting the bar for MMO’s with plenty of copy cats to follow, Diablo did the same thing years ago.

Well, now it’s doing it again. I got a chance to watch the HD gameplay trailer for Diablo 3 today and I was blown away. It looks like Blizzard is redefining this type of game all over again. The trailer was graphically awesome to be sure, but the gameplay and new features were insane. I wanted to play this game so bad I could taste it. Trust me, it will be a very long wait for this title to come out. Let me say too, I don’t see this is hype or vapor, this trailer is simply the game, and someone playing it narrating what is going on. Very cool.

Here, I have a link to the trailer that you can download in chunks. The whole trailer is almost 600MB and you can get it at FilePlanet [Link], but for those that don’t want to bite off all that at once, you can get it here in 12MB pieces. There are lots of places on the net to get bits and pieces of the trailer, but I can tell you that the entire HD trailer is an awesome thing, I highly recommend grabbing it. Then you can sit back, fire it up and just get lost in this magnificent game.  Grab the smaller chunks here.