Devil Worshippers treats

Here's a little trick i would like to share with my Devil Worshipper buddies (even if I don't use it. Argh! Gotta stop using shortforms. Damn IMs).
This trick is to enable all those keys such as HOME, DELETE which don't work as well out of the box in *BSD. Since I'm really used to having them, I searched a solution and I hope this helps someone else.

Create a '~/.bashrc' and add the following lines

set meta-flag on
set output-meta on
set convert-meta off
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[2~": yank
"\e[3~": delete-char
"\e[4~": end-of-line
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[D": backward-char
"\e[A": previous-history
"\e[B": next-history
"\C-?": delete-char
"\C-H": backward-delete-char
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line

Quit out your existing session and re-log back in and now all those keys that were unavailable earlier are now at your disposable. Enjoy;)

Quickies

Here are some quick tips to help using Linux easier.

• We tend to use 'grep' to search through our files but finding the occourence of the word can be tricky especially if there are alot of output. grep comes with color option to highlight the word using the --color=auto option. I add an alias in my .bash_profile so I don't have to keep typing it all the time.

• alias grep='grep --color=auto'


• vi can be your best friend as it's a very powerful editor and it's always available in every Linux distribution. However, it can get tedious looking at merely looking at black and white fonts. The newer distribution of vi is called vim (vi improved) which offers color options. To enable it (if it isn't) just fire up vi and press the ESC key, and type ':syntax on' exactly. NOTE: The following instruction is for Ubuntu. To make sure every file you open has syntax highlighting, copy '/etc/vim/vimrc' to '~/.vimrc'. Open '~/.vimrc' and look for the line that says 'syntax on' which is disabled by default. Quit and save and every file you open from now on will have syntax highlighting. The syntax highlighting information is stored in '/usr/share/vim/vim63/syntax'.

• GTK fonts too small? When using Fluxbox, most of the GTK application fonts tend to be really tiny. This doesn't appear in GNOME because it will load 'gnome-settings-daemon' to make the apps streamlined. This however is not a good approach for minimalistic WMs (isn't that why we CHOSE the minimalistic WMs in the 1st place:P). Here is a trick that will make your fonts in the GTK apps, appear exactly as you want them. Edit (or create) a '~/.gtkrc-2.0' and add 'gtk-font-name="<font name> <font size>"', save the file, reload your GTK applications and voila all your fonts are now as you defined them.

Well that's all for now folks;) Gotta go configure my development tools now. Ciaoz.

Return of the Badger

Geez. Looks like an agreement with the devil didn't go so well. The installation went just fine however the update didn't go as expected (as usual). Yeah i see 1 guy starting to curse me now. You know who you are Tough luck man. Told you i never could get it to work properly for me. Now i've reinstalled my ol failthful Badger and surprise surprise. Lost my tutorials again. Gotta redo it but now that I've got it I can ACTUALLY paste it up now. WHEE!!!

Rise of the Devil

Finally running FreeBSD the way its meant to be;). When you initially start up Fluxbox you will notice that all your GTK applications will be utilizing REALLY small fonts. Previously I used to run gnome-settings-daemon to get the fonts in the right size but now I've found another way to get the fonts just right.

I execute Fluxbox using the "Use system default" option in GDM. This will look for a .xprofile (as opposed to .xsession in UIbuntu) in your home directory. However in my case I symlink .xprofile to .xinitrc (just used to the normal standards I guess). I find this a better way to start up new WMs as I can logout and login to change different settings without disrupting the other users WM settings. Also, I can start up any custom apps I would like loaded using this method. Couldn't get fluxbox to read the startup file in the ~/.fluxbox folder though. Have to check that out later.

My .xprofile file contains the following lines

fbpager -rc ~/.fluxbox/fbpager&
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/fluxbox

I guess I'm just used to having a pager in my previous WMs that I just had to have it in fluxbox itself. A pager application is the one you use to switch to multiple desktops in XFCE4, GNOME or KDE.

Will add more on the status of the devil after I find more things to do >:)

Birth of the Devil

I've successfully reinstalled my OS to FreeBSD. This is my...errr... 12th try at this. Every single installation teaches me something new like what I SHOULDN'T do and what I SHOULD do. So far so good. I just might end up keeping this OS. But I aint keeping my hopes up TOO high though. The entire installation (including X) took about 45 minutes to complete (no surprise there). After that it was a matter of installing Fluxbox and GDM. I've also learned a new trick to get my GTK applications to have decent sized fonts too. Will post the HOW-TO in a while, once ALL my upgrades are done and it's working as well as it should. I'm currently upgrading my RELEASE-6 to STABLE-6. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Dragon's Death

Today is a sad day indeed. My new dragon hatchling has just died. I did an update today morning and it somehow caused all my apps to segfault. Sigh. I would like to take a moment of silence in honor of my valiant OS.
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Moment of silence over. Looks like I'll never be able to see what are the changes in Dapper Drake after all. Oh well, time to go see the devil now.