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7:07 AM
0
Q: Wireless Connectivity and Fedora 15 Boot Up

805801I'm currently running Fedora 15 and recently I've noticed that if I am in an area which does not have a wireless network or a secured wireless network which I cannot automatically connect to, Fedora 15 boots up very slowly, sometimes hanging on the screen with the Fedora logo. Is there a way to f...

 
7:19 AM
0
Q: How to detect if $1 is stdin or argument

mschonakerIn bash, is there a way to know if a given script has been invoked with: myscript.sh myfile or myscript.sh < myfile ? Inside some scripts I always have accessed the contents of myfile with $1, but now I'd like to change the behavior as different cases. EDIT: I also would like a...

 
 
2 hours later…
9:17 AM
0
Q: Architecture tag name confusing

CalebI recently noticed a couple of questions tagged architecture that don't make any sense to me. I clicked through to make sure I knew what the architecture tag was supposed to be and discovered a hodge-podge of stuff. It looks like it was originally created with the processor architecture in mind, ...

 
9:47 AM
0
Q: Turn num lock on on startup?

bollovanI usually edit in vim,and when pressing + , I'd rather move my hand to the right part of the keyboard where + resides rather than doing shift + =. But when num lock is not on,in vim it just opens a new line above and inserts the letter k .And every time I start my PC num lock is off. I would like...

 
10:02 AM
1
Q: How/why does this globbing expression work?

KevIn one of my bash scripts I needed to obtain the last part of a colon delimited string. For example I needed to grab the numeric 289283 value from the following value: OK: DriveC-ReadBytesPerSec: 289283 After some trial and error I arrived at the following: READRESULT="OK: DriveC-ReadBytesPer...

 
 
3 hours later…
1:27 PM
1
Q: See the STDOUT redirect of a running process

RichIf I start an app with this command: /path/to/my/command >> /var/log/command.log And the command doesn't return, is there a way, from another prompt, to see what the STDOUT redirect is set to? I'm looking for something like either cat /proc/PID/redirects or ps -??? | grep PID but ...

 
1:42 PM
0
Q: beginning shell scripting

JaiminI am a php programmer and i just wanted to learn linux shell scripting now.. i would like to know few things from the experts over here before starting. will this learning add any value to my resume so that i can get a job in mnc. If yes which linux should i prefer to use and start learning...

 
@UnixandLinux See my comment, but I think the main answer to that question is about his resume and what general direction he should head as a programmer. Can we migrate it there? There is a bit about what distro to use, but since every distro can be used for shell scripting and none of the deciding qualifications are listed, I felt like that would be better asked in a different question entirely in which he can expand on the needs for that.
 
0
Q: Delete files recursively that DON'T match regexp

EvilAmarant7xI'm attempting to clean out a bunch of temporary files from a folder tree, but don't want to delete files that match some criteria, specifically executable files or .tpl files. I see the question here Delete files in a directory that match a regexp, using a Mac terminal is almost what I'm look...

 
2:09 PM
0
Q: Copying many CDs to disk

Let_Me_BeI have many old (data) CDs. I want to copy them all to the disk, but the problem is that some of these CDs are no longer readable and it is extremely tiresome to copy the CDs one by one. Is there some tool to expedite this process?

 
 
2 hours later…
3:39 PM
0
Q: Is Open LDAP meant to work with the passwd command for Linux?

ChanceI've implemented an Open LDAP server in OpenSuSE 11.2 via the YaST GUI. I'm having success logging in from the local machine and other machines via LDAP. I am able to change LDAP user passwords via passwd on the command line. However, I cannot do anything else through the command line, suc...

0
Q: Console tool for test internet connection bandwidth

WolfyI'm looking for a tool that will test my internet connection bandwidth and create an simple report... like speedtest do... Do you know some program/tool that do this... if possible that run on CentOS.

 
 
1 hour later…
5:07 PM
0
Q: Finding an earlier version to downgrade to

Victor NicolletOn my Debian server, I upgraded the SQLite package to version 3.7.7 but discovered that it contains a critical bug that breaks several things including my Subversion repository. So, I would like to downgrade back to the previous version I was using. But: I have no idea what that version was (I...

 
 
1 hour later…
6:22 PM
0
Q: Why do I get a 'conformability error' when I attempt to convert water in GNU units?

brianeggeI've been using the GNU units program and I seem to think that I should be able to convert water between a volume and a weight. Examples: You have: 1 gram water You want: cm^3 conformability error 1 gram water = 9.80665 kg^2 / m^2 s^2 cm^3 = 1e-06 m^3 and You have: 1 gallon water You...

 
 
2 hours later…
8:05 PM
@Caleb Did we have a consensus on being chdir as opposed to CD drive?
3
Q: Disambiguating the cd tag

Gillescd serves dual use for the cd (change directory) command and CD as in CD-ROM/R/RW/audio. The tag isn't huge, but I'd still prefer to distinguish between them before it grows. I don't know how to name the two tags in such a way that people who feel tempted to use cd and don't realize there's an am...

 
@Gilles I didn't spot the meta post, I just saw that most of the tagged posts seemed to be about the shell command.
A data-cd tag got added to this question, which I am pretty sure isn't needed, but I wasn't sure what to change it to:
0
Q: Copying many CDs to disk

Let_Me_BeI have many old (data) CDs. I want to copy them all to the disk, but the problem is that some of these CDs are no longer readable and it is extremely tiresome to copy the CDs one by one. Is there some tool to expedite this process?

I understand why could be useful, but seems like it should be or or something.
 
@Caleb and as synonyms sounds good
 
I wish we could add hints, like when people type one of the suggestions is . Maybe I'll request that
 
@MichaelMrozek Do we have a consensus of the tagging cabal (i.e. us three)?
 
About ? That's fine with me
 
8:11 PM
@Gilles :)
 
@MichaelMrozek and about means chdir? @Tshepang didn't like it
 
@Gilles How well do dvd issues fit into that? Are there posts that would specifically need something dvd oriented or are data formatted optical media issues pretty much all the same thing?
 
@Tshepang I was going to invoke you as well (: You haven't been tagging much lately
 
If exists I would think people would see that when they type cd and use it
 
@Caleb DVD and CD have their own problems. There's some overlap, but not complete. I say use different tags.
 
8:13 PM
@Gilles I hardly ever tag actually
 
@MichaelMrozek Good point, but cdrom could be an alias for something. data-cd? optical-disk? optical-media?
 
except for the obvious of course
 
Oh, I thought already existed. What's wrong with that?
 
@MichaelMrozek No, not at the moment. It's lumped under , and just got instantiated today. I have no problems with having a cdrom tag except that I think the majority of issues are going to be dvd/cd neutral so I tend towards a generic tag with a cdrom alias. I like that cdrom will get seen when people start typing cd.
 
@MichaelMrozek maybe that CD-ROMs are so simple no one asks about them? It's mostly about recordable CDs, or about recordable DVDs, or about video DVDs, or about optical media in general.
I'm for having as the master tag for CD-ROM+CD-R+CD-RW and as an alias. That way if people start by typing cdr and pick an existing tag, they'll get the right tag.
 
8:18 PM
why not just kill due to ambiguity?
@Gilles agreed; what about DVDs?
d u want them kept separate?
 
@Tshepang People might re-create it. We could have it banned.
 
@Gilles I prefer banning it
 
@Tshepang yes, because DVDs have different issues (UDF, CSS, …)
 
@Tshepang It does seem to serve a function for the change-directory command, a lot of issues related to that come up and browsing them seems useful. What's not useful is when people tag cdrom stuff as cd, so having a cdrom tag or alias would fix that I think.
 
0
Q: Red hat linux command line character underscore problem

David SanchezWhen I type a command e.g. cd /etc/ I get the following cd /etc$ -- if I press the backslash key again then I get the correct entry cd /etc/ -- I am using gnome but I get the same problem with KDE. Does anyone know what may be causing this problem?

0
Q: Getting tmux to copy a buffer to the clipboard

Digital PowersI am trying to figure out a decent way to copy what I have in a tmux buffer into my clipboard. I have tried a couple of different things like bind-key p select-pane -t 2 \; split-window 'xsel -i -b' \; paste-buffer which gets me fairly close, all I have to do is hit control-d after I do pref...

 
8:20 PM
@Gilles I'm down with that.
 
@Gilles yeah, makes sense
 
@Caleb Ok, then let's do the CD stuff now, and if we see being misused, rename it and have it banned
 
@Caleb in that case, maybe Michael's answer should be preferred meta.unix.stackexchange.com/questions/558/…
 
@MichaelMrozek I've created , please synonym it to
 
@Gilles Wait which way did we just synonym? What just happened was different than I expected :)
 
8:31 PM
I was afk and misunderstood when I came back; is the master now
 
@Gilles I liked as master (because of the substantially different ).
@MichaelMrozek Gotcha. No problem.
 
@MichaelMrozek Weird, doesn't bring up any question
Maybe there's a cache
 
I took the cd tag off of several questions entirely that had more to do with finding/downloading ISO's than about the actual disks. Some of these had already, I added it to the others.
@Gilles I don't think you can call up questions by the alias in a manual URL. That's how I discovered data-cd ended up as the alias.
 
@Caleb Yes, you can, try
 
@Gilles Huh. Maybe the URL forwarding rules take a while to kick in.
@Gilles: Oops, I just duplicated your effort to tie off the question on meta.
 
8:43 PM
A new answer probably makes sense anyway
 
@MichaelMrozek check
 
@Gilles: Any comments on , and ? I started trying to fix a couple messy ones and realized I had no idea which direction it should be heading.
 
@Caleb needs to exist because many askers won't have a clue what or is
is more general; it can be about measuring, not just limiting
 
A lot of questions come up about qos in general and the answer is almost always tc related since tc is kind of the de-facto standard traffic shaper in the linux world, but that doesn't mean it is in all unixes.
Does it even make sense to have a ? I started out assuming it did, but I'm not sure isn't sufficient.
 
@Caleb What does Server Fault do? We should avoid being gratuitously incompatible (while being incompatible if it makes sense)
I forgot to look for cd by the way (here it's Super User)
 
8:55 PM
They have both tc and quos tags.
 
@Caleb and what do they mean? e.g. they'd have tags that apply on Windows also, whereas we don't need that if the terminology is consistent across unices
Which it generally isn't when it comes to networking
What do *BSD, Solaris, etc have?
 
I think pf handles it on *BSD. Sort of iptables and tc rolled into one.
I'm not sure how ipfw fits into that whole picture. Some say it doesn't support QoS but it has stuff about queues and queue rate limits ... basically it's not a world I know much about but the point is it isn't tc.
 
@Caleb I can't think of an ambiguity, and has a well-defined meaning, so let's keep it
@Gilles Super User has an ambiguous cd tag, a lonely cd-rw question, a lonely cd-ripping question, cd-rom, audiocd, cd-burning, and maybe one or two others. Ok, let's ignore them.
 
9:11 PM
@Gilles Solaris doesn't seem to be a very good option for network traffic shaping. I'm finding references to various hacks, various people saying it's un-necessary, and others saying use Linux.
@Gilles That sounds like the general motif. Sometimes I get scared over there.
I can't make out the distinction between , and over on ServerFault.
In fact some questions are tagged with all three. I don't think askers know which one to ask for so they use the shotgun approach.
 
@Caleb better than sticking to like some askers here
@Caleb suggest a synonym?
 
@Gilles Ya I think I'm headed that direction.
@Gilles ...a source of constant amusement, esp when I people tag BSD (or like Lance, AIX!) questions as . Just trying to get attention?
 
strange that this sat for 2 days unanswered
2
Q: In the output of "aptitude update", what do "Ign" and the other codes mean?

Paul WhittakerWhen I run sudo aptitude update from the console, I see output with lines such as this: Get:1 http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release.gpg [198B] Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/main Translation-en_GB or this: Hit http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Releas...

 
@Tshepang he should have posted on AU or UL
@Caleb I'm surprised he hasn't been banned anywhere (has he?). He does ask enough interesting questions, it's a pity he asks so many poor questions as well, and even the interesting ones are badly asked
 
9:26 PM
@Gilles I wonder if it's ok to ask him to ask here next time?
 
He does seem to have angered people on security.se a little
@Tshepang No, his question is on-topic on SU
 
@Gilles Actually I think he hit the "bad asker" limit where you don't get to ask questions on several other sites due to too many downvotes on his first question attempts. U&L seems to be where he has survived longest.
 
@Gilles I know, but as in, he'll get a faster response
 
Telling him politely that U&L exists and that kind of questions tend to be answered faster there is fine
@Caleb I don't think the limit is implemented outside the trilogy
 
ok
nice, on SU I got a 1:1 Questions:Answers superuser.com/users/34953/tshepang
 
9:29 PM
I saw a couple attempts at questions come across the English site and get downvoted, then not just closed but deleted before you could count to ten.
 
@Tshepang something I want to reach here
 
And I suspect he gets enough upvotes on his interesting-but-we-have-to-format-and-translate-them not to hit the limit anyway
 
@Gilles Here, yes. We've collectively salvaged several questions, and those votes keep him alive.
 
Code Review is really suffering to get going.
 
0
Q: How to change default "reading" program?

Halstright now when I run man smth or similar less is used to view it. However, on Mac OS X, I really like scrolling with touchpad instead on up/down or page-up/page-down buttons. Is there a way to just print text into the terminal instead of using less or more?

 
9:32 PM
Because when I think "I need someone to review my code", I don't think "question and answer format"
 
@Tshepang In it's landing page, the last entry is 6 days old (sorted by Activity).
@MichaelMrozek I think it just needs more marketing.
The posts there are hard to title though.
I'm thinking title like "Does this shell script look ok?"
or "Parse Java source code"
or even "Need tips over improving this javascript code"
 
@Caleb It's more than that. He's amassed quite a bit of rep, in fact. Most of which he puts in bounties. 1440 rep in 2 months (counting his previous account) from questions isn't so bad!
 
@Tshepang it's Area 51 page isn't looking too bad though:
159
Code Reviewcodereview.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for feedback on projects you're working on, by sharing your code with fellow programmers and getting extensive feedback/review of best practices, design pattern usage, application UI, security, etc.

Currently in public beta.

 
@Tshepang I don't know where you got that, but it's wrong. It had 6 questions today.
 
@Tshepang For 159 days, that's pretty weak
@Gilles He meant the last post on the list (at the bottom), not the first. That confused me at first too
 
9:38 PM
@MichaelMrozek it's barely active enough not to get closed
 
@Gilles That's hilarious, I didn't know he had an account before got'a mention.
 
@MichaelMrozek oh, sorry for my unclear English
I should have used the oldest entry
or oldest post?
 
@Tshepang Mentioning "bottom of the first page" would make it much more clear, because it's not the "oldest" post either except by reference to the first page.
 
@Tshepang No, actually “last entry” makes sense, but it's ambiguous: I understood it to mean latest entry (i.e. last by time), but you meant last in reading order which is valid too
 
@MichaelMrozek damn, that's nearly half-a-year
 
9:41 PM
@Tshepang Money is at 327. I remember when we thought they would launch before us
 
0
Q: What is it called when you queue my bits?

CalebSo over on Unix and Linux we were chatting about how to tag questions related to traffic shaping. We thought we would check ServerFault for reference, but that led me to wonder just what exactly is going on here. Can somebody explain the differences between qos, traffic-shaping, and bandwidth-co...

 
@Caleb actually, the context was In it's landing page, the last post..., so it's not so ambiguous.
 
Code Review has more traffic than Science Fiction and Fantasy, which was created a week earlier. Also a few more questions, that's because we've deleted a lot on SFF.
and CR has twice the visits of BCG, which is a lot older.
Wow, I'm surprised that Parenting isn't doing much better.
 
@Gilles yeah
@Gilles oh, I would have expected SFF to be blossoming
 
Hey @all, is it ok to remove windows and install linux for security reasons like hack, virus, bla bla?
 
9:44 PM
@Tshepang I guess it's popularity reduced due to stricter measures of what's acceptable?
 
@Gigili this is a unix/Linux chat, of course we're going to tell you to ditch Windows (:
 
@Gigili less chances of attack
 
@Tshepang Partly that, and partly because we're too lax
But I suspect the people who think we're too lax wouldn't have stuck anyway, so it's ok
 
@Gilles Suppose that I'm one of your best friends, again linux? =)
 
@Gilles too lax?
 
9:46 PM
@Tshepang Will all windows apps for in linux as well?
 
Try searching for “story identification” or “identify this” on meta.SFF and meta.SO and meta.Gaming
 
0
Q: fastest way of doing a tar.gz from a tree of directories?

avilellaI've got a tree of directories with files like this: . |-- 00 | |-- 00 | | |-- 00 | | |-- 01 | | |-- 02 | | |-- 03 | | |-- 04 | | |-- 05 [..] | | |-- 97 | | |-- 98 | | `-- 99 | |-- 01 | | |-- 00 | | |-- 01 [...] There is about 200 files at the e...

0
Q: Prevent a package from being installed?

Linux-UserI installed Python 2.7 from source. A dependency of some packages is python. Is there a way I can prevent the install of a lesser version of Python, or let apt know it's already been fulfilled?

 
@Gigili No, most of them have equivalents but not always perfect equivalents
 
@Gigili no, and if they do, you'll have to use something like Wine (winehq.org)
 
Aha, thanks a lot @Gilles and @Tshepang
 
9:48 PM
e.g. at work I have to use Outlook. There are plenty of mail clients for Linux, of course, but they aren't good at connecting with Exchange servers and coping with the strangely-formed HTML produced by my Outlook-using colleagues
 
@Gigili Especially then! I wouldn't even wish Windows on my enemies, why would I wish it on my closes friends?
 
@Caleb lol
 
@Gigili No, most will not. Some apps are cross-platform (meaning they run on more than one operating system) but most are not. There is a whole separate world of applications for linux.
 
@Caleb I fear of regret, Is security reasons a good motivation to do such change?
 
@Gigili It's a valid motivation if you have things that are worth protecting and are willing to learn how a very different system works. If not, it might be too much sacrifice ... giving up the familiar and the "easy" for a gain isn't important to you.
 
9:52 PM
@MichaelMrozek You mentioned that in your great Meta post:
10
A: Beta progress, importance of reputation, and voting

Michael MrozekThis somehow turned into a giant entry, so I split it into a few sections; it starts discussing the launch procedure and ends with me rambling about how voting is good and why we should vote more :) Area 51 metrics and launch process The beta launch process was changed somewhat after the first ...

 
@Gigili I don't use it primarily because of security ... security measures could be taken on other systems too ... but because it gives me the freedom to do what I want with my computer.
@Gigili You should clarify whether you are talking about desktops or servers ... and how much you already know about securing Windows with how much you are willing to learn about another (very complex) world.
 
@Tshepang Yeah, and Robert estimated 2-3 weeks 6 months ago. I'm not sure what happened, I don't really follow that site
 
@Caleb @Gigili The flexibility is amazing. That one can choose a different desktop rocks. With Windows and Mac, you are pretty much restricted to just one environment. There's pros and cons regarding this of course.
@MichaelMrozek I was wondering if is that site that could not decide on a theme.
anyone remember that?
It got a theme, people didn't like it, and was reverted to a Beta theme.
 
@Tshepang sites? AFAIK that only happened to Physics, and it wasn't that they couldn't decide but that a lot of people rejected Jin's design
 
@Gilles sorry, that's what I meant.
 
9:56 PM
@Tshepang Yup, that's Physics. They're launched, but using the beta theme for an indeterminate period.
 
I have sweet memories of those days when the idea of launching was exciting (when is it happening to us?).
 
@Caleb I've learned a little when we were working on our bachelor thesis, a project about writing compilers, but wasn't that easy , especially the command prompt and also I had problems with internet connection .. I fear if I remove all and then I blame myself "was security that important ?"
 
@Gigili do a dual-boot if you are so worried
easier still, run Linux in a VM
 
@Tshepang Running in a VM doesn't solve many security problems if your host OS isn't trusted!
 
@Caleb my response was to the worry that @Gigili might not like Linux, after which he can just delete the VM or reclaim the partition(s).
 
10:03 PM
@Gigili I don't use Linux because it's more secure. It's a nice benefit but not my main motivation. I use Linux primarily because it's more user-friendly.
 
0
Q: Alias throttle to throttling

CalebRight now both throttle and throttling exist, with the larger batch of questions tagged with the throttle. They seem to be be about the same general thing, and throttling seems like a better choice to refer to the concept by. While that's being discussed, rate-limiting should probably be thrown ...

 
@Tshepang Great idea, there's no difference if I do a double-boot or complete installation? I mean something that doesn't work , like internet connection?
@Gilles A friend of mine told me that in linux I can change what I don't like .. I doubt if I would do such things, I learned to adopt!
 
@Gigili no there isn't much, other than that your VM install will be a little slower than a normal one. There won't be a problem with internet connection. The VM (VirtualBox) will think it's running on a LAN connection).
 
@Tshepang True enough, but remember he came here asking about security so you should qualify that a VM is only a solution for learning the ropes and seeing if he likes it, not for his initial concern of security.
 
@Caleb yeah, makes sense
 
10:10 PM
Ubuntu has Wubi too
 
@MichaelMrozek I don't generally recommend it.
 
@Gigili No. Dual-boot and "full install" are not actually different except that early in the boot process some bit of software makes a decision about which OS to start up. Whichever one you chose gets full access to all the hardware ... it IS a full install.
 
Oh. I've never actually used it
 
Having someone on the phone from another country who did an ubuntu upgrade and now can't boot at all… not fun for either of us.
It's a lot easier to troubleshoot a straightforward installation.
 
@Tshepang OP asked about dual-boot there, not VM. No a dual-boot system will not be slower ... but yes a VM will be a little slower.
 
10:12 PM
@Caleb yeah, I only realise now
 
Wubi sounds nice, but it doesn't buy you much. It saves you from having to split your partition, but the installer does that well anyway.
 
@Gilles We used to do dual-boot install sessions for people in univeristy. Ubuntu's default option used to be to use the whole disk, even if Windows was installed. No matter how much we emphasized paying attention when partitioning, people lost their Windows partitions every time
 
@MichaelMrozek Hmm, I never paid attention to that
 
Thanks @everyone, hope you climb the ladder of success at every venture!
 
I always use the advanced installer for myself, and I'm usually only called when there's trouble
 
10:15 PM
@Gilles what's that? the nonGUI one?
@MichaelMrozek not good
 
@Tshepang Yes, the one with a text UI, support for LVM and a few other “advanced” stuff
 
@MichaelMrozek My first exposure to Ubuntu was fixing friends machines that got chewed up in just that way. I don't think I've ever quite forgiven Ubuntu and it remains one of my less favorite distributions.
 
@Gilles it's still based on Debian Installer right?
 
Potentially destructive options make bad defaults.
 
now that's one nice piece of software
 
10:17 PM
@Tshepang not sure, I haven't really followed these news since the Debian weekly news went under
 
@Caleb the new ugly interface (Unity) didn't help either did it?
@Gilles they have started a similar news service, which publishes less regurlarly (infrequently)
 
@Caleb My first use of Ubuntu was warty amd64, when Debian was about to push out a new stable release without the amd64 architecture
My biggest gripe with Ubuntu was their choice of Gnome. If only they'd picked KDE!
 
@Gilles oh, so you do prefer KDE
 
@Tshepang No, Unity did not help. I was about ready to start cutting it some slack until Unity came along.
 
@Caleb lol
what were they thinking!
@Gilles their goal was ease-of-use, and I think GNOME 2 was easier to use than KDE 3
 
10:20 PM
Actually in many ways it's brilliant. It has some strokes of genius, but it's immature and for my taste tries to define my experience too much.
 
everytime I've tried to revisit KDE, I always came back to GNOME
matter of taste I guess (I love simple)
 
@Tshepang I use neither. But between KDE3 and Gnome, I would always recommend KDE.
 
Gnome3 actually looks very promising, but it's lacking basic configuration options like key-bindings for now. When it matures I think it will actually be a pleasure ... sort of what Unity wanted to be but didn't spend enough time working out the kinks.
 
Now with KDE4, I've stopped recommending KDE
 
Meanwhile, I still use awesome across the board. And it's pretty awesome.
 
10:22 PM
@Caleb heard good things about that, but never bothered to check it out
 
And with Ubuntu, I just tell people to install Ubuntu, go with the flow, and only start experimenting if they feel like it.
 
Ubuntu's big win is good desktop integration
 
@Caleb It's on my short list of wm's to try
 
and sudo thing is a good idea
 
I have an absolute requirement of good customizability in a Turing complete language
 
10:23 PM
@Gilles what language is it in the case of awesome?
 
@Tshepang lua
 
@Tshepang sawfish: lisp/scheme cross; awesome: lua; xmonad: haskell
 
@Tshepang afaik, they are the ones who pushed for Totem to ask user to download codecs a file required them
 
The others either don't have a decent language or are only toy programs
 
I have no idea what Lua looks like.
 
10:25 PM
@Tshepang A little imperative language, designed for easy embedding. Gets a lot of praise from Norman Ramsey. Used a lot in high-level parts of games.
 
@Caleb I gave up on awesome after the fourth time a point release broke my configuration file. They couldn't have cared less about backwards compatibility
 
am looking at their website
they don't have a tutorial that is easily within reach
 
@Gilles As far as I'm concerned it's pure genius ... exactly what I would have written if I'd started from scratch. I came from sawfish where I loved the customizability but it wasn't maintained and I always kind of envied tiled managers and flirted with other interfaces for virtual desktops from fancy things like beryl. When I discovered awesome it was all over ... the mixed tiling/floating, 100% scriptability, tag interface instead of standard desktops ... it's just beautiful.
 
@Tshepang Here's what my config looked like when I used it: lug.rose-hulman.edu/wiki/User:MoraSique/rc.lua
 
@MichaelMrozek Ouch, that's bad. My .emacs is still (in theory) compatible with 19.23. My .profile is still (in theory) good on SunOS 4, and my .zshrc on 2.5. I want the same for my wm.
@Caleb sawfish is maintained again
 
10:27 PM
@Caleb nice promo there
 
@Caleb How good is awesome at overlapping windows? I never seem to have enough monitor space for tiling
 
@MichaelMrozek Lack of care for backwards compatability and rough documentation are valid complaints. I don't regret working through the lack of docs and I always test my configs in Xephr ... and havn't looked back.
@Gilles Seriously? That's news to me.
 
@MichaelMrozek me not likes the splatter of end statements(?), but it looks simple enough
me spoilt by Python whitespace thing
 
The only reason I liked awesome was the bar had all the built-in widgets for icons and progress bars and graphs and all that, and I finally discovered dzen
 
@Gilles It's not it's strong point, but it handles it. I only use floating layouts for a few apps (like The GIMP) that refuse to play nice with tiling. I use tiling on even my smallest screens ... it seems the smaller the screen the more useful it gets...but the ability to show one or many "virtual desktops" at once is nice because you group things by tag, then pick which tag(s) to have up at a given time.
 
10:32 PM
0
Q: Why Process CPU % Usage larger than Total CPU Time

BrigWhen I run the TOP command, a process shows 1208% cpu usage and the total CPU usr time is 81.7% with IRIX mode on. When I change to IRIX mode off, the process shows 99% cpu usage and the total user cpu time is 43%. Any ideas what might be going on? These are VM machines.

 
@MichaelMrozek Geez man no wonder their api changes kept breaking your config, you had a lot of irons in the fire.
 
Yeah. Upgrading awesome was a big deal, I would set aside multiple days to do it
 
@MichaelMrozek Okay, now that's ridiculous (unless you were joking?).
 
@Tshepang I doubt it. Been there done that. Usually combined with an overhaul of key bindings, vim macros, etc ... but working on one's workspace can be a big deal when you have it all wired up fancy with your own scripts.
 
No, it really did take me about 8 hours to work out all the things that had changed. I would keep the old version installed in case I needed to restart X
I use wmii now, but it doesn't really matter, they're all kind of the same. The only thing that differentiated them was the status bars, and I just hide them now
 
10:37 PM
@Tshepang What's ridiculous about it?
@MichaelMrozek Is that the whole thing, or did you write other included files?
I don't know how compact lua is compared with scheme, I'd say about the same
 
@Gilles spending so many hours just to fix an upgrade issue with a window manager
 
I think that's the whole thing. It includes some stuff, but it was all other awesome modules
 
My .sawfishrc is >2k lines, but I do comment a lot more than you
 
@Gilles +1
 
My wmii config is like 100 lines
 
10:40 PM
@MichaelMrozek I have 2999 lines of sawfish code, not counting blank/comment-only lines or modules written by other people
 
@Gilles damn!
 
That...makes me sad
My wmii config is actually 240 lines
On the other hand, my dzen bar is powered by 500 lines of Python
 
@MichaelMrozek For Emacs, it's 14819
 
That's insane. Mine is 548 lines
And I was thinking about splitting it into multiple files because that seemed long
 
@MichaelMrozek +1
 
10:43 PM
@MichaelMrozek 548 lines? I have 426 (582 including blank/comment) just for compatibility with various GNU Emacs and Xemacs versions
My `.emacs` is very simple though:
(load "~/lib/emacs/paths.el")
(load "main")
 
Ok I've been officially out-geeked. My old sawfish configs are ~700 lines, my current awesome config is 408, and my vimrc (not counting ~10k lines of included plugins, sytax files etc) is a measly 292. (which either proves my incompetence or vims clear superiority)
 
@Caleb Oh, vim, that's just a toy. wc -l ~/.vimrc` → 220
 
@Caleb I am extremely out-geeked: I don't use either Emacs or Vim, and I use Metacity WM
@Gilles you remind of your Emacs vs. Vim post... a masterpiece; the best I've seen yet
 
@Tshepang Metacity? That would explain why you can't fathom the time it takes to configure a real WM. Metacity has what ... three radio options?
2
 
@Caleb lol
 
10:47 PM
@Tshepang And I didn't know there were other ways to edit text.
@Tshepang Link?
 
@Caleb What about ed?
 
41
A: vim vs. emacs... and no, this is not a flame war

GillesI use both, although if I had to choose one, I know which one I would pick. Still, I'll try to make an objective comparison on a few issues. Available everywhere? If you're a professional system administrator who works with Unix systems, you need to know vi (not Vim), because it's available on ...

@Caleb hehe
@Tshepang one of the best posts on this site
should not have been CW
 
and then cat, and then magnets, and then butterflies, and then…
 
@Gilles No problem. But in my mind it's a subset of vi.
 
(implemented since Emacs 23 as M-x butterfly)
 
10:51 PM
gotta run
 
Not original to me: the easiest way to have world peace is to make Randall Munroe write a comic about it
 
@Gilles I cede. That doesn't mean I'll give up vim and learn emacs, but I don't know of a built in butterfly function in vim.
Gentlemen it's been a pleasure but it's way past my bedtime.
 
@Gilles I see "image not found"
@Caleb thanks for the humor
 
@Tshepang It's a link to XKCD, and it's supposed to be inlined (it is for me)
 
@Gilles hold on, I can't even see images on xkcd.com/378
 
11:04 PM
@Tshepang Then it's your computer or your ISP's fault
 
@Gilles something to do with my setup, because the page works fine from Windows VM
 
@Tshepang The only times I've ever used metacity is when I'd broken awesome beyond repair, and those were dark times
@Tshepang And yet I got the checkmark for including an image
 
@MichaelMrozek lol
@MichaelMrozek no, your answer came first (just a guess)
 
That too
 
11:19 PM
Interesting how this got so popular:
74
Q: Why is Mercurial considered to be easier than Git?

Tamás SzeleiWhen looking at comparisons, it seems to me that there could be a 1:1 mapping between their feature sets. Yet, an often cited statement is that "Mercurial is easier". What is the base of this statement? (if any)

You'd think the arguments were over.
 
@MichaelMrozek Yeah, but I get a badge because you got the check mark
 
Good point. Everyone wins
 
@Tshepang Wow, man, bikeshed! BIKESHED!
 
It was tweeted I think, I read it earlier. I hated every answer and whined about it in another room
 
@Gilles first 3 answer are decent actually; the one with 100+ votes is a little flamey though
 
11:30 PM
@Tshepang The first answer is stupid. I admit I haven't read it fully, but: part 1 is about some extremely rare task being easier in hg; that's not an argument to pick one or the other. Part 2 is mostly a rant against git on Windows, where Windows's faults are blamed on git. Part 3 is part 2 again.
 
@Gilles damn, now you make me want to revoke my vote
 
@MichaelMrozek Damn, he's on to us!
Hey, can I be on the conspiracy too?
 

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