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Archive of posts filed under the Linux category.

Using vim like an IDE

I’ve been using The NERD tree for a file list and minibufexpl for tab-like buffer management. To close a buffer, select it in minibufexpl and hit the ‘d’ key. If you want to remap the :bd command so it does the same thing, check out these tips – otherwise :bd will delete the whole window, […]

SDL Windowed Fullscreen (no mouse trapping)

The fullscreen display mode in SDL traps the mouse on one X display, which can be undesirable if you are running dual head with separate X screens and using SDL for something other than games. UPDATE: An even easier way of doing this is passing SDL_NOFRAME to SDL_SetVideoMode with width and height set to the […]

make alternative for small C/C++ projects

Lately I’ve found maintaining Makefiles tedious, even for small projects. Much can be done with implicit rules, but header file dependencies must still be specified manually (or so I though – more on this later). For a small project, maybe you only have five or so of these rules. However there is no reason to […]

Firewire Networking in Linux

Every time I copy data between my desktop and laptop, I think about how it would be faster if my laptop had gigabit ethernet. I have a gigabit switch and an onboard gigabit NIC on my desktop, but the laptop is slow old 100BaseT. However I do this rarely enough that shelling out 30 bucks […]

Middle mouse button paste in Firefox

While searching for a “clear location bar” button add-on for Firefox (like in Konqueror) I stumpled upon this dot.kde.org thread. Summary: If you click the middle mouse button in the body of either firefox or konqueror, it will paste whatever is in the x clipboard into the location bar and go there. This really eliminates […]

Downloading and extracting album art

Album Cover Art Downloader I use this to download cover art for CDs I’ve ripped. It displays a list of covers that match and let’s you choose the right one. It took a while to find this, as everyone links to the old defunct site which has no link/redirect to the new site. Note: I […]

Kmail Imap delete immediately

Shift+Delete This deletes a message immediately (after confirmation) without sending it to the trash. This is very useful if you have a spam folder that you like to scan for false positives, and then delete everything. It took a good 30 seconds to move a few days of spam messages to the trash. Ctrl+A, Shift+Delete […]

HOWTO: Install skype on 64-bit ubuntu

From the ubuntu forums. Worked like a charm with skype 1.4 for feisty, downloaded from skype.com. Includes instructions for dapper and feisty, both 32 bit and 64 bit. Now if only changing my sound card capture input to microphone didn’t steal sound from MythTV…