Re: [GTALUG] Favorite desktop manager?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

The only window manager I've found that allows me to configure my desktop the 
way I want it is WindowMaker.

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Re: [GTALUG] From Slackware to which distro?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2022, William Park via talk wrote:


Hi All,

I've been running Slackware since forever.  It's time to grow up and see 
the world.  Which distro would you recommend that I move to?  Yes, I 
know it's personal, and reasons will be varied and educational.


- Ubuntu -- OK.  I use it at work in VM and in WSL (Windows Subsystem 
for Linux).  For me, Mint is another flavour, just like Kubuntu, 
Xubuntu, etc.


I'm currently running Mint, but I really don't care which distro I use.
I do prefer .deb to .rpm, but it's not that important.

Whichever distro it is, I use WindowMaker as my desktop because of its
configurability.


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Re: [GTALUG] Heads up: Ubuntu 21.10 kills your desktop icons

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2021, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:

GNOME have finally made good on their threat to remove all support for 
icons on the Desktop. Any files in ~/Desktop no longer produce icons on 
the screen. The GNOME Shell plugin that was the last thing that allowed 
it is no longer supported. GNOME Shell itself seems broken: what was the 
Shell Preferences browser page now bring up a 404 page from gitlab.


As someone who needs constant visual reminders of what he needs to be 
doing, this is a huge blow for me. Desktop icons are a kind of todo list 
for me. My own actual real desktop seldom has flat space on it*: right 
now it's relatively clear, with only 7 different MicroPython development 
boards on it. But in real and virtual life, my desktop is my work in 
progress. I guess GNOME's telling me my work's done now?


Windowmaker (wmaker) is available and can have desktop icons.
(I don't use them).

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Re: [GTALUG] You may already have a Windows licence and not know it …

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2021, Giles Orr via talk wrote:


On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 19:48, Znoteer via talk  wrote:



...

# cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
MSDMU:_ASUS_Notebook ASUS-K--K-K#

(License string obfuscated.)  'strings' not required.


My current maching, a Dell laptop, does not have that file.

It had Windows on it when I bought it (though not running; I booted
with an install CD in the store before buying it and never ran
Windows).

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Re: [GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2020, Lennart Sorensen wrote:


On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 07:07:29PM -0400, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:

I bought a used Dell Inspiron 3720 about 7 years ago.

It has been my main (and only) computer for the last 6 years.

I have had no issues other than the internal DVD drive failing.


Do you ever use the touchpad and keyboard on it?  My experience with
Dell's of that era were they were essentially unusable without an external
mouse and keyboard.  I remember so many people carrying mice and keyboards
with them to meetings.


I have used the builtin keyboard and touchpad (e.g. when I am at a
library), and they work fine. Normally I do use an external keyboard
(http://cfaj.ca/keyboard.jpg), mouse, screen (49"!) and speakers
(Harmon Kardon Soundsticks III).

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Re: [GTALUG] Laptop recommendations?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 22 Apr 2020, Mauro Souza via talk wrote:


My current 2 laptops are Thinkpads, T430 and T460. My previous ones were 
Thinkpads too, and they are heavy like a brick, look like a brick, and sturdy 
as a brick. Never had a problem
with them. But I had Dell and HP notebooks and all failed from overheating 
issues, motherboard issues, things like that.


I bought a used Dell Inspiron 3720 about 7 years ago.

It has been my main (and only) computer for the last 6 years.

I have had no issues other than the internal DVD drive failing.

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Re: [GTALUG] Script to show HTTP(S) and TLS details for a website

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sat, 14 Sep 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: William Park via talk 

| Hmm, minor personal irritant about variable assigment:
| var=$(...)
| is enough.  You don't need to do
| var="$(...)"

I think that getting quotes right in sh is hard.  I support the
simplest rule that works:

Always double-quote a $ thing UNLESS it must not be quoted.

The case you point out may be quoted, so I would quote it.


The only time an assignment needs to be quoted is when it contains literal 
whitespace.

Using quotes on an assignment is just as silly as always using braces: echo 
"${var}"
You don't always do it just because sometimes it is needed.

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Re: [GTALUG] your desktop too boring?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2019, Alex Volkov via talk wrote:


Hey Hugh,

Just a quick note while wearing a moderator hat on this mailing list.

You may not be aware of it, but 'Rice it' is a pejorative term, please 
avoid using it here.


See -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_burner


   "In some cases users of the term assert that it is not offensive or
racist,[12] or else treat the term as a humorous, mild insult
rather than a racial slur."

And in the articles referred to, it is certainly NOT being used as
a racial slur.


Thank you,

Alex.



On 2019-08-19 7:14 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:



Personally, I like a boring desktop.

I found this from a blog post:





This guy has a nice collection of old computers (in Cambridge, Ontario):



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Re: [GTALUG] your desktop too boring? Rice it!

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:




Personally, I like a boring desktop.


Same here. Any desktop showing is wasted space.

Here's mine (from  a workspace not curently in use):
   http://cfaj.ca/images/desktop.jpg

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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:


On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: Stewart Russell via talk 

| This is not a place of honour:.
| 
| https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic


This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
Too bad.


  That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo
  BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc.


   It was Northcastle Structured BASIC, and here is the article I wrote
   on it for the TPUG Magazine:
   https://archive.org/details/tpug-newsletter-23/page/n21

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Re: [GTALUG] For Chris: Commodore BASIC as a scripting language

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:


| From: Stewart Russell via talk 

| This is not a place of honour:.
| 
| https://github.com/mist64/cbmbasic


This doesn't have the Waterloo BASIC extensions to Commodore BASIC.
Too bad.


  That was my first thought, too, although I used a clone of Waterloo
  BASIC that was available on a TPUG disc.

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Re: [GTALUG] Script to show HTTP(S) and TLS details for a website

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019, Giles Orr via talk wrote:


Well damn.? That's a lot of very good suggestions.

I will dispute one of them: you said (more than once I think) that I don't need 
to quote variables.? You are technically correct ... right up until a variable 
value has a space in it.? Then everything goes to
hell in a handbasket.?


Yes, always quote them. And it is not only spaces that can be a
problem; several other characters are special to the shell and can
cause problems.

But it is not necessary to use braces unless you need more than
straight expansion:

echo "$var"

not:

echo "${var}"

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Re: [GTALUG] Script to show HTTP(S) and TLS details for a website

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 11 Aug 2019, Giles Orr via talk wrote:


On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 at 11:46, Giles Orr  wrote:
  ...https://www.gilesorr.com/blog/tls-https-details.html

Any suggestions to improve the script would be most welcome.


Jason:




You are of course correct: '#!/usr/bin/env bash' is more portable.?
I don't usually bother because '#!/usr/bin/bash' works fine on every
Linux I've used and on Mac, so I don't think to fix this when I make
my scripts public ...


$ ls /usr/bin/bash
ls: cannot access '/usr/bin/bash': No such file or directory

It is usually /bin/bash



Dave:
"Line 130 s/-eq/=/"



 See, that's interesting ...? First, "==" would be correct for a
Bash string comparison, not "=" (which is correct for 'sh').? Second
...? Arguably it's a numeric comparison (thus '-eq'), but I did put
quotes around it which probably makes it string ...? ? Yeah, I
don't know what that should be.? It's worked so far ...


You said that is could return 1.1; that is not a valid number in bash.

Also, you are combining two syntaxes in your function definitions. You
can use either

function funcname { : ## ksh style
}

or

funcname() { :   ## POSIX style
}

You don't need both.


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Re: [GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2019, James Knott via talk wrote:



Remember. You only get what you pay for


That's something a lot of people have never learned.


   Because much of the time it isn't true.

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Re: [GTALUG] POP3 vs IMAP

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sat, 8 Jun 2019, James Knott via talk wrote:


On 2019-06-08 08:36 PM, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:

POP is download only.


?? But, once it's downloaded, you can do anything you like with it.


Now, try to keep multiple devices in sync, including sent mail.


  Not interested.
  But it's certainly doable.

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Re: [GTALUG] POP3 vs IMAP

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sat, 8 Jun 2019, Loui Chang via talk wrote:


On Sat 08 Jun 2019 12:20 -0400, Stephen via talk wrote:

IMAP
Allows multiple devices to access you emails
Keeps messages on server


IMAP also allows to preserve some kind of folder structure on the server and
synch (upload/download) those folders bi-laterally between client and server
including Sent Mail and Drafts.

POP is download only.


   But, once it's downloaded, you can do anything you like with it.

   I keep parallel mbox and (modified) maildir hierarchies.

   I use mbox with alpine, and maildir for processing individual messages and 
(theoretically) statistical analysis.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: fixing an LCD TV

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Fri, 31 May 2019, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:


How viable Is it to use a TV as monitor, ignore the "smart" crap and
just plug in the HDMI? Are there features or specs needed for a TV
to make it usable for close viewing?


   I use a 49" LG 1080p smart TV for a monitor via HDMI.

   I love it.

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Re: [GTALUG] Software to draw illustrations?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2019, Bob Jonkman via talk wrote:


On 2019-02-10 2:51 a.m., Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:
> I use emacs to write PostScript programs and convert them to JPG or 
GIF or PNG with ImageMagick.


I use a horseshoe magnet to manipulate the bits directly on a floppy 
disk, then output them to paper tape on my PDP-8...


--Bob.

(but really, I never considered PS a human-writeable language!)


If you can write Forth, you can write PS.

I also generate PS with other programs.
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Re: [GTALUG] Software to draw illustrations?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2019, William Park via talk wrote:


Hi all,

What software do people use to draw illustrations that you'd see in
textbooks or presentations?  Eg. data structure, high school math, block
diagrams, etc.  I mean, I see them, but I don't know how to create them.


I use emacs to write PostScript programs and convert them to JPG or GIF or PNG 
with ImageMagick.

But you might be more comfortable with GIMP.

There are also several other paint programs, such as gpaint, xpaint, rgbpaint.
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Re: [GTALUG] Dead DVD drive in laptop

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2017, Lennart Sorensen wrote:


On Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 12:44:17PM -0400, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:

I can play movies from a USB stick. I cannot play DVDs with one. A DVD
is not a file; it holds files.


A DVD contains multiple files.  Placing all those files in a directory
works the same as being on a DVD to many player programs and gives you
all the menus and special features and everything.  You simply tell VLC
to open the folder, not the file.


If I don't have a DVD player, how can I transfer a DVD to anything?

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Re: [GTALUG] Dead DVD drive in laptop

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2017, Lennart Sorensen wrote:


On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 07:29:38PM -0400, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017, Alex Short via talk wrote:


4. Don't use DVD. Just use a USB stick and iso files instead. 


I can't play DVDs with a USB stick.


Sure you can.

vlc is perfectly happy with DVD files in a directory on a USB stick,
complete with menus and all.


I can play movies from a USB stick. I cannot play DVDs with one. A DVD
is not a file; it holds files.

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Re: [GTALUG] Dead DVD drive in laptop

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017, Alex Short via talk wrote:


4. Don't use DVD. Just use a USB stick and iso files instead. 


I can't play DVDs with a USB stick.

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[GTALUG] Dead DVD drive in laptop

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

The DVD drive on my Dell Inspiron laptop has died.

I see three options:

1. Get it fixed
2. Replace it
3. Ignore it and get an external DVD

Which would you recommend?

(I'm running Linux Mint.)

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Re: [GTALUG] Bash Problem

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 9 Jan 2017, Bob Jonkman via talk wrote:


Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:



newName="${oldname}-bkp-${filedate}.${extension}.old"


The braces are not necessary here.


Are braced incorrect here? I've been putting braces around all
variable names, so that there are fewer syntax exceptions for me to
remember...


They are not incorrect, just unnecessary.

The only time they are necessary is when the variable name is followed
by a character that is legal in a variable name.

Or when modifying the output of the variable expansion.

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Re: [GTALUG] Bash Problem

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 8 Jan 2017, Mauro Souza via talk wrote:


Or
nFname="${base}.mp4"

Using brackets you can mix variables and text and create something like this:
newName="${oldname}-bkp-${filedate}.${extension}.old"


The braces are not necessary here. This will work fine:

newName="$oldname-bkp-$filedate.$extension.old"

Braces would be necessary if you were using underscores instead of
hyphens because they can be part of a variable name:

newName="${oldname}_bkp_$filedate.$extension.old"

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Re: [GTALUG] Ubuntu

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2016, Chris F.A. Johnson via talk wrote:


On Tue, 22 Nov 2016, ted leslie via talk wrote:


You may want to approach this the other way.
I you go to newegg.ca for example, i see the cheapest chrome book at about 
400$,

instead, do search on 8GB portable (4GB is cutting it close),


I've been using Mint on a Dell Inspiron i3 with 4GB for a couple of
years without any problems.

I normally have 20 workspaces open, on which I always have at least 2
shell windows open, as well as Firefox, emacs (usually 2 or 3 frames
as well as one instance as root), alpine and slrn each in its own
shell window, Gentoo file manager, audacious, often xboard, etc


  And I forgot VLC, often two instances open.

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Re: [GTALUG] Ubuntu

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2016, ted leslie via talk wrote:


You may want to approach this the other way.
I you go to newegg.ca for example, i see the cheapest chrome book at about 400$,
instead, do search on 8GB portable (4GB is cutting it close),


I've been using Mint on a Dell Inspiron i3 with 4GB for a couple of
years without any problems.

I normally have 20 workspaces open, on which I always have at least 2
shell windows open, as well as Firefox, emacs (usually 2 or 3 frames
as well as one instance as root), alpine and slrn each in its own
shell window, Gentoo file manager, audacious, often xboard, etc

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Re: [GTALUG] Going to FSOSS 2016... route question

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 2 Oct 2016, William Park via talk wrote:


I'm thinking about taking public transit to FSOSS2016.  I can get to
Go Union Station easy.  From there, Trip planner says
   - Union -> University Subway line -> Downsview -> York U
   - Union -> Yonge Subway line -> Finch -> York U

For those living (and taking TTC) in Toronto, which route is least
crowded during morning/afternoon rush hours?


Take the University subway. The Finch bus is a long ride.

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Re: [GTALUG] Are you on the watch list?

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2016, ac via talk wrote:
...

beer? someone say beer?

Seeing as we are polling opinions here (and I know too little to
contribute much to CA/US/Mexico political discussions) but I know a lot
about beer!

Who makes the best beer?


The beer situation is Toronto is excellent these days. My favourites
brewed in and around Toronto include:

Mill St.: Tankhouse Ale
Junction: Conductor's Ale
Red Racer: Copper Ale
Black Oak: Pale Ale
Flying Monkeys: Hoptical Illusion
Muskoka: Mad Tom IPA
Amsterdam: Boneshaker IPA
Amsterdam: Cruiser All Day PaleAle
Wellington: Arkell Best Bitter

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Re: [GTALUG] Suggestions: A Book for a Beginner, new to the Linux Shell

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 17 Jul 2016, David Thornton via talk wrote:



If anyone says you need a man(1) just tell them you have better info(1).

"Info" is a documentation system that ships with most uni* and often has actual 
examples.


   I much prefer the man pages to info.

   The man page is more (or at least as) easily searchable.

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Re: [GTALUG] Suggestions: A Book for a Beginner, new to the Linux Shell

[Chris F.A. Johnson via talk]

On Sun, 17 Jul 2016, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:


A discussion came up in the Toronto Raspberry Pi Meetup* about
suggestions for learning to work in bash. We didn't come up with
anything much, but if you have any suggestions, I'd be grateful to
hear them.


My recommendation is, of course, biased:

 Pro Bash Programming, by Chris F.A. Johnson

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