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GIMP 2.4 Released

Hooray!! This is absolutely wonderful news!! GIMP is one of my favorite software applications, and it gets better and better as time goes on. I want to thank the GIMP developers as well as every single person (and there are many) who contributed to GIMP. I am definitely looking forward to GIMP 2.6!! (If you don't know what GIMP is, and are interested, click here.)

Dreamer-Minstrel

http://www.cmi-lmi.com/minstrel.html Apparently I belong to the "Dreamer-Minstrel" guild. I can relate to some parts of the description. I am an idealist, and "dreamy" would reflect this aspect of my personality. But I'm not "dreamy" in the sense that I'm "spacy"; I'm a very technically oriented person, and I tend to ride the function that approaches perfection as x approaches infinity. I am definitely an optimist; there is no question about that. Overall, my guild fits me. But it only describes a subset of my personality. Take the quiz for yourself, here.

The Shell

The shell is a fundamental piece of software no matter what operating system you use (Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, etc.). If you are at the command line, you are using the shell. It's that simple. In Linux, the most common shell is Bash. Bash is an abbreviation for "Bourne-again shell", with "Bourne" referring to the original UNIX shell, which is called the "Bourne shell". There are several other shells used in Linux (zsh, csh, etc.) but they aren't as common, and I've never used them. Bash is a wonderful shell. It has many, many useful features. I'm just beginning to understand this for myself, since I've only been using Linux for about 10 months. If you google "bash shell", you'll find a million resources. Wikipedia has a sizeable documentation on Bash as well. Anyway, here are a couple of interesting tidbits... At the command line on a Linux machine, to verify that you are using the Bash shell, you can type in the following command and press enter. echo $BASH_VERSION If it displays output (the version number of Bash), then you are currently using Bash. Here is the output when I enter this command on my machine: [patrick@computer ~]$ echo $BASH_VERSION 3.2.25(2)-release This means I am currently running Bash 3.2.25 (the latest version). *** One very useful Bash shortcut is what I call "tab expansion." Let's say there is a folder named examples in your current working directory. Also suppose that your current directory contains no other files or folders that begin with the letter e. Now, at the command line, type cd, space, then type the letter e and press TAB. You will notice that Bash completed the folder name for you. Pretty sweet, huh? Instead of typing the letters e, x, a, m, p, l, e, and s, you only had to type e and TAB. If you use Bash a lot, this shortcut is a huge timesaver. Let's consider one more example: Your current directory contains two folders named mail and old-mail and one file named mail-config.txt. You want to open mail-config.txt, so type nano, space, the letter m, and then TAB. Now you should see something similar to this on your screen: [patrick@computer ~]$ nano mail TAB did not complete the file name because there is also a folder in your directory named mail, so Bash does not know whether you are referring to the folder, mail, or the file, mail-config.txt. In order to complete the file name, you must now type a hyphen (-) followed by TAB. Since there are no files or folders in the current directory that begin with mail-, TAB will successfully fill in (or "expand") the rest of the file name. In a nutshell, this is how "tab expansion" works. It is easier to understand by experimenting with the TAB key while using Bash. I will save additional Bash shortcuts and tricks for a future post. Thanks for reading!

Upcoming Ubuntu 7.10

I have added an Ubuntu countdown timer to my blog. The upcoming release is called Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon". Since Ubuntu is a major Linux distribution, this is pretty big news in the Linux community. Clicking on the timer will take you to the Ubuntu site where you can download Live CD images. If you burn an Ubuntu ISO to a CD, you can boot Ubuntu from a CD, and nothing will be stored on your hard drive (unless you decide to install later). That's why it's called a "Live CD". It's an easy way to try out a Linux distribution. The only requirements are a broadband internet connection and a blank CD (plus burning software, of course). Off to the library...

First Post

In the upcoming weeks (month, years, ... , who knows?), I will be writing about my experience using Linux...or GNU/Linux...as my primary desktop operating system. *** My first experience using Linux occurred about 10 months ago; I booted a "live" Linux distribution called KNOPPIX. The same DVD contained a full image of Fedora Core 5, so I managed to partition my hard drive, and installed Fedora Core on a separate partition. So, now I had a "dual boot" setup, having both Windows XP and Fedora Core 5 installed. This setup was okay for a few days, but then I managed to screw up my Fedora Core installation. Then I decided to install Ubuntu 6.10 ("Edgy Eft"). That was the best choice I ever made. Ubuntu is a great distribution. When Ubuntu 7.04 ("Feisty Fawn") was released, I decided to install it over my previous Ubuntu install. Even better than before. I haven't used too many Linux distributions, but I've had a great experience with Ubuntu. But that's not the end of the story... Last Saturday, I did some research, and decided that I would try out Arch Linux next. Arch is considered to be a more difficult distribution to install, since multiple text files require editing during the installation process. But I managed to install it. Arch runs faster than Ubuntu, and I'm very, very happy with it so far. The installation of Arch alone has improved my understanding of Linux even more. *** My goal with this blog is strike a balance between formality and informality, stream-of-consciousness writing and storytelling, beginner tutorials and technical discussions/ramblings/musings. I welcome any comments and questions about the content on my blog.