DSL Talk

So now you’ve got the basics of vi down, but you’re thinking “so what?” Well Miles, let me tell you. vi has a lot of cool features that a jazz man like yourself is going to be able to riff on for a long while. It isn’t the archaic version of notepad that you think it is. Did you know that vi has 26 unique buffers for you to copy text into, and an additional 10 that save things you’ve deleted? That’s like having 26 clipboards you can use. Have you ever tried opening and changing a file in scite, only to find that you couldn’t save it because you didn’t have permission? In vi that isn’t such a big deal because you can force vi to save the file. Or did you know that you can compile and run the text you’re working on by writing a macro that makes a system call with whatever file you’re working on as the argument? That was one of the things I thought only scite had.

Huh, what the heck is that?

Well, it is simply the smallest/lightest/fastest scriptable gui widget I have ever seen.
If you are sitting around with a copy of DSL and you want to increase your geek threshold start trying to teach yourself some Lua and see what you could make -- we are using it for the control pannel and the 'media player'.

http://lua-fltk.sourceforge.net/

The project is over three years old now -- yet very few people even know it exists.

Oh, and Lua is very fast. It executes in about 1/10 the time of perl.

Dillo is still in there -- and it is also still in active development. The version in DSL is a special hacked addition. The main line of Dillo is progressing. The main reason why I haven't upgraded is because of cookie exchange issues in the later versions.

We also have a text version of Links. Links-Hacked is a great browser, it runs well and is very responsive. Also, it can do a lot that Dillo can not --- authentication, manage plugins, some js, and a host of esoteric functions. I am a 'fan' of Links-Hacked. Unfortunately, it is now a dead project, which is a shame because I think it has enormous potential. I've emailed the author and he has no intention of resuming development. Maybe one day someone will pick up the source code, or it will get incorporated into the main Links2 project?

I just wanted to inform you that I just did a small remastering using Grub as bootloader. This allows selecting boot options with the arrow keys of your keyboard.

The remastered version is available with English or German default keyboard. If you are interested in the more comfortable booting, download the DSL-Grub ISO.

A bootscreen is available here

Please do not be confused by the renaming of the kernel and the ramdisk. A few days ago a did a massive multiboot DVD for a large german Linux mag (available in January) which will contain several live distributions bootable -- one of them is DSL of course...

I’m going to take back what I said about being able to do 95% of what you need to do in vi. It was pointed out to me that cutting and pasting is well over 40% of what you need text editor for. What kind of text editor can’t cut and paste? So today I’m going to look at cutting and pasting in the vi text editor, and saying that now you’ll know 80% of vi, where the other 20% will take 80% of the time to learn.

Hmm.

I just had to create one of these blog accounts once I knew they were available. However, I've got absolutely no idea what to write.

Scite is my favorite text editor. I like the syntax highlighting and the ease of use. Searching and replacing is easy and every command is easy to find. I thought that I would never find another text editor I liked that much. If you haven't tried the vi editor yet, you're probably going to be as surprised as I was. There is a little learning curve, but it's worth it. It is a very powerful program and it even lets you write your own macros. Here is a really short introduction to vi for newbies that I wish I had when I was learning it.

In the last six months or so,
I've seen many different and interesting ways that the
DSL distro is being put to work by the userbase.

While the stock DSL does come complete with many light and fast
apps and servers, many times the needs of the user require
that another program or application be used that offers more
features or functions not available in the distro.

Here is where the fun comes in , designing your own personal
distro from base .iso up to run in your DSL box..
Where you are the master of its design, events and purpose.
Shaping the distro to be much more than a "LiveCD"

updated 15 dec 2004 - mikshaw

Here is a list of available Fluxbox commands/actions.
These commands are not the same as the shell commands
entered into a "run" dialog such as fbrun. They are
instead commands built into fluxbox to accomplish tasks
which may not be available from the menu.

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.

Who woulda thunk it??

Brian
AwPhuch