Install Bluefish 2.0.1

Here's the quick guide to installing Bluefish Editor 2.0.1.

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall libart-2.0-dev libaspell-dev libbonobo2-dev libbonoboui2-dev libgail-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libgnome2-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev libgnomeui-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpopt-dev libgvfscommon-dev libgucharmap2-dev libenchant-dev intltool

$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/src
$ sudo chown $USER /usr/local/src
$ sudo chmod u+rwx /usr/local/src
$ cd /usr/local/src
$ wget http://bluefish.mrball.net/stable/source/bluefish-2.0.1.tar.bz2
$ tar xjvf bluefish-2.0.1.tar.bz2
$ cd bluefish-2.0.1
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall --pakdir "/usr/local/bin" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default --pkgversion "2.0.1"
$ make distclean

GPG (or PGP) Encryption

I did a lot of searching and experimenting before I learned this one (thanks to rww on IRC). I used to use PGP in Windows for email and file encryption. Ubuntu is open-source and so is GPG (GnuPG), so I thought Ubuntu would have great support for GPG. Well, it appeared to at first. It comes with a password management application called Seahorse, which has some things in it about GPG keys. However, I could never get it to work with my old PGP keys, and I couldn't figure out how to encrypt and decrypt files from the GUI. I really wanted the ability to easily encrypt or decrypt the clipboard, but I finally decided that was just asking too much.

It turns out there is a package called seahorse-plugins that for some reason is not installed by default but is required for all this GPG stuff to work. I think it used to be called gedit-plugins several distributions ago, but that package no longer exists.

So, install it with:

sudo aptitude install seahorse-plugins

Then, to add the clipboard capabilities, right click on a panel, choose "Add to Panel," and choose "Clipboard Text Encryption" applet.

United States English as Default Language

I chose English as my default language when installing Ubuntu, but still in some applications, especially in Firefox, the spell-checking would use Great Britain English (insisting that there is a "u" in "color" "favorite" and "behavior"). To change it to US English, simply navigate to a page in Firefox that has a text box (i.e. a web form to send an email or something), right click, choose Languages, and choose "English / United States."

Cleanup Filenames With Detox

An easy way to cleanup filenames is a handy little utility called detox. It's so easy to use. After installation, from a command line, simply type:

detox /path/to/files/*.mp3

to cleanup filenames of all MP3 files in the given directory, for example. It removes spaces and replaces special characters with plain ones (i.e. replaces u with accent with plain "u"). It has options, but if you just want the basics all you have to do is something like the above.

FreeNAS FTP

If you have trouble with FTP working (I did with version .7), it may be have something to do with having DHCP set instead of a static IP. Try either changing DHCP to static or going into Network/Hosts and adding a host. Enter the name of the freenas server (in my case "freenas") and the IP that belongs to it. Now try to FTP.

K3B To The Rescue

It turns out K3B is a great piece of software for writing optical discs. Brasero and others work for basic stuff, but K3B has saved the day when I could find no other native Linux software to do what needed to be done... namely write a traditional audio CD from a CUE sheet file and one large MP3. This requires the MP3 to be decoded and converted back into WAV format, then the CUE sheet must be used to parse the audio into various tracks of certain length for the audio CD. All other software I tried choked, even command line stuff. K3B JUST WORKED! I didn't want to have to run KDE / QT -based software on my Gnome / GTK -based Ubuntu system because of the extra libraries and resource cost, but considering the time and trouble involved in trying to accomplish something that just won't happen, it's worth it... at least for now. I'll still keep my eyes out for a Gnome / GTK -based application that can use CUE sheets and MP3 files, even though I rarely need to do that.

Fixing GPG Errors That Show Up After Aptitude Update

When you get GPG errors after doing a sudo aptitude update here is the fix:

W: GPG error: http://archive.canonical.com jaunty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 40976EAF437D05B5
W: GPG error: http://download.virtualbox.org jaunty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY DCF9F87B6DFBCBAE
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-da...jaunty/Release

W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

The fix for this is to re-download the keys using the hexidecimal numbers given in the error (I bolded them above).

NOTE: Your hexadecimal numbers may be different then mine, so make sure to use the hexadecimals numbers in your error, not mine.

Type this command into the terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys #don't actually run this line yet

And then add the hexadecimal numbers to the command (again, these are my keys from my error. Make sure to use your own):

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 40976EAF437D05B5 DCF9F87B6DFBCBAE 2EBC26B60C5A2783 A8A515F046D7E7CF 6E871C4A881574DE 28A8205077558DD0 D739676F7613768D 8C851674F96FD737 C0B56813051D8B58 4874D3686E80C6B7 60D11217247D1CFF 5A9A06AEF9CB8DB0 6D975C4791E7EE5E 5A9BF3BB4E5E17B5 7FB8BEE0A1F196A8

Network Security Software

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a helpful ip scanner and network security utility. It uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. Once installed, simply use:

sudo nmap 192.168.1.*

for example to release its hounds to search out interesting IPs on that subnet. There are many other ways to use it, but this is a basic start. For full documentation type man nmap or search for nmap documentation on the web.