Ubuntu Linux Help » CrunchBang

Regular Expression Test Tool

CrunchBang — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:36:29 +0000

I’ve used this web based regular expression test tool a couple of times over the last day or so. While I don’t normally struggle with regular expressions, this tool has still come in handy; it has saved me from the “code it and cross your fingers” approach I normally take.

This is a great tool for anyone who works with PHP, especially as the service uses PHP regular expression functions as a base for its operations.

URL: http://www.solmetra.lt/scripts/regex/

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

465 Free Fonts for Ubuntu

Roger Wheatley — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:37:49 +0000

Foreword: If you enjoy these fonts and this post then please consider spreading the love by partaking in a little digging. I wouldn’t normally ask but this site is currently powered by a prototype blogging application and I could really do with the extra traffic to help judge its performance. Thanks.

Brian Kent is a prolific font designer. At 32 years old he’s already amassed an impressive collection of handmade fonts. He’s also a really nice guy and has agreed to let me package his free fonts for Ubuntu.

How to Install the Fonts

You can browse and download Brian’s fonts directly from his website. Or, to install all of the fonts simply follow the instructions below. The instructions should work for both Feisty and Gutsy.

1. Open your apt sources.list file for editing with the following terminal command:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Add the following two lines to the bottom of the file:

deb     http://ppa.launchpad.net/corenominal/ubuntu gutsy main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/corenominal/ubuntu gutsy main

3. Close gedit and issue the following terminal command to update apt:

sudo apt-get update

4. Still in the terminal, enter the following command to install the package:

sudo apt-get install ttf-aefonts

5. Enjoy your new fonts!

Why Package the Fonts?

I’ve recently joined the Launchpad Beta Testers team and I wanted to have a play with the Personal Package Archive [PPA] feature. This is my first attempt at packaging for Ubuntu and I wanted to package something that might be of use to other members of the community.

I found the process quite rewarding and at times a little puzzling — but I got there in the end. The packaging guide on the Ubuntu Wiki is fairly comprehensive and well worth a read if you’re interested in packaging.

You can see some of the fonts from the CrunchBang Article here: http://crunchbang.org/archives/2007/10/13/465-free-fonts-for-ubuntu/

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Wicked Cool Shell Scripts

CrunchBang — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:41:45 +0000

I’ve not read the book, but the Wicked Cool Shell Scripts site and its example shell scripts are, erm, wicked cool. The site offers a whole host of scripts, some of which could quite easily be adapted/hacked into useful tools. If you’re remotely interested in Shell scripting, you should take a look, even people with scripting experience might learn a thing or two.

URL: http://www.intuitive.com/wicked/index.shtml

Download the script library: wicked-cool-shell-scripts.tgz

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Windows XP, Ubuntu, GParted & Super Grub Disk

CrunchBang — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:13:46 +0000

Yesterday I permanently shut down the old family desktop. I say family, but in reality it was the desktop used by Becky and Emma before they got their laptops. Anyhow, before shutting the desktop down for the last time, Becky asked if I would transfer her music and photo collection to her laptop.

Becky’s laptop is one of my old machines, it’s an Acer Travelmate 240. I used it for a good few years before handing it over to Becky sometime last year. Being one of my old machines, it was set-up for dual booting with Ubuntu and Windows XP. Unfortunately I’ve yet to persuade Becky to migrate to Linux, so she always boots the system into Windows XP.

Anyway, before attempting to move Becky’s data I performed a quick check on her system. Turns out that I’d partitioned her 30GB drive in favour of Ubuntu, no surprise there, and Windows XP had less than 2GB of free space to play with. I asked Becky what she would like me to do, her reply, “You can remove that second-rate operating system, I don’t want your linucks shite on my laptop” — or something along those lines.

Not wanting to take her bait, and not being a Linux zealot, I agreed. So, I inserted my CrunchBang Linux CD and booted the machine. I then ran GParted and removed Ubuntu’s swap and ext3 partitions, before resizing the fat32 partition to use the whole drive [GParted is a fantastic tool!] Once I’d finished adjusting the partitions, I attempted a reboot, only to be presented with a GRUB error. I forgot that this would happen, GRUB couldn’t find its configuration file as I’d removed it when I edited the disk partitions.

To fix Becky’s now useless system, I inserted my copy of the Super Grub Disk and within a couple of minutes I’d managed to restore the MBR and configure the system so that it would boot directly into Windows XP. I then transferred Becky’s data and decommissioned the old family desktop. Easy.

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

CrunchBang 7.10.02 in Development

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:34 +0000

So, when I released the initial CrunchBang Linux I really didn’t think that anyone would actually download it. Turns out I was wrong, and this really surprised me. Initially I had no intention of working on another release of CrunchBang, see the quote below from the release notes:

It should be noted that my remastered version of Ubuntu is intended for my own personal use. I had no intention of releasing any disk images when I started this project; however, now that I’ve produced a working copy, I’ve decided to release the disk image under the premiss that someone may find it useful.
This is the first, and possibly last, release of CrunchBang Linux. Therefore you should expect to encounter numerous issues and a wide variety of erroneous bugs.

However, now that CrunchBang has been released and people have started using it [I'm truly shocked by this fact] I feel that it is only proper that I do my best to tidy it up and improve it. Therefore I have begun work on CrunchBang Linux 7.10.02. The new release should be considered a “spit & polish” release with fixes to the default theme and a few applications added which were missing in the first release. More news on this to come soon.

If you’ve got any suggestions for the next release then please feel free to post them in the Feedback & Suggestions forum. Now would be the ideal time to influence the next release.

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

CrunchBang Linux Forums

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:32 +0000

It was suggested on IRC that it might be useful to set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. So, I’ve set-up some forums for CrunchBang Linux. This wasn’t an easy decision to make and personally I’m still not sure that the forums are needed; however, I do agree that it might be nice to have somewhere other than this blog for people to leave feedback and suggestions.

Please feel free to visit the forums and register, get in quick before all the good usernames disappear :P There isn’t much in the way of content yet, but hopefully the posts will start trickling in.

Regarding the forum software, it’s bbPress. I did toy with the idea of using Cruciforum; however, while I really like the Cruciforum concept, I’m not convinced it’s quite ready — and I don’t have the time to help out and do any coding on the project :| Anyhow, I’m really quite impressed with bbPress. It reminds me of how WordPress used to be, before it went all Web two point zero. It’s simple and lightweight, just the way I like things. Looking back at how WordPress developed, maybe now would be a good time grab a copy of this GPL’d forum software?!

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Twitter, Twitux, gTwitter & Mono

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:31 +0000

Twitter, I guess it’s one of those web applications where you either “get” it or you don’t. For a long time I stood firmly in the don’t “get” it camp. My history with Twitter is somewhat scattered, I posted my first couple of tweets on December 21, 2006. It was a while until I tweeted again, when I did it took the following form:

Testing twitter on my Nokia N95 06:15 AM January 22, 2008 from web

And then 7 days later I tweeted again:

Once again playing with twitter, still not sure that I “get” it! Hmm. 02:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web

And then just a few hours later:

Testing gTwitter on Ubuntu. Looks good but uses mono and therefore comes in at a rather large 20MB+, hmm. 07:52 PM January 29, 2008 from web

And then today I tweeted this:

Testing Twitux twitter client, looks good and doesn’t use mono like gtwitter. This I could use, will leave it running. about 14 hours ago from web

By George, I think I’m beginning to “get” it!

It’s only taken me a couple of years, but I think I’m beginning to understand what Twitter is all about. Twitter is a simple little application, at least from a user’s standpoint, where you input up-to 140 character messages. These messages can then be viewed by anyone who wishes to follow along. It’s quite simple really and I’m now confused by why it took me so long to come to terms with such a simple concept. Why didn’t I get the hint from Twitter’s front page?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Anyhow, as you might have read, I’ve now started using Twitux. The application was introduced to me by Gabriel D. W. Wollenburg. I’ve only had it running for day, but I like it, and it beats having to keep another tab open in Epiphany. Unfortunately the application isn’t available in the Ubuntu repositories, but you can grab a copy from getdeb.net. It’s a small download at about 66.8 KB and only takes seconds to install using gdebi.

Regarding gTwitter, it crashed on first use, this didn’t leave a good first impression. Secondly, it uses Mono. I have nothing against Mono, but so far CrunchBang Linux remains a Mono free system, at least it does for me. So, installing gTwitter, which is available from the Ubuntu repositories, gave me an apt-get output something along the lines of:

corenominal@misspiggy:~$ sudo apt-get install gtwitter
[sudo] password for corenominal:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
 libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
 libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
 libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
 libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
 libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
 mono-runtime
Suggested packages:
 libgtkhtml3.8-dbg libgda2-3 libgdiplus
Recommended packages:
 binfmt-support cli-common
The following NEW packages will be installed
 gtwitter libart2.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2.0-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkhtml2.0-cil
 libgtkhtml3.8-15 libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-corlib1.0-cil
 libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil
 libmono-system-data1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
 libmono0 libmono1.0-cil librsvg2.0-cil mono-common mono-gac mono-jit
 mono-runtime
0 upgraded, 25 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
Need to get 6173kB of archives.
After unpacking 22.0MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

While I’m not short of disk space, 22MB for a Twitter client is somewhat extreme. Besides, I prefer Twitux.

Finally, I’d just like to publicly thank Gouki for encouraging me to explore Twitter some more. Gouki is without a doubt the main cause of all my time wasting experiences. BTW Gouki, I’ve still not forgiven you for this ;)

You can follow along with my pointless twittering at: http://twitter.com/corenominal

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Random Ubuntu Advocacy – Serbian Version

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:30 +0000

A Serbian translation of the random Ubuntu advocacy images is now available. The translation comes courtesy of Milos Jakovljevic and the Serbian Ubuntu LoCo team. Thank you Milos.

The complete Serbian set can be viewed on this demo page. The code to display the images is below, simply copy & paste into your HTML/blog template where you would like the random image placement to occur:

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

CrunchBang IRC Channel

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:29 +0000

CrunchBang Linux now has its own IRC channel on freenode. Thanks to Space Aviator for setting this up and mailing me with the details. You can connect to the CrunchBang IRC channel using an IRC client such as XChat, point your client to the freenode network (irc.freenode.net:6667) and join the #crunchbang channel.

I use IRC most evenings and I’ll add #crunchbang to my channel list. I’ll try to log in whenever I can. Please say “hi” if you see me about, I’m always up for a chat with fellow Linux users. My nick is corenominal.

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Random Ubuntu Advocacy – Russian Version

CrunchBang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:09:28 +0000

The Ubuntu advocacy images are now available in 12 different languages. Alexander Telenga has done a fantastic job converting the images into Russian. These new Russian images are some of my favourites to date, I love the Russian character set. Thank you Alexander :)

The complete Russian set can be viewed on this demo page. The code to display the images is below, simply copy & paste into your HTML/blog template where you would like the random image placement to occur:

Philip Newborough. Some Rights Reserved.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.