Wael Nasreddine

It’s very important, when you are choosing an important password, to choose it well, always mix letters ( lower AND upper ), numbers and characters… A week password can be guessed via dictionary attack, like `home` or `computer` etc… A strong password can never be guessed via dictionary attack, ex: `]RmXpEB=1&` or `rl*~V3nM"S` …

I agree that random passwords are very hard to remember, but it’s better safe than sorry right ? Anyway you might think I thought of that password, well guess again

To generate a random, yet powerful, password I use apg it’s a small program that generates passwords, you can request both pronounceable and random passwords.. here some examples:
Generate an 8 to 10 chars long, pronounceable passwords
$ apg -a 0 -m 8 -x 10
Dabfiecaf
cebfaysHey
hivjebDoj
Kaneisht2
FiwauHyk
NiwryinkEp


Generate 15, 5 to 10 chars long, random passwords
$ apg -a 1 -m 5 -x 10 -n 15
y=/y}Ue
U^hV;DX
Y|'q@PWU}
Iz?J[M\{:
z0)g(3?bR[
W3'(PQ}8.
/]eb:]VkU
num)bQ
|q&Z6:)d5
I()jhl?I
0′[Pc1″<4
e1,`L”
WAU\ %o+n1+ 9pIs'


Password Strength
To check the strengh of your password, you can use Password checker by Microsoft.com or this small Java program

Good Luck

Lately I have been getting sick and tired of graphical IM, I like aMSN for MSN clients but wait I have 3 MSN accounts, that’s 3 wish’s processes and believe me, that’s too much !! I tried using Pidgin, but I didn’t like it compared to aMSN, If I want to use a graphical messenger I’d like it to be fully featured… I have decided to go to a much more appealing solution, a textual one, but hey I already use mutt for my mail, and ViM for everything I write, So I don’t mind a textual messenger…
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Hello,

Do you like the famous wget? but you would like to have a more advanced program? Open your arms and welcome the aria2 software, I have been using it for more than a year now and I thought it deserve an article on my blog, specially the integration with firefox 3, we’ll discuss it later in this article…
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Good Morning

Today I stumbled upon a very interesting panel, The Avant Window Navigator, it is like the Mac OS X panel, 3D, Buttons bounce, flip, glow etc… It is very pretty and it replaces every widget we have ever used…

The Avant panel can’t operate without compiz, so first you need to install compiz, there is plenty of articles around the net, just search for an article that works for your distribution, once that’s done and tested you should install the AVN…

Now you should remove all Gnome panel, just follow this tutorial, don’t forget to add AVN to your session.

This is merely a TIP, but It’s very usefull, if, for some reason, you would like to get rid of all gnome panels but you don’t wish to lose what gnome-panel offers with it then this is your answer…

First off, here’s a Screenshot to show you what I’m talking about.

We don’t really remove the Panels, we just hide them, so start off by removing all panels, you’ll have one panel left that you can’t remove so do the following:

Open Gconf-editor and goto to /apps/panel/toplevels and set these values:
auto_hide: yes
auto_hide_size: 1
expand: no
hide_delay: 1
monitor: 3
unhide_delay: 10000
x: 10000
y: 10000

Source

This article describes a very nice tip on how to switch between windows and linux using one command (or click ), I was tired of forgetting to stop grub to select windows and of searching on the internet if someone has already done this, so I’ve created the scripts myself.

Requirement:

• The scripts require a fully working GRUB installed on MBR of your hard disk.
• Your boot partition must be either ext2 or ext3.

On Linux::
Download the functions folder as well as the files colors and Go2windows, put all the files in the same folder, now if you do:
$ ./Go2windows
and confirm, your computer should reboot directly on windows.

On Windows:
Download all the contents of this folder also read very carefully this file before doing anything, now once you have installed all the required programs, if you double click Go2Linux, your windows should reboot in about 10 seconds directly into linux.

A while ago I was tired of editing/commenting Window Managers in .xinitrc, So I decided to look for a way to start any Window Manager, switch between them using one command line, and also make sure that the command ’startx’ starts the last Window Manager used…

The idea goes like this, the real xinitrc file will be called something else (Personally I chose .Xinitrc), .xinitrc will be a symbolic link to .xinitrc-sessions/windowmanager, and .xinitrc-sessions/windowmanager is just a small file that goes like this:
#!/bin/sh
source $HOME/.Xinitrc


So when you call startx, .Xinitrc will be called, in .Xinitrc the Window Manager name will be concluded from the file which .xinitrc links to (in this case .xinitrc-sessions/windowmanager)

To make the task even easier, instead of creating .xinitrc-sessions/* and .xinitrc link, I created a small and simple bash script which will create all the required files/links needed to launch the Window Manager

example:
If I want to run fvwm, all I have to do is call:
$ xsession fvwm
I want to change to gnome, so
$ xsession gnome
and now, running:
$ startx

will launch gnome as it was the last Window Manager

Links:
.Xinitrc
xsession