Download

• tktreectrl_2.4.1-1_i386.deb (373KB, alternate download)

Procedure

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tktreectrl/tktreectrl/tktreectrl-2.4.1/tktreectrl-2.4.1.tar.gz -O- |tar zxvf -
cd tktreectrl-2.4.1/
./configure --with-x --enable-shellicon --enable-gtk --enable-threads --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install #or checkinstall

git clone --depth=1 git://repo.example.com/mycoolapp

However, let’s say that once you checkout the project, compile it and decide that you want to contribute to it, then a shallow clone would probably not suffice. In this case, one can deepen the repository by using the following command inside the git repository, where n = number of revisions to deepen to:

git fetch --depth=n origin master

Saves more than having to re-clone everything from scratch and lose your working tree.

The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and so let me run with it for a moment, as a way of giving an executive summary of our situation today.

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It’s a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They’ve been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and manoeuvrable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants [one] can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it’s a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers’ attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: “Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!”

Prospective station wagon buyer: “I know what you say is true…but…er…I don’t know how to maintain a tank!”

Bullhorn: “You don’t know how to maintain a station wagon either!”

Buyer: “But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.”

Bullhorn: “But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!”

Buyer: “Stay away from my house, you freak!”

Bullhorn: “But…”

Buyer: “Can’t you see that everyone is buying station wagons?”

• Debian package (5.7 MB)
• RPM package (5.7 MB)

Compiling

./configure --enable-binreloc --enable-socket --enable-vte --enable-the-force --prefix=/usr
make
make install

Download

• yasm-compdigitec-unofficial_1.1.0-1_i386.deb (Debian Package, 1.8MB)
• yasm-compdigitec-unofficial_1.1.0-1_i386.rpm (RPM Package, 1.8MB)

wget http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/releases/yasm-1.1.0.tar.gz -O- | tar zxvf -
cd yasm-1.1.0
./configure --disable-nls --prefix=/usr
make
make install
yasm --version
#yasm 1.1.0.2352
#Compiled on Oct 23 2011.
#Copyright (c) 2001-2010 Peter Johnson and other Yasm developers.
#Run yasm --license for licensing overview and summary.

Download a copy of the Firefox source, and extract it. Then run ./configure as follows:

--enable-application=browser --enable-official-branding --disable-debug --with-x --disable-profiling --disable-gnomevfs --disable-gconf --disable-accessibility --disable-ogg --disable-webm --enable-splashscreen --disable-angle --enable-crashreporter --disable-smil --disable-installer --disable-updater --disable-update-packaging --disable-parental-controls --disable-tests --enable-faststart --disable-safe-browsing --disable-meegocontentaction --enable-optimize=-O2 --disable-logging --enable-install-strip --disable-necko-wifi --disable-glibtest

A few points to note:

• Remove --enable-official-branding if you ever plan to distribute your build online (in .deb or something like that) - Mozilla is extremely picky about distributing official artwork in modified builds.
• Add a --prefix=/usr if you don’t want to install to /usr/local (replace /usr with whatever path you want)
• You will want to add --disable-libjpeg-turbo if you don’t have a handy version of yasm (or are lazy)

Then run make. If you want to test your build, you can find it under dist/bin of your extracted tarball. Change to that directory and then one can test it like so:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./firefox-bin -ProfileManager -no-remote

This will allow you to test without clobbering your existing profile. When you are done, you can run make install (beware of conflicts with the repository’s firefox) or if you would rather use checkinstall to make a package, checkinstall --fstrans=no.

Prerequisites:

• Java compiler and JRE
• It is recommended to do this procedure in a separate folder to avoid contamination and interference from other files.

Procedure:

• Compile Java code to generate hello.class (assuming hello.java in this article, replace hello with your application’s name):

  javac hello.java

• Add meta file - create file called hello.mf with the following contents (replace hello with your .java name):

  Main-Class: hello

  Optionally, add the following line if your application depends on other jar files:

  Class-Path: (list of jar files here)

• Make an executable jar:

  jar cvfm *.jar hello.mf *.class

• At this point you have an executable jar which you can run with any JRE like so:

  java -jar hello.jar

  . But if you want to generate an EXE for Windows, continue to follow these instructions:

• Download and run Launch4J.
• Set “jar” to hello.jar in the directory where it can be found.
• Set “output file” to hello.exe in the same directory as hello.jar.
• (Optional) Add icon by selecting icon.
• Under “Header” tab, set GUI if your Java application is GUI, otherwise select console.
• (Optional) Under “Single instance” tab, select “Allow only a single instance” if you wish to only allow one copy of your application open at the same time. Type in a random combination of letters and numbers in “mutex name” and type in your application name under “Window title”.
• Set a minimum JRE version under the “JRE” tab (such as 1.3.1).
• Save your configuration if you want to, then click the build icon at the top to build your application.

Procedure

1. Open up your ProFTPd configuration file (by default it is /etc/proftpd.conf) using your favourite text editor:

   sudo nano -w /etc/proftpd.conf

2. Add a VirtualHost. The following snippet sets up a “virtual” server on Port 3003 for all bound IP addresses (IPv6 and IPv4). You can change the 3003 to the port you want to host, change the ServerName to a useful description of the host and DefaultRoot to the root of the FTP.

   <VirtualHost ::0.0.0.0>
   	Port 3003
   	Umask 022
   	ServerName "VirtualHost FTP"
   	DefaultRoot /home/www/customer3003
   </VirtualHost>
   

3. If you do not want IPv6 support or it gives you problems on your specific host, then you can bind it to all IPv4 addresses on Port 3003 (same as above otherwise):

   <VirtualHost 0.0.0.0>
   	Port 3003
   	Umask 022
   	ServerName "VirtualHost FTP"
   	DefaultRoot /home/www/customer3003
   </VirtualHost>
   

4. If you want, you can also modify it to bind to only certain ports to the specified port. When you are comfortable with your configuration, save the file and exit.
5. Reload the FTP server and connect away:

   sudo /etc/init.d/proftpd restart

What did not work

• <VirtualHost *>
  	Port 3003
  	Umask 022
  	ServerName "VirtualHost FTP"
  	DefaultRoot /home/www/customer3003
  </VirtualHost>
  

• <VirtualHost>
  	Port 3003
  	Umask 022
  	ServerName "VirtualHost FTP"
  	DefaultRoot /home/www/customer3003
  </VirtualHost>
  

• and

  <VirtualHost All>
  	Port 3003
  	Umask 022
  	ServerName "VirtualHost FTP"
  	DefaultRoot /home/www/customer3003
  </VirtualHost>
  

First have your site configuration file (with the VirtualHost) opened in your favourite text editor, then make sure the ServerName of the VirtualHost is set to the www version:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin you@example.com
	ServerName www.example.com

	<!-- other VirtualHost configs here... -->
</VirtualHost>

Then add another VirtualHost at the bottom of that (in the same file), replacing your variables:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName example.com
	Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>

This should look something like this in the end (all in one file):

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin you@example.com
	ServerName www.example.com

	<!-- other VirtualHost configs here... -->
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName example.com
	Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>

When you are done save the file, close it and reload Apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

This is a very safe and effective way to enforce your SEO and this solution does not require the rewrite engine either, which makes it very fast and safe. It performs the 301 redirect in the search-engine-approved manner and it will make sure your search engine popularity is not being cut in half by the www and non-www.

TilEm emulator

TilEm is a Z80 based emulator for the Linux operating system. It is capable all the Z80 based series of TI graphing calculators with the exception of the TI-81.This little emulator will emulate all the features of the hand-held graphic calculator complete with a display and calculator interface with 100% compatibility.

However, TilEm is not packaged by default with Ubuntu, so we have provided a package for use with Ubuntu and Debian systems: tilem.deb (366 KB)

Simply click to install. Note that you must have your own TI-83+ images - you can try asking your educational institution, obtaining a flash update from Texas Instruments, downloading it yourself using a serial or parallel cable or searching Google for “ti 83 plus rom image“. Be sure to get a .rom file or a file which contains a .rom.

Once you have your ROM image, it is simply a matter of copying the rom to the ~/.TilEm/ti83p/ folder. For example, if you have a ROM file called “ti83p_2.rom” then just copy or move the file to the aforementioned folder. Then start TilEm by typing tilem in the terminal.