March 18th, 2010
Filezilla is a fully featured free open source File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client for file transfers. It has cross platform support and is also my preferred FTP client for both Mac and Linux use.
While it usually works flawlessly, occasionally I have found remote servers that no matter what I try, they just wont work with Filezilla. In this case I use CoreFTP which is also free.
If you want to set up a FTP server, there is also FileZilla Server which is also free and simple to configure and use. It has a similar feel to Bullet Proof FTP Server but doesnt have the cost. It also works very well.
Filezilla is available from http://filezilla-project.org/
Filezilla user interface
January 6th, 2010
If you have personal or sensitive business information, especially on a portable device such as a laptop, USB stick or portable hard drive, you should consider encrypting this data. If you lose any of these devices, any un-encrypted data on them can quickly and easily fall into the wrong hands. One solution is a free and relatively easy to use encryption utility called TrueCrypt which can encrypt to some of the most secure levels of encryption available.
You have a couple of encryption options from complete system encrytion (fully secured laptop), an entire physical drive or the more simple and user friendly encrypted virtual hard drive which is simply a file on your device that appears as a hard drive when you put in your password. You decide what data will be stored in the encrypted file. It is not as secure as a fully encrypted system but is a far better option than nothing at all and will take an enormous amount of effort to decrypt without the right password. I generally have an encrypted volume on any portable device and any personal or important information sits in that. I also keep the TrueCrypt installer on an unencrypted part of the drive so I can install it if required (I also use a portable version that does not need to be installed)
Windows Vista and Windows 7 high end versions (Ultimate) have BitLocker encryption built in if you want to encrypt your laptop. While this is built in, you have to have bought the expensive OS’s and the encrypted data is not as flexible. With a TrueCrypt “Volume”, it can be mounted on pretty much any operating system (Including Linux and Mac) and can be put on a USB stick or portable hard drive which makes it portable. It cannot be read unless the right password is used.
With encryption though, the end user is the most likely weak point.
TrueCrypt can be downloaded from http://www.truecrypt.org/
December 2nd, 2009
An alternative to expensive Microsoft server licences and higher hardware requirements is to use Linux as your server platform. Most server functions can easily be performed by free (yes free, really) Linux servers. This includes company firewalls, file and print servers, web servers, email servers, authentication, database servers, proxy servers, storage servers (such as Openfiler) etc. If it can be done on a server, more than likely, the function can be done for free with Linux. There are commercial Linux server releases such as Suse and Red Hat which are not free but these come with support etc. Most of the high end server manufacturers offer Linux out of the box (HP, IBM, Dell and others)
Most Linux servers have far smaller hardware requirements than Windows servers and will happily run on older hardware. Most of them also only have a terminal interface though rather than a nice graphical interface so configuration and maintenance can be difficult for staff familiar with Windows servers only. There are tools available to make configuration easier. Interaction with Windows PC’s is made possible with a system called SAMBA so the end user does not even realise their servers are not Windows.
If you find the idea of using something a bit unknown worries you, you may be interested to know that (according to a Wikipedia article), over 85% of the worlds super computers run Linux distribution of some description and the big movies studios all use Linux servers for movie production. A lot of web servers that serve you up your internet content (including this site) are also all hosted with Linux servers.
If you want to set up a free Linux server, stick with one of the main distributions such as OpenSuse, Ubuntu or Fedora to make sure you have a wide user base to draw support from. My development Linux server is Ubuntu running under VMWare.
December 2nd, 2009
Linux as an operating system is moving out of the server and IT geek arena into more mainstream user friendly graphical desktop versions. Ubuntu is one such Linux distribution that is more user focussed and comes ready to go with most office, internet, email and entertainment needs covered with pre-installed free software . Linux operating systems are free to use for either personal or commercial use and with only minimal training, most business PC users would be able to make the change without too many challenges. Ubuntu has a “release” every 6 months, usually in April and October of each year. Hardware support is generally good and with a little perseverance and web searching, a user can usually find that they can do anything on Linux that they could do on Windows. The real power of Linux though is not in its graphical environment but its underlying service power and ability to be controlled via a command line terminal session.
Usually though, MS Windows is supplied with most name brand PC’s so unless you have a compelling reason to buy white box generic PC’s with no software or you have a fundamental aversion to Microsoft, Windows will remain the operating system of choice for most small to medium enterprises.
Other commonly used Linux desktop releases include (but are certainly not limited to):
These are all based on one of the three distributions below:
If you want to give Linux a go, the best options are Ubuntu (Debian based), Fedora (Red Hat based) or OpenSuse (Slackware based). My personal preference is Ubuntu. These all come as easy to install and easy to use distributions packed with useful software. Once you get used to an underlying distribution, it is easier to stick with it, they each do some things differently. Most Linux installations are available as a “Live CD”which allows you to boot from a CD to try out Linux on your hardware without having to install it or you can dual boot with Windows if you have some unallocated space on your hard drive (you can make some with various boot CD disk partition tools if you dont have any).
