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?"

Term Productivity

[digitaltraveller]

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]

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:Sidebars

[computergeek6933]

Widgets work wonders. You'll have all the info you need spread out before your eyes.

SuperKaramba

[deReuter]

Just install superkaramba, works like konfabulator with widgets and stuff. http://www.superkaramba.com/ [superkaramba.com]

Bind everything to a key combination

[elconde]

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

Personal Tips

[Anonymous Coward]

I am faily new to linux, but maybe these will help...

I do everything on my Ubuntu laptop so and hibernate instead of logout... so I get lots of "personal" clutter in my "business" windows. Most flavors of Linux have 4 desktop spaces I believe. I use the desktops to sort these things. I usually have two for business stuff, the third for personal stuff, and the 4th as a "scratch" area. Aside from switching back and forth between business desktops both with IDE, shell, etc, it seems to save a lot of time.

I am not sure if it is a GNOME feature or what, but being able to easily customize panels is really handy. One of the premade panel tools you can add is the "sticky notes" which seem to save me a lot of time. Normally, I make lots of "to do" type lists and keep them in unsaved buffers in my IDE. If I let my battery die or restart without thinking, they are gone. The sticky notes thing just seems to help a lot.

I use IM for work. On windows, Trillian seemed to be very space and time efficiant. GAIM doesn't seem to be a good replacement. So... no help there.

Also, I waste lots of time getting my wireless running after switching locations (which I do a lot it seems). If that were more streamlined, I believe I would save a lot of time.

Just a thought.

a couple of little things

[carcosa30]

alias su="xterm -fg white -bg darkred -e su" so when you su, you get a new xterm in colors to remind you that that xterm is root.

Use fluxbox. The tabs mean that you can stack up things like xterms.

If you run gnome panel, you can put drawers on it. The drawers can contain swallowed apps, such as xterms running top, tail syslog, watch processes, etc. So you can pop open a monitor drawer and xterms running text monitors emerge.

Check into 3ddesk. It's an applet that maps your desktops onto a 3d cylinder that can be rotated with the mousewheel for desktop switching. Much more useful than it sounds. The visual preview and positional awareness that it gives make it possible to use many more desktops than you ordinarily could without them becoming useless clutter like they can with traditional pagers.

I don't know why you're concerned about maximizing real estate with a dual-head display. I get by just fine with a 19 inch display.

That said, there are some technologies emerging that will allow you to use x11 functionality to use a laptop or additional workstation as a second (or third) screen controlled by the same desktop. Check into x2vnc.

Automation

[zorander]

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.

A Quake Like Console : Yakuake

[unixmaster]

Try Yakuake [yakuake.uv.ro]. Its a Quake like console for KDE. The best thing it can be hidden/shown with one key ( F12 default) so it doesn't steal your screen estate and can be enabled instantly when you need it.

Re:Linux Desktop

[B Man]

It's quite nice to be able to have multiple terminals visible at the same time and have quick cut-and-paste.

Try using gpm and you can do a quick cut-and-paste. Just hold the mouse left button down and highlight text to copy, then just click the middle mouse button (or both left and right or the scroll on a scroll mouse) to paste.

Konsole

[gatzke]

I keep a konsole window open with 5-10 shells open. shift-left shift-right to swith between.

Stay logged in on multiple machines and it is easy to swap between.

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:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[Yrrebnarg]

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:SuperKaramba

[p0z3r]

The website is really: http://netdragon.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
We don't have the ability to maintain the superkaramba.com site as Adam is not available currently to help, and he owns the superkaramba.com domain.

Themes can be found here: http://kdelook.org/index.php?xcontentmode=38 [kdelook.org]

Re:Linux Desktop

[spuzzzzzzz]

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.

My best

[nerdwarrior]

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.

Re:Switch...

[Janitha]

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

Control-R

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Screen Real Estate

[Apreche]

If you want to maximize use of screen real estate there is nothing better than the ion window manager [cs.tut.fi], especially if you have multiple monitors. It's the only manager I know of that lets you have a separate set of virtual desktops for each monitor that can be switched independently of one another. You will lose a lot of time, however, reconfiguring all the keyboard commands to not suck.

Re:Outsource

[Janitha]

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.

Re:My advice...

[novakreo]

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.

Re:Bind everything to a key combination

[kerasineAddict]

Simple binding save you a couple seconds here and there, but if you can type fast you might as well use it to your advantage. The standard reply would be to learn vim/emacs/full-featured-editor.

If you have taken the time to do that, why not do the same for your window managment? No two windows are more than 3 keystrokes away. Ratpoison [nongnu.org], or (as I would see it) better Ion [cs.tut.fi], allows you to completely control and automate your window mangement. The ability to add keyboard shortcuts to tasks as you prefer it (chording and/or chaining), and scripting certain events (no more annoying dialog popups, move them to a specified portion of the screen) saves a lot of time.

Also, tabs are where they belong. In the window manager, so you can have few terminals, browsers and whatever in tabs. And Ion's tiling capabilities allow you to see the information you need to on screen, without wasting screen real estate. (Though for dual-head 1600x1200 screens that's admittedly less of a problem)

Re:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh

[ananke]

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.

screen is your friend

[rjoseph]

Set your login script (.bashrc or whatever) to:

exec screen -D -R

Will reattach a remote session or create a new one if none exists: allows you to continue screen sessions across logins completely transparently. Brilliant!

Re:Linux Desktop

[nmb3000]

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:enlightenment.org?

[bob whoops]

Yes, and it does seem to be down. Try enlightenment.org.au, enlightenment.sf.net, or http://get-e.org/ [get-e.org] (thanks to the helpful people in ##enlightenment at freenode)

I'd recomend root-tail

[Vrejakti]

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

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Temporal]

Umm... Some articles posted within the 10 hours before this one include this one [slashdot.org], this one [slashdot.org], this one [slashdot.org], this one [slashdot.org], and this one [slashdot.org].

Re:enlightenment.org?

[absynce]

Go Here [sourceforge.net], I think that enlightment.org is down,but definitely check it out. It's my fav. Linux. Go to EliveCd [elivecd.org] to get a nice live version that you can install to the hard drive if u like it enough. Then check out this review [flaviostechnotalk.com] for some good tips. Enjoy:)

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's rather odd that you're the first to notice, since there's clearly no way the editors could have retroactively timestamped these posts. Nice critical thinking there, buddy. Somewhat ironic a juxtaposition with your sig.

hyphen

[muhgcee]

No, I will have to disagree. I don't think time is saving Linux desktop tips. Anyone care to discuss?

Multi-monitor management

[toastydeath]

I recommend running Xdmx and xmove. Possibly NX as well.

Xdmx will allow you to have very, very flexible control over how your dual monitor setup works. It not only supports your local two monitors, but will allow you to strap network pc's/monitors on to your existing setup with little fuss. I ran a six induvidual laptops as my primary display at work for some time with xdmx, and it worked very well. The only downside was my desktop was not quite beefy enough to handle a display size of 3072x1536. It also handles bezel sizes, if you prefer the "looking through a window" perspective versus xinerama's standard continuous desktop. It will support just about any monitor layout you want.

xmove gives you screen-like functionality for your desktop. Get up from your workstation, jump on a laptop with wifi, and xmove will pull the display output across the network - just like screen. Send the applications back to your desktop, and shut your laptop down. Bazing!

NX suppliments this with fantastic compression and will allow you to do stupid things, like do xmove/remote x work at home. Or resume a particularly stunning game of bejewled.

Rotate This!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take one of your screens and rotate it 90 degrees. Then dedicate it to a full-screen web-browser. Most websites benefit from extended vertical size. I have a 1600x1024 SGI LCD that I use just that way and it is great - I rarely ever have to scroll web pages anymore because most are less than 1600 pixels tall.

Re:Wrong question

[eyeball]

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!

I don't know. My tasks at work are split roughly 50/50 between serious coding and sys admin work, which I do on a medium-spec'd dual-head Linux desktop. The sys admin part alone can get pretty resource intensive, especially when using multiple terminal sessions, X11 clients, and web-based monitoring and system administration applications (some with Java, javascript, ajax, etc). I'm constantly amazed at how much resources all that takes up.

Anyway, my favorite time saving tip is to use GNU Screen, a nifty virtual terminal multiplexer. You start it from a terminal window like xterm (or rxterm, or gterm...), and it immediately gives you your regular shell prompt. With a few key combinations you can start new terminal "windows," each with a new shell prompt, then switch back and forth between them. All this within one Screen process running in xterm.

While you're viewing one "window," Screen will track any changes to the other windows, and restore their state when you switch to them. So for example, if you start Pine on one, create another window and log in to ssh, you can then switch back and forth between Pine and ssh without loosing any of the text or having to manually refresh.

Sure you can do all that with multiple xterms, but Screen gives you many extra features. Terminal names can be set for each window, which can be presented in a list. Windows can be monitored for activity or bells. A status-line can also be configured to tell you various information (i.e.: current window name, cpu load, date..).

The biggest feature for me is the ability to attach to a single Screen process multiple times from different xterms, or even disconnect from and reconnect to a Screen process. I typically ssh to a half dozen development boxes, and `tail -f` various logs on each. Then if I need to check a log quickly I switch to the appropriate screen. If I need to actively monitor one or more logs, I start up new xterms, connect to the Screen instance, and switch to different windows with logs.

Of course you can use it for more than ssh: Pine, foreground apps that log to the console, local logs, top, console based IRC or IM clients, etc. You can also connect to your Screen process remotely via ssh. Since Screen will continue to run in the background if you disconnect, you can restart or crash your window manager or X server, and reconnect to your Screen session (a bonus for some of us bleeding edge early-adopters).

BTW, I've been using Screen since the mid 90's. My last Screen process was up for almost 400 days. I modified it slightly at compile-time to support 60 windows, up from the default max of 40, and typically had almost 60 windows running at any given time. I also run it on a dedicated headless small bsd box outside my linux desktop. The system is so stripped-down and bare-bones, it will only run screen, ssh, and sshd. Still, I can connect to it using multiple xterms, remotely, etc.

The ION window manager!

[Hackeron]

http://ask.slashdot.org/~Hackeron/journal/101301 [slashdot.org]

Re:Outsource

[Eideewt]

Virtual desktops are pretty awesome. I've moved from minimizing programs to just leaving them where they are and switching to another virtual desktop. I've also got a 3x3 setup, but I find that using ctrl+alt+numonthenumpad is the quickest way to work with them, since the numpad positions correspond to the layout of my desktops.

I also used the Ratpoison window manager for a while. I think that, depending on your computing habits, a tiled window manager could really be productive. If I were writing more code and switching between fewer windows I would definitely consider switching back to one.

Re:10 hours and 26 minutes?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Oh, and my front page has had articles regularly, with no gap larger than four hours between. Go to Preferences, and set the front page to display all the articles, not just the "best". There were articles posted, you just didn't bother to look.

Fix Less and vim

[TopSpin]

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!

Re:Time saver

[leuk_he]

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.

Re:Linux Desktop

[peterpi]

Google answers my own question. It's called xmove

Re:Wrong question

[macshit]

What does screen have that konsole does not have?

1. Detachability / crash-resistance (especially useful for remote operation; you can also detach locally and later re-attach remotely)
   
2. No bling-bling
   
3. Probably about 1/10 the resource usage
   
4. Name not painfully contrived to start with "k"

Configuration and useability tips:

[lkcl]

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:Control-R

[rafa]

control-R is very useful, but you can complement it with some other goodies. For example, you can make bash automatically search in your history based on what you've already input. For example "ls foo" would get you to your previous command that starts with ls foo, even if it wasn't the last command you typed. In your .inputrc:

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward

If you just want to insert another option after the last command you wrote, but before the filenames etc (uses alt-o) put this in your .inputrc:

"\M-o": "\C-p\C-a\M-f "

Make tab-completion case insensitive, and make it stop matching hidden files (in your .inputrc):

set completion-ignore-case on
set match-hidden-files off

Make your history immediately available from all your bash instances - in your .bashrc:

shopt -s histappend
PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'

Re:Linux Desktop

[leoboiko]

If you want to run X programs but hate managing so-called "windows", try ratpoison [nongnu.org], the mouse-less, window-less window manager. It's screen(1) for X. No more space lost with decorations, no more time lost resizing and moving windows.

Re:Some simple things

[gseidman]

Two words: LVM snapshot

You can even automate the snapshotting. It only keeps track of pages that differ, so it doesn't use up much disk space unless/until the writable filesystem and the snapshot diverge a *lot*. The snapshots are presented as readonly block devices that can be left mounted somewhere so you can grab older versions or deleted copies of files. It isn't quite as nice as the Veritas .snapshot directory in every directory, but it's still really nice.