Linux Community Magazine

There are over three hundred Linux distributions that you can choose from. The choices can be overwhelming. There is no agreement as to what is the best linux distro. We know that Linux Ubuntu is the most popular on the desktop and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the most popular in enterprise settings. But popularity does not equal best fit.

1. For newbies: If you are new to Linux, I suggest you use Linux Mint or PCLinux. These are the most user friendly distributions.

2. Everyday Linux If you are looking for a distribution that is going to be around a while and is relatively easy to use, then I suggest Fedora or Ubuntu. Fedora is based by Red Hat and Ubuntu is backed by Canonical. Some would also suggest OpenSUSE, which is based by Novell. I don't recommend OpenSUSE because I don't like Novell and their close dealings with Microsoft

3. Light and fast If you have an older system Puppy Linux is the choice for you. It is an amazing distribution for older machine. Puppy Linux enables you to save money while doing more work, even allowing you to do magic by recovering data from destroyed PCs or by removing malware from Windows

4. Server CentOS is simply an unbranded and free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Debian is also an excellent choice, being well known for its stability

5. Music Production Ubuntu Studio is the most popular music and recording solution out there.Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.

6. Multimedia If you are interested in turning your computer into a multimedia station, Mythbuntu is the distro for you. Mythbuntu is focused upon setting up a standalone MythTV based PVR system. It can be used to prepare a standalone system or for integration with an existing MythTV network. The learning curve is a little high, but worth it.

7. Power User: If you really want to learn Linux, then Gentoo or Slackware is the way to go. Slackware just happens to be the oldest Linux distribution still in active development

8. Netbooks If you are think of using Linux on a netbook, EasyPeasy or Jolicloud are both good choices

9. KDE Desktop For those who like the KDE desktop enviroment OpenSUSE or Kubuntu are probably the best.

So what is the best linux distro? It depends on your needs and what you are looking for.

Full article: Best Linux Distro for You

As the holidays approach and we wind down to the end of the year, we all tend to look back on our accomplishments. This year, I am reminded that I am approaching the one-year anniversary of my move to a Linux desktop. For those of you who really want to learn Linux, I hope my experiences will help you take the plunge in 2010!

What prompted my move: I needed a more powerful laptop. I had my personal laptop configured as a dual-boot machine ever since Novell bought SUSE. Dual-boot is fine, but in my haste to get things done, I would inevitably drop back to Windows... and that just wasn't working out well. Time to dig in, work through the issues, and find new, powerful applications that ran on Linux.

The hardware: Last year's holiday season yielded some great deals. While I could have bought a new system with Linux installed so that driver availability would be guaranteed, I decided to take a gamble and buy a Dell Studio 15 off the shelf at Staples and work through any driver issues I might encounter. This unit has a 64 bit processor, a 320G hard drive, and 4G of RAM.

Driver issues: While SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP 2 ships with a great many drivers (including loads of printer drivers), I had two problematic pieces off hardware: the ATI graphics card and the Broadcom wireless card. After lots of searching, I finally found the best answers for my issues at If you go the Ubuntu route as many people do, the Ubuntu forums will be your best resources.

* For information on how to install Broadcom wireless drivers on SUSE please see: /SDB:Broadcom_(BCM4306)_WLAN_Installation_under_SUSE.

* For information on dealing with ATI's graphics cards, please see: /Ati.

* For a list of models and hardware compatible with SUSE, please see: /HCL or /.

Software replacement: One of the main reasons people avoid moving to Linux is that many pieces of commercially-available software are written only for Windows. There has been more movement to write for the Mac, but Linux support can lag behind. Enter the open source community. I found some great replacements for software I use regularly... and some of it actually works better than the Windows versions I had been using! Here are just a few of the applications I am currently running:

* Office Productivity Suite: If you have not looked at OpenOffice recently, you should definitely take some time to explore! The 3.0 version is greatly improved. I have been able to do most of what I need with OpenOffice, and actually like the Calc program better than Excel. SUSE also comes with Acrobat Reader and Planner (a project management program) already installed.

* Photo Editing: Gimp is included with SLED and does everything I would have used Paint for, and more.

* Diagrams: For the more advanced Visio functions, check out Dia. If you just need to do a flowchart or some other simple diagrams, I recommend using Draw in OpenOffice.

* Multifunction Printer Software: HP has some great tools included with their Officejet All-in-One printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. While I found the printer drivers for my unit (a 7410) included with SLED, I really wanted some of the more advanced functions (for example, scan to PDF) that I had on Windows. Enter the HP Toolbox found at /hplip-web/index.html. When this program installs, it uses xsane for scanning documents to image files for PDF. I got all of the functions I needed... plus, I no longer get those annoying update messages from Windows!

* Broadband Wireless: OK, I know this is actually hardware, but when I migrated I could not find a version of Verizon's VZAccess Manager to connect the card. After a bit of digging, I found that I could configure the card as a modem (which it is) and use Kinternet as my dialer. Quick and simple and no need to install more software. A quick search at /linux should get you the answers you need for your card. If not, instead of putting in the card name, try searching on "EVDO card."

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I have been working with this laptop since last December and absolutely love it. The only way to truly learn Linux is to work with it every day. If you are bored over your Christmas break and want to play, give Linux a try. I will never go back!

Copyright 2009, Uptime NetManagement, Inc.

Open SUSE is an operating system that is built on the top of Linux Kernel. It is available as OpenSUSE 10.x and 11.x series. This operating system includes an installation and administration utility called YaST2, which is a powerful installation and system management tool. But at times, you observe that while updating your operating system using Yast2, it fails with unexpected errors. The file system might get corrupt due to the occurrence of such errors. In such situations, you need to format the hard drive and restore data from an updated and valid data backup. But, if you face any issues while restoring lost data from the backup or it is not up-to-date or non-existent, Data Recovery Linux applications can be used to extract the lost or inaccessible data.

Consider a practical scenario, you try to update your operating system openSUSE10.3 to 11.0 and it fails due to connection failure. After this, when you boot your system, it crashes and the boot process fails. The original desktop environment remains the same but boot menu displays openSUSE 11.0. Additionally, when you run a disk check utility, you get file system errors like:

unreadable or no valid ext2 data

Cause

The above issue occurs if these conditions are true:

Due to connection failure, there has been partial installation of openSUSE 11.0

One or more file system metadata structures (generally Superblock) are corrupted or damaged

Superblock is the key data structure that holds file system information as file system type, location of data packets, file system size etc.

Solution

To solve this issue, you need to follow these steps:Run fsck using a boot disk. It is the command-line tool that allows you to solve most of the file system corruption issues. If superblock corruption is the issue, you need to replace it with alternate SuperblockFormat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system, if you continue to encounter the same issue. The lost data can be restored from backup.

If you find that data backup is invalid and is not able to restore the required information or is absent, Linux Data Recovery tools can be used. Such software use powerful scanning algorithms to recover the lost data in a safe manner. With self-explanatory user interface, advanced recovery features and read-only design, these Data Recovery Linux applications work as effective data recovery tools.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is a powerful Linux Data Recovery application to recover the lost or deleted data. The software comes with advanced features like RAW File Recovery, Disk Imaging, File Filter etc. It supports Ext2, Ext3 and Reiser FS file systems. The tool is compatible with almost all Linux distributions like SUSE, Red Hat, SlackWare, Turbo Linux, Gentoo etc.

Ext2 (second extended) file system is a file system designed to be used in Linux kernel. It facilitates high-level security, reliability, and data management options to the system. Although, it is a highly secure system, it does sometimes get affected by virus infections, which in some cases can delete the files. In such cases, you should try to restore the files by their updated backup if you have one.

The Linux system provides some in-built methods to retrieve deleted files from the system. You should consider using these methods. However, if you are not able to recover the deleted files with these methods, then you should perform Linux Data Recovery of your ext2 system using a third-party Ext2 Recovery software.

Listed below are some in-built data recovery utilities, that Linux provides:

* E2undel: This utility recovers deleted files from the Linux systems having ext2 file system by interacting with its console.

* Ext3undel: This utility recovers deleted files from the Linux systems having ext2 or ext3 file system. It uses a set of scripts to help you in retrieving the deleted files by automating the recovery jobs.

* Extundelete: This utility recovers deleted files from Linux systems having ext3 or ext4 file system. It uses the information saved in the ext3/ext4 file systems to recover deleted files. It is able to preserve both the file name as well as its content.

The aforementioned utilities can help you in recovering deleted files from the Linux system. However, these utilities cannot guarantee safe Linux data recovery. In such cases, you should use a third-party Linux recovery software for Linux systems that can guarantee safe recovery of lost files. Such tools employ fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms to recover lost data without overwriting anything on the corrupted area.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery software recovers lost files, directories, and hard drive volumes from Linux systems having ext2, ext3, or ext3 file system volumes. It can support various Linux distributions such as Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Caldera, Mandrake, Sorcerer, TurboLinux, Slackware, Gentoo etc. This Linux Recovery software also allows to preview specific lost files such as MS office files, video files, audio files, and BKF files, etc. The tool is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, 2003 Server, XP, and 2000.

In these days, Linux is considered as one of the best and consistent operating systems in this technical world. Similar to other operating systems, the problem or the issue of data loss is also being found with Linux. There are several cases which can happen and can cause data loss some of them are registry file removal, accidental removal of partition, virus attack, software disagreement, power surges and many others. In addition to this, there are several ways that can unswervingly or ultimately lead to data thrashing. In these types of conditions, you have an alternative but to choose for Linux recuperation using endorsement, to make sure that your working is not weak. Nevertheless, at the time when the backup is not available, un-updated, or not working, then the best option is to go for Linux data revival solutions.Suppose for instance that you tried to access any useful data file with the aid of Linux partition, and you find a message instead of the opening of file:F ile is unapproachableor,The File is not foundIf you find these kinds of errors, then you must be sure that they are caused because of the corruption or removal of a data organization which is used for controlling and managing several file formation and access activities. This sort of data structure is commonly called as Block Group Descriptor, and is considered as the best option for feeding information super block, inode table, inode bitmap and block bitmap.Who the data is lost in Linux?The thing is that the Block Group Descriptor is basically used very regularly by the file organization and operating system; its corruption may result to the failure in operating system for checking out the particular files. This is the main reason which leads to the data thrashing in Linux.Nevertheless, if you have a clear and efficient backup with you then it's not a tricky trouble to grip. But at the time when there is no back up or it's not updated, then it's hard to avoid the data loss. In this kind of situation, if you wish to recuperate your useful data, then the option in front of you is to opt other Linux data revival software. These tools help in recovering data from Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, and FAT file system volumes. I must tell you that revival of data is done for all types of office files, photographs, BKF files and videos. Good Linux recuperation tools check out the recuperation from all distributions of Linux, together with, TurboLinux, Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Slackware Sorcerer, Caldera and Gentoo.If you are not aware with Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery then I must tell you that it is a bankable value for data revival Linux operating system. It has several recovery alternatives some of them are as follows Save scan Graphical user interface Drive cloning Imaging Resume recoveryThe recovery of useful data can effortlessly be executed with the help of these tools.