Cool packages: bb

bb is a library for creating very advanced ASCII-based graphics. I learned this from insmod. I have also done a bit more research about it, and apparently looks like a demo of the AA library. AA is an "ASCII-art" library, and it is portable to many different platforms. I don't know much about it, so hopefully insmod will get a chance to put something up about it. For more information go to: http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/. This is the library's project page and has lots of info about it. It, of course, also provides a source download and describes the library.

Cool packages: Gnuchess

Do you like to play chess? Do you want to learn to play chess? Are you sick of staring at the #, %, $, or > prompt? Then Gnuchess may be for you. This is Gnu's own version of chess. It is pretty simple, and can have both simple graphics and can be totally text based. I have not used this package much but I have gotten this through pkgsrc with several variations included. I plan to use this to play chess and as a break after I type. Overall, a nice, simple game package.

Packages: Lynx

Okay. Picture this: You have just fallen into a dumpster near a university, when suddenly you feel a hard metal object slap you. You dig through the trash, and fined that is a DECstation from the early 1990s. Well, cool find, you think, but there's no internet with it! Wrong! With the help of Lynx, NetBSD/pmax, and perhaps a telnet connection, you can use the internet. Lynx itself is a text-based internet browser for Unix and many other operating systems. It is totally free and can also be downloaded through pkgsrc.

Spotlight: Solaris

Many of you may have heard of the operating system Solaris. It is the operating system that Sun Microsystems introduced in the early 1990s. It replaced Sun's earlier Unix-based operating system. Today Solaris is open source, and you can get Solaris 10 for free. It is very innovative, and among its innovations is Sun's own file system, ZFS, which is an advanced 128-bit file system. Solaris also comes with a GNOME-like desktop environment, the Java Desktop System. There are releases for both PC and SPARC platforms. And, of course, jdk runs on it. To learn more, go to http://sun.com/solaris/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Operating_Environment.

New stuff: My Discovery of Ubuntu!

Let's see......today I discovered Ubuntu. I had heard of Xubuntu, Ubuntu with Xfce (the mini, mousey Unix desktop environment) from a friend at the Computer Club, and, after asking a few questions, decided to learn more about Ubuntu. So I googled it and went to Ubuntu's homepage, www.ubuntu.org (I could have guessed that url). I learned there that Ubuntu is a free, simple ("Linux for Humans") distro of Linux that normally comes with GNOME, but can also come with either KDE or XFCE. It also is available as either a server or a desktop package. Hmmm........a bit of a better interface than sash :) . Maybe I will consider using this on a small notebook......
Still, I think NetBSD suits me well and I will stick with that system for now.

Command of the week: ! ls

Yes, this week's command is (gasp!) ls. This seemingly simple Unix command actually is very useful and efficient (especially compared to its DOS counterpart, dir). Ls simply shows the contents of a present directory (list to ls), but with options it can be very adjustable and "pliant." For example, ls -l lists files in the directory and their accessibiltiy conditions, like this:


drwx------ 2 users 4096 Nov 2 19:51 mail/
drwxr-s--- 35 www 32768 Jan 20 22:39 public_html/
-rw------- 1 users 3 Nov 25 02:58 test.txt

(example from http://www.computerhope.com/unix/uls.htm)

Or, for another example, ls -a will show all hidden system files, like this:

$ (or % or >) ls -a
.cshrc .history .bash coolstuff.vi HelloWorld.c a.out
$

While........

$ ls
coolstuff.vi HelloWorld.c a.out
$

There are many other ls options. For more info. about them, do man ls at your shell prompt or go to these other sites:

Linux and UNIX ls command help / Concise chart of ls options / http://www.computerhope.com/unix/uls.htm
Ls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Wiki article about ls / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ls
Unix ls command / Technical details about ls and explanation of its useage / http://www.scism.sbu.ac.uk/law/UnixStuff/ls.html
Unix man pages : ls () / the technical man explanation of ls / http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?ls

Shells

No, I'm not talking about seashells. I'm talking about Unix shells. You know, tcsh, bash, csh, ksh, sh, etc. Maybe you change shells regularly, or maybe you just stick to one shell. I personally like the bash shell, or the GNU Born Again shell. I use bash 3.1. Shells differ in syntax, in style, in purpose, and in quality (of course). What shell(s) do you like? What shell(s) do you like to hate?

NetBSD

My favorite type of Unix is NetBSD. It is extremely portable and efficient. For more info about it, go to http://www.netbsd.org. Here you can learn more about it and find out what you need to install it and what you can do with it.

The vi editor

Once, or maybe twice or more, all of us have had to use vi at some point. Maybe we used it to edit rc.conf, or maybe it was used to write our first document, or maybe it was the first application we ever used from the prompt. To many of us (including me) it is an extremely rigid, hard to use, and counter-intuitive editor. But vi, in general, stands as the most well-known and ubiquitous editor for Unix or Linux, although later Emacs took this position. vi (for visual inter face :) ) was created originally in 1976 by the UC-Berkeley student Bill Joy, who later worked at Sun Microsystems. It replaced ed (ex), Unix's first editor. For those of you who have heard of or used DOS'S EDLIN.EXE, know what this editor is like. Vi was sort of an update of this for Unix. It became very commonly used as an "all-for-one" editor, and it is especially typist and ASCII-friendly. While rather archaic, vi is very efficient, and, once you get used to it, it starts getting easier to work with. Overall, vi was one of the first all-purpose Unix editor to be commonly known and well distributed.

Why Unix? Why Open Source?

Okay, I have to admit, from now, that I am starkly for open source, and that means GNU and FSF and Linux and every other open source organization. Not freeware, not free trials of shareware which last 45 hours, not shareware............open source. GNU. Linux. NetBSD. That penguin guy. (Tux.) I strongly try to keep away from Windows, unless I need to send e-mails or update this blog. Oh...and that also means keeping away from a GUI. I only use my favorite shell - bash. Well, still I often use csh and ksh. This keeps me focused on programming, typing, scripting, thinking, and not games, wasting time surfing the web, and doing careless stuff. In addition, GUIs are slow, "point-and-click" (aaaarrrgh.....that's what people think computing is now), unreliable, buggy (you do not want to see how often I have to press ctrl+alt+del), and involves lots of hard work to write applications on. Not that its easy in Unix, but, you know, I don't like VB, and, in addition, I hate trying to use all those windowSize(), etc. functions in C programs. You could guess why my NetBSD box starts up in about 10 to 20 seconds (from fresh boot to dmesg to login), while a brand new Dell machine takes over a minute to get working. Just makes me wonder why we need so much faster processors when we can go faster with an efficient operating system (you know, efficient in Latin means they will bring about). Also, interestingly, due to my experience with Unix, Windows seems so slllllooooooowww in comparison. However, the most important aspect of Unix, to me, is its programming compatibility. No operating system is more easy to learn to program with and to program with in general. Why do you think the open source programming community is one of the largest ones that exist.

Next, I support open source for several reasons. First, I am on a budget. I can't afford a new computer. That's why I bought a $12 dollar garage sale Gateway 2000 and put NetBSD on it. Second, open source promotes spontaneous improvement. For example, say I was a programmer and recently downloaded some miscellaneous package for my workstation. However, it has some fatal bugs. Well, thanks to the handy source code included, I can fix it and give it to others. Third, I love free software :) .

If you disagree with my opinions, I will not argue with you. You are entitled to your own opinion.