Introduction

What are snaps and why you should use them? The Linux ecosystem has suffered from an old problem since the dawn of the concept of ‘distribution’, and that
problem is fragmentation. One of the biggest issues that cause this fragmentation is different package formats; I can’t run my .debs on my Fedora system or my .rpms on my
Ubuntu machine. Yes, we do have alien, which should allow the transition between the two formats, but there are two problems with this approach : there are other package
formats besides rpm and deb and besides, alien doesn’t always work as expected. So the issue is still there, or I should say, was there. Enter snap, the universal Linux
package format, which strives to offer users and developers a single packaging format and easiness when it comes to creating new packages with the applications and libraries
that are needed, ensuring that said packages are easily shareable between distributions. Dell, Samsung and the Linux Foundation are quoted as contributors, while among
supported distributions are Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or OpenSUSE.

This article will detail how to use snaps as a simple user, as well as instructions for developers/packagers
on how to create snaps for others to use. The OS we’re gonna use is Ubuntu 16.04, but the instructions below shouldn’t be hard to adapt to other distributions.

Snaps as a simple user

This part will give you a tour of snap from a user perspective : how to install the necessary tools and how to use them for basic, day-to-day
usage. First, you need to install snapcraft, a package that provide snap, the go-to tool for aforementioned day-to-day operations :

 $ sudo apt install snapcraft

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Introduction

You need Windows for a program you use for work, your favorite game runs only on Windows or you are a developer that works on some cross-platform project. And of course, you can’t even think about giving up your favorite OS. Whatever the reason, you need Windows and a virtual machine won’t cut it so all you’re left with, if you don’t have a spare machine, is dual-boot. I usually recommend against multiple-boot machines, but I can’t argue with the fact that here are situations when the idea is very useful. So this is what this article is about: making sure you need a dual-boot system, acknowledging the requirements, making backups if need be and proceed. You are expected to have some experience in installing Windows as well as Linux, at least Ubuntu in this case, and some courage. But first let’s make some concepts clear.

Concepts

We don’t want to lie to you: any task that involves advanced partitioning schemes isn’t for the faint of heart. But it isn’t rocket science either, and we’re here to help you. Various operating systems have various partitioning schemes but since the partitioning concepts of the PC are so “smart”, there are some things you should know. Every OS that I know of that is installable on the PC requests a primary partition to boot from. Linux is the most flexible in this respect, as you can have its’ /boot or / on a logical partition, but I’m not so sure if your BIOS will be able to boot from it. Windows, Solaris and the BSDs absolutely demand primary partitions, with Windows being the most “oppressive” in that respect. So whenever you install a dual-boot system with Windows involved, install it first, as it won’t ask you and overwrite the MBR. If you want to dual-boot Linux and BSD or Solaris, install Linux first. Now that we settled this, we will insist you make backups if you have other partitions on the target disk, and you still need them. Our setup will start with a blank drive, and we’ll show you how it’s done.

Installing Windows 7

As said, you need to install Windows first, and this is more than an advice, and it doesn’t apply only to Windows 7 either. We suggest you don’t try over-complicated setups, because your chances of having a system actually up and running in decent time are decreasing rapidly that way. Take note that this article is not a step-by-step how-to on installing Windows 7 and/or Ubuntu. We will only refer to the parts that involve partitioning for a successful dual-boot experience. So, when you will get to Windows’ partitioning screen, here’s a screenshot for you to get an idea:

So, since Windows asks for a minimal primary partition size of more than 12 GB (!) , I gave it that, it auto-created it’s system one and left me the rest of the disk empty and blank. After installing finished successfully, I was prepared for the tricky part: installing Linux. No, I’m just kidding, it’s as simple as it can be.

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This short config will show you how to install Spotify client on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux. Let’s start by adding a spotify repository:

echo 'deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 13B00F1FD2C19886
apt-get update

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Introduction

If you ever wanted to have a personal robot then you are reading a correct article. This tutorial is a brief demonstration on how easily you can configure your personal or company robot, then soon after, connect it with one of available adapters like: shell, campfire, hipchat, irc, gtalk or skype. In this tutorial I’m going to teach you how to set up Hubot with its default adapter Shell. Although it’s the simplest option, it’s the solid foundation for your future modifications.
Correctly configured and connected Hubot can dramatically improve and reduce employee efficiency as well as give your company lots of fun. Additionally, It can provide your team with the newest rss feeds or send crucial notifications. Keep in mind, that Hubot is developed by Github team, so it’s next pros for spending a while on investigations.

So what is Hubot ?

Hubot is open source, written in CoffeeScript on Node.js. It can be easily deployed on PaaS platforms like Heroku. Hubot comes preinstalled with several core scripts like math, ping, help, translate or youtube.
Additionally you can visit community repository which provides tons of other interesting scripts (i.a: ascii, coin, deploy, dice or jenkins). If this list still doesn’t meet your expectations, feel free to write your own script using CoffeScript.
As a starter I wanted to present few examples which I hope will bring some light to this topic.

Hubot> hubot convert me 56MB KB
Hubot> 57 344 kilobytes
Hubot> hubot mustache me linuxconfig.org
Hubot> http://mustachify.me/2?src=http://img1.tuicool.com/aqi6r52.jpg#.png
Hubot> hubot translate me praktyczne
Hubot> "praktyczne" is Polish for " Practical "
Hubot> hubot image me niagara falls
Hubot> http://www.niagarafallslive.com/images/HorseshoefromSkylon.jpg#.png
Hubot> hubot convert me 5 years days
Hubot> 1 826.21099 days
Hubot> hubot math me 2(3+7)/4
Hubot> 5
Hubot> hubot die
Hubot> Goodbye, cruel world.

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Sure, VirtualBox is a popular solution for quick and easy virtualization on Linux, but KVM can provide a more robust and efficient solution with minimal configuration. With the use of tools like Virt-Manager, it can be just as easy to use.

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