Civilization 5 and X-Com: Enemy Unknown on Linux

It seems like Firaxis Games is on board with Linux now. This past week, Civ5 and XCom: EU were released on Steam for Linux. I've purchased both, but I'm liking Civ5 too much to even touch XCom just yet.

Civ5 runs well for me, with two exceptions that are not showstoppers. To stop the game from freezing on start, I had to disable Steam Overlay, and it seems a lot of people have had to do that. Also, water sometimes looks messed up for me until I restart the game. Neither of those things bother me, though. I bought these games just to support big game titles coming to Linux!

Hi… you said: "If you’re looking for a cheap, good, easy sound card for Linux, I highly recommend the Sound Blaster Audigy SE." I bought the card and it works in Ubuntu 14.04 but when trying to install the program I can't. In windows works perfectly. Could you let us know what to type in Ubuntu to be able to install the program that comes with the card? Thank you…. CapToyou.

You mean the software on the CD that comes in the box? You don't even need that to use the card in Ubuntu, it should just work. I threw out that CD as soon as I saw it.If there's some software you actually wanted to use from that CD, like maybe their SoundFont player or whatever, it'll only work in Windows. If that's the case, let me know what it was and I might be able to point you to a free alternative for Linux.

Install new Xubuntu specific packages after an upgrade to Xubuntu 14.04

Earlier this week, I upgraded my Xubuntu box from 13.10 to 14.04. I originally started this installation out at 12.10, and just kept upgrading. Some people like to do a clean reinstall each time, but not me. If I were down to reinstall my OS twice a year, I'd probably just use Windows!

After the upgrade I went looking for two major features of 14.04, the Whisker Menu and Light Locker. I couldn't find them. Apparently when you do-release-upgrade, it just takes the packages you have, and upgrades them to what's in the new release. However, if what you have comes from a collection of packages (xubuntu-desktop), the upgrade tool doesn't know that.

So, for you to have Whisker Menu, Light Locker, Mugshot, etc. from 14.04, you will need to run:

sudo apt-get install -f sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Even then, your Application Menu will still be on your Panel. You'll need to go into your Panel settings and swap it out for Whisker Menu manually.

I ended up not using Whisker Menu or Light Locker, instead keeping the classic Application Menu and xflock4/xscreensaver as my lock screen.

Use node as a command line calculator application

If you're in front of a shell and need a simple calculator, the traditional tool to use has been bc. However, I find bc's syntax to be clunky with certain things, and you have to remember to pass a flag to set precision when you start it, or else decimal numbers will come out messed up.

I have a better idea. If you don't already have node installed on your system:

sudo apt-get install node

And just type "node" at the command line. You'll get a JavaScript console, much like what you'd get in a browser's developer tools. In there, you're free to do all the math you want, so it works great as a calculator--and instead of using cryptic symbols for different operations, you can just use Math.pow(), Math.sqrt(), etc.

Find out if you're inside of tmux from the shell/within a shell script

I've been playing around with shell scripts, particularly ways to extend vim and make vim work better with tmux by calling shell scripts from within vim. Here's a potentially useful tidbit:

If you're inside tmux, an environment variable called $TMUX will be set.

Try it: from a normal shell, type:

echo $TMUX

The output will be blank, because it's not set. Then, enter tmux and try it again. You should get something looking like a path, that identifies your tmux environment somehow.

So, that's how tell if you're in tmux or not. If $TMUX is not empty, you're in it.

Use fn + up/down arrows on a Mac for PgUp/PgDown

The other day, a coworker enlightened us to this. If you're using an Apple laptop/keyboard that has the "fn" key, you can hold that down and press the up/down arrows for Page Up and Page Down.

We were in a remote tmux session and needed to scroll up, but the tmux vim bindings that make Ctrl+U and Ctrl+D do half-page scrolling were not set up in that environment, and just holding the up arrow to scroll one line at a time was painfully slow. In this case, fn+up and fn+down worked beautifully.

Sudo write a read-only file in Vim after you already opened it without root

Doesn't it suck when you open a file in vim, make changes, hit :w to save it, and vim complains that it's read-only? You forgot to open it with "sudo vim"! Luckily, there's a way to write your changes without having to close vim, re-open it with sudo, and redo your changes:

:w !sudo tee %

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2600783/how-does-the-vim-write-with-sudo-trick-work

Conveniently Mount and Auto-mount Disks Using The Command Line

On my Xubuntu desktop, I have a 2GB drive that I use for backup purposes, etc. that's different from the OS partition.

If you have a drive like this, you can easily just click on that drive in your file manager, and Ubuntu will automatically mount it, in /media/$USER/diskname. Yet, when I went to try and mount via command line, or to try and add mounting to my startup scripts, it would always be some wildly complicated thing. The closest thing to something easy that I found was udisks, which would mount in the /media root folder, not quite the same as with the GUI.

Turns out the command I was looking for is called udisksctl.

To easily mount via command line, you'll first need to know where in /dev your disk is located. From there, the commands are simply:

udisksctl mount --block-device /dev/sda1 udisksctl unmount --block-device /dev/sda1

And it will mount just the same as if you mounted it via your file manager, with no need for flags for filesystem type, etc. I have a command like this in a startup script, so that my 2TB volume mounts on boot.

How to find out what device in /dev a disk is mapped to in Ubuntu

In Linux, disks will show up in /dev whether they're mounted or not. If you want to mount a disk, you'll need to know what "file" in /dev that disk has been assigned by the system.

To see some options for figuring this out, run: ls -la /dev/disk/

And you'll see a few subfolders.

ls -la /dev/disk/by-label

To me, this one is the most useful. If you have a hard disk called "Terabyte", the output will show something like "Terabyte -> /dev/sda1", and you'll know exactly where to look. You might see some extra "../" signs, since the current directory is a little deeper than /dev.

ls -la /dev/disk/by-id

This will show some names/numbers that probably reflect the makes and models of the physical disks that you have.

ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid

This will list disks by their UUID, which is good for fiddling with your bootloader and stuff like that.

I knew a good amount of these, but this is a great list

Enter ~ . to kill SSH session

When you walk away from an SSH session, and then come back after a while, a lot of the time you’ll find that the connection was dropped, and the terminal session is just frozen. If you’re using a GUI tool, you could just close out that tab and open a new one, then reconnect there. But what if you want to preserve the contents of that terminal session?

Press “Enter”, then “~”, then “.” (period) in order. It’ll kill the SSH session and bring you back to your regular prompt.

How I Sync Bookmarks from Chrome for Linux to my iOS Devices

I’m quite proud of myself for this one.

When I first saw “Sign In to Google Chrome” appear about a year ago, I cringed. Why would I want to sync bookmarks between all my devices?

Since then, I’ve changed my mind and decided that I want to do that. Problem is, my list of devices is as follows:

- Xubuntu desktop - Macbook Pro - iPhone 5 - iPad Air

The bulk of my bookmark collection existed in Chrome on the Xubuntu desktop, since that was my primary web browsing device before I switched it to being more of a server.

I signed my Xubuntu box and and my MBP into Google Chrome, and all my bookmarks (and extensions even!) synced like magic.

When it came time to deal with the iOS devices, I figured I’d be out of luck, since it only since with your computer if you use Safari. That, or I could download Chrome for iOS and use that, but… nahhh. Apple are jerks about third party browsers in iOS.

I was shocked, however, to find out that Apple now offers a utility to sync your Chrome, Firefox, or IE bookmarks to iCloud, and from there to your iOS devices, for WINDOWS ONLY. I guess this is because Safari for Windows was discontinued, and they realize that Windows users have iOS devices and want bookmark sync too. It pisses me off, though, that Apple won’t respect my decision to use Chrome on the Mac.

Doesn’t matter though, cause I found a way around it. Since my Xubuntu box sits running all day, I set aside 768 MB of its RAM to run a Windows 7 VM, which does nothing else but sit with Chrome signed in and the iCloud sync tool running in the system tray.

It works perfectly and seamlessly. I can bookmark something in Chrome for Mac or Linux, pick up my iPad, and the bookmark is there. The “Bookmarks Bar” even corresponds perfectly with the “Bookmarks Bar” and “new tab screen” on Safari for iPad.

I am reblogging this just for the dog pictures on the slides lol

November 28, 2013 at 01:48PM

One Year With Xubuntu

Exactly one year ago, I got fed up with the Mac, decided that I didn't want to be a Mac user anymore, and switched to Linux. The distro I chose was Xubuntu, and I've stuck with it. Ironically, you know what else I've ended up sticking with? Apple products, and particularly, the same 15" Macbook Pro I'd decided to give up using. My Xubuntu box is now a server that I still use for nearly everything, but I do it remotely from my Apple devices, which serve as thin clients. My setup consists of: - Xubuntu desktop - 2010 15" Macbook Pro, whose hard drive I replaced with an SSD - iPhone 5 - iPad Air The Xubuntu box still runs a desktop, but there's no monitor connected. I use the xorg dummy driver to trick the system into booting with a desktop, otherwise it would realize there's no display connected and not bother with one. I can VNC into this desktop from my MBP or my iPad. In most cases, though, VNC is heavy and unnecessary. Thanks to the rigorous training at my new job, I now prefer to do everything I possibly can at the command line, whether it's in Linux or in OSX. I have SSH keys set up so that my iPhone, iPad, and MBP can SSH into the box easily. For the iOS devices, I use the iSSH app to do so. On the MBP, I have an alias set up so that I just type "linuxbox" and it automatically runs the SSH command, with the proper alternate port that I use and everything. I use Namecheap dynamic DNS, combined with port forwarding on my router (Apple Airport Base Station) to allow me to SSH into my Xubuntu box from anywhere, without knowing my home network's public IP. When I SSH in, I can resume whatever I was doing previously on any device. I use vim and tmux together as my IDE, where tmux allows me to split one SSH connection into multiple terminal sessions. All I have to do is type "tmux attach" and I get back a tabbed multi-terminal environment with everything I was already working on. I have a simple FTP server running on the Xubuntu box that shares my filesystem locally, including video content. I use OPlayer on my iPad to watch videos that reside on the Xubuntu box, as it allows you to use FTP as a streaming source. I don't even bother using Banshee or any kind of graphical music player/organizer anymore. I now use Beets, a CLI music organizer, combined with my own personal scripts, to sync music to my USB flash drive seamlessly for listening in the car. So what do I use my Mac for? - browsing in Chrome - Skype - iMessage (all my friends that I text regularly have iPhones) - graphics editing (with Pixelmator) - MS Office for Mac - Sequel Pro (the best free mySQL GUI out there) - Transmit (to mount the Xubuntu box's filesystem locally on the MBP) Just running the Mac versions of proprietary software is much smoother and easier than trying to get Windows versions running in WINE. But I don't have to sacrifice any of the power or freedom that Linux provides, either. I'm getting the best of both worlds.

Touch-Pad Fix for Ubuntu/Xubntu Linux for Laptops

Installed Xubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) on a laptop that had a touchpad with a enable/disable button. The only problem is that the function the button was suppose to perform didn’t work.

Here is a the quickfix made possible by a piece of software called “touch-indicator”. You use the steps below via a terminal window to install the software using apt-get:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install touch-indicator

Have a blast using Linux!  

Colors scripts

How to create a simple bash script to display your terminal colorssaved in .Xdefaults (or…

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Reverse the order of a file or some text output

Let's say you're at the terminal, and you have some text output in the form of a series of lines. If you want to reverse the order of the lines, you can pipe it to tac, which is cat backwards. Example:

ls | tac

I had also come across tail -r to do the same thing, but that only works on files. It doesn't accept input from STDIN, so you can't pipe stuff to it.