Convert linux package files one to another easily

This is a familiar problem for most of the people who are using Linux. Software for Linux are available in many formats. Most popular package managers are rpm on RedHat related distributions(Fedora, CentOS, SUSELinux...) and deb on debian related dists( Debian, ubuntu, Mint...). If they are distributed as .deb or .rpm it's relative easy to install with a single command line.
Sometimes it's very difficult to find deb for an rpm only (or vice versa).
I spent some time searching for a tool to convert .deb to .rpm(still google chrome is ditributed as .deb only).
So I found this tool written in Perl very useful. It's Alien, a script which can convert between .rpm, .deb, .slp and tar.gz(.tgz)
Download it from here .
Unzip it and makesure your system has perl installed and perl version is 5.004 or greater .If not install the latest version by

$sudo apt-get install perl (on Debian distributions)

go into the folder from terminal and type to start installing.
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
sudo make install

and it will be installed, and check its man pages for more details.
Its very easy to convert a foriegn package format to the native packaging format of your distribution.
Like
to convert an rpm to .deb on Ubuntu

sudo alien -d file_name.rpm

file_name.deb will be generated.
But converting vice versa is a different story, such as converting a .deb to an .rpm on Ubuntu will give dependency problems. :(
Using verbose option as an command line argument, you can see what alien is doing behind the scenes.


So, no more problems of searching for rpms for deb only softwares :-)

May, Google be with you :P

Chrome on Ubuntu

Google Chrome is my favorite browser on Windows due to its speed and simplicity. Still Google has not released a stable build for Linux and Mac. But recently it released Unstable versions for Linux and Mac through dev channel. It was easy to install on Ubuntu because there is a .deb version.
Google advices not to download it.
But, really, when has a simple warning stopped you from downloading an incomplete alpha?
You can download it from here .
Still Linux version doesn't support flash or Unicode,and didn't work the task manager also.
Here is the list of the issues with the browser.

Will it be the last few days for Vista to be on my laptop?

I'm going to say BYE to genuine(but I cal it malicious:-P) Vista!
I'll briefly explain my Vista experience.

When I was going to buy a laptop I searched for laptops with XP or no OS because I've seen Vista is very much slow.(Some said there will be problems in future for pirated OS.But I don't believe them.) I found only Acer without pre-installed Windows. Because of the rumours that ACERs are very much heating, my option was HP(I havn't had money to buy DELL :-P). So I bought HP DV5-1104tx with Vista Home premium installed.
But it's heating very much,So I call it lipa:-P

First of all I installed my favourite Ubuntu8.04. But I had to rely on Vista to use my E220 HSPA modem. (Used betavine on ubuntu,but it gave problems.) But after Ubuntu8.10 launch every thing changed, I rarely used Vista only to play games. If I boot in Windows for playing I cant wait until ring stops rotating. And it doesn't have most of the tools thst I had on XP like msconfig on Home premium edition. On thursday ubuntu9.04 is scheduled to be launched, So I'm gonna completely remove Vista and upgrade to Ubuntu9.04 and install Fedora11. If I feel still I want Windows to play,hope to install Windows7.
Isn't it a simple plan?

After more than an year I found my blog is working and thought of post something to it. Today we got our new year vacation :). I found an innovative desktop design on http://bumptop.com/. I couldn't test it yet, because I'm working on ubuntu.I have to reboot to windows after a long time to test it. I'll post about it after testing.
These days I'm reading a book about linux programming and playing with linux. The vacation is going to be busy with algore project and these things. I hope to post what I find interesting on the web.

How to delete viruses from USB drives.

One of the ways by which a virus can infect your PC is through USB/Pen drives. Common viruses such as ’fun.exe’ , ‘New Folder.exe’, ‘xlu8a8sy.exe’ etc are spreading through USB drives.Most anti virus programs are unable to detect them and even if they do, in most cases they are unable to delete the file, only quarantine it. Here are the things which you can do if you want to remove such viruses from your USB drives.



Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system, a window will appear similar to the one shown below

Don’t click on Ok , just choose ‘Cancel’. Open the Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in the run box. In the command prompt type the drive letter: and press enter . Now type dir /w/a and press enter.



This will display a list of the files in the pen drive. Check whether the following files are there or not
Autorun.inf
Ravmon.exe
fun.exe
xlu8a8sy.exe
pissu.exe
New Folder.exe
svchost.exe
Heap41a
or any other exe file which may be suspicious.

If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected. In command prompt type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and hidden file attribute from all the files. Now just delete the files using the command del filename. example del Ravmon.exe. Delete all the files that are suspicious. To be on a safer side, just scan the USB drive with an anti virus program to check whether it is free of virus or not. Now remove the drive and plug it again. In most of the cases, the real culprit turns out to be the “Autorun.inf” file which mostly gets executed when someone clicks Ok in the dialog window which appears above. Thus the infections can spread.

Security Tip



Disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives. If you disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives, then there are lesser chances of the virus spreading. A tool which can perform such a function is Tweak UI. Download it from here install it.(this feature is added to Windows vista).