You Can Use Your Console For That

In the spirit of promoting linux applications for Mac and others, here are some apps which do a surprising amount without ever leaving your console.

1. Irssi – irc chat with heaps of features
2. Canto – rss feed reader
3. CenterIM – multi-protocol instant messenger
4. Mutt - mature and powerful mail reader. “All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.”
5. Mplayer – the swiss-army-knife of media players. Ok, it does require X to see the video, but you get the idea.
6. mpd with ncmpcpp – flexible, lightweight music server and controller
7. PyTone – python-ncurses based jukebox
8. feh – set your background or view a slideshow
9. beeswax – keep track of tasks using the GTD method
10. sgtd – more of the same
11. vim – the only editor a programmer will ever need. There’s good reason to use vim instead of vi. Trust me.

Most of these are available in pacman if you’re using Arch linux, or in the AUR. Some, like Beeswax are ready to be compiled on a mac with only a few changes.

Serving with OS X

The project of the week is setting up a true unix web/email server using OS X Leopard. (groan) Well, I have my reasons for wanting to do this. I am struggling right now but here’s what I have so far. Guides will follow for the stuff that works.

• complete dns setup using named – this was relatively simple since a good install of named already exists on your mac. what’s necessary is creating some configuration files for you domain(s) and setting it up as a service at bootup.

and… that’s it! Everything else is topsy-turvy. It seems like Leopard was put together with the intention that SQLite would handle all the database work (goodbye MySQL!) with php and apache compiled to suit. Now this is great if you’re a Ruby Rails fan or if you’ve never heard of wordpress, let alone countless web email or cms suites. But if you want to deploy a stable, standard cms you’re really out of luck.

Of course you could use OS X Server (if you have an extra US$499 lying around). But then you have to deal with de-coupling some services, like named, from their pre-configured settings and the server admin gui. As far as I can make out, the kernel isn’t any different for low-end server use from regular OS X. 

However, you do get a bunch of server applications pre installed which are a real headache to try and compile yourself. Some of these are imap, pop, apache, mysql… the list goes on. Right now it looks like OS X versus Server comes out as Headache A versus Headache B. It certainly isn’t out-of-the-box-no-IT-department-required-as-advertised.

New iPhone ebooks icon

I’ve been looking for the right Books.app icon lately and ended up creating one from scratch myself. Tell me what you think.

X11 Focus settings

Gimp for os x used to come with a script to change the focus settings of windows in X11. Today, I downloaded the newest os x compilation, 2.4, and surprise- no script! A little digging revealed a quick and easy way to toggle mouse focus for X11 whenever you want.

Run in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm -bool true

to turn on mouse focus. (That’s the kind where a window focuses without licking on it if the mouse is hovering over it.) To turn it off, just run the same command with false instead of true at the end.

At the moment, I can’t recommend turning mouse focus on since it seems to cause some trouble for Gimp 2.4. But that’s just my speculation.

Eee PC compiz install

I have fallen in love with the asus eee pc – my new mobile linux machine! It plays nice with my iMac and works well with a special eeeXubuntu install. After some trial and error I’ve put together some quick instructions for getting the snazzy window manager compositing engine Compiz running on this little box.

So this requires:

• an Eee PC running eeeXubuntu.

That’s it.

::::Compiz install instructions::::

1. Either download this zipfile with configuration settings already set and ready …. or you feel really adventurous and want to do it all yourself later (not in this how to guide!).

2. Run

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri compiz-core compiz-plugins compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald compizconfig-settings-manager

3. Add to end of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section “Module”
  Load “glx”
  Load “dri”
  Load “dbe”

EndSection

Section “DRI”
  Mode 0666
EndSection

Make sure this file ends with two new lines (blank lines, carriage returns). It will totally mess up your X11 setup otherwise!

4. Restart the x server with ctrl-alt-backspace.

5. Hit alt-f2 and type in:

compiz –replace

This should result in a pause and then nifty new windows!! Now if you like the result, you can make it start up every time by adding the last command to your startup items (I’ll leave how up to you).