System Notes Org

At SystemNotes, we love free software. Especially when it is Open Source (source code is readable and may be freely modified by the end users), and available on different platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows, iPad, Android, etc.). When preparing tax returns, many people turn to paid software, or tax professionals. There's nothing wrong with paying for a useful service or software, but linux geeks often turn to shell scripts, or whatever open source software they can find before shelling out any cash -- no pun intended. Here are some useful tools for preparing the US 1040 tax return and most common schedules: Open Tax Solver If your needs are simple, Open tax solver is quick and easy. There are even options for some state taxes. Open Tax Solver http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net There is a simple interface that takes inputs, and when finished, just click "Compute Tax." for the results. Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Income Tax Calculator If you prefer to ha...

Hard drive data recovery is one of the most difficult tasks a sysadmin can attempt to perform, so it should be considered a last resort that, after many frustrating hours, may not even work at all. Data Recovery or Disaster Recovery can be thought of in several categories, and it is important to have a plan in place, and know the options before resorting to one of your local hard disk data recovery services. Many people fail to consider the value of their data until it is too late. This article discusses general principles, with some specific examples from experience with Novel, Microsoft, and Linux operating systems. Detailed tool discussions will be reserved for separate posts. Here is a short list of categories, roughly in order of increasing level of difficulty to recover. Backups and off-site storage RAID Documents File Systems Data Recovery from Hard Drives There is software available that can recover from several types of failures, but it does not always work when ther...

I wrote some shell scripts to generate Nagios configuration files, and I finally decided to publish them on Freshmeat . The initial version is crude, and has some hard-coded information, but it is still better than trying to edit the .cfg files by hand. Here is a brief description nagios-config-build is a group of shell scripts that generate Nagios configuration files from a list of hostnames. It automatically resolves IP addresses from DNS, and provides a quick way to manage a large number of hosts without having to set up a complicated system. Nagios is more than just a server monitoring tool. From the Nagios website: " Nagios is a powerful monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes." Systemnotes.org download: http://www.systemnotes.org/download/shell/nagios-config-build.html Freshmeat project: http://freshmeat.net/projects/nagios-config-build Please feel free to use thi...

We can't have all work and no play, so a cartoon every once in a while doesn't hurt. While you're having fun, check out http://www.lifeisnojoke.com . Here are some articles on where to find free software: opensource-software-for-windows searching-for-software Now, some people may not understand that by free, we mean free. Not pirated, illegally copied, or borrowed. Open source software is free to use, copy, modify and distribute. A small to medium-sized company may have 100 computers, and have to pay $200 for some kind of office software for each machine for a total of $20,000. But if the company chooses to use free software such as openoffice , the price would be $0.00 x 100 = $0.00.

Did you ever look for a binary, and as a last resort download the source to compile yourself?   Of course you were disappointed that the program would not be part of your package management system. Usually you have to run something like this:   ./configure   make   make install An easy way to create an .rpm or .deb file from source is to run checkinstall instead of "make install" during the standard install from source. http://freshmeat.net/projects/checkinstall -- CheckInstall Freshmeat Page http://checkinstall.izto.org -- CheckInstall Home Page CheckInstall keeps track of all files installed by a "make install" or equivalent, creates a Slackware, RPM, or Debian package with those files, and adds it to the installed packages database, allowing for easy package removal or distribution.

This is a very simple topic, but sometimes little tips can save you a lot of time. Windows & Linux First select the text, or item, or location to paste to: Copy = Ctrl-c, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Copy" Cut = Ctrl-x, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Cut" Paste = Ctrl-v, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Paste" You can copy and paste text, graphics, files, etc. In Windows, you can copy and paste files within Windows Explorer, or you can drag and drop them. Linux All of the above, plus: Copy = Select text with the mouse Paste = Click the middle mouse button vi If you want to copy and paste in vi, that's another topic. To copy a line in vi, type yy (yank line), and then p (paste after), or P (paste before). To copy a word, use yw (yank word). To copy five lines -- 5 yy, or five words -- 5 yw, or to paste something five times 5p. Here are some good tips on vi http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=312 . By t...

Linux users are familiar with OpenSource, and the Free Software Foundation , but many Windows users still have no idea how much free software is available. Sure freshmeat.net is always a good resource for sysadmins and power users, but beginners just want to know how to use their computer, and have no idea what software to use. There are a few nice lists of software when searching Google for "open source software windows": http://www.opensourcewindows.org Top 10 open source Windows apps" http://osswin.sourceforge.net http://www.opensourcelist.org/oss/suggestedapplications.html http://www.myopensource.org And there are free CD's available for download from http://www.theopencd.org and http://www.winlibre.com/en/Articles/Download/index_download.php If you really want more, after searching freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net, check out the directory of software http://directory.fsf.org , which has over 5,000 entries so far. They are not listed by OS, but there are plen...

An easy way to find free Open Source software is check out http://freshmeat.net Another place to look is http://sourceforge.net