Category Archives: Tips and tricks

Systemd: the good and the bad

Systemd certainly seems to divide opinions. This “new” init system, which also seeks to be a daemon and a central building block of the Linux today is without a doubt both good and a bad thing.

The good thing about systemd is that it does provide some much needed new functions and keeps things well within “the one single cover”. However, since systemd tries to be very versatile its design also tends to evolve more complex every time a new version gets done. Complexity by itself is not a problem when things do not break and everything goes well. The reality of computer world is however that things do, in general, break sooner or later and in this regard systemd is not perfect. For example: My more powerful computer was able to boot Debian Jessie easily but my Intel Atom build greeted me with a message saying that Systemd malfunctioned – and nothing ended up working. From the previous example it is easy to see that systemd (like all programs) do get bugs which can really ruin the user’s experience. Continue reading →

Tint2 configurations: Boxed (remix)

Since I am back using Tint2 panel I did a remix, which is based on my older work available here. Modifications available in the below are minor but useful when having a wm like Openbox. Copy the configuration below to .config/tint2rc or point your tint2 to specific configuration file with tint2 -c configuration_file_name

The panel will look something like this:

Tint2 Boxed remix configuration. For transparency in Openbox (like seen within the screenshot) use xcompmgr (xcompmgr -c)

Tint2 Boxed remix configuration. For transparency in Openbox (like seen within the screenshot) use xcompmgr (xcompmgr -c)

Continue reading →

Keeping track of the program versions via terminal

Sometimes, it is important to know what version of the program you are running.
These days as I develop Audax I need to check version numbers (among other things) quite regularly. Checking a version number is usually quite easy and gets to be done with a – -version suffix. Continue reading →

Copying and deleting files/folders within a terminal client

Disclaimer. When using a sudo/root mode be extremely careful and really think about what you are doing. The sudo/root mode should never be used without considerations and it is certainly not the correct place to test out things. Also, even as I do make my best effort to produce high quality instructions, I do not take any responsibility if anything goes wrong or if there is some sort of error in the commands below.

Before I begin talking about the official topic of today, I will list the simple way of doing things. I will use the case relating to Audax 0.2. and Emelfm2 usage on the example below.

Ever since Audax 0.2. originally came out Emelfm2 was included to the distribution. If you find Emelfm2 too hard to grasp then you can also install some other (more traditional) file manager like pcmanfm (sudo apt-get install pcmanfm) and use it together with “Simple mount” coming with Audax 0.2. If you want to copy/remove something from a mounted usb device with pcmanfm then execute a command  gksudo pcmanfm within, for example, Fbrun dialog (hit F2 button). In any case, it is strongly recommended that you read the entire post presented here. Throughout the post I will be using an example username tester.

Important note. Audax 0.2.5 is just around the corner. Within the 2.5. version mounting will work out of the box and without trouble as Audax will ship with a bug-fixed and functional pcmanfm.

And now let’s get to the topic of today.

Copying and deleting files/folders within a terminal client

Warning. Remember that a terminal client does not usually prompt you with any “Do you want to continue?” questions. Never ever copy and paste anything to a terminal client when you are removing things. On some occasions the copy+paste has resulted to an immediate deletion of files and folders. This is very bad news if you have made some sort of an error. As a result you might have ended up cleaning your device completely without any possibilities to recover the data since sudo/root mode does not have a trash bin feature. Continue reading →