Tech Juice

Introduction

If you are a Windows poweruser, the switch to a Linux desktop environment can be quite a shock. Many of your favorite shortcuts and tricks become useless, and it can be quite challenging to get back up to speed. There are many tweaks that you do to make Ubuntu’s Gnome 2 desktop environment easier to use and more powerful. This article presents a list of things to do after a fresh install that may help both Ubuntu newbies and adept users.

Note that the 11.04 release of Ubuntu introduced a new desktop environment called Unity. It is a trainwreck of an UI at this point (2011), and power-users will most likely be much more productive in the ‘classic’ Gnome 2 UI. The tips in this article apply to Gnome 2 for Ubuntu, but some things might work for other distros and UIs.

Programs to Install

There are several invaluable programs that everyone should get after a fresh install.

Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak is a tool for Ubuntu that makes it easy to configure your system and desktop settings. If you are a Windows user you might know Windows Powertoys, which is very similar. You can configure login settings, package related jobs, default folder locations, which items to display…

Other posts in the ARP series: The ARP protocol explained and An introduction to ARP cache poisoning.

Both Windows and Linux have a tool called arp. I tested this with Windows 7 and Linux kernel 2.6.31, but this information should be true for just about every OS version since the dawn of TCP/IP.

Command Overview

Be aware that there is one ARP cache (table) per interface, as opposed to the routing table, which is global for the system.

Windows: arp.exe

Open an (you need administrator rights). Now you can type arp to execute the Windows ARP cache manager.

Display the current ARP entries for each interface with arp -a:

[sourcecode language="text" classname="nonum"]
C:>arp -a

Interface: 232.19.232.231 — 0xb
Internet Address      Physical Address      Type
232.19.232.2          22-22-2c-27-ac-22     dynamic
232.19.232.22         22-21-f3-23-3e-23     dynamic
232.19.232.32         22-29-33-c1-c2-24     dynamic
232.19.232.91         22-2d-29-a9-33-17     dynamic
232.19.232.231        22-22-29-c2-22-b7     dynamic
232.19.232.242       …