Linux
screen is one of my favorite GNU utilities; it provides a quick and easy way to have several open terminals and do multiple things at once. Another cool feature about screen is that it stays running even if the user logs out or disconnects. This enables the user to detach from their session and resume it later. This feature is a life saver when working on a remote machine through SSH. If I was disconnected for some reason, I can easily reconnect and resume my session.
screen is very easy to use. Below is a list of its main commands. Read on, experiment with them, and you will become proficient in screen in minutes. Believe me you will appreciate it.
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Submitted by Ayman on Sun, 2006/09/17 - 9:03pm.
Vim is one of the most popular text editors for Linux and Unix systems. Its text-based interface may look intimidating for newcomers, but underneath it there is a wealth of functionality to be learned. Experienced Vim users often feel much more productive using Vim than GUI-based text editors.
I've been using Vim on a daily basis for years to do a wide range of tasks, from casual editing of short text files, to managing large programming projects, and every now and then I come across a new feature that considerably helps in some aspect of text editing. For this reason, I decided to compile a list of such Vim tips in this post.
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Submitted by Ayman on Thu, 2006/09/07 - 7:37pm.
A few days I go I received Ubuntu Linux CDs from the Ubuntu ShipIt program, I ordered them back when Ubuntu version 6.06 (Dapper Drake) was released (1st of June), they took a bit longer that expected and the package was obviously opened at the customs, perhaps because of the recent events in the region, anyway they arrived, and I need them badly for my laptop, as the current Gentoo Linux installation is quite outdated and updating it will take a considerable effort.
Perhaps the first thing I'd install after the distro itself is Xgl, it's a 3D desktop environment, I tried a demo live CD and the results were fascinating on both visual and productive fronts, Xgl provides some really cool visual effects such as dropdown shadows and translucent windows, it also features an improved multi-desktop model with many enhancements to common features such as alt-tab functionality.
Although I'm going to install Ubuntu on my laptop, I'll remain a loyal Gentoo user on my workstation.
By the way, those who live in Syria and are interested in Ubuntu but can't find any CDs, please let me know and I'll try to provide copies.
Submitted by Ayman on Thu, 2006/08/17 - 3:54pm.
While waiting for ADSL to be enabled in my area, which (I've been told) will happen soon, I did some tinkering with my Gentoo Linux workstation to make it more protected against remote attacks, and I thought of compiling a list of security measures against the dangers of full-time Internet connection. Obviously the list is not complete, but it has tips that can surely help.
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Submitted by Ayman on Sun, 2006/03/05 - 4:44pm.
Here is a quick tip for Firefox users under Linux. If you find loading the current text in clipboard as a URL when middle-clicking on the current page annoying, then type about:config in the location bar, search for middlemouse.contentLoadURL and set it to false.
This feature may has some uses, but many times I middle-click somewhere other than a link, and Firefox tries to load whatever text in the clipboard as a URL. Since that the text won't an actual URL most of the time, Firefox loads a random website that is the result of a Google "I feel lucky search", which is very annoying!
Submitted by Ayman on Fri, 2006/01/27 - 9:05pm.
I have used XMMS for my music playing needs since my first days with Linux, it looked and acted like Winamp, and back then this was more than enough for me, years passed, XMMS hardly improved, but I kept using it, recently I started looking for alternatives, although XMMS was doing its job, I thought there might be new features in the world of Linux music players that I was missing.
I looked around for alternatives, XMMS2 was in early development stages, and there were other Winamp-clones like beep media player, bmpx, and Audacious, those were out of question since I was looking for something different, I also found that amaroK has good reputation among KDE users, but this one was out of question too, given that I'm a Gnome user and want something that integrates nicely.
Next I came across Music Player Daemon (MPD) which got my interest, this application uses the client-server model, it is the backend of a music player, and has a variety of frontends to choose from, when I read about it I immediately thought I could make use of this in my home network, I have a 5.1 sound system connected to my workstation, to control XMMS when I'm on another machine, I ssh to the workstation and use the commandline switches of XMMS to play/pause or go to the next/previous item in the playlist, while this was usable, it wasn't very flexible, I also found a web-based XMMS control panel, but it wasn't very flexible either.
MPD's approach means that I can run the backend on my workstation, and one of the many frontends on other machines on the network, all will control the same backend as if running on my workstation.
Going through the client list, I found that MPD had many frontends, one for Gnome (gmpc), and two command-line versions (mpc, ncmpc) usable over SSH.
I decided to give this new and different way of playing music files a try, fortunately ebuilds for Gentoo were available, I only had to run
emerge mpd gmpc mpc ncmpc
to get everything installed, configuring MPD was a matter of editing /etc/mpd.conf.
Before starting mpd, I found out another cool feature, MPD indexes music files in a database instead of looking in the filesystem, this speeds up searching a lot for large collections of music files. Indexing is done by running mpd --create-db.
Finally, I started MPD and gmpc, tested it a bit, and then decided to use it instead of XMMS.
Happy end huh?
Submitted by Ayman on Fri, 2006/01/27 - 8:00pm.
Just got Revolution OS (IMDB). I've seen its trailer on The OpenCD. It seemed very interesting. Time to watch the whole thing now.
For those who don't know, Revolution OS is a documentary on Free Software and Open Source. It features interviews with many famous people from the Open Source movement.
Submitted by Ayman on Mon, 2004/12/27 - 10:19pm.
