How can I be a KDE power user?
As far as I can tell, KDE is essentially a desktop environment shell layered on top of many very useful libraries. The difficulty is, how does one test each individual layer? Here’s a recent example. I...
View ArticleSpotify vs. MOG
This is as much for myself as for anyone who reads this. Now that Spotify landed in the US, it’s attracted my attention. I’m already paying $10/month for MOG. Can Spotify take my $10 and make my...
View ArticleGentoo-built Desktop Managers and Their Lack of Integration
I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but I certainly have. It’s not that it can’t be worked around. It’s that Gentoo-built desktop managers lack the polish other pre-mangled distributions like...
View ArticleRule of Thumb for Detecting Poor Design
You know you’ve got a bad design, or at least one that could be improved, when you start copying and pasting code around. (Note: this doesn’t mean the design needs improving.) Now, to brace myself for...
View Article“git svn” Cheatsheet for Git Rebels in an SVN Workplace
This is my own use of git svn. No one in Google seems to have this mix listed out for a Subversion project with a proper trunk/branch/tag setup, so I decided to post what I’ve got. Getting a...
View ArticleDesktop Revolution: Stage 1: Notifications Bar
I have a lot of ideas about how the Linux desktop can be improved, perhaps revolutionized, and these ideas all come from running up against walls repeatedly. I’m going to write the best ones down, the...
View Articlescreen to tmux: A Humble Quick-start Guide
An online friend named bmc_ on Twitter introduced me to tmux. It reportedly has simpler, cleaner code than screen, which implies that it’s more robust, in addition to more very useful features. The...
View ArticleRemoving WINE’s Default Application Entries
Today I double-clicked an image, and it opened with WINE Internet Explorer. What in the world? Why would I want that? Anyways, odd developer choices aside, there’s a way to get rid of WINE’s software...
View Articlefcron compatibility with vixie-cron’s /etc/cron.* directories
vixie-cron has cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly, and cron.monthly directories. Your system might have something slightly different. If you’re like me, you’ve done your research on cron daemons, and...
View ArticleGentoo (and a little Ubuntu) on a MacBook Pro (5,3)
Getting Started The Google-size summary: I’ve gotten Gentoo working on my MacBook Pro (5,3) again. I’m going to attempt to recount all the little issues I ran across while installing Gentoo. If you...
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