Getting Started with x86-64 Assembly on Linux

In this post we will learn how to assemble and link a simple "Hello World" application written in x86-64 assembly for the Linux operating system. If you have experience with Intel IA-32 assembly and you want to quickly get adjusted to the x86-64 world then this post is for you. If you're trying to learn the assembly language from scratch then I'm afraid this post is not for you. There are many great resources online on 32-bit assembly. One of my favourite documents is Paul Carter's PC Assembly Language, which I highly recommend if you're moving your first steps into the assembly language. If you then decide to come back to this post, you should be able to read it with no problems, since the tools that I will employ here are the same used in Carter's book.

The Nest of Heliopolis PPA repository on Launchpad gets updates after a while

Recently I managed to find the time to update a couple of new packages from my Personal Package Archive (PPA) on Launchpad. For those of you who don't know where to find it, click here. If you want to automatically get updates as they come out, you can install it on your Ubuntu by simply issuing

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:phoenix1987/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update

from your terminal. In brief, the changes involved Sopcast Player Plus, a fork of SopCast Player by Jason Scheunemann, and gtumbler, the application I have developed in the Summer 2012 as part of the first edition of the Ubuntu App Showdown. So let me now give you the details of what has changed with this new releases.