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I first met Debian because of Ubuntu (I was using Fedora in that time), I was introduced to Ubuntu Dapper Drake in August 2006 more or less, and then when I realized it was based on Debian, I decided to test Debian, and started with Debian Sarge the stable release in that time. The differences with Ubuntu were huge, Dapper Drake was years ahead of Debian Sarge, but then I switched to Testing (Etch in that time), actually I’ve downloaded and installed a Debian testing from scratch, and then I switched my /etc/apt/sources.list file to etch instead of testing. Well the differences with Ubuntu were not that big comparing it to testing.

"If you are running out of RAM on your Linux system, you will want to find the culprit in order to solve the problem, either by reconfiguring the RAM-hungry application or by stopping it." "We'll use ps, awk, head and sort with a pipe, to find out which application is consuming our RAM" "List running processes ordered by RAM usage" ps aux | awk '{print $2, $4, $11}' | sort -k2rn | head -n 20"

Today I’m presenting you my first interview, today is the turn or Raphaël, a Debian Contributor. I’ve meet Raphaël by his blog. He is interviewing other Debian contributors, and I’m interviewing him, continue reading and meet him better.

One of the most common statements about Slackware is that, it is difficult to maintain, and not user friendly. This is only partially true and depends on what is easy for you. If you know nothing about Linux then it may be complicated to start with Slackware, but if you know a little bit about Linux, then it could actually be easier to have a server on Slackware than for example Fedora or Ubuntu. Why?. Well mainly because it is more difficult to break things in Slackware than in others, the lack of a dependency resolution official tool, makes installing and maintaining software more time consuming, but at the same time, more stable.

From time to time, I can read an article stating that there are too many Linux Distributions, and that this situation is counter productive for Linux. Usually those blog posts get a bunch of comments saying the opposite, and stating that precisely this is the grace of Linux, the freedom of choice it offers. The problems Let’s see the points typically scored as negative.

Arch Linux is yet another Linux distribution. By the time of this writing Arch Linux is in the top ten list of Distro Watch. Computers are mostly used to perform certain task, and to do that task well, the user should not have to spend much time configuring the computer, or tweaking it to make it work, Arch Linux aims to keep computer working as simple as possible. In fact its philosophy is summarized in the acronym KISS Keep It Simply Stupid. But do not thing that because it is simple it is not powerful, Arch Linux can perform as Desktop, LAMP, firewall, router, cache server, or any other task you may want, while keeping it simple. Some time ago, I have already written a review about Arch Linux, in this one year and seven months of being using it almost exclusively I have learned a lot, and realized it is (at least for me) one of the best Linux Distributions I have tested. Anyway I think it is time to write another review.

OpenSSH key public key authentication, let users log into server without the need to use their user's passwords. It is possible to disable any other form of login into server, and let available only authentication based on ssh public key. What is achieved, using this method is to avoid password break by brute force attacks. For this method to work, three steps should be taken. Create a pair public / private key ssh Disable root login in the server Disable password login for any other user in the server

There are rumors about the possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft, both company's CEOs have been talking about an alliance to face Apple. ...the NY Times said. " ...The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could team up in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.... " ....how could this ever affect Linux?

It is well known on the Debian Community that the Stable version, is aimed for production environments mainly focused on stability and security, but not in having the latest packet versions. Therefore desktop users usually use Testing version for desktop environments, but this leads to some problems, as it is not intended for normal use, but for development and testing of the new stable version. Some of those problems as Mr. Hertzog states are that some packages could just dissapear, or broke the system, among other problems. Do not think this happens a lot, but it could happen.

Review/Comparison of two different Linux Distributions. Archbang and Linux Mint Debian Edition. Check how different and how similar they are. Some facts, and a video at the end.

What Linux Community needs, and what needs to avoid to be bigger, why the problems the different projects have with each others is counterproductive. Does Linux community really need a "head"?. What do you think?

There are very few things that you can accuse Linux of sucking at, but one thing that most geeks can agree on, is that Linux sucks at hardware support. So is hardware support the main hurdle that Linux has to overcome to become mainstream?

This technique, use iptables to block a particular IP, that has passed the threshold of a certain number of connections in a given period of time. This only uses IPtables and not DenyHost nor Fail2Ban

This post will guide you step by step in the process of installing a robust server, capable of serving hundreds of pages per second, without losing performance. While simultaneously serving the pages fast enough to avoid you loosing visitors due to excessively long waiting times. As the title suggest it is based on Nginx, it also uses Apache as PHP interpreter, and of course MySQL and PHP, all installed over an Arch Linux Server.

When you run a webserver, which could be Apache, Nginx or Lighttpd, you may want to know how it is performing, actually, usually any web server can handle a normal day of work, but what happens when the server under your administration gets, stumbled, or appears in Slashdot, or digg front pages, now a days even twitter may drive a lot of traffic to a webpage. If that event occurs your server will be under real stress, and it is in that day when you want it to perform well, and survive the "attack". It is usually not possible to know how it will do that day, until the D. day arrives, but you can figure out how it will be. In this article you will find how to perform a simple test to have an idea of the health of your web server.

Article about vmstat tool, to check the memory status in a Linux system, explaining the terms that vmstat uses, and also how to solve some memory problems, (only some hints)

That title, makes you all fellow Linux users wanted to know why someone would like to go back to Windows, really? and it is because for all of us who has discovered the freedom, and not only the free as in beer, or the free as in freedom, but also the "living free of system halting", the "living free of viruses", the "living free of having to format the hard drive and reinstall from time to time", it is hard to believe that someone may want to forget about this, and go back to Windows.

This how-to shows you how to use knockd, to open and close a normally closed firewall, so you can go in the server from any IP, without having to let the firewall open for that IP a-priori.

Arch Linux, a Simple yet powerful Linux distribution, read some of the basics of this wonderful distro, from the source article "Arch Linux is a bleeding edge Linux Distribution, that is mainly focused on simplicity, according to them "...without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications..""

If you have more than one Debian or Ubuntu Linux machines in your home or office, you know that when you upgrade them you have to download the same file twice, resulting in a waste of bandwidth, and more important TIME!. Well that should not be that way, you may use apt-cacher which is a .deb package proxy that will take care of the versions of the downloaded files, and keep the latest in the disk for your upgrades.