A|RAKESH's Weblog » Technology

Speed Up Your Web Browsing with OpenDNS

Rakesh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:47:29 +0000

Are you looking for a faster way to browse the Internet and have pages load faster? If so, you might be interested in trying out OpenDNS (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220). Adding OpenDNS to your router or home computer will speed up your web browsing.

DNS (Domain Name System) translates an IP address to an easy to remember hostname. If you use your ISPs DNS settings by default, it may not be the fastest way to get to your favorite sites.

: Image via CrunchBase

First, let you know – What Is OpenDNS?

Like many people, I use OpenDNS on my home network. It is a free DNS service that translates the URLs of Web pages into IP addresses.

OpenDNS theoretically helps speed up Web browsing by using better DNS servers to resolves URLs faster than your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The increase is probably too small for you to notice on a regular basis, however. More importantly, the service gives you better control over the Web sites you and your family visits, and contains built-in controls to protect against hackers hijacking your browser.
In operation for just over five years, OpenDNS now is serving upwards of 20 billion DNS queries per day. I’ve never experienced an outage or performance problem. Kudos to the folks at OpenDNS for running a fine service.

Read this post to add OpenDNS (DNS Servers: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220) to your PC to Speed up Web browsing.

Related posts:Add OpenDNS to your PC to Speed up Web browsing Related posts:

Add OpenDNS to your PC to Speed up Web browsing

Window Manager: Getting started with Openbox

Rakesh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:18:23 +0000

Get the packages

First install the main package, and any or none of the three optional extra utilities.

In Debian/Ubuntu do:

## required installation:

sudo apt-get install openbox

## optional installation:

sudo apt-ge install obconf gmrun pcmanfm

In other linux installations you can probably use ‘yum’ instead of ‘apt-get’.

Set up your configuration

Installing openbox will get you a set of default system wide configuration files in

/etc/xdg/openbox






You can copy them to your own directory, where you can edit them:







    mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox
    cp -p /etc/xdg/openbox/* ~/.config/openbox









There are three files required for a minimal configuration
autostart.sh

        run once just before openbox starts up

        Use a delay to launch X11 windows, and background them,

        so that the don’t come up until openbox has started.

        I have some example commands in here
 menu.xml

        You can define exactly one menu to be invoked in the root

        window, using the right mouse button. I have modified this

        to make it very easy to invoke gmrun, to launch a command,

        and to start an xterm window.

        My modified version of the default is here
 rc.xml

        This is the main configuration file in which you can define

        how menus should look, how many virtual desktops you want,

        which keyboard actions you want, etc. My version defines two

        ways of launching an xterm window, one big and one small, using

        CTRL+F1 and CTRL+F2 respectively. I also cycle left and

        right through desktops using CTRL+Left and CTRL+Right.

        I have included an option to run ‘gmrun’ using CTRL+F4

        My modified version of the default is here
PERMISSION AND WARNING

Anyone who so desires has my permission to copy and use any of the example files provided here, most of which are themselves slightly edited versions of files that came with OpenBox.
Please check the executable files before you use them, especially autostart.sh and the .xinitrc file mentioned below. 
Using gmrun

One of the nice things about using gmrun is that it maintains a history of commands. It also supports tab completion, and if you give it a url it will launch firefox, etc. I have slightly modified the default initialization file, which is







    ~/.gmrunrc









to specify a location for the panel and wider default text-box width. My version, based on the default version, is here. 
Sample .xinitrc

A sample ~/.xinitrc file invoked when you start X from a console, is here. If you fetch it make it executable and remove the comments at the top. 
Tar file with sample config files

A tar file containing my tailored extensions to Openbox and a sample .xinitrc file is available here: configfiles.tar.gz
Current contents







    -rwxr-xr-x    2087 2009-01-22 17:57:34 dotxinitrc

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 04:11:41 dotconfig-openbox-files/

    -rw-r--r--    1768 2009-01-20 09:46:33 dotconfig-openbox-files/autostart.sh

    -rw-r--r--    2861 2009-01-22 03:55:14 dotconfig-openbox-files/menu.xml

    -rw-r--r--   25571 2009-01-22 04:49:49 dotconfig-openbox-files/rc.xml

    -rw-r--r--    1391 2009-01-20 03:27:22 dot-gmrunrc-sample

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 15:41:34 CLO/

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 15:41:50 CLO/openbox-3/

    -rw-r--r--    5050 2009-01-22 15:37:54 CLO/openbox-3/themerc









I hope it is clear from the rest of this file what to do with each of those. But just in case, here is a summary:






    # create the required directories, in case you don't have them
        cd /download
        tar xvzf configfiles.tar.gz
        mkdir -p ~/.themes ~/.config/openbox
        ## put the CLO theme in place
        mv CLO ~/.themes
        mv dotconfig-openbox-files/* ~/.config/openbox
        ## config file for gmrun
        mv dot-gmrunrc-sample ~/.gmrun
        ## if you want to start up the X window system directly from

        ## a console terminal using startx
        mv dotxinitrc ~/.xinitrc









Before trying out the scripts please check all the files, in case of corruption, or in case they invoke utilities not available on your machine, especially these two ’startup’ files: ~/.xinitrc ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh
Get the packages
First install the main package, and any or none of the three optional extra utilities.
In Debian/Ubuntu do:
## required installation:
    sudo apt-get install openbox
## optional installation:
     sudo apt-ge install obconf gmrun pcmanfm
In other linux installations you can probably use ‘yum’ instead of ‘apt-get’. 
Set up your configuration
Installing openbox will get you a set of default system wide configuration files in







    /etc/xdg/openbox









You can copy them to your own directory, where you can edit them:







    mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox
    cp -p /etc/xdg/openbox/* ~/.config/openbox









There are three files required for a minimal configuration
autostart.sh

        run once just before openbox starts up

        Use a delay to launch X11 windows, and background them,

        so that the don’t come up until openbox has started.

        I have some example commands in here
 menu.xml

        You can define exactly one menu to be invoked in the root

        window, using the right mouse button. I have modified this

        to make it very easy to invoke gmrun, to launch a command,

        and to start an xterm window.

        My modified version of the default is here
 rc.xml

        This is the main configuration file in which you can define

        how menus should look, how many virtual desktops you want,

        which keyboard actions you want, etc. My version defines two

        ways of launching an xterm window, one big and one small, using

        CTRL+F1 and CTRL+F2 respectively. I also cycle left and

        right through desktops using CTRL+Left and CTRL+Right.

        I have included an option to run ‘gmrun’ using CTRL+F4

        My modified version of the default is here
PERMISSION AND WARNING

Anyone who so desires has my permission to copy and use any of the example files provided here, most of which are themselves slightly edited versions of files that came with OpenBox.
Please check the executable files before you use them, especially autostart.sh and the .xinitrc file mentioned below. 
Using gmrun

One of the nice things about using gmrun is that it maintains a history of commands. It also supports tab completion, and if you give it a url it will launch firefox, etc. I have slightly modified the default initialization file, which is







    ~/.gmrunrc









to specify a location for the panel and wider default text-box width. My version, based on the default version, is here. 
Sample .xinitrc

A sample ~/.xinitrc file invoked when you start X from a console, is here. If you fetch it make it executable and remove the comments at the top. 
Tar file with sample config files

A tar file containing my tailored extensions to Openbox and a sample .xinitrc file is available here: configfiles.tar.gz
Current contents







    -rwxr-xr-x    2087 2009-01-22 17:57:34 dotxinitrc

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 04:11:41 dotconfig-openbox-files/

    -rw-r--r--    1768 2009-01-20 09:46:33 dotconfig-openbox-files/autostart.sh

    -rw-r--r--    2861 2009-01-22 03:55:14 dotconfig-openbox-files/menu.xml

    -rw-r--r--   25571 2009-01-22 04:49:49 dotconfig-openbox-files/rc.xml

    -rw-r--r--    1391 2009-01-20 03:27:22 dot-gmrunrc-sample

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 15:41:34 CLO/

    drwxr-xr-x       0 2009-01-22 15:41:50 CLO/openbox-3/

    -rw-r--r--    5050 2009-01-22 15:37:54 CLO/openbox-3/themerc









I hope it is clear from the rest of this file what to do with each of those. But just in case, here is a summary:






    # create the required directories, in case you don't have them
        cd /download
        tar xvzf configfiles.tar.gz
        mkdir -p ~/.themes ~/.config/openbox
        ## put the CLO theme in place
        mv CLO ~/.themes
        mv dotconfig-openbox-files/* ~/.config/openbox
        ## config file for gmrun
        mv dot-gmrunrc-sample ~/.gmrun
        ## if you want to start up the X window system directly from

        ## a console terminal using startx
        mv dotxinitrc ~/.xinitrc









Before trying out the scripts please check all the files, in case of corruption, or in case they invoke utilities not available on your machine, especially these two ’startup’ files: ~/.xinitrc ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh


Related posts:Using Openbox as window-manager on Linux



Related posts:Using Openbox as window-manager on Linux



Using Openbox as window-manager on Linux
Rakesh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:16:46 +0000
For many years I have used GNOME on my Debian linux laptop. For some months I have been experiencing poor ‘interactive performance’ under heavy system load with GNOME (a desktop environment). When the system is largly idle the gnome desktop feels fast and snappy, and

interaction is very immediate. However, when I start a heavy background process, CPU utilization shoots to 100% on both CPU

cores (which is good!), but my whole desktop becomes sluggish i.e. under heavy system load, the gnome desktop keeps on responsing

nicely but not as it should be. 
As I need lightweight system. So, sfter some investigation I decided to try openbox, and am now using it as my default window manager on a desktop PC running Debian 5.0 (Lenny). It works well both with the gnome session manager (choose openbox from the session menu when you log in) and without the session manager (using just the ’startx’ command and a startup file in ‘~/.xinitrc’ to start up the windowmanager and a few clients). It is lightweight, very fast, very robust, and very tailorable that includes:
* Minimal overhead, which makes it ideal for lightweight systems, older hardware or speed demons;

* Few dependencies, which again is appealing to lightweight or minimal systems;

* Mouse-wheel scrolling of the desktops, for quick access to multiple workspaces;

* A customisable right-click menu and customisable keybindings written as XML files;

* Piped menus, where the output of one menu script is piped back into the Openbox menu and used in another (imagine the possibilities!);

* Plenty of themes, which are all customizable through text files;

* Multi-head Xinerama support for dual monitor output;

* And above all, SPEED. 
To understand what Openbox actually is, it’s important to know the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment.
A window manager is the program which draws on your screen the “box” in which the program is run. A window manager controls how your program window works, looks and acts. It decides what window decorations to use and gives you a way to move the windows, hide them, resize them, minimize them and close them. It controls what buttons you push to do those things, and what keys you press to make those things happen.
On the other hand, a desktop environment minds the entire desktop. It provides a taskbar, a system tray, a login manager, additional menus or perhaps screensavers and desktop icons. It might include a file manager, a text editor or some other accessory programs, too.
Openbox is a window manager, not a desktop environment. Openbox is only responsible for maintaining the windows you open on your screen — nothing else. That means installing Openbox won’t give you easy menu access to wallpaper options, a taskbar or system panel, or most of those other doo-dads. It does, however, give you a framework to build incorporate other programs that do those things — and usually with a greater degree of freedom over the style and interface.
Openbox can be used alone, without a desktop environment, or it can be used to replace the window manager in a complete desktop environment. Either way is acceptable.










In brief, Metacity, while a fair default, is not the only window manager you can use with GNOME. Openbox is a lightweight, customizable window manager that works either by itself or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity. Its advantages include the ability to switch desktops with the mouse wheel, a built-in, customizable menu that allows stand-alone operation with some GNOME components in order to build a GNOME-like system on low-end gear, and (this is subjective) better looking, cleaner themes that don't depend on resource-intensive pixmaps.









Read this post for Getting started with Openbox as Window Manager.
For many years I have used GNOME on my Debian linux laptop. For some months I have been experiencing poor ‘interactive performance’ under heavy system load with GNOME (a desktop environment). When the system is largly idle the gnome desktop feels fast and snappy, and

interaction is very immediate. However, when I start a heavy background process, CPU utilization shoots to 100% on both CPU

cores (which is good!), but my whole desktop becomes sluggish i.e. under heavy system load, the gnome desktop keeps on responsing

nicely but not as it should be. 
As I need lightweight system. So, sfter some investigation I decided to try openbox, and am now using it as my default window manager on a desktop PC running Debian 5.0 (Lenny). It works well both with the gnome session manager (choose openbox from the session menu when you log in) and without the session manager (using just the ’startx’ command and a startup file in ‘~/.xinitrc’ to start up the windowmanager and a few clients). It is lightweight, very fast, very robust, and very tailorable that includes:
* Minimal overhead, which makes it ideal for lightweight systems, older hardware or speed demons;

* Few dependencies, which again is appealing to lightweight or minimal systems;

* Mouse-wheel scrolling of the desktops, for quick access to multiple workspaces;

* A customisable right-click menu and customisable keybindings written as XML files;

* Piped menus, where the output of one menu script is piped back into the Openbox menu and used in another (imagine the possibilities!);

* Plenty of themes, which are all customizable through text files;

* Multi-head Xinerama support for dual monitor output;

* And above all, SPEED. 
To understand what Openbox actually is, it’s important to know the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment.
A window manager is the program which draws on your screen the “box” in which the program is run. A window manager controls how your program window works, looks and acts. It decides what window decorations to use and gives you a way to move the windows, hide them, resize them, minimize them and close them. It controls what buttons you push to do those things, and what keys you press to make those things happen.
On the other hand, a desktop environment minds the entire desktop. It provides a taskbar, a system tray, a login manager, additional menus or perhaps screensavers and desktop icons. It might include a file manager, a text editor or some other accessory programs, too.
Openbox is a window manager, not a desktop environment. Openbox is only responsible for maintaining the windows you open on your screen — nothing else. That means installing Openbox won’t give you easy menu access to wallpaper options, a taskbar or system panel, or most of those other doo-dads. It does, however, give you a framework to build incorporate other programs that do those things — and usually with a greater degree of freedom over the style and interface.
Openbox can be used alone, without a desktop environment, or it can be used to replace the window manager in a complete desktop environment. Either way is acceptable.










In brief, Metacity, while a fair default, is not the only window manager you can use with GNOME. Openbox is a lightweight, customizable window manager that works either by itself or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity. Its advantages include the ability to switch desktops with the mouse wheel, a built-in, customizable menu that allows stand-alone operation with some GNOME components in order to build a GNOME-like system on low-end gear, and (this is subjective) better looking, cleaner themes that don't depend on resource-intensive pixmaps.









Read this post for Getting started with Openbox as Window Manager.


Related posts:Window Manager: Getting started with Openbox



Related posts:Window Manager: Getting started with Openbox



How to Capture Screenshot with Dropdown Menu in Place on Linux
Rakesh — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:25:43 +0000
As we know, the Screenshot is cool feature, but it is irritating if you can’t figure out how to make it capture an image of the desktop with a dropdown menu in place on Linux. 
Background




In Linux computer (GNOME or KDE users), when you try to capture screenshot with dropdown menu, what happens is the Screenshot app closes the dropdown menu before it takes the snapshot.




If you are looking for tips on how to capture screenshot with dropdown menu in place on Linux, follow this steps:
You can do this with an application called scrot. Install with synaptic or with 
Code:




debian:~# apt-get install scrot




(Note that you must log in as root)
you use it from the terminal like this
Code:




debian:~# scrot -cd 10 ~/Desktop/screenshot.png




If you’re in KDE, KSnapshot has this functionality built-in (and it’s point-and-click).
or you could use the GIMP screenshot & minimize the GIMP in the time-delay, before you drop that menu down….
This is an example screenshot (or screen capture) taken from command-line showing GNOME desktop with a dropdown menu:



Note that the apt-get (get application) tool is used to install applications in all Debian based Linux distributions such Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc (including Debian) but Fedora uses yum.
For Fedora users, install with synaptic or with
Code:




fedora:~# yum install scrot




It’s done the screenshot of a dropdown menu in place!!!   
Enjoy!

As we know, the Screenshot is cool feature, but it is irritating if you can’t figure out how to make it capture an image of the desktop with a dropdown menu in place on Linux. 
Background




In Linux computer (GNOME or KDE users), when you try to capture screenshot with dropdown menu, what happens is the Screenshot app closes the dropdown menu before it takes the snapshot.




If you are looking for tips on how to capture screenshot with dropdown menu in place on Linux, follow this steps:
You can do this with an application called scrot. Install with synaptic or with 
Code:




debian:~# apt-get install scrot




(Note that you must log in as root)
you use it from the terminal like this
Code:




debian:~# scrot -cd 10 ~/Desktop/screenshot.png




If you’re in KDE, KSnapshot has this functionality built-in (and it’s point-and-click).
or you could use the GIMP screenshot & minimize the GIMP in the time-delay, before you drop that menu down….
This is an example screenshot (or screen capture) taken from command-line showing GNOME desktop with a dropdown menu:



Note that the apt-get (get application) tool is used to install applications in all Debian based Linux distributions such Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc (including Debian) but Fedora uses yum.
For Fedora users, install with synaptic or with
Code:




fedora:~# yum install scrot




It’s done the screenshot of a dropdown menu in place!!!   
Enjoy!



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Digg Search Plug-in :: Firefox Add-on for Searching Digg.com
Rakesh — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:01:52 +0000
I’ve created a Firefox search add-on (using OpenSearch format) for searching digg.com. You can get it from here 
About what Digg search plugin does
The Digg Search Extension for Firefox allows you to search on the Digg (http://www.digg.com) while you use Firefox. 
The Digg Search Extension for Firefox allows to search on the Digg (http://www.digg.com) while you use Firefox. Digg search results from the Digg search engine based on people’s opinions, reviews and voting. Find the most relevant news, video, images, pictures, and answers from all across the web.
Installing from the Firefox Add-ons website
For a categorized directory of extensions that you can browse, visit the Firefox Add-ons website. When you find an extension you want to add:
   1. Click the Add to Firefox button. The Software Installation window will appear.

   2. When the Install Now button becomes available, click on it.

   3. After the extension downloads, click Restart Firefox to finish the installation. Firefox will restart and your new extension will be available. 
After installing, choose Digg search from the search box’s drop-down menu and just enter a search term (e.g. digg search). 
Enjoy Digg search !
Please feel free to review this add-on at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/75926
I’ve created a Firefox search add-on (using OpenSearch format) for searching digg.com. You can get it from here 
About what Digg search plugin does
The Digg Search Extension for Firefox allows you to search on the Digg (http://www.digg.com) while you use Firefox. 
The Digg Search Extension for Firefox allows to search on the Digg (http://www.digg.com) while you use Firefox. Digg search results from the Digg search engine based on people’s opinions, reviews and voting. Find the most relevant news, video, images, pictures, and answers from all across the web.
Installing from the Firefox Add-ons website
For a categorized directory of extensions that you can browse, visit the Firefox Add-ons website. When you find an extension you want to add:
   1. Click the Add to Firefox button. The Software Installation window will appear.

   2. When the Install Now button becomes available, click on it.

   3. After the extension downloads, click Restart Firefox to finish the installation. Firefox will restart and your new extension will be available. 
After installing, choose Digg search from the search box’s drop-down menu and just enter a search term (e.g. digg search). 
Enjoy Digg search !
Please feel free to review this add-on at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/75926


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