Category: Software

Enable PPAs In Elementary OS

Today’s article will tell you how to enable PPAs in Elementary OS. This is generally considered a bad idea, but it’s your computer and you can do anything you want with it. So, well, this one will have you enabling PPAs in Elementary OS.

I suppose that some folks will have no idea what I’m talking about. So, I’ll point out that Elementary OS is a Linux distro. Also known as eOS, it seems  targeted at looking good, having cohesive apps, and charging you money for this. That’s fine. You can use it for free.

Elementary OS is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. Ubuntu has PPAs, a way to install software that’s not in the default repositories, but Debian does not. Some Ubuntu derivatives also do not allow PPAs (by default) and Elementary OS is among those that do not.

Elementary OS developers would prefer you use AppImages or Flatpaks, instead of accepting the security burden that is allowing PPAs. After all, any PPA you add is pretty much like giving someone root access to your computer.

Well, today’s article is about just that. It’s a quick article that’ll teach you how to use PPAs in Elementary OS. Heck, the command to enable this is shorter than this intro, where I show you how to…

Enable PPAs In Elementary OS:

To get started, we’re going to have to have one of those open terminals. You can root through your menu (or use the search feature) or you can just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Next, to enable PPAs in Elementary OS, you really only need one command. But, we’ll make sure you’re updated fully before trying this. Thus, you get two commends!

Now that you’ve done that, you can now add PPAs to eOS. If you wanted to keep up with the more recent versions of LibreOffice, you’d run the following commands:

That should install LibreOffice and then keep it updated as the PPA maintainers update the repository. Either way, congratulations! If you’ve done everything correctly, you can now enable PPAs in Elementary OS.

Closure:

There you have it, another article. This article tells you how to enable PPAs in Elementary OS. Their preferences for different packages isn’t too dissimilar than Ubuntu themselves recommending Snap applications. Plus, any PPA you add will the be able to install software by its very nature, Maybe it is time to start doing away with the old ways and moving towards modernity?

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How To: List Cron Jobs

Today’s article is going to show you a few ways to list cron jobs on your computer. If you don’t know, cron is a way to schedule jobs in Linux. Cron goes all the way back to the mid-70s UNIX era. It’s a pretty handy tool that we’ve not yet really covered on Linux Tips.

In one of these future articles, I’ll have to explain how to add, remove, and change cron jobs. It’s easier than you might think. Importantly, even if you haven’t added any cron jobs, your system almost certainly has many of them. They’re useful for scheduling tasks and your computer does all sorts of task scheduling even if you don’t add anything to it.

In today’s article, we’ll show you how to list cron jobs by their type. By type, I mean by when they’re scheduled. Tasks are scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You can schedule them at other intervals, but generally speaking the system will only use those particular intervals.

List Cron Jobs:

Like many articles, this one will also require an open terminal. The terminal is a pretty useful tool! Anyhow, you can open one pretty easily. Just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Once  your terminal is open, we can first examine the the hourly cron jobs. It’s really easy. Just enter:

You may start to notice a trend with this next one. If you want to list cron jobs by their daily status, your command would be just a little different.

Sure enough, if you want to list cron jobs by their weekly status, the command isn’t much different. That one is:

And of course monthly is like this:

See? Nice and easy. A little bite-size article that tells you how to list cron jobs.

Closure:

And there you have it. You have yet another article, this one dealing with showing you the cron jobs that you have running on your computer. These are all the tasks that are regularly scheduled. One of these days, I’ll do an article about editing them and adding them, including adding them with different interval schedules.

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Install And Secure MariaDB In Ubuntu

I’ve recently purchased a couple of new VPSes (spelling?) and so today’s article is about how you install and secure MariaDB. As mentioned before, some articles are just going to be me scratching my own itch. In this case, I have a couple of virtual private servers that are doing nothing more than costing me money. I might as well put them to good use.

So, what is MariaDB? It’s a database management system that’s a fork of MySQL. Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems in early 2010 and MySQL went with it. Quite a few people didn’t trust Oracle’s stewardship of MySQL, they were already known for their own database management system, and so MariaDB was born.

MariaDB is actually a fork of MySQL. MariaDB is also permissively licensed, while the newer MySQL has an enterprise version with proprietary code in it. MariaDB is completely open and works just fine under a number of FOSS licenses.

MariaDB is just as fast, and faster in some operations. It supports the native languages used with databases. It’s well supported with a vast number of installs running some of the largest databases on the planet. MariaDB is one of many MySQL forks, which is to be expected. After all, MySQL was the first of its kinda – a free database management system that was released at a key  point (mid 1990s) of Internet development.

In my observation, and despite all its goodness, MariaDB a testament to exactly how much people dislike and don’t trust Oracle! So, then, why not…

Install And Secure MariaDB:

As this is server related, you’re likely to be doing this in a terminal and you’re likely to be using SSH to do so. So, I’m going to assume you already have a terminal open, saving us some time.

Make sure you’re fully updated before attempting this, so:

Now, we’ll go about installing MariaDB. It’s trivial, just run:

That’ll take a minute and, when done, you can verify that the MariaDB service is up and running properly. That needs this command:

MariaDB should be installed and running – but it’s woefully insecure. In order to secure the MariaDB installation, you will want to run the following command:

It’s going to first ask you for your root password. You’ll enter your default root (sudo) password. One of the questions will let you assign a different password for MariaDB and it’s strongly recommended that you do so. For the other few questions, you can read them or you can just answer yes to all of them, as all of them are the best choices for securing your databases.

That’s actually all there is to it. You’ve learned to install and secure MariaDB. It’s one of the many steps you might take if you wanted to set up your own server, so be careful when you’re doing so and opt for the best practices.

Closure:

There you have it! It’s another article, this one tells you how to install and secure MariaDB. In some cases, rare cases indeed, you might want to open it up to connections outside of localhost. If you do that, be sure to open up the correct port in the firewall. Other than that, you’re good to go.

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Install Brave Browser In Fedora

I keep hearing people talk about the Brave browser, so I decided to spin up a virtual machine and learn how to install Brave browser in Fedora. It’s actually one of the more complicated installs, but it’s not dreadfully difficult. If you’re looking to install Brave browser in Fedora, this article is for you.

If you’re unfamiliar with Fedora, it’s a distro that’s mostly sponsored by Red Hat and it is usually on the front edge of software. So, if you’re looking for a reasonably stable platform that also offers the latest and greatest software, Fedora is probably a good distribution for you.

Read: What is The Best Linux Distro?

So, if you’re a Fedora user, or are considering using Fedora, you might be pleased to know that you can install Brave browser. It’s not even all that difficult. While it’s generally advised that new users stick to the software choices in their default repositories, I’ve generally/mentally always made an exception for the browser. After all, which browser you prefer is such a personal choice. As such, you may need to reach outside the defaults to find the browser that best suits your needs.

Anyhow, today’s article is going to tell you how to install the Brave browser in Fedora. I’m not really a huge fan of Brave, but the growing popularity can’t be denied. So, you might as well know how to install it.

Install Brave Browser In Fedora:

Like so many articles, this one requires an open browser. That’s easily accomplished with the GUI application menu, or you can just go ahead and press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal open, let’s prep Fedora to install Brave browser. You’ll need to install dnf-plugins-core if you’ve not already done so. That’s done with this command:

We’ll then want to add the Brave repository, like so:

Note: That may change with newer Brave versions.

Next, you’ll want to make sure the software you get is genuine, using an .asc file – an ASCII version of a .pgp key file, and this requires this command:

That’s pretty much it, actually. All that’s left is to install Brave browser in Fedora – which is done with just this command:

Follow any on-screen prompts and you’re good to go. If you want proof that it works, see this:

freshly installed brave browser in Fedora
That may look a little funny, but it’s Fedora with LXDE – and the Brave browser!

See? It works! It wasn’t even all that hard to install the Brave browser. If that’s the browser you want to use, you can now jump to Fedora and know that the browser works just fine. You’re welcome!

Closure:

There you have it. There’s another article, this one telling you how to install Brave browser. I figured it’d be something folks are interested in, as Brave has increased in popularity and more folks are considering using Brave as their default browser.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

Review: MetaClean (Clean Exif/meta Data From Email Attachments Automatically)

Today’s article is about MetaClean, a Thunderbird plugin that you can use to automatically clean Exif (and other meta data) from email attachments. This is not the type of article I usually write, but it’s a very interesting extension for the Thunderbird email client. It’s good enough to help make folks aware of it.

Just the other day, I updated this article:

How To: Sanitize Exif Data From Your Digital Images For Privacy Sake

The update was largely a link that went to a study regarding the privacy implications of Exif data. If you’re unfamiliar with Exif data and its importance, I would strongly encourage you to read the article. I’d also strongly encourage you to read the linked article. If you’re concerned with your privacy, or are regulated to be concerned with the privacy of others, this might just be one of the best extensions you’ve ever used.

See, Exif data is just one type of meta data. Lots of files, from pictures to text documents, contain meta data. For example, a file generated by a rich text editor (such as LibreOffice) will contain your username, may contain a record of edits, and may contain a list of usernames that have also edited it. Meta data contains all that and more.

Enter MetaClean…

Note: MetaClean is a proprietary product with an enterprise/business solution that offer their services free for personal use. It’s a closed source product and using it means you trust them to perform the services claimed and adhere to their claims.

The file remains on the server for the time necessary for its processing, depending on the size of the file the processing time varies from 10 milliseconds to 600 milliseconds, after this time the file is removed and it will be impossible to restore it (GDPR compliant).

Read on to learn more about using MetaClean.

MetaClean Automatically Removes Meta Data:

It’s easy enough to add MetaClean to Thunderbird. Just click on Add-Ons and Themes, and then in the search box put “MetaClean.” The search result should contain the extension and you can install it with a single click. It’s remarkably easy.

MetaClean basically uploads all of your attachments to their own server, strips out the meta data (but will leave their own branding in the field, for free users) and then returns the sanitized file to your computer before the email actually sends. I tested this with a number of files and it’s amazingly fast.

Again, it requires that you trust them – and not care that they leave a comment in your meta data. The comment is harmless and won’t lead to you in any way. Your privacy will not be compromised.

Here’s the amazing thing, it not only does all that – but it even works on compressed files – though it only currently supports 7Zip and .zip formats. With them supporting Thunderbird (and it working fine on Linux), we can hope that they’ll expand that to .gz and some folks may like it if it could also work with .rar files. For now, it works just fine with the compressed files I tested.

Meta data is in all sorts of things that you create or touch, though it’s not always a bad thing. It’s sometimes useful to have meta data. I, for one, like to include the ID3 tags with my music files. But, you don’t always want to share the meta data. In fact, in some industries you have to not share it – to be compliant with privacy laws. However, if that’s you, you might be interested in their professional options – where the server that strips the meta data is actually owned and run by you.

Basically, once you’ve added it as an extension, it will automatically sanitize your files – removing any personal meta data from the file. It does this all without any user intervention (once you tell it to automatically do so). If you want to send a file while including the meta information you can also tell the plugin to let that email through with the personal information attached.

Closure:

It’s really that simple. Just install MetaClean and forget it. You won’t have to wonder if you remembered to sanitize your meta data before you sent it. You can be pretty confident that it was sent without that private data still attached. It’s definitely one of the most beneficial and easiest Thunderbird extensions that I’ve worked with lately.

I realize that I forgot to give it a number rating! In this case, it does what it says on the tin. I wish their privacy policy (while excellent) spelled it out a bit better. The tools could be a bit more fine-grained. They could see about adding support for more compression formats. As for the rest, they do great. I’m going to award them a solid 8 out of 10.

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