Additional repositories for Debian and Ubuntu

Google Linux Software Repositories This repository hosts Debian and Ubuntu packages for Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Music Manager, Google Voice and Video Chat plugins, and mod_pagespeed plugin for Apache. Adding the repository in /etc/apt/sources.list: echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list Importing the signing key in the keyring: wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - Opera .deb Repository This repository hosts Debian and Ubuntu packages for the stable and beta branches of Opera browser for Linux....

January 9, 2014 · 2 min

A different approach to ranking Linux distributions

Counting the number of Linux users and ranking Linux distributions according to their popularity has always been a problematic task. Not surprisingly, it still remains an open problem. Initiatives such as the Linux Counter or the flawed by design DistroWatch approach being inneficient, why not use Alexa Traffic Rank instead? Although this method is not perfect, I believe Alexa is a pretty accurate tool for comparing and ordering sites on the same topic....

January 11, 2013 · 2 min

UnixBench results: Linode, Tilaa, Hetzner

As announced in a previous post, here are the results of my UnixBench tests. I’ve been benchmarking VPSes from Linode (Xen virtualization) and Tilaa (KVM virtualization), along with a dedicated server from Hetzner. Here are the details of each tested configuration: Linode: 512MB of RAM, 4 virtual CPUs, 20GB Storage Tilaa: 256MB of RAM, 1 virtual CPU, 10GB Storage (RAID 10) Hetzner: Root Server X2, 2GB of RAM, 1 physical CPU, 320GB Storage (SAMSUNG HD321KJ) Methodology and notes:...

March 8, 2012 · 44 min

Compiling and running UnixBench on Debian and CentOS

As I’m in the process of migrating and reinstalling some VPS and dedicated servers, I figured it would be a nice opportunity to run benchmarks in order to measure system performance in various cases. I will be using UnixBench for doing so and will post my results during the next couple of days. Meanwhile, here is a tutorial on installing and running UnixBench. We start by installing (as root) required packages to build the program, follow the instructions related to the Linux distribution you are using:...

February 27, 2012 · 1 min

Compiling Apache 1.3.x on modern Linux distributions

For a lot of reasons, some people still want to be able to run Apache 1.3 on modern Linux distributions, and unfortunately for them, it doesn’t compile out of the box anymore. The encountered errors are, however, easy to fix and you will learn how to do so in this tutorial. We start by downloading and unpacking sources of the latest 1.3.x version, which happens to be 1.3.42: wget https://archive.apache.org/dist/httpd/apache_1.3.42.tar.gz tar xvfz apache_1....

November 10, 2011 · 2 min

20 Years of Linux: From Typewriters to Computers

This video is my contribution to the Linux Foundation 2011 video contest: Celebrating 20 years of Linux. It was created using stop motion technique, and consists of 332 pictures taken with flash enabled in order to add some random artefacts and create grain. The typewriter being featured is an heavyweight Olympia Super Deluxe manufactured in the late fifties, which belonged to my grandmother at the time she was teaching touch typing: amazingly, it still works almost perfectly after almost fifty years!...

July 8, 2011 · 2 min