Favourite additional packages for Ubuntu

The standard Ubuntu installation comes already with a pretty complete set of software packages. Next to the standard set of packages I install on my desktop/laptop:

  • ubuntu-restricted-extras: allerlei extra fonts, video codecs, etc.
  • default-jre: installeer de java JRE
  • geany: my favourite editor, very usefull for php, html, css, etc.
  • meld: an easy diff program which also enables melding differences per line
  • mozplugger: show PDF’s inside a tab of Firefox
  • compizconfig-settings-manager: tune je desktop effecten
    • schakel de “Ring wisselaar” aan, zet daarbij “Volgende venster (alle werkruimten)” op toets Alt-Tab

And a bit of tuning:

  • For 9.04 following command prohibits the pop-under of the upgrade program. It returns to the previous policy showing a notification icon:
    gconftool -s –type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

Installing awstats on Debian system

To see who is visiting your website there is a nice opensource package available called awstats. After installing awstats by the usual command a few extra actions are required. I’ll explain in the rest of these post the required steps for a simple configuration.

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Sudo command from php

I wanted to have an easy button in a webpage to restart some process that requires sudo rights. After quite some Google searches I combined a few techniques that made this work.

Although this method only grants very limited rights to the webserver, granting superrights to a web process might open up some security issues somehow. However family or co-workers simply pressing the on/off button on the server when something is not working and I’m not around is a worse problem in my opionion.

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