Linux – Roumazeilles.net

Less keyboard, more work

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:02:05 +0000

We do so much typing that we tend to forget about it. But there are ways to improve the situation (ensuring that you type less to produce more text).one of the best ways is to identify the texts you keep typing on the keyboard. then, you just have to use a utility program to help you setup a shortcut to be used.

The program will recognize the shortcut, then automatically replace it with the correct text. Type “win“, see “Windows” appear. Type “HTML” and see a full block of selected HTML code appear (I use such shortcuts to create blocks of HTML code on this site, reducing typing time and avoiding typos).

For this, you need to be supported by a small program. I found two interesting ones :

AutoHotkey (for Windows) allows to write very simple scripts (examples are provided); I use it everyday (it works perfectly on a Windows 7 installation, by the way).
Some people would prefer to explore Texter and TextExpander, too.
If you are on Linux, you will prefer to have a look at AutoKey which is freely inspired by AutoHokey (copying is a form of flattery)

OpenOffice.org v3.2 available for free download

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:22:12 +0000

The excellent office desktop suite, OpenOffice.org (Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in a free form, if you want) just moved to version 3.2 (still free).

New features:

Faster start-up times
Compatibility with MS-Office 2007 documents
Better Compatibility with MS-Office 97, 2000, XP documents, encrypted with a password
Importation of dynamic tables from Excel
Comments are now possible in the Impress presentations
Improvements to the Calc cells handling (cell merging, sorting, etc.)

For Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.

Cygnus for Windows 7

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:00:57 +0000

The Cygnus name will certainly remind you of something ig you are interested into GNU/Linux, but maybe not more. Actually, this is a software package which has been designed to provide a lot of the “basic” Linux commands to be used from inside a Command-Line box of Windows.

Version 1.7 of Cygnus is now available that supports Windows 7 (but drops support for Windows 95, 98 & Me).

As if this was not enough, this version also has the capability to configure IPv6 (if you are already attracted by this solution) or supports multiple installations.

Cygnus v1.7-1.1 new release.

Give your Linux a Mac look

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:44:59 +0000

Mac4Lin v1.0 is a free download for Linux systems which will allow your machine to appear very similar to a recent Mac.

User manual of OpenLDAP

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:20:34 +0000

A good bookmark: Using OpenLDAP on Debian Woody to serve Linux and Samba Users is a user manual for OpenLDAP; But it does a lot more than merely explaining the installation of this directory on Debian Linux. It can be considered as a proper training to OpenLDAP in more ways than one.

But if you consider that this is not the right thing, you could thing a more organized (but less readable) description of LDAP: “Basics of LDAP” which is also very much Linux-oriented, of course.

Open the bottle for Wine 1.0

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:28:10 +0000

After years of preparation and beta-phase, finally, Wine has been able to reach launch as Wine 1.0. Why is it significant? Because this is the software package designed to be able to run many Windows applications from a GNU/Linux distribution. If you want to switch to Linux, you may not be willing to abandon some of the applications that were developped for Windows.

Wine is there to solve the problem. It runs many games and it runs Photoshop CS2 and CS3 from the box (I did not test it myself, though). It was the plain objective of Google when they allocated money and developers to support this project. They reached their goal.

It is probably the right time to try OpenSuse 11.0 (one of the best new Linux distributions) with Wine.

Wine is coming to Linux

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:09:13 +0000

Usually, I would not comment about upcoming software applications and tools, but today there is an rumour that may be very important. We all know that switching from Windows to Linux is a difficult move because we have been used to so many applications available on one Operating System but not on the other (in my case, how could I do without Photoshop?)

Here comes Wine, an open source tool supposed to allow you to run native Windows applications in your Linux PC. In beta during years, Wine was incomplete and unable to provide the ultimate dream of OS migration, but things seem to be changing. Google invested a lot of effort, and it is said that version 1.0 of Wine is upcoming.

One of the important things I noticed, of course, is that there are plenty of games now supported (Baldur’s Gate II – Throne of Baal, Call of Duty 2, World of Warcraft, etc.) and I see that both Photoshop CS2 and CS3 are also in the list.

You (and I) should be trying this…

Software galore

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:37:18 +0000

We never can get enough of them, but our computers are sometimes overflowing. Software applications are everywhere, but how to choose the right one for the task at hand? I built a real collection of pages where you will be able to find nearly all you can dream for nearly all computers:

Five important security apps for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software
The Windows Apps You Never Need To Install
Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls; We have to admit that there is no longer any good reason to pay for your computer security under Windows.
Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications
Logiciels gratuits from TutoWeb.
Now, to look into the future, Sneak peek at OpenOffice.org 3.0
And, last but not least, for old dinosaurs, let’s remind you that you can still use VAX-VMS on your Linux PC. If you don’t know what I am saying, either you’re too young, or you never received a hacker education. Or both.

Recompiling a Linux kernel, tips

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:30:44 +0000

Some GNU/Linux lovers like to optimize their Linux kernel with many recompilations. This is not absolutely needed, but a quite common hobby there. However, it is quite difficult to do correctly. Tips for successful Kernel Recompilation in Linux by bobcares.com.

Read/write Linux partitions from Windows

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 11:00:17 +0000

When you have a computer with multiple partitions on the same disk or several disks with different partitions, things start getting bad if one of them is a Linux Ext or Ext2 partition: Usually, you can’t access the Linux partition from your Windows computer, Microsoft totally ignore your disk/partition.

In order to correct this, you can/must use a special Windows driver able to recognize correctly those Linux Ext/Ext2 partitions. Ext2 IFS provides full read/write access. It’s is essentially a kernel ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows. When installed in your Windows computer, it simply becomes able to natively access the Linux disk. After installing, you can mount your Linux partition under a drive letter, just like you would an NTFS partition. The drive will be available in Explorer and within any file browser dialog in your favorite Windows applications.

Download from fs-driver.org.

Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:37:36 +0000

A good 2-part tutorial from C|net.

Optimize Linux and Windows

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:36:23 +0000

You install your PC some time ago, it may be necessary to clean it up a little in order to keep or improve its raw speed. As a matter of fact, even if we are no longer in the old times of Windows 98 that were nearly forcing you to a re-install once or twice a year, it is not unusual to see that installing many new software packages (voluntarily or indirectly) leads to tons of data and roadblacks for your PC.

Here are a few solutions to improve the situation:

Optimize Windows start with the help of Microsoft BootVis (source: LH).
Optimize Linux start (a previous article on Roumazeilles.net: Linux boot sequence in images).
Clean up a Linux installation with FSLint which will find -for example- duplicate files (source: DS).
CCleaner for Windows.
Slim Down and Speed Up Linux (LH)

I hope it will help you in securing a faster PC whatever your prefered Operating System.