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The Linux console in framebuffer mode is pretty cool. A lot of Gentoo users typically have it loaded so as to use the spiffy bootsplash system, and the graphics consoles are wonderful.

If you are into text console stuff, there is Twin - Textmode window environment which is surprisingly neat. It can run bash boxes in a ncurses based environment. Gentoo had it in portage and it compiled easily for me. A bit rough around the edges, but cool.

Also, I just have to plug Turbo Vision for POSIX which is that classic Borland library used for the great DOS apps of yore. I've been tinkering with it on Gentoo amd64 and even submitted a patch for the terminal class upstream. (Yes, I managed to compile it with debugging symbols, and trace down a segfault using gdb). I'd love to see Turbo Vision get a little luvin' so that it can run Bash boxes like Twin can, for no real reason other that its just such a darned nifty (and fast) environment.

And back to the framebuffer graphics consoles themselves. I believe you can write SDL apps that use the framebuffer. There was a FBUI project going, but I think it's dead.

I believe the whole point is to log in to FVWM, look at the shiny-shiny, then CTL-ALT-BACKSPACE to go back to the plain ol-good-ol-reliable-we-dont-need-no-steenkin-GUI plain text console.

At least, that's what REAL men do. There's always twin if you insist on windowing.

TWIN

it's a textmode window environment with many features, worth looking into.

twin gives you all the goodness of X, without the X-ness :)
It's like diet X ... X-lite ... low-carb X ... or something like that.

Or twin? Console window manager. Gotta love it. Even has an XMMS applet. ;)

First, there's tvision, a port of Borland's turbovision to gcc. Unfortunately turbovision is not in the public domain as could be deduced from that page, so tvision is not free software and on shaky legal grounds, but borland doesn't seem to mind.
Another interesting project is twin, which is a text-mode windowing environment, something like screen with a TUI.
nstti, the not so tiny text interface, might make a good starting point if you decide to write your own in python.
And there was this butt-ugly GUI that worked directly on vga hardware that would've been fine for POSes, but I can't find it right now.

Our company sells text based accounting software that has been made with FoxPro. Yes, we are moving into graphic software, but there still is a willingness to put up with this kind of stuff.

Text is all we need when dealing with numbers.

My advice is to sell the advantage of speed. Customers who want good accounting software will rather put up with a good text based system that is fast, than a good gui based system that is slow. Time is money. We just need to make it easier to use.

For those who are planning on making text based software, might I recommend Twin?
* it is text based
* has windows [like ncurses]
* has multitasking [unlike ncurses]
* uses the mouse
* has a desktop
* can work with X11
* has a window manager [yes, you can maximize & minimize]
* you can detach & reattach windows

I wish that there were more applications for it.

and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux.

I assume you are looking for an interface with the basic CUA (Windows) keybindings? Unfortunately, AFAIK, full support for CUA seems to be virtually impossible in the generic case of remote terminals (due to ESCaping keycodes and the ancient keyboard limitations kept alive by terminal emulators -- e.g. this is the reason you have to hit ESC twice in mc to register a single ESC), but in the specific case of the Linux Console (which has direct access to hardware), this is possible.

Many editors have CUA bindings, though to varying degrees of success. e.g. Emacs or Jed. Unfortunately, some of the time it feels like a hack and a few might even require manually modifying Linux's keymappings.

Perhaps the closest I've found is SetEdit, which is based on a port of the TurboVision text-mode windowing library, which is very comfortable for me since I used to use the old DOS Borland IDE, which also happens to have an OSS Linux version called Rhide.

I love text-mode and I think a lot could be done to improve it in Linux; particularly, "fixing" the ancient terminal system and providing for modular non-linear behavior. Sometimes I don't want to deal with the 100MB+ required for X (not to mention GNOME & KDE for apps that are dependent upon them), but I'd like a non-linear interface.

Screen is a step in the right direction, though it is not (initially) very user-friendly (not using Windows/CUA keybindings ;)). I've also found the simpler dtach to be useful at times.

I don't know why more non-linear text mode applications aren't created. I've found a few that are made as independent ncurses apps, but, ideally, I think they should all use some standard text windowing environment. Recently, I noticed Twin which looks familiar (tvision?), but doesn't seem to be very actively used... and I don't know if it supports CUA keybindings.

Hope this helps.

Conflicting answers to this question the guy who wrote PaX says exec-shield can't but some debian people claim it works here. Guess someone might have to test it if the Debian people didn't.
Or does he mean the patch is ALSO supplied making it immune? Is the problem that these patches by design can't do anything when it concerns kernel space?

all of the above remarks and comments are very deep and insightful.... if you happen to live in the U.S.A.! Outside the country, Tivo is not an option.
(sometimes there is truth in the jokes)

the distribution contain a Release.gpg file that is signed: so it is not possible, for example, to compromise a mirror, and it is more difficult for an intruder to compromise a single Debian package in the archive.
There is a script apt-check-sigs that will check the above signature: this is explained in the debian page on releases; unfortunately the link to download the script from there is down, here are two alternatives: google cache my site (slow)

as people click on the link for the screenshots at http://linuz.sns.it/~monge/qt-directfb/story.html nerds everywhere do directly to google to search for more.... just like me :)

it happened that I proposed (almost) the same problem at a seminar in Nov 2002, and then I solved it. My program does not find the shortest string; but it also understands if a code is 'uniquely infinitely decodable' that is if it can decode strings of infinite lenght in an unique way. It is based on a known technique, see [Cover Thomas], with some improvements. This program also shows that the problem is polynomial complexity in n,k where n=number of words k=maximum of letters in a word.

It's a window manager for your terminal. http://linuz.sns.it/~max/twin/

http://linuz.sns.it/~max/twin/ sigh. where's my mind this morning.

The article which is partially in the form of an interview then delves in the various historical descriptions on the burning on the stake and the horrendous tortures at the hands of the inquisition and closes inviting people to the conference.

A list of Giordano Bruno's publications can be found at this italian web site. Also, the italian ministry of research through one of its many sub-committees is working on a complete CD-ROM of Giordano Bruno's work in XML.