A few things that attracted me to the ClearOS solution was (and still is):

• Caching
• Proxy (/Filter)
• Blacklisting
• Anti-Virus
• Web Interface

Now I’m sure there’s others out there, and you can also build this solution yourself. Seeing how I’m familiar with most of these to use, and implement, I did not really care to get lazy and use a web interface with it. I can spend all day in the console, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little cushion there, er.. or to be lazy. The main thing that pulled me towards ClearOS and its all-in-one approach was the caching.

Thus, I wish to share the home network’s caching reports. It surprised me at how much of an impact using a local caching server actually helps.

Reports

This isn’t entirely a month, but I’m sure you can get the idea.

At another glance, by month.

Against what?

In rough-draft-mode, there are at least 4 to 6 active physical machines utilising the Internet. May it be some streaming activity, mail retrieval, or mass-storage movement between here and remote servers .. There can be a huge amount of data consumed. Some screens straight from the feeder (router) itself:

253GB in (if I did my maths right ..) in total passed in May. So the Squid is doing a great job I’d say at attempting to capture what it can.Whether it’s caching more than serving is up to question. Reviewing some of the domains it’s been serving most is generally photo and music sites. (YouTube, HypeM, Grooveshark,  Facebook, etc).

So I’d safely say, that in some cases this is a relief to the network. It may not be the “all and all” solution for using less bandwidth when it comes to mass-storage movement, but it does indeed lower web (http/) traffic to free up some space for something else.

Visit ClearOS

I’ve recently come across an all-in-one free spacer tool called BleachBit.

BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean 90 applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari,and more.

I’m going to demonstrate and share my thoughts.

Install BleachBit

Installing BleachBit was simple for me. I installed it through the Debian Software Center. You can probably install it on your distribution’s software center. Or download it from the website if you’re using Windows. Continuing on..

Start BleachBit (Normal. Not “as root”)

You’ll be presented with a pleasant screen asking which “drives” (directories), and if you’d like to overwrite these files after deletion. Basically, it’s going to not only delete, but will also shred them so it makes it a lot harder to recover them in the future. Valuable to those have crazy ex-partners. Kid, I kid.

I went ahead and also selected “Overwrite files to hide contents,” too. Then hit close.

The selections

Now is the part where you’ll need to decide what you wish to clear. You must do this carefully as you may accidentally delete all of your bookmarks. You definitely don’t want that.

I selected some simple elements. Notice I left out “places,” in Firefox, as that relates to Bookmarks. If you have your bookmarks backed up, then go ahead–Though that just defeats the purpose of keeping bookmarks inside of the web browser.

The more touchy

Now that you’ve selected the obvious files, it’s time to move onto the more touchy. System files, and Package files (for Linux).

I’m not recommending that you mess with any of these. Though I did select “Clipboard,” and “Recent Documents.”

Preview Your Deletions First

It’s time to review what you’ve did. You can click the “Preview” button at the top left to see what exactly this program will delete, based on your selections.

This is the basics. If you’re running Debian that is, or something similar. It’ll vary from distribution to distribution. Also it’ll most likely look different on Windows.

Permission Error Time

If you’re satisfied with the Preview, go ahead and select “Delete.” You’ll get this nifty-little screen..

You can safely click “Delete” if you have not messed with anything else in-between Previewing, and clicking Delete. If you have, then I recommend Previewing the deletion selections again, then coming back to Delete the files. Note: You’ll also need to have any programs that may be accessing these files closed. Aptitude, Synaptic, Google Chrome, Firefox, Pidgin, and any other programs you’re telling BleachBit to clean. As it can conflict due to other permission errors.

Re-open “as root”

Before, as I didn’t point out, I also selected an APT clean. Which, because I was not running BleachBit as root it did not work. You’ll need to close the current BleachBit, after everything besides the APT clean, and re-open it as root.

It’ll might ask you the same things, go ahead and select “Overwrite files,” too. Then re-select the APT fields (or whatever your package manager may be) again, and hit Preview. All OK? Good, go ahead and “Delete.”

If all goes well:

Nice? I hope so.

I’m shocked I haven’t came across this sooner! This is a great tool to have for the quick free’r. If you have any tips, suggestions, etc, feel free to let me know. Remember this is also on Windows.

Download BleachBit

What I mean by that, can Ubuntu be sold in stores such as Wal-Mart? It’s being pushed in several places, among companies such as System76, but could it survive mass exposure?

Batman Light

I said that 10.04 appears to be shelf PC ready. It’s easy, friendly, and I’ve not had a problem installing or using anything on it. Providing that it comes from the repository (Software Center). If it comes from somewhere else, if supported it should go smoothly. Yes I know that LibreOffice or OpenOffice isn’t the friendliest looking thing out there, but it is extensible given the chance. Yes I know it’s lacking the game options, but if games like Xonotic keep popping up.. it would hopefully continue to attract more.

Monopoly

There’s just one tiny issue: Microsoft has wrapped up a monopoly regarding the operating system that is massively shipped via retailers. I’m not dissing their way of how they got it that way, but I do put down and discourage what they do to stay there. Twisting company’s arms for license agreements, harsh lash-outs against various Open Source, many other things I care not to mention.

The Continued Development

Now whether or whether not Ubuntu is still being actively vamped on-top of the Debian structure is up to question. I have not dug into the core of Ubuntu in some time, and quite frankly, it’s too much of a mess for me to bother with.

Though, I was reading some articles that spoke of Debian’s “[2]relevance,” to the Linux community – I thought this was rather a silly question, but I guess it was needed to be asked.. simply because that person was wondering if it was. Among others too, probably.

Relevance

It doesn’t exactly matter how relevant or irrelevant Debian is to the community. I’m sure there is projects unknown out there that are driven by the base of Debian in one shape or another. The fact that the Debian team takes their time in developing, and releases points out a clear fact: They really care about their project – Or just don’t like new stuff.

Irrelevance

In the case that other [1]competition does get there first, would it actually be too late for Ubuntu to show up? We’ve already seen Android being tossed around like hot potato, so it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine Ubuntu at the same stage.

What is stopping it though? I’m truly lost.

Not Ready?

Is there something stopping Ubuntu from being shipped to the masses? Is there something that the general public is unaware of that is stopping it?

The “Vision”

Since Ubuntu’s announcement to ship newer versions with the Unity desktop, there has been some rage, and compliments. Some don’t like the idea that Ubuntu is starting to head off in their own path – It’s completely understandable in both directions. Though you can’t just expect something to appeal to everyone when it looks like everything else. It’s the reason Apple has that sleek feel to their products, minus the [3]defects of actually using them (the application store, screws on hardware, etc). That still doesn’t stop Apple from being different.

It pushes them out there – That’s what Ubuntu is aiming for – At least that’s what I believe.

On the other hand, the Wait

I understand how Ubuntu could be holding out to see what happens with “Ubuntu” in general. Whether this Unity will be a good idea, or bad idea that flops the community to crap – I hope not. So later on, maybe I will see my wish come true, to see Linux PCs in Wal-Mart.

Refs:

Don’t forget to try Debian

Yes, that’s a broken E. :

So you have ClearOS installed, and you’re wanting to not only use the “Content Filter,” but you also want to make your connections go through tor. That’s really no issue, but will take a few minutes to setup.

Shell Access

Yes, you’re going to need shell access to your ClearOS box. Preferably root, but if you have another user that is allowed and has sudo access, that’ll work too.
(Side note: More detailed information about proxying via ClearOS can be found here.)

(1-3) Prepare Your Environment – Privoxy

Since ClearOS repositories do not contain any traces of Privoxy you’ll need to manually build it yourself. Head over to the Privoxy website, towards the downloads. You’ll need to “View All Files” and scroll down to the “Sources” directory. There you should see a tar.gz, click on it – Make sure it is “stable” (Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/files/)

Copy the direct link and put it into the shell – I’m going to assume you’re in /home/admin. Example ..

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ijbswa/Sources/3.0.16%20%28stable%29/privoxy-3.0.16-stable-src.tar.gz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fijbswa%2Ffiles%2F&ts=1289336405&use_mirror=cdnetworks-us-1

Something like this..

So now that we’ve did that. Let’s run some other useful tasks.

Before compiling or installing Privoxy, you need to set a specific user/group for it. Mostly because you don’t want this tool running under super cow powers.

Do this:

useradd privoxy

Then:

passwd privoxy

Think of something good

Now, run make. It’ll then give you some tips on doing some other commands first – Whatever that is about. Either way, just press the y key and you’ll be set. Hopefully no errors occur. If so, just post them and I’ll see what I can dig up.

So… if everything does go OK. Issue make install – This will then install Privoxy to its suitable environment.

Side Note: Since there is 2 proxies by default installed on ClearOS (Squid, and Dans Guardian), you would naturally think you could direct Squid to Tor. This is not the case. ClearOS has the Squid configuration in a specific way, in-which I really didn’t not feel like editing. So I came up with this solution instead. If you have instead wanted to use Squid and came up with a suitable edit, feel free to pass it along.


Time to edit the configuration! Head over to /usr/local/etc/privoxy/ to edit the config. Like so:

cd /usr/local/etc/privoxy/

nano config

Go all the way to the end of the file and add:

forward-socks4a / IP:9050 .

Do not forget the end dot (.). Replace IP with the IP of the machine (the loopback IP. E.g. 127.0.0.1 or LAN, 192.168.1.2).

Save/Close that file.

(2-3) Tor

Now it’s time to cook some onions. Go to the Tor Project website to grab a binary or source of tor (http://www.torproject.org/download/download-unix.html.en). I recommend grabbing the source tarball.

Copy the link of the source tarball, at this time it’ll be 0.2.1.26. Make sure you’re still in /home/admin or something suitable. (I have an admin account setup for pseudo reasons if you hadn’t noticed.)

wget http://www.torproject.org/dist/tor-0.2.1.26.tar.gz

tar xvf tor-0.2.1.26.tar.gz

cd tor-0.2.1.26

./configure

make

OR

make install

If you only issue make you can execute directly in src/or/tor after compiling. Or you can issue make install and it’ll install it. Remember the account you’re installing / running under – You may not want tor running under a root account.

Small configuring with Tor

Now that Tor is installed, and hopefully working, it’s time to change a few things. Even though tor will be used by the entire network (HTTP) via a single machine, maybe some people will want to go directly to Tor, rather than around tor to use tor.

Open up /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc and find (if torrc does not exist, do: mv torrc.sample torrc):

## Replace this with “SocksPort 0″ if you plan to run Tor only as a

## relay, and not make any local application connections yourself.

SocksPort 9050 # what port to open for local application connections

SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 # accept connections only from localhost

This is for connecting local Internet applications through port 9050. We want to add an listening host/port in-case someone wants to connect directly to Tor that is not on the machine. It should look like this instead:

## Replace this with “SocksPort 0″ if you plan to run Tor only as a

## relay, and not make any local application connections yourself.

SocksPort 9050 # what port to open for local application connections

SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 # accept connections only from localhost

SocksListenAddress IP:9100 # listen on this IP:port also

“IP” should be the LAN IP of the machine, such as 192.168.1.2. You can set the port to whatever you prefer (as long as it’s not in use by something else).

Generally some people will want to run Tor in the background, so if you want to do this find #RunAsDaemon 1 and remove the #. But if you don’t think anyone is going to run Privoxy / Polipo or some other translator on their owncomputer to connect to Tor then don’t worry about adding an extra listening address.

Once you’re all finished with that, save and close.

(3-3) DansGuardian

Yay – We’ve made it this far!

Let’s start editing DG now. Open up /etc/dansguardian-av/dansguardian.conf and find:

# the port DansGuardian connects to proxy on

proxyport = 3128

3128 is Squid’s port. We want to change this to 8118 (which is Privoxy). Save and close.

Finishing Up

Login to the web interface of ClearOS, head to the Content Filter, and restart it. If all goes well, it should come back online – If not, change the proxy port back and start over.

Everything should be correctly setup now. You’ll be connecting to DansGuardian, which connects to Privoxy, and that will connect to Tor. This is rather a complicated solution, however DansGuardian is the layer that offers some blocking and stuff.

Execute Privoxy, Tor, and you’re set. Point your browser to IP-Of-ClearOS:8080 and hit up google.com to see if it works. Remember, you may want to run these programs with different rights/etc, so think clearly about what you’re doing.

Please post any conflicts. I understand I’m not the best tutorial’r.

Best of luck!

Just a random thought.

Hold on there, just a second. Linux for the desktop is not completely dead. Nor has it missed its chance.

What opportunities has Linux missed? What is this about 1 percent market share (desktop)? What I’m truly not understanding is the claims of what Linux has missed. It’s not that Linux has missed anything–It’s that some have purposely ignored it.

Where

Dell sold PCs, and probably still is selling PCs with Ubuntu on them, kudos – But they now don’t advertise so much more with it, oh well, they do – It’s just more of “one” model available. You have to customise it. Not very appealing to the average consumer that just wants to walk into the store and grab-up something (or site).

System 76 has been selling PCs with Ubuntu on them for a couple years now (or more, not sure). Don’t ask me how it is going for them – But there’s one well known company that surrounds the idea of Linux on the desktop. Though, it’d be good if Canonical offered some lead-way support. You know, slapping a “Buy a computer with Ubuntu on it” right on their site? Very helpful in the long run. It wouldn’t hurt for Red Hat to do the same thing.

Strong-arm, not weak-arms

Don’t take the concept literally, or take it however you want .. either way:

The reason Linux is still struggling its way to the mainstream, commercials on TVs, people coming over to your house and knowing that what their seeing on your computer is Linux is because the commitment between parties is weak. (Breath break)

A strong arm needs be intact when trying to sweep the desktop market. Of course there is plenty of people/companies/groups out there that contribute heavily to Linux. I’m not saying they are the bad ones here – I’m not saying anyone is bad for any matter. But if Linux is going to make it onto desktops there needs to be an agreement somewhere along the line.

And that agreement is working together for a solution.

Issue with this current Linux setup

I’ve had several discussions with various OS users, and we’ve all came to the conclusion that in some areas support is a must. If you’re going to sell something, make sure you can support it – If you can’t support it, then don’t offer it. Given a few circumstances, some things that are sold really do not require support. An Operating System is one of those things that would need support.

Of course.. there’s layers within a company that handles specific tasks. And these tasks can be a number of different things.

• Public Relations (Being nice to people)
• Sales (Bringing people in)
• Support (Fixing said bugs)
• Commanders

This is seriously as simple as it could get for now. What has this got to do with Linux and the desktop market?

Think about how someone downloads a Linux distro (for free) and they have no idea what they are doing. They have to rely on Wiks, forums, IRC channels, mailing lists, and the next door neighbour to be able to get what they want, finished. This is not always the case – And I’d have to honestly say Ubuntu (10.04) has made this ultimate step in taking away the pain of trying out Linux.

So anyway, what do you do to keep this customer? You help them – uh – For what price? Currently there’s free Linux and paid Linux. Paid Linux comes from the term you have to pay to download it – but can get it free elsewhere – and the support costs money. Free Linux comes from what I just said – It’s a loop.

So once again, what has this got to do with Linux? It’s bumpy, is what it has to do with it. Where is the working together? There’s already Public Relations, and Support, but where is the Sales? Why aren’t these Linux vendors displaying computer companies that sell Linux? No one is going to know where they’re at if they’re not displayed.

Commanders is a tough situation. Every Linux distribution has a fleet of people that decide what gets released and what doesn’t (for official). How do you get them to work together? They need to decide where their distribution fits the best in the market. Enterprise, or home. Can’t have a million distributions running around, this just confuses the end-user.

Said distributions of belonging to a group?–No idea.

Conclusion 

Out of all this that I’ve said, destruction needs to take place of all the small-time distributions and let the already-out-there distributions take the lead with nothing in their path. Yea, put your dukes and money stash up – It’s a dollar sign war. It’s a nasty thing to say, but it’s the honest thing to say.

You can’t compete against your own team and expect to win. So until this actually happens, yes, the dream is dead.

This is an article in response to: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/207999-2/desktop_linux_the_dream_is_dead.html

I believe that when using an OS you should use whatever that OS is meant for. Linux to Linux, Windows to Windows, OS X to OS X, AmigaOS to AmigaOS, SkyOS to SkyOS, and the list goes on. Obviously some of these can use cross-platform applications that have libraries that’ll work on either-or-whatever–That’s not the issue.

The issue comes in when people expect an OS such as Linux, to run applications it wasn’t meant to run in the first place, such as Windows applications. Of course WINE is there (and developed) to help Windows applications run on Linux–it’s evident not every Windows app is going to work, simply because Linux doesn’t support this by default.

I’m not sure whether this is a bad or good thing – What I do know is, that a lot more alternative or even in some cases better applications can be used on Linux. I frown to see when people are frustrated that their favourite Windows application does not work on Linux, but such is Life–I direct them to a Linux app that serves the same purpose. Sure it may not look as pretty, may not do every single thing in some cases, but it’s still there&usable.

Time is to Tell the Future

With the progression Linux has been making in general (from the kernel, to the Desktop Interface, to the distributions such as Ubuntu), Linux has came along way (I have many more to thank because of this such as Red Hat, Slackware, and Debian) – I’d say that from what I can see, that it is very much possible that Linux will have a wide-selection of applications that serve any one user’s needs. If you pay close attention, you can see that is happening–not as much as you’d think, but it is. On an average basis, it already is.

The balance and OEM outlook

‘cuz the production of prebuilt computers being sold&shipped from major manufacturers I think that with time more people will become aware of Linux – With that being said, there will be a higher demand for more um, average use applications. Look at System76, selling machines with Linux. There is probably other city shops that are doing the same thing.

Personal Side-note

I’ve setup a family member with Ubuntu, and they have seem to caught onto within just a week. He used Windows for the entire time of ever using a computer. I think that on average if this is possible, then just taking a little more time, and effort from everyone, well, I’m sure you know.

Ubuntu has brought a new light to the Linux world, and I’m happy for this.

I think I’m a little off-topic, but oh well

WINE by itself

WINE obviously serves its purpose. Running some Windows applications. Microsoft Office, handful of games (Crossover thrives the most in this in my opinion since it’s aimed at Paid support (some things don’t always have to paid, but because this is, it works out as it should (how do you expect them to buy the games?))), and of course, some developers actually use it to create Windows applications (yes, it’s true).

However WINE is not meant to be a replacement for Windows applications. Sure, some people can think of it that way–but in all reality, it only serves for some applications & games.

It’s what I always tell people: “Don’t come to Linux expecting to run Windows.”

People

People are obviously not stupid, they’re just sometimes un-aware of the options that are out there. Other than Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Fedora, Linux has no real Batman light beaming about. Month-by-month, or year-by-year Linux is getting more and more light.

The advertisement for Linux is obviously not as much as Windows, or OS X, but if you take a look at the ZDnet video of how people thought KDE was Windows 7 without actually knowing what Windows 7 looked like–you’ll notice what I said earlier (on average basis) is happening.

Don’t worry, we’re not trying to fool people, just let them know there is other options. If these options do not suit you and you like what you’re using, then continue to use it. You don’t see me going around giving false information about other OSs though.

When I fix computers and they happen to have Windows on them, I keep it as is. If they are curious to know what is out there I give them those options and help support them for their new journey. Occasionally I do bring up other solutions anyway, just for conversation. Anyway…

The last line outcome?

I think that with how Linux is being set now, will eventually have major affect later. What chart says this?–Heck if I know. I do know that I’m starting to hear more people talk about Linux more than ever since Ubuntu swept the market.

1. SMC Fan Control – This is a good for laptops, you can adjust your fan speed. It sits up at the top telling you some useful information, your current temperature and current fan speed. Also you can customize a little and make your own preference’s and change the reading out between Celsius or Fahrenheit.

** Download SMC fan control

2. Magnifique – Not much to this, this just lets you change the color of things like the toolbar. I got this because i was tired of having default colors.

** Download Magnifique

3. Geektool – I found this to be extremely useful. After you install, there is a preference in your preference panel. This allows you to display log files, run system command, display image files which you can use to show a weather map on your desktop. While having a log file shown or running a command it shows a borderless, scroll bar free terminal on your desktop, in terms it looks like built into the wallpaper. One thing i do not like about this is once you exit out of the Geektool preference panel you can no longer interact with the Geektool widgets. I still highly recommend this if you use os x.

** Download: Geektool

4. WaterRoof – If you’re lazy like me then you probably want to avoid doing stuff the hard way, which is exactly what this application does. This is a IPFW GUI front end. To keep it short and simple this lets you do some neat things like view your net connection, set Internet rules, deny and allow connections etc. If you have a ssh, ftp, http or any kind of server up then i would get this.

** Download: WaterRoof

5. Transmission – This is a great torrent client for OS X, unlike other torrent clients this doesn’t hog resources. Also shows a a little icon on your dock with stats of how much you are downloading and uploading.

Download Transmission

6. Onyx – Onyx is a system tool that lets you do system maintenance on your OS X. It allows you to do clear log files, clear browser data, smart status check, fix file permissions, view man pages and a couple of other neat things. This is something worth checking out if you have not already.

** Download: Onyx

7. Fink -

The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X

With Fink, it opens the world even more when you want download software. It’s simple even though you use the terminal. I was never able to get Darwin ports to work, so i decided to use Fink and remove Darwin ports.

** Download: Fink

8. KisMAC – If you want to test out wireless security then this is the tool for the job.

** Download: KisMAC

If you have any handy applications that you like to use, let us know!