Spyware, Virus, Trojan & Worm removal tools

Spybot

Excellent spyware removal tool with immunization to prevent reinfection.

HijackThis

CWShredder

For removing particularly persistent infections (e.g. CoolWebSearch).

Symantec Threat Explorer

Keep abreast of the latest threats.

Symantec Removal Tools

F-Secure Removal Tools

Specific tools for removing particular worms and trojans.

Avast! Antivirus

Excellent background antivirus; also scans email and P2P. Free for home use.

Fedora Core

Using Xnest to connect to an XDMCP X-server from Fedora fails

iptables is blocking the reverse connection; open port 6002 using the [ System | Administration | Security Level and Firewall ] tool or by hand.

Gnome

How to set the default theme for all users

Use gconftool to edit the defaults (in /etc/gconf):

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
--type string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Clearlooks

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
--type string --set /desktop/gnome/interface/icons_theme gnome

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme Clearlooks

LaTeX

PDF, Postscript (PS) and Encapsulated Postscipt (EPS)

EPSUTIL

Finally: a simple utility to resize, manipulate and rotate EPS files.

PDFcreator

Create PDF files (and a few other types) simply by printing to a virtual printer with this free utility.

MySQL

Remote connection refused

If you're running a newer version of MySQL (say 5) and everything seems fine locally, but remote hosts can't connect, check the config file (/etc/mysql/my.cnf on Debian/Ubuntu) for "bind-address = 127.0.0.1". If it exists, comment it out.

Mongo

Compile Mongo on Ubuntu 8.04, 9.10 and 10.04 (and other modern Linux systems).

Mongo is an old scientific graphics plotting package (not to be confused with either SuperMongo or MongoDB) written by John Tonry. Here's how to get it to work under a modern version of Linux (say if you have legacy scripts and don't want to recode them). Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Hedgehog, 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Not all the steps will be strictly necessary on all systems, but they won't hurt.

Download the last source code mongo2k-010612.tar.gz and my patch (this supersedes the earlier patch). Then:

sudo apt-get install tcsh gfortran xorg-dev libreadline-dev patch
tar xzvf mongo2k-010612.tar.gz
cd mongo2k
patch -Np1 < ../mongo-ubuntu10.04-patch
cd source
make all
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/mongo
sudo make install
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/mongo* /usr/local/bin/psrast* 
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/nojob
sudo chmod -R a+rX /usr/local/lib/libmongo* /usr/local/lib/mongo

If you want to install locally rather than system-wide, edit the Makefile after applying the patch to change the installation directory, and skip the 'sudo' steps (just do 'make install').

You might also be interested in a version used by the STAR package from SAAO, described in this blog post.