lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

If you have been using Linux, I think you must have been frusturated with the lack of good fonts when using Emacs. It gets very hard to distinguish between "l" (the letter l) and 1 (number 1) and between comma and semicolon when programming or examining large amount of code.

The Bitstream Inc have done an excellent work in producing and relesaing under a very liberal license, the bitstream-vera fonts. These fonts are really beautiful and easy to read. To use these fonts with your emacs, just add this line to your ~/.Xdefaults file

 Emacs*font: -bitstream-bitstream vera sans mono-medium-r-*--*-100-*--*--*- 

Of course, you need to have the bitstream-vera fonts installed on your Linux box

Yesterday, I had to give an introduction to the LAMP stack to a group of trainees. My energy was mostly focused on the MySQL and PHP part. I had gone to the workshop with some source code examples and no slides. I am convinced that this is the best way to present talks to a group of developers i.e. using a white board and source code. Though I will not say that the trainees were hanging on to my every word, they asked question and I did not see anyone fall off to sleep . I introduced them to DBDesigener, phpmyadmin, and Adodb.

It also helped that I used these tools in most of the work I do and knew them quite well. I was able to show them how they will be using them in Real Life.

Business Week has an interview with Linux Trovald. Very interesting and quite insightful. My favourite quote

Q: Some say Linux and a lot of open-source projects really aren't innovative, that they're copies of commercial products. What's your reaction to that?

A: I disagree. It's an easy argument to make. One reason people make it is that, in open source, they don't see the revolutionary new versions magically appearing. In comparison, look at commercial closed systems. They make a new release every year or three to four years with a huge marketing splash. They make it look very different. But it's a circus to make it look like a sudden innovation.

In open source, you don't have a circus. You don't see a sudden explosion. It's not done that way. All development is very gradual -- whether commercial or open source. Even when you have a big thinker coming along with a new idea, actually getting it working takes a lot of sweat and tears.

There's innovation in Linux. There are some really good technical features that I'm proud of. There are capabilities in Linux that aren't in other operating systems. A lot of them are about performance. They're internal ways of doing things in a very efficient manner. In a kernel, you're trying to hide the hard work from the application, rather than exposing the complexity.

As a result of these innovations, you get good performance, better security. Linux is actually very stable. People complain about how long it takes us to develop new versions, but we made sure that with new upgrades, old programs continue to run. We have programs written in 1992 that will run on the latest versions.

Also it's good to copy good ideas. It should be encouraged. We don't say Einstein was a really smart guy and we should come up with a better theory of relativity. We build on top of his good ideas and have new exciting quests.

Two days ago I installed the Fluxbox window manager(WM), a very nice and lightweight WM. I had to do some digging around on the Internet and startup script files to get Fluxbox as an option in the GDM (the login box, where you have the option to start either the GNOME, KDE or the Failsafe session)

Here is how it is done

1. Compile, install the WM of your choice.
2. login as root and go to directory /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions
3. Create a file in the diectory, and give it he name of whatever WM you have installed i.e. Fluxbox, Enlightenment, WMaker etc.
4. Enter the following lines into the above file
   

   #!/bin/bash
   
   exec  [Path to the WM launcher]
   
   

   Change the [Path to the WM launcher] to whatever your WM uses. In case of Fluxbox it is /usr/bin/startfluxbox , in case of Enlightenment it is /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession enlightenment and in case of WindowMaker it is /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession wmaker. These locations may change according to the options you have used while compiling.