Forem: Hamdi Jr

How to Live Boot Kali Linux

Hamdi Jr — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:14:54 +0000

We all find it difficult to use virtual machines or dual-booting Kali Linux just for testing purposes. In my case, I'm already dual booting and don't want to mess around with virtual machines and I have the perfect solution for it- Live Booting. Before we begin, let's talk about live booting.

What is live booting?

The concept of live booting is quite simple. You can install a live distro on your USB and boot from it without making any changes to your hard disk. Each time you boot from this live USB it will be a fresh distro with no data from previous use. But if you want to save your data then with a little bit of work you can add persistence which will act as storage.

Requirements for live booting:

A USB stick with a minimum of 8GB of memory
Stable internet connection

Advantages of dual-booting:

It makes no changes to the hard drive or installed OS, and to go back to normal operations, you simply remove the USB and restart the system.
You can use all your system resources
You can take your OS to any PC you use.
You can either choose to start fresh after restarting or continue previous work by adding persistence.

Let's start live booting

We already talked about live booting and its advantages. Without wasting any more time let's start doing :

Downloading Kali live image - The first step is to download the distro. We need the Kali Linux(live) to flash our USB.
Flashing our USB stick - Next we need to flash this USB stick with our kali live image. To do this, you need a tool called balenaEtcher. Download this for the respective operating system you are using now.

if you are using Linux, extract the downloaded file.
- Now open Etcher and select flash from file and choose our downloaded kali live .iso file
- Click on select target and choose your USB stick
- Click on Flash. After waiting for some time the flashing process will finish and you are ready to go.

Setting up persistence - If you don't want Kali to save any data and start fresh every time you restart, then this step is not needed. In this method, we are creating a partition called persistence which will act as a hard drive to store data.

This step is divided into two parts for Windows and Linux. For Windows, you need miniTool partition wizard. Let's begin:

Persistence for Windows - We are using minitool partition wizard for this step.
- Launch the application, right-click on your application and click on Move/Resize.

Use the small black arrow keys to shrink the partition size and click OK. A large new grey chunk of unallocated space appears This is the size of your persistence.

Right-click on the unallocated space and click on create. Now create the partition as primary, File system: Ext4 and label: persistence. Now click OK and click on Apply in the top left corner. It will take some time to finish.

Persistence for Linux - We don't have any tools for this step. You can use disk which comes with the distro. You can also use GParted if you want.
- Open the disk tool and select your USB disk. You can see there is a partition called free space. Select the free space and click on the + button.
- Now click on next and name the partition as persistence and type: Ext4. Now click on create and wait for it to finish.

We have successfully created the partition and we are ready to move on.

Configuring the Partition - We are at the final step now. Once the partition manager is finished, reboot your computer and boot it up from your USB drive. Choose the option "Live USB Persistence" and wait for the distro to boot up.

Now open the terminal and type in the following:
* mkdir -p /mnt/my_usb - making a file system to mount
* mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/my_usb- mounting the filesystem
* echo "/ union" > /mnt/my_usb/persistence.conf - adding the configuration file.
* umount /dev/sdb2 && reboot - unmounting and restarting
Success!! We have added persistence and if you make any changes and restart you can still see the changes. You are now able to save stuff everywhere on your Linux filesystem, and every configuration you make locally will be available everywhere you plug it in

Conclusion - I hope this blog helped someone out there. I would recommend this for someone who is trying a new distro or for someone who is learning. If you find any difficulties or have any suggestions please mention them in the comment section. Hope you enjoyed the blog.

How to Make Vim a Python IDE - Best IDE for Python.

Hamdi Jr — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 15:47:00 +0000

Hello everyone,
I'm back with another Linux tutorial. We are going to talk about something which is also my personal favorite - VIM.
We are all fed up with iDE's and text editors which takes years to open up and setting up these things takes more time than writing the whole code. That's why I have come up with the best solution.

What's Vim?

Before we go any further, let's talk about what vim is. Vim is a very lightweight text editor that can be customized however we want. It normally runs in the terminal and is very easy to learn.

Why Vim?

As I mentioned earlier, Vim is very fast and highly customizable. Also, who doesn't want to work on an IDE which opens up within a second? Another reason to choose vim is because of its keyboard shortcuts. While using vim you don't need to touch the mouse. This will reduce your coding time by half. I'm sure by the end of the day, you will be a fan. Let's get started now.

After this tutorial, our vim will look like :

Installing Vim

Vim installation is a very easy step. For now, I'm going to focus on Linux installation but I'll provide the links for other operating systems.
Windows - Vim in windows

Mac - We are going to install vim using Homebrew. Open your terminal and type:

$ brew update
$ brew install vim

This will install vim on your machine.

Linux - Installing vim in Linux is very easy. Open your terminal and type:

For Debian based distros:

$ apt-get remove vim-tiny
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install vim

For Arch based distros:

pacman -S vim

For fedora:

dnf install vim-enhanced

Installing Plugin Manager

Vim comes with a native plugin manager but we have something better than that. We are going to install Vundle. It makes installing and updating packages trivial.
Let's install vundle:

Open your terminal and type :

$ git clone https://github.com/gmarik/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

This will clone the vundle repository in your machine.

Next step is the vim configuration file(vimrc). You will need this file throughout the tutorial. Do the following in your terminal:

$ cd ~
$ touch ~/.vimrc

Add vundle to your vim configuration. Go to your terminal and type:

$ nano ~/.vimrc

this will open the vimrc file. Now copy the code below and paste it there.

filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialize
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'

" All of your Plugins must be added before the following line
call vundle#end()
filetype plugin indent on

Now ctrl+o to write the file then press Enter and finally ctrl+x to exit the editor.

Now let's install vundle plugin inside vim. fire up your terminal and type vim and now vim will load up. Now type :PluginInstall and press Enter.

Making Vim an IDE

Now comes the best part - Installing all plugins to make vim an IDE. This step is very easy, we are going to add a line in our vimrc and go to vim and install it. Dont worry this may look a bit confusing but it's very easy. Let's get started :

Open your terminal type sudo nano ~/.vimrc and clear everything there and then paste the code:

set nocompatible              " required
filetype off                  " required
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()
Plugin 'gmarik/Vundle.vim'

" All Plugins

Plugin 'mhartington/oceanic-next'
Plugin 'tmhedberg/SimpylFold'
Plugin 'vim-scripts/indentpython.vim'
Plugin 'vim-syntastic/syntastic'
Plugin 'nvie/vim-flake8'
Plugin 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plugin 'jistr/vim-nerdtree-tabs'
Plugin 'kien/ctrlp.vim'
Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
Plugin 'zxqfl/tabnine-vim'
Plugin 'frazrepo/vim-rainbow'
Plugin 'vim-airline/vim-airline'
Plugin 'vim-airline/vim-airline-themes'
Plugin 'davidhalter/jedi-vim'
Plugin 'ycm-core/YouCompleteMe'


call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required


" setting horizontal and vertical splits
set splitbelow
set splitright

"split navigations
nnoremap <C-J> <C-W><C-J>
nnoremap <C-K> <C-W><C-K>
nnoremap <C-L> <C-W><C-L>
nnoremap <C-H> <C-W><C-H>

" Enable folding
set foldmethod=indent
set foldlevel=99

" Enable folding with the spacebar
nnoremap <space> za


" Setting up indendation

au BufNewFile, BufRead *.py
    \ set tabstop=4 |
    \ set softtabstop=4 |
    \ set shiftwidth=4 |
    \ set textwidth=79 |
    \ set expandtab |
    \ set autoindent |
    \ set fileformat=unix

au BufNewFile, BufRead *.js, *.html, *.css
    \ set tabstop=2 |
    \ set softtabstop=2 |
    \ set shiftwidth=2

highlight BadWhitespace ctermbg=red guibg=darkred
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.py,*.pyw,*.c,*.h match BadWhitespace /\s\+$/

let g:ycm_autoclose_preview_window_after_completion=1
map <leader>g  :YcmCompleter GoToDefinitionElseDeclaration<CR>

" setting up pyflakes

let python_highlight_all=1
syntax on

" nerd tree settings
let NERDTreeIgnore=['\.pyc$', '\~$'] "ignore files in NERDTree

" setting up line numbering
set nu

" Rainbow bracket settings
let g:rainbow_active = 1

Just like we did before press ctrl+o to write and Enter to save. Then press Ctrl+x to exit.

The next step is to install everything using the plugin manager. Open the terminal and type vim. Now, install the plugin by typing :PluginInstall. This will take some time but it will install all the plugins.
The ycmserver error - when you open vim you may encounter some errors but don't worry, it's very easy to fix it. open your terminal and type:

$ pip install cmake
$ cd ~/.vim/bundle/YouCompleteMe
$ ./install.py

Let's set up a color scheme for our IDE. We are going to install the oceanic theme for now. fire up your terminal and type:

$ git clone https://github.com/mhartington/oceanic-next.git
$ cd oceanic-next
$ cp colors/OceanicNext.vim ~/.vim/colors

Now open your vimrc and add the color schemes. To do this open your terminal and type :

$ nano ~/.vimrc

this will open your vimrc file. Now paste the code below there:

" Theme
 syntax enable
" for vim 7
 set t_Co=256

" for vim 8
 if (has("termguicolors"))
  set termguicolors
 endif

colorscheme OceanicNext

Now Ctrl+o to write and press Enter to save it. Press Ctrl+x to exit.

Nicely done guys. We made vim a powerful yet lightweight ide.

Features of our new Vim IDE

We did so many things but I did not explain what we were doing or what features we added to our Vim-Ide. Trust me, you guys are going to be surprised when you hear the features of your new ide. Let's get into it now.

Split layout - If you open a file with :sp , you split the layout vertically (opening the new file below the current file). If you reverse the keys to :vs , you get a horizontal split (opening the new file to the right of your current file).Key combos: Ctrl + j move to the split below, Ctrl + kmove to the split above, Ctrl + l move to the split to the right,Ctrl + h move to the split to the left.

Code Folding - Modern IDEs can fold the codes at functions and import statements, by showing the first line only. You can also do it here by pressing the Space key.

Autocomplete - Just like any other IDE, vim can predict what you are going to do next.

Super Searching - You can navigate to any file or any tag just by pressing Ctrl + p. This is one of my favorite features of vim.

Syntax Checking/Highlighting - After you write the code in vim. Our flake-8 and syntastic plugin will highlight all the errors in your code and also tell you how to fix it.

We have added almost every feature of ide to our vim. You can now code in a feature-rich ide without having to wait an hour to open up.

Small Intro to Vim

I believe some of you have experience using vim. It's okay even if you don't have any, I will give you a small intro of the basics.

Modes - Vim is usually opened in command mode, this means that you can write anything but you do all other commands here like we installed the plugins. Commands usually start with :. In order to change from command mode to writing mode press i. You are now in insert mode, you can write everything here and go back to command mode by pressing Esc.
Writing, saving, and exiting - When we change to insert mode from command mode(i) we can edit the code. After we finish, we need to save this and exit, but how?
To do this, you need to go back to command mode by pressing Esc and press :w to write everything. you can exit the editor by using the command :q. If we need to exit without saving, use the command :q!.
Additional resource - If you need to learn more about vim and its features, go to vimcasts.

Conclusion

Vim is something every programmer should try at least once. I hope this blog helped someone or encouraged someone to try it out. There are tons of plugins out there, go find yours and try them out. If you find any difficulties, please let me know in the comments. That's it for today and I will be back with another tutorial soon.

How To Install Pop Shell Window Tiling Extension On Ubuntu 20.04 Or 20.10, Fedora, Debian, And Arch Linux Or Manjaro

Hamdi Jr — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 15:43:59 +0000

Ever wondered how these linux power users customize their desktop.The beauty is that in Linux, it is easy to become a power user because everything is customizable. So you can become one too. In this blog we are going to talk about tiling window managers. Ever get tired of using your mouse to open a minimized window or copy pasting code from your browser to editor. This step will take some of your precious time because you either need to close or minimize the first window. This is where the tiling window manager comes in.

What is tiling window manager?

When you install linux there is a lot of software that comes with it, A window manager is one among these software. Usually the window manager that comes built-in is a stacking window manager. This means windows are stacked on top of each other. Other than this, there is another window manager called Tiling Window Manager . In this window manager, they position windows in tiles or grids (like in a phone’s gallery application) and stacks or floating layouts etc. A tiling window manager is a graphical application that helps you organize your desktop windows and gives you the extra feature of controlling your desktop with only your keyboard.

This is what a tiling window manager looks like:

Now let's talk about the advantages of tiling window managers:

With a tiling window manager, you get a window manager that positions your windows for you as you open them, and all you get to do is control the layouts in which you want your windows to be placed.
Also the tiling window manager has its keyboard configurations. This means you can control the entire desktop with keyboard shortcuts.
Within a week you will learn to use this window manager and your fingers will develop muscle memory of the keyboard shortcuts. Therefore switching between windows feels like an automatic process.
This will definitely improve your workflow and save your time.

Popular tiling window managers

There are many tiling window managers but among them there are a few popular wm. Some of these well known tiling window managers are:

Awesome WM
i3wm
bwspm
Pop Shell
Xmonad

We are going to install Pop shell as it is convenient and easy. Another reason I chose Pop Shell is because it comes as an extension and you can always return to your stacking window mode within a second.Also we don't need to change our desktop environment either. In case you have doubts about this, I recommend installing this and trying it once.

Without further ado, let's get it into it

The distro I'm using is Ubuntu 20.10 but it works with all debian based distros.

Pop Shell was introduced by system76 for pop os but they made it available for linux distros . Compared to other display managers, the installation step is very easy. As I said earlier, we are installing it as an extension, therefore you need to enable extensions in your tweaks tool. Now let's start the installation process:

Install all the dependencies - We need to install some dependencies in order to install and run this extension. To do that, open your terminal and type in the following command

sudo apt install node-typescript make

Cloning shell repository - After doing that, the next step is to clone the official github repository. So once again go to your terminal and type

git clone https://github.com/pop-os/shell

Installing the extension - The next step is to install this extension. So on your terminal type :

cd shell

This will move you to the shell folder and you can now type this code in your terminal:

make local-install

Last step will install the extension in most distros. But in my case, I faced an error :

make: *** [Makefile:61: enable] Error 2

Don't worry, this error is very easy to solve. You just
need to reboot your system and the error will be
resolved.Now repeat the second step and it will be
installed without any trouble.

Restart your device - After successfully completing all the steps mentioned above, you just need to restart your device and everything is done

Using Pop shell

Using the pop shell is very easy. You will find a new icon at the topbar. Click there and toggle tile windows option. The windows will be tilled now. In case you want to go back to stack window mode, click the extension again and turn it off.

Uninstalling Pop Sell

In case you did not like the pop shell or you want to remove it for another reason, follow these steps:

Open your terminal and type in the following:

cd shell

this will move you to the shell folder and now type the following:

make uninstall

This step will remove the extension from your device.

Some useful links :

If you have successfully installed the pop shell and are going to continue with it, I'll be providing you with some links that may prove useful to you:

Conclusion

Tiling window managers are awesome. But this is not for everyone, so I recommend trying this out once and you can always go back if you are having trouble.If you are someone who needs to improve workflow then this is for you. But if you are someone who would like to stick to the basics and doesn't want to ruin the existing workflow then I suggest you use this. Anyway, it's up to you whether you want to continue or not.

I hope this blog proved useful to you. This is the result of my continuous research and hardwork. If you face any trouble, feel free to contact me at neoblaze24@gmail.com .I would be glad to help you out.
Bye for now.

Minimalist Ubuntu 20.04/20.10, Linux mint, debian Customization

Hamdi Jr — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 18:31:39 +0000

Hello World!!,

Everyone want their desktop to look cool or elegant.This not only improves the look of your desktop but also improves your workflow and creates an interest to work more on it. This were linux comes in, in my case its Ubuntu 20.10. But the same steps can be used on any debian based disto. Linux gives its user full control over his machine. We can customize linux however we want and its okay to mess up too, because you can always fix it or go back to previous.

I will give you screenshot of desktop after customization so that you can understand what we are doing.

This how a basic ubuntu 20.10 looks like:

So without further due lets get into it!

We need to install gnome tweak tools which allows us to customize our desktop. This very a very easy as well as important step.
In order to install this:

Open your terminal and paste this code into it

sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

The next step is to install themes and icon packs into our desktop. You can install the same themes, If you want to replicate my desktop. You have to do some things at first before installing themes.

First step to enable user themes from gnome extensions.
for that you need to got to:
User themes.Turn on the this extension and now you are ready to move to next step. If you have trouble with installing gnome extension, refer this extensions
The next step is to install ocs url which allows ypu to install themes easily. For that you need to go the this link
ocs url. Now click on download button and select debian package. If you have another distro like arch or fedora then click on the respective links. Next Step is to install the ocs url. For that you need to open terminal in the location where you have downloaded it, in my case its Downloads folder. After opening terminal type in:

sudo dpkg -i ocs-url_3.1.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

We are all set to install themes now.First theme we are going to install is Nordic. The installation step is quite simple, click on install button select nord bluish accent and now the ocs url will pop up and click on the install button.
The second step is to install orchis. The installation step is similar but this time you need to install orchis compact. Now we have to install an icon pack.For that we are going to install tela circle icon. Install it using the same method mentioned above. I installed tela circle blue but you can choose any from there.Install the cursor pack from layan and you can choose any variant. Now you need to select a wallpaper. You can either chose your own wallpaper or use mine.Link to my wallpaper is Wallpaper.If you Finish all these steps then you are ready to move on to next step.
Now we need to set these thing on our device using gnome tweak tools. Open tweaks from your application menu.
note: if you opened tweaks before installing themes you
need to close it and reopen again in order to show our
themes.
After opening tweaks go to appearance tab and change the following option:
Application -> Nordish-bluish-accent
Icons -> Tela-circle-icons
Shell -> Orchis-compact
Cursor -> Layan
Wallpaper -> choose the file from Downloads

The second step is over finally and hope you guys didn't have any trouble with it. Without further due lets move on to third step>

We are going to customize our dock in third step. This is a easy step and wont take much time. Lets get into it now:

For this you need to install an extension called Dash to dock dash-to-dock and turn it on.
Now open your tweaks. if you already opened it before then close it and open again. Go to extensions tab and find dash to dock and now click on settings. Now do the following changes:
- change position on screen to bottom

  * Go to Launchers tab and turn off *show trash* can 
     and select *show application button at beginning of 
     dock*

   * Now go to appearance and select *use built-in theme*

Well done! you have successfully completed step 3

We are almost finished now and the final step is to tweak the terminal. We are slightly going to customize our terminal. But don't worry because i'm going to post a tutorial on customizing terminal soon. Lets get into it now:

We need to install something called screenfetch for this step. So open your terminal and type in the following :

sudo apt-get install screenfetch

After it is installed type in :

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

now go to the bottom and type > screenfetch now press ctrl+x and press y. Close your terminal and reopen it. You can see your pc specs and os logo in there.

Your terminal now look like this:

That's all for now guys. This was my first blog, please forgive me if there is any mistake. Hope you enjoyed and found my tutorial helpful. This was a beginner friendly tutorial and I'll post another advanced tutorial on customization. In case you had any issue with this, feel free to contact me on neoblaze24@gmail.com. I will happy to help you out.Once again thank you for reading my blog.
Bye!!