The goal of the instructions in this article is to install Debian on a hard disk that already has a functioning Windows 7 installation (with a master boot record – MBR). Here Debian Sid (a.k.a. Debian Unstable) –which is a rolling release distribution– is taken as an example but a regular Debian stable version can also …

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To configure specific compiler switches per package in Gentoo use these instructions. Modifying environmental variables per package The package.env file can be used to modify environmental variables per package. See /etc/portage/env in the Gentoo Wiki for details. Conflicting compiler switches In make.conf one …

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If a low-level backup is required then use these instructions. Rolling release If your Linux distribution has a rolling release model (e.g. Gentoo Linux) then you'll probably have to install it only once. With a non-rolling release distribution you'll have to do a system upgrade every now and then. Either way, the OS …

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The KDE desktop environment supports environment variables. These are active when logged in to KDE. Contrary to regular bash environment variables, which are active only when a bash shell is started. To set KDE environment variables create a file in the .kde4/env or .kde/env directory, e.g. as follows: 1export …

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Ever wanted to combine several PDF-files into a single file? Under Linux a simple command can be used to accomplish this. Use the command given below: 1gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sOutputFile=output.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf (Note: this requires ghostscript to be installed.)

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Under Linux, you can use the isohybrid command to attempt to fix an ISO intended for a USB-stick, but that does not boot (because e.g. it expects a real DVD). Warning and disclaimer: do make sure that you make a copy of your image file first and execute the isohybrid command on the copy. The command to use is as …

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This article will delve into the details involved in serializing and deserializing arbitrarily sized objects to- and from a byte array. The contents of the byte array are stored in a random access file. An index file is kept to allow for objects of varying size. Serializable objects Any object that is an instance of a …

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