A big part of my move from Windows to Linux has been finding replacements for the applications that I had previously used day-to-day that are not available on Linux. For the major applications like my web browser (Firefox), e-mail client (Thunderbird), password manager (KeePass2) this hasn’t been a problem because they are all available on Linux as well. Heck you can even install Microsoft Office with the latest version of wine if you wanted to.

Here are a couple of neat iOS applications for the paranoid (kidding!) & security inclined. iPGMail iPGMail (currently $1.99 on the App Store) is the best OpenPGP application I’ve tried on Apple’s platform. Even within the somewhat restrictive limitations that Apple has created for application developers this particular application does everything it can to be user friendly. I would highly recommend this to anyone that wishes to send signed/encrypted e-mail from their iOS device.

With the recent questions surrounding the security of TrueCrypt there has been a big push to move away from that program and switch to alternatives. One such alternative, on Linux anyway, is the Linux Unified Key Setup (or LUKS) which allows you to encrypt disk volumes. This guide will show you how to create encrypted file volumes, just like you could using TrueCrypt. The Differences There are a number of major differences between TrueCrypt and LUKS that you may want to be aware of:

If you are not familiar with the concept of virtual hard drive volumes, sometimes called file containers, they are basically regular looking files that can be used by your computer as if they were real hard drives. So for example you could have a file called MyDrive.img on your computer and with a few quick actions it would appear as though you had just plugged in an external USB stick or hard drive into your computer.

If you’ve used KeePass on Windows you may be very attached to its auto-type feature, where with a single key-combo press the application with magically type your user name and password into the website or application you’re trying to use. This is super handy and something that is sadly missing by default on Linux. Thankfully its also very easy to make work on Linux. Start by installing the xdotool package On Debian/Ubuntu/etc simply run:

As noted previously I’ve recently switched over to running Linux on all of my personal computers at home. This switch has gone surprisingly well and I will be posting about some of my experiences with that later on. In the meantime just a quick update on the distribution I’m running.

Here are some of my recent posts from over at The Linux Experiment. Change the default sort order in Nautilus Extend the life of your SSD on linux Ubuntu 14.04 VNC woes? Try this! How to mount a Windows share on startup

If you’ve had issues trying to get Thunderbird to send your PGP signed e-mail using anything other than SHA-1 there is a quick and easy fix that will let you pick whichever hash you prefer. Open up Thunderbird’s preferences On the Advanced Tab, under General click Config Editor… In the about:config window search for “extensions.enigmail.mimeHashAlgorithm” without quotes. Double click on this and enter a value.

It has been a bit of a long time coming but I’ve finally decided to stop procrastinating and actually attempt to move my last Windows desktop to Linux. This decision was reached after I realized that for many months now my home computing use has happened almost exclusively on my Linux powered laptop, and that I actually only ever bothered to use my Windows desktop to sync my phone and for nothing else.

After reading this I’m still not 100% sure there can ever be a completely “safe” way to do this with Twitter. That said some ways are certainly better than others… Personally I think the best of the approaches listed is to include the full key fingerprint and then to also periodically tweet the details. At least that way if an attacker does go and maliciously modify your bio there is still a chance for someone to see the good tweet as well.