How to Generate A New Sources List For Ubuntu

If you have ever peeked into the “sources.list” file located at the “/etc/apt/” folder, you will know that it contains the repository of all the packages available to your machine. Additionally, if you want to add PPA manually, you have to open this file and add the PPA to the end of the list. What if, on a fresh install of Ubuntu, you discover that your “sources.list” is empty? Or you need to change the whole repository to one that is specific to your country? How can you generate a new sources list without any technical skill?
The Ubuntu Sources List Generator is one great tool that you can use to generate source list for your Ubuntu.
1. Go to the Ubuntu Sources List Generator site.
2. Select the Country where you want to download the repository from.
3. Select your Ubuntu release.

4. Scroll down the list and select the components that you want in your repository. The standard ones are “Main”, “Restricted”, “Universe”, “Multiverse”, “Security” and “Updates”. You can also include “Partner” and “Extra” to include additional software that are not provided by Ubuntu.
5. In addition to the main sources, the Generator also include popular PPAs like Cairo Composite Manager, Cortina Wallpaper changer, GIMP, Google Chrome, Virtualbox, Steam, Spotify etc. that you can include in your sources list. Simply check the box beside the PPA.

6. Lastly, scroll all the way down to the bottom and press the “Generate List” button.
7. On the next page, you should see three big boxes. The first box at the top contains the sources list that you have selected and you will need to copy/paste them into your sources.list file. In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Paste the sources lists into the document (for a new slate, you might want to erase all the existing sources listed in the file before pasting the new sources list in). Save and exit.
8. If you have added third party software’s PPA, it will show you the PPA key that you need to add to your system. Run the commands in your terminal, line by line.

9. The third box is the alternate layout for Synaptic, which you can ignore most of the time.
To complete the process, you need to update and upgrade your system:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

That’s it.

How to Preview Links Before Clicking in Google Chrome

Have you ever wished you could see what was behind a link before clicking on it?
When using Google Chrome to browse the Web or read a social networking site like Facebook or Google+, a feature that will let you preview links can really come in handy.
If you’re looking for an easy way to preview a link before clicking on it, look no further. There’s a neat extension for Chrome that allows you to do just that.
1. Install the SwitftPreview extension.
2. Head over to the options page by right clicking on the SwiftPreview browser icon and selecting “options.”
3. In options, you can customize the preview window’s width and height. If you prefer, you can even make the preview fit to your window.

4. By default, you can see a link preview by just hovering over the link – after a slight delay. In options you can change this behavior so that you have to hold down the shift key to see a preview instead.
5. Once you’re done setting up the options, you can browse to any Web page to test it out. When you hover your mouse over a link (short or long), you should see a preview after a few seconds (or long if you’ve changed it in the options).

6. You can pin the preview to your window by clicking the CTRL key on your keyboard. This way it won’t disappear when you move your mouse away from the link.
7. You can also block link previews on individual domains by clicking on the browser icon from that domain. SwiftPreview will be immediately disabled on that domain; you can click the browser icon again to re-enable it for that domain.
That’s it’s! SwiftPreview is definitely not the only tool that can help you preview links in Google Chrome, but it’s simple and does the job well. You’ll save time and clicks.

Cinnarch 2013.01.23

Alex Filgueira has announced the release of Cinnarch 2013.01.23, the latest build of the project's desktop distribution that combines Arch Linux with Cinnamon (a fork of GNOME Shell). This is a beta release. From the announcement: "Another month, another release. This one with some great improvements. One of the downsides of installing Cinnarch is the time that the installer spends downloading the packages. Almost 500 MB in packages have to be downloaded one after the other. This new version reduces the downloading time doing parallel downloads thanks to a Pacman wrapper called powerpill. This new system downloads everything with a 12 MB connection in just 4 - 6 minutes. With this we avoid the 'select mirror' step, because there's no need, but at the end, in your final system, you will have selected by default the 5 fastest mirrors to your location in the case of the Arch Linux repositories." Download (MD5) the live CD image from here: cinnarch-2013.01.23-x86_64.iso (699MB).

BackBox Linux 3.01

Raffaele Forte has announced the release of BackBox Linux 3.01, an updated version of the project's Ubuntu-based distribution and live DVD with a collection of penetration testing, incident response, computer forensics and intelligence gathering tools: "The BackBox team is pleased to announce an updated release of BackBox Linux, version 3.01. This release includes features such as Linux kernel 3.2 and Xfce 4.8. The ISO images (for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures) can be downloaded from the download page. What's new? System improvements; upstream components; bug corrections; performance boost; improved auditing menu; improved Wi-Fi drivers (compat-wireless Aircrack patched); new and updated hacking tools (e.g. backfuzz, Beef, Bluediving, cvechecker, HTExploit, Metasploit, set, sqlmap, WebSploit, Weevely, WPScan, zaproxy, etc.)" Read the full release announcement for system requirements. Download (MD5): backbox-3.01-amd64.iso (1,381MB, torrent).

SolusOS 2 Alpha 7

The seventh alpha of SolusOS 2 has been released for testing. SolusOS is a Debian-based distribution project that has recently forked the GNOME 3 Fallback mode into a brand-new Consort desktop environment. From the release announcement: "The SolusOS team is pleased to announce the release of SolusOS 2 Alpha 7. This release is intended to demonstrate the Consort desktop, which will be the flagship desktop of SolusOS 2. Please note that this is an alpha release and should not be used in a production environment. Currently only the 32-bit PAE ISO image is available for testing. New features and addressed issues: Consortium (Metacity fork) now has side-by-side window tiling; issues with 'shadow trails' and 'latent shadow boxes' left behind by tool tips, DND icons and menus are gone; Consort Panel is now fully usable; gnome-applets has also been forked into consort-applets to undergo active development...." Download: SolusOS-2-A7.iso (995MB, MD5, torrent).