Linux by Examples

[Telengard]

Just stumbled into an interesting Linux blog. It seems to be directed toward moderately experienced users who want to learn more. Just skimming through the posts I knew I'd like to return and read more. It has over 300 posts and appears to be updated somewhat regularly, so I didn't notice anything really stale. I'll let the thing speak for itself and you can decide whether it interests you as much as it does me.

Linux By Examples - We explain every GNU / Linux command line by examples in this blog!

The idea of showing gnu/linux/unix command by using examples is to guide new user to have better understanding of the basic usage of a command and adapt to use it instantly. We are always recommend users to try out the command for more capabilities by going through the manuals. But usually a useful command comes with a very technical and complete manual, and these manual sometime scares a new user away. It is because they couldn’t find a simple example just to try it out. For example when a student wants to learn up how to add two numbers and you throw him/her a Calculus book. Manuals are meant for reference, examples are meant for learning. Thats why when people ask you to RTFM ( Read the Fxcking Manuals ), they expect you to feel Fxck if you do not cope with it well.

Sample topics for your perusal:

• Split screen console terminal ~ Terminator
• Compile and execute 32 bits application in 64 bits operating system
• How to mount a ssh server?
• python: simple http server for file sharing
• Bash script that process input from pipeline or file redirection

Edit: Put the quote in a quote block so there's no confusion about who said it.

[Snowhog]

Re: Linux by Examples

Damn! Just checked out Split screen console terminal ~ Terminator That's a very nice utility!! VERY nice. Installed it already and checked it out.

I'll spend some time going over the Linux By Examples - We explain every GNU / Linux command line by examples in this blog!

Thank you Telengard. Another nice find.

[verndog]

Re: Linux by Examples

@Telengard,

Thank you. I like that idea of "by example". Your right, reading a dry manual shows few, if any good examples. Also I really dis-like that term "RTFM", and never use it.

Two examples I remember, the definitive C language book - The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie, and The AWK Programming Language.
Both have most everything you need, except "by example" techniques. They do have examples but like the C language itself, very terse.

Once learned though, those two manuals were invaluable.

Thanks again for the link. I will keep it bookmarked!

[Telengard]

Re: Linux by Examples

Your right, reading a dry manual shows few, if any good examples.

The credit for those words belongs to the blog, not to me. It is not my blog. Glad to know you like it though.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Linux by Examples

I've installed "terminal" too, just to see how much it is really different from the "split view" option in Konsole.

[Snowhog]

Re: Linux by Examples

Just tested the split-view in console. The big difference I see there, is that only one set of controls - from the menu bar - are available and affect/control the resulting 'splits' whereas Terminator allows for, and has, individual controls for each split terminal created. That single feature is quite powerful.

The one thing that I've found that Terminator is lacking, is it's config file! It's supposed to exist at ~/.config/terminator/config but it isn't there. In fact, it doesn't exist anywhere! And that means you can't configure it, and the changes you make via Edit profile can't be saved (you're told that at the top of the profile window) and don't affect the application.

[Telengard]

Re: Linux by Examples

The one thing that I've found that Terminator is lacking, is it's config file! It's supposed to exist at ~/.config/terminator/config but it isn't there. In fact, it doesn't exist anywhere! And that means you can't configure it, and the changes you make via Edit profile can't be saved (you're told that at the top of the profile window) and don't affect the application.

Did you try creating a dummy config file to see if it would work then?

Sounds like maybe whoever packaged Terminator for Ubuntu messed up a bit. If that is the case then you may have to resort to building from source to fix the problem.

[Snowhog]

Re: Linux by Examples

Found the file. It's a Python configuration file located at /usr/share/terminator/terminatorlib/config.py
It can be edited (by root) with any text editor. For transparency, I changed the following two lines:

'background_darkness' : 0.77777775, (was 0.5)
'background_type' : 'transparent', (was 'solid')

I now have a 75% opacity, true transparent Terminator console when launched. Interestingly, when launched, it opens in my Documents directory. Haven't located the file that controls this - it isn't in the config.py file. What I also noticed in this file (config.py) is the following:

DEFAULTS = {
'gt_dir' : '/apps/gnome-terminal',
'profile_dir' : '/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles',

Of course, the directory /apps doesn't exist in KDE, but does (?) in Gnome.

paul@myotherbrain:/usr/share/terminator/terminatorlib$ cat __init__.py
#!/usr/bin/python
# Terminator - multiple gnome terminals in one window
# Copyright (C) 2006-2008 cmsj@tenshu.net

Yup.