The popular Linux distribution Ubuntu distributes it’s offering as a Live CD .iso file. A Live CD is effectively a living, breathing copy of the operating system that can be written to CD and then booted from. The idea has a couple of benefits. It allows the user to sample operating system without any danger of damaging their existing setup, whether by partitioning of the hard drive for an install or another manner. If you’ve ever been curious to see what the attraction is about, the Ubuntu Live CD is an excellent manner to experience it by. Another benefit to the Live CD concept is it’s excellent ability to diagnose or salvage an otherwise busted Windows install. If Windows won’t boot and you feel you are looking at a complete reinstall – how do you recover those important files? Well, ideally from your backups you’ve been maintaining but another method is leveraging the Ubuntu Live CD to access the Windows partition. Even if you have no intention of ever actively using Linux, a Live CD can be a true life-saver in situations similar to the previous.

What do you do if you don’t have a CD/DVD burner? You may be a bit taken back by that question – doesn’t everyone have that? Perhaps now, but few would argue that the entire medium is on an upward trend – or even flat-lined. Digital distribution is the future and you need to look no further than the actual Live CD system we’ve been talking about. Nevertheless, even if you have a CD/DVD burner you may not have any available media to write to. In this instance it’s actually possible to create a bootable image onto a USB flash drive – which you probably have oodles of.

UNetbootin is a free portable software utility that can take a CD iso image file and transpose it onto a USB thumb drive with just a few clicks. The process can even be simplified further in that UNetbootin can download the image directly, rather than you handling that side of the equation ahead of time.

To get started, select the desired distribution and subsequent version from the drop-downs. Then point UNetbootin to the drive letter of your USB thumb drive. The Ubuntu Live USB requires approximately 700MB on a FAT32 formatted drive. The process is non-destructive to the existing files on the drive, but I would still play it safe and ensure there is nothing valuable on the thumb drive that isn’t already somewhere else.

Once completed, to actually boot from your newly created thumb drive will likely require accessing an alternative boot menu when you power on your computer.  Generally the process involves hitting the Escape or F10 key on the initial BIOS screen as your computer powers on. The command will bring up a second screen, before Windows begins to boot, where you can select what device you wish to boot from. The options are typically: your first hard drive (likely Windows), CD/DVD drive, USB, or even the network.

Most computers purchased in the last 5 years or so provide the ability to boot from USB so you now should be all set!

Download UNetbootin

If you’ve ever spent some time and effort to configure Linux to serve files and printers to other computers on your network, you’ll know there are millions of howtos and write-ups to get you going. The bad news, here is yet another one. The good news, I’ve cut out the fluff and removed the verbose nonsense in order to get you up and running quickly.

1. First we need to get Samba installed, thankfully Ubuntu makes this a very simple process. Open a terminal window and execute sudo apt-get install samba. Ubuntu will query the package repositories and download and install the latest available samba package.
2. In that same terminal window type sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf.
3. In smb.conf, edit the [global] portion by replacing the workgroup = pcworkgroup where pcworkgroup is the workgroup your machine belongs to. You can find this in windows by right-clicking on My Computer->Properties->Computer Name.
4. Still in smb.conf, create a section for your desired share. Here is an example share titled MyShare and replacing username with your Linux login.
[MyShare]
path = /home/username/MyShare
available = yes
public = yes
guest ok = yes
browsable = yes
writable = yes
5. Save the file and in that same terminal window type sudo chmod 777 -R /home/username/MyShare.
6. Now restart samba with sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart from the terminal.
7. Finally, on Windows we want to map a driver letter to this share. From My Computer select Tools->Map Network Drive from the menu bar. Enter \\LINUXIP\MyShare in the Folder box and assign it an unused drive letter. LINUXIP is clearly the ip address of your Linux machine.

We’ve got file sharing going now what about sharing out that printer?

1. From the Ubuntu Gnome interface navigate to System->Administration-Printing. The default interface has this menu at the top of your screen.
2. Setup your printer
3. Now select Share Published Printers Connected to this System located under Server Settings.
4. On the Windows side, point your browser to http://LINUXIP:631/printers
5. On the loaded website find the printer you just configured in Linux. You will want to right-click on the link and copy the web address. The address will likely be something similar to http://LINUXIP:631/printers/MyPrinter.
6. Star the Add New Printer Wizard under Printers & Faxes in your Control Panel accessible from the start menu in Windows.
7. Choose Network Printer, then Connect to this printer. Paste the web address that you copied in step 5.
8. Install the appropriate Windows print driver; it would be handy to have the original installation disk that came with your printer at this time.
9. Click Finish.

If you made it this far, you should have a rather simple print and file serving configuration for your network. There are literally books on this particular topic, so be aware that this is just a basic configuration that should be enough to get you up and running. From this framework, you can further massage the configuration for your desired setup.

Good luck!

While it may be hard to believe, until Hardy Heron, Ubuntu did not ship with a firewall in it’s base install. You’d never dream of putting a Windows machine out on the Internet naked, for all to poke and prod. Things are different on Ubuntu for a few reasons:

• Fewer services are running by default on an Ubuntu install, as compared to Windows.
• Ubuntu (and really Linux) have always had security as a priority, while Microsoft has only recently began to focus on the problems in Vista. Windows is getting better in this regard.
• Lastly, and probably the biggest reason, the overwhelming install base of Windows makes for an easier target. Looking to do some evil? You’d likely focus your sights on something that can cause the most virtual damage – Windows and it’s 90% desktop market share.

Irregardless, running behind a software firewall is a good practice to adopt. Ubuntu 8.04 has introduced the Uncomplicated Firewall or ufw with the goal of integrating the power and flexibility of iptables without the overcomplicated nature that usually comes along for the ride. Here’s an overview to get you up and running quickly.

Enable ufw:

sudo ufw enable

When you initially enable ufw it’s defaulted into ACCEPT mode – basically allowing all incoming and outgoing traffic – until you establish a ruleset as below.

Allowing an incoming/outgoing connect on port 22:

sudo ufw allow 22

By port and protocal:

sudo ufw allow 22/tcp

Or by service name (list of service names from /etc/services):

sudo ufw allow ssh

Deny all ssh traffic from 172.16.1.0/24 to 10.123.123.100:

sudo ufw deny proto tcp from 172.16.1.0/24 to 10.123.123.100 port 22

Deleting the rule just created above:

sudo ufw delete deny proto tcp from 172.16.1.0/24 to 10.123.123.100 port 22

Block a single IP:

sudo ufw deny from 192.16.1.245

Deny a single IP behind your firewall from ssh-ing out:

sudo ufw deny proto tcp from 192.16.1.242 to any port 22

Enable/Disable logging:

sudo ufw logging on or sudo ufw logging off

Overview of the configured ports in ufw:

sudo ufw status

And to disable ufw and the running ruleset:

sudo ufw disable

As you can see, the syntax is quite logical once you’ve spent just a few minutes with it. I believe this is enough to get anyone up and running. More information can be found at the Ubuntu Wiki.

April has came and went, leaving us with the latest Ubuntu Linux release – Hardy Heron, available here. Ubuntu is heralded for it’s user-friendly and polished approach to desktop Linux. The overriding goal of each release is to win over converts from other operating systems, though mainly Windows, through a somewhat familiar desktop and suite of applications. The goal is admirable and obtainable, but also lofty and slow going. However, no one would argue that Ubuntu is not headed in the right direction.

Unfortunately, out of the box Ubuntu is multimedia handicapped. Because of copyright and patent restrictions that complicate the distribution process, the entirely free Ubuntu has chosen not to include support for proprietary codecs. Enter Medibuntu, a repository of Ubuntu packages that provide Adobe Flash, DVD Playback and MP3 codecs, Skype, Google Earth, and more.

Open a Terminal Window, Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal.

Then type:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs

* If you have an AMD64 processor, replace w32codecs with w64codecs

Additionally, installing Skype, Acrobat Reader, or Google Earth is just as easy.

sudo apt-get install skype

sudo apt-get install acroread

sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2

Ubuntu just got better in 5 minutes!

So, what can Google do that would make this more special then any other Ubuntu release/spin off? Well, Google services integration is a given but probably the bigger impact will be from the marketting and association that the Google brand name brings. The Google name is extremely recognizable in the Joe Public domain, and while their latest ventures (Google Base? Google Video Store? Google Pack?) haven’t exactly set the world on fire, if Joe is upset with Microsoft and their OS (which many of them are, even if they do just accept it as a fact of life) and hears that those Google folks have a replacement – there is a good chance they will check it out. Sure there is a learning curve, but I have seen quite a few people that don’t know much about linux or administration happily switch to Ubuntu because it lets them do all the basic things a computer is good for (web, email, word processing, etc) and doesn’t turn into a sluggish piece of junk after 6 months.

The direct impact on the rest of the Linux world? Increased support from hardware vendors, probably the final step in end-user legitimacy.