I have been using my Mac and Linux computers a lot more recently. Syncing configurations between the two machines is pretty easy with tools like JungleDisk or Dropbox. Today I just started syncing my .bashrc and .bash_profile between the two systems. There are some configurations that need to be different on a per machine basis however. I wrote this quick little bash script to illustrate an easy way to do this. »
I downloaded Amazon’s Unbox this weekend to watch some BSG (yes I am a nerd). Unbox is Amazon’s video download service. I say service because it is much more than just another download. Amazon allows me to re-download videos or transfer them to multiple machines. Obviously, the Unbox player doesn’t allow burning to DVD, but I am over my purist-open-world days. As with any service, there is room for vast improvements. »
Today I figured I would upgrade my computers to Ubuntu Gutsy. It turned out to be a long day. Start with the desktop at work… My xorg.conf was completely destroyed. After about 40 reboots, I finally had my desktop load without going into failsafe mode. Unfortunately, Xinerama support wasn’t working. After some research I learned that Xinerama is no longer supported by the ati drivers. Instead, XRandR is. The great thing about this is it is in the early stages of development and doesn’t support multiple GPU’s, which my work computer has. »
Thanks to Jon H., I can now do find and replace in files on Linux machines from the command line. Its pretty simple, but I had never bothered to figure it out. Here are two examples. The first is for just one file, the meat and potatoes are in the second example, which does a find and replace in all PHP files. sed -i -e "s/TOREPLACE/REPLACEMENT/g" temp.txt; sed -i -e "s/TOREPLACE/REPLACEMENT/g" `find -name '*.php'`; Super helpful. »
At first, I was hesitant to install IE on Ubuntu. Basically, I didn’t think I could trust it. But after spending hours and hours of development time waiting on my windows virtual machine to do anything in IE, I knew I had to try it. IEs4Linux work great. I only use IE6, and it is great. At first glance, it seems to work exactly like IE on my virtual machine, except it runs as fast as a normal desktop application. »
Since I converted to Ubuntu a few months ago, I have wrestled with the decision of KDE vs. Gnome. KDE has infinite configurability, while Gnome tries to be much more simplistic. I like many of the KDE applications, like Amarok, Krdc, and Kaffiene, so I thought I would try to switch from Gnome to KDE. This lasted about 3 hours. I spent all 3 hours trying to configure KDE to my liking, to basically mimic Gnome. »
After a Googling for a few hours, I finally got Sound Juicer, an audio extraction application for linux, setup correctly. Although I am very happy with Ubuntu, problems like this are why I think the rest of the world still isn’t ready for linux. There are still just too many simple problems that require experts knowledge (I am not an expert, Google is my expert). Problem #1: Lame Ubuntu doesn’t include any Lame or MP3 plugins. »
I have had an iPod for a little over a year, and never updated the software. Since I run Ubuntu on all my computers, without Wine, I rarely log onto my Windows partition. So, a couple days ago, I decided to update my iPod software from 1.0 to 1.2.1. All did not go as planned. When I loaded up Amarok after updating my iPod, I received this message: Media Device: failed to create lockfile on iPod mounted at /media/ipod: Read-only file system After a lot of Googling, I found nothing related to my error. »
When I wanted a laptop for school a couple years ago, I came to the sad realization that I couldn’t buy one that didn’t have Microsoft Windows and 500 other pre-installed programs. I quickly reformatted to Linux. Today, Dell and Microsoft are realizing there are many others out there like me. Since Dell started its Ideastorm website they finally must acknowledge that people hate not having a choice. The number one idea is “Pre-installed Linux.” Wow! »
I recently discovered SSHFS, or SSH filesytem, and I haven’t used Samba or NFS for my Linux sharing needs since. It has all the features of Samba and NFS, without all the headaches. To install on Ubuntu, just: apt-get install sshfs usermod -a -G fuse username and to mount a filesystem: sshfs username@remote_machine:remote_dir local_dir You may be wondering why I have become such an advocate for SSHFS overnight. Here are the biggest benefits I see: Encryption Reliability User mounting without any root privileges No Gnome keyring to manage Samba password (I hate Gnome keyring) NO SERVER SETUP Unfortunately, there are a few downsides to using this remote filesystem utility. »