Yet Another Linux Blog

Consolidated links from my bookmarks:

Using viewports in vim.
Vim quick reference card.
Search and replace in vim.

So I was looking at LXer today and saw this story:
Dapper Drake verdict: It sucks

How’s that for a flamebait title? But lets go through the author’s main points:

• Mounting SAMBA shares makes the computer slow (sometimes).
• I didn’t RTFM, so I missed a step.
• I didn’t RTFM again, so I missed another step.
• Something is wrong with printing.

Here’s some choice quotes:

Finally Ubuntu Dapper Drake was finally released, and I eagerly downloaded the Live CD ISO. Big mistake — if I had RTFM I would have noticed that I needed the “alternate” CD for an upgrade.

And in the next paragraph:

Once again I should have probably read the manual, but I figured I’ve done this before.

…and something went wrong. Big surprise.

The rest of the article seems to be a rant about having dial-up Internet, and about how these bugs are a big deal for the “enterprise” and then a few paragraphs about Debian’s relationship with Ubuntu, where the author doesn’t make any particular points.

I can understand these sort of “articles” being published on a little blog like mine, but for Tectonic Magazine, it’s just poor editing.

Since my proposal for Google’s Summer of Code was rejected, I’ll work on some other programming stuff this summer. Here’s the plan:

• Java Intro course
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Ruby Quiz

The Java intro course is run by a guy working for Sun. It’s a gentle introduction to programming in general, using Java and sometimes the Netbeans IDE. All the assignments are due by the end of summer. While I think that this “course” will be pretty easy, it’ll give me a change to write some Java code and play with an IDE or two. I also wanted to investigate the status of GCJ. I play to compile all of the exercises with both the Sun software and the GCJ software.

The SICP course is an old MIT course, and is considered to be an excellent intro to programming course. The examples are in LISP. I’m already up to the third lecture.

Ruby Quiz is a weekly programming challenge. It reminds me a lot of the Computer Science Olympiad-type questions that I looked at in HS, except these are in Ruby, and thus help you become familiar with Ruby’s features. I plan to follow these every week for the summer.