Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips? 565
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?"
My advice... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Turn it off (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, open a web browser in one window and a terminal in the other and get to work you slacker!
The /. effect (Score:4, Insightful)
10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:2, Insightful)
There were 10 hours and 26 minutes between front page posts. And people wonder why we're bleeding users to other sites? It's the BS editors. The BS dupes. The BS factual errors. Seriously, wtf are we paying Slashdot for? If you're buying a subscription, what are you getting? What are the advertisements on the page doing for us? Where does this money go?
I've always left ads on Slashdot because I 'support' the culture, but this is the final straw. Until this shit is fixed, I'm non-existant. This is my last post.
Fuck slashdot. (This is not a troll. This is a serious rant of someone who wanted to spend Sunday afternoon catching up on tech news.)
Just approach it differently. (Score:3, Insightful)
What window manager/desktop environment are you using? In general, I would say make use of what you already have. Assuming you use FireFox, make liberal use of the tabs function; I prefer about five per window on my 1280x1024 single screen system, so you could probably do more without the tabs becoming too small. Also, when SSHing or doing general terminal work, use a terminal with tabs. The Gnome terminal will do this, but multi-aterm is less of a resource hog. (For some reason I can't seem to copy and paste into multi-aterm, something I can do in the Gnome term. If there's a way around this I would be interested; the copy and pasting is helpful.) I know this is not much, but I usually find that making more efficient use of your environment is more something to sit and think about a bit. It's better to try to work with what you have than to go and install a bunch of applications that may or may not help.
Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Linux Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
few tricks... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a Gnome desktop, dual-display, but with a laptop, so I keep all my controls on one desktop. I have a window list on the bottom, with just the windows, desktop switcher, show-desktop button. On top, I have the application menus and such, shortcuts to terminals that I often use (quick-launch ssh sessions and such), and the nifty toys (volume meter, screenshot, et cetera). On the left side, I have this little panel on auto-hide, so that if I can mouse over it I can see all my shiny CPU/network/etc usage meters, and a few obscure but useful shortcuts.
Re:10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Mistakes generate interesting stuff? What? Trolls, "insightful" comments, and +5 Funny's about duplicates and suggestions on how the "editors" could find duplicates on their own site (including using the scrollwheel to go down two articles)?
Give me a break. You are an "old-school" user, you should remember the days when Slashdot wasn't a pile of suckass shit. Where they didn't seem to be 7 days, 7 months, and 7 duplicates behind the rest of the technews sites.
I'm unimpressed with most of the comments these days. People don't take the time to do a simple search so that they can have the opportunity to be FP or post some unintelligent bullshit under another high rated post for them to get their Karma shots.
Blah.
Slashdot has been sucking bad and the "editors" just don't give a fuck. Hopefully that 10.25 hour break was them having a sit down meeting to discuss their serious breakdowns recently.
I have little faith.
Re:10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some simple things (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Wrong question (Score:1, Insightful)
Most of my work involves web/e-Mail/SSH access
Come on. Maybe a small minority of his work needs that power, and dual screens is useful in so many ways if you're doing anything related to web design or programming. Or perhaps his employer knows that one way to keep your tech staff happy is to give them decent machines to play with, even if they're not necessary. It's not like they drain dollars just by being more expensive at purchase time.
Re:Mount remote filesystems in KDE via ssh (Score:2, Insightful)
Three Quick Points (Score:2, Insightful)
Get proficient with screen (lets you use one xterm as if it were more than one ... let's you keep consoles open even when you kill the xterm and you can reconnect to them later)
CHOOSE between emacs and vi. Don't spend more than five minutes making this decision. Become proficient in the editor of your choice. Don't talk to anyone about your choice once you've made it.
Reasons not to implement this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Have you tried actually using a 486 recently? And I'm not talking about with modern software, but with software we used back then. It isn't pretty. Things were a lot slower and more annoying than you remember, we just didn't notice because we were busy comparing it to a 386 instead of a Pentium 4 or AMD Dual Core. People used to live without electricty too but who wants to now? You can't go back.
There are many other reasons than that why a company wouldn't put this guy on a 486 (or a P1, or...) : Higher total cost of ownership and admin (Say a RAM chip blows, it'll cost you more overall in terms of time and money to aquire 8 megs of old-school SDRAM than it would to get 512Megs of DDR2). Not to mention the very simple fact that most organizations define a baseline system that meets most everyone's needs and just buy that system for everyone when they need a new one. It is easier and cheaper to do this (one install image, etc) than to try to fit everyone to their minimal needs. And good luck getting support on any old 486 software, even in the Open Source realm.
Those are just things off the top of my head and I'm not a system admin.
Re:10 hours and 26 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Incidentally, in my post you quoted, I was trying to say that the interesting stuff existed despite the mistakes, not because of them. Hope that clears up any confusion.
D
Re:Wrong question (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My best - Screen (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't stress enough how elegantly simple and yet useful screen can be:
-Lost connectivity to the server? SSH back in and "reconnect" to your previous session.
-Kicked something off on your laptop and want to leave? Disconnect the running ssh session and reconnect tomorrow (or later at home) to pickup where you left off.
-Crap, what was that filename I wanted to use again? Start another screen session instead of another SSH session and flip back when you find out what you needed. You can even mark/cut/paste between sessions.
Kick screen off in your profile and never look back...
Stop Trying to Save Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Been there (Score:3, Insightful)
* Create key bindings. If you don't go to the mouse as often, not only will you be more productive, but you will also prevent RSI's. I could open a terminal window, browser, maximize both, and move either to another virtual desktop with just two fingers on the left hand.
* speaking of virtual desktops, Use virtual desktops. I like having everything maximized, but I quickly run out of space that way. Normally, I have the terminals on one desktop, the code on another, my reference documents/browser windows on the third, and then the forth for everything else --normally a running version of the project I'm fixing. Figure out what apps you use most, and designate a v.desk to each which makes it easier for the mind to find that information it was looking for.
* Love the terminal window. By making use of aliases, scripts and various other 'hacks,' most tasks can be boiled down to a handful of keystrokes. It is worth the time to learn either shell scripting and/or perl so that more complicated tasks can still be done rapidly with a reduced chance of error.
* Thing about the ergonomics. You are obviously a professional computer jockey, otherwise you wouldn't have dual monitors being driven by linux. Until your computer responds to 'computer,' you're going to need your wrists, so take five minutes to consider how you could improve the layout to minimize the chances of an RSI or other strains and pains -- this includes neck strains which is a very common pain resulting from dual monitors. Although this is not a time saving tip per se, it will add years to your useful geek life.
Well, that is all of the advice I can think of right now. The most important thing you need to consider is ways to eliminate repetition. Anytime I type anything more than 3 times, or click an icon that is more than 2 levels deep, I will consider, if only for a second, alternative means to envoking that task.
Good luck and good hunting.
Email Customization is a MUST for a business env.. (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the biggest productivity saps for a sysadmin is dealing with the massive volume of email that we get. In even a moderate-sized business, it's easy to get 1,000 mails per day, with a couple 100 actually from a person, not an automated script.
Now, what I'm about to say is predicated on the assumption that your external mail server already runs SPAM filters, and that virtaully everything that you actually get is "real" mail. If this is not the case, FIX THIS FIRST. Get your company to pony up for some serious anti-spam software. It saves EVERYONE a ton of time, and at the same time, cuts down on your (the company's) exposure to the nasties that inhabit email.
First, pick an email client which has filters. My preference is for Evolution or Thunderbird, but there are many out there. Pick one. As a previous poster noted, GIVE IT ITS OWN DESKTOP - that is, in your window manager which has virtual desktops, dedicate one solely for the email client. Now, configure it with lots of filters to sort your mail. Personally, I have a reasonable hierarchy with 3 folders at the top level: NOW, LATER, and WHENEVER. Underneath these, there should be folders for every type of email you get: ones from your boss, ones from the company HR, ones from the monitoring scripts running on your servers (you do have these, right? RIGHT?). Take a good long time figuring out how to get these down cold - you want a good balance of sufficient sorting without going overboard. I find that having about 30-50 folders total is optimal for me. If you can, also have the email client tag your mail with "importance" color coding (most clients have this, and it's really useful).
Now to reading: obviously, your should read the NOW, well, NOW. However, you don't want to be completely interrupt-driven. I would turn off any biff-style mail notification, or at best, turn down its check time to no less than 10 minutes between check. Instead, train yourself to periodically check the NOW folder. Read and deal with the NOW stuff during your normal workflow.
The LATER folder should probably be read every couple of hours, or if you truly haven't anything else to do. Resist the temptation to open it and look. Finally, the WHENEVER shouldn't be read until the end of the day (or maybe while your eating lunch at your desk ;-)
Email is one of the great things about networks; however, it can be an enormous timesink if not properly handled. -Erik
Re:foreign technologies (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and KDE's major competitor, GNOME? Developed by Mexicans.
(Don't even get me started on the Japanese hardware and software that floods the US market.)
Re:foreign technologies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
It's mostly the RAM though.
My home system is a PIII 450MHz with 512MB of RAM (running an up-to-date debian unstable/experimental), and I've absolutely no problem with firefox, gnome, etc. I even do ray-tracing on that box (though to be honest that's pushing it... I mostly do smaller test scenes there
I use much more up-to-date systems at work, and honestly, the difference in usability isn't all that huge. I haven't upgraded the home system simply because it hasn't been worth the bother so far, though I admit the ray-tracing thing has made me at least think about it.
A crucial factor, I think, is that recent versions of linux (2.6 era) have an absolutely great scheduler for interactive use -- the CPU load can be pegged at 100% for hours and it simply has no perceivable effect on interactive use, as long as you've got the memory to avoid paging.
Re:foreign technologies (Score:1, Insightful)
No other country has adopted this invention at any where near the rate of the US.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
C got the rep for being fast and cool, because it was all about Unix, which was fast and cool. Every Unix machine (well, most) had a C compiler.
Pascal has a hand-holding feel, like you're in a little box constantly fighting the language. No pointers or similar mechanism. Abstracted strings.
Why do race cars use a manual transmission? That's why programmers use C(++): more control.
But your basic idea that Americans have a "not invented here" bias against some software is just wrong. If there is documentation in English, we don't care where it originated.
Re:My advice... (Score:3, Insightful)
ssh -R 666:127.0.0.1:666 host will forward 666 from localhost to remote
Yeah, and that's ever so much more convienent to type than just setting it up in a GUI, saving it as a profile, and typing "putty -host xyzzy".
Nice to see that you still play Doom though.
putty is a half crippled ssh-client clone for windows.
Your fanaticism is showing. putty is open source, cross platform, and damn good. If you're going to claim that it's "half crippled" then you'd best back that up with actual facts rather than just looking like a knee jerk anti-Windows fanboy. I don't suggest that you use putty for all tasks, but it's certainly a good alternative for many of them. Right tool, right job.
Re:My advice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you have vim doing the wrong highlighting -- most likely vim is defaulting to background=light when you should use background=dark. Solution? Either change putty to use a light background (e.g. -- white/grey with dark text instead of the default black w/ grey text) or do a
The black on black bit is almost certainly the same issue -- the apps are presuming what color your background is and they're simply wrong. That's not a putty issue.
Refreshing after resize is unreliable and sometimes makes the application permanently unviewable.
Sorry, never had that issue.
Connection drops from time to time, seems not as reliable but may be due to Windows' limited network capabilities
I leave my putty sessions up for days or weeks at a time. The only time it times out is if the connection on one end drops -- the general case is that my DSL modem drops. Not much putty can do about that. You do have TCP keepalives turned on, right? If not, then the remote host is probably booting you for being idle.
Cant do X forwarding or many other nifty things
Funny, I guess that "Connection->SSH->X11, Enable X11 Forwarding" checkbox is a thing of my imagination. I highly recommend that if you enable that then you also click on "Enable compression" on the "Connection->SSH" page. This is analogous to the openssh -X/-L and -C options.
I think I even saw putty plain not run certain terminal applications.
Most likely a termcap issue, but I've seen putty used to replace commercial clients and do a better job.
As for your website -- do you really want me to dissect it? There's a lot of utter crap on there, varying from outright lies to improper parallels. There are some truths as well, but they're buried in the muck.
And no, I'm not a Windows fanboy -- but I do use the right tool for the right job. I have both Windows and Linux systems at home, and I'm a professional C++ coder on Unix platforms.