I have been thinking about Ubuntu One a lot lately and I really like the whole concept of saving system configurations on the cloud (which it will eventually evolve in to from simple storage) and being able to sync into your new computer or recovering from a lost machine. Even if you don’t take those things in to consideration, a simple storage system is not so bad even though a better storage system already exists (dropbox).
Also the question of where Ubuntu (or Desktop OS in general) are heading to in the near future. Even though I have a lot of respect for RMS I find myself disagreeing with him in many things, including his views about Cloud computing and storage.
Anyways, fell free to vote on the poll (sidebar, RSS readers will need to visit the website) and share your thoughts in the comments.
Linux distributions are often customized to perform many specialized tasks cater to a particular industry, hobby or business. Security Penetration testing is one such niche where professional (and hobbyists) use customized Linux distributions with the whole purpose of doing security tests on networks and personal computer (hopefully with permission). Most of these distribution are live CDs which can be used without having to install them to your computer. Today we will take a look at some of best Pen-test distributions out there.
1) BackTrack:Backtrack is the most widely known pen-test distribution out there. The latest release (4 Beta) has been ported to Debian/Ubuntu from Slackware and now can be installed locally as a full distribution and tools can be updated using Backtrack repositories. Backtrack includes more than 300+ security tools.
This video tutorial will explain how to losslessly convert any video file format, including quicktime .mov, flash .flv files, open source .ogv, .mp4, .wmv, .asf and more. I show you how to install ffmpeg, check the formats and codecs available to you, convert a file to a new format (windows media and .asf in this example) without any loss in quality during the decoding and encoding process, and create and run a script file that will enable you to run a batch conversion on any number of files at the same time.
Anyone who has tried to convert multimedia files in Windows knows how challenging it can be. There are a ton of different programs out there to do it, but most of them either leave a watermark in your video, lower the resolution of your video, or both, unless you pay hundreds of dollars. ffmpeg can do this for you quickly, conveniently, and completely free – and can even be used in Windows! This video was created for Ubuntu, but will work for most Linux distributions, and the code you learn here to convert a file can be applied to the Windows version as well, though Windows’ scripting language is different so you will need to adjust the batch conversion script.
Some of you might know that Ubuntu recently launched a beta online storage service called “Ubuntu One”. This service looks very similar to what other popular online storage service like dropbox already does, except that Ubuntu One (pro service) is more expensive than Dropbox and the fact that dropbox client already supports Linux very well that it makes little sense to use Ubuntu One as an online storage service. Unless you consider these facts:
1) More than just backup: Online storage and file sync is just one aspect of what Ubuntu One will be about. Although it is still in the early stage, eventually the goal of Ubuntu One is to be able to integrate with applications so that you can backup / store / retrieve application-specific information and share with other computers (or users) if you want. Something very similar to what OSX already does with MobileME.