Linux Support
To Do List After installing Crunchbang Stable Debian
Linux OS
Debian Linux Openbox Window Manager Tutorial updated on Fri. Jan. 2nd., 2015.
CrunchBang is a Debian GNU/Linux based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window
manager, it is highly customizable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance.
The primary aim of the CrunchBang project is to produce a stable distribution offering the best possible out-of-the-box Openbox experience. To achieve this goal, CrunchBang pulls many base packages directly from Debian’s repositories, which are well-known for providing stable and se-cure software. Packages from CrunchBang’s own repositories are then customized and pinned to the system to produce what is known as the CrunchBang distro. You can install other desktop environments if you don’t wish to use Openbox, i.e. Gnome, KDE, etc. And because it is Linux OS you won’t have to worry about spyware or viruses.
Netflix now works out of the box via the latest Google Chrome stable and Steam is available for gaming enthusiasts.
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Download Crunchbang Eleven “Waldorf” Debian Wheezy OS: http://crunchbang.org/download/
Special Note: For faster downloading I recommend torrent sharing to download Crunchbang.
How-to prepare an ISO to USB:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/
and
http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/statler_usb_installation
If you are currently running Windows OS:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/crunchbang-linux-flash-drive-install-windows/
If you are currently running Linux OS:
Unetbootin works just fine for creating the Crunchbang USB flash drive if you prefer to use a GUI. You can install Unetbootin if you are already running Ubuntu or another Linux OS. In Ubuntu, simply use Startup Disc Creator to format your USB flash drive (thumb drive) first, and then run Unetbootin to migrate your downloaded Crunchbang image onto your USB flash drive device. You can also use Gparted to format your USB flash drive with FAT32. Do not use Ubuntu’s Startup Disc Creator application to migrate your downloaded Crunchbang image onto your USB flash drive device, otherwise it will not boot.
sudo apt-get install unetbootin
Okay, when you are you done creating your live USB flash drive with Unetbootin please make sure you either select Live or Install (not “De-fault”) during bootup of your live Crunchbang USB flash drive device.
Most users should be familiarized enough regarding how to boot from a USB port on their computers, but if not please review any of my other tutorials on my web site for specific instructions.
Special Note about partitioning: Crunchbang will not automatically resize your hard drive partitions during live installation. If you need to shrink a partition you can use the live Crunchbang session to work with Gparted. The swap creation is a pain if you are trying to configure a dual boot system during Crunchbang installation.
Always make sure you have a live stick of whatever your current operating system is so you can rollback to your old system just in case Crunch-bang doesn’t work out for you eventually. AND you will want to research a dual-boot system if you currently have Windows installed on your computer, otherwise I will not be responsible if you bork your bootloader and lose access to Windows OS if you don’t research a proper way to create a dual boot system. Naturally, it would be way too complicated for me to explain it within this simple guide on how to create a dual boot of Windows and Crunchbang, but you may want to try the Crunchbang forums if that is something you need.
I recommend just wiping the entire drive and just use Crunchbang whenever possible, to simplify the installation process for Crunchbang on your computer.
Special Notes: Alright the rest of my tutorial expects that you already have a good knowledge of Linux OS and know your way around the
com-mand line on Linux. If you have no experience with Linux I recommend you try Ubuntu or Linux Mint until you can get up-to-speed with Linux systems, and have more experience working with a terminal command line.
If you have a hard drive that you need to have magnetically shredded because you are giving your computer to someone else, Dban will over-write everything, even sectors marked as bad. Formatting a hard drive is not the same as shredding either. If you have an SSD drive that you need to have shredded, make sure to use the disc that came from the factory since SSD drives are usually encrypted. Here is where you can download Dban to burn onto a blank cd-r/dvd-r disc:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/ http://www.dban.org/
In terminal copy and paste:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/XdY
But first, before using that command, where XdY is the drive, (i.e. sda, sdb, or hda, hdb) you will need to figure out exactly what /dev/XdY is on your computer and then change the above command to suit your hardware.
Here is how you identify XdY above: sudo sfdisk -l
Special note: DD will zero-out your hard drive, it is irreversible, and may take over an hour to perform. When you hit enter after using the com-mand there will be no process indicator. You will just have to be patient when using DD. If you want something that has a process indicator or multiple sweeps then you should try using Dban instead. Parition Magic is no longer a free download, but is probably the best for this kind of task. Dban does the job though and is free to download.
If for some reason you need to repair your grub because your system won’t boot up after a fresh installation of #!:
Boot-Repair is a simple tool to repair frequent boot issues you may encounter in Ubuntu like when you can’t boot Ubuntu after installing
Win-dows or another Linux distribution, or when GRUB is not displayed anymore, or when some upgrades break GRUB, etc. Boot-Repair lets you fix these issues with a simple click, which (generally reinstall GRUB) and restores access to the operating systems you had installed before this prob-lem. You need to boot from your live stick of Ubuntu
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu precise main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/boot-repair.list'
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)
But hopefully you are are booted into your freshly installed system by now.
Part I
Crunchbang comes with it’s own nifty post-installation script to automatically update your entire system, also to add printer support, and plenty of other software you will probably need. Do use it.
After you have installed everything with that script and have restarted your computer, now you will probably want to add more repositories to your source.list to have access to more codecs and software for your system.
Edit the repositories, copy and paste in Terminal: sudo geany /etc/apt/sources.list
Here is a good cutting-edge source.list to update your system if you are located in the USA. This will add jessie (testing) repositories for the latest software available.
Special Notes: Okay, the code name for the next major Debian release after stable is jessie. This release started as a copy of wheezy stable, and is
currently in a state called testing. That means that things should not break as badly as in unstable or experimental distributions, because pack-ages are allowed to enter this distribution only after a certain period of time has passed, and when they don’t have any release-critical bugs filed against them. Please note that security updates for testing distribution are not yet managed by the security team. Hence, testing does not get se-curity updates in a timely manner. Please review The Debian Handbook for more information. You are encouraged to switch your sources.list entries from testing to stable for the time being if you need security support. To find out more about how the testing distribution works, check
the developers’ information about it. If you don’t wish to include Jessie, simple remove it from the source.list below. although I haven’t experi-enced any problems when using jessie yet:
# Crunchbang
deb http://packages.crunchbang.org/waldorf waldorf main deb-src http://packages.crunchbang.org/waldorf waldorf main # Debian Wheezy
deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy main contrib non-free # Debian Jessie
deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian jessie main contrib non-free # Debian Security
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free # Debian Backports
deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports main contrib non-free # Debian Multimedia
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org wheezy main non-free # Oracle Java
deb http://www.duinsoft.nl/pkg debs all
Requirment: To avoid problems with this new source.list we want to set the correct priorities for apt (read man apt_preferences for specific
de-tails) otherwise you are going to have some breakage probably IF you are using jessie (testing). If you are not using jessie, then you can skip this step.
Open /etc/apt/preferences:
sudo geany /etc/apt/preferences
And then simply copy and paste over everything with: Package: *
Pin: release a=waldorf Pin-Priority: 990 Package: *
Pin: release a=wheezy-backports Pin-Priority: 200
Package: *
Pin: release o=Unofficial Multimedia Packages Pin-Priority: 100
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 50
Once you copied and pasted that into your /etc/apt/preferences file and saved it, make sure to add the repo key for deb-multimedia in Terminal to avoid any errors.
Add your PGP key for your codec repo:
sudo apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Or if that doesn’t work you can try using this:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 1F41B907
And now make sure to add the repo key for the duinsoft:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-key --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com E18CE6625CB26B26
Special Note: If you are outside the USA you can build your local list of repositories here:
After your are done with the above steps please make sure to completely update your system at this point and install any updates that may be available before continuing with this guide. Be patient.
Once you are completely updated please restart (reboot) your system if you are done with the first portion of this guide before proceed-ing further.
Okay, now it is time to research your hardware. (Recommended)
it is always a good idea to begin some basic research on your hardware to see if anyone else has reported any problems with your make and model of computer while running Debian Linux OS.
In Terminal copy and paste:
sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
Open Ice Weasel. Copy and paste the above results into Google search engine, including the word ‘Crunchbang’ or ‘Debian Linux’ to begin a search for any other users who might be running Debian OS, who share with you the exact same hardware specifications, and importantly to see if anyone else has reported any problems trying to get Debian or Crunchbang OS running correctly on your identical hardware. Sometimes this can be a big time saver. Make bookmarks or printouts of any relevant information that you might need later on.
smxi is an interactive script designed to help people maintain their systems. It supports Debian and true Debian-based distros (such as, but not
limited to, AntiX, Aptosid, Epidemic, Linux Mint Debian [LMDE], Mepis). It does not support Ubuntu-based distros because there are too many differences between Debian and Ubuntu.
FYI: This is the best way to install your video drivers, which would be a good idea at this stage in the tutorial. smxi is a feature rich, powerful script, and has the following primary features and options:
System Upgrades (dist-upgrade / upgrade) Kernel upgrades / kernel module upgrades
Automated video card driver installation (plus any needed patches), especially non-free drivers like nVidia and AMD/ATI fglrx Installing extra software (including building a desktop/server from scratch, starting with just the base Debian system)
Removing certain software
Cleaning up your system (cleaning up apt archives, removing kernels/ kernel modules, cleaning system cruft, etc) Tweaking your system, Mozilla configurations, installing some small graphics tweaks, etc.
Instructions: Run smxi in terminal to shutdown your desktop. When you arrive at the terminal command line (CLI) you need to login with your
username and password. Then you need find your script by changing to your smxi script directory using cd /usr/local/bin command, then you need to sudo su – before running smxi and simply follow the prompts afterwards.
sudo reboot will restart your system when you are completely done running the script (or the script may give you the option to start your X
desktop and take you (hopefully?) back into your updated Crunchbang desktop system. Reboot your system for all changes to take effect when you are done using this script. You can use smxi as often as you want, but remember you will not have X Desktop running or your desktop
environment available while executing smxi from the command line. And don’t forget to make a donation on their web site if you used their very helpful scripts.
For more info about smxi: http://smxi.org/site/about.htm
For more advice on using smxi with #! or if you have any questions: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=22740
Here is how to quickly install smxi in Terminal (write it down or print out this part of the guide because you will need it):
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget -Nc smxi.org/smxi.zip sudo unzip smxi.zip
sudo su - smxi
Hopefully you installed your graphics driver with sxmi by now. I wanted to change my display to fit my wide flat screen monitor so I added these lines to my autostart configuration file (Settings >> Openbox >> Edit autostart) and then restarted my computer:
## Display
xrandr -s 1280x720 & xrandr --dpi 96 &
Conky that comes with #! is very basic and kinda boring. Here is my conky script (simply copy and paste over the old one), and to open the con-figuration file click on Settings >> Conky >> edit conkyrc. There are plenty of other examples you can test out over at the Crunchbang forums if you do a search for the keywords ‘conky’ and ‘Crunchbang’. (lastly make sure to always restart openbox to enable any changes)
# conky configuration #
# The list of variables has been removed from this file in favour # of keeping the documentation more maintainable.
# Check http://conky.sf.net for an up-to-date-list. #
# For ideas about how to modify conky, please see:
# http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/59/my-conky-config/ #
# For help with conky, please see:
# http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/2047/conky-help/ # # Enjoy! ############################################## # Settings ############################################## background yes use_xft yes xftfont HandelGotD:size=8 xftalpha 0.5 update_interval 4.0 total_run_times 0 own_window yes
own_window_type normal own_window_transparent yes own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager double_buffer yes minimum_size 200 5 maximum_width 220 draw_shades no draw_outline no draw_borders no draw_graph_borders yes default_color grey default_shade_color red default_outline_color green alignment top_right gap_x 5 gap_y 5 no_buffers yes uppercase no cpu_avg_samples 2 override_utf8_locale no TEXT
CPU $alignr ${cpu cpu0}% ${cpugraph cpu0}
MEM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc% $membar
swap $alignc $swap / $swapmax $alignr $swapperc% ${swapbar}
/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /}% ${fs_bar /}
global $alignc ${fs_used /home/karlos/global} / ${fs_size /home/karlos/global} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /home/karlos/global}% ${fs_bar /home/karlos/global}
$processes processes ($running_processes running) NAME $alignr PIDCPU
${top name 1} $alignr ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top name 2} $alignr ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2}
${top name 3} $alignr ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top name 4} $alignr ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4} ${top name 5} $alignr ${top pid 5} ${top cpu 5} ${top name 6} $alignr ${top pid 6} ${top cpu 6} ${top name 7} $alignr ${top pid 7} ${top cpu 7} ${top name 8} $alignr ${top pid 8} ${top cpu 8} ${top name 9} $alignr ${top pid 8} ${top cpu 9} Inbound $alignr ${downspeed eth0} kb/s
${downspeedgraph eth0}
Outbound $alignr ${upspeed eth0} kb/s ${upspeedgraph eth0}
Alt+F2$alignr Run Dialog Alt+F3$alignr Alt Menu Super+space$alignr Main Menu Super+t$alignr Terminal Super+f$alignr File Manager Super+e$alignr Editor Super+m$alignr Media Player Super+w$alignr Web Browser Super+g$alignr Graphics Editor Super+l$alignr Lock Screen Super+v$alignr Volume Control Super+x$alignr Logout
I wanted to make my screen layout look more like the screenshot above, and this is how I changed my tint2 configuration file. Click on Settings >> tint2 >> Edit config file and save when done (lastly make sure to always restart openbox to enable any changes):
#---# TINT2 CONFIG FILE
#---# For more information about tint2, see: # http://code.google.com/p/tint2/wiki/Welcome #
# For more config file examples, see:
# http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/3232/my-tint2-config/ # Background definitions # ID 1 rounded = 0 border_width = 0 background_color = #000000 40 border_color = #828282 0 # ID 2 - task active rounded = 1 border_width = 0 background_color = #d8d8d8 30 border_color = #d8d8d8 30 # ID 3 - task rounded = 1 border_width = 0
background_color = #000000 0 border_color = #000000 0 # ID 4 rounded = 1 border_width = 1 background_color = #888888 20 border_color = #ED2323 60 # ID 5 - taskbar rounded = 0 border_width = 1 background_color = #000000 0 border_color = #000000 0 # ID 6 - active taskbar rounded = 0 border_width = 1 background_color = #d8d8d8 8 border_color = #d8d8d8 0 # ID 7 - tooltip rounded = 3 border_width = 0 background_color = #222222 90 border_color = #222222 90 # ID 8 rounded = 1 border_width = 1 background_color = #888888 20 border_color = #888888 20 # Panel panel_monitor = all
panel_position = bottom center horizontal panel_items = TSC panel_size = 100% 30 panel_margin = 0 -1 panel_padding = 0 0 panel_dock = 0 wm_menu = 1
panel_layer = bottom panel_background_id = 1 # Panel Autohide autohide = 0 autohide_show_timeout = 0.3 autohide_hide_timeout = 1.5 autohide_height = 6 strut_policy = follow_size # Taskbar taskbar_mode = multi_desktop taskbar_padding = 6 0 6 taskbar_background_id = 5 taskbar_active_background_id = 6 taskbar_name = 1 taskbar_name_background_id = 0 taskbar_name_active_background_id = 0 taskbar_name_font = Liberation Sans 9 taskbar_name_font_color = #828282 100 taskbar_name_active_font_color = #828282 100 # Tasks urgent_nb_of_blink = 20 task_icon = 1 task_text = 0 task_centered = 1 task_maximum_size = 40 40 task_padding = 2 2 task_background_id = 3 task_active_background_id = 2 task_urgent_background_id = 4 task_iconified_background_id = 3 # Task Icons task_icon_asb = 80 0 0 task_active_icon_asb = 100 0 0 task_urgent_icon_asb = 100 0 0 task_iconified_icon_asb = 80 0 0 # Fonts
task_font_color = #828282 60 task_active_font_color = #828282 100 task_urgent_font_color = #FFFFFF 100 task_iconified_font_color = #d8d8d8 60 font_shadow = 0 # Launcher launcher_padding = 8 4 4 launcher_background_id = 0 launcher_icon_size = 24
# Specify icon theme names with launcher_icon_theme.
# if you have an XSETTINGS manager running (like xfsettingsd), tint2 will follow your current theme. launcher_icon_theme = gnome-colors-statler
# Each launcher_item_app must be a full path to a .desktop file launcher_item_app = /usr/share/applications/terminator.desktop launcher_item_app = /usr/share/applications/xfce4-file-manager.desktop launcher_item_app = /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop launcher_item_app = /usr/share/applications/iceweasel.desktop # System Tray systray = 1 systray_padding = 4 2 3 systray_sort = right2left systray_background_id = 0 systray_icon_size = 24 systray_icon_asb = 100 0 0 # Clock time1_format = %I:%M %p / %a %b %d #time1_font = Museo 8 time1_font = AvantGardeLTMedium 8 #time2_format = %A %d %B #time2_font = Monospace 6 clock_font_color = #b5b5b5 100 clock_padding = 4 0 clock_background_id = 0 clock_lclick_command = gsimplecal clock_rclick_command = gsimplecal # Tooltips tooltip = 1 tooltip_padding = 2 2
tooltip_show_timeout = 0.0 tooltip_hide_timeout = 0.0 tooltip_background_id = 7 tooltip_font_color = #d8d8d8 100
tooltip_font = Liberation Sans normal 9.0 # Mouse mouse_middle = none mouse_right = toggle mouse_scroll_up = toggle mouse_scroll_down = iconify # Battery battery = 1 battery_low_status = 20
battery_low_cmd = notify-send "battery low" battery_hide = 96
bat1_font = Liberation Mono 8 bat2_font = Liberation Mono 8 battery_font_color = #b5b5b5 100 battery_padding = 2 0
battery_background_id = 0 # End of config
Here is my autostart script for reference (Settings >> Openbox >> Edit autostart): ## Openbox autostart.sh
## ====================
## When you login to your CrunchBang Openbox session, this autostart script ## will be executed to set-up your environment and launch any applications ## you want to run at startup.
##
## Note*: some programs, such as 'nm-applet' are run via XDG autostart. ## Run '/usr/lib/openbox/openbox-xdg-autostart --list' to list any ## XDG autostarted programs.
##
## More information about this can be found at: ## http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Autostart
##
## If you do something cool with your autostart script and you think others ## could benefit from your hack, please consider sharing it at:
## http://crunchbang.org/forums/ ##
## Have fun & happy CrunchBangin'! :) ## GNOME PolicyKit and Keyring
eval $(gnome-keyring-daemon -s --components=pkcs11,secrets,ssh,gpg) & ## Set root window colour
hsetroot -solid "#2E3436" & ## Display
xrandr -s 1280x720 & xrandr --dpi 96 & ## Group start:
## 1. nitrogen - restores wallpaper ## 2. compositor - start
## 3. sleep - give compositor time to start ## 4. tint2 panel
(\
nitrogen --restore && \ cb-compositor --start && \ sleep 2s && \
tint2 \ ) &
## Volume control for systray (sleep 2s && pnmixer) & ## Volume keys daemon xfce4-volumed &
## Enable power management xfce4-power-manager & ## Start Thunar Daemon thunar --daemon &
## Detect and configure touchpad. See 'man synclient' for more info. if egrep -iq 'touchpad' /proc/bus/input/devices; then
synclient VertEdgeScroll=1 & synclient TapButton1=1 & fi
## Start xscreensaver xscreensaver -no-splash & ## Start Clipboard manager (sleep 3s && clipit) &
## Set keyboard settings - 250 ms delay and 25 cps (characters per second) repeat rate. ## Adjust the values according to your preferances.
xset r rate 250 25 & ## Turn on/off system beep xset b off &
## The following command runs hacks and fixes for #! LiveCD sessions. ## Safe to delete after installation.
cb-cowpowers &
## cb-welcome - post-installation script, will not run in a live session and ## only runs once. Safe to remove.
(sleep 10s && cb-welcome --firstrun) &
## cb-fortune - have Waldorf say a little adage #(sleep 120s && cb-fortune) &
## Run the conky conky -q &
Here is where we double-check to make sure you are using the latest default web browser and flash plugin. To upgrade Iceweasel to the latest version, and replace the outdated default flash plugin with a self-updating one, copy and paste the following in terminal:
sudo aptitude install -t wheezy iceweasel sudo aptitude purge flashplugin-nonfree sudo aptitude install flashplayer-mozilla
Okay, here is how you can switch out Iceweasel for unbranded Firefox, of course this is very optional, and I recommend you try living with IceWeasel (it should do the job) for a while to see if it can suit all your needs (not very recommended):
sudo apt-get remove iceweasel
sudo echo -e "\ndeb http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt all main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C1289A29 sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-mozilla-build
Okay aftewards you need to change your desktop openbox menu entry for your browser by editing your menu.xml file (Settings >> Openbox >> Edit menu.xml) and change it to something like this (do not just cut and paste this over everything, and only change the wording to firefox and do not change your own existing indentation to demarcate programming structure) located at:
/home/YOURUSERNAME/.config/openbox/menu.xml
<item label="Web Browser"> <action name="Execute"> <command>firefox</command> </action>
</item>
edit keyboard shortcut located (optional): /home/YOURUSERNAME/.config/openbox/rc.xml
And make it look like this: <keybind key="W-w"> <action name="Execute"> <startupnotify> <enabled>true</enabled> <name>Web Browser</name> </startupnotify> <command>firefox</command> </action> </keybind>
And save and close it.
Reboot your system to enable any changes.
Here are some highly recommended and thoroughly tested add-ons for Iceweasel and Firefox: Adblock Plus (plugin) (Highly Recommended)
Adblock Plus (ABP) is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox (including Firefox for mobile) and Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Very popular,
and almost what I would consider to be a necessity, if you surf the Internet on a daily basis. Works great with sites like youtube.com and other similar web sites that bombard you with constant commercials. It will also allow you to import preconfigured blocklists to stop tracker web sites from monitoring your browser presence.
Password Exporter (plugin)
This extension allows you to export your saved passwords and disabled login hosts using XML or CSV files that can be imported later. Very help-ful when needing to re-install Linux Mint onto a new system or migrating your data and personal information. This works on any OS with Fire-fox browser and you can migrate passwords from other browsers with FireFire-fox preferences.
NetVideoHunter (plugin)
NetVideoHunter is a Firefox add-on (extension), and you can easily download videos and audio from almost all audio and video streaming web pages with two clicks. Tested and considered to be probably the best plugin out of all the other similar plugins available for this kind of task. HTTPS Everywhere (plugin) (Recommended)
HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.
Tor Browser Bundle
The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked. The simplified explanation is that you can think of Tor like using three VPNs in a row. The goal is to hide your IP address, giving you complete anonymity online. Tor routes Internet traffic through three relays: an en-try node, a middle node, and an exit. Each relay has it’s own layer of encryption and the exit node is the one that contacts the web server, fetches the web page, and gives it back to you yet doesn’t know your actual IP address.
This page explains things pretty well:
Alternatively, you can use this PPA to install Tor Browser Bundle:
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/12/tor-browser-bundle-ubuntu-ppa.html
NoScript (plugin) (Recommended, but can be very intrusive at times)
NoScript (plugin) is a free and open-source extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, and other Mozilla-based web browsers, created and ac-tively maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group. NoScript allows executable web content such as JavaScript, Java, Flash, Silverlight, and other plugins only if the site hosting it is considered trusted by its user and has been pre-viously added to a whitelist. NoScript also offers specific countermeasures against security exploits. There have been reports of Java viruses/mal-ware infecting Mac systems (Unices-based systems), so NoScript will stop that kind of problem before it becomes a serious issue on your Linux Mint OS.
YesScript (plugin)
A very simple JavaScript blacklist. Lately, I’ve noticed scripts not responsing on certain web sites (like abs.twimg.com and others) when brows-ing on twitter. If you recieve an error that says a script isn’t respondbrows-ing (would you like to continue etc etc), causbrows-ing your browser to hang/crash your browser -and- you don’t want to use the above NoScript plugin because it can be too intrusive most of the time, simply cut and paste the of-fending web site address into YesScript Firefox plug-in, and you can surf without further problems of this kind.
Dictionaries & Language Packs (plugin) (Required)
Spell-checking plugin for Mozilla Firefox browser.
Additional Miscellaneous Add-ons for Iceweasel and Firefox:
BCExplorer for Firefox – BrightCloud category and reputation info as you browse!
Beef Taco – Sets permanent opt-out cookies to stop behavioral advertising by 102 different advertising networks (recommended)
BetterPrivacy – BetterPrivacy is a safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSO’s on Google, YouTube, Ebay… (recommended)
BitDefender TrafficLight for Firefox – Adds a strong and non-intrusive layer of security to your browsing experience
BrowserProtect – Protect your browser configuration against homepage and search hijacks
CS Lite – This extension will allow you to easily control cookie permissions.
Ghostery – Protect your privacy. See who’s tracking your web browsing and block them with Ghostery.
GoogleSharing – GoogleSharing ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, move-ments, and what websites you visit.
HTTPS Finder – HTTPS Finder automatically detects and alerts when SSL is available on a web page. It also provides one-click rule creation for HTTPS Everywhere. Other features include an ignore-domain list, and “auto-forward” to HTTPS.
Keylogger Beater – Use it to keep your username or password from being stolen by a keylogger.
LinkExtend – Provides meta-site-ratings for computer safety, child safety, company ethics, and popularity.
Master Password+ – Various enhancements for “master password”
Netcraft Toolbar – Blocks phishing sites, helping to protect users from online fraud…
anonymoX – Firefox add-on to achieve anonymity in surfing, using web-based proxy
PrivacySuite – One place to protect your privacy when you go online.
RefControl – Control what gets sent as the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis.
RequestPolicy – Be in control of which cross-site requests are allowed.
ShowIP – Show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom information services by IP (right click) and hostname (left click), like whois, netcraft, etc. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard.
Certificate Patrol – Verifies SSL certificates
TrackMeNot – Protects users against search data profiling…
Priv3 – Practical Third-Party Privacy for the Social Web
WOT – The WOT add-on is a safe surfing tool for your browser.
For Human Eyes Only – converts messages into images
Change IP Address – How to quickly change your IP address with a new router MAC address (recommended) For more privacy you can find more information here:
Here is the updated openjdk that should work for most users (very optional): sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk openjdk-7-jre icedtea-7-plugin
And then run:
sudo update-alternatives --config java
And then select /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk from the selection list and press enter.
Add this PPA to install Oracle Java 8 (the package provides both JDK8 and JRE8) using the following commands (very optional): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-8-oracle
For more information:
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/09/install-oracle-java-8-in-ubuntu-via-ppa.html
http://javatester.org/version.html
https://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp
If you are still having problems trying to install Java and getting Java to work correctly on your system, please visit the following web site for further support:
http://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/java
How to configure Autologin with SliMconf:
sudo apt-get install slimconf gksudo slimconf
How to change the clock from military time to 12-hour AM/PM w/date in Tint2 config:
Openbox > Preferences > tint2 Panel Config > Edit config file, look for # Clock and change everything for #Clock to look like this and save it: # Clock time1_format = %I:%M %p / %a %b %d #time1_font = Museo 8 time1_font = AvantGardeLTMedium 8 #time2_format = %A %d %B #time2_font = Monospace 6 clock_font_color = #b5b5b5 100 clock_padding = 4 0 clock_background_id = 0 clock_lclick_command = gsimplecal clock_rclick_command = gsimplecal
If you would like to know what other time variables are available:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … es-to-faq/
BitDefender (very very very optional) is an anti-virus software suite developed by Romania-based software company Softwin. It was launched
in November 2001, and is currently in its thirteenth version. The 2011 version was launched in August 2010, and it includes several protection and performance enhancements as Search Advisor and Performance Optimizer. The thing I love about BitDefender is that it will run in the taskbar after start-up and has a resident shield that is always monitoring your system for any potential threats, not that viruses normally target Linux operating systems however. And the GUI doesn’t work in Crunchabng, but you can still use the command line to run a system scan with Bitdefender.
If you are running a file server like Owncloud and/or you are connected to other window systems across your local network, it might be a good idea to periodically scan your file server shared folder with this application periodically for viruses.
First you need to get a free scanner key here via email. It should be good for one year.
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/deb/ bitdefender non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bitdefender.list' wget http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/deb/bd.key.asc
sudo apt-key add bd.key.asc sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bitdefender-scanner-gui bitdefender-common
Once completely installed then you will need to reboot your system. And you will need to enter in the free scanner key you received via email by running Bitdefender.
Don’t forget to bookmark this page!
When you are ready to reboot just copy and paste: sudo reboot
Special Note: Troubleshooting BitDefender Scanner Engine Crashing
Some users are reporting that BitDefender GUI crashes right after the scanning engine is initialized (and for some reason the engines don’t ini-tialize on Crunchbang when you run the GUI either). In order to fix some of these errors you will need to copy and paste this into terminal:
sudo touch /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so.linux-x86_64
sudo ln -fs /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so.linux-x86_64 /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so sudo bdscan --update
sudo bdgui
Then enter in your key that you received in your email message from Bitdefender. Don’t use the GUI to do a scan because it won’t work from the gui because the engines won’t load when using the GUI. They only work when using the command line. I have no idea how to fix Bitdefender to make the engines load properly for your GUI to run without a seg fault.
Okay, here is how you can only use the bdscan command from the command line to use Bitdefender on Crunchbang for now. Use bdscan –help for more information on how to use bdscan from the command line instead of using the GUI.
Here is a good example of how to use bdscan from the CL. Example: sudo bdscan [OPTION] [PATH]
Here are a few commands to get your started with bdscan from the command line: sudo bdscan --info
sudo bdscan --help sudo bdscan ~/.
A scan won’t remove a file and you will need to use the other options from bdscan –help command to modified the bdscan [OPTION] what to do if it finds an infected file. etc etc. And then your next step would be to write your own bash script file to periodically do file scanning and have it. You can use autostart or create a crontab to update the definitions and then run the scan whenever you need it to scan periodically too.
It sucks that you can’t use the GUI yet to run the scanner, but if you can find a fix for why the engines won’t load with the GUI, please feel free to post one in the command box below to share with everyone else who reads this blog. This was just the best I could come up with. There is always clamav, but I don’t really know how updated that is either and the GUI is kind of limited too.
For further BitDefender support please visit:
Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW & GUFW) (Highly recommended)
There isn’t one by default like on Ubuntu so you will want this. Open your Terminal, copy and paste:
sudo apt-get install ufw gufw gufw
To check your current settings:
sudo ufw status verbose
To add basic firewall rules:
sudo ufw deny 5353/udp sudo ufw deny 5900/tcp sudo ufw deny 22 sudo ufw deny 25/tcp
sudo ufw deny 135,139,445/tcp sudo ufw deny 137,138/udp
sudo ufw deny 110 sudo ufw deny 2049 sudo ufw deny 143 sudo ufw deny 21/tcp sudo ufw deny ssh
To block outgoing ports except those needed (This configuration will allow the following outbound ports: 20-21, 53, 80, 123, 443, which is all that is required for many users, unless you plan on running a server):
sudo ufw deny out 1:19/tcp sudo ufw deny out 1:19/udp sudo ufw deny out 22:52/tcp sudo ufw deny out 22:52/udp sudo ufw deny out 54:79/tcp sudo ufw deny out 54:79/udp sudo ufw deny out 81:122/tcp sudo ufw deny out 81:122/udp sudo ufw deny out 124:442/tcp sudo ufw deny out 124:442/udp sudo ufw deny out 444:65535/tcp sudo ufw deny out 444:65535/udp
Re-check your changes:
sudo ufw status verbose
Re-check enable (required):
sudo ufw enable
It will automatically load these settings from now on. If you need to access one of those ports temporarily, then you can do a gksu gufw and dis-able your firewall momentarily. Just don’t forget to re-endis-able it when you are done.
If you want to tighten-up your security even further please review:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24722
Here is a configuration script if you are running a server:
#!/bin/sh
# obtain server's IP address
SERVERIP=`hostname --all-ip-addresses | cut --fields 1 --delimiter " "` # disable firewall
ufw disable
# reset all firewall rules ufw reset
# set default rules: deny all incoming traffic, allow all outgoing traffic ufw default deny incoming
ufw default allow outgoing # open port for SSH ufw allow OpenSSH # open port for Webmin ufw allow webmin
# open ports for Samba file sharing
ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to $SERVERIP app Samba ufw allow to 10.0.0.0/8 from $SERVERIP app Samba # open ports for Transmission-Daemon
ufw allow 9091
ufw allow 20500:20599/tcp ufw allow 20500:20599/udp # open port for MySQL
# open ports for Lighttpd ufw allow “Lighttpd Full”
# open port for network time protocol (ntpd) ufw allow ntp
# enable firewall ufw enable
# list all firewall rules ufw status verbose
For more information:
http://www.frozentux.net/documents/iptables-tutorial/
Rootkit Scanner (very optional). A rootkit is a stealthy type of software, typically malicious, designed to hide the existence of certain processes
or programs from normal methods of detection and enable continued privileged access to a computer.
How to periodically scan for rootkits. Both RKHunter and CHKRootkit basically do the same thing and to check your system for rootkits. No harm in using both.
Open a Terminal and enter the following : sudo apt-get install rkhunter chkrootkit
To run chkrootkit open a terminal window and enter : sudo chkrootkit
sudo rkhunter --update sudo rkhunter --propupd sudo rkhunter --check
If you get a warning for unhide.rb rkhunter simply informs you the unhide.rb executable located in /usr/bin/ is a ruby script. It is perfectly normal and you can whitelist it in rkhunter.conf{,.local}.
And if you are interested in more settings you should read:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24722
CPU Frequency Management
CPU frequency management is one of the key utilities to power preservation and here is how to solve that problem on your new Crunchbang system (Recommended):
http://technowizah.com/2007/01/debian-how-to-cpu-frequency-management.html http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=10435
Special Notice: Outdated GVFS package causing CPU problem (optional): Do you occasionally have a slower than normal running system?
One application that gets installed on your system is GVFS . Sometimes when you are installing software on Crunchbang many of those packages recommend GNOME-specific packages that you have to explicitly opt-out of installing alongside your wanted package (gvfs being no exception). gvfsd is part of the Gnome Virtual File System (daemon), which provides some libraries for file managers and other GUI elements and until the updated package is available to us in the software repos for Debian Stable, you are going to have to use this work-around solution if you want to avoid potential high CPU usage with some gnome specific packages. GVFS is unfortunately outdated in Crunchbang (GVFS #! =< 1.12 and the patched fixed version that is not in our repos is at least > 1.14-5, which might probably solve this problem) One of the offending packages is gvfs-backends, which provides /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-afc. You might not be able remove it because the gvfs suite provides a lot of libraries necessary for file managers and back-end functions, and most likely your printer configuration settings manager. Hopefully they will have the updates available soon in the stable repositories to download them.
The temporary solution is to stop the offending process manually each time you have high CPU useage assocated wtih GVFS or GVFSD. If you do notice a slower than normal system you will observe it clearly using 100% of your CPU on Conky and your HDD light will probably stay lit con-tinuous during idle time. If this situation does happen, there are two options available to you as an administrator.
First you need to empty the folder: rm -rf ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata
And then stop the process from running: pkill gvfsd-metadata
That will flush the corrupted gvfsd metadata cache, and restart gvfsd-metadata for that session. After you reboot your system however the prob-lem will probably return. Here is a couple links where I found this information so you can learn more about it and if your system will be ef-fected by these outdated gvfs packages:
Launchpad bug report Solved Ubuntu forum thread WordPress blog w/ fix Google links
Or you can just uninstall it (my printer configuration still seemed to be working fine afterwards, but you should definitely want to first configure your printer before proceeding and try to keep a good eye on it to keep from borking your system and definitely backup your system when pos-sible):
sudo apt-get remove gvfs-backends gvfs-fuse sudo apt-get autoremove
Here is a quick handy installation script for multimedia codecs and other applications (Required):
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo wget https://debianhelp.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/exoodles-tar.doc sudo cp exoodles-tar.doc exoodles-tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf exoodles-tar.gz sudo chmod +x exoodles sudo exoodles
I highly recommend the above script. If you want to install your codecs manually proceed with the following instructions below, and do note that these are untested so leave me a comment in the box below if they need updating. If you use the above script it has been tested.
sudo apt-get install libav-tools flac faac faad sox ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview mpeg3-utils mpegdemux liba52-dev mpeg2dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libflac++6 totem-mozilla icedax lame libmad0 libjpeg-progs gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame libmad0 mpg321
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer-tools ttf-mscorefonts-installer
MPlayer is a movie player that plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg,
FILM, RoQ, and PVA files. You can also use it to watch VCDs, SVCDs, DVDs, 3ivx, RealMedia, and DivX movies. It supports a wide range of output drivers including X11, XVideo, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB etc. There are also nice antialiased shaded subtitles and OSD.
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats as well
as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in uni-cast or multi-cast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks. I haven’t tested the VLC PPA and if it works with Crunchbang but you are welcome to give it a try your-self if you want the latest VLC. Skip down below to make a clone of your system before installing PPAs because sometimes they can bork your Debian system.
Open your Terminal, copy and paste:
sudo apt-get install vlc mplayer mozilla-plugin-vlc guayadeque radiotray
SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features
like support for MPlayer filters and more. One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave. Don’t worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, and volume. This is really great for watching DVD movies.
sudo apt-get install smplayer
FFMpeg is a complete and free Internet live audio and video broadcasting solution for Linux/Unix. It also includes a digital VCR. It can encode in
real time in many formats including MPEG1 audio and video, MPEG4, h263, ac3, asf, avi, real, mjpeg, and flash. Open your Terminal, copy and paste:
sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder mpeg2dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libflac++6 ffmpeg libmp4v2-2 totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame libmad0 libjpeg-progs libquicktime2 flac faac faad sox ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview flac libmpeg3-1 mpeg3-utils mpegdemux liba52-0.7.4-dev
sudo apt-get install libav-tools flac faac faad hal sox ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview mpeg3-utils mpegdemux liba52-dev mpeg2dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libflac++6 totem-mozilla icedax lame libmad0 libjpeg-progs gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame libmad0 mpg321
Gstreammer 0.10
Open your Terminal, copy and paste (when you get to the EULA prompt press Tab key):
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer-tools
How-to install Netflix in Crunchbang:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23958
Additional True Type Fonts
When you begin the installation process you will come to a window that will require you to accept the EULA to install, and you will need to click on your <Tab> key to select <OK> and carefully press enter key and then carefully use <TAB> to select YES at the next prompt.
Open your Terminal, copy and paste:
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
For 32-bit
sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 ffmpeg sox twolame vorbis-tools lame faad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
For 64-bit
sudo apt-get install w64codecs libdvdcss2 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 ffmpeg sox twolame vorbis-tools lame faad gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
Archiver/ Packing software (Recommended)
An archive format is the file format of an archive file. The archive format is determined by the file archiver. Some archive formats are well-de-fined by their authors and have become conventions supported by multiple vendors and/or open-source communities.
Since chromium is no longer supported (I think) here is a script to get the latest current version of Chrome Web Browser (works with Netflix): if [[ $(getconf LONG_BIT) = "64" ]]
then
echo "64bit Detected" &&
echo "Installing Google Chrome" &&
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb &&
rm -f google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb else
echo "32bit Detected" &&
echo "Installing Google Chrome" &&
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb &&
rm -f google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb fi
or if you want the latest developmental version: sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta
Special Note: After trying to install the current version I needed to do a sudo apt-get install -f to force the installation of libappindicator1 and
to get google-chrome on Crunchbang. I’m just letting you know what you need to do if it throws an error message about missing files.
Chrome Plugins:
Adblock Plus (plugin) (Recommended) Adblock Plus (ABP) is a content-filtering extension for Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked ver-sion of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Very popular, and al-most what I would consider to be a necessity, if you surf the Internet on a daily basis. Works great with sites like youtube.com and other similar
web sites that bombard you with constant commercials. It will also allow you to import preconfigured blocklists to stop tracker web sites from monitoring your browser presence.
Remote Desktop (plugin) Access other computers or allow another user to access your computer securely over the Internet.
HTTPS Everywhere (plugin) HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major web-sites, making your browsing more secure.
Reditr is to Reddit what Tweetdeck is to Twitter. And now you can experience it under any GNU/Linux based system thanks to Google Chrome.
Additional Miscellaneous Add-ons for Chrome and Chromium:
A Little Privacy – Prevents passing referrer to third parties, removes redirect trackers, resolves short URLs, and more.
Abine TACO – Opt-out of advertising networks
Block Mixed Content – This extension blocks loading of insecure active content in secure (HTTPS) pages.
Chrome BCExplorer BETA – BrightCloud category and reputation info as you browse!
Chromeblock – Stop secret tracking of your web browsing
Disconnect – Stop major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do.
Ghostery – Protect your privacy. See who’s tracking your web browsing with Ghostery.
KB SSL Enforcer – Automatic security, browse encrypted.
Keep My Opt-Outs – Permanently opts your browser out of online ad personalization via cookies.
NOREF – Suppress Referrer (referer) for Hyperlinks
NotScripts – A clever extension that provides a high degree of ‘NoScript’ like control of javascript, iframes, and plugins on Google Chrome.
SafeBrowser – Sends the url of the currently selected tab to Google Safe Browsing to retrieve some malware results of that domain
SaferChrome – SaferChrome makes browsing safer by identifying and preventing security and privacy breaches.
Signature Check – Allows users to check a certificate thumbprint against the SignatureCheck.org thumbprint to detect man-in-the-middle attacks that use valid signing certificates.
SiteAdvisor for Chrome – SiteAdvisor will give safety ratings for websites, this extension will warn you before you open threat sites.
TrafficLight (BETA) – Adds a strong and non-intrusive layer of security to your browsing experience
Unencrypted Password Warning – Helps to prevent you from sending unencrypted passwords or credit card numbers.
Vanilla Cookie Manager – A Cookie Whitelist Manager that helps protect your privacy. Automatically removes unwanted cookies.
If you are a big fan of Chromium and Chrome you will want to add some handy modifications with this guide over here at:
http://cynicaltux.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/round-off-your-crunchbang-waldorf-part.html
My usual recommended add-ons:
Adblock Plus (plugin) (Recommended) Adblock Plus (ABP) is a content-filtering extension for Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked ver-sion of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Very popular, and al-most what I would consider to be a necessity, if you surf the Internet on a daily basis. Works great with sites like youtube.com and other similar web sites that bombard you with constant commercials. It will also allow you to import preconfigured blocklists to stop tracker web sites from monitoring your browser presence.
Remember Passwords (plugin)
Patches the original Login Manager to allow saving of passwords on forms which otherwise suppress it. A really nice time-saver. Remote Desktop (plugin) Access other computers or allow another user to access your computer securely over the Internet.
HTTPS Everywhere (plugin) HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major web-sites, making your browsing more secure.
Reditr is to Reddit what Tweetdeck is to Twitter. And now you can experience it under any GNU/Linux based system thanks to Google Chrome.
Google Talk is a browser plugin that lets you voice and video chat with friends and family from your browser. Install this plugin and logon to
Gmail with your webcam and microphone attached to your computer, then initiate a chat with a friend or family member. It will try to connect to your webcam and enable video chat.Special Note: After install Google Talk, if you see something like this:
W: Duplicate sources.list entry http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists /dl.google.com_linux_chrome_deb_dists_stable_main_binary-amd64_Packages)
sudo wget q O https://dlssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo aptkey add
-sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' apt-get update
apt-get install google-talkplugin
Okay, very important! since hopefully you have survived this far on the Journey towards a complete Crunchbang system, it is highly
recom-mended that you make a clone of your operating system, in case you break it. And that way you don’t have to spend another couple of hours
get-ting everything dialed-in again perfectly.
Crunchbang is meant to break, that is why it is named Crunchbang.
And this way you will learn more about Linux settings when you don’t have to worry about spending another couple of hours getting everything perfect again, so here is what I recommend you use at this point…
Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. It allows
bare-metal restore. Even if your hard drive melts or your operating system gets completely borked, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes. If there is one thing you are going to be doing often with Crunchabang, it is reinstalling your oper-ating system, and so it makes sense to backup your work before you get too involved tinkering around with Crunchbang. (Required)
http://redobackup.org/
Here is another really great alternative instead of Redo Backup:
Clonezilla is a free disaster recovery, disk cloning, disk imaging and deployment solution. Clonezilla is designed by Steven Shiau and developed
by the NCHC Free Software Labs in Taiwan. Clonezilla SE provides multicast support similar to Norton Ghost Corporate Edition.
http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php
Whichever you use, please make sure you create a bare metal backup solution for your Crunchbang system and that way you can be up and run-ning again in less then 20 minutes, where it would make more sense to simply do a system restoration instead of spending too much time trying to fix whatever you did wrong, and not have to worry about the wait time for a response on the Crunchbang forums and still have a fully func-tional operating system to use.
Graphical FTP clients
FileZilla is free, open source, cross-platform FTP/SFTP software, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Binaries are available for
Win-dows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). As of 18 April 2011, FileZilla Client was the 7th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.
This is great FTP client, very complete, in my opinion, and the best one around.
To install FileZilla in terminal:
sudo apt-get install filezilla filezilla-common
Access it through Applications → Internet → FileZilla FTP Client.
Geany is a lightweight cross-platform GTK+ text editor based on Scintilla and including basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
fea-tures. Among the supported programming languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.
It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features.
sudo apt-get install geany geany-plugins
LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is compatible with other major
office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in French and Spanish, and the English word Office.
To install the latest stable version from:
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/
Okay, as you are probably already aware these following commands may need to be adjusted to reflect the occasional updates to the actual new name of the libreoffice_*.*.*.* package you have just downloaded above. Easy way to do that is to copy and paste this into a text editor and make any edits to the following commands before running them in your terminal.
sudo apt-get remove libreoffice sudo apt-get autoremove
wget http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/4.3.2/deb/x86_64/LibreOffice_4.3.2_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz sudo tar -xzvf LibreOffice_4.3.2_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz
cd LibreOffice_4.3.2.2_Linux_x86-64_deb/DEBS sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Now LibreOffice has been installed successfully. But you can’t access it from Openbox menu, even when you restart Openbox or reboot your computer. So what you need to change is this.
Now Open menu.xml
sudo geany .config/openbox/menu.xml
<menu id="libreoffice" label="LibreOffice" execute="cb-libreoffice-pipemenu" />
Copy and paste this in place of the above text and save the file. You don’t have to worry about the demarcation, and you can just just copy and paste over the above line of code.
<menu id="libreoffice" label="LibreOffice"> <item label="LibreOffice"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/soffice </command> </action> </item> <item label="Writer"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/swriter </command> </action> </item> <item label="Calc"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/scalc </command> </action> </item> <item label="Math"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/smath </command> </action> </item> <item label="Draw"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/sdraw
</command> </action> </item> <item label="Impress"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/simpress </command> </action> </item> <item label="Base"> <action name="Execute"> <command> /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/sbase </command> </action> </item> </menu>
Grammar checking Plug-in for LibreOffice Writer:
Since Crunchbang uses an outdated version of Java the latest stable LanguageTools plugin for LIbreoffice won’t install correctly, and will throw you errors during installation. If you want the very latest version of LanguageTools then you will need to upgrade to Java 7. But you can still use the older supported LangaugeTools version 2.2 here without having to bother with upgrading to the latest version of Java.
Here is how you install it without updating to Java 7. Download the file:
http://www.languagetool.org/download/LanguageTool-2.2.oxt
Open file from root (required for all extentions in LO): sudo /opt/libreoffice4.3/program/soffice
You will always need to open LibreOffice from root to install extensions no matter what you do on Crunchbang, but you will only need to install them once.
Latest Grammar checking Plug-in for LibreOffice Writer (if you have already updated to Java 7 on #!):
https://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/how-to-install-grammar-checker-in-libreoffice-in-ubuntu/
To enable PDF import capability:
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center
Special Note: If you would like the MS Windows OS or Apple Mac OS version of LibreOffice Suite for another computer you have at work or
school – here is where you can find the link. And I definitely recommend using the torrent because the direct link doesn’t usually completely download for some unknown reason. https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
Image Editors
Windows equivalent : Adobe Photoshop Debian equivalent : GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and
edit-ing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operatedit-ing systems includedit-ing Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. It has layering abilities like Photoshop.
In addition to detailed image retouching and free-form drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image editing tasks such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, photomontages combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format.
New additions in Gimp 2.8 are single window mode, on-canvas text editing, layers group, and to apply all changes to a layer grouping.
GIMP’s product vision is that GIMP is, or will become, a free software high-end graphics application for the editing and creation of original im-ages, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.
sudo apt-get install gimp gimp-data gimp-data-extras
Special Note: If you want the latest version of Gimp, I have attempted to figure out a way to install the latest GIMP 2.8 in Debian Squeeze and I couldn’t find instructions that would work to allow me to successfully build it from scratch. I was able to install Gimp 2.7, but it had problems too after testing it out. There really isn’t a way to get 2.8 on here without a huge hassle – AFAIK.
Download additional Script-Fu filters and tweaks:
Instructions on how to install Scripts that work in Gimp:
http://www.gimphelp.org/script28.shtml
http://registry.gimp.org/popular
Photo Management
RAW file viewers/editors/plugins for SLR Digital Photography
Not the most intuitive program to use at first, Raw Therapee is a fairly feature rich and comprehensive RAW editor that’s compatible with Linux. At the time of writing, the team are working on a stable release of version 3.0, which is a major release for the project. Unidentified Flying RAW (or UFRaw for short) is a dedicated RAW image editor based on GTK+. It can be used as an application on its own or as a plugin for GIMP (simply open a RAW image in GIMP to be presented with the UFRaw editor window).
sudo apt-get install libraw-bin ufraw ufraw-batch and gimp-ufraw rawtherapee
Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It
manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and en-hance them. It focuses on the workflow to make it easier for the photographer to quickly handle the thousands of images a day of shooting can produce. It’s also one of the very few FOSS projects able to do tethered shooting.
Shotwell can import photos and videos from a digital camera directly. Shotwell automatically groups photos and videos by date, and supports
tagging. Its image editing features allow users to rotate, crop, eliminate red eye, and adjust levels and color balance. It also features an auto “en-hance” option that will attempt to guess appropriate levels for the image. Shotwell allows users to publish their images and videos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Piwigo, and YouTube.
sudo apt-get install shotwell
Audio Editors
Audacity is a cross-platform multitrack audio editor. It allows you to record sounds directly or to import files in various formats and convert
au-dio files into many different auau-dio file formats too. It features a few simple effects, all of the editing features you should need, and unlimited undo. This is the first and last GUI audio editor you will ever need on Debian.
The GUI was built with wxWidgets and the audio I/O supports PulseAudio, OSS and ALSA under Linux. sudo apt-get install audacity lame libmp3lame0
gtkpod
