There is a popular joke about Linux users that we are so busy tweaking our system to do things for fun that we don’t have time to do important stuff. Getting things done in a structured manner (regardless of your OS) has always been a challenge for me. Writing down things to do on a piece of paper just doesn’t work for me anymore, specially since I spend a lot of time in front of the computer it makes sense to have a GTD application on my desktop I can have access to all the time. So ever since I made the complete move to Linux I tried quite a few organization tools to help me get things done much more efficiently, some of these tools are OS independent but all of them works on Linux. Hopefully you will find some of these apps helpful.

Tracks is not your grandma’s to-do app and perhaps thats a good thing. In order to run this app you will need to install and configure mysql (or SQLite3) and Rails; you can run your own web server or use the built in mongreal server. Its not as scary to install as it sounds, even if it was, its totally worth it. Tracks is a very extensive GTD application that works a lot like basecamp. You can host it yourself for personal use or on a public server to collaborate with others on group projects.
 
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This tutorial will show you how to use Samba to share a directory on your Linux machine across your network, accessible by Windows, Linux, and Mac machines. The process takes less than five minutes, and by the end you should immediately see the file server through browsing your Windows network. This is not the most secure way to share files via Linux (but you can configure Samba for greater security), and is suitable for a home network without unwanted guests.

BONUS: I announce who the prizewinner is from last week’s Twitter contest!
Follow me on Twitter and check out my blog.

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Last time we did a free book collection 2 years ago it was a hit among Linux users and rightfully so, who doesn’t like free books? No matter how experienced you are with Linux systems, there is always something new you can learn from a good book that focuses on specific aspects of a Linux system. While our old list was an ‘OK’ list, it wasn’t structured properly and most of the links are broken by now. This time we tried to make a list of free books by categories. “Beginners”,  “Advanced” and “Administrators”.

This is the first part of the series, in the near future we will have a list for “Intermediate and Advanced Linux Users” and “Linux System Administrators”. If you have any suggestions feel free to share them with us in the comments.

1) Introduction to Linux – A Hands on Guide

     Author: Machtelt Garrels 
     Format: HTML

2) Bash Guide for Beginners

     Author: Machtelt Garrels 
     Format: HTML

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Firefox Minefield is a daily build that has the latest bug-fixes, enhancements and test options that are not yet available on the stable release or might never end up being on future Firefox stable releases. In simple words, Firefox Minefield is a playing field for developers to continuously, often daily, update with the new things they are working with; which makes minefield nightly builds often unstable.

From a user’s point of view this is a great way to try out new options/features without having to wait few months for the next release. When Mozilla introduced major enhancements to its tracemonkey javascript engine last year, it was available on minefield nightlies, months before stable Firefox release.

However, manually updating nightly builds everyday can be a hassle. You can use this script (thanks to jalada) to run a daily cron and update to the latest build.

–> Make sure you already have Firefox Minefield installed in /opt/firefox

–> The script is for 64-bit builds. For x86 platforms you can get the correct links from here.

–> If this breaks your Firefox, I am not responsible. Hopefully you know your stuff :)

#!/bin/sh
cd /opt/;
rm firefox-3.6a1pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2;
wget "http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/firefox-3.6a1pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2";
rm -rf firefox/;
tar -jxvf firefox-3.6a1pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2;
chmod -R a+r firefox;
rm /usr/bin/firefox;
ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox;

(line breaks are replaced with semi-colon)

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