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According to the GNU website if Debian wanted looking glass they could have it.

Remember the whole KDE debacle about Qt not being free enough? Multiply that by a few million times and you'll see why Looking Glass won't make it past "gee, that's cool" in the Linux world.

The fact that YOU mentioned this, not knowing ANYTHING about Java on Linux and it got moderated +4 by uninformed ZEALOTS that were too lazy to search google for "java gnu" and "qt gpl" is WHY its an issue, not because it really IS an issue.

Qt is GPL'd btw, has been for years, so there is NO issue. Just keep spreading the FUD buddy....

According to RMS,

THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH JAVA ON GNU/LINUX.
THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH JAVA ON GNU/LINUX.
THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH JAVA ON GNU/LINUX.
THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH JAVA ON GNU/LINUX.

Get it? Can we not spread FUD now? Thanks.

at the moment maybe... but just might be the kick in the pants to spur a mass influx of developers to get the Kaffe project up to speed and the get the GNU Classpath expanded, cos Stallman was certainly on target with his "Java trap" article... and there's an awfull lot of people who will not want something as special as this Looking Glass to have to rely on non-free java runtimes.

It requires that source code for the binaries be distributed with the binaries.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

• a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

• b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

• c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

Open source won't use Java until Java is open source. Most OSS developers are wary of traps like that.
(Which caused reluctance to using Qt, which sparked the Gnome project. Now Qt is free, of course.)

Java is certainly going open source. Not Sun's java, but there are plenty of open-source VM:s, and compilers, and a full implementation of the class library in the works.

I predict that, when these projects reach sufficient maturity (AWT/Swing support being the achilles heel in all the above), we will see widespread adoption of Java in the OSS community.

What Sun does will have little impact on the OSS community unless they get serious about open source and put Java under a tolerable license.

(If someone's curious about what is bad about the Sun license, see Dalibor Topic's post here, containing a point-by-point comparison to the Open-source definition.)

Open source won't use Java until Java is open source. Most OSS developers are wary of traps like that.
(Which caused reluctance to using Qt, which sparked the Gnome project. Now Qt is free, of course.)

Java is certainly going open source. Not Sun's java, but there are plenty of open-source VM:s, and compilers, and a full implementation of the class library in the works.

I predict that, when these projects reach sufficient maturity (AWT/Swing support being the achilles heel in all the above), we will see widespread adoption of Java in the OSS community.

What Sun does will have little impact on the OSS community unless they get serious about open source and put Java under a tolerable license.

(If someone's curious about what is bad about the Sun license, see Dalibor Topic's post here, containing a point-by-point comparison to the Open-source definition.)

Sun are not "testing the waters". Instead they are continuing to follow their extremely successful strategy of the last few years. What Sun really don't want is a viable open source clone of Java, whether it is gcj or IKVM. So, every so often they make noises about open-sourcing things. This means that people think working on the open source Java clones is a waste of time. People also carry on working on open source Java applications, providing Sun with help that Microsoft can only dream of.

Why do you think Mono is now days away from a 1.0 release, while gcj and classpath are still lagging the current Java? Because everyone knew that Microsoft would never open-source .NET. The .NET system is probably better than Java, and we knew that if we wanted a free version we would have to write it ourselves.

This is the reason why Sun's strategy is, ultimately, misguided. .NET and c# are very nice to develop with, there is a high quality open source version, and the platform has Microsoft's marketing clout behind it. Oops...

Quoting Tim O'Reilly's speech:

The most common version of the history of free software begins with Richard Stallman's ethically-motivated 1984 revolt against proprietary software. It is an appealing story centered on a charismatic figure, and leads straight into a narrative in which the license he wrote -- the GPL -- is the centerpiece. But like most open source advocates, who tell a broader story about building better software through transparency and code sharing, I prefer to start the history with the style of software development that was normal in the early computer industry and academia. Because software was not seen as the primary source of value, source code was freely shared throughout the early computer industry.

RMS' retelling of the history of the movement he started does not begin as O'Reilly describes above (or, reading O'Reilly differently, RMS is being called an "open-source advocate"). Either way, O'Reilly is wrong. RMS has made it very clear that he does not wish to be lumped in with the open source movement. As for the story of how the free software movement came to be, RMS describes how fortunate he was "in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software" which "could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing"; as you can see in the brief quote I include below, RMS made it clear that back then source code sharing was the norm and there was no need to define a movement to underscore the importance of treating others in the ethical way these hackers treated one another back then. It is this description of RMS' experience as a member of the MIT AI lab that sets the stage for the jarring experience he had when trying to get the source code for software which controlled the early laser printer Xerox had donated to the AI lab. RMS wanted this printer program's source code so the program could be modified to include the end-to-end feedback improvements the MIT AI lab had hacked into their previous printer control software. Read or hear the speech for yourself (links go to the 2001 NYU retelling of this story -- two years before O'Reilly first gave his speech). Read a relevant portion of RMS' speech:

So imagine what it would be like if recipes were packaged inside black boxes. You couldn't see what ingredients they're using, let alone change them, and imagine if you made a copy for a friend, they would call you a pirate and try to put you in prison for years. That world would create tremendous outrage from all the people who are used to sharing recipes. But that is exactly what the world of proprietary software is like. A world in which common decency towards other people is prohibited or prevented.

Now, why did I notice this? I noticed this because I had the good fortune in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software. Now, this community could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing. In the 1970's, though, it was a bit rare for there to be a community where people shared software. And, in fact, this was sort of an extreme case, because in the lab where I worked, the entire operating system was software developed by the people in our community, and we'd share any of it with anybody. Anybody was welcome to come and take a look, and take away a copy, and do whatever he wanted to do. There were no copyright notices on these programs. Cooperation was our way of life. And we were secure in that way of life. We didn't fight for it. We didn't have to fight for it. We just lived that way. And, as far as we knew, we would just keep on living that way. So there was free software, but there was no free software movement.

Furthermore, when O'Reilly tells a story of "building better software through transparency and code sharing", he is not in any way speaking t

Quoting Tim O'Reilly's speech:

The most common version of the history of free software begins with Richard Stallman's ethically-motivated 1984 revolt against proprietary software. It is an appealing story centered on a charismatic figure, and leads straight into a narrative in which the license he wrote -- the GPL -- is the centerpiece. But like most open source advocates, who tell a broader story about building better software through transparency and code sharing, I prefer to start the history with the style of software development that was normal in the early computer industry and academia. Because software was not seen as the primary source of value, source code was freely shared throughout the early computer industry.

RMS' retelling of the history of the movement he started does not begin as O'Reilly describes above (or, reading O'Reilly differently, RMS is being called an "open-source advocate"). Either way, O'Reilly is wrong. RMS has made it very clear that he does not wish to be lumped in with the open source movement. As for the story of how the free software movement came to be, RMS describes how fortunate he was "in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software" which "could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing"; as you can see in the brief quote I include below, RMS made it clear that back then source code sharing was the norm and there was no need to define a movement to underscore the importance of treating others in the ethical way these hackers treated one another back then. It is this description of RMS' experience as a member of the MIT AI lab that sets the stage for the jarring experience he had when trying to get the source code for software which controlled the early laser printer Xerox had donated to the AI lab. RMS wanted this printer program's source code so the program could be modified to include the end-to-end feedback improvements the MIT AI lab had hacked into their previous printer control software. Read or hear the speech for yourself (links go to the 2001 NYU retelling of this story -- two years before O'Reilly first gave his speech). Read a relevant portion of RMS' speech:

So imagine what it would be like if recipes were packaged inside black boxes. You couldn't see what ingredients they're using, let alone change them, and imagine if you made a copy for a friend, they would call you a pirate and try to put you in prison for years. That world would create tremendous outrage from all the people who are used to sharing recipes. But that is exactly what the world of proprietary software is like. A world in which common decency towards other people is prohibited or prevented.

Now, why did I notice this? I noticed this because I had the good fortune in the 1970's to be part of a community of programmers who shared software. Now, this community could trace its ancestry essentially back to the beginning of computing. In the 1970's, though, it was a bit rare for there to be a community where people shared software. And, in fact, this was sort of an extreme case, because in the lab where I worked, the entire operating system was software developed by the people in our community, and we'd share any of it with anybody. Anybody was welcome to come and take a look, and take away a copy, and do whatever he wanted to do. There were no copyright notices on these programs. Cooperation was our way of life. And we were secure in that way of life. We didn't fight for it. We didn't have to fight for it. We just lived that way. And, as far as we knew, we would just keep on living that way. So there was free software, but there was no free software movement.

Furthermore, when O'Reilly tells a story of "building better software through transparency and code sharing", he is not in any way speaking t

check it out or this. I tend to agree with the first more, but the second also keeps my computer running.

You can charge money. You just have to provide the sourcecode. See the GNU FAQ. You can't change the license because you got other people's work with this license and THEY have to agree to the change.

My solution grew over years switching from Window Maker (1998) to 9wm (1999) to larswm (2000) to ratpoison (2001) and since then is what a famous freshmeat editorial calls an "anti-desktop".

Here is the Tao:

• Run all windows fullscreen and without decorations with a WM like ratpoison (or Ion or larswm)

  Nothing then distracts you from the program you work in, as opposed to a typical GUI desktop where diverse window/tool/status bar consume up 50% of screen estate.

• Run CLI/console programs wherever possible.

  Since CLI programs all use the same font in only one size, few colors (which typically can be customized and thus streamlined to a useful minimum), they offer a visual tranquility that is hard if not impossible to achieve through theming in GUIs

  I essentially do all my work in a GNU screen session inside an rxvt, with a couple of open zsh shells plus vim, mutt, elinks, slrn and aumix.

• Choose a good, readable, big console font,

  I was dissatisfied with all available choices and designed my own one called pxl 2000. I use the large 20 pixel size variant which gives me 92 characters per line on a 1024x768 pixel display

• Use white text on black background

  Black backgrounds are the most tranquil backgrounds possible (dark blue might be an alternative for some people). Since monitors do not reflect light like paper, but are light sources themselves, using brighter backgrounds is almost the equivalent of looking into a neon lamp your entire day. If you use CRTs, black backgrounds also reduce flicker and radiation.

• Use textmode web browsers wherever possible

  A major source of visual stress is browsing the web with its flashy and page layouts that change (and thus constantly force your eyes to readjust) with every hop from site to site. Textmode browsers like lynx, w3m, links and elinks streamline the web to one, always consistent page layout (elinks offers the neat feature of switching table rendering off on the fly) in your preferred, fixed-size console font, and allow to concentrate on the real textual information of the web.

• Use a dark grey, non-flashy color scheme for the legacy GUI applications you still need

  Configuring GUI applications to black backgrounds and white text typically creates compatibility problems (i.e. unreadable widgets) because some application programmers didn't think about such a setup. So the best compromise is to configure all GUI widgets to a dark grey background with white menu text. The get color scheme consistenty across Qt and GTK applications plus Mozilla, create a color scheme in the KDE Control Center and click the option "Apply to non-KDE applications".

-F

I've got the laptop in question right here, (I'm typing on it now) and yeah, I dual-boot Linux (Knoppix knx-hdinstall) and Windows 2000 SP4. I need to upgrade the hard drive to give both systems the space they need to coexist happily, but even now they both are happy together. The hard drive is 10GB, there is 228MB of RAM in here, and I have both a wired NIC and a Prism-based 802.11b card to use with it. It won't run Neverwinter Nights or Doom 3, or anything like that, but from what I understand Starcraft will probably run on this. I can certainly play KMahjongg on this until the cows come home.

However, I intend to use this machine primarily on Linux...*especially* when it is hooked up to the University network. Everyone knows just how good OpenOffice.org is as an Office alternative, and how much it needs to evolve, so I won't say much about that. However, the SPSS requirement is something that takes some thought.

After some judicious googling, I found two SPSS alternatives: The R Project and GNU/PSPP. I don't know much about either program, (nor do I know much about SPSS) but it's good to know there are at least two alternatives that leap out at you when you look for it.

Linux should be a supported alternative at all Universities and Colleges throughout the world. Actually, I think Linux should be promoted over Windows, and I am not alone in thinking this..

Linux solves a lot of problems that bedevil IT departments at Colleges and Universities. It comes with great Free/Open Source alternatives to widely-bootlegged proprietary software. It is less prone to malware, viruses and trojans. It is more secure than Windows. And if you look beyond full-figured GUIs like GNOME and KDE and use trim window managers like IceWM, BlackBox, XFCE and so on, you can run graphical Linux on modest computers. Linux + KDE is actually quite nimble on my 400MHz ThinkPad 600E, and I have seen it run OK on 233MHz Pentium systems with 128MB RAM or better. If Windows 2000 will run on a machine, Linux and KDE will also run.

All these problems the article we're discussing enumerates would be ameliorated if not completely sidestepped by encouraging alternatives to a Windows Monoculture.

Why, except in a few rare cases, would you regularly use a command line IM client in favor of a graphical one? It seems terribly inconvenient.

Fortunately I'd already picked up a Powerbook 3400 on eBay ($65) and an Oronoco Wavelan card from a garage sale ($5) as a Debian/PPC plaything.

On the MacOS 9 boot partition, I added iTunes 1.1, IE 5, the Macast mp3 player, and "iHam on iRye". If I could run iTunes 4.5 on the Powerbook as well as the iMac in the upstairs office, my job would be done, but I was left with trying out a number of streaming servers. Many of the servers on OSX use iTunes as a backend (nicecast, for instance), which sucks up added CPU cycles on my 400MHz iMac, and with the three I tried, I couldn't quite figure out the correct URL to connect to from the Powerbook. I looked at gnump3d, which doesn't use iTunes, but haven't tried it yet. I had played with the Squeezebox' server, the slimserver, a year ago, so gave the update another try. The instructions provided a URL format even I could grok, and the resulting stream played on both iTunes 1.1 and Macast on the Powerbook. Using IE (or whatever browser), I can surf to the Slimserver's web interface to select playlists, and after plugging the Powerbook's line out into my stereo, the result wasn't too bad.

What makes a really slick remote control is iHam on iRye, an iTunes 4.x remote control that works on MacOS 9.x and X. Not Windows, for better or worse. It provides an iTunes-like interface, and it seems I can even select webcasts. Provided that the Airport Express' stereo line out provides a signal of at least the same quality as the PB 3400, I may have found my ultimate solution.

Congratulations, you've reinvented the wheel. :)

• shell: bash
• editor: vim
• email: mutt
• audio playback: cplay front-end
• mixer: aumix
• irc & im: irssi
  • im/irc gateway: bitlbee
• web browser: w3m
• p2p:
• • client:giFTcurs
  • daemon:giFT
• news aggregator: raggle

• shell: bash
• editor: vim
• email: mutt
• audio playback: cplay front-end
• mixer: aumix
• irc & im: irssi
  • im/irc gateway: bitlbee
• web browser: w3m
• p2p:
• • client:giFTcurs
  • daemon:giFT
• news aggregator: raggle

ncftp - best FTP client EVAR.

wget - awesome HTTP/HTTPS/FTP download tool (need to mirror a site? wget's got you covered).

lftp - best sftp client EVAR.

zip and unzip - so very useful (and I used to maintain several of the OS ports).

I was going to include bash, but it hasn't actually been updated since 2002.

Cygwin isn't really an application per-se, but it's always the second or third thing (after Firefox) that I install on a new Windows box... having a real shell and tools on Windows is a real sanity-saver.

ncftp - best FTP client EVAR.

wget - awesome HTTP/HTTPS/FTP download tool (need to mirror a site? wget's got you covered).

lftp - best sftp client EVAR.

zip and unzip - so very useful (and I used to maintain several of the OS ports).

I was going to include bash, but it hasn't actually been updated since 2002.

Cygwin isn't really an application per-se, but it's always the second or third thing (after Firefox) that I install on a new Windows box... having a real shell and tools on Windows is a real sanity-saver.

and to use all those and more at the same time you have GNU Screen ...

Let's start with the shell--zsh is by far the best one I've used. It has everything.

Moving on, Links (web browser) and Naim (AIM/ICQ/IRC client) rock. The only issue with the former is that Links doesn't support cookies, so I have Lynx in case I want to post on /. or something.

I don't have a console mail client on my machine--I have other methods of getting my email. For accessing my email account with my uni, I ssh into my uni's shell account and use pine from there or I use Links to access the Squirrelmail setup on my web server (over HTTPS, of course). To access my fastmail.fm account, I just use Links to access their web interface (they support both web and IMAP access for free).

For downloading stuff, I use giFTcurs, the btdownloadcurses.py BitTorrent client, and the venerable wget, depending on what I'm looking for and where I'm downloading from.

And, for the part that will generate the most flamage, my text editor of choice: Joe! Its interface is just as simple as nano, but with more features, such as find/replace and decent copy/paste, using text selection. On a related note, I use most as my pager--coloured man pages are good.

And, finally, who could forget NetHack?

Hmm...now I have an urge to find out how to make live CDs, so I can make a ``CLI survival kit'' live CD. Well, maybe not, as I'm too bloody lazy, but it's an idea...

And when you're using all those apps, don't for get Screen, the terminal multiplexer. It'll let you run all those apps in one virtual terminal (or xterm, Eterm, aterm, whatever). It'll let you disconnect from a session and logout and then reconnect to the session next time you login. You can even share the same screen session in other terminals.

Screen rocks. Everyone using a shell needs to use screen.

Just play the Free Software Song by RMS.

If you like w3m, you'll *love* elinks.

Oh, and the best damn console app ever is screen. It's a window manager for the console, and it simply rules...

The legal issues for Linux relate to when you use it in a product, as opposed to (e.g. Windows CE, QNX). The terms for Windows CE, QNX, etc, tend to be very clearly spelled out - X dollars per unit. With Linux, the risk is there of having FSF decide that you've linked too closely and that you must now release as GPL. If you've decided not to release, there's a lot of legal fees that you're going to be spending, either way.

I used the GPL as a generic term for "insert open source non-BSD copyleft license here"; there are OSNBCL specific legal issues that a traditional "pay per use" license simply doesn't face, and a BSD license basically doesn't face any legal restrictions at all (well, comparatively so).

I don't think license management is at all as big a deal as you make it out to be, provided that you've been keeping up with it since the beginning; it's trying to prove you have a license when you tossed it in a drawer or bin somewhere that can be problematic.

I do exactly the same thing you do, with Red Hat. I only use errata RPMs (well, used to), but all else is compiled by hand and stored in:

/usr/local/software/FooProgram-1.0/

I've been doing this for years. Some time ago it was suggested I use stow which looks really good but I'm already too set in my ways to change. Nonetheless, I think it's the best way to go, no matter what flavour of Linux/BSD you are using (in fact, I find this approach really makes you a distro agnostic).

I live in text mode. Here's a selection of my preferred apps. Most of these are still in active development (though some are more active than others).

screen. Simply indispensable. It slices and dices console sessions. Pretty much everything I do, I do in screen. I've a page elsewhere that describes everything screen does for me.

zsh. My shell of choice. Think of all the good features of bash, ksh, and tcsh rolled together. (Without much of the ickiness, particularly the csh heritage.) Personally, the killer application of zsh was that fact that not only did it have context-sensitive completion but (unlike tcsh) it shipped with hordes of completion definitions right out of the box. Type 'dpkg -L fo<tab>' and zsh will autocomplete on the Debian packages currently installed on your system. With an ssh-agent running, type 'scp otherhost:fo<tab>' and zsh will ssh to the other system and autocomplete on the files available on that host.

irssi. The best IRC client I've come across, certainly beating out IrcII, BitchX, and even epic. Multiple windows, extensible, tons of plugins available.

bitlbee. This is actually an IRC-to-Instant-Messaging gateway. It allows me to use irssi and the IRC environment with which I am so familiar to also deal with those of my friends and family who insist on using the various IM services.

snownews. curses-based RSS aggregator. I shopped around a bit before finding an aggregator that I liked. snownews does everything I need.

mutt. Possibly the best mail client around, GUI or not. While pine is okay (and simpler to use), mutt is much more customizable and scales better to large volumes of email.

procmail. Again, not exactly command line, but essential to my email usage.

Emacs. My text-mode editor of choice. Feel free to substitute XEmacs or vi (preferably vim) at your own preference. I prefer emacs to vi, though I know a decent amount of vi, as any sysadmin should. I actually like XEmacs a little better than GNU Emacs, but GNU Emacs has better UTF-8 support.

w3m. There's also links; I'm not tremendously familiar with it because w3m fills all of my needs and it used to be the case that w3m had better HTML support than links, but I don't believe this is any longer the case. Of note is the fact that w3m can do tabbed browsing, though it's not multithreaded, so you can't read one tab while another is loading. Also, if you run w3m with a valid $DISPLAY, it can even show images in the pages it displays.

moosic. This is a music jukebox. The features that distinguish it from other such programs are twofold. First, it runs as a standalone server; you interact with it via a command line client. (In theory, a curses or GUI client could be written, but to my knowledge none yet has.) Second, it's customizable with regards to how it plays music. It has a config file where you tell it what programs to use to play various music formats (it does come with reasonable defaults). Someone elsewhere in this article pointed out mpd; I'll have to look at that, but it at least doesn't appear to support the various MOD formats.

mplayer. It does more or less require some graphical output (X, framebuffer, whatever), but it's run and displays it status in text mod

I live in text mode. Here's a selection of my preferred apps. Most of these are still in active development (though some are more active than others).

screen. Simply indispensable. It slices and dices console sessions. Pretty much everything I do, I do in screen. I've a page elsewhere that describes everything screen does for me.

zsh. My shell of choice. Think of all the good features of bash, ksh, and tcsh rolled together. (Without much of the ickiness, particularly the csh heritage.) Personally, the killer application of zsh was that fact that not only did it have context-sensitive completion but (unlike tcsh) it shipped with hordes of completion definitions right out of the box. Type 'dpkg -L fo<tab>' and zsh will autocomplete on the Debian packages currently installed on your system. With an ssh-agent running, type 'scp otherhost:fo<tab>' and zsh will ssh to the other system and autocomplete on the files available on that host.

irssi. The best IRC client I've come across, certainly beating out IrcII, BitchX, and even epic. Multiple windows, extensible, tons of plugins available.

bitlbee. This is actually an IRC-to-Instant-Messaging gateway. It allows me to use irssi and the IRC environment with which I am so familiar to also deal with those of my friends and family who insist on using the various IM services.

snownews. curses-based RSS aggregator. I shopped around a bit before finding an aggregator that I liked. snownews does everything I need.

mutt. Possibly the best mail client around, GUI or not. While pine is okay (and simpler to use), mutt is much more customizable and scales better to large volumes of email.

procmail. Again, not exactly command line, but essential to my email usage.

Emacs. My text-mode editor of choice. Feel free to substitute XEmacs or vi (preferably vim) at your own preference. I prefer emacs to vi, though I know a decent amount of vi, as any sysadmin should. I actually like XEmacs a little better than GNU Emacs, but GNU Emacs has better UTF-8 support.

w3m. There's also links; I'm not tremendously familiar with it because w3m fills all of my needs and it used to be the case that w3m had better HTML support than links, but I don't believe this is any longer the case. Of note is the fact that w3m can do tabbed browsing, though it's not multithreaded, so you can't read one tab while another is loading. Also, if you run w3m with a valid $DISPLAY, it can even show images in the pages it displays.

moosic. This is a music jukebox. The features that distinguish it from other such programs are twofold. First, it runs as a standalone server; you interact with it via a command line client. (In theory, a curses or GUI client could be written, but to my knowledge none yet has.) Second, it's customizable with regards to how it plays music. It has a config file where you tell it what programs to use to play various music formats (it does come with reasonable defaults). Someone elsewhere in this article pointed out mpd; I'll have to look at that, but it at least doesn't appear to support the various MOD formats.

mplayer. It does more or less require some graphical output (X, framebuffer, whatever), but it's run and displays it status in text mod

1. Dev Todo is a wonderful outliner and task manager. Today I ported it to win32 using mingw to use at work (it pisses me off that windows dropped ANSI color support in their crappy CMD! I knew it was bad, but I still use it more than msys or cygwin because it is quicker on my slow box). Dev Todo stores everything in beautiful XML. I intend to make a filter for XSLT for my biweekly progress reports. My boss wants me to list things I've gotten done & what I plan to do & this great app can store all of that.
2. Pine-I don't care if RMS doesn't consider it free. It is the best IMAP client. I do like Mulberry as well, though.
3. GNU Screen-I mostly just detach/reattach. I'd like to learn to use it more.
4. VIM-My editor. Again, need to learn it better.
5. Lynx on windows and ELinks on Linux for browsing.
6. I have aliased "fuck" to use cowsay to tell me to calm down. Great stress relief.
7. GPG
8. LaTeX. I hesitated to include this, but I use it on both linux and windows & it is technically interactive. I have started using it more than standard word processors (WordPerfect>OpenOffice>MS Word) and I want to use it instead of impress/powerpoint/whatever.
9. OpenSSH because my box is so much better than the one I use at work
10. NcFTP best ftp client I found, though I have been having much less need to use it.

whenever it should beep it says woof woof! Incredibly annoying, how do I turn it off?

Put

vbell off

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

For IRC, I use irssi. It's neat, small, fast, and does what I need it to. Also, I haven't had the need to change any of its stock options yet - I like it the way it is. Other candidates are BitchX (annoying autoaway etc.), ircII (too much configuring, maybe?), or CenterICQ (don't like the interface for IRC).

CenterICQ is my app of choice for IM. It's quirky sometimes, and once segfaulted, but other than that, I have had 0 problems with it. Also, it supports a variety of protocols.

For web-browsing, I use links. I've tried lynx and w3m, but links just "does it" I guess :). It's got support for more stuff. Also, I find the -g option nice, something the other two don't have IIRC.

I've tried Emacs, Pico, Nano, ed, etc. etc. etc., but so far, nothing has replaced my addiction to Vim. Maybe I'm a masochist, I don't know.

When I'm at home in console mode, I usually use Alt+Fx to switch between different apps, and use screen to keep irssi and centericq running. When over ssh, I use screen. Sometimes, I run out of VTs, so I use screen to group things inside the VTs. When in X, I just keep things in separate rxvt windows.

For entertainment, I have either NetHack, fortune -o, or bash.org (aww shit, slashdotted them, they're down enough as it is!) in links. :)

-- Chris

I am astonished to see that no one has mentioned Bash...

Combined with screen, Naim is really nice for idling on AIM (to avoid missing IMs from people who are only awake when you sleep and such), and for switching computers without having to disconnect. The same convenience can be achieved using screen with an IRC client for IRC (I use Irssi).

Its much more convenient than GUI stuff when you switch computers a lot during the day. I can leave naim and irssi running in screen while I drive home from work and people can still IM me if they need to for those 30 minutes.

I use naim a lot for one reason: I can run it inside screen, detach from one computer and re-attach on another without ever going offline (or missing messages while I'm walking somewhere else). If I'm moving around a lot, screen also lets me have multiple connections to the same session, so I can read & reply from wherever I happen to be at the moment.

The other reason is that next to my main desktop at home, I have a nice little text-based LCD terminal (actually a partially disassembled 486 laptop) that I IM on -- saves screen real estate and I don't have to get offline when I'm doing stuff like kernel driver debugging that requires me to shut down X...

One of the most under used console app is Screen. http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ I am not a sys admin but Screen is still pretty handy.

Man, how many times has screen saved my butt? Multiplies the usefulness of any console appplication by five.

... will be affected too. I guess that would probably mean the death of MailMan

Units is also your friend. There's also a Cygwin port for you Windows types.

I don't think that both sides are being shown here.

There's this one group that has a bunch of far-left open source freaks tossing money its way and has some 60s throwback wearing 80s close running it!

Oh yeah. You think these groups are bad, follow the money that goes into The GNU Foundation. Total agenda my friends, total agenda. I hear they even have the guy who runs Linux itself behind it. At least I've never heard of Bill Gates directly in cahoots with anybody.

Psst, rumor has it that GNU has a politician in their pockets. Yeah, big sympathetic. Goes by the name of Dennis Kusinich. Word has it that GNU might even help him steal the election...

It's interesting to see Tannenbaum's influence on Senn:
"I have to be upfront with you, I am a fair newbie at Minix. I have been using Linux since the 0.9 kernel (downloaded via ftp on VMS in 90s) and have a fairly decent background in Unix - solaris, sco, bsd, etc. I got interested in Minix back around the same time too, but I had success with Linux and stayed with it. I got reminded of Minix the other day when Andrew Tanenbaum posted his response to the 'Brown' book - pure enlightenment - http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/."[emphasis added]

Here is some more background infoon the genesis of the project.

This might be a troll, but I'll bite.

Don't like GNOME? Use windowmaker. If that's still too fat for you, use oroborus. Still too big? Try setting your window manager to "twm".

Don't like OpenOffice? MS Office isn't much better...maybe you'd better stick to HTML and CSS with Bluefish. Or maybe vim or Emacs.

FireFox still too slow? As long as you're dropping features by moving away, try w3m or lynx...two very capable text-based browsers.

Don't have a 3D accelerator? Play software-rendered Quake. Or (using that same project) use the SDL's aalib target.

Remember,

• VoIP requires H323 and other setuid scripts, potentially opening your network to crackers.
• The internet was simply never designed for realtime interaction, and post-hoc hacks won't make it realtime: instead the system would probably have to be redesigned from the ground up using realtime-XML.
• VoIP completely bypasses the government's anti-terrorist infrastructure, which depends on intercepting phone calls arbitrarily: it is estimated that each percentage point of calls which are transferred to VoIP will result in 600-800 American deaths per annum through terrorism

I haven't checked in on the project in a while, but Bayonne was coming along nicely in this area and is currently used in a few production facilities.

You might have to roll your own, but the framework is certainly there.

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $

Stallman's take on the whole thing can be found here. As usual it is as much helpful as it is inflammatory. Hell, the letters RMS is all it takes to completely shutdown half the minds and all productive discussion here. I think you're better off bringing up our favorite group of 40's Teutonic goose-steppers.

Well, the GNU/Linux thing gets a revisit. Eben Moglen has been a much classier act. I think he does much better at being a spokesman for the FSF. The message is essentially the same but the impression you get is far more tactful and thoughtful and dare I say clean-cut..professional even. The FSF has a link page to Moglen and Kuhn's public answers to SCO here.