Disable Plymouth and show GRUB menu on Ubuntu based Linux PC

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Ubuntu PlymouthI don't really understand the need to make Linux operating systems more appealing to general crowd by using stuff like Plymouth to mimic other inferior operating systems behavior. The Linux way would be to try to explain general crowd that wasting effort on making boot splash screen doesn't bring increase in productivity. This is the reason why I disable Plymouth or any other boot splash software on all of my Linux PCs. I also like to force showing GRUB boot menu before boot in case I need easy access to recovery entries on GRUB boot menu. In this article I will show you how to disable Plymouth and force showing GRUB menu with 3 seconds timeout on Ubuntu Linux PC.

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Enable userdir Apache module on Ubuntu Linux and other Debian based distributions

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Apache logoLately I've spent a lot of time on web programming using open source based technologies like PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL. This works really great on Linux because every tool you need for web programing is right there a few keystrokes away using your favorite distribution and package manager. One essential thing you need to setup for web programming is localhost web server serving files inside your home directory. I've wrote about one method of making Apache web server work this way in my following article:

LAMP development in your home directory with suPHP module

In this article I will show you how to do the same thing in another way by enabling Apache module called userdir on Debian based distributions like Ubuntu. The official definition of userdir is that "this module allows user-specific directories to be accessed using the http://example.com/~user/ syntax". So lets get started...

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Send and receive SMS using GSM modem or phone on Ubuntu

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Huawei e220I currently use mobile broadband as my primary Internet connection and this worked great on my Linux PCs for a while. The GSM modem I'm using every day is good old Huawei e220, but there is one aspect of this great hardware device I haven't used on my Linux PCs, and that is sending/receiving SMS messages. In this article I will show you how to send and receive SMS messages using GSM modem or phone on Ubuntu Linux PC.

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Quick Chat for WordPress - New version 1.80

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Hi everyone. Last few days I've been rather busy working on Quick Chat. This new version is partial rewrite of previous Quick Chat with focus on security. Also I've added two requested features that deal with chat identity theft prevention. Namely Quick Chat admin options now have "Protect registered users user names from being used by other users" option turned on by default. This means that after user name change Quick Chat will use ajax to fetch information does chosen chat user name belongs to any registered user. If chat user name isn't available, user will have to change his user name to participate in chat. Also I've added "Reserved chat user names list" admin option where site admin can add user names that would be baned from chat. On this list I've placed names "admin" and "moderator" by the default (restriction isn't case sensitive).

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Linux kernel 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 power regression workaround

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Recently I've been referencing Linux 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 kernel power drain regression in many of my articles. Fortunately Phoronix has found the root cause of this issue and has suggested a workaround for the affected systems. Also because of the Linux kernel 3.0 merge window closed this power regression will not be properly fixed until Linux kernel 3.1 release. In this article I'm bringing you two ways to work around this problem on your laptop or desktop system running Linux kernel 2.6.38 or newer.

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