Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips?

dan_polt asks: "I currently use a Linux desktop system, at work. One of the great things about the Linux desktop is that there are lots of ways to save a lot of time from useful widgets and configuration to minimize the pain of repetitive tasks. Most of my work involves web/e-Mail/SSH access, and I have a very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens. What software or configuration tips might Slashdot have for me to: make better use of my time; make the most of my screen real estate; and make my use of the desktop more effective?"

Outsource

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

1. Give me your machine.
2. You have more free time.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Re:Outsource

[Janitha (817744)]

First find a good window manager (initially spend the time if you have some exploring gnome, kde, enlightenment, twm, fluxbox, *box, what ever). Find something you like from that. Simple is good. Bling Bling is bad. I personally choose enlightenment. Multiple desktops! Use them. I have a 3x3 array setup with edge flipping so hitting the edge of the screen would push me to the adjacent desktop and have wrapping around. So within any desktop, I can access any other. Of course this is a personal preference. (I would imagine this taking someone a long time to get used to, but once you do its like gold). Create a convention on how you would use your desktops, for example the top row for work, middle for shells/web/information, middle last for email, and bottom row for shells. Something that you will feel good with. Learn your shortcuts (either for window manager, editor, or what ever software your using). Things I find useful are scrolling through desktops, autocomplete, saving/copy/paste, locking computer, open applications, change music. Personalize your enviornment and applications. Configuration files are there for a reason. Set up shortkut keys and use them. Of course when you are customizing it, do it only once (or twice) initially not everyday tweaking more than you edit your actual work. If its a work computer, do not even think about installing games. And get rid of those bookmarks, my productivity shot up as soon as the slashdot and other bookmarks went away. Organize all the work related bookmarks in a way thats easiest for you. Lot of other things I was planning to say are already written below. Enjoy.

I'd recomend root-tail

[Vrejakti (729758)]

Root-tail home page [goof.com] and freshmeat link. [freshmeat.net] random screen shot. [nyud.net]

About: root-tail is a program that allows printing of text directly to the X11 root window wherever you choose, much like running rxvt with a pixmap background but without the hassle and with more features.

Some code I use with it (there's TONS of options):

sudo root-tail --justify -g 600x250+20+350 /var/log/messages,lightblue

Enlightenment == simple?!

[Fross (83754)]

Simple is good. Bling Bling is bad. I personally choose enlightenment.

You just literally made me choke on my breakfast. Bad!

Well, choke laughing, so it's not all bad.

My advice...

[garcia (6573)]

Don't be posting to Slashdot and reading the trolls you will receive in response instead of working on that high-spec'd dual headed monster you got.

That'll save you a ton more time than any of the advice given here ;)

Personally, I have tried to use as much as I can via Putty (SSH+screen) and keep everything I do in one window. It cuts down on how much I have taking up my real estate and it seems to make me more productive.

Even with a 23" LCD it's nice to have everything in one place.

The one useful script

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

#!/bin/sh
rm -f /usr/local/bin/games

Re:The one useful script

[jZnat (793348)]

I use Debian you insensitive clod! It's /usr/games and /usr/local/games

Re:The one useful script

[tomhudson (43916)]

make better use of my time; make the most of my screen real estate

apt-get install pr0n;

Re:My advice...

[novakreo (598689)]

putty is not a linux program, it's only for ms windoze - it's not needed on linux though, we just use ssh.

Putty is actually available for both Linux and Windows (even NT on Alpha!).
While it probably is overkill for just 'ssh hostname.tld', it is useful if you need to use features like port-forwarding and want to use a saved profile instead of supplying command-line options or hand-editing ~/.ssh/config, or for migrating from Windows while keeping the same SSH client.

Two 1600x1200?

[Bananatree3 (872975)]

Try watching Star Wars and working at the same time! Wait a sec, maybe that wouldn't work...

Time saver

[dfjunior (774213)]

make better use of my time

Quit f-ing around on Slashdot and get back to work!

Re:Time saver

[gatzke (2977)]

In /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 www.slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 .slashdot.org

Helps me at work...

Re:Time saver

[leuk_he (194174)]

YOu should realy use

0.0.0.0 www.slashdot.org
0.0.0.0 .slashdot.org

I wonder how this habit of using 127.0.0.1 came into fashion if 0.0.0.0 is the more correct solution.

This is like setting your clock fast

[hey! (33014)]

and other methods for tricking yourself.

The problem I have with these tactics is that obfuscation strategies don't work against a sufficiently clever and determined opponent. And I'm very clever and determined when it comes to avoiding work.

No, the important thing to do is to sap your determination for wasting time. The reason people waste time is that they have so many commitments they can't keep them straight, although they're rattling around somewhere in their head.

The mind is like a thick, opaque stew -- you can only be aware of what happens to boil to the surface at the moment. We toss all the commitments we make to ourselves and others into the pot, and pretty soon its beyond us to know all the things that are in there. It's very common to harbor a unnamed suspicion that that something nasty like a severed human finger could surface at any second. This creates a tremendous resistance to even looking at the stew, much less stirring it up to find something important you've lost.

The secret to productivity is to change your mind from stew to consommé. To do this, you have to find some place other than your mind to put all your commitments. Then you have to look at all those things on a regular basis, because they'll sneak into your head if you don't. That's what people miss when they "get organized".

Simple program to clear your mind of frightening junk:

1. Refuse every commitment that is not essential.
   
2. Place every commitment you make, no matter how trivial, into a tracking system.
   
3. Review everything in you system without fail every Monday, refactoring undoable items into doable steps.
   
4. Review the doable items you have without fail every day.
   

Turn it off

[daeley (126313)]

First thing you do to increase productivity is turn off all the blinkenlight widgetry. Even if the frenetic distractions every second don't give you seizures, they'll certainly slow your mental processes down.

Then, open a web browser in one window and a terminal in the other and get to work you slacker! ;)

Linux Desktop

[B Man (51992)]

I use Linux mostly at work as well, I do work in a Windows-centric environment so I use VMWare to run Windows. Otherwise I would rather just use the virtual consoles, with ssh, elinks (for browsing), and rarely X. I do find X to be useful for things that I must use it for, but for the most productivity, nothing beats a console.

Re:Linux Desktop

[cbr2702 (750255)]

I do find X to be useful for things that I must use it for, but for the most productivity, nothing beats a console.

It's quite nice to be able to have multiple terminals visible at the same time and have quick cut-and-paste. I like X a lot, mostly as a way to hold many xterms.

I do find, though, that as everyone writing for the web expects you to have a GUI browser, firefox is quicker than elinks for most things.

Re:Linux Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

multiple terminals visible at the same time

The utility screen will let you split your terminal space between an arbitrary number of applications (and each one recognizes that it has its own tty).

quick cut-and-paste

Once again, screen has you covered, and will allow you to transport text between hosted applications; it even provides a spiffy vi-like interface for selection, and freezes the program output (no, it doesn't suspend) while you're doing this.

Re:Linux Desktop

[nmb3000 (741169)]

Can you really do this with screen?

Of course! Screen can do anything!

I'm not sure exactly what you're shooting for, but you can "split" a screen session like this:

In a console, run screen. This will create a new session inside screen. Tell screen to split the window by sending the keystrokes CTRL+a S (that's a capital 's'. If you send a lowercase 's' you will freeze the display. Resume it by sending CTRL+a q).

The screen should split into two vertical windows. Tab into the lower window by sending CTRL+a <TAB> . Now create a new shell by sending CTRL+a c. You can go back and forth using CTRL+a <TAB> . Once you have a shell running in each you can do and/or run anything you want to. To close a split session, give it focus and send CTRL+a X (note the capital 'x').

Gentoo's Wiki site has a nice writeup of screen [gentoo-wiki.com]. It makes it real easy to get up and running with screen. It includes the above example as well as instructions on how to resize the split and do many other things.

Re:Linux Desktop

[spuzzzzzzz (807185)]

I agree strongly with this comment. And although sibling points out that it is possible to copy and paste with gpm, I still find X useful because I can see so much more stuff (in different windows) at the same time. And if you're one of those people that uses X as an Xterm container, a tiling window manager [wmii.de] is essential.

PS: I find that wmii isn't very mature yet; I still prefer wmi-10.

The /. effect

[richdun (672214)]

Get Slashdot to space the posts 10 hours apart. That'll increase geek-productivity worldwide in no time.

Term Productivity

[digitaltraveller (167469)]

GNU Screen [gnu.org] is a featured packed window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes. You can detach from remote screen sessions and the program will continue to run. You can then re-attach later; an essential feature if you use ssh alot.

Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[gtoomey (528943)]

You can mount a remote filesystem in KDE without using NFS, ftp, rsync, Samba etc

Just enter in Konqueror
fish://[e-mail]
(yes that is fish) and you will be asked for your ssh password.
Your remote files appear in Konqueror & you can then copy/paste etc to your local filesystem.

Re:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[Yrrebnarg (629526)]

You missed the real power-feature here. Try using fish (or ftp or even http) while you're attaching something in kmail or editing a file with kate, or even koffice. Now try doing a drag-and-drop into a konsole...now try it with a URL. Now try it while in a ssh -X session. Or maybe man:screen or info:glibc as a URL in konqueror. One last trick is KDE's alt-f2 dialog. It does integer arithmetic and opens URLs. KDE really is cool if you use it, but nobody here in the USA ever seems to give it a chance.

And for the flamebait part, why is kde so unloved here in the USA?

Re:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[ananke (8417)]

Not to mention the quickie acronyms. Type 'gg:whatever' in that alt+f2 dialog, or any konqueror, and you'll be taken to google. Same thing for imdb, fm [freshmeat], etc.

Re:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[Dan Farina (711066)]

Of course, unless you actually wanted your remote file system mounts to actually be something more than a hack and used something like Fuse (http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]) where file system syscalls can be handled by behavior defined in user space.

sshfs and smbfs work like a charm, although they have some...amusing "file systems" listed as well. (Such as a representation of a relational database as directories and XML files....)

Bind everything to a key combination

[elconde (779753)]

Bind everything! Use the spare windows key to bind every application that you use regularly.

http://hocwp.free.fr/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html [hocwp.free.fr]

Some good ones from my .xbindkeysrc:

"xmms --stop" Mod4 + Up

"xmms --play-pause" Mod4 + Down

"xmms --fwd" Mod4 + Right

"xmms --rew" Mod4 + Left

"emacs" Mod4 + e

"firefox" Mod4 + m

"oocalc ~/aspreadsheet.sxc" Mod4 + c

Depends

[miyako (632510)]

Setting up an efficient workspace depends a lot on what exactly you do most of the time and how you prefer to work.
Keeping in mind that these tips might not be at all applicable to you, here are a few things I've found that help me to be more efficient.
When doing software development, I like to keep code open in one window and documentation open in another. This is much more useful if your working with an unfamiliar language or API.
When I'm doing web design or coding in PHP I like to keep code open in one window and a web browser open in the other for testing.
Avoid keeping email or IM clients open at all times one one monitor. Even if you are in regular communication with co-workers having these things open all the time is a great distraction.
Choose a good Desktop Environment. While I like KDE for regular non-work stuff, I find that I'm often a lot more productive using WindowMaker, not really sure why this is though to be honest.

A few things you're bound to figure out over time

[b0r1s (170449)]

1) Don't be afraid to use newer versions of software, but don't try upgrading when you have deadlines pending. Switching from things like XTerm to more modern terminals (Gnome terminal, KDE's term app, whatever) will benefit you in the long run, but there's always quirks that will pop up, especially if the change requires installation or upgrading libraries. Be willing to try new software, but don't be too anxious.

2) Just like your desk, find out what needs to be where by trying new things. I find that email needs to be full-screen on a second monitor, and 'everything else' belongs on my l arger primary. I keep a few SSH terms open in virtual desktops so that I can have an open console when the poop hits the fan, but they're out of the way the rest of the time.

3) Use rsync or tar to backup your home directory frequently, because when you need to restore, you'll be glad you did. Most programming conventions in Linux make this much easier than in (say) Windows, as you don't have to worry about app config stored in weird places (registry), but you still need to be anal about backups.

4) Turn off the silly services to save CPU and Memory. 'chkconfig' in many modern distros (primarily redhat-based) will show you what's going to start at boot - turn off telnet, ftp (if you can use sftp), and the nfs daemons if you won't be serving NFS. Defaults suck, spend a few minutes tweaking these things and it'll help you much in the future.

5) Learn your favorite window manager well. If it's Gnome, or KDE, or whatever, learn it. Those of us who have been using Windows for a decade know the ins-and-outs of the Explorer interface, and it really saves us time - learning their equivalents in Linux will also save you time.

Wrong question

[Mac Degger (576336)]

The question you should ask is why the hell your company is giving you a "very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens." if your work only "involves web/e-Mail/SSH access".

Really; is your company's IT department stupid? Is your company run by dot-com-bubble-wanna-be's who want to repeat the past? When your tasks are so system-resource-undemanding, why did they pay for that machine for you? You could do your work on a 486! Literally!

Automation

[zorander (85178)]

Learn ruby/perl/python/something and automate *everything* the each time you find yourself repeating a task that could be easily parametrized. Most of this is an attitude thing. If repetitive tasks don't annoy you, then you're not going to be able to eliminate them from your life. It will never seem worth the effort.

Also, get a decent window manager like ion [cs.tut.fi] and learn its shortcuts. Developing more than a passing knowledge of Ion and Vim has doubled my productivity when debugging code. Ion makes one monitor feel like two, so I can imagine that on two it would be pretty damn good.

Three Words...

[wernst (536414)]

Install Microsoft Windows.

Two more letters...

[Anonymous Coward]

Un

Some simple things

[lheal (86013)]

1. Set up Ssh to allow you in to your usual haunts without a password.
2. Settle on a window manager, and stick with it until it's not supported any more, and then stick with it some more (until it's just not available). Just pick one, and over time you'll learn all of its little time-savers and other gimmicks.
3. Learn a scripting language such as perl, bash, or python, depending on what it is you usually want to automate. If you do much sysadmin work, you may need several languages.
4. Keep your files organized in whatever way allows you to find things without searching for them. Get in the habit of storing things in the place where it will be easiest for you to find them. Make your web browser ask you where to put things, and then force yourself to put them in the right place when saving them.
5. Keep your current work files backed up where you can get to them without relying on someone (even yourself) to change a tape. Since Linux lacks a Recycle Bin, the wrong mv, rm, or tar command can mean hours of finger-drumming waiting for a restore. (Pet peave: why doesn't unlink(2) move stuff to a filesystem-wide deleted area?)

Let me explain your *BIG* mistake:

[Hosiah (849792)]

You posted this question during the annual four-day-weekend flamefest, in which thousands of bored cubicle slaves have Thanksgiving holiday off and overrun Slashdot like a horde of goblins. Think Quake Deathmatch with flame-throwers and infinite ammo. Now to address your actual question: (and watch, because I'm the only person providing a helpful answer, I *WILL* be modded down!)

Making better use of your desktop real estate means getting rid of a lot of junk. If you haven't already, I'd try saying goodbye to KDE/Gnome and getting the lightest possible window manager for the job: That's Fluxbox, ICEwm, Fvwm, or the desktop environment Xfce. (I'm low on sadism, so I won't recommend TWM. Anybody that 1337 wouldn't be posting this question.) This doesn't sound like much, but trust me, when you do away with that extra time waiting for KDE to load, you'll be faster and only have (in Fluxbox's case) a tiny slit in your way. No icons cluttering things up (yeah, we need a home directory icon on the desktop when it's in our menu, too! Sheesh!). Every Linux program on your system can be started from any window manager's menu, it's just a matter of editing the menu to launch the program. Too bothered to edit text menus? Then from the console, try "kicker" for KDE's panel, "gnome-panel" for Gnome's, and "xfce4-panel" for Xfce's, depending on what you have installed. I've tried them all and they work even from TWM!

As for time-saving: the key here is "automate". Anything you type in a terminal more than once is grounds for automation. Simply take the same commands you type and save them on a line each in a plain text file with the line "#!/bin/bash" at the top and the line "end" at the bottom. Save that file somewhere in your executable path (type "echo $PATH" if you don't know), and type "chmod +x [name of your program]". You can now execute it just like any other system program.

The next level of automation is programs that require interaction. Two work-arounds exist for this: "Here" documents are little scriptlets you can slip into Bash scripts to do simple keyboard commands for interacting with command-line programs that insist on recieving input. The more sophisticated approach is Tcl/Tk's "expect", which can be used to script damn-near anything (take a command-line web browser like lynx and feed it an expect script with the right instructions, and you can auto-post B1FF comments to Slashdot, even! (Provided you had a nick signed in.), sorry, guys, the secret's out!) I can't think of anything having to do with ssh and email accounts that couldn't be handled with all of the above.

This might be overkill, but anybody who's read "Beginning Linux Programming" by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones, courtesy of www.wrox.com, wouldn't have to post this question. I promise you could skip the GTK and Qt parts and brush up on Bash, at least, which is easier than BASIC on the Apple ][.

Doubtless, part of the indiference/hostility in here is because this is also the kind of question spammers ask, and you wouldn't find any people on Slashdot who deal with too much spam, now would you? I don't mind answering because, if you're a *good* wizard, you deserve to know this stuff as well as I do, and if you're a *bad* wizard, I haven't given you a damn thing you couldn't have gotten from a few hours of Googling.

My best

[nerdwarrior (154941)]

In no particular order:

• ion [cs.tut.fi] | ratpoision [nongnu.org]; Pane-based (v. window-based) window managers. Little to no wasted screen real estate. Significantly reduced mouse usage.
• emacs [gnu.org]: Wickedly powerful text editor/operating environment.
  • WhizzyTeX [inria.fr]: Updates DVI in another window as you edit TeX/LaTeX.
  • AUCTeX [gnu.org]: Very powerful emacs extensions for TeX/LaTeX.
• fetchmail [catb.org] + procmail [procmail.org] + mutt [mutt.org] + spamassassin [apache.org] + msmtp [sourceforge.net]: No-nonsense mail reading and sending.
• bash completions [caliban.org]: Quasi-telepathic tab completion.
• Firefox [mozilla.org]
  • Adblock [mozdev.org]: Saves an astonishing amount of screen real estate.
• screen [gnu.org]: Among many other abilities, screen+ssh can provide VNC-like capabilities for your terminal sessions.

Control-R

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

IMO, the single biggest timesaver in bash is the Ctl-R history recall search feature. (It was quite a while before I found out about it, and I wish I had found it sooner.)

If you crank up your history list to a few thousand entries and set it to forget dupes, you can recall any command you've issued in the last couple of months with just a couple of keystrokes.

Stop Trying to Save Time

[logicnazi (169418)]

Almost every nerd I know (myself included) wastes more time trying to set up the machine 'just so' to make every task super conveinent and easy than they actually save. I suggest getting the machine in a minimally working configuration and only trying to save time when a task becomes really burdensome and repetitive. Even then I would think twice and ask how much time it really takes and how much time it would take to make it faster.

Of course that wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun. That's what you should do if you are really interested in saving time. If you just want to have the enjoyment of knowing your machine is optimally set up to do whatever it is you do then follow the other suggestions you find here.

Fix Less and vim

[TopSpin (753)]

in .vimrc:

set t_ti= t_te=

from any of the various places sh/bash/etc source:

LESS='X'; export LESS

Now, Less and vim won't restore the @#*$!%ing terminal on exit, permitting you to cut/paste/transcribe whatever you were just editing/viewing.

(whomever caused this behavior to be default; a pox on you)

p.s. Some bonehead in Usenet advises frobbing your terminal type to vt100 to get the same result. Do not do this. If you don't know why then especially don't do this!

Configuration and useability tips:

[lkcl (517947)]

1) install KDE 3.4 (it's faster, it's better all-round).

2) run prelink -v --conserve-memory -q -a
      but first add /usr/lib/mozillaNNNNN and /usr/lib/kde3 to
      prelink.conf (and any other software such as openoffice)

3) on debian, edit /etc/default/rcS and replace
      FSCKFIX="n" with FSCKFIX="y"

4) on debian, install hal, dbus-1 and udev, and then edit /etc/default/hal and make sure DROP_DAEMON_PRIVS is
      commented out (this will make it possible for you to
      mount auto-detected USB drives etc.)

5) cd to /etc/hal/device.d and do this:
        ln -s /usr/bin/fstab-sync 50-fstab-sync.hal

5) edit /etc/profile and add this:
      export KDE_IS_PRELINKED="1"

these simple things will make your system faster, more robust in the face of complete technically incompetent blithering idiots who would otherwise blindly press ctrl-d when faced with a prompt saying "your filesystem is corrupted. give root password for maintenance or press ctrl-d", and also provide automatic access to USB devices that is otherwise bloody inconvenient.

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

See, Taco! I told you if you started filtering dupes, people would find a way to complain!

Back to the drawing board...

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Lifewish (724999)]

Of the four or so high-content-rate sites I frequent, none of them had anything happening in the last 10 hours. Would you prefer that Slashdot lower their content standards even further? Is that even possible?

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[bradbeattie (908320)]

I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again. I think we could use moderated stories. You could browse at +5 stories to cut out the crap or at 0: fark style. Moderate a story -1: dupe or +1: headline. Any reasons not to implement this?

Reasons not to implement this

[weierstrass (669421)]

It might embarrass the editors.

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Karma Farmer (595141)]

There were 10 hours and 26 minutes between front page posts.

Given a choice between a few articles of high quality and many articles of low quality, I'd take fewer articles.

Of course, that's a false choice, in two senses. First, there's no correlation between the number of articles and the quantity of articles. Second, it's not a choice Slashdot offers.

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[tomhudson (43916)]

Oops... actually, there's a very strong correleation between the number of articles and the quantity of articles. However, there's no correlation between the quality of articles and the quantity of articles.

Actually you were right both times. Posting the same article 6 times (as was done a few days ago) shows there is no correlation betwen the number of articles posted and the quantity. It was 1 article (number) posted 6 times (quantity). It's slash-math. Don't try to understand it - it'll give you a brain aneurism :-)

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[daviddennis (10926)]

Well, it is Thanksgiving weekend. Most people are out doing stuff with their physical world friends.

Some of the ads are actually useful. My business partner's going to get a gift from ThinkGeek (better not say what it is here since he might be watching!) And it looks like I'll be using ServerBeach for my next venture. So I wouldn't give up on ads, and as you say I like supporting Slashdot.

As for your substantiative criticisms, are we really bleeding users? I certainly haven't noticed any lack of comments. In fact, it might not be so bad if we did. It sure was nice when I could actually read every comment on the articles that interested me. Now I'm lucky if I can finish the first page of ten!

Digg is so different from Slashdot in my experience that I don't see them as competitors. I visited there, didn't see what the fuss was about, and came back here.

That being said, to me it's always been about the comments, and the rich experience they bring us here. For example, I've wanted to learn about on-demand water heaters for some time, and all someone had to do was post an article about some bogus new on-demand technology, and whammo! I found out pretty much everything a person could conceivably want to know about them.

The moderation system is clever, and really works, and that seems to be the main value added that Slashdot's founders have created. Other than that, it's been being in the right place at the right time and having the right idea.

As long as there's a good and active user community here, I'm still loyal to it. The founders aren't the most literate bunch in the world, and they make all kinds of silly mistakes, but this place seems to work and generate interesting stuff, and for that I'm happy.

D

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for your substantiative criticisms, are we really bleeding users?

Yes. Six to twelve months ago, there were a few news stories about the Slashdot effect losing its power, and since then, the traffic analyses a few companies do have shown Slashdot to be receiving less traffic. To add my own anecdote, I've noticed a number of the smarter users who used to contribute here no longer do, and I've certainly been coming less often.

The type of users that are staying is of crucial importance. I've noticed the same thing happen to quite a few Usenet newsgroups. A bunch of newbies come in and annoy people, the signal:noise ratio goes down, the regular contributers/experts leave, and a year later, the place is full of newbie noise and no real answers.

Slashdot can survive pretty much anything, except for one thing: losing the smart contributors. In the past year or so, I've noticed the quality of comments declining rapidly, and if this continues as it has been, I fully expect Slashdot to be a complete joke a year from now.

Re:Quicksilver

[m()p3s (888808)]

I press apple-space,j,c,k,j,n,s,n.

sounds pretty good but typing all of those commas would just frustrate me.

Re:Switch...

[Janitha (817744)]

He already has the operating system set up... you should really read the post before replying.