Vim

Vim is my favorite text editor. It's an OpenSource editor that's powerful, fast, and full of features. I've tried other editors, EMACS, GEdit, Nedit, etc., and all of them are very high quality editors and have their merits. Time and time again I return to Vim because it works the way I do. GVim is the graphical version of this wonderful editor.


From the Vim website-

"What is Vim?"
An explanation in six kilobytes.

Vim ("Vi IMproved") is a "vi clone", ie
a program similar to the text editor "vi".

Vim works in textmode in every terminal,
but it also has a graphic user interface,
ie menus and support for the mouse.

Availability:
Vim is available for many platforms and has many added features
compared to Vi. (see http://www.vim.org/viusers.php)
Vim is compatible to almost all Vi commands - except Vi's bugs. ;-)

Operating Systems:
Vim is available for many systems: AmigaOS, Atari MiNT, BeOS, DOS,
MacOS, NextStep, OS/2, OSF, RiscOS, SGI, UNIX, VMS, Win16 + Win32
(Windows95/98/00/NT) - and especially FreeBSD and Linux. :-)

Copyright:
The copyright is in the hands of the main author
and maintainer, Bram Moolenaar .
Vim is "charity-ware", ie you are encouraged to make
a donation to orphans in Uganda (see ":help uganda").

Source:
Vim is OpenSource and everybody is welcome to help improve it!

OpenSSH

OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH connectivity tools that technical users of the Internet rely on. Users of telnet, rlogin, and ftp may not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.

The OpenSSH suite replaces rlogin and telnet with the ssh program, rcp with scp, and ftp with sftp. Also included is sshd (the server side of the package), and the other utilities like ssh-add, ssh-agent, ssh-keysign, ssh-keyscan, ssh-keygen and sftp-server.

Support the OpenSSH project.


Ecrypt a file-
openssl aes-256-cbc -a -salt -in topsecret.txt -out topsecret.txt.enc

-openssl is the command for the OpenSSL toolkit.
aes-256-cbc is the encryption cipher to be used. (256bit AES is what the United States government uses to encrypt information at the Top Secret level.)
-a means that the encrypted output will be base64 encoded, this allows you to view it in a text editor or paste it in an email. This is optional.
-salt adds strength to the encryption and should always be used.
-in secrets.txt specifies the input file.
-out secrets.txt.enc specifies the output file.
-you will be prompted for a password.


Decrypt a file-
openssl aes-256-cbc -a -d -salt -in keychanges.tar.gz.enc -out keychanges.tar.gz

-d decrypts data.
-a tells OpenSSL that the encrypted data is in base64.
-in secrets.txt.enc specifies the data to decrypt.
-out secrets.txt.new specifies the file to put the decrypted data in.
-enter password when prompted.


For more information check out http://tombuntu.com.

Damn Small Linux

I've been experimenting with how to install Damn Small Linux(DSL) on a usb drive. I don't have a pressing need to boot from a usb drive, but I wanted to see if it works. Turns out, there are plenty of helpful websites discussing this topic. After discovering this pendrive linux howto and getting the DSL iso from here I had everything I needed. I was able to create the bootable usb from a Windows Vista pc and it worked. Now I'm able to boot into DSL on any pc capable of booting from a usb device. Sweet!!!!