Following on from my Installing Arch Linux with KDE post, installing GNOME instead of KDE is very simple.
When editing the /etc/inittab file from the KDE guide, uncomment the gdm line and not the kdm one
# Example lines for starting a login manager #x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/gdm -nodaemon #x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon #x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >/dev/null 2>&1
I’ve always kept an interest in Linux and I normally check out the latest version of Ubuntu, however after hearing so many good things about Arch Linux I decided to download a copy and give it a try.
The default desktop environment for Ubuntu has always been GNOME, so I decided to install KDE, this guide will step through what I did to install Arch Linux and then install KDE on my system.
I have used KDE before via Kubuntu, however I thought I would try Arch Linux becasue as they say, it’s a lightweight distrobution that keeps things simple
You’ve reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple.
This means I can install a clean copy of KDE and install only the applications I want.
I’ve been following the development of the Raspberry Pi pretty much since it was announced, and since then I have thought of numerous uses for a tiny, low powered, yet powerful and cheap (£16* without ethernet, £22* with) device.
My main reason is to run one as a media box plugged into my TV via the Raspberry Pi’s HDMI port, and last week the XBMC team released a video of their software running on a Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is capable of decoding 1080p video and with it’s HDMI port make it a perfect media streamer.
The SoC is a Broadcom BCM2835. This contains an ARM1176JZFS, with floating point, running at 700Mhz, and a Videocore 4 GPU. The GPU is capable of BluRay quality playback, using H.264 at 40MBits/s. It has a fast 3D core accessed using the supplied OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG libraries.
Raspberry Pi’s should hopefully start shipping late Janusry, early Februrary 2012, and I cannot wait!
* Prices are an estimate based on current conversion rates.
I’ve been moving round Linux distributions recently and currently find myself using (and rather enjoying) Arch Linux.
As my article on installing MiniDLNA on Ubuntu is so far my post popular, I though I’d document how I installed and configured it on Arch.
There is a MiniDLNA package for Arch in the community reposotory, meaning it can be installed very easily via Pacman (the following commands have been run as root, add sudo to the beginning of them if you have installed and configured it)
pacman -S minidlna
When setting up my Ubuntu server I wanted it to be able to stream my media via UPnP/DLNA, I looked at a few solutions including MediaTomb and uShare, however I decided to go with MiniDLNA based on the fact that it was lightweight (my server isn’t the most powerful) and that I have a Western Digital TV Live which plays pretty much any file format meaning I didn’t need the server to transcode my media, MiniDLNA will quite happily however stream media to my other devices, like MP3′s and AVI’s (XviD/AC3) to my Xbox 360.
Installing MiniDLNA is available in the default repositories if you are running Ubuntu 11.10 and it can be installed by running the command
sudo apt-get install minidlna
Personal Package Archives (PPA) are an easy to install and upgrade software on Ubuntu
Personal Package Archives (PPA) allow you to upload Ubuntu source packages to be built and published as an apt repository by Launchpad.
It saves you having to download and compile software if it isn’t available from the default Ubuntu repositories, it will also allow you (in some cases) to update existing software.
To easlity add a PPA to your list of repositories on Ubuntu Server, firstly you will need to install python-software-properties
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
You can now add PPA’s using the following command
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:name-of-repository
If you are running ssh on your home server, I highly recommend you install Fail2ban.
Fail2ban scans log files like /var/log/pwdfail or /var/log/apache/error_log and bans IP that makes too many password failures. It updates firewall rules to reject the IP address.
Just a quick one, if you receive a GPG error when running an apt-get update, just enter the following command to fix it
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-extras-keyring
Then run another update and the errors should be gone.
After the 1TB drive that was connected to my home server (running Windows XP) died, I decided to go for cheaper, more open source approach.
My requirements for a home server are pretty simple, I would like it to function as a seedbox, to be able to download from Usenet, stream my media using DLNA/UPnP and more importantly to be accessible from my Windows 7 desktop and laptop for file storage.
After looking at my various options, including FreeNAS and Amahi, I decided to go with Ubuntu Server.