Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Here’s one of my favorite tips for Fluxbox. In KDE, Alt-F1 brings up application menu. In Windows, the Windows key brings up the Start menu.
Fluxbox should have a way too.
Here’s how I do it.
I edit the keys file. I use gedit for most of my editing in fluxbox because it is fast AND full featured. To edit this file, I use the default Alt-F2 to open the run dialog and execute the command:
gedit ~/.fluxbox/keys
then add this line into the document:
Mod1 F1 :RootMenu
Then use “Reconfigure” to reload the updated keys.
I noticed that the kind developers of Hydrogen have posted an update for us at their website. This worked on Jaunty Jackalope for me. Also available are Windows binaries for Hydrogen that work in Vista.
You can install it by downloading from SourceForge using the commands below:
cd
mkdir source
cd source
wget http://softlayer.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hydrogen/hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb
dpkg -i hydrogen_0.9.4rc1_i386.intrepid.deb
Of note, is more use of Qt4 elements with less eye candy on the skins, and questionably easier to interpret. I kind of feel it clashes, but the Instrument and drum kit editor have been combined. It means one less place to find things, and that is progress.
Hydrogen drum computer software running on Ubuntu Linux
Having a laptop and a desktop is very useful because it provides another display. With the same mouse and keyboard, you can manage both the laptop and the desktop using Synergy2. Synergy2 is a free and open source application that allows us to share the same mouse and keyboard across multiple workstations. According to the official Ubuntu documentation, I recently configured this by using QuickSynergy in Ubuntu and the Synergy2 client in Windows. QuickSynergy is nice, but it doesn’t provide full functionality as it only arranges systems in a circle around the server. In my setup, this works, but it would not be ideal for 4 displays side by side. Instead, you would need to manually edit the configuration file. This is much easier on Windows in my previous experience. You may need to allow the client/server access to the desired port, the default being 24800. I was able to install directly from the repositories instead of from source on my two Ubuntu desktops, and the compiled Windows binaries worked perfectly, and even Windows firewall let it through.
My setup is quite flexible. I’ve got two desktops and one laptop sharing one monitor. The two desktops are connected via KVM to a display. That display has two inputs, so my laptop is also connected to the same monitor as an extended desktop. I have two methods of selecting inputs to the monitor : a button on the front and the KVM control via keyboard.
This kind of flexibility really speeds up and streamlines my music production and progress on Sample Of The Day. I am able to be blogging and editing audio on one display, while on the other I can have Propellerhead’s Reason making loops and free audio samples using the software synthesizers.
Well, I finally upgraded all four systems to Jaunty Jackalope. I did the upgrade in pairs so that the entire network wouldnt be offline. I spread it across two days. I used the tutorial from UbuntuGeek to upgrade via the konsole. It was mostly painless, with my laptop being the most troublesome. Having to re-configure a separate network manager, that wasn’t immediately visible, was a nuisance. I had to add a widget to the panel and then configure the widget. I would have preferred to keep my connection.
Now that I’m using a larger network, I’m attempting to connect my systems in a semantic interface using IRC. I’ve found that Quassel’s backlog system enables me to monitor multiple channels in one window and that’s pretty helpful. To top it off, I found you can connect it in a multi-user setup by configuring multiple users on the Quassel Core . Of course, centralizing this and delegating it to a server that is in less demand with fewer resources, worked perfectly for me. It simplified the backup and freed some resources across my net.
This is my first post mentioning Quassel, but it will not be my last. I am going to skip the really significant features that Quassel brags about (with much reason), but point to this lovely screen shot. It demonstrates how Quassel shows a tiny preview of a link beneath your mouse cursor, keeping you from having to open your browser to view a site that you may not really desire to visit.
I use the command line more than anything, and I try to stay up to date regularly, so I added an alias for the command I use for updates.
alias apt-up='sudo aptitude -y update && sudo aptitude -y full-upgrade '
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Recently, I have had a need to use Windows more frequently (Windows-only games and ActiveSync!), but still have a high demand on my network at the same time. I have sought to be able to combine the best of both worlds. I previously relied heavily on Web-based applications, but my favorite Web Development IDE was developed for Linux only. I had put up enough with the banalities of using WebMin and it’s built-in file editor. I have read about others having success running KDE apps on Windows, but since I had my Quanta already setup and configured, I looked for a way of just being able to access that. Honestly, I’m not very excited about using VNC over WiFi, even with high compression.
To my surprise, I found that Xming was specifically suited to my needs. It acts as an X11 server, allowing me to use it to display my X11 applications that I have forwarded through SSH. It works perfectly.
It took a little time for setting up, but if you have got PuTTY installed and working, sixty percent of the work is already done.
Below is a screen shot that shows my running Windows Vista desktop, programming in Quanta which is actually hosted on a server called A. This is connected through an SSH tunnel from my laptop to my C server using the Putty client. From the C server, I launch the Quanta program using another SSH connection to the A server. It looks just like the Quanta program is a native windows app on the local Windows Vista desktop. You’ll also notice I’ve got an xterm session open connected to server A in the background.
Friday, November 28, 2008
I’ve resisted too long. Finally I was coerced into it. After having spent a lot of time on a different project, I’ve tried to spend a little more time in KDE 4, and then Konqueror stopped working. It would give me a fatal error every time i tried opening. I found someone else reporting the error and it had been suggested to go ahead and upgrade KDE. I checked for new packages in Hardy Heron, but none were available. The upgrade from the run prompt using
kdesudo “adept_manager –dist-upgrade”
After a successful install on the machine that has the most packages, I chose to repeat on the other machines. Yay, I’m able to use Konqueror again.
I’ve also been very happy with some of the other improvements. While I was disappointed to see that KDE3 is missing, KDE4 now supports saving sessions and locking the terminal. Both were my biggest complaints aside from crashes.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
I recently learned of a font that other users highly recommend for your terminal application. Being a demanding Konsole user, it sounded beneficial so I thought I should try it. I have, and I think I am happy with it. You should try it out. Here are the instructions on how to install it in KDE 3.5. It is called the Terminus font, and I found a TrueType Font format file at this site. To install it in Kubuntu Hardy, I went to Kmenu -> System Settings ->
Appearance ->
Font Installer ->
Add Fonts.
I then selected the files I downloaded from the previous site. Then, from inside of Konsole I went to
Settings -> Font -> Select and chose the Terminus font.
And now here is what my terminal looks like:
Please share your thoughts and any suggestions!
