Fun times.. You certainly have come a long way since our days of tinkering with Xandros.
I hate to say it but it is time to move on. So I say good bye Ubuntu and hellllllloooooooooooooo
Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). Ubuntu had become somewhat bloated and was slowing my older PC down. People can say what they want but I saw a very noticeable performance degradation when upgrading to 10.04 from 9.10. I also got tired of having to reinstall every six months for the latest and greatest. The Linux Mint Debian Edition is a Debian rolling edition. I just installed it this evening and all of my packages are updating as I am typing this.
Check it out when you get some time… I think you might like it too.
I actually like Linux Mint a lot. I installed it a few years ago, probably around some of the early versions and it felt like a “different” execution of a Debian-based release as compared to Ubuntu.
But I never went beyond trying it out in a VM.
I also just heard about LMDE last week, while listening to the TuxRadar podcast (at least, I think that’s where I heard it.) I love the idea of a rolling release.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll get the latest ISO and see how it goes!
Do you have any cool scripts or apps that you like?
John Hope
2010-09-22 1023hrs
I have not used scripts before and am way behind the curve on my familiarity with them. I have however been slowly working my way through Sams “Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours.” So to answer your question on the scripts part, I have to grab a line from Sgt. Schultz… “I know nothing!”
As for some apps that I like on the Linux platform there are two that I will definitely mention. The first one is PDF Shuffler and has made its way into the software managers of both Ubuntu and Mint. I found PDF Shuffler almost two years ago when needing to meet the need of combining multiple PDF files into one PDF file. It is a very simple program that has drag and drop functionality. Open the app, drag/drop the PDF files to the app, select the export button, name the new file and select the location to save it and you are done. Simple as that.
The second app that I use meets my need of a password manager that I carry on my thumb drive. Since I am in mixed environments I needed a solution that is cross platform compatible. That is where KeePassX comes in on the Linux side of things. I think you can run KeePassX off of the thumb drive in Windows but I was already using the Windows version called KeePass. For KeePass to work with KeePassX you have to use version 1.x of KeePass. That issue has to do with the data base file difference between version 1 and version 2 of KeePass. Anyway, KeePassX on Linux and KeePass v1 on my thumb drive allows me to open the file at work or home, in Windows at work or Linux at home.
I am sure there are some more but those are the two off the top of my head. I won’t get into the Thunderbird Google Contacts and Calendar plug-ins that I use to do a three-way sync with my Linux desktop and my BlackBerry.
Let me know if you have some insight on the app/script topics on Linux also.
I read an interview with Larry Wall a month or so ago and really enjoyed his perspective on why he created Perl and what he hopes it will achieve. I haven’t used Perl much, but it certainly is well-loved by many.
Some of the stuff I like about the CLI is the simplicity in which things can be achieved. It takes time to learn and tweak, but once a process or function is in place and becomes second nature to use, it’s amazing how much productivity it adds.
I hope to write soon about bash, shell aliases, shell scripting and other such things. Keepass sounds cool. For PDF stuff, I really like Ghostscript.
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John Hope
2010-09-20 2128hrs
Fun times.. You certainly have come a long way since our days of tinkering with Xandros.
I hate to say it but it is time to move on. So I say good bye Ubuntu and hellllllloooooooooooooo
Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). Ubuntu had become somewhat bloated and was slowing my older PC down. People can say what they want but I saw a very noticeable performance degradation when upgrading to 10.04 from 9.10. I also got tired of having to reinstall every six months for the latest and greatest. The Linux Mint Debian Edition is a Debian rolling edition. I just installed it this evening and all of my packages are updating as I am typing this.
Check it out when you get some time… I think you might like it too.
http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1527
David Russell
2010-09-20 2145hrs
I actually like Linux Mint a lot. I installed it a few years ago, probably around some of the early versions and it felt like a “different” execution of a Debian-based release as compared to Ubuntu.
But I never went beyond trying it out in a VM.
I also just heard about LMDE last week, while listening to the TuxRadar podcast (at least, I think that’s where I heard it.) I love the idea of a rolling release.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll get the latest ISO and see how it goes!
Do you have any cool scripts or apps that you like?
John Hope
2010-09-22 1023hrs
I have not used scripts before and am way behind the curve on my familiarity with them. I have however been slowly working my way through Sams “Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours.” So to answer your question on the scripts part, I have to grab a line from Sgt. Schultz… “I know nothing!”
As for some apps that I like on the Linux platform there are two that I will definitely mention. The first one is PDF Shuffler and has made its way into the software managers of both Ubuntu and Mint. I found PDF Shuffler almost two years ago when needing to meet the need of combining multiple PDF files into one PDF file. It is a very simple program that has drag and drop functionality. Open the app, drag/drop the PDF files to the app, select the export button, name the new file and select the location to save it and you are done. Simple as that.
The second app that I use meets my need of a password manager that I carry on my thumb drive. Since I am in mixed environments I needed a solution that is cross platform compatible. That is where KeePassX comes in on the Linux side of things. I think you can run KeePassX off of the thumb drive in Windows but I was already using the Windows version called KeePass. For KeePass to work with KeePassX you have to use version 1.x of KeePass. That issue has to do with the data base file difference between version 1 and version 2 of KeePass. Anyway, KeePassX on Linux and KeePass v1 on my thumb drive allows me to open the file at work or home, in Windows at work or Linux at home.
I am sure there are some more but those are the two off the top of my head. I won’t get into the Thunderbird Google Contacts and Calendar plug-ins that I use to do a three-way sync with my Linux desktop and my BlackBerry.
Let me know if you have some insight on the app/script topics on Linux also.
David Russell
2010-09-25 1403hrs
I read an interview with Larry Wall a month or so ago and really enjoyed his perspective on why he created Perl and what he hopes it will achieve. I haven’t used Perl much, but it certainly is well-loved by many.
Some of the stuff I like about the CLI is the simplicity in which things can be achieved. It takes time to learn and tweak, but once a process or function is in place and becomes second nature to use, it’s amazing how much productivity it adds.
I hope to write soon about bash, shell aliases, shell scripting and other such things. Keepass sounds cool. For PDF stuff, I really like Ghostscript.