nano configs

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Like most of you who don’t like to get into those religious wars about editors of emac vs vi, we tend to prefer to use nano, simple, and light!

The side of peace :).

Screenshot

But after using nano sometimes, you soon begin to miss those features which you used to have in other editors, e.g syntax highlighting or tabspace etc.

No need to worry lil hippie, nano has these abilities 🙂 you don’t need to envy those unsexy editors out there anymore.

Here’s my default nano configuration which you might want to use.

~/.nanorc

set tabsize 4
set autoindent
set nowrap
include “/usr/local/share/nano/c.nanorc”
include “/usr/local/share/nano/perl.nanorc”
include “/usr/local/share/nano/sh.nanorc”
include “/usr/local/share/nano/html.nanorc”
include “/usr/local/share/nano/php.nanorc”
include “/usr/local/share/nano/php2.nanorc”

Since am on FreeBSD the synthax highlighting files are located in /usr/local/share/nano, if you are on linux, you might wanna look in /usr/share/nano/

You  can find more syntax highlighting config files here

This is just a simple configuration which will set your tabspace to 4, allow auto indentation, no line wrapping and some syntax highlight 😀 the only things that a use will ever need out of an editor.

Please don’t rant that nano can’t do magical stuffs :p it is an editor and nothing more [unlike some other things which claims to be editors :p].

+selven

Linux Mint 7 Gloria

6 Replies

20090822-linux-mint

I have been using Linux for ten years now and like most of you I like to try different distributions. A few months ago I discovered Linux Mint while browsing on DistroWatch. I was surprised to see that Linux Mint was really popular (I think it was 4th at that time) and just now it’s the 3rd most popular Linux distribution…

Linux Mint, which is at version 7 now, is based on Ubuntu which itself is built on Debian. So we’re in excellent company here.

These are the things in Linux Mint that I really like:

  • Linux Mint contain codecs for most of the media files (audio / video) found on the Internet out of the box.
  • The user interface is gorgeous and really feels like something that has been designed by someone who really knows about user interaction. For example, Mint has a menu (pictured above) which contains selected applications (favourites) and which is 100% customisable. It’s much better (IMHO) than the default Gnome menu.
  • There is an application which shows all software available in Linux Mint with screenshots. What is great is that this list can be sorted by popularity. It’s a great way to discover open source applications which are used by a lot of people and which you don’t personally know about.
  • Compiz (as well as the proprietary Nvidia driver in my case) is preinstalled and is sensibly configured: not a lot of eye candy but, instead, a pragmatic choice of settings to make Gnome more usable.
  • aptitude! I love anything .deb-based.

I’m really impressed by Linux Mint. This is the only distribution I use at home. At work I use CentOS Linux because, well, it is great for a business environment. But I might replace CentOS on my own computer there with Linux Mint. Just don’t tell anyone.

Grub 2

7 Replies

Dans la sĂ©rie je ne sais pas quoi faire le week-end, j’ai testĂ© pour vous Grub2. Pour ceux qui ne savent pas, c’est le petit soft qui permet de dĂ©marrer votre machine, le mystĂ©rieux boot loader qui n’a rien d’effrayant. La version 2 permet d’avoir quelques fonctions gadgets histoire d’Ă©pater vos amis.

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What do you think of Google Chrome OS?

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20090709-google-chrome

Two days ago, Google announced the Google Chrome OS (Operating System) project.

Google Chrome OS can be seen as Linux with a special window manager to only allow one application: the Google Chrome web browser. In essence, a computer running Google Chrome OS will only have one application, a web browser. This means that the user will only use web-based applications presumably (but not forcibly) from Google (e.g. Gmail, Google Docs, etc.)

Google will initially launch this OS on netbooks (those ultra small laptops with small screens.) Netbooks account for only a few % of the market and most people use them for browsing only so this seems a sensible strategy (it would have been stupid to launch the OS on full-fledged PCs as people would have immediately requested for “Photoshop on the web”.)

Our friend, Fake Steve, is adamant that building Google Chrome OS is not a good stategy for Google. In my opinion, he is correct when he questions the business logic of Google. You see, Chrome OS is going to be free (like most Linux distributions), has one good browser (like most Linux distributions), with good support for Google apps (like most Linux distribuions) but is going to be costly to build for Google (unlike most Linux distributions which exist already.) So why build yet another Linux distribution (which is what Google Chrome OS is in essence…) Why don’t Google use something which exists already?

What do you think?

LUG Meeting Saturday 04/07/09 Confirmed

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Dear Members & non members,

You are invited for our monthly lug meeting this saturday the 4th of july 2009 (04/07/09).

  • Time: 10:00 AM Maurtian time
  • Location: Linkbynet, 2nd Floor BG court, St jean, Quatres Bornes
  • Technical presentation to be done by: Dr. Stefan Brandle, Lecturer at the university of Mauritius.
  • Topic of presentation: The Future of Computers in Education
  • Map: http://thegodof.net/images/maplugm.png
map to lugm

map to lugm

Please confirm your presence. Last date for cancelation of the meeting is thursday 02/07/09 at 23hr59.

Geeks, nerds, non geeks, non nerds, humans, non humans whatever you are, if you are interested in anything opensource or *nix, you may wish to just try a lug meeting once.

ps. You don’t need to be a linux/unix guru to attend.

lug meetings are usually fun!

Thanks.

+Selven

Secretary of the LUG

Google: Let’s make the web faster

1 Reply

20090630-google
Google lance une consultation sur les moyens d’accĂ©lĂ©rer l’internet basĂ©e sur 4 axes:

Broadband Access (Le petit problĂšme de Maurice…)
Browser Technologies (Les petites astuces du renard en feu)
Internet Protocols (Revoir un peu les bons vieux HTTP/TCP/…)
Webmaster Tools (Concilier le beau et le rapide, Flash/…)
Other Ideas (Tout ce qui peut apporter une contribution).

N’hĂ©sitez pas Ă  poster vos idĂ©es !
http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=79951
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The Sony Bravia LCD TVs run Linux

11 Replies

20090623-sony-bravia

How many of you would like to get an LCD TV for Christmas? A lot, I bet. How many of you know that the Sony Bravia LCD TVs are powered by Linux? A lot fewer, I guess.

LCD TVs have a lot of pixels. When displaying a normal-resolution programme (say from the MBC), the TV must use extremely complex image processing algorithms to generate the missing pixels. For example:

  • SECAM @ 720 x 576 = 414,720 pixels every 1/25 of a second (I’m simplifying…)
  • HDTV @ 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels every 1/25 of a second

So the TV must digitally create 5 times as many pixels as in the original frame 25 times per second. As you can easily guess, this requires a lot of horsepower hence the use of a powerful computer inside the TV. Sony has chosen Linux to power that computer (specifically Linux kernel 2.6.11)

For the more curious, have a look at http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/source_tv.shtml