metalbabble.com/technobabble

With all bias aside, a question many netbook enthusiasts debate is which OS to install on a netbook. Today there are a lot of powerful netbooks on the market with large hard drives capable of running any distro of Linux or Windows 7. My focus is on a low end or older netbook. I still love my Eee PC which is now a few years old. But even upgraded it has 2gigs of ram and 4gigs of storage (plus another 8 on sd) — the model shipped with 512mb ram, and just the 4gig ssd. This really brings us to two realistic contenders in my opinion:

Windows XP or Xubuntu.

Before anybody complains about me forgetting about their favorite, obsucure, runs-on-an-atari lightweight distro, keep in mind me choices are based around actually doing modern or real work using real applications and modern websites.

Here are the pros and cons…

Windows XP
PROS
* Customizable install with nLite
* High compatability
* XP is small enough you will still have room for apps like older versions of office, photoshop, etc
CONS
* Security. Realistically you should consider running antivirus as well which is a big setback on a netbook.
* Becomes slow and bloated over time
* Difficult to install without use of external cd drive.

Xubuntu
PROS
* Being free, it’s a lot easier to obtain, customize, and install (even via a USB drive)
* High UI customization to optimize screen real-estate
* Customization - only install what you need
* Fast, runs chrome perfectly.
* Decent apps, still have the ability to install Gimp, maybe open office with room to spare
CONS
* The learning curve associated with Linux (maybe not to the people who are installing OS’s on netbooks, but still!)
* Some maintenance issues, such as preserving disk space after package management.
* Less compatible

OVERALL
* Any OS install on these will require setting up a usb drive to boot and install from. This is somewhat easier with linux, but not impossible with windows. An external CD drive is even easier.
* Both OS - linux or windows - require customization to run well regardless. In windows, you’ll need to avoid swap files, tweak your registry, reduce disk writes and caches, and similarly in linux you’ll want to avoid swap as well and customize some scripts to reduce disk writes. Both will also require some tweaking to run well in the low memory environemtn.
* It’s tempting to spring for ubuntu, vista, 7, or something newer but honestly xp and xubuntu are slim and have a very small footprint and are essentially as capable as today’s OS’s.
* Using an SD card is tempting as a home directory or even a home and program directory - not only will this reduce writes to your more-expensive SSD, but you can reinstall and retain some of your stuff.
* Both XP and xubuntu waste space after it updates, see the old technobabble article on this!

When it comes to web browsing in Linux, it’s usually FireFox that tops users’ lists. But as great as FireFox is, I’ve found it sort of clunky - especially on NetBooks like the Asus Eee PC. As you might know, Google has brought chrome over to the Linux platform as a developer preview. And in my experience, Chrome really hauls it under Linux!

So is it time to set aside FireFox and make Chrome the default Linux browser? (Can you imagine Ubuntu or Fedora with Chrome, and NOT FireFox?) Well, maybe. Chrome and Google are going down their own route with their NetBook-minded OS, but that’s another story entirely. My point right now is, Chrome makes an excellent browser for Linux boxes, and is especially suitable for netbooks.

Today, we have a developer preview of Linux Chrome to play around with. It’s a bit of a tease, since it runs great but is stripped down. This entry will go through a few little hacks to get Chrome to do what you want in linux.

The Annoying Nag Page

No matter what you set as your home page in Chrome, it’ll always load to a screen that explains it’s a developer preview only. It’s worth reading and all, but once is probably enough to look at this thing. The page is actually “about:linux-chrome” - and even if you change it to something else in Settings, you’ll start back here again when you reload the application. My first attempt was to go through the configuration files and manually change it there. That didn’t work either.

So how do we resolve this? Kind of simple actually! Just pass the name of a page as a parameter. So if you use “google.com/ig” as your start page, you can use the command “google-chrome google.com/ig” to always start at your homepage. Actually, maybe you should use the command “google-chrome metalbabble.com”

In any case, I had an application launcher for chrome on a toolbar, I just set the command to what I have above, and presto. Works perfect, like it should! No TRACE of the nag screen.

No Flash / No Plugins

Here’s another must-have as far as I’m concerned. This one can be solved in a similar fashion - passing extra parameters to chrome. So, to enable plugins you use “google-chrome -enable-plugins” Pretty obvious, huh?

So to use these two command line switches together you’d have something like “google-chrome -enable-plugins google.com/ig” Just go into any shortcuts you have on your menus or toolbars and use these switches. Heck, get really fancy and write yourself a shell script.

Final Thoughts

Chrome is neat. It’s neat, but I never had a good reason to drop FireFox or Safari to start using it. However, in Linux, and especially on my NetBook, the performance and clean interface is well worth it. And if you can’t wait for the real deal then at least you can now get by with a couple of the essentials!

Have fun & let me know what you think!

Creative Suite (CS) is a wonderful suite of software for creative professionals, and it’s the best there is… or is it? Many people know there’s a free alternative to Microsoft Office called OpenOffice, but did you know that many of the Adobe CS applications also have a free open-source equivalent?

Let’s take a look at some…

Adobe: PHOTOSHOP Open Source: GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

The Gimp is one of the best open source programs, and certainly the next-best thing to Photoshop for bitmap/raster image editing. Photoshop users will feel right at home with filters, layers, adjustments, brushes, and many of the more powerful unique items Photoshop sports. The Gimp is so good in fact, I almost consider it true competition to Photoshop.

Adobe: DREAMWEAVER Open Source: Kompozer, NVU

http://kompozer.net/

Kompozer and NVU have a similar heritage from Mozilla. Like Firefox, Kompozer spun off from Mozilla’s old HTML editor. I will admit that Dreamweaver is an amazing program, but if you have to settle for free - Kompozer can more than get the job done. Similar interface items such as toolbars, insert menus, etc - will make the Dreamweaver web slinger feel right at home.

Adobe: ILLUSTRATOR Open Source: InkScape

http://www.inkscape.org/

I am personally from the Photoshop camp, but many people swear by the power of Illustrator. As far as vector graphic editing goes, InkScape easily covers all the bases. In addition to the obvious support for paths, layers, and such - InkScape also provides niceties such as the warp/tweak tool, text on a path, effects, and more. Not to mention the native support for SVG.

Adobe: INDESIGN Open Source: Scribus

http://www.scribus.net/

Scribus is an award-winning piece of software that ranks right up there along side Publisher, Quark, and InDesign. As with the other refined Open Source programs on this list, you can expect a solid user experience, all the right tools, and ease of use. Scribus features compatability along with it’s own unique features (scripts, etc). Desktop Publishers will have no problem quickly picking up this powerful page layout program.

But wait there’s more!

As open source software becomes more refined and more popular, we will begin to see even more possabilities emerge. Linux has begun to draw attention for it’s video-editing capabilities which will even raise eyebows on the biggest AfterEffects users. There are open source Flash players, and new standards such as HTML 5 which will quicky become a true alternative to Flash.

And one of the real benefits of OpenSource is there is no real harm in trying, you may even find your prefernece falls with one of the above programs rather than their expensive commercial rivals.

Some things get better with age, and if you’re a retro game fan like me - then you’re in luck.

What is Abandonware?

Abandonware refers to software that is old, abandoned, and usually no longer supported or protected by the creators. It can be a gray area because companies are usually very protective about their copyrights - even those that are quite old. Nintendo, for example, has traditionally held a tight grip on their copyrights to older titles. Now that we have Virtual Console, we can understand why.

Old computer games are a little different.  (Sometimes) There are many games that have gone free, open source, or just fallen out of the interest of the orginating companies - if they even still exist. If you grew up with DOS or MAC you may have some old favorites you might like to play again.

This article will focus on old DOS games and getting them to play - not just on Windows but also Mac and Linux.

First up, you need something that can run the games. In many cases emulation or virtualization will do the trick. For old DOS games many people turn to DOSBOX. It’s a great little program that is available on various platforms.

Get DOS BOX here: http://www.dosbox.com/

Other ideas include VirtualBox, Virtual PC, VM Ware Fusion, or Parallels

If you’re using DOS BOX you have some configuration to do. When you run the program you get a usual DOS prompt. To get at your files, you have to mount the location. So, if in Windows you have a directory of games at c:\games you can type “mount c: c:\games” to get that directory into DOS BOX.

Other useful things will be going full screen (alt-enter) and adjusting the speed of emulation: ctrl-f11, ctrl-f12. Many old games will run extremely fast on newer machines, so some throttling will be necissary.

DOS BOX also has many front ends available for it, dosshell, boxer, and so forth. These make it easier to have multiple configurations for multiple games. It also simplifies the loading proess for your programs. If you enjoy tweaking your system, you can locate the DOS BOX configuration file (in Windows it’s in your install directory) — in the configuration file you can change defaults such as starting full screen, sound/graphics options, speed, and so forht.

All you need now is some programs. There are many sites out there with Abandonware galore. One I used to find some of my old favorites was: TheOldComputer.com

I’ve used Ubuntu for quite some time, often as my primary OS. Each new version offers some new things, but as it’s on a fixed release schedule - it isn’t often that one release is a major step forward…. but then there are releases like 9.04!

I knew Linux was going to find its way to my new desktop so I (dumbly) made a partition just for this when I installed Vista ultimate 64bit. However when I ran the Ubuntu setup I did not realize it lumped all of my NTFS partitions together. Linux resized my Vista partitions and made its own. This completely pissed off Vista which in turn did a whole scandisk procedure and nagged and yelled as you’d expect.

In any case the first thing that was most striking to me about Ubuntu 9.04 was the interface. Every surface seems updated and polished. I was never a fan of the orange/brown appearance but it really works this time around. I normally ditch the human theme in favor of something blue or silver, but this time around it’s nice, and I stuck with it. The dark themes are nice too, and the desktops are perfect for multiple-monitor setups. Visually my favorite interface is probably the login screen which is dark and glossy.

Performance-wise, it runs like a top for the most part. I was concerned about the 64-bit release but it’s been fine with a few exceptions. The add/remove app seems to crash a good deal, I had some crashing when I installed my nvidia drivers, and there is a intermittent issue where my keyboard stops working which I think might be related to the gdesklets or some additions that I put in. When it runs however, it runs fast.

Compatability is good. It reads my NTFS partitions with no problem. A new version of WINE is out which is a step closer. All of my hardware with the exception of my webcam worked immediately after installation. Even ACPI is perfect.

So you might be asking, asides from is fresh interface, what else is new? For me, the biggest thing is how well is handles my multiple-monitor set up. The display properties in conjunction with the nvidia control panels give you a lot of power and management tools to tweak the heck out of your setup. Also new is bassero and a cloud-computing utility which I haven’t really played with yet.

Overall it’s another step forward. The big win in 9.04 is the interface, but behind it is the solid and easy OS Ubuntu has always strived to be. More and more Ubuntu is becoming something that is ready for the mainstream world.

In some previous technobabble articles we talked about some of the bloated files that Windows Update leaves behind. Many times drives fill up on users and there’s no obvious reason to where all the space is going. That’s where visualization comes in - at a glance you can identify the biggest parts of your file system.

First you need a tool to accomplish it. I’ve first seen a visualizer in Ubuntu as part of the disk cleanup process, if you have a recent linux install - chances are you have something already. As for Mac/PC people…

http://windirstat.info/ (Windows: WinStatDir)

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ (Mac: Grand Perspectiv)

Both programs will scan what ever part of the file system you decide - one drive, two drives, one folder (like your home folder, for instance) when completed, you’ll see a psychedelic representation of what objects in your fiesystem are taking up the most space, relatively. Large blocks are larger files.

Once you identify a particular file or folder that takes up space, you can research what it is to determine if you can safely delete it. Running on a typical Windows machine you’ll typically find a gig or so of update backup files which can be removed safely, but when in doubt - just google something to determine if it’s needed by the system or not.

Good luck & happy spring cleaning!

Drive visualization in Windows

The large chunks to the left are big virtual machines

some of the attacks are shown here

Sorry, it’s just not. Mine isn’t either. There’s really no way around it. This article will describe several popular router configurations and how to break through them.

1) Out-of-the-box.

For instance, consider a family using a Linksys router to share their high-speed to their laptops, etc. Most likely the log in is 192.168.0.1 with user “admin” and password “admin” - with that alone you could wreak all sorts of nasty havoc on their network or lock them out entirely. Not good. Never use the defaults, and update your passwords. This isn’t just linksys routers either - it’s very simple to determine what time of router your are seeing and then you can easily google the default passwords to log into it. Vonage, Verizon, Dlink users - I’m looking at you.

2) WEP Protection

Supposedly WEP is “good enough”. Well, maybe… it’s a deterrent I suppose. These are very very common password protected networks. The Geek Squad will set it up for you, that sort of thing. Here’s how to break in with KisMac…

• First, if the network is hidden - see #3 first.
• Ok, now follow the screenshot - run a authentication flood. This will create unique IVs, which you’ll need over 100k (that’ll take 5-10 minutes to capture) you can speed this process up several ways, such as performing a packet reinject (that menu item)
• Keep an eye on the unique IV’s - and whenever you feel “lucky” you can try one of the attacks, weak scheduling vs a 40-bit has worked for me in the past. I mean… for testing purposes, of course

3) Hidden ESSID

This is a “hidden” network where typically you don’t see the network’s name come up on your computer as an available network. BestBuy in Seekonk, MA hides their “BestBuy” network this way. Quite simple to just type in and access. But you of course, have to know the ID to even get there. Now, BustBuy was easy to guess. But what if it was something a bit more random like B3stBu7 - well we might not guess that. 

Breaking in: If you can guess the name, that’s all you need. If you are running something that identifies a hidden network the way of getting the name is to hit it with a De-authenticate. First, set your program to sniff on the channel you found the hidden essid on. Next, perform the deauthentication.This is built into KisMac, and extremely ease to use. Deauthenticate is under the network menu in KisMac. What this does is basically fools the router. When performing this attack your computer will pretend to be the router and all the clients on the network will need to reauthenticate themselves. In the confusion, the name of the network will be revealed to you - and you’re in. You can see an example of a hidden network in my screenshot.

4) WPA

Well now things are getting tricky. Locking down your wireless with WPA involves a complicated process with both parties in the connection performing a super double secret handshake to even talk to one another. If neither likes the other, it’s no go - this is why people choose this protection. But it can be broken, with time.

KisMac features several means under the crack menu. Most involved blowing tons of words “a wordlist” at it to try and get it. Just choose it from the menu. As you capture packets listening in on the network, KisMac is smart enough to use portions of the keys it finds in the packets to help get it. So, this is why it’s a time-consuming trial and error sort of thing. Maybe 20-30 minutes or more of trial and error with this menu will get you there… eventually.

5) MAC filters

I used to advise people that this was a good means of protection. I did so under then philosophy that nothing is %100 safe, and a MAC filter is a great deterent. Basically a MAC filter means that the router only allows connections to computers that it knows. Every network device has a MAC address - a unique identifier. This is hardware-based so the router really only talks to computers that you physically know about. Well… sort of.

To crack it you basically need to just pretend to be one of those computers it will let it. Which ones will it allow? That’s easy - any computer that’s currently on the network. So using any sort of network profiling too - I’ll use KisMac again as an example but certainally others would work too. View the clients on the network, and use one of their MAC address.

How do you do that? This is called MAC spoofing, where esentially you pretend to have a different MAC address. There are a bunch of ways to do this. Here are a few ideas, none are gaurnteed to work, but have in the past in some form or another…

• Using linux or Mac OS X - you can check out what your MAC address is in your config files. This has worked on an older red hat distro - where these config files were saved some place like /etc/network-scripts … something like that, you’ll have to google it. 
• Here’s a fun way to do it - use Virtualization! Grab virtual box or something like that (maybe vmware fusion, haven’t tried though) inside your virtual machine there’s yet another glorious configration file with … you guessed it… the MAC address which you can freely change (to something on the network, in our scenario)

Other considerations

• This stuff is pretty serious, I’m relaying it for ethical purposes. Don’t go be a douche and cause trouble.
• Working in a Virtual environment is good, that way it’s not your computer if things get nasty. Try it out though - see if you virtual MAC address appears on your router, it’s quite possible you’ll only see your computer’s as by default many virtualization environments treat the vm’s as a private local/sub network - with your computer as the access point.

Be safe and ethical! Happy hacking!

Ah yes, the fine art of war driving. To define war driving - think: a bunch of linux geeks in a van stealing your neibhor’s wifi.

All you need is a laptop with wifi - and mobility!

Some tools:

kismet - in linux, this is the way to go. ubuntu users should be able to type “sudo apt-get install kismet” and the magic will happen. you will need to manually edit the kismet configuration file to set up your wireless driver with the program. this program also supports GPS so you can map where signal is available. you can also read packets, so if you’re sitting in panara with this puppy running you can watch all the foolish coffee sippers check the bank accounts and write emails… fun!

kismac - the mac variety, and it’s even BETTER than kismet. why? well for one, it’s easier. but also it supports cracking of secured networks.

wireshark - available for win/mac/linux. more of the same

have fun!

Lil Bandit

Started out life as a laptop. After being trampled and catching fire its board was used in a “custom case” that I made out of lego blocks.

As you can see it’s running Red Hat Linux