Mostly CLI

Install Vim-outliner on K/Ubuntu

2010-05-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

I spoke of vim-outliner a few years ago and was recently reminded of it again while listening to the mintcast podcast regarding orgmode for emacs.

Orgmode seems to be fairly feature rich, but I never liked the whole key combination thing with emacs. To this day, I can't figured out how to close an emacs session. Vim just seems easier. It's a preference.

Vim-outliner doesn't seems to have all the features of orgmode on the great emacs OS, but it is good at what it does...outline. It seems to follow the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, instead of the emacs philosophy of cram as much as possible into an app. So I attempted to install it on my Kubuntu 9.10 machine and it's not as simple as an aptitude install. So, here is how to get vim-outliner installed and set up on a current version of K/Ubuntu.

$ aptitude install vim-vimoutliner

Make sure you have vim-addon-manager installed. If not install it. Then,

$ sudo vim-addons -w install vimoutliner

Finally, make sure you have the following in your ~/.vimrc file, if you don't already,

filetype plugin indent on

To start vim-outliner, simply open vim with any file with the extention .otl, such as:

vim file.otl

and you're good to go. Please visit my prior post on vim-outliner for a quick tutorial or use vim's help to access the documentation by typing ":help vo" in an open vim session.

Stop the Corruption! - Putty and Screen

2010-04-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

I use putty to make ssh connections to my home server when I'm forced to use MS Windows, such as when I'm at work. The first thing I do after connecting is start up screen, which opens several pre-assigned applications in "tabs". Putty's default settings seem to cause screen corruption with some applications, notably newsbeuter, finch, links, mc and hnb.

Not pretty.

This is simply fixed with 2 settings in putty. First, in the putty configuration tool go to "Terminal" and check the box for "Use background colour to erase screen". Then select "translation" found under the "Window" section and change the character set to "uft-8" using the drop down menu.

Here are the results:

Vim - Cut and Paste a Block of Text Between 2 Files

2010-04-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

Vim is my editor of choice, but I would never consider myself an expert. So when I wanted to copy text from one text file to another in vim, I was challenged. Although I was frustrated for a brief moment, I remembered uncle google and he helped me with my conundrum. So here is how you cut and paste a section of text from one text file to another using vim.

First open your first text file in vim. Scroll down to the first line of the block of text you wish to copy and press "ma" (that is m followed by a, without the quotation marks). "m" marks the beginning of your block. The "a" makes the assignment of copying the text to buffer "a".

Now scroll to the end of the block of text you wish to copy and press "y'a" (again without the quotes). The "y" yanks the text block. The single quote in the middle, I guess designates the end of the block and "a" again identifies the buffer being used.

Next open the second text file by typing ":split filename.txt" (Remember no quotes). This will open the second text file in a split vim session window. Scroll to the line where you would like the text pasted and press "p" (You should know, don't include the quotes). This will paste the block of text on the line below the current cursor position. Save and your done.

Please leave comments with other examples of cutting and pasting in vim.
Enjoy.

Newsbeuter and Google Reader

2010-04-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

If you go to the newsbeuter website you'll be told that it's the mutt of rss feed readers. It is text based and highly configurable. Newsbeuter is fairly easy to set up and configure. Just install newsbeuter using your distros package manager. It should be available on most distributions Ubuntu, Fedora, Opensuse, Arch, Slackware, Debian, etc.

Now that it's installed, just type newsbeuter in the terminal to start it. There's probably not much to see as we haven't added any RSS feeds yet, but I usually start an application before configuring it because usually there are configuration files that are created when an app first starts up. Press "q" to quit.

To add feeds open the ~/.newsbeuter/urls file and simply add your feed urls to that file. Save and close and you're good as gold. You can edit the ~/.newsbeuter/config file to customize your keybindings and other settings. See the man page for configuration options.

I recently learned that you can use newsbeuter to view your Google Reader feeds. To do this make sure you have the latest version of newsbeuter and simply add the following to your ~/.newsbeuter/config file.

urls-source "googlereader"
googlereader-login "your-googlereader-account"
googlereader-password "your-password"

Save and start newsbeuter. You now have your Google Reader Feeds.
Please see the newsbeuter documentation site for more configuration options.
Enjoy.

HTML Editors for Beginners

2010-03-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

In about two weeks, I'll begin teaching an HTML class and I'll need a good HTML editor with syntax highlighting. I need something cross platform as I know that most students will be using Windows and at least one will be using a MAC. I, of course, will be using Linux. I prefer using vim.

Vim is great as I can run it at the command line, in a GUI (gvim) and on any OS you can think of. Within vim you can activate html syntax highlighting by simply typing:

:set syntax=html

That will add html syntax highlighting for only that session of vim. You will need to add "syntax on" in your .vimrc file for highlighting to be permanent.

Now as much as I love vim, I'm not going to have my students use it. This is an HTML class for the absolute beginner and introducing vim to the class is a hurdle I don't want to jump over. So, I'm leaning towards having my students use bluefish. Bluefish has several cool features including running on all three major platforms.

Any other suggestions for an HTML editor for beginners? What features do you like? What are your thoughts regarding bluefish?

id3 - Managing mp3 Tags

2010-03-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

I listen to alot of podcast and very few of them actually use mp3 tags or they use tags that don't make sense to me. I have a sansa fuze media player which lists my podcast as "Season 3" or "Released as a Single" or simply "unknown". I mean how am I suppose to know what Season 3 is. Well, I've put a stop to the madness and use an application called id3 to change the mp3 tags, so I can have some sanity to my mp3 playlist.

One of my favorite podcast is for the TV show Lost, hosted by a father and son who discuss the show. The file name for the podcast is d66027dd-8873-2829-c731-97fcc5a62bb9.mp3. I know, but the name of the file really doesn't matter since the media player only really reads the tags associated with the file. To list the tags of the file:

id3 -l d66027dd-8873-2829-c731-97fcc5a62bb9.mp3

Which will give you the following output:

d66027dd-8873-2829-c731-97fcc5a62bb9.mp3:
Title : Lost Podcast (MP3): EP. 5.11 " Artist: Jeremiah Glatfelter
Album : Year: 2010, Genre: Unknown (255)
Comment:

My fuze displays this podcast as Jeremiah Glatfelter. Who the hell is Jeremiah? Maybe it's some inside joke or something, but the hosts of the show are Jay and Jack and that's what I would like displayed as the artist. So, to change the artist portion of the tag, I use the following:

id3 -a "Jay and Jack" d66027dd-8873-2829-c731-97fcc5a62bb9.mp3

Which outputs the following to show that the change has been made.

Title : Lost Podcast (MP3): EP. 5.11 " Artist: Jay and Jack
Album : Year: 2010, Genre: Unknown (255)
Comment:

Pretty straight forward. Here are the options to change the other aspects of the tags using the same syntax.

usage: id3 -[tTaAycg] `text' file1 [file2...]
id3 -d file1 [file2...]
id3 -l file1 [file2...]
id3 -L
id3 -v
-t Modifies a Title tag
-T Modifies a Track tag
-a Modifies an Artist tag
-A Modifies an Album tag
-y Modifies a Year tag
-c Modifies a Comment tag
-g Modifies a Genre tag
-l Lists an ID3 tag
-L Lists all genres
-R Uses an rfc822-style format for output
-d Deletes an ID3 tag
-h Displays this help info
-v Prints version info

Now you can tag to your hearts content.
enjoy.

My .bashrc File Part 5 - Pimping the Prompt

2010-03-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is the final installment of my .bashrc series. PS1 is a variable that allows you to change your prompt environment. Here is my setting as found in my .bashrc file which I use to get the prompt above.

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

The numbers in the brackets represents colors. The \u option is username and \h is hostname which defines the first part of my command prompt. The second part of my prompt is indentified with /w which displays my current path which is shown above in blue.

Your possibilities are limitless when it comes to customizing your prompt and I don't have time here to list and explain all the options available, especially when the detail is readily available with a simple google search. Nevertheless, here are some links you might find useful to help pimp your prompt.

10 examples with syntax explanation.

This IBM article is a great resource as well.

I hope this series has been useful. Please share your pimped command prompt in the comments.

My .bashrc File Part 4 - Alias'

2010-03-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

If you are unfamiliar with the alias command then you are missing out on an effective and efficient tool. Alias is a way to create a shortcut command in bash. You can take very long commands with several options or triggers and create your own shorthand equivalent of that long command. For Example, for me to get the weather for my local area using the weather-util application I would normally need to type:

weather -f --id=KSLC -c "Salt Lake City" -s UT

Well, that's way to long. I normally only want to know the weather in my local area, so I've created an alias for this long command.

alias weather='/usr/bin/weather -f --id=KSLC -c "Salt Lake City" -s UT'

This command essentially substitutes the longer command to display the weather for Salt Lake City with just the command "weather". I have several alias' in my .bashrc file to make my life easier.

# some ls aliases

alias ll='ls -l'

alias la='ls -A'

alias l='ls -CF'

#Information

alias weather='/usr/bin/weather -f --id=KSLC -c "Salt Lake City" -s UT'

alias gcalcli='gcalcli --cals all'

#For getting around

alias videos='cd /home/jared/Videos/ && ls'

alias pics='cd /home/jared/Pictures/ && ls'

alias music='cd /home/jared/Music/ && ls'

alias podcasts='cd /home/jared/Podcasts/ && ls'

alias dropbox='cd ~/Dropbox/ && ls'

alias documents='cd ~/Documents/ && ls'

alias notes='cd ~/Notes/ && ls'

alias manti='cd ~/Manti/jared/ && ls'

The first group of alias' are very common shortcuts for the "ls" command. The second group of alias' give me shortcuts for the weather and gcalcli applications which displays the weather and my google calendar information. Finally, the las group gives me shortcuts to commonly used directories. This saves me tons of time as I don't have to type out the complete path of a commonly used directory.

Please share some of your cool alias' that you have implemented.

You Know You're a Geek If.....

2010-03-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

.......YOU GET EXCITED ABOUT RAM!!!!!!!!!

I haven't been able to sleep at night for the last 3 days in anticipation of the RAM upgrade I ordered from newegg for my HP 1000 mini. The mini originally came with 1 GB RAM and I'm maxing it's compacity with 2 GB. The climatic release of tension came when my RAM (finally!) arrived and I could pop in the SODIMM into it's slot and gasp in awe at the increased performance from this baby.

Whew! What a rush.

My .bashrc File Part 3 - Making Life Easier

2010-03-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

A very common thing to do in the command line is to extract compressed files. Now as many of you probably know there are a dozen different compression methods out there. Let's say I have a .bz2, .7z, .gz and a .rar file and I don't want to think about which app to use and what option I need to extract my file. I just want my file uncompressed. Let's make life a little easier and insert the following into your .bashrc file.

#------Extraction of compressed files--------------
# from ARCH Wiki

extract () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) rar x $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xvf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xvjf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xvzf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
fi
}

Now when you need to uncompress a file, simply type "extract filename" and slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am. No thinking or looking up the correct syntax, all you are left with is an uncompressed file and isn't that all we really wanted?

What fun things are you hiding in your .bashrc file that makes life easier? Please share.

My .bashrc File Part 2 - Useful System Information

2010-03-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

In the last segment I discussed displaying some useful personal information using a function script within my .bashrc file. Today I'll discuss displaying useful system information. I have two funtions which display system information, which is set up very similar to my previous script.

This first script displays my internal IP address and my WAN IP address by simply extracting that information from ifconfig whenever I type "myip" in the terminal. Here is the script.

function myip() # get IP adresses
{
MY_IP=$(/sbin/ifconfig eth0 awk "/inet/ { print $2 } " sed -e s/addr://) \ MY_ISP=$(/sbin/ifconfig
eth0 awk "/P-t-P/ { print $3 } " sed -e s/P-t-P://)
}

This displays:

External IP:
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Internal IP:
192.168.0.97

This second function displays my machine statistics, file system space available, memory stats and IP information, when I type "ii" in the terminal. Here is the function:

function ii() # get current host related info
{
echo -e "\nHello ${RED}$USER"
echo -e "\nSystem information:$NC " ; uname -a
echo -e "\n${RED}Machine stats :$NC " ; uptime
echo -e "\n${RED}Storage stats :$NC " ; df -h grep -v varrun grep -v varlock grep -v udev grep -v\ devshm
echo -e "\n${RED}Memory stats :$NC " ; free -m
echo -e "\n${RED}Local IP Address :$NC" ; ifconfig grep
'inet addr:' grep -v '127.0.0.1' cut -d: -f2 awk '{ print $1}'
echo -e "\n${RED}ISP Address :$NC" ; wget www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp -O - -q
echo ""
}

You'll notice that in this script, my outside WAN IP is pulled from a website instead of from the ifconfig command. Here is the output:

Hello jared

System information:
Linux manti 2.6.24-24-server #1 SMP Fri Sep 18 17:24:10 UTC
2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Machine stats :
10:02:17 up 81 days, 15:14, 10 users, load average: 0.15, 0.38, 0.37

Storage stats :
Filesystem
Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 17G 3.0G 13G 19% /
/dev/sda2 276G 246G 16G 94% /home
/dev/sdb1 187G 146G 32G 82% /media/backup

Memory stats :
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 502 492 10 0 37 65
-/+ buffers/cache: 389 113
Swap: 1874 30 1844

Local IP Address :
192.168.0.97
ISP Address :
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

I apologize that not everything is lined up correctly, it's due to the layout in blogger. The output lines up fairly cleanly in the terminal.

Enjoy!

My .bashrc File Part 1 - Useful Information

2010-03-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

I thought it would fun to have a short series regarding my .bashrc file. Feel free to share any cool aspects or insights from your .bashrc file during this series. A short disclaimer for this series, regarding most of what I will be sharing with you is NOT original content. I've copied most aspects of my .bashrc from others who have been so kind to share their cool ideas. Now, lets begin.

I want to focus the first apart of this series on having bash display useful information in an easily accessible and concise way. For example, the first thing I do each morning is run my "update" script which displays the time, my schedule for the day and the weather, which looks something like this:

Hello jared, How are you today?

Current Date and Time:
Fri Feb 26 09:00:40 MST 2010

Your Schedule:
Mon Feb 22 12:00am Zone 4
Fri Feb 26 12:00am Safety Kids Fair
6:30am Scriptures
11:00am Preschool time
Sat Feb 27 9:30am Food Co-op Pick up

Current Weather Conditons:
Current conditions at UT (KSLC)
Last updated Feb 26, 2010 - 10:53 AM EST / 2010.02.26 1553 UTC
Wind: from the SSE (160 degrees) at 13 MPH (11 KT)
Sky conditions: mostly cloudy
Temperature: 35.1 F (1.7 C)
Relative Humidity: 69%
City Forecast for Salt Lake City, UT

Here is the script I use in my .bashrc file.

function update() # Current date, time, weather and calendar
(
echo -e "\nHello $USER, How are you today?"
echo -e "\nCurrent Date and Time: $NC " ; date
echo -e "\nYour Schedule: $NC " ; gcalcli agenda head
echo -e "\nCurrent Weather Conditons: $NC " ; weather head -n 7
echo ""
)

Let me run through this function. As you can see it's all just echo commands spewing out the information I desire. I begin by having bash say "Hello" to me. Just because it's a shell doesn't mean it can't be polite. Next it displays the current date and time which is followed by my schedule for the day. My schedule is produced by a cool little app called gcalcli which was a Google summer of code project that displays your google calendar on the command line. I blogged about this app previously here. I then finish things up with the weather using the weather-utils application. I have the weather command set up as an alias (which I'll cover in another segment) to display my local weather.

As mentioned previously, this is the first command I type into the terminal when I first wake up, which gives me a quick and concise outlook for the day.

Well, I hope this was interesting to some of you. My next installment will cover displaying useful system information. So until then... enjoy!

KDE 4.4 Features

2010-02-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

I have been really impressed with KDE 4.x, so when 4.4 recently came out, I was excited to try it out. You can get KDE 4.4 for Kubuntu through PPA and Arch already has it available in their main repo. Here are some of the cool new features that will make your Gnome loving friends jealous.

New Plasmoids and added features.

Improved folder view plasmoid, hover mouse a folder to view it's contents
improved device notifier, gives options for handling devices
webslice to view a portion of a website
Spell checker

Window Management

ctrl+F9 to view all open windows (similar to expose in OSX)
ctrl+F7 to view all grouped windows
ctrl+ F8 to view all desktops - my absolute favorite

Tabbed Windows (just like fluxbox)
Improved Krunner with plugins - shows devices, firefox bookmarks, wikipedia (mediawiki plugin), calculator, etc (Leave Gnome-Do in the dust)
Timeline:/ protocol to sort by time
Kmix has multimedia keyboard support
Can flag devices for auto mounting

AND a new netbook desktop. I've never been keen on the moblin/ubuntu netbook remix look. Joulicloud was better, but nothing great. KDE netbook desktop is not perfect, but is better then any of the other choices that are currently available.

I installed it on my netbook running Arch and it's not bad. I definitely like the icons on the desktop and the search field is really handy.

Also some cool new apps.

rekonq - my favorite new app, konquorer with webkit or Konquorer done right
palapeli - an actual jigaw puzzle game

Anyway, go check KDE 4.4 out and read about its new features here.

pwsafe - Password Keeper

2010-02-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but, I have a butt load of usernames and passwords. I try not to use the same username and password for facebook, twitter, my bank, work, etc for what I hope is obvious security reasons. I desperately needed something to manage my passwords, which lead me to find pwsafe. From the man page, "pwsafe [is a] commandline password database utility compatible with Counterpane's Passwordsafe." It has been really handy.

pwsafe is in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories and I assume should be in most of the major Linux distributions. If you can't find it for your distro, you can get it here.

Once installed, you will need to create a new database.

$ pwsafe --createdb

You be asked to create a password for this database, make sure it is unique, secure and don't forget it.

Once that is done you're ready to add an entry.

$ pwsafe -a name

This will initiate the following:

Enter passphrase for /home/jared/.pwsafe.dat:
group []: Web
username: xxxxxxxxx
password [return for random]:
password again:
notes: access to jaredandcoralee.com ftp and panel

This is pretty straight forward. You are asked for your passphrase (the one
created when you first set up your database) and then a group name. This is a
nice feature to catagorize your passwords. I have a group for Finance, Websites,
Work, etc. You can then search or list information just for those groups. Next you will enter a username, password (twice) and notes. The notes is nice for security questions you may be asked on bank sites for authentication where you can never remember the answer.

To view a list of entries with in a group.

$ pwsafe -l groupname

You will be prompted for your passphrase. The groupname is optional, but helps cut down on the output. This will just print out group, name and your notes. No passwords will be displayed.

To view your passwords,

$ pwsafe -upE name

Again you will be prompted for your passphrase and your username and password will be displayed. There's a lot more you can do with pwsafe. See the man page for more info.

Enjoy.

Catching up with Arch Linux

2010-02-22T08:16:00.000-08:00

Let's begin with a little update. I've been off-line for a few months now, mostly due to a new job and just feeling like I needed a break. Recently though, I've been having the urges to blog again, mostly due to Quvmoh putting the audio of my presentation "Life without a GUI" from UTOSC on HPR. (thanks Quvmoh) This also reminded me that I need to put my slides up from the presentation which you can find here. Use the tpp application to view them as slides or any text editor will work as well. You can also download my handout of the presentation here. The handout will give you useful links for file conversion and the syntax for playing video in the framebuffer.

The last time I blogged I was praising Slackware, but since then I've moved on to Arch. Don't get me wrong Slackware is awesome, but there was one unforgiving issue that caused me to dump Slack for Arch. It was the lack of supported software for Slackware. I just couldn't find everything I wanted on the main repo or on slackbuild.org or anywhere else. One example of this was tuxpaint for my son. I just could not get it installed on my 64-bit system. After hours of frustration without any progress I was done. This is tuxpaint for heaven's sake, it shouldn't be this hard, especially when I could easily just "apt-get install tuxpaint" on Debian/Ubuntu or "yum install tuxpaint" on Fedora or "pacman -S tuxpaint" on Arch.

And speaking of pacman... WOW! I'm in love. It really does put apt to shame. It is so fast. I literally blink and applications are installed. More praises for Arch, include the rolling release methodology. I always have the latest and greatest stuff and everything is stable. I just can't say enough about it. I recommend everyone to give it a try.

Finally, I've been throwing around the idea of doing a Linux command line podcast. I figure it's a niche topic that's not exclusively covered in any other linux podcast. I would cover alot of what my UTOSC presentation was all about, "How to live life and get everything done in the command line." Topics I might cover could include: How to deal with various office document formats, How to blog from the command line, How to email and view attachments from the command line, How to do photo editing from the CLI, discuss how to use the various apps listed on my CLI apps list or maybe interview the developers of these apps, and so on. For the 2 people out there that read my blog let me know what you think. If anyone is interested and would like to co-host that would be great. Now all this being said, I really don't know anything about podcasting so if anyone could give me some tips or advice or just point me in the right direction that would be greatly appreciated.

Excited About Slackware 13.0

2009-08-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming less and less excited about Ubuntu in general for reasons I hope to blog about later when I have more time. So for now I'll just announce that Slackware 13.0 has been released. The biggest feature is 64 bit support and updated packages. I can't wait to dowload it and put it on my main system.

Here are a few other features of the new release per the official announcement.

kernel 2.6.29.6
KDE 4.2.4
Firefox 3.5.2
Alternate Intel video Drivers

I hope everyone takes the opportunity to to check it out.

Redirected Domain

2009-07-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

I love DynDNS. It's a great service. Using this service, I've registered cli.homelinux.net and redirected jaredandcorlee.com to that domain.

The new CLI domain better fits the subject matter on the site. If you haven't checked out the site, please give it a look over. Understand that it still needs work, but definitely stop by the CLI applications list which is the core focus of the site. Also, please send your CLI suggestions and site recommendations.

Hooked up with Google Voice

2009-07-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

I got Google voice! I got Google voice!.... um, now what?

If you have a Google voice account, what are doing with it? How has it made things better?

Time with Slackware.

2009-07-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Since my last post regarding Slackware and Debian, I find my self booting into Slackware Current a lot more then Debian Sid. I had some problem with playing a particular video format in Debian, which I really didn't want to deal with at the time but Slackware handled fine. Other then that small issue, I can't really tell you why. I'm just drawn to Slackware for some reason and I'm really liking it.

Keeping the Current branch up to date was pain, until I discover slackpkg. Now it's a snap. Mind it's not as quick as apt in Debian (not by a long shot) but it's really no problem. I update slackpkg, then initiate the upgrade, do something else, come back to slackpkg and accept the changes and let it run. No big deal.

I guess now that my Slackware system is set up (finally!) everything just works and it works great and I swear it feels so much snappier, even more so then Debian on the same machine. Now some will call me crazy, but running KDE4.x on Slackware seems on par with Crunchbang Linux (using openbox) on another partition. Remember, this is an Intel Centrino 1.4 Ghz laptop with 768 mb of RAM.

So, am I a converted Slacker? Well, it depends. On my main system I run Kubuntu and I tend to upgrade with every six month release. There is no way in hell that I'm going to change out my Slackware that often, because it takes me 3 months to get everything set up and configured right. I'm not touching this Slack install for sometime, I worked to hard on it. Now that being said, I'm running Slackware current, so if I understand things right, if I keep it up to date, I should be running the lastest release anyway. Also, Slackware doesn't release every 6 months. Nevertheless, it comes down to time. How much time do I want to spent setting something up and how often will I need or want to upgrade the machine? My time is precious, so most of the time I'm going to use Debian or a Ubuntu variant, but I can definitely see when it would be beneficial to use Slackware.

This senario puts me in a certain mind set. I'm kind of getting bored with Debian now and I can see myself trying another distro in it's place and if I don't like the ways things are, I can easily put Debian back on lickety split, no harm done. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not touching my Slackware partition. So, as far as this laptop goes Slackware is staying, and for Debian.... well let's see what peaks my interest on Distrowatch.

My 5 Minute Review of MS Windows 7.

2009-06-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I started playing with virutalbox and for some odd reason decided to try out MS Windows 7 in it. Actually, I do know why I was trying it out. First, I've heard alot of great reviews for it even from Linux users and was curious. In addition, it was suppose to have lower resource usage then Vista (which I've never used) and wanted to see how true all of this was. Finally, another reason to giving MS Windows 7 a test run was that I'm sure my wife would be eventually using it and I would inevitably be supporting it to some degree.

So, all this being said, here is my 5 minute review of MS Windows 7.

The Good
The installer has been simplified, which make Windows just as easy to install as most Linux distros. Good job Microsoft for doing some catching up. In general, it did seem to run "lighter" then even MS Windows XP. Finally, I like the KDE4 look and feel.

The Bad
The task bar. It's too big. I can't tell the difference between the quick start laucher icons and the minimized windows icons. Actually, I think if you launch a quick start app you don't get a new task. Minimized windows are icon only, no text. This made things frustrating because I wasn't familiar with the icons. I couldn't find an option to change this. Finally, I tried to install AVG anti-virus and it wouldn't install.

Well, that's pretty much all I had time for. If I'm bored I may boot up the WM again and get back to you with something a little more in depth.

Command Line Webite

2009-06-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

Shortly after I got married my brother purchased the jaredandcoralee.com domain as a birthday present. We used this site as a family website to post pictures and other family related stuff until my wife discovered blogger. The family site got neglected as blogger took over the role and purpose of the old site. So, I still have the domain and decided to turn it into a Linux command line site.

It's a complimentary site to this blog, focusing on getting things done on the desktop linux command line. It still needs alot of work and I will fix it up and add to it as time allows. Please feel free to offer suggestions or contribute as you so desire. Hopefully, it will of use to someone out there.

Here's the link. http://jaredandcoralee.com/

Thanks.

The Application Named After Me.

2009-06-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

There's a Jared application. It's used to edit MS Windows registry. Okay, I wish it did something cooler, but I'll take what I can get.

Is Slackware worth it?

2009-06-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last night I installed rtorrent on Slackware current on my Pentium M 1.4 Ghz laptop and this is how it went.

rtorrent is not a main Slackware package, so I went in search of a SlackBuild. I easily found the rtorrent SlackBuild and downloaded it and read the README file. It was dependant upon libtorrent ... no problem there was a SlackBuild for that too. libtorrent was dependant upon libsigc++ ... no problem, Slackbuild had it available. So far, no big deal. libsigc++ installed with no problem. I was not so lucky with libtorrent.

libtorrent had problems with the build. After googling, I found it needed a patch. Since I have no clue as how to apply a patch, I had to google how to apply a patch to the source code. After a few attempts, I finally got it.
I then turned my attention to rtorrent and began the build process... fail! After googling some more, I discovered it too needed a patch. Of course, I was now a patch applying guru and was good to go on my first attempt.
I then compiled and waited and waited as the gcc compiling "screen saver" scrolled pass my terminal. Over an hour later, I had rtorrent installed. Awesome!

I then re-booted and went into my Debian Sid partition on the same machine and did:

aptitude update
aptitude install rtorrent

In just over a minute I had rtorrent installed.

So, is Slackware worth it?

rtorrent is a low resource ncurses bittorrent client. Is my performance on Slackware for this applications really going to be that much better then on Debian? I doubt it. My time is precious. Granted I did learn how to apply a patch, but if I stick with Debian, I will probably never have to apply patches.

As I've previously stated, I like Slackware, but I'm nearly a week into installing it on my laptop and I'm still configuring it. I tried to install wicd and thought everything went well, but I can't get it going. I still need to build the lastest openoffice.org SlackBuild and can't even begin to imagine how long that will take to compile. While on the other hand, I had Debian configured in 2-3 hours. With all this being said, I really like Slackware but I can't seem to really adequately explain why.

So maybe you can help me come to terms with my fasination with this distro. Is Slackware worth it and why? Why do you like Slackware?

Slackware Current vs. Debian Sid

2009-06-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have an older laptop which I try to be very respectful of it's limited resources. Since I have alot of respect for both Debian and Slackware, I wanted to see which would provide me with the best results on this laptop. I like to have fairly up to date packages, so I installed Slackware 12.2 and upgraded to current. I also installed Debian Lenny and upgraded to Sid. Both are running on the same machine. I disabled gdm login on Debian so it would boot to a command line prompt. Each were installed with default settings and respective upgrades. I also installed the latest KDE 4 packages in each branch and loaded the same 3 desktop widgets.

Here's the set up.

Laptop
Intel Pentuim M 1.4 Ghz
768 mb RAM
Intel 855 Video card (shared 8 mb RAM)
Asus Motherboard

Results
Boot time grub to login
Slackware 49 Sec
Debian 36 Sec

RAM used at login (no X)
Slackware 161 MB
Debian 77 MB

Time startx to full KDE 4
Slackware 25 Sec
Debian 35 Sec

RAM used at full KDE 4
Slackware 425 MB
Debian 729 MB

If course I'm going to tweak things from the default install and turn off services that I don't use. One final note, I did notice that Debian seems to run pretty hot on this laptop. Maybe I can fix that with some tweaking.

1 System Upgrading, 7 Apps Running and Only 30 MB of RAM

2009-05-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

This is pretty awesome. K.Mandla is running the following:

1. Window manager (screen)
2. System monitor (htop)
3. Network monitor (iftop)
4. Music server (mocp)
5. Web Browser (elinks)
6. File manager (mc)
7. bit-torrent client (rtorrent)

At the same time is upgrading his system, on a 7 Year old Celeron (550 mhz) Laptop and is using only 30 MB of RAM.

Holy Cow! The power of the CLI.
Check it out here.

Jaunty is Jumping.

2009-04-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

So, I had a few days off work, which gave me a long Easter weekend. I took this time to play around with the latest Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope beta 9.04. So far I'm very impressed.

First, I'd like to mention that the boot time has been cut in half. I'm very impressed. I press the power button, blink once and I'm looking at the KDM login screen. KDE 4.2.2 is very, very stable. There's nothing to complain about for the first time in the KDE 4 release. I love it. All the plasmoids worked as expected, which has been a problem in the past. I guess there is one thing I can complain about. I don't like the default KDE4 theme and I can't for the life of me figure out how to install and apply a theme change. This should be an option that is plain as the day is long. So either I'm a moron (which is generally the case), or KDE4 devs are making things very difficult. All other desktop customization wasn't an issue.

Another wonderful and time saving feature in Juanty is the installation of restricted codecs. I would usually have to manually add the mediubuntu repos, update and then install the necessary codecs. In Jaunty, I opened Dragon Player selected a .avi video file and was presented with a dialog box suggesting that other codecs be installed. I clicked a button to accept the suggested installation, and in less then a minute, I was playing my video file. Wonderful! That is exactly as it should be.

Finally, I'd like to mention that this is the first time Koffice 2.0 beta is available in the main repos for Kubuntu. I'm not sure why I'm so excited about this new Koffice release. Koffice has always seemed featureless and awkward, but the rewrite of this suite seems to include some neat improvements. I really like the look and feel of kwriter, but found kspread frustrating to use. Being an accountant and spending 80% of my life interacting with a spreadsheet I feel that I'm a fairly advanced spreadsheet user. So when I was playing around with kspread and attempted to create a simple chart, I hit a brick wall. This is usually a very straight forward feature in most spreadsheets, but I couldn't get it to work with kchart, the integrated charting tool. I googled and read a few posts that the kchart feature had been turned off for a period due to some testing issues, but couldn't verify if my installed version of Koffice was part of that test phase. I'm assuming it was.

Overall, I'm well impressed with the new Juanty release, so I'm going to keep it. I don't see any reason to wait for the official release on April 23. The beta seems to be a very solid system. I highly recommend Jaunty, so go take a peek, I think you'll be pleasantly impressed.

Package Manager Analogy for Windows Users.

2009-03-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

So, I was listening to Hacker Public Radio #299 where thirtythree and a buddy (Bill) were demonstrating Linux to a group that were obviously unfamiliar the OS. It couldn't have been more then five minutes in to the presentation, when a very common question was asked, "How do you install software on Linux?" Bill did his best to explain repositories, packaging and dependencies and how you don't have to go to various websites to find software, etc. Now, I've had this same question asked to me on occassionl, in fact, just last week and I would try my best to explain how cool and easy a package manager is, usually to no real avail.

So, while listening to Bill trying to explain the Linux way of installing software, the clouds parted and soft ray of sunlight shone up me and I think I've come up with the perfect analogy or example of a package manager and repositories. It's iTunes. Yes, synaptic, yast, Mandriva control center are like the iTunes of software. Most people are familiar with iTunes and have used it, so I feel it's a good comparison to get the message accross. Follow me on this make believe conversation.

dude: How do you install software on Linux?

me: Linux has a build-in online store of software, were you can search for almost any type of software. Have you ever used iTunes to buy music?

dude: yes.

me: Well Linux has a similar tool for getting software, except all the software is free. It's called synaptic (or insert other GUI PM), let me show you.

dude: cool!

me: In Windows, to install software, you usually have to go to a retail store and buy a CD or go to a website, like Adobe.com to download and install Acrobat Reader and/or then go to mozilla.org to download and install thunderbird. Well, if you were to buy music the same way it would be like going to the U2 website to download their new album and then going to Coldplay's website to download their music, etc. The reason iTunes is so popular is because it's this one-stop-shop for music. You don't have to go hunting the web or a retail store for your music.

dude: Yeah, that makes sense.

me: Well, synaptic on Linux is like iTunes, where it is the one-stop-shop for software on Linux.

dude: I like it.

me: So, that is how you install software on Linux.

Now, I understand that there are fundamental differences between iTunes and a Package Manager, but Joe Smoe needs some type of tangible comparison to really get it.

Now something else that can be done is, explaining that many companies do offer Linux packaged software on there website, then show them some examples. Here are just a few:

Adobe Flash
OpenOffice
Firefox
Picasa
vlc player

..and there are tons more that I'm sure you can think of to add to this list. When I show this to the potential new Linux user, I would emphasize that using the distro's package manager is recommended way of doing it.

Let me know what you think. Just another way to convert the world.

Watch Battlestar Galactica on Your Phone.

2009-02-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

I have a crappy Nokia flip phone. There is nothing special about it. It does have a camera and can take really poor quality video if you happen to be standing in reasonable light. It does have have a media player to watch these videos which are formatted in .3gp, which I guess is very common in these small portable devices. I also have a 1 Gb micro SD card for storage on my phone. So far nothing too outlandish about this phone or it's features. These features are found on the most basic "free" phone given to you by carriers when you sign away your 1st born with one of their contracts. This is definately not a iPhone or some other overpriced "smartphone".

Anyway I wanted to see if I could watch Battlestar Galactica on my phone while on the bus to work each morning and found that it's not that difficult with Free open source software. My Battlestar Galactica episodes in .avi format, so I just needed a way to convert my .avi file to .3pg. Then put that newly created .3pg file on my microSD card and fire up my media player on my phone and I should be good to go. Here is how I did it.

Install the following: ffmpeg, amrnb, amrwb and sox. In debian based distros it's pretty straight forward with apt-get and each of these applications are in the Ubuntu repos. Then issue the follow command:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 44100 -r 25 -ab 192 -y outputfile.3gp

Here is a brief breakdown of the ffmpeg command. You can find more detail on the ffmpeg man page.

-i input file
-s video size (qcif=176x144, see man page)
-vcodec video codec (needed for the conversion)
-acodec audio codec
-ac # if audio channels
-ar Audio frequency
-r Frame rate
-ab audio bitrate
-y output file

You may have to fiddle with the frame rate a bit to what works best for you on your device. I've converted one file and played it on 2 different devices and the audio and video sync was off on one and not the other, which tells me that something funky is going on with different media players. I would recommend that you keep the audio quality (freq and bitrate) high because the speakers on most of these low quality device are pretty crappy. You will want to have goo sound quality if you expect to hear anything.

A one hr long episode of Battlestar Galatica in .avi is about 350 mb, once converted to .3pg with the above configuration rates is about 80 mb.

If you have mpeg files you would like to convert, use the following:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 8000 -r 25 -ab 32 -y outputfile.3gp

If you're try to get videos off your phone to watch on your computer, here convert your files the other way.

ffmpeg -i clip.3gp -f avi -vcodec xvid -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 file.avi

Enjoy!

Gwyneth Paltrow is Ubuntu!?

2009-02-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

Yep! Gwyneth Paltrow believes in Ubuntu. The philosophy, not the Linux operating system. Check it out. Scroll down to the bottom to see the reference.
http://goop.com/newsletter/22

“Ubuntu” is an African term that means what makes us human is the humanity we show each other. It’s a worldview that sees humanity as a web of family rather than a mass of individuals. When you relate in this way, you feel connected, energized and have a sense of abundance.
These tips are merely seven of the more than 50 in the book. All are fairly easy to incorporate into your busy lifestyle and, more importantly, they each can make a profound difference.

I wonder if she knew that there was an operating system and an entire community out there who actively practice these ideals, if she would be willing to use it?

Configured Crunchbang!

2009-02-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

I installed the latest Crunchbang Linux on my laptop a while ago but I haven't had time to actually configure it to my own liking, until this weekend. Here's the Screenshot.

Conky took some time to get just right, especially the weather option, but this is mostly due to my lack of knowledge of configuring conky.

I also set key-bindings for transparency effect of windows and an expose effect using skippy. Then I installed synergy which allows me to use my mouse and keyboard from my main computer on my laptop, similar to a KVM.

Finally, I added wine and installed MS Office 2007, which is required for a class I teach.

I took careful notes, for future blog posts. I will now try to mimic this set up on the Ubuntu install on my main desktop. I've seen some posts concerning this on the Crunchbang forum which I think will help.

Let me know what you think.

Crunchbang #!

2009-01-10T14:46:00.000-08:00

I've been using Crunchbang Linux on my Laptop for sometime now and it's my new favorite distro. It's based off of Ubuntu but uses a pre-configured openbox as the window manager. Let me emphasize pre-configured openbox.

If you have ever used openbox, you will know that it is very minimalistic, but very customizable and powerful window manager. Customizing openbox can take some time when you are beginning from scratch, but can have a very personalize desktop. Crunchbang does most of the work for you and includes the tools to tweak openbox all you want. Time saved.

Since Crunchbang is based on you Ubuntu, you have a huge repository of software to draw upon. It has a very light weight and clean fell to it. Here are a few screenshots to wet your whistle.

Give Cruchbang (#!) a try.

Ubuntu Fanboys Love Apple.

2008-12-05T06:25:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a growing trend of Linux users using Macs. Recently it occurred to me that everyone I know who runs Linux on a Mac use Ubuntu. I'm not sure exactly what this means, I just find it interesting. As I pondered about this I began to realize a few other common characteristics of Linux+Mac users (L+Mu) which I would like to share with you. Now please understand that this is just my observation, not an in depth study of any kind.

1. They all run Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is a great distro, I run it on my main PC at home, but I also run Slackware 12.1, Fedora 10, PCBSD and Crunchbang! (essentially Ubuntu). It just seems Ubuntu is by far the distro of choice for L+Mu.

2. Not only do they run Ubuntu, but they always dual boot MAC OSX. It doesn't just seem to be a love of Apple hardware for L+Mus, but they also seem to have a fondness for the operating system as well. They seem to boot into OSX and use it. Again, OSX is a good OS, it's just not my cup of tea.

3. L+Mu seem to be this rising new generation of Linux users that began in 2004-2005, around the time Ubuntu first came out. I don't see many "Old School" users turning to Mac. By "old school" I mean pre-2.4 kernel. I started using Linux in 2001 and consider myself a 2nd generation Linux user. The 1st generation of users being from 1991-1997/8, the 2nd generation from 1998-2003-ish and the 3rd generation from 2003/4 on. Each generation seems to have their own characteristics and personalities, which I won't get into this post. Before I get too far topic though, I 'll just say that it seems the trend of L+Mu are newer Linux users.

4. Finally, you don't find too many FOSS purists among L+mu. I guess this is obvious with the simple fact that they are using Apple hardware. Again don't get me wrong, I don't have a shrine to Richard Stallman at home, but I have a respect for GNU and his ideas. Now I believe this is one of the characteristics of this new rising 3rd Generation mentioned above, that they don't seem to see anything wrong with proprietary / close source software. They actually see it as a good thing.

Am I the only one noticing this pattern or am I completely off? Please give me your opinion to this trend of Linux+MAC users.

Your Little Black Book - Using a Text File and grep

2008-11-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

This tutorial incorporates grep, nano and awk to search a text file of contacts to create a CLI PIM manager or address book and demonstrates well the power of the CLI. You do not need to have any knowledge of these commands to
follow the tutorial, but an understanding of such commands will aid in understanding the concepts being applied.

This address book and contact manager will have the following characteristics:

be able to search and view records whenever you need them, from the command line and a text editor.
perfectly accessible over a slow text-only network line
be able to cut and paste addresses and contact information from the Web, email, and any other applications
have no concept of "required fields" -- each record can contain as much, or as little, information as you need to have.
can be taken with you and used on any Linux or Unix machine

Creating the Addresses file

The first step is to make a new file (call it something like "addresses"), you can do so by typing:

nano addresses

Now, you can begin adding records to it.

Records have to be delimited somehow; I would suggest putting ### on a line by itself between each set of contact information. Format the records themselves however you like, with name and address and whatever information you have. I used to keep a completely free-form contacts file, so that each record contained completely unformatted data in whatever way that I happened to get it, but this practice quickly shows its limitations -- I've found
that it helps immensely to label certain fields, such as telephone number and email address. I use this format:

Name
Address
Phone: phone number
Fax: fax number
Email: email address
Comments: additional information

As an example, a few records might look like this:

---------------------------------------------------

Acme Industries, Inc.
4211 E Broadway
New York, NY 10026
Phone: (212) 555-1032
Fax: (212) 555-1038
Email: acme@example.net

###

capri pizza
Phone: 555-8250

###

jane smith
Phone: 555-3104
Email: jsmith@example.nyu.edu
Comments: friend of susan's

------------------------------------------------

Searching, browsing, and exporting records

Create the following script to make searching for a contact easy.

#!/bin/sh
awk 'BEGIN { RS = "###" } /'$*'/' ~/addresses

Name the script "contact" and make it executable (chmod +x contact). Make sure that your Address file and your contact script are in the same directory or place the script somewhere within your path.

At the command line simply type:
contact jane

or

./contact jane

This should bring up Jane Smith's contact information as found in the text file. You can search using any of the information in the text file. Here are some examples:

contact nyu.edu

will give you all contacts with a 'nyu.edu' email address.

contact 90028

will give you all the contacts living in the that zip code. You search options are limitless.

More Advanced Searching using grep and awk

fgrep outputs single lines of the file that match a string you give, and is good for when you just want to see if you have such-and-such a record in your file. Use the -i option to do a case-insensitive search -- for instance, here's how to see if you have contact information for Acme
Industries:

fgrep -i 'acme industries' addresses

Should display:

Acme Industries, Inc.

The output gave the name -- but you want the phone number too. Output the search with a few lines after the match with the -A option:

fgrep -i -A5 'acme industries' addresses

Which will display the next 5 lines following the name 'acme industries', like this:

Acme Industries, Inc.
4211 E Broadway
New York, NY 10026
Phone: (212) 555-1032
Fax: (212) 555-1038
Email: acme@example.net

And here's where using labels really pays off. When you need, say, all the email addresses that have "nyu.edu" in them, you can find them with a plain grep command:

$ grep '^Email:' addresses | fgrep 'nyu.edu'

Then you can simply copy and paste the listed emails into your email client.

Harvesting the actual addresses themselves is also a trivial matter:

$ grep '^Email:' addresses|egrep -o '[^ ]+$'

You can use awk to output entire records containing a particular match. The simplest way is to change the awk record separator, RS, to ### and then enclose the pattern to match in slashes. For example, here's how to export all records containing the string "acme" somewhere in the record:

awk 'BEGIN { RS = "###" } /acme/' addresses

and you will get:

Acme Industries, Inc.
4211 E Broadway
New York, NY 10026
Phone: (212) 555-1032
Fax: (212) 555-1038
Email: acme@example.net

The contact script we first used in this tutorial is based off of this awk command.

Because the file has labels, you can limit your search to them. For example, you can search for all email addresses that have "smith" in them, and output the entire records:

awk 'BEGIN { RS = "###"; FS = "Email: " } ($2 ~ "smith") { print $0 }' addresses

You can use the same awk pattern to do any number of things. For instance, in conjunction with the grep examples above you can output all the email addresses in records that have "friend" in the comment field:

$ awk 'BEGIN { RS = "###"; FS = "Comments: " } ($2 ~ "friend") { print }' addresses | grep '^Email:' | egrep -o '[^ ]+$'

Adding and importing records

Adding records to your contacts file is easy. The file doesn't need to be sorted, so append new records by either editing the file in nano or using redirection on the command line:

cat >> addresses

then type in your new contact, like this:

###
new name
Cell: 801-123-4567

This will add the 'new name' to the bottom of your addresses file.

Rarely do I actually type out any new contact information myself -- that only happens when I'm transcribing something from paper, or when I'm getting a number from someone on the phone. Nine times out of 10 I'm just cutting and pasting the text from the Web or email into an editor window that has
the contacts file open. It's painless and fast -- there are no forms to have to fill out for each part of the record. But you have to keep two things in mind: separate the records with hash marks, and insert labels for numbers, email, and comment fields, if you want to use them.

If you already have a set of address records formatted some other way, awk can import it so that it's in the right format.

Let's say you have a file named address.txt where all the records are kept one to a line in this common format:

lastname,firstname,address,city,state,zip,phone,email

Here's an awk one-liner to take that input and spit it out into the bottom of the addresses file, in just the right format:

$ awk 'BEGIN { FS = "," } { print "\n###\n\n" $2, $1, "\n" $3 "\n" $4 ", " $5, $6, "\nPhone: " $7, "\nEmail: " $8 }' address.txt >> addresses

ENJOY!

Disclaimer:
This tutorial is a re-publication from an article from linux.com a few years back with some slight modifications from me. I'm unable to find the original article to link. If anyone knows who originally published this please let me know and I'll make the necessary reference.

Is that a Fish in Your CLI? The asciiquarium Screensaver.

2008-11-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

We've all seen the aquarium screensavers with fish swimming around our monitor. Well that calming soothing fish love isn't just for the CLI haters. Command line activists can also go fishing via the terminal with asciiquarium.

asciiquarium is not in the Ubuntu repositories but don't let that scare you. asciiquarium is a perl script which gives us easy access to this fun little program. Before we can see our fishy friends there are some dependencies we need, perl (of course), curses and the Term::Animation module. perl and curses is found in most of Linux distros by default, but I had to install the Term::Animation module from source which was pretty easy on Ubuntu. You can get Term::Animation from freshmeat.net. Just download Term::Animation, uncompress, enter the newly created directory and proceed with the following steps in the terminal,

1. perl Makefile.PL
2. make
3. make test
4. make install

Once installed, download asciiquarium from here, uncompress, enter the newly created directory and type the following.

./asciiquarium

Once running, pressing "r" will redraw the image, "p" will pause the animation and "q" will quit the program.

Watching all these fish are making me hungry. I think I'm in the mood of a good fish taco.

Happy fishing.

How's the Weather up there? CLI weather app.

2008-11-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

weather-util gives you local weather readings on the command line. If you are running Ubuntu you can easily install this handy little application by typing the following in the command line.

$apt-get install weather-util

To retrieve local weather information you will need to know your local weather id which can be found at the National Weather Service. Your id is a 4 digit letter code which identifies your city or area. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah and my id is KSLC.

Once you have your id the syntax is fairly straight forward.

$weather -id=KSLC

Which outputs the following:

Current conditions at UT (KSLC)
Last updated Nov 07, 2008 - 09:53 AM EST / 2008.11.07 1453 UTC
Wind: from the SE (140 degrees) at 8 MPH (7 KT)
Sky conditions: mostly cloudy
Temperature: 39.9 F (4.4 C)
Relative Humidity: 62%

You can get a forecast using the -f option.

Current conditions at UT (KSLC)
Last updated Nov 20, 2008 - 08:53 AM EST / 2008.11.20 1353 UTC
Wind: Calm
Sky conditions: partly cloudy
Temperature: 32.0 F (0.0 C)
Relative Humidity: 85%
Issued Thursday morning - Nov 20, 2008
Thursday... Sunny, high 55, 0% chance of precipitation.
Thursday night... Low 30, 10% chance of precipitation.
Friday... Sunny, high 43, 0% chance of precipitation.
Friday night... Low 21.
Saturday... High 45.

Now you have no excuse to be caught out in the cold unprepared. If you can muster up some creative juices I'm sure you could easily get the output to display in conky.

WOW! Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

2008-10-31T07:08:00.001-07:00

Just a brief post on how impressed I am with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. I've only played around with the liveCD, but I am definitely well impressed, mostly with it's increased speed. I tested it on an older P4 1.4 Ghz laptop with 512 mb RAM and it was fast, even running from CD. Also, wireless worked. I've been having trouble with wireless on this laptop, with each of the 4 OSes installed (including MS Windows XP). Wireless works great with Ibex. Ubuntu has also had problems with this laptop's Intel i810 video card. I would usually have to manually edit the xorg.conf file, but Ibex handled it like a champ, including compiz.

I'd also like to make a comment on one particular accessibility feature, orca. As some might know, my eye sight is deteriorating, which is increasingly having me become more interested in accessibility options in Linux. Orca is pretty cool. For those who are unaware, orca is a text to speech application. I want to thank Ubuntu for including ocra by default.

Good job guys.

gcalcli - Google Calendar on the Command Line

2008-10-24T06:58:00.000-07:00

gcalcli gives you access to your Google Calendar on the command line. You can retrieve your calendar information for multiple calendars and in various formats. gcalcli can be found in the repositories for Ubuntu Hardy and Ibex.

If your Distro does not have gcalcli in it's repositories, instructions can be found here. gcalcli is written in python and just has a few dependencies for an easy install.

Once installed you may need to create a .gcalclirc file in your home directory. The file should be configured like this:

[gcalcli]
<config-item>: <value>
<config-item>: <value>
...

Mine looks like this:

[gcalcli]
user: username@gmail.com
pw: password
cals: all

Obviously, use your own Google Calendar username and password in the file. I have several calendars that follow, like a US Holiday calendar, a family birthday calendar and my Wife's calendar. I wanted to have access to all the calendars so I indicated that as an option in the config file. There are several other options that can be included within this configuration file specifically having different colors for each calendar.

On my laptop running CrunchBang! Linux, gcalcli was not correctly reading the .gcalclirc file. So, I created the following alias in my .bashrc file:

alias gcalcli = "/usr/bin/gcalcli --user=username@gmail.com --pw=password"

This seemed like a reasonable work around for now.

To view my calendar I simply type:

$ gcalcli agenda

Notice my calendar in blue and my wife's calendar in magenta.
Using the agenda option without parameters will list one week of calendar information. You can include a date range to customize the output.

$ gcalcli agenda 11/15 11/31

This will give you all calendar items between 11/15 and 11/31 of the current year.

To view your calendar in a matrix with borders, type the following:

$ gcalcli calw

The calw option without parameters will display the current week's calendar items. You can add parameters to increase your ranges view.

$ gcalcli calw 3

This will display the current week and the following 2 weeks.

You can post to your calendar as well using the quick option in the following syntax.

$ gcalcli quick "10/31 7 pm Halloween Party"

This will create a calendar for a Halloween Party on 10/31 at 7 pm.
Please see the gcalcli site for more things you can do with this neat little app, including adding calendar items to gnu screen and receiving notices. For all you GUI lovers you can even use gcalcli to display your calendar items in conky.

Now you can do all your scheduling and calendaring on the CLI.

Everything Can be Done in the CLI (Mostly)

2008-10-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

I love the command line and truly believe that it is an ideal interface for the Desktop. It's speed is unparalleled. It's simplicity and flexibility is far superior to anything that can be done with xorg and any GUI. Mind, I'm not a completely idealistic or ignorant to the advantages of a GUI. I'm a KDE and Openbox fan, but I'm constantly drawn to the sheer power and flexibility of the command line that I feel can never truly be reach by a GUI.

I am also drawn to Desktop applications because it is what I know and use everyday and it is what I find interesting. Most people use a computer as a Desktop. Server administrating my may be interesting to some, but I find it very boring and frustrating. Plus, most sys admin's tasks are done on the CLI anyway.

I passionately feel that nearly all tasks that are done in the Desktop can be done from the CLI. I understand that there might need to be some "work-arounds" or extra steps taken on the CLI to accomplish a similar task in the GUI, yet I think it will be a fun challenge.

This being said, I have begun a list of Desktop tasks and the command line applications or options available to complete those tasks. You can find this list here. This is just a list I've thrown together, which I hope to develop as a much bigger community resource. It is a work in progress which I hope to expand and improve. My vision is to have each application link to a resource of some kind. It may link to a tutorial which explains how to use the application or a link to a script that automates a long or repetitive process. Essentially, I want it to be a resource for users to draw upon to be able to complete any Desktop task in command line.

Please send me recommendations as to how to improve this resource. Help me to fill in the blanks. You'll notice a lot of blanks in the Development section. That's because I'm not a developer. Help me with additional solutions to tasks. Please offer suggestions as to how to improve the layout or organization of the list. I hope to have this hosted on my own website sometime, but for simplicity sake I have it on Google Docs. Please make any other suggestions you see fit.

Ways to make comment:
1. make a comment to this post.
2. email: jared (dot) bernard ((@)) gmail (dot) com
3. twitter: https://twitter.com/moriancumer
4. identi.ca: http://identi.ca/moriancumer

Procrastination Brings Forth INX

2008-08-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well, because of my procrastination with SimplyCLI Desktop, someone else has risen to the occasion. Introducing INX which encompasses the concept I was hoping to achieve with SimplyCLI Desktop and WOW! is it beautiful. I am truly impressed. You can view a slideshow with screenshots here and even video screencast demonstrations here .

So, as of now SimplyCLI Desktop is no more (not that it got much further then the concept stage). I don't see a point in having 2 X-less Linux Desktop distros, plus INX has nearly everything I was hoping to achieve with SimplyCLI Desktop. I say nearly because there are a few things I hope INX will expand upon and could improve. First is the name (though I doubt this will change). SimplyCLI Desktop I think is more marketable. INX is very gnu-geek with the whole acronym thing. Also, I would like to see some tutorials by example integrated into INX. I already have several written. Another thing is an installer. One is being worked on, so I'll need to see how that is going. Finally, I didn't see much in the way of video, image or PDF viewers integrated in the menu interface. Mplayer, fbi and fbgs which facilitate framebuffer would be great additions. Solutions on the CLI for these media types is essentially unknown to most and when demonstrated can be very impressive.

Anyway, I plan to contact the maintainer to see what I can do to help contribute. So in the mean time go check out INX and let me know what you think.

Let's Try This Again.

2008-05-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

So many things to blog about and so little time. My personal life has become very hectic thus my lack of blogging. My work load at my job has nearly doubled and my wife has taken on a business venture leaving me to have to take care of more things at home including our almost 2 yr old son. In addition to this madness, my wife is about to pop with a new baby we've been cooking, which I foresee even less time spent on hobbies and blogging.

This being said, I think I have resolved the liveCD issue mentioned in a previous blog for my pet project SimplyCLI Desktop. I have yet to experiment with this new process which is explained here. It seems pretty straight forward and makes sense as I've read through the instructions, but I've yet to actually test it. I'm hoping to get to it before the baby comes in the next 2 1/2 weeks.

I've been dying to blog about a few things like KDE4, crunchbang Linux and a few more tutorials and perhaps some day I will, but time moves on and unfortunately blogging is towards the bottom of my priorities at the moment. Nevertheless, I'm still plugging along.

So, to the random person who just happens to fall upon this blog, I want you to know I'm still alive and SimplyCLI Desktop will happen.

The Perfect irssi Configuration or 3 Apps in One.

2008-02-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

I love irssi! I use irssi as an all in one irc, instant messenger and twitter client. Here is how I did it.

IRC
First irssi as an irc client. This is what irssi was originally designed to be. irssi is a console application that can run in screen. You can install irssi by:

sudo aptitude irssi

If you are unfamiliar with irc, then here is a quick explanation and how to.

irc stands for instant relay chat. It essentially gives you access to a chat room. I connect to a few linux irc groups on a regular basis to interact with fellow Linux-ites and to ask questions. Just type irssi at the command line. Once started, You will need to connect to a server. Freenode has tons of interesting irc groups. You can see a list of Freenode irc groups here. to connect to Freenode type the following in irssi:

/connect irc.freenode.net

to join the general linux group, type:

/j #linux

You use esc+# (could also be alt+#) key to move through the irssi 'screens'. (i.e. esc+1 for screen one, esc+2 for screen two, etc)

IM
Now let's set up Your instant messenger in irssi with bitlbee.
Install bitlbee:

sudo aptitude install bitlbee

In irssi, connect to a bitlbee server. There are several servers available, I use the following:

/connect im.bitlbee.org

If this is your first time connecting to bitlbee you will need to register. You may need to move to the newly created bitlbee screen in irssi for the following.

register password

This should be a newly create password, used specifically for logging onto the bitlbee server. To set up your IM accounts.

Use the following as model to add your various accounts:

Yahoo

account add yahoo handle password

AIM

account add oscar MyScreenName MyPassword login.oscar.aol.com

Jabber

account add jabber example@server.com password server.address:port:ssl(?)

MSN

account add msn handle password

Once you have added your accounts, activate your accounts:

accounts on

Save your settings:

/save

To see your buddies type:

blist

To chat, type your buddies name and message,

name: Hello world!

The next time you log on to bitlbee, identify yourself with your new bitlbee password:

identify [password]

Twitter
Finally, Let's get twitter going.

Download the twitter perl script from here and save it to your ~/.irssi/scripts directory as wd.pl. Then install a few dependencies.

sudo aptitude install libjson-perl libdatetime-format-strptime-perl libwww-perl

Next you will need to create the following file ~/.netrc by typing,

nano ~/.netrc

copy and paste the following in the file and save.

# set your username (e-mail address) and password in your ~/.netrc file.
# eg.
# % echo "machine twitter.com login your@email.address password
# yourpass" > ~/.netrc
# % chmod 0600 ~/.netrc
#
my $username;
my $password;

Change $username to your twitter username and $password to your twitter password and save the file. You can find this information in the wd.pl file you downloaded earlier. Once the file is saved, change the permissions of the file.

chmod 600 ~/.netrc

In irssi create an alias,

/alias twit /exec ~/.irssi/scripts/wd.pl $*

and save.

/save

Now twitter away by using the following.

/twit

will update all your friends twits and to post a twit, use the following:

/twit -sv "hello World"

OOOOHHH YEAH! the perfect irssi set up. Now doesn't that feel good.
Learn more about twitter here.

NOTE:  THE wd.pl SCRIPT NO LONGER WORKS DUE TO A CHANGES
WITH TWITTER. I CURRENTLY DON'T HAVE A FIX FOR THE SCRIPT.
I HAVE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH THE DEVELOPER, BUT SEEMS TO
HAVE LOST INTEREST IN THE PROJECT.

Wixi - A Personal Desktop Wikipedia

2008-02-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

I've just discovered this great application wixi. It's a personal wikipedia you keep on your desktop. It comes in handy when you're creating documentation or trying to organize notes. It breaks out entries by pages which can be exported to html for web publishing. Pages can be easily be organized and viewed at a glance with a tree structure layout in a left hand column. The best feature is the search function. You're quickly and easily able to search through your documentation and notes.

Wixi is available for Linux, MAC OS X and that other OS. If you're using Ubuntu, you won't find it in the repos, but never fear, it's easy to install.

First install the dependencies:

 sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8 pysqlite

Then download wixi from here and unzip the package.

 unzip wixi-1.03-src.zip

Then go into the newly created directory and install.

 cd wixi-1.03/

 sudo python setup.py install

Now you're good as gold. Just type "wixi" in a terminal or if you're using KDE press alt+F2 for the run dialog box.

When you start wixi for the first time you'll be asked to create a new database where all your information will be stored. Just type the name for your database and you're done.

Click "ok" and start using wixi. Visit the wixi homepage for more information.

Enjoy!

Problems with LiveCD Image.

2008-01-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling to create the liveCD image. I've attempted using the remastersys script from Linux Mint which should be compatible with Ubuntu 7.10, but I continue to get a disk drive error that no one else seems to be getting.

I'm in the process of looking for the best way to create my image for SimplyCLI Desktop, but I seem to be extremely busy lately with work, teaching, family and church. Needless to say it's going slowly. I'm an accountant and this is our year end wrap up at work, so there is a lot of over time and going in on Saturdays. Things should slow down mid-February. So posting will be spotty until then. If anyone is actually reading this catch the RSS feed at the bottom of the page.

Cheers!

Excuses... Excuses!

2007-12-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

My boy was sick most of the weekend, then I had problems with framebuffer in Gutsy. I guess Ubuntu doesn't load the kernel modules by default as of Gutsy. If you want to do cool multimedia stuff in the console you have to have framebuffer. I found the answer to my framebuffer problem here.

Hopefully, I'll have an image tonight and then an upload to ibiblio the next day.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

SimpleCLI Desktop for Christmas!

2007-12-21T11:54:00.001-08:00

I'm hoping to have a CD image uploaded to ibiblio by Christmas. Oh yeah... and the logo. :) Then I'll need to create a website, with an official announcement and a forum for support to qualify for listing on Distrowatch.

What's the Point?

2007-12-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

I teach a computer class here in Salt Lake and today was the final. I had a student who had only attended class twice before, who today shows up 2 hours late for the final. All the other students had taken their final and left. She handed me a note from a doctor because she broke her arm that morning delivering newspapers in the snow, hence was late. Remember, this is the 3rd time she's ever come to class and it's the LAST day of class. She showed up the 2nd day of class and the day of the mid-term. She has turned in one assignment the entire semester and just before the final had a 20% in the class. That's an "F" for those who don't do math. :)

She emailed me two weeks ago to tell me that she couldn't come to class because she broke her leg, yet today there was no cast on her leg. I mentioned this and commented that she has had quite a bit of bad luck lately. She just politely smiled and shrugged. She got a 70% on the final and turned in a partially completed assignment from 2 or 3 weeks ago which brought her total grade up to 40%. I have 7 students in my class. Four of them received over a 95% , another received a 84% and another a 71%. The last two were missing a few assignments.

So, why even come to the final? Why lie about injuries? It just doesn't make sense to me. Every student who showed up on a regular based passed the class. I let students make up work, without a penalty. I'm pretty easy going, at least I think so.

Her 40% effort got her no where. She didn't learn anything in the class and she got a failing grade. It was just a waste. I feel like she wasted my time and obviously her own. I don't mind people wasting their own lives away, just don't impose that waste on me.

Distros I Like.

2007-12-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

My last post reviewed some various window managers for Linux. Today I'd like to list some Linux distros that I've been impressed with.

K/Ubuntu - My current favorite distribution. Huge community and tons of documentation. 6 month release cycle. Tons of packages and great package management. Easy to set up and get going. It's default desktop is Gnome, which as everyone should know is not my favorite. Kubuntu is good, but is kind of the red-headed step-child to Ubuntu, so it doesn't get all of the cool features of Ubuntu.

PCLinuxOS - A great distro. Very devoted, but small community. Great hardware support. Ready to use right at first boot, with all multimedia codecs installed. Probably the best choice for first time Linux users. Unknown release cycle. Packages not the most up-to-date, because they only have one guy doing it. KDE based.

Damn Small Linux - The name says it all (50 mb LiveCD, 200 MB installed in HD). Great for old computersor running from a thumb drive in qemu. Based on Knoppix. Small supported packages repository, but can add the Debian repository. Many packages are out of date. Fluxbox/JWM based.

Foresight Linux - This is a new one to me. It greatest feature is the conary package manager, making it easy to roll back packages. Not a huge package repository. Gnome based, but a KDE version is coming soon.

Honorable Mentions

Puppy Linux - Built from scratch. Few packages. Very fast.

Mandriva - KDE based. Great distro. Used it for a long time and they are doing some great innovative things.

Fedora - Tons of resources. Good solid distro backed by Red Hat. Gnome based.

Mint Linux - Ubuntu with codecs installed by default. Lags behind Ubuntu in releases. Has some custom applications.

OpenSuse - Good beginner distro, backed by Novell. Seems a bit heavy to run. KDE based.

Mepis - Debian based. KDE desktop. Back in the day it had some problems with package management, but I think that's fixed.

Slax - Great LiveCD comes in several flavors.

Give these a try too.

Knoppix
Sidux
Vector
Slackware
Debian
PC-BSD
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD
OpenSolaris
Dream Linux
Backtrack
Dyne:bolic
Wolvix

Anyway, these are some I've played with and have been impressed with. See Distrowatch for even more options.

Try KDE 4

2007-12-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

I played with KDE 4 yesterday and really like the look and feel. Koffice is going to be great, though it is still in alpha.

If you would like to try KDE 4, you can down load a Kubuntu liveCD here and a Suse LiveCD here.

Let me know what you think.

If You're going to use a GUI, use KDE4.

2007-12-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well, if you are going to use a GUI, use KDE. I like KDE because of the freedom it offers, meaning it is the most flexibility, customizable and feature rich window manager out there.

Here is my assessment of some of the most familiar window managers in Linux.

KDE
Pros: Tons of options so you can customize the heck out it. Looks good. Easy to use.
Cons: Bloated. Too many options (for those who don't like choice).

Gnome
Pros: Easy to use. Looks good. Moderate customization, but not overloaded like KDE.
Cons: Moderate customization. Bloated.

Xfce
Pros: Light on resources. Gnome looking. Pretty. Easy to use.
Cons: Gnome looking. Minimal customization.

Fluxbox/Openbox/Blackbox/FVWM
Pros: Very light on resources. Highly customizable. Minimalistic.
Cons: Takes forever to customize and most customization is done by editing config files.

WMaker
Pros: Light. Unique environment.
Cons: Very few customizations.

JWM/IceWM
Pros: Light. Easy to use.
Cons: Windows 9X feel and look. Few customization options.

Enlightment
Pros: Light. Very unique environment.
Cons: Very unique environment. Takes some getting use to.

There are others out there as well, but this list covers about 98% of all the Window Managers used in Linux. You should notice that many of the Pros I listed are also Cons. I did this on purpose to demonstrate that it's really a matter of preference. One is not really better then other, it's just a matter of what fits you the best. I've tried each of these and I like KDE the best, but on some of my older machines where KDE is too slow, I use Flubox or Openbox. I tend to lean more on Window Manages with a lot of customization.

If you haven't tried some these window managers give them a try. You may be surprised and find a new favorite window manager.

The Kid, The Wife and the Weekend...OH! and KDE 4

2007-12-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

It's Monday and there's no logo. My weekend was filled with watching my little boy and partying with the in-laws.

Friday night we had a Christmas Party at our Church and later that night my Mother in-law showed up out of the blue after attending some family get-together. She lives about 4 hours away. So, she stayed with us, which isn't a problem, I enjoy having my mother-in-law around. Saturday was filled with watching my 1.5 year old son, playing host to my mother-in-law and attending a 3-year old niece's birthday party that evening. Sunday was packed with church meetings, family obligations and working on upgrading my wife's computer, which took precedence over my own projects.

So, how does one find time to be involved in Open Source projects, especially during the holidays, with family, church and other obligations? Plus, I work two jobs to pay the bills.

My salvation is the two 4-day weekends coming up where I should have a lot of spare time. We'll see what happens.

OH, I ALMOST FORGOT! I'm so excited for KDE 4. I've just learned that it will require 40% less memory to run then KDE 3.x. So cool! I can't wait. Check out the countdown banner and add it to your blog or website.

What's in a Logo?

2007-12-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

I need a logo for SimpleCLI Desktop.

The logo needs to summarize all the ideals and concepts of SimpleCLI Desktop into one concise marketable image.

I was thinking of using this image:

and integrating some text, similar to this:

SimpleCLI: ~$ >
Desktop

Let me know what you think?

Now all I need to do is put on some finishing touches and create the .iso image. The logo is one of those finishing touches. I'll post the logo here as soon as I'm done with it.

Yet Another Linux Distro?

2007-12-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

Yep! :)
Why you ask? Well let me tell you...

I love the command line because of it's flexibility, it's quickness and it's productivity. It's liberating. You can do nearly anything in the CLI that can be done in the GUI, yet many people are intimated with the command line and therefore shy away from it. Hence, my idea to produce a user-noob-friendly CLI Linux Desktop Distro. I want to introduce people to the command line in a warm way. I want people who are new to the command line to be able to jump into a CLI environment and be able to immediately do what they do everyday on a computer with little anxiety and a minimal learning curve.

I also want to educate people that you can be productive and do things on your computer in the Command Line Interface. Things that most people would think was impossible in the CLI. You can view, edit, organize and manipulate your pictures. You can watch and edit video. You can burn CD's and listen to music, browse the internet and watch youtube videos, and it's not that hard. You don't have to memorize thousands of awkward long commands, because I'll be holding your hand. Then when you feel comfortable to venture out on your own, their are resources and examples built-in which will teach you, at your own pace, how to customize or adapt your system to your specialized needs.

Now, I'll admit that not everything on the command line is as easy as the GUI. Word Processing is one good example of this. I recommend using Latex to work around this issue since there is no known true CLI word processors. I've created some Latex templates to make things easier, but still... there is a slight learning curve. Yet, I feel with just one or two minutes of simple instruction and using a template, anyone can create a beautiful looking and professional document in no time.

Am I reinventing the wheel? No. There is no CLI only Desktop distro. Most distros with a CLI environment are for servers or specialized flavors like tomsrtbt. I propose that if a user wants to feel comfortable on the command line he or she should do so by doing normal everyday things, not by learning to configuring sendmail or editing config files.

Now to answer the questions addressed. Why must I create a new Linux distro to achieve the goals I've just outlined? Why don't I just make a Ubuntu Package that includes my tutorials and application menu? The answer is because the GUI is very tempting. I want to isolate the user in the CLI environment as much as possible. If a user was to use my tutorials or application in a terminal emulator like gnome-terminal or Konsole and they encountered a small bump in trying to perform a function, it's too easy to say, " Screw it! I'm just going to open up OOo Writer to type my paper". If the user is engulfed in the environment, then it's a little tougher to do that. Granted, if they are running the LiveCD all they need to do is reboot, also since SimpleCLI Desktop will be based on Ubuntu-server they can easily just "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" to get X up and running. Still, it takes just that much more effort to escape the CLI environment if its the only environment running. In addition, when the user finally does get over that little bump, they are a better person for it and they've learned and are less likely to forget what they've learned.

It's just like trying to learn a foreign language. The best way is to be immersed in the environment. Surround yourself with others that speak the language you are trying to learn and try to communicate as you normally would. Use resources to get by and eventually you'll feel more comfortable with the language. This is the premise of SimpleCLI Desktop.

SimpleCLI Desktop

2007-12-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

SimpleCLI Desktop is my new Linux distribution I hope to have available by the end of the year. I believe about as many people as read this blog (zero) will actually be interested in what I'm trying to develop. Nevertheless, I think this is a niche product that has yet to be made available to the community, and who knows maybe one other person out there will actually find this cool also.

I'd like to explain what I'm trying to create with SimpleCLI Desktop. So, here is an outline of my objectives:

1. An easy to use (newbie friendly) Command Line Interface (CLI) only Linux Distribution. That's right ,NO GUI. It will have a menu driven interface custom developed by me :) which will easily initiate applications and processes. Think of it as the CLI version of the start menu or application menu. Basic instructions will be displayed at login.

2. Help create a friendly environment for anyone wanting to learn the command line. There will be built in tutorials that will be constantly updated and expanded. Tutorials can be accessed through the application menu.

3. Designed for desktop use. Most of what people do on a computer is desktop stuff like: Surf the Internet, email, word processing, play games, listen to music, watch videos, view pictures, blog, instant message, etc. All of this can be done in a CLI environment, using very little system resources and is easy to do. I want to show the power of the CLI and it's simplicity.

4. Be used as a LiveCD distro. I want people to be able to use this anywhere.

Hopefully, the name now makes sense.
The distro will be based on Ubuntu-server and created using the Remastersys script.

In my next Blog I'll explain why I'm creating an entire distro and not just a Ubuntu package with my application script and tutorials.

How Kick-Butt is This Woman!

2007-12-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Here is an article on the woman who took down the gunman that opened fire in two churches in Colorado.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14817480/detail.html

There are some out there who want to sell out our right to bear arms. I'm sure media and politicians are already trying to spin this story and the recent shooting in Ohio to promote gun control. If guns were illegal, the gunman would have still obtained fire arms one way or another and this woman security guard, would have been defenseless and more lives would have been lost. Because this woman was able to carry a gun, LIVES WERE SAVED! The same can be said for the shooting just over a year ago here in Utah, when a gunman entered Trolley Square mall and let loose, killing 1/2 dozen people. He was stopped by an off-duty police officer having dinner with his wife.

I was try to come up with some way to tie Linux and open source to the above, but I'll forgo such a lame attempt. Just use Linux, you'll be much happier. :)

How many Linux Users are There?

2007-10-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

Net Applications recently published there results of users by operating system. According to them, 0.81% of computer users use Linux. They say they are not counting servers and embedded systems such as TiVo or cell phones. Net Applications are WAY OFF on their statistics and here is why.

Net Applications gather their information by internet activity to sites they track. They do not track the entire Internet (that would be impossible), so the sites they track may not be of interest to most Linux users. Also, most Linux users are very security aware and 'disguise' their web browsing so that they are anonymous or browsing in another operating system. This could definitely skew Net Applications' results.

Net Applications does admit that Linux is growing quickly. They even show that Linux usage has more then doubled since January 2007. I actually believe that that statistic is very optimistic. Linux is growing quickly and has been for sometime, but I think Apple has had tons of growth as of late, thanks the iPod.

So how many Linux users are out there? Well, W3Schools estimates about 3.4%.
Which I think is closer to the actual market share numbers, though I would guess slightly higher, more towards 4%. Why would I guess that? Because of some of the reasons listed in my argument against Net Applications. With the recent success of Apple, I would estimate their market share slightly higher, about 5-7%. This leaves Microsoft sitting around 89-91%. Now I dare you to tell me that they are not a monopoly? Wal-mart doesn't even come that close in market share in their respective market.

So what are the actual numbers. Well, Microsoft says they have about 1 billion users world wide, which is roughly 1/6th or 17% of the world's population. Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu claims 6 million users. Linux counter estimates 29 million Linux users and here is why. If my 4% of market share is accurate, then Linux users should be around 35-40 Million, way more then Net Applications' guess and of course I'm right. :)

If you're into statistics, here are some U.S. censuses results about computer and Internet usage.

Google Code Hidden Treasures

2007-10-03T08:20:00.001-07:00

I don't know how I've missed this.
http://code.google.com/

Google code is filled with hidden treasures. Here are just a few command line things that caught my eye.

Gcalcli allows you to view and access your google calendar on the CLI. There is even instructions to this to your conky file and display your calendar in your wallpaper.

http://code.google.com/p/gcalcli/

Cli-network manager is what its name implies.

http://code.google.com/p/network-manager-cli/

nrg4iso converts nero (.nrg) images to the more universal iso

http://code.google.com/p/nrg4iso/

A bunch of command line festivities.

http://code.google.com/p/crusty/

Tons of fun.

Some Fun Links

2007-09-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

I just found some great websites, tutorials and applications while randomly browsing around. These are definitely random links. I hope you enjoy them as much I have.

A debian package a day site - They are currently looking for contributors to write articles and editors
http://debaday.debian.net/

How to install Windows Media Player 9 and 10 on Linux using wine - very detailed with screenshots.
http://wine-review.blogspot.com/2007/09/windows-media-player-9-10-on-linux-with.html

irssi themes - Never played around with irssi themes, it's quite fun and easy to set up. BTW irssi is a irc chat client. Just download the .theme file and place it in your ~/.irssi directory then start irssi. Once in irssi, type '/set theme theme_name.theme' and that's it. This site has tons.
http://www.irssi.org/themes

Create a video of your desktop activity. This isn't in the Ubuntu repos so you will need to install manually.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=41938

Finally, strigi. Unlike most desktop search tools, this one uses very little resources. In Ubuntu, 'sudo apt-get install strigi-applet' to install.
http://strigi.sourceforge.net/

Enjoy!

Get Organized with VIM....yes, VIM.

2007-09-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've recently discovered and have become addicted to vim-outliner. If you've never used a note taker or outliner before then it's time to get organized. Outliners are great for organizing projects, planning events, meetings, presentations, talks, note taking and satisfying many other organizational needs. I wish I knew about vim-outliner when I was in college, it would have been the perfect tool for managing lecture note and class projects. I now use vim-outliner for organizing work tools and open source projects.

To install vim-outliner in Ubuntu is as easy as opening a terminal and typing:
sudo apt-get install vim-vimoutliner

Now you will need to edit the /etc/vim/vimoutlinerrc file to enable necessary features, so in a terminal type:
sudo vim /etc/vim/vimoutlinerrc

Press 'i' to enter insert mode then make sure the following 2 lines are uncommented:

let g:vo_modules_load = "checkbox:hoist"
and
let maplocalleader = ",,"

Also make sure that the following line ends with a zero, not a 1:

let g:use_space_colon=0

Now save the file by pressing the 'esc' key to exit insert mode and type:
:wq

Now, let's get outlining!
To open a vim-outliner file type:
vim filename.otl

You must have the '.otl' extension to your filename for vim to act as an outliner. To use the outline just start typing, remembering to press 'i' first to enter vim insert mode. Create categories and sub-categories by tabbing. Here is an example:

How to Back up Your Data

   CD-RW

      Storage

       Lifespan

   USB Drive

      Storage

      Lifespan

   Rsync

The above is an example of a 3 level outline, vim will automatically color code each level. To add text or notes to a category, start a new line under a heading and begin the new with a :(sp) (That's colon followed by a space). Here is an example:

How to Back up Your Data

   CD-RW

      Storage

         :  Make sure you store your CD's in fairly cool conditions

         :  Don't storage your CD's in direct sunlight

      Lifespan

Your text will automatically wrap as needed. Now comes the fun part....folding.
Exit vim's insert mode my pressing 'esc' and move your cursor to one of the newly
entered text lines and press the 'z' and 'a' keys (z-a) and you should get
something like the following:

How to Back up Your Data

   CD-RW

      Storage

         [TEXT] ------------------------- (2 lines)

      Lifespan

Pretty neat! There are some built-in keyboard shortcuts that unleashed the real
power of folding. Here are some of those handy commands:

Z-c		collapse a tree within command mode
Z-o		expand one level
z-O		expand all the way down
>>		Demote headline, collapse the tree to demote all children
<<	Promote headline, collapse the tree to promote all children

,#	Fold at level #, all set foldlevel=# (i.e. ,,3 will foldset at level 3)
,,-	Draw dashed line
,,f	Directory listing of the current directory
,,s	Sort sub-tree under cursor ascending
,,S	Sort sub-tree under cursor descending
,,t	Append timestamp (HH:MM:SS) to heading


There are several other commands. To learn more commands and other outliner
features you can access vim-outliner documentation while in vim, by typing:
:h vimoutliner

I know...... I know..... You are well impressed, but wait there's MORE!!!!!
You can add checkboxes and percentages of completion to each of your categories.
You do this by moving the cursor to the heading of choice and pressing the following
keys ",,c%" (that's "comma comma the letter 'c' and the percentage symbol")
This will create something like this:

[_] %How to Back up Your Data
   [_] %CD-RW
   [_] Storage
         [TEXT] ------------------------- (2 lines)
   [_] Lifespan

You can toggle a checkbox as checked or unchecked by pressing the following
keys ",,cx" (comma comma the letter 'c' and the letter 'x'). Here is a
screeenshot of a partially complete oultine with checkboxes and percentages:

Here is a list of checkbox commands:

,,cb	Insert a check box on the current line or each line
	of the currently selected range (including lines in
	selected but closed folds).
,,cx	Toggle check box state (percentage aware)
,,cd	Delete check boxes
,,c%	Create a check box with percentage placeholder
,,cp	Create a check box with % placeholder on all headings
,,cz	Compute % completion for the tree below the current heading.

Of course vim-outliner also has all the vim features and commands that
you've come to expect and love. So all vi controls and keyboard entries
work with outliner. You can find more information about vim-outliner at
http://www.vimoutliner.org.
At the vim-outliner site you'll find some neat scripts to convert .otl files
to .html and .sxi (OpenOffice.org Presentation format).

Now go get organized!

Story of 3 MS Windows Users Trying Linux.

2007-09-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

Story #1
I was talking with a guy I work with a few months ago about Linux and how wonderful and great it is, so he decided to try it on an older computer (about 1 Ghz P4) he had lying around. He said he thought the hard drive was bad because MS Windows exploded or something and it wouldn't reinstall Windows. He downloaded Ubuntu, placed the newly burned CD in the drive and to his amazement it installed and brought his computer back to life. He was impressed! That is until he tried to get online. For some reason he couldn't connect. I believe it was a DNS issue with his home network, because I had a similar issue. He went to the Ubuntu forums to try to resolve the network problem. He quickly received a reply but he didn't understand it. At work the next day, he told me of his experience and professed how Linux sucks if it can't even auto-configure his network. I voluteered to go to his home and fix it for him, I assured him it was probably something simple and could fix it in just a few minutes. He told me not to bother because Linux sucks..... yada, yada, yada.

Comments:

So, let me get this straight:
1) You have a computer that will not install Windows for whatever reason.
2) Linux does install on it
3) There is a network problem, which I could easily fix, but you don't want me to (because Linux sucks).
4) So instead, you'd rather have the computer gather dust in the corner, then have it fixed in 5 minutes and be a powerful, useful tool.

Does this make any sense at all to anyone?

The guy I work with said he just tried Linux because it was free, but didn't like it because it didn't work. He said if Linux worked just like Windows, ran Windows programs then he would use it. Basically he was looking for a free Windows, which Linux is not. It's been my experience that those looking for a free Windows, just pirate it or only give Linux half a look. Linux is not Windows. Windows does somethings better then Linux (like games, and some hand holding, etc), but Linux also does somethings better then Windows (Freedom, and control over your system, no viruses and spyware, etc). They also both have their problems. I think they are both easy to use.

Now, I'll also say that this guy has problems with Microsoft and Windows, because he has complained about them, but he seems to tolerate it. Yet when it came to a very minor issue with Linux, he considered it trash and he won't put up with it and goes back to MS Windows!

Story #2
This story comes from a blog. http://www.pcmech.com/article/an-idiots-tale-of-choosing-a-linux-distro/

This guy wasn't too excited about Vista and I guess had some problems with it, so a friend at work encouraged him to try Linux.

At first he was blown away by all the choices of Linux distributions out there, but like a trooper he tried a few to see which worked best for him.

He tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but had problems configuring his video resolution correctly. He did comment that he liked KDE better then Gnome. Next he tried Linspire/Freespire, and he liked that it supported commercial applications, but somethings didn't install right and he had the same video problems he had with the Ubuntus (or is it Ubunti). This really isn't a surprise because Linspire/Freespire is based off of Ubuntu. Finally, he tried PCLinuxOS, and thought it was okay. His video worked great, so he left us saying he'd give it a go.

Comments:

First off, people need to realize that many times the hardware problems with Linux, is not Linux's fault. Most manufactures make it difficult for Linux users to have hardware drivers, leaving the Linux community to come up with their own drivers. So yes, not everything works perfectly with Linux, but most does. In fact probably 80-90% does. Not too bad for not having help from most hardware manufactures. That's quite an accomplishment and those developers should get major kudos for all they do.

Second, Windows users are not use to choice. This guy freaks out because there are too many choices, as opposed to Windows where there are two choices now, Vista with some features and Vista with all of its features. Isn't choice good?

This reminds me of a friend I had who was visiting from China and was in America for the first time. When he went to the grocery store he was blown away with all the choices he had in cereal. At first he was overwhelming but then he came to appreciate the fact that there was more then 3 types of cereal.

I admire this guy for trying different distros, though he only really tried two, since all but PCLinuxOS were Ubuntu variants. But PCLinuxOS, worked for him and he's going to give it a fair shake. I hope?

Story #3
This story also comes from a blog. http://scitech.teambio.org/2007/09/18/windows-guy-takes-ubuntu-gutsy-to-work/

This guy is a Windows systems admin and tries Ubuntu Gusty which is currently in alpha, so not really stable. He attempts to see if he could do his job with Linux instead of Windows. I think a very fair challenge. To summarize, he succeeds, but with some work arounds and tweeks.

Comments:
This guys story was very interesting and I enjoyed seeing how he worked about various issues. This guy knew what he was doing and knew how to research to find solutions to his problems, the sign of a good admin. His one problem with Internet Explorer running on Linux with the address bar, could be resolved by using an older versions of wine. I had the same issue and it took some digging to find the anwser. All in all I admire this guy for giving Linux a fair shake.

Conclusion:

I believe most people have some issues with Windows. Most people don't like paying for and constantly updating and scanning their computers with anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Vista seems to have driver problems. And there's other issues, but most Windows users just put up with it, mostly because they don't know they have any other choice and Microsoft likes that. People need to know they have a choice.

I hope these guys in story #2 and 3 stick with it, because if they do it won't take long that they will feel just as comfortable with Linux as they do with Windows. I've been using Linux for nearly 7 years now and I'm now at the point that I don't feel comfortable with Windows anymore. I have trouble navigating around or knowing how to configure settings. I wish Windows was more like Linux, because to me Linux is easier. Maybe I should take a similar challenge to guy #3 and see if I could get my job done with Windows. It's all about preference and what you know, I guess.

Ding Dong SCO is Gone!!!

2007-09-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

SCO the Anti-Christ of Linux has filed for bankruptcy. You can read about it here:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070914152904577

SCO sued IBM and then Novell back in 2003. I tend to remember some talk back then about what might happen to Linux. I even had a friend tell me that I should start using FreeBSD because of all the 'issues' and potential legal problems surrounding Linux. It's a bit of a shame that this has happened, because SCO used to be Caldera Linux and they were a good company that contributed greatly to the Open Source Community. It all went to pot when SCO merged with Caldera and Darl McBride began running things.

Darl lacked vision. He couldn't possibly see how a free product could make money. Darl was in a position to be visionary and a significant force in the software industry. He could have been part of something great! Yet all he saw (at least in his own eyes) was how his company was missing out and not getting their rightful dues. So, he played the victim. While others changed their paradigms (Novell and Dell for example) and profited from it, Darl sank.

Well, Darl is now famous as the hater of Linux, kind of like Judas or Benedict Arnold in their perspective time and place. I was going to compare Darl to Hitler or Stalin, but they were more successful then he ever was or will be. They had a following, people who were loyal to them and they changed the world. Granted not for the better, but they were very influential, Darl never was. It would be an insult to these dictators to compare the CEO of SCO to them. No, Darl is a failure and he is known for his betrayal.

Well, it's been more then 4 years and Linux has increased in popularity and usage like never before. Dell is now even selling Ubuntu pre-installed on their computers, as well as Lenovo one of the largest laptop manufactures in the world. Who would have ever thought we would have come so far. We hoped, but was never really sure what would happen.

Just think where Linux will be in the next 4 years (2011). I predict that Linux will have a significant market share, meaning enough for the commercial software industry to take notice and start marketing Linux users. I'm guessing that tipping point is probably around 8%. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

You Never Forget Your First.

2007-09-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly ten years since I bought my first computer back in 1998. It was an Acer desktop (where are those now) with an AMD k6-2 333 mhz Processor, with a whopping 64 mb of RAM and a 4 GB Hard Drive running Windows 98. When I purchased this computer I didn't understand anything about computers. I had no idea what processor speed was or what RAM was, I completely had to trust the salesman that he was giving me a fair deal. I now know that that was a decent computer for it's time.

Of course, computers have been around long before 1998, I grew up with a computer in our home for most of my life, but I never used it. Computers never interested me. They seemed crude and undesirable. I didn't see a need for them, but in 1998 the internet boom was in full swing and I liked the idea of email and having so much information at my finger tips. This computer was the first computer I bought with my own money and the first time I had an email account. From almost the beginning of having this computer I wanted to make it do as much as possible. I soon upgrade my system to 128 mb of RAM and to a 20 GB Hard Drive and I also bought a 2X CD-Rewritable. I thought at the time that I had the ultimate system.

Later Windows ME came out and I upgraded to that, which was the beginning of the end for my Windows days. Things started to go wrong, my CD-Rewriter won't always be detected and I had problems with my sound when I played a CD. It was on this computer in the spring of 2001 that I put Red Hat 7.1 on my little Acer, just 2 1/2 years later after enter the computer age.

I built a new computer later that year, but kept my Acer as a test computer. In the summer of 2004 after 6 years of loving service I sold my Acer for $80. I felt so dirty. You never really forget your first. I have fond memories of this computer, it will always be special.

What was your first? I'd like to hear your story.

Images and Videos on the Command Line? YES!

2007-09-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

Want to watch a movie? Perhaps you would like to view and edit your photographs? It's easier than you may think using the command line and framebuffer.

You will first need to activate framebuffer in grub at start up on your favorite Linux distro. You will need to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. I use nano to edit files but any will do, so I type:
sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

You'll need root privileges to edit menu.lst. Find the line that looks like the following

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-12-generic root=/dev/hdb1 ro quiet splash

Yours may look a little different depending on your distro or kernel being used, but it should start with 'kernel' and have similar information. At the very end of the line add the following, 'vga=791', so that it looks like this:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-12-generic root=/dev/hdb1 ro quiet splash vga=791

The 'vga=791' will activate framebuffer to run at 1024x768x64k resolution, here are other resolution options. Just replace the '791' with whatever will work with your video card and monitor.

# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
# vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
# vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
# vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
# vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
# vga=769

Now reboot so your kernel can start in framebuffer.

To watch movies, install mplayer-nogui, in Ubuntu simply type:

sudo apt-get install mplayer-nogui

Once installed go to the directory of your favorite video and type:

sudo mplayer -vo sdl videofile.avi

Shazaam! There you go. Make sure you have the necessary codecs/plugins to view your video format. But now you want to watch a DVD do you? Well then type:

sudo mplayer -vo sdl dvd://1

The '1' on the end indicates the title number on the DVD.

Say you want to view your Aunt Thema's lastest Christmas picture. You'll need to install 'fbi'. No, not the government agency, but the framebuffer image viewer. In Ubuntu simply type:

sudo apt-get install fbi

to install the viewer.

Next go to a directory containing Aunt Thema's pics and type:

fbi *

You should now be able to see Thema in all her glory. Use the space bar to view the next image.

If you want to edit Thema's picture, perhaps you would like to add some contrast or brighten the picture up a bit, then imagemagick is the tool of for you. You guessed it...

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

will install the app. I'll go into some of the cooler features of imagemagick, especially it's convert command in a later blog, but for now you can read the man page for info as to how to use imagemagick (man imagemagick).

No more do you need to rely on the heavy GUI environment for your graphical needs, the CLI is here for you.

Enjoy!

Word Processing (with Latex) in the Command Line

2007-08-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

In my never-ending quest to prove that you can do anything in the CLI that you can do in a GUI, this is my attempt at word processing in the command line. There is no true word processor for the CLI, that I'm aware of, but the results of using the Latex typesetting language create a good enough end result. If your not familiar with Latex typesetting language, you can sort of compare it too html markup language. With Latex you use code to assign your document layout, font type, font size and other document characteristics. A skilled Latex artist can create absolutely beautiful, high quality and professional documents.

In the GUI, I'd recommend using Lyx a great WYSIWYG Latex editor, but we're in CLI land here so we'll be using vim-latexsuite a fantastic plug-in to a brillant text editor. In Ubuntu, just 'sudo apt-get install vim-latexsuite' and you are good as gold. The vim-latex-suite has a very in-depth guide built-in. You can access the guide once in vim by typing:
:h latex-suite

This blog will walk you through creating a simple document and serve as just an introduction to the vim-latex-suite. For more a more comprehensive explanation of the latex-suite please see the guide mentioned above.

Open a vim session by typing:
vim texdoc.tex

Now press the 'i' key to change vim to 'insert mode' and type or copy the following into vim:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}\title{My First \LaTeX{} Document!}
\author{Jared Bernard}
\date{December 25 2010}
\begin{document}
\maketitle Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distribution of all time! I can do anything in the CLI that you can do in a GUI plus more. So there..... (sticks tongue out at GUI).
\end{document}

Everything that starts with a '\' is what defines the format of the document. Here is a basic description of what we just created.

This document is an article, using a 12 pt font. (There are several types of document classes. 'report' is another common class.)
the Title of this document is 'My First Latex Document!'
Its author is Jared Bernard. (me)
It was written in December 25 2010.
Everything else is the content of the document

Now that we know what we created, press the 'esc' key to change to 'normal mode' in vim. Then type ':w' (w/o quotes) to save the document.

Now here comes the fun part, HOLD down the '\' key while pressing the 'l' (el) key twice. This is described in the vim-latex-suite guide (mentioned at the beginning of this blog) as \ll. This will compile the .tex document. If your typeset language has mistakes you will see an error message at the bottom of vim session. If this occurs verify that your typeset language is exactly as the example given and make the appropriate changes. Otherwise, if everything worked out well, you should see no evidence of anything happening :).

Now exit vim, by typing:
:wq

Now that you are at the command line type:
ls

You should now see some new files that where created, texdoc.aux, texdoc.dvi, texdoc.log and of course texdoc.tex. These are your data files for your new document. The .dvi file is your main latex file. There are several ways to view your newly created document, but first you must install some CLI .dvi viewers. Type 'sudo apt-get install dvi2tty dvifb dvipng fbi' to install the viewers which are discussed below.

The first way is using dvi2tty, so type:
dvi2tty texdoc.dvi

This is not my preferred way to view your document as the formatting isn't always accurately displayed, but is does give you a quick look at what you have just created without the typeset language.

A Better option to view your document is using dvifb. To view, type:
dvifb texdoc.dvi

Isn't that beautiful! :) If you copied the typeset exactly as I have it you will notice the word 'Latex' in the title and the unique format I designed for it. You can see the difference as it's displayed with dvi2tty compared to dvifb.

You can also convert your .dvi file to a png image, by typing:
dvipng texdoc.dvi

This will create a file named 'texdoc.png'. You can view this image using fbi by typing:
fbi texdoc.png

Now that's great, but what if I want to email my document to my gui-loving and windows-loving friends? How can they view my new beautiful document. They should have no problem viewing your newly created .dvi file using any pdf viewer like xpdf or Adobe's Acrobat Reader or viewing the .png file in any image viewer.
If you need to make changes to your document, just open the original .tex file and make the necessary changes, save the document, compile the document using the \ll command and you should be good to go.

Let me know what you think. If there is ANYTHING you thought couldn't be done on the Command Line that can be done on the GUI, let me know. I'll try to figure it out and blog about it.

The Non-Programmer's Contributions.

2007-08-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

The extent of my programming are some basic shell scripts, which I'm very proud of, but doesn't classify me as a hacker. Times are changing. Linux is becoming more popular and as a result the community is seeing more and more average computer users joining its ranks. As these new Linux and open source users become more familiar with the community, hopefully they will have a desire to give back. But how does a non-programmer contribute to the community which seems to be filled with programmers and system admins? I'm an accountant, am I expected to learn code to not feel like a moocher? Of course not!

Here are some ways to contribute to Linux and open sources without having a computer engineering degree.

1) Promote Linux and open source.

Tell your friends, co-workers and family about Linux and OSS. If they are not ready for a full OS conversion, tell them about some of the great OSS projects out there for windows, such as, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, Audacity, etc.
Give out liveCDs. Ubuntu will even send you free CDs.
Offer to help install Linux on their computer.

2) Donate money to OSS projects. Many of their websites offer ways to donate.

3) Help others. Even if you still consider yourself a newbie, I can guarantee that there is someone else out there who is struggling with a problem or issue you've once faced. You can help answer questions or just offer suggestions in the following ways:

Forums. Visit your distributions forum. Many OSS projects also have their own forums. Help answer questions.
Attend installfests. Usually your local user groups put these on. Help some install Linux.
Jump on an IRC channel. User groups, distributions and various projects all have IRC channels where discussions and questions are asked constantly.

4) Help with documentation. Documentation is never-ending. Find a project you feel passionate about and assist in writing readme's, how-to's, tutorials, wiki entries, help guides, etc. Contact the project leader and tell him you would like to help. If you are bilingual help with translating documentation into another language.

5) Test for bugs. Learn how to properly report bugs. Download and use alpha, beta and release candidates of projects. If you don't have an extra system to test on, use one of the many virtual machines out there to test so you don't foul up your main system. Be specific so those working on the projects can have all the information they need to solve the problem.

6) Finally, continue to learn. The OSS community is fast-paced and is changing all the time. New projects pop up daily. The more you learn the more you can help others.

The Linux and open source community is non-discriminatory. Everyone is welcome. So now there are no more excuses. Get out there and help out. :)

My Affair with Ubuntu

2007-08-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

My first experience with Linux was Red Hat 7.0. At the time I didn't really know anything else existed, in my eye Red Hat was Linux. Two things were frustrating for me during these early exploration days, no automounting and installing applications. For the life of me I couldn't access my CD-ROM or floppy drive and the mount command was confusing to me. Installing applications beyond what was available on the Red Hat CDs wasn't going to happen. At the time, I dual booted Red Hat and Windows 98. Spending most of my time in Windows and occassionally experiementing in Linux.

It didn't take me long to discover that there was more out there then Red Hat. Mandrake (now Mandriva) caught my eye early on, so I installed 8.0 and I felt much more comfortable with Linux. When I stuck a CD-ROM in my drive, an icon appeared on the desktop which allowed me to easily access and view all the data on the CD. Though I could still only install applications from the Mandrake CDs, it seemed to me at the time that Mandrake had a sufficently large repository of applications, more so than Red Hat.

I stayed with Mandrake for a long time, up to ver 10.2. During this time, my distaste for Windows grew and I became more and more relaxed with Linux. Linux in general seemed to mature quickly. It was like riding a rollercoaster, I loved it. I eventually removed my Windows partition and was ready for Linux full time.

After Mandrake, I tried several other distros and had significant affairs with Suse, Mepis and PCLinuxOS. They all seemed like the ideal distro for me in the beginning, but like most flirtations, the honeymoon ended quickly. Now don't get me wrong, these distributions are great, I would still recommend these to any new Linux user, but "challenges" seemed to crop up slowly which caused me to divert my attention elsewhere. Suse's YaST was slow and at the time they didn't seem to support particular and necessary formats such as mp3's and encrypted DVDs. Mepis came along and satisfied my urges with multimedia, which at the time was like a passionate romp in the hay and had me declaring it the "Perfect Distro". Mp3's and encrypted DVDs were no problem and it was my first experience with apt-get (synaptic) which made my legs quiver. But the starry-eyed lover lost me when updates began breaking my system and no one messes with my system. PCLinuxOS had longer legs then Mepis and looked sexy in a mini-skirt. PCLinuxOS made my bones melt. Everything lacking in every other distro I tried, PCLinuxOS had and more. I'll admit that my break up with PCLinuxOS was for very petty reasons. Texstar is awesome, but he's one guy I wanted some of the lastest and greatest packages and I wanted them now. Texstar tried but he just couldn't put out.

I tried for a long time to ignore the harlot Ubuntu. I gave into the pressure and found a motel for that South Africian seductress and we did the unmentionable and I liked IT. Yeah, that sudo thing is annoying but Ubuntu is hot and I quickly got use to it. She's stable, she plays with the lastest and greatest and her community assets are HUGE. There are documents, helps, wikis, books and more. I've been riding Ubuntu for just over a year now and I have to say, anytime I've needed help, there has been a tutorial, how-to or help giving me step by step instructions everytime. The instructions have been specific, easy to follow and worked every time and I do some freaky things.

My eyes have yet to wander from Ubuntu. Nothing else seems to attract me. Ubuntu satisfies me like no other distro has. I see a long and happy relationship here, in fact there maybe a bun in the oven developing. I'm working on a specialized distro based on Ubuntu-server. More to come on that.

Amazing Photo Resize Technology

2007-08-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

This is incredible! Technology to resize a photo not necessarily to scale but having no distortion. Watch the video to get a better understanding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcIJXTlugc

Some Random Links

2007-08-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a great rant for those who don't give Linux a fair shake.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/howto-leave-ubuntu/

And free 'Free Software' stickers. Enjoy!
http://raro.oreto.inf-cr.uclm.es/apps/stickers/

50 Reasons (but not all valid)

2007-08-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is my response to a blog titled '50 Reason to Dump Windows' which can be found here:
http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2007/08/13/50-reasons-to-dump-windows/

Below is the list with my comments, (I'm a Linux advocate, but I'll try to be fair):

Windows is Expensive.
-Definitely a true statement.

Windows crashes more often than Linux ever will. (Windows BSOD) (Linux Kernel Panic).
-Maybe, I haven't seen significant proof of the this, but I do think that Linux is easier to recover from a crash than Windows.

Windows Task manager is not half as cool as Linux Htop.
-Htop is pretty cool.

Windows Notepad is not 1/1000th as cool as linux vi.
-Note: they do develop vi for Windows.

Microsoft office for windows is not free. Openoffice, which was originally developed for *nix platform is free on all platforms that it supports.
-ok.

Windows Terminal vs Linux Terminal. No comments, see for yourself what you can do.
-Very true!

Windows is not friendly towards Linux installations on a separate partition.
-True, but how is this relevant. Windows user could care less. This is a reason 'Not to use Windows?'

The release of Windows Vista comes more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between two releases of Microsoft Windows.
-ummmmm?

Internet Explorer is prone to vulnerabilities more than any other mainstream web browser.
-Note: They do make other browsers that run on Windows. This may be a reason not to use IE.

Microsoft Windows still looks the same. (95 98 2000 2003 XP Vista Longhorn).
-No more different then different version of KDE or GNOME or other.

Windows in owned by profit hungry corporation with little hope of innovation.
-Profit Hungry.. yes. Is that necessarily bad... no. The way they conduct business...yeah, pretty bad. Microsoft not innovative...true. I believe the open source model does provide a greater opportunity for more innovation, but I think Apple has been fairly innovative, not following the OS model.

Linux is for people by people.
-Yes.

It is legal to share linux, not so with windows.
-Yes

Linux is not tied down by one look, like windows, you can choose several looks; ie, KDE, GNOME, fluxbox. To name a few.
-There are other desktops and Window Managers for Windows but not very common or reliable.

Linux hardware requirement is so minimum you can run most current popular linux distro on a ten year old hardware, try that with windows vista.
-Yes, but not with current versions of KDE or GNOME. Less user friendly WM's like Fluxbox, Windows Maker, etc.... sure.

Viruses are few and far between.
-As far as I know, ZERO 'in the wild' viruses.

Linux faces open standard unlike windows, and so a system update won’t make any programs or systems obsolete.
-What are you talking about?

Linux can be configured by the user.
-What!? Very limited as it should be.

Linux can be customized by the user.
-What!? Very limited as it should be.

Linux can be built from scratch by the user, (if you are programmer and know how to).
-You don't even need to be a programmer. Linux from Stratch and others.

Linux doesn’t hog system in default installation like windows do.
-ummmmm?

Linux gives you the freedom to choose application/hardware unlike windows.
-What!? You can't chose what application or hardware to use in Windows? That's new to me.

Most top linux distros are updated every six months.
-Some.

High quality support are available for free online, in the form of HOWTOs, forum, e-books, wikis.
-Yeah, they have the samething for Windows, but the community is definitely more informed.

Support of linux won’t be discontinued, like windows 98 in not supported by Microsoft anymore.
-Older versions of Linux are not supported.

*nix has been around for more than 35 years, and is well tested and as secure as possible.
-This could get ugly because I know how some feel about this. LINUX IS NOT UNIX! I some might disagree and that's your right.

No licensing fees for linux.
-Yep!

Linux is more secure.
-YES! Definitely.

You won’t have to upgrade your computer hardware in order to switch to the newer version of linux.
-True.

Linux is capable of operating on a wide variety of platforms (i.e., processor and system types), rather than just being limited to Intel-compatible processors and computers.
-True. :)

Government security agencies use Linux over windows; SElinux is an example of dedication towards Linux.
-ok

Linux doesn’t have Backdoors like windows do.
-Anything can be hacked, Unless it's unplugged, bury 20 feet in the ground and covered in cement.. then maybe.

Development and popularity on linux platform encourages competition and perhaps whatever innovation that window has.
-ok

Linux doesn’t need to defragment HD.
-Windows XP and Vista, don't really require this.

Ext3 and other linux file system is better than ntfs.
-I agree.

Google runs on Linux, there is a reason for that. Think.
-Think. Google may not be the ideal model.

Apache on linux hosts more websites than IIS on windows.
- Yeah, unfortunately IIS is still gaining in market share. Apache can run on Windows also. Is this 50 reasons to use Apache?

Apache is more secure than IIS.
-Yes. Apache can run on Windows also. Is this 50 reasons to use Apache?

Firefox is far more advanced/secure than Microsoft IE. Even though you can run Firefox in windows it doesn’t provide the secure platform that linux provides and are open to attacks/exploits that firefox on linux aren’t.
-ummmmmm?

Linux has superior network and system management.
-Sure

Linux is also supported by IBM, HP, Novell.
-Ok. Novell also support Microsoft.

Linux is reliable.
-Yep.

Linux doesn’t discourage running virtual machine like windows.
-?????? VMware?

Linux is the de-facto OS for security forensics.
-I don't know anything about that.

There is a reason why Apple switched to *nix; OSX is the defining example of what you can do with *nix. It has reached such a point that Microsoft is copying ideas from apple/OSX, again.
-One more time. LINUX IS NOT UNIX! geez! I'm ok. Though that was a good move on Apple's part.

There is no “service packs”. There are updates.
-ok.

If you think Linux doesn’t provide eye candy like windows does, think again. Two words, Beryl and Compiz!!!
-Linux eye candy is way better, man.

There is nothing you can do in windows that you can’t do in linux, not the other way around.
-I agree. It may not be easier, but true.

If you are stuck with the looks of windows you can switch to linux and still use the same looks. ie, Linspire.
-yeah, but why? I've seen a way to make Windows look like Ubuntu.

Last but not least. Linux is FREE.
-True, as in Freedom right?

Why I Linux!

2007-08-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog of soon to be many. I need to let you know that I'm a Linux fanatic! I love Linux and I want to be a promoter of Linux. So let me begin with an explanation of what Linux is and why I use it.

Linux is an operating system. An operating system is the environment you use on a computer to run programs. Microsoft Windows is the most popular operating system used on computers. Apple's OS X is another well known operating system and there are others. Linux is one as well. Within an operating system you can run your Internet browser to view the web, or run a word processor to type a letter.

Six 1/2 years ago was the first time I realized that there were other operating systems besides those offered by Microsoft and Apple. My life has never been the same.

The reason I use Linux is because I treasure my freedom in every aspect of my life. Linux is free, not just as in, you don't pay a dime for it, but it's free as in freedom. You are not free using Microsoft and Apple. What makes Linux freedom is it's license. Microsoft's and Apple's licenses are restricting. When you buy Windows or OS X you do not own it, you just pay Microsoft and Apple money to use it in the way they dictate it. Meaning you can not share it with anyone, you don't have a right to do so. You are tied to the way they set it up and structure the operating system. If you don't like the way something works or is designed, live with it. You have NO option. Remember you don't own it!

Let's compare this to a car. If you bought a car and it was licensed in a similar way as Microsoft Windows, you would not own it. Yes, you paid a lot of money to rent it essentially. You couldn't fix it up and resell it to make more money on your investment because Microsoft restricted it in their agreement with you. They do this because they feel your improving on their product is taking money away from them. Remember you don't own it. You're stuck with it as is. You can not add a new muffler, rims or decide to make it into a convertible. If you do you're in trouble. Say you don't buy a car to customize it for your own needs, you just use it to get from point 'A' to point 'B', but you've had the car for 10 years now and it's been good to you, so you want to sell it, make a few bucks and buy a new one. Sorry you can't you have to throw it way. You're not allowed to sell it and they encourage you to 'lease' a new car from them again. You can only lease, never buy.

If you're not willing to use a car under these conditions, why use your computer under these conditions?

Linux is freedom because it is open source which means the programming code is available to everyone to view and change. It can be customized to your own needs. Linux provides a community that encourages you to improve upon it, copy it and share it. For a long time I didn't understand this because, I'm not a programmer, I can't change the code of the software. But there are thousands of programmer out there in the world who contribute to Linux who have customized Linux hundreds of ways and I can guarantee you that one fits you. Plus you can contribute in others ways (which I will discuss at another time).

So instead of having to choose a 'one size fits all' operating system, you can find one that fits your needs, tastes, and likes, so it feels as comfortable as a good pair of jeans. http://www.distowatch.com is a great resource to 'shop' for the perfect fit.

Before I close, let me say this, Windows is not a bad operating system and maybe it does fit your needs. There are advantages and disadvantages to each operating system mentioned here. The biggest disadvantage for me in using Windows is it's restrictions. Restrictions I never really noticed until I started using Linux. Also, beware Microsoft and those 'geeks' who love it, may tell you things about Linux which are not true. I urge you to find out for yourself the truth.

As for now, I've gone on long enough, more to come, but I hope this helps explain... why I Linux.