I’ve been using Linux for almost 13 years. I’ve been answering folks questions about Linux for almost 13 years too. And if you asked me to give you an answer how to find something on your Linux server via Twitter in 140 characters, I’d not be able to do it. In fact, I’d not even try it. No friggin’ way.

Well, thankfully a much smarter and much more experienced person did just that. Found a way to answer questions about Linux in 140 characters or less for most anything you could want to find in Linux.

Dead serious.

One of the biggest challenges we face in using Linux and UNIX on servers is how to find files or small strings of text lost in the labyrinthine file system of a server. “Where was that executable?” “PHPMailerHost? Where’s that?”

Fortunately, most Linux (and UNIX) systems provide two powerful tools for searching.

IT veteran Don R. Crawley says that you can almost always find anything you want in the file system with either the “find” or the “grep” commands. These are just two of the commands he explains in his new book, Tweeting Linux, 140 Linux Configuration Commands Explained in 140 Characters or Less.

Tweeting Linux: 140 Linux Configuration Commands Explained in 140 Characters or Less is a straight-forward approach to learning Linux commands. Each command is first explained in 140 characters or less, then examples of usage are shown in screen captures, and finally more details are given when necessary to explain command usage. You’ll see the most commonly-used commands, plus a few gems you might not know about.

Don R. Crawley writes from experience and has an informative blog too. The book is on sale at Amazon for $30.00 and well worth the peace and quiet information that your forgetful friends will gain from this book. Give it a look!

[ Links: Tweeting Linux: 140 Linux Configuration Commands Explained in 140 Characters or Less ]

Just 5 months ago, Firefox 4.0 came out. Just 2 days ago, Firefox 6.0 came out. And scarily enough, they’re already testing in the nightly builds version 8.0. Damn Mozilla, slow down. I can’t update and test fast enough!

App Tabs: Take sites you always keep open—like Web mail—off your tab bar and give them a permanent home in your browser.
Organize your Tabs with Panorama: Too many tabs? Reclaim your browser from tab clutter! Panorama lets you drag and drop your tabs into manageable groups that you can organize, name and arrange in a fun and visual way.
Scratchpad: One of our new, built-in developer tools, Scratchpad lets you build and test snippets of JavaScript code right in the browser, saving you time and precious keystrokes.

I’m already a fan of Scratchpad. And so far, it seems like Firefox 6.0 is a tad bit faster and also seems to use less RAM.

[ Links: Firefox 6.0 Download, Features ]

Looks like the guys over at Neowin must have been refreshing the nightly builds like mad (I know I have) but Mozilla has released the final build of Firefox 4.0 for Linux, OS X and Windows today. Boasting a faster rendering speed, an improved UI and so far in my personal usage lesser memory usage, it seems like the next round of browser wars has already started – Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 was released last week and Opera 11.10 was just released a few days ago.

Firefox 4.0 for Windows
Firefox 4.0 for Linux (x86, x64)
Firefox 4.0 for Mac

Mozilla has yet to update their website, but the install so far has been good!

[ Links: Neowin, Mozilla Firefox ]

iroha Note is a software solution that allows you to create notes to study from, or to organize your information. It is simple to use, but at the same time it is a powerful tool for your note-taking needs. In addition to taking notes, iroha Note can also be used as a simple mind mapping utility.

Made with Adobe AIR, iroha Note will run on Windows, Mac and Linux – as long as you’re running the latest Adobe AIR runtime. It will link up thoughts and notes of different types – links, pictures, notes and website URL’s – all in a real attractive package.

Price? Free.

[ Links: iroha Note ]

Google finally is showing off what exactly that Gizmo Project purchase can do for you. Earlier this year, Google Voice was made available for all US citizens, finally leaving the closed beta since it’s Grand Central days – yet another Google purchase. Anyway, it works as easy as follows:

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan and many more countries – for as little as $0.02 per minute.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

Also, last week, Linux users got the ability to finally use video chat via the browser too. Gmail is getting even better and better.

[ Links: Official Gmail Blog ]

Seems like the patient – or in some cases, rather impatient – owners of the Maemo 5 (Linux) based Nokia N900 cellphone has finally gotten the update they’ve been looking forward to for quite some time, PR1.2 or 10.2010.19-1.

New games join the veritable arcade already on offer in Ovi Store. Jurassic 3D Rollercoaster, Zen-bound, Angry Birds (level pack), Sygic, Kroll, Weatherbug, and GoGadget are all available to keep you entertained. Important to note though that Ovi Store will do a full switchover this week Thursday, May 27, so these games and other for-purchase apps will show up then.

The prior leaked version was 10.2010.12-9, so that’s at least 7 weeks of testing and bug fixes. Let’s see how the rest of the week shakes out. And lets see if the apps based on Qt 4.6 also start flooding out too.

[ Links: Nokia N900, Nokia Conversations, Nokia PR1.2 Leaked ]

Apparently the long-awaited update for the Maemo based Nokia N900 has been leaked as a global PR1.2 update and has finally updated a lot of stuff after the prior PR1.1 and PR1.1.1 updates; which ushered in a few updates and bug fixes. What’s been confirmed so far is:

• Qt updated to 4.6.2
• Portrait Browser Mode
• Updated Application Manager
• Skype and Google Talk video calling
• Improved virtual keyboard
• USSD call codes now work
• Improved camera options
• Build No: 10.2010.12-9

Among other UI and software updates, unfortunately there’s not an update for the Flash version but it’s not the 10.1 Flash Player (version 9.0.260.0). PR1.2 is apparently quite the update.

As it stands though, Nokia has not officially released the PR1.2 update and this build is 4 weeks behind the latest known PR1.2 update, but as it stands this leaked version is a global release that has plenty of bugfixes and features that many Nokia N900 owners have been waiting for. I’m impressed with the Skype video calls… that’s a killer app in my mind. More over at Talk.Maemo.org (TMO).

Update: Ovi Maps 3.0 also confirmed.
Update: Flash Player has been updated from 9.0.246.0 to 9.0.260.0.

[ Related Links: Maemo "PR1.2 Is Released" Thread, Nokia N900 PR1.1 Update ]

In a move that more than likely caught the entire world – well, the people that actually care about open source on phones, pocketables, netbooks, televisions (upcoming) and so forth – by surprise.

I’m sure you’ve heard the news: Moblin and maemo are merging! We are taking the best pieces from these two open source projects and are creating the MeeGo software platform. Both teams have worked for a long time to support the needs of the mobile user experience – and MeeGo will make this even better. We want it to be fun, focused, flexible, technically challenging and ultimately, something that can change the world.

As far as how this fits into the Nokia Linux based Maemo handset platform, which so far has produced the Nokia N900 to date, has yet to be discussed. But products are to be released in the second half of 2010 based on the MeeGo open source OS, of which “MeeGo” is copyright the Linux Foundation.

[ Links: MeeGo ] [ Discussion: Talk.Maemo.Org ]

Call it a work in progress, but some illustrious members of Maemo.org have gotten Google Android (Eclair) to boot and be functional on the Maemo Linux based Nokia N900. Why is it a work in progress? The touchscreen works, as well as the keyboard on the N900; however you will not be making any phone calls via Android on the N900 quite yet. In fact, not all sounds or modules have been interfaced yet.

However, it’s pretty darn cool. Read more about it over at Maemo.org – [ thread here ]

Earlier in the week, Nokia came out with their PR1.01 and people were wondering when the “by Christmas” update that Nokia promised was coming. Well, question no more. Nokia’s PR1.1 update raises the Maemo 5 build to 2.2009.51-1.

First up is support for the Swiss keymat variant with hardware and virtual keyboard layouts supporting the combination of German, Italian and English characters. We’ll also see full compatibility with certain SIM cards from network operator 3. Although only a small number of SIM cards were impacted at the time, this release means the N900 is now fully compatible with 3 SIM cards.

Mail for Exchange also sees an update which will it allow it to work with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. This should bring the possibility of Exchange integration to a much broader group of users.

Ovi Maps also gets the update treatment, with improvements made to search performance and route calculation. Beyond these major changes come a range of smaller usability improvements which have been worked into the release and are based on the excellent user feedback the team have received (keep it coming).

Microsoft Exchange 2003 support, an updated Ovi Maps, among other fixes that people have been plain out begging for since the initial release of the Nokia N900.

The rollout is being staged across multiple territories, so if you do not see it now, be patient. Read more about it at Nokia Connections or at the Nokia Maemo 5 Wiki.

[ Links: Nokia Connections, Maemo 5 Wiki, Maemo Talk ]

All of the drama surrounding the CrunchPad [ Related: CrunchPad Litigation Imminent ] seems to not have stopped Fusion Garage from relabeling the CrunchPad the JooJoo.

Possessing a rather large 12.1″ Capacitive screen, the JooJoo runs off a *Nix based OS that boots directly into a browser that houses all of the applications that will be used by this machine. The JooJoo has no physical buttons on the outside other than the power button and has a 4gb SSD, Wifi (no 3G), an accelerometer and about a 4-5 hour battery life.

Pre-orders start on December 11th for $499 USD.

Yeah… funky name for a product that might eventually be stopped from being sold due to pending litigation.

[ Links: The JooJoo, Engadget Hands On ]

Guess what I got running via VMWare Fusion? If you guessed the recently shown off Google Chrome OS you’d be right. So far, it feels a bit unoptimized and slow but I’m only giving it only 512mb of RAM, 1 virtual processor on my Mac Mini running VMWare Fusion 2.06. I’ll retry in a bit once I’ve installed VMWare 3.0. Make sure that you use bridged and not NAT for your networking setup otherwise you’ll not be able to login.

This build of the Chrome OS is running 4.0.253.0 (32516). And speaking of logins, at the login screen (seen below) you input your Gmail login and password in order to login.

To get your download running, you will need a couple of things. If you have one of the VMWare [ site here ] applications, on the Mac it’s VMWare Fusion which has recently been upgraded to version 3.0, that’s a good start. Some people have used VirtualBox, which is free, and I have on the PC, but have yet to attempt. Then you will need to head over to via gdgt.com [ site here ] and download the Google Chrome OS VMWare Image.

You will need a login to their site, which is free, painless and takes like 1 minute to obtain a login.

Helpful tips, if you download it:
1.) To use the vmdk file, open VMware and create a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an “existing virtual disk.” (In VMware Fusion, this is the last option below, “use operating system disk” and “use OS disc image file.”)
2.) Make sure your VM is set to use bridged networking, rather than NAT.
3.) The username and password to login to Chrome OS / Chromium OS is your google account!

Alternatively, if you don’t have VMware, some users have had luck getting this image to run using VirtualBox, which is a free cross-platform (Windows / Mac / Linux) virtual machine created by Sun Microsystem.

Again, I haven’t tried the VirtualBox method yet, but might try it out on my main Windows PC later today. So far, it’s quirky, has twice randomly stopped on me, but for something that’s coming out next year, I could easily see using this on my OQO 01+ as a web only way to access the web and get to the internet when I’m mobile and want access to a full-blown Flash player and a keyboard. Can’t wait for the final release in the second half of 2010.

[ gdgt ] [ VirtualBox ] [ VMWare ] [ Related: Chrome OS as Open Source Project ]