Ubuntu For Free

Having been a long time user of 4DOS in my pre-win95 days, I had developed some batch files and/or aliases that I were quite handy in that environment. Switching to another operating system that’s more flexible with the command line, I’ve re-implemented some of those batch files and aliases. Here’s one of my favorites, and while it’s pretty simple, I use it all the time. It switches to a folder using the pushd command, executes your chosen command, and then uses popd to switch back to the original folder. It has no error checking of it’s own and it has no instructions. I did it in this fashion to keep it as light and quick as possible.

#!/bin/bash
## In Folder script by Joshua Kersey
## http://www.forwardyouth.com/ubuntu
pushd "$1"
"$2"
popd


Let me know if you’ve got any suggestions for improvement.

My first install of Ubuntu was Dapper Drake, and it was the original flavor, with the Gnome desktop. It included XChat, which seemed an easy transition from mIRC. Since I’d previously managed IRC connections using telnet, it wasn’t daunting. However, after switching to Kubuntu, I found myself presented with Konversation. It might have been my previous experience with mIRC, but I almost felt right at home.

In comparison to XChat, I feel it’s better at managing connections to multiple servers. The servers are spawned as separate tabs, where XChat *tried* to do it in a tree-like view, it failed and inserted the additional servers as child-nodes of the first-connected server.

Using bash scripts, we can make Konversation take action. It requires the DCOP protocol, a newer method permitting KDE applications to communicate between each other. Known as an Inter-Process Communication, DCOP providesthe ability to send DCOP messages to/from any other KDE app, allowing Konversation to integrate nicely with Amarok (i.e. to announce the “now-playing” track) and other KDE software (i.e. getting data from “weather” or sending/retrieving information with “kate”).

One of my favorite features, is the On-Screen Display, abbreviated as OSD. This feature provides a miniaturized display of text in a separate screen area. For example, we can see entire messages directed to us, even when Konversation is minimized, through the OSD, when Konversation is able to determine our nick.

You can also configure notifications, or specific actions when selected events occur, including pop up messages (optionally passive), sounds, shell commands, log insertions, etc.

I have plans for a couple of scripts for the application, so I think I’m going to try my hand coding something different.