Showing headlines posted by the_doctor

Ransomware is on the rise. On a single day, WannaCrypt held hostage over 57,000 users worldwide, demanding anywhere between $300-$600 in Bitcoin. Don't pay up and you'll not be seeing your data again. Before I get into the thrust of this piece, if anything, let WannaCrypt be a siren call to everyone to backup your data. Period. End of story. With a solid data backup, should you fall prey to ransomware, you are just an OS reinstall and a data restore away from getting back to work.

Raspberry Pi manufacturer Premier Farnell has released the Pi Desktop, a case that offers most of what you need to build a Pi-based PC.

If you either work on a Linux desktop, or administer a Linux server, there might be times when frustration sets in over networking issues. Although Linux has made significant advances over the years, there are still instances where the standard troubleshooting or optimizations won't work. To that end, you need to have some tricks and tips up your sleeve to make your life easier.

Let's say you've been using a Linux machine for either a desktop or a server. During the installation you opted to have the home directory encrypted and, at some point (for whatever reason) the system will no longer boot. Is that encrypted data lost? With a little bit of work, no. I want to walk you through the process of recovering the data from your encrypted home directory. This process will require a working Linux machine with the drive containing the encrypted home directory attached and mounted. Your best bet is to handle this process on the likes of one of the more recent Ubuntu releases, as it will ensure your drive is automatically mounted when you attach it. You will also need the encryption password you created to protect your home directory.

The most important part of the Windows 10 S configuration is a setting that prevents it from running any apps that aren't included with Windows 10 or available through the Windows Store.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to suggest that women coders should hide their gender to achieve greater acceptance.

If you're a heavy Chromebook user, and you find your device constantly giving you an "out of memory" error, or if you find data in older browser tabs simply disappearing, your device doesn't have enough memory to handle your workload. Fortunately there's a way to fix this.

Google still hasn't shed its "bad guy" clothes when it comes to the data it collects on underage students. In fact, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the company continues to massively collect and store information on children without their consent or their parents'. Not even school administrators fully understand the extent of this operation, the EFF says.

Running Linux from inside Windows no longer requires a virtual machine or dedicated third-party software.

Linux. What is it? At one point in time it was a niche operating system run by those who wanted to show off their PC prowess and feel more alternative and l33t than the rest. But something happened on the way to the convention — Linux became accepted. Not only did this platform become accepted, it was adopted as a must-have technology by enterprise-level businesses, where reliability, flexibility, and security are key.

Mastodon is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) decentralized microblogging platform. It is a piece of software that has been written by Eugen Rochko to enable users to use the social network as an "alternative to commercial platforms."

There are certain Linux distributions that always seem to be behind the curve, when it comes to kernel updates. One such distribution is Ubuntu. There's a reason for that (of course); Ubuntu always wants to ensure the best possible user experience. To that end, the platform tends to lag behind a bit in the kernel sector.

I've been using Linux now for 20 years. I was one of those, back in the old days, willing to jump ship on Windows, even though the alternative was, at times, an incredibly frustrating challenge. But then, I happen to also be one of those who loves a good challenge.

Linux has become a more powerful alternative to Windows, there’s no doubt about that, but this still doesn’t necessarily mean Microsoft is anywhere close to losing the number one desktop on the desktop.

There may be instances where you need to include the fastest possible storage you can find on a server. In some cases, the best route to that is by making use of a ramdisk. Effectively, a ramdisk takes a portion of your system memory and uses it as a disk drive. This method of storage is considerably faster than standard hard disk storage, so it is a great tool for when you need blistering speed on a specific app.

I have been using openSUSE for a long time -- basically, for as long as there has been an openSUSE. I used the "stable" numbered releases at first, but that was a typical "point-release" distribution, which got major updates in complete new releases which were made every six months or so. I like to keep up with the latest Linux developments, so when the original (unofficial) Tumbleweed distribution came along, I gave it a try -- and I have never gone back.

Three Windows users whose computers were upgraded to Windows 10 decided to file a lawsuit against Microsoft after the operating system caused loss of data and hardware damage, which in the end led to substantial costs for each of them.

The issue at the heart of this problem is that Mozilla dropped support for ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) and is now requiring Linux users to have installed the PulseAudio library to support audio playback inside Firefox.

Controlling services in Linux doesn't have to be a confounding experience. Here's how the process works, and why it is often seen as an overly complicated task.

In twenty-four years, Debian has gone from one of half a dozen leading distributions to the premier representative of Linux. Its derivatives Linux Mint and Ubuntu are the most popular distributions today, and new security and server distributions are likely to be based on Debian itself.