OpenVPN is a full-featured SSL VPN (virtual private network). It implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the SSL/TLS protocol. It is an open source software and distributed under the GNU GPL. A VPN allows you to connect securely to an insecure public network such as wifi network at the airport or hotel. VPN is also required to access your corporate or enterprise or home server resources. You can bypass geo-blocked site and increase your privacy or safety online.

I have a machine running a couple of vagrant VM. The problem I have is that sometimes I forget to shutdown those VM before I shutdown or reboot my machine.

Setting up a VPN server with Amazon EC2 is a great way to protect your privacy. You can turn the server on when you need it, shut it down when you dont. All your traffic will go through your VPN and go out on the internet from your EC2 box so that you are in a really secure environment.

Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments.

Ready-to-use virtual machines sporting open-source operating systems

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you've already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn't on the list.

Ubuntu Sans Italic Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kl Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz 0123456789 ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - + = The Ubuntu Font Family are a set of matching new libre/open fonts in development during 2010-2011. The development is being funded by Canonical on behalf the wider Free Software community and the Ubuntu project. The technical font design work and implementation is being undertaken by Dalton Maag. Members of the Ubuntu core development team are packaging the font in .deb format. The font was released under a libre-licence and is now packaged in Ubuntu 10.10.

I routinely run multiple screen sessions on my Linux desktops and servers.
A problem with this is that when I grep through my command history, I find I issued a command in a different session, and have to detach and re-attach to get that history item.
Is it possible to 'force' the differently-updated histories from multiple sessions to all go to a central history?

People sometimes have to do a reinstall of their Ubuntu system for various reasons (been playing/experimenting with configuration/drivers/other packages or just because something is badly broken) but remembering all the extra packages you have installed can be a chore - but here is the simple solution:
On your old system (assuming it is still working), start up Synaptic and go:

PenguinTV is not just another RSS feed reader. It is designed from the ground up to work seamlessly with podcasts and video blogs, allowing you to easily enjoy the audio, music, and video published around the web in RSS format. One user calls it "hands down the app of choice" for downloading video blogs.

I accidentally discovered a wonderful use of the dd command on ubuntu. Clip mp3 files.

It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.

Blueman is a GTK+ bluetooth management utility for GNOME using bluez dbus backend. The aim is to create a full featured graphical bluetooth manager for Linux.

This page contains audio service usage examples. The API description is available at audio service.
Examples and commands for MPlayer, GStreamer apps etc.

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Sometimes you need to convert from one encoding to another because your application can only read certain data encoded in a certain way. NIX systems (Linux and UNIX) comes with a command line program called iconv that can be used to convert from one text encoding to another easily.
iconv -c -f ASCII -t UTF-8 [FILE_NAME] > [NEW_FILE]

gestikk provides mouse gestures for you to easily control your PC by drawing gestures with the mouse: mouse gestures.

If you want to update all the packages other than one package in your Ubuntu system follow this procedure. There are three ways of holding back packages, with dpkg, aptitude or with dselect.

GNOME Do (Do) is an intelligent launcher tool that makes performing common tasks on your computer simple and efficient. Do not only allows you to search for items in your desktop environment (e.g. applications, contacts, bookmarks, files, music), it also allows you to specify actions to perform on search results (e.g. run, open, email, chat, play). Want to send an email to mom? Simply type “email mom.”

To be honest, I never really liked Human, Ubuntu’s default theme, and seems that many other people don’t. Happilly, on GNU/Linux systems it is easy to customize everything, even the buttons aspect or the windows borders. Here’s a list of 30 Gnome themes of all styles, from the Windows XP look-a-like to the very original skin, to enhance your Ubuntu experience.