Linux, programming, computers and life

While my home computer runs ArchLinux, and my personal laptop runs Ubuntu, my work laptop has Windows XP installed. Here’s the list of apps i’m using there (those that i installed, not part of the corporate applications). Not surprisingly, they a all free software.

Launchy - great launcher
HandBrake - video and audio encoder
Vim - ’nuff said
Firefox - you all know what is it
TortoiseCVS - convenient CVS frontend
7-Zip - archive manager
Synergy - kayboard and mouse sharing
Smplayer - media player
MyPhoneExplorer - SE mobile phone management
UsefulUtils Disks Studio - burner
InfraRecorder - burner
WinSCP - scp for windows
Putty - telnet/ssh/… u name it

Any other alternatives i should try?

windows, app list

Being almost 2⁵ i discovered i do not know how to tie my shoelaces. If your laces come undone frequently, here’s something that will help you. Besides, there’re a LOT of different knots, i adopted that one.

I’m disappointed by choice of Linux distributions for my EeePc (called pingu). I installed Ubuntu EEE there which works, however, because of specifically built kernel, i cannot find/compile modules for VirtualBox which i really need. It looks like main stream distributions are Mandriva (which is supposed to work, but i personally don’t like it), EeeDora & Ubuntu EEE. There are a lot of smaller distros which all work partly on the Eee and require tweaking in order to make them usuable.
While i use ArchLinux at home, it’s too much work to install it on the Eee and maintain it working, i’d like to have something more stable and less attention requiring.

I do not intend to whine about open source software quality and choice, because i very much appreciate the choice, freedom of it and free time that a lot of people devte to it. I’m looking for advice.
What are you using on your Eee ?

Update: ubuntu eee (temporary name) 8.10 will be released 1.1.09. Extremely exciting news!

eee, eeepc, linux, distributuion, distro, ubuntu, fedora

Thanks to my fiance, I’m now Eee 1000 owner. It’s so cute, i like it a lot . The question, what Linux distributive should i install there?
I have Arch on my desktop, and i love it, but I’d like to get something ready for Eee out of the box. Currently, the best solution looks Ubuntu Eee, but i’ll probably look for more options.

eee, linux, ubuntu, archlinux

At work, i have both laptop (sadly running Windows XP) and Linux station which is used for development. I got tired of working with 2 mice and 2 keyboards, and the hardware switch wasn’t available. And then, a friend suggested to use synergy2.
It’s so simple to use, it’s incredible. And it just works. It allows you to use one keyboard and mouse for several computers. Keyboard focus just follows mouse focus. I have now one virtual screen which i constructed from my workstation and laptop screens.
In order to make it work, i needed only  to create small configuration file and run server application on Linux and client on Windows. Here’s that file, it’s self-explanatory:

section: screens
  station_name:
  laptop_name:
end

section: links
  station_name:
    left = laptop_name
  laptop_name:
    right = station_name
end

synergy. desktop sharing, keyboard sharing

Ipod shuffle is nice because:

• it’s cute
• it has good sound quality
• it’s CUTE (according to my girlfriend)
• opening experience is really great

And NOT nice because:

• iTunes
• one must do something besides copying the files to the device
• iTunes (according to my girlfriend)

We both fought ITunes (and we both have degrees in computer science and both programmers), for me it was a second time, and we lost. Finally, when we understood what to do, in order to get our audio collection transferred to shuffle not randomly, we had to import the collection to iTunes. Which was taking ages… (nice touch - format conversion is asynchronous to other operations with iTunes).
So i uninstalled the damn thing, together with quicktime player (hehe). And using simple iPod Shuffle Without iTunes (which only takes several kilobytes and evel looks mac-like) we finally won.
Or, from other point of view, lost to iTunes .

There’s a nice quote i remember from “Under Siege 2:Dark Territory” movie.

“Assumption is the mother of all fuckups”

It’s very true in programming by the way.
A good friend just wrote email to me saying:

Not googling is also mother of all f#@k%#s

Technorati Tags: quote, assumption

I think i found the best way to create panoramas - Autostitch™. It’s easy, free and simply works. Here’s Bansko panorama created with it. And it’s possible to run it with WINE .

Technorati Tags: panorama, photo, autostitch

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

– read more in wikipedia

Technorati Tags: halnon, hanlons razor

Recently, due to security reasons, all kind of ports were closed at my workplace which made impossible to connect to gtalk and icq servers. I used pidgin because i could not find stable jabber transports, which was connected to icq, msn, and jabber networks - to be able to contact both people at work and friends. I couldn’t do it any longer .
Since Internet browsing works, there are at least two ports open - 80 (http) and 443 (https). Which means i need ed to find jabber server which allows to connect on those ports. And it was easy enough - thanks to Australian jabber.org.au. It allows connections on port 443.
So, pick your favorite jabber client, register on site above and use jabber transports to connect to msn/icq/etc. Do not forget to set the port manually to 443.
Most important - have fun .

Technorati Tags: jabber, im, firewall, https, howto