An important announcement.

This is the end! well, not really! it's the end on here at least. I moved the blog to http://www.sanshiros.wordpress.com  . All the how-to and the general blogging is there. I'll be happy if you stopped by, take a look and follow me :)

Skype issues 21/9/2015

Don't panic! skype is down for many users world-wide so there's nothing wrong on your side.

Probably in an hour (or less) everything will be alright (hopefully).

How to choose your future desktop/laptop

I won't analyze much the laptops since most of the companies don't build their own laptops but they give them to companies like Clevo, Quanta etc to build for them. Companies who build their own laptops are MSI and Asus, which i like and have a good enough product quality. Now about your new dell or alienware (dell's expensive product line) it's made by the company named Clevo. Of course Clevo isn't a bad company and have a good amount of achievements, such as first 17" screen on a laptop, first dual core processor on a laptop etc, so you must know this before you buy your new dell, fujitsu, hp, toshiba or whatever else. it's either gonna be Clevo or Quanta who build your laptop :) Lastly i want to say that you should test the laptop you're thinking to buy to see if you like its performance and most of all its keyboard. personally i dislike the laptop that comes with a "desktop-ish" keyboard... laptop keyboard must be silent! :)

Moving on to Desktops...
I never bought a 'ready' desktop because i have noticed the following things on every single company...

Alternative software

Software, can't leave without them, they're making our computers actually useful instead of a plastic/metal mass. However sometimes not everyone have the money to pay for software and piracy is illegal (as it should). The solution is alternative software, they're free, cross platform (most of them) and more community-driven. Today I am going to write down a list with alternative software starting from very essential things such as an Operating System to  specialized programs, so expect this list to be updated.

Let's start...

Google changed logo after 16years

Good month everybody! Yeap that's right, Google decided to change their logo after 16 years, to be honest i liked the old one better, but anyways... changes are always welcome :D

Here's the oldie:

A basic guide to security. [*updated*]

Computer security is something not so complicated, today i'll write down some tips for both computer and internet security.
First I'll start with the simple tips that some of you already know.

One basic method to protect your computer when you're not alone is by locking the screen, whatever OS you have, windows, linux, bsd your desktop environment or window manager will already have an option to lock the screen. You'll be surprised if you knew how many private data and passwords leaked because of that. Yes passwords too, all web browsers have the option to reveal saved passwords doh!

Set a strong password for your username, you can go as far as setting a BIOS password, of course you can reset it easily by removing the motherboard's battery in case you forget it

Poor performance in everything by your powerful GPU

I have noticed lately that a lot of people have their GPU drivers crashing, they also get very little performance out of their powerful graphics card, well sometimes it's the driver's fault but sometimes is not...
Then what is it? The answer is plain simple... "Miners" a lot of these people got their problem fixed (after ensuring it wasn't a GPU fan stopped working or abnormally high GPU temperature) by scanning with an antivirus (i always recommend malwarebytes, it's simple, powerful and does the job well). It turns out many people are getting their crapware out on the internet in hopes that someone will run it and start mining (with GPU cores) for them without the computer's owner notice it.

How to see how much VRAM your GPU uses under linux.

I pretty much said everything on the title, in this article I'm going to show you how to display your GPU VRAM and other information under linux using terminal.

First you need to type in:

lspci | grep -i VGA

Debian noRoot

Few days ago i decided to download a program from google store, it was Debian noroot from pelya, it says that it doesnt need a rooted device, that's good because i dont wanna void my warranty on the tablet, anyway i downloaded it, it's pretty large keep in mind so attempt to download/install it from a WiFi only.

Anyway after i set up my resolution to 1280x720 and font size to 0.7 it booted up. It's pretty nice and fast in my opinion after all it's a minimalist installation of debian jessie with XFCE , but don't think of it as a full OS in your tablet/mobile phone, more

Minor problems (Linux)

Problem1: error message when i tried to connect to the home network and see the shares, error message said "operation not valid or supported" something like that...
Solution: installed gvfs-backends and gvfs-fuse, logged out and then back in, everything's working as it should.

Problem2: for some reason enabling the MATE desktop environment's default compositor (to get fancy shadows under the windows) caused choppy resizing animation on *SOME* applications, yeap, some, e.g Eye of MATE while other applications like pluma or web browser were fine.
Solution: you need to... either install another compositor, e.g compton (i have my compton.conf and a small guide on some post here) or from Compiz panel, choose the resize effect to be something other than live-window-resize.

Personal openbox menu

Here i'll post my openbox menu (made with obmenu), don't use it as is since you might have different applications

my distro is debian xfce with openbox alongside
version is 8.1

To be honest i consider this more like a backup and not an ordinary post, but if anyone else likes it, it can be modified easily (only few commands depending on your system will need a change)

Anyways, here it comes! :D

My conky setup

Conky is a system monitor which can offer you a great desktop eye-candy if you're using linux (whatever distro)

You can install it by simply typing down:

sudo apt-get install conky

or if you're using a rpm based distro

sudo yum install conky

After it's done go to ~/.conkyrc (or create one if it doesnt exist (probably it will not)) and paste your desired conkyrc into your blank conkyrc with your favorite text editor. Small note: since it's .conkyrc that means the file is hidden, so you must set your file manager to show hidden items.

A tmux quick tutorial

A quick guide for the utility called tmux (terminal multiplexer) that allows you to open windows, split the terminal screen etc
First of all tmux is really handy when it comes to ssh connections allows you to have more than one terminal to work with, second important thing is that it's easy to use.






First we need to install it...

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install tmux

openbox compositing.

We know that Openbox is plain and sometimes way too minimalistic but if you need a compositor for transparency, shadows or i dont know what else check Compton

# apt-get install compton

create compton.conf in your ~/ (home directory) and place your settings there (i will give my configuration later on)

Compton offers transparency, shadow effects, multiple color of shadows, that's actually nice for dark themes and a really nice fading effect.

working around problems

Phew.. fixed that too
Phew.. fixed that as well!

I upgraded to debian jessie recently and and i had a couple of problems with pulseaudio which came in by default... the usual problem of course of having sound coming out from both speakers and headphones well that was easy to fix by adding

configuring UFW firewall.

Having a firewall on your linux machine isn't necessary if you don't use it as a server... but if you want to have a better control on your machine we'll see some basic configurations you can do.

First of all you have to think what ports you need to be open. Here's a good example

ports: 25, 53, 110, 443, 53323 on TCP must be open so you can connect to your e-mail, http, https and skype