Sunday, August 26, 2012

a good idea

The now-dormant distribution Pardus Linux had a utility called Kaptan for helping users to customize a fresh Pardus installation. An article over at LinuxBSDos.com discusses Chakra GNU/Linux's Kapudan, a port of the Kaptan utility. The article, "Every distribution should have its own Kapudan," includes some nice screenshots that show Kapudan in action, beginning with this one:




Should every distro have something like this? I'm not sure about that. Some people might see it as too much "hand-holding." But looking over the screenshots, I do think that it's an excellent idea, especially for distros that cater to folks new to Linux -- Linux Mint comes to mind.

The "Cancel" button at the lower-left of each screen hints that it may be easy to bypass the Kapudan set-up utility. I can imagine myself either taking advantage of Kapudan or clicking "Cancel" and going directly to the default desktop.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised to see other distros doing something like this. Why not?

found some good ones

Just completed this one:

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. I enjoyed the story, but didn't like that it's part of a trilogy, so I don't think I'll read the other two books. I might check out the movie, though.


Still working on these:

Journal of a Mountain Man, James Clyman (edited by Linda M. Hasselstrom). I stumbled upon this one at a thrift store; the writings of James Clyman, describing his travels and adventures on the plains and in the mountains of the North American West in the 1800s.

Telling New Mexico: A New History, edited by Marta Weigle. This one was in the stacks at the Albuquerque Public Library, downtown. Here's what it says on the back cover:

This extensive volume presents New Mexico history from its prehistoric beginnings to the present in essays by forty-five prominent scholars and writers representing diverse disciplines including anthropology, Native American and Chicano studies, history and geography.


jump!

What a fun, summertime photo! Found this one at annarbor.com. This is from Saturday at the Parkridge Community Center Summerfest in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

new stuff

They're calling it a "quarterly" update, but six months after PCLinuxOS 2012.02, the next PCLOS maintenance release, version 2012.08, is finally out. To get info and download one of the .iso's, see this page. If you're already running PCLOS and have already updated to KDE 4.8.3, you don't need to install PCLOS 2012.08, unless you want a clean start.

Also, Anthony Nordquist has announced the first development build of SalineOS 2.0, based on Debian Wheezy. SalineOS comes with the Xfce desktop environment. Still a lot of work to go on this one; information and downloads can be found here.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

a bit about man

A few tips about Linux man pages:


See man man for general info on this topic.




Linux man pages are displayed by the less program, which is important to remember for quickly getting around inside of a man page. See man less.

For a keyboard reference, type h within a man page. This will bring up the “summary of less commands.”

To search for string in a man page, type a forward slash (/) followed by the string, then press Enter:

/string [Enter]

All instances of string will be highlighted. Toggle this highlighting by pressing Esc, then u.

If you press n, the page will go to the next line containing string. Shift+n will take you to the previous line containing string. Those lines will be at the top of the page.

To quit a man page, type q. The same thing will get you out of the “summary of less commands.”


Press the up arrow or down arrow to move back or forward one line at a time.

Press PageUp or PageDown to move back or forward one page at a time.

Press the Home key to go to the beginning of the document, and the End key to go to the end of the document.

Here's a table of commands and keys, from tuxfiles.org:


Command / keyAction
e, j, Enter, or Downmove forward one line
y, k, or Upmove backward one line
f, Space, or Page Downmove forward one page
b, or Page Upmove backward one page
/characterssearch the manual page for the specified characters
qquit


(Source for the above table: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/manpages.html)


All Linux distros include man pages (as far as I know), but you can also find Linux man pages online. For example, you can easily find the man page for the ls command by typing man ls in your search bar. Or, do a search using the terms linux man pages, and you'll find results for different sites that contain man pages, and other info about them.

If you use Duck Duck Go, there's a !bang command that will take you directly to a man page. For example, for the man page for the cal command, type !man cal in Duck Duck Go's search bar.

alphabetical order?

In my post just a few tweaks (August 11, 2012), I showed the contents of my (then) current ~/.fluxbox/init file. Later, I wondered if it wouldn't be easier find things in that file if the lines were put in alphabetical order. Why aren't they in alphabetical order in the first place? What would happen if I did it?

So I made a back-up copy of my init file, and then I sorted it. By the way, you can do something like this quickly by using the sort command (see man sort).

So, I haven't seen where sorting it causes any problems. Yet. Anyway, here's my new ~/.fluxbox/init file from Mepis 11 (I did move a few lines around after sorting):


session.screen0.allowRemoteActions: false
session.screen0.autoRaise: true
session.screen0.clickRaises: true
session.screen0.clientMenu.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.colPlacementDirection: TopToBottom
session.screen0.defaultDeco: NORMAL
session.screen0.demandsAttentionTimeout: 500
session.screen0.edgeSnapThreshold: 10
session.screen0.focusModel: ClickFocus
session.screen0.focusNewWindows: true
session.screen0.followModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.fullMaximization: false
session.screen0.iconbar.alignment: Left
session.screen0.iconbar.iconTextPadding: 10l
session.screen0.iconbar.iconWidth: 70
session.screen0.iconbar.mode: {static groups}
session.screen0.iconbar.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.maxDisableMove: false
session.screen0.maxDisableResize: false
session.screen0.maxIgnoreIncrement: true
session.screen0.menu.alpha: 200
session.screen0.menuDelay: 200
session.screen0.menuDelayClose: 200
session.screen0.menuMode: Delay
session.screen0.noFocusWhileTypingDelay: 0l
session.screen0.opaqueMove: true
session.screen0.overlay.capStyle: CapNotLast
session.screen0.overlay.joinStyle: JoinMiter
session.screen0.overlay.lineStyle: LineSolid
session.screen0.overlay.lineWidth: 1
session.screen0.rootCommand: ~/.fluxbox/autostart.sh
session.screen0.rowPlacementDirection: LeftToRight
session.screen0.showwindowposition: true
session.screen0.slit.acceptKdeDockapps: true
session.screen0.slit.alpha: 255
session.screen0.slit.autoHide: false
session.screen0.slit.layer: Dock
session.screen0.slit.maxOver: false
session.screen0.slit.onhead: 0
session.screen0.slit.placement: RightBottom
session.screen0.strftimeFormat: %a %b %d  %R
session.screen0.tab.placement: TopLeft
session.screen0.tab.width: 64
session.screen0.tabFocusModel: ClickToTabFocus
session.screen0.tabs.intitlebar: true
session.screen0.tabs.maxOver: false
session.screen0.tabs.usePixmap: true
session.screen0.titlebar.left: Stick
session.screen0.titlebar.right: Minimize Maximize Close
session.screen0.toolbar.alpha: 255
session.screen0.toolbar.autoHide: false
session.screen0.toolbar.height: 0
session.screen0.toolbar.layer: Dock
session.screen0.toolbar.maxOver: false
session.screen0.toolbar.onhead: 0
session.screen0.toolbar.placement: BottomCenter
session.screen0.toolbar.tools: prevworkspace, workspacename, nextworkspace, iconbar, prevwindow, nextwindow, systemtray, clock
session.screen0.toolbar.visible: true
session.screen0.toolbar.widthPercent: 90
session.screen0.tooltipDelay: 500
session.screen0.userFollowModel: SemiFollow
session.screen0.window.focus.alpha: 255
session.screen0.window.unfocus.alpha: 200
session.screen0.windowMenu: /home/steve/.fluxbox/windowmenu
session.screen0.windowPlacement: RowMinOverlapPlacement
session.screen0.workspaces: 4
session.screen0.workspaceNames: one,two,three,four,
session.screen0.workspacewarping: true
session.appsFile: ~/.fluxbox/apps
session.autoRaiseDelay: 250
session.cacheLife: 5l
session.cacheMax: 200l
session.colorsPerChannel: 4
session.configVersion: 10
session.doubleClickInterval: 250
session.forcePseudoTransparency: true
session.ignoreBorder: false
session.keyFile: ~/.fluxbox/keys
session.menuFile: ~/.fluxbox/menu
session.slitlistFile: /home/steve/.fluxbox/slitlist
session.styleFile: /home/steve/.fluxbox/styles/Steve-BlueNight
session.styleOverlay: ~/.fluxbox/overlay
session.tabsAttachArea: Window
session.tabPadding: 0

Saturday, August 11, 2012

best tool for the job

No matter what distro I'm using, it's common for me to use applications that are not native to that distro's desktop environment.

Right now, I'm logged into Mepis 11. The default environment is KDE, but I'm logged into a Fluxbox session. Here, I prefer to use xfce4-terminal instead of Konsole because Fluxbox's transparency works with xfce4-terminal, but not with Konsole.



Mepis 11 comes with Firefox. I prefer to use Chromium, but the version from the repos is still at 13.0.782.220, so I installed google-chrome-stable (now at version 21.0.1180.75)  from outside of the repos, and I use that instead.

KWrite is the default text editor, but I prefer to use Geany.



For file management, KDE has Dolphin, which I use most of the time, and Konqueror. But I also have Thunar (from Xfce) and PCManFM (from LXDE) installed.



I don't use either of those very much, though.

Gwenview is the native image viewer, but I also like Geeqie and Mirage.



The idea is to use what you feel is the best available tool for the job. Linux gives you tons of choices; you don't have to only use applications that come with your distro's default desktop environment.

Unless you really want to.