The Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a client-server application designed to manage the state of an Android Powered Device.

To install it in Linux, we have to get the Android SDK. We can do that by going to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and downloading the Linux version, by the time I wrote this was: android-sdk_r06-linux_86.tgz

And so I did:

wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r06-linux_86.tgz

Now we need to decompress the archive, we downloaded:

tar -zxvf android-sdk_r06-linux_86.tgz

Copy everything to /usr/bin so it can be used.

sudo cp android-sdk-linux_86/tools/adb /usr/bin

And as a final step, we need to chmod it, in order to make it executable.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin

The usage is simple, but I must note that adb must be executed as root, otherwise it will not see the device properly. Here-s an example, how to start it:

adb start-server
adb devices

If the installation went OK you should se something like:

List of devices attached
570071758f58	device
List of devices attached 570071758f58	device

If you have any questions please leave a comment. Hope you enjoyed my tutorial.

Here’s my code snippet for getting the current external IP address.

Method 1 (using curl):

This one requires curl to be installed.

curl -s  http://checkip.dyndns.org | grep -o '[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}'

Method 2 (using wget):

wget -q -O- http://checkip.dyndns.org | grep -o '[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}\.[0-9]\{1,3\}'

I recommend the second because it should work on any system.

Of course you can replace Dyndns with any “IP get” page like http://whatismyip.com.

A friend asked me yesterday why do I love Linux so much, so I decided to make a blog post out of it, to express my gratitude for this great operating system.

Probably the first thing you will notice when moving to a Linux distribution is the fact that everything works. When Windows promises “something” that usually something doesn’t really work that good. But hey, here comes open-source, with plenty of bugs fixed and features added everyday I’m sure you’ll get most of your box. Talking about that, it worked on any machine I used it on.

Eye-candy

In love with Microsoft’s Aero? Then you’ll never miss it ever again. Compiz Fusion has some mind blowing eye-candy, highly configurable and of course with a smaller memory consumption. You can choose from millions of themes, beat that Vista!

Software

I also find the installation process fun (this includes setting up applications and stuff like that). OK maybe I am geek, but it was so addictive. After installing Ubuntu, you are facing a gigantic application catalog, and with a few clicks you are all set to go.

It takes a few days to accommodate to the changes, but everything really works as it should, when you fully get the hang of it, you can do as much as everything.

What is your opinion on Linux?