Opera, an excellent web browser

Years ago I was looking for the next best thing in browsers.

Internet Explorer sucked in my opinion, in many ways it still lives up to that classification.

Netscape was on it's way out...

So I installed several browsers at the time.

Opera, Firefox, and Kameleon.

I liked Opera back then, but it was buggy, and at the time, nothing held a candle to Firefox.

Well that was some time ago. No one ever even hears of Netscape as a browser choice anymore.

I don't like Firefox anymore. I think Firefox is getting too bloated and huge.

I miss the simplicity of old Firefox.

After installing CrunchBang, I noticed one of the options was Opera.

I had been using Google Chrome, which is better in my opinion than Firefox.

After installing Opera 11.62 for Linux, my favorite browser quickly changed.

Opera is nothing at all like old Opera, but in the best of ways.

Here is a screenshot of the new Opera:

Rock solid performance, speed, and a sleek design that offers a plethora of tools at your disposal without cluttering up the user interface, this is what I have wanted in a browser for a long time.

I also found the email client to be smooth as silk, which is amazing since it's a built in browser email client, and those have been iffy at best.

The only thing I tweaked was setting the junk mail so it wouldn't show up in the unread mail list, which was pretty effortless.

Here is what the Opera team has to say about their excellent product:

"Lightning fast

Make your web browsing faster. Loading pages and running web applications is really snappy. You can even speed up browsing on slow connections, with Opera Turbo.

Safe and secure

Reduce your exposure to threats. Your safety is ensured by industry leading security, Fraud and Malware Protection and a clear display of your security level.

Smart features

Use great features that make browsing faster and easier. Opera has more features built in than other browsers. You can also add even more with extensions."

(This quoted material is from the webpage http://www.opera.com/browser/)

If your interested in downloading Opera for yourself, you can get it here:
http://www.opera.com/download/

P.S. Several weeks after running Opera, and loving it, I did find a flaw.

Opera refuses to let me post and image to Blogger.

Blogger is very trustworthy, and it should be my decision as to whether I can post there or not.

This is proper etiquette in the software world, the user should always have the last say in something like this.

This is a problem for me, and may mean my no longer using Opera.

Here is the error I recieve:
"Information from this secure page will be submitted to a page that is not secure on www.blogger.com.

Submitting sensitive information is strongly discouraged."

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CB.VU For fun, for you!

While mucking about the internet, i stumbled upon this website:

http://cb.vu/

It's a virtual Unix console, and it works pretty well.

I could only find one thing that didn't work for me, the weather app.

If your new to the "nix" console then this is the place to get yourself acquainted. You can't mess this up, which is perfect for beginners afraid of irrevocably damaging their machines or operating systems.

Here is what the creator of cb.vu has to say about his creation:

"Have a lot of fun... Oh and this site is bug free (of course :o)), still tell me if you crash it. 

If you are bored, try the commands clock or matrix or weather or reboot. Or even   

                                          

better: snake! Try to do better than the autopilot. If your are desperate, try   

                                            

snake -f3 -a -r and take some bets on the score... 

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

There are some functionalities which are not totally fake, like the commands ping,   

                                        

whereami, weather, fortune. Besides those, there is no communication whatsoever  

                                            

between the browser and the server. Everything is happening within your    

                                                  

navigator, I am sorry to frustrate your hacking instincts... You can however  

                                               

create files on the web root directory and even view them with the browser by    

                                            

entering the file name in the address bar. Use vi or try:  

                                                                                                                                                                                       

echo "Hello there, my name is Colin." > hello.txt  

                                                                                                                                                                                                

You can now view the file with cat hello.txt and check its existence with ls -l.  

                                           

Also view it on the browser with pr hello.txt or enter the URL:  

                                                            

http://cb.vu/hello.txt                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                             

Then delete the file with rm hello.txt.                                                                                      

                                                                                                                             

If you are a Unix/Linux/BSD user, you might be interested in the Unix Toolbox:                                               

http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml.                                                                                              

                                                                                                                             

I hope it was fun and drop me an email (c@cb.vu) if you liked it or have some                                                

suggestions.                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                             

sincerely yours,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Colin"

My hat is off to you Colin, excellent work!

Go to http://cb.vu/ and check it out, I think  you will be pleasantly surprised!

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Change of scenery

Well this is the third time I have re-written this notice.

I am forever not happy with my choices.

Welcome to what is hopefully the new look for Denny's Home World for a while...

But don't quote me on that.

The old template was actually causing me some problems with ease of use of the blog, i.e. I wanted it to have the bar at the top so I could quickly add an article or change something.

I hope you like the new look...
-Denny

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AllBootDisks.com to the rescue!

Very few of us have a reason to use DOS nowadays. (Disk Operating System)

But every once in a while, we are forced to use it for things like bios updates and other unique situations.

"AllBootDisks.com is your number one FREE resource for all Microsoft boot disks.

We offer a boot disk for everything from MS-DOS 3.3 to Windows XP Professional. These disks can be used to setup a new hard drive, scan an existing hard drive for errors, install or re-install Windows, upgrade your PC's BIOS, run DOS utilities and much more." - AllBootDisks.com website

AllBootDisks.com has boot iso images you can then burn to cd.

They have a very useful selection.

To look them over, go to http://www.allbootdisks.com

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Shutter, Take screen shots in style!

I found Shutter while messing with very simple window managers for Ubuntu. These window managers, unlike desktop environments such as unity or gnome, do not come with a screenshot utility already implemented.

So after a little search on Synaptic, I found Shutter.

While I usually look for the simplest software I can get to do any one task, I have to admit the Shutter program has a lot of useful features.

Here is a quote from an article about it's features:

"You can take screenshots of a specific area, a window, or your whole screen. With an addition to that you can apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then use it as per your need. Shutter is free, open-source, and licensed under GPL v3. I am sure you will find this simple program interesting and helpful.

Shutter features in detail:

· Capture a specific area: you can choose any arbitrary region of your screen and take screen shot this help you to capture only those parts you really need. Shutter offers two different tools to do so in order to meet any user’s taste.

· Capture a window: You can choose the window you want to take screen shot of and Shutter will highlight the currently select window in an attractive and useful way. It is even possible to simple select a window from a list and capture it right away.

· Capture a menu or tool tip: Capturing menus or tool tips is very easy with Shutter. You select one of the options and a (user-defined) countdown starts. During this time you can open the desired menu or let a specific tool tip come up. Shutter will recognize and capture it. This is a real advanced feature.

· Capture a website: Choose the website opened in the browser and it can take the screen shot of the website."

-Tech Stroke Shutter Article

http://techstroke.com/shutter-ubuntu-1004910-advanced-screen-shot-program.html

As of my writing this article, the official website for Shutter, shutter-project.org was unreachable due to technical issues.

Here's a screenshot of Shutter in action:

If you are the one with blender and gimp installed on you version of Ubuntu Studio, then this is definitely for you.

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Openbox Rocks!

When I fist installed and ran Openbox years ago, I thought it was way to simple for me.

When you first start up Openbox, it's basically an ugly grey screen with nothing but a right click menu.

I now realize what it really is, the tray, forks, knives and napkins at an all you can eat Linux buffet.

Openbox is simple because it's the foundation for what you intend to do with your desktop.

After installing and running applications like wicd-gtk, tint2, feh, obmenu, pcmanfm, and grun it can be molded to be beautiful, functional, simple, and quicker than greased lightning. (and maybe gkrellm if you like what you see below.)

My personal set up starts with a file I had to create in the /home/user/.config/openbox/ folder. the file named is autostart, and it is very useful. (Replace user with your username, for me it would be /home/denny/.config/openbox/... also, .config is hidden, you may have to use control h to unhide it.)

I right clicked in that folder, and chose 'create new' and then 'blank file'.

After naming it autostart, I added a autostart template from the Official Openbox Wiki.

My autostart file looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
feh --bg-scale /home/denny/Pictures/wallpapers/starnight.jpg & tint2 & wicd-gtk & gkrellm

Here I am telling feh to set my background image, then i fire up tint2, then wicd-gtk (i use a wireless network) and then for my weather and email checking I use gkrellm.

Tint2 is a panel application. I chose it because it is simple and elegant. You could just as easily install xfce4-panel or lxpanel, both would work quite nicely.

Since I use regular old Ubuntu, and then hack the stuffing out of it once it's installed, i do have at my disposal the wireless panel app that comes with regular Ubuntu, but for some reason it doesn't want to show up on Tint2 unless I actually add tint2 to the /etc/xdg/autostart/ folder in desktop configuration file format, which I would rather not do.

So I instead use wicd-gtk, which has been exceptional on this machine.

Here is my screenshot:

There are a lot of other Openbox screenshots available here:
http://openbox.org/wiki/Openbox:Screenshots

You can see feh has changed the background image, tint2 is displaying my running apps, shutter is taking the screenshots, gkrellm is telling me whether I have email, what the weather is like, and how my processor is doing, and wicd-gtk is handling my wireless net connection.

One of the first things I do when installing Openbox is to run obmenu, and then I use obmenu to add obmenu as a menu option. That way you can change the menu through the menu option your created, very useful.

I also install grun and add it to the menu. Then I add pcmanfm to the menu, listed above in the menu options as home. with these few things you have a very easy way to get to and to do the rest of your modifications without having to fire up your terminal window to do so.

I top it off with some of my favorite cli apps like moc for my music player and htop in the "tools section", and I use terminator for my terminal emulator. These are all just suggestions, the fun part of Openbox is making it your own!

I hope after reading my little article you give openbox a try again... it can be quite rewarding, and make your machine run much faster.

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Terminator a first class terminal emulator

I am enough of a Linux geek to where I use the terminal emulator a lot. So many tasks can be accomplished faster and with less "clutter".

As much as I find Gnome-Terminal a fine app, there is definitely room for improvement.

I especially don't like how gnome-terminal uses the f10 key as one of it's hot keys, blocking use of the much used key in cli programs like Midnight Commander,  HTop and others. (CLI stands for Command Line Interface, for those of you who did not know.)

Besides gnome-terminal's weaknesses, I also find Terminator's ability to split the screen into two three or more panels inside the main screen of Terminator to be very useful.

It's great to be troubleshooting a problem with google using Links while chatting up the Ubuntu guys over at irc.freenode.org, channel #ubuntu for help using irssi, all on the same screen.

There is actually a lot more features than I have listed here.

Here are some screenshots of some of my usual setups with Terminator:

Well that's enough for me, here is what Chris Jones, Terminator's creator, has to say about his unique and useful software:

"Terminator - Multiple GNOME terminals in one window

Terminator  is  a program that allows users to set up flexible arrangements of GNOME terminals. It is aimed at those who normally arrange lots of  terminals  near  each  other,  but don't want to use a frame based window manager.

The  layout  can be modified by moving terminals with Drag and Drop.  To start dragging a terminal, click and hold on its titlebar.   Alternatively,  hold  down  Ctrl, click and hold the right mouse button.  Then, **Release Ctrl**. You can now drag the terminal to the point in the layout you would like it to be.   The  zone  where  the terminal would be inserted will be highlighted."

"The goal of this project is to produce a useful tool for arranging terminals.
It is inspired by programs such as gnome-multi-term, quadkonsole, etc. in that the main focus is arranging terminals in grids (tabs is the most common default method, which Terminator also supports).

Much of the behaviour of Terminator is based on GNOME Terminal, and we are adding more features from that as time goes by, but we also want to extend out in different directions with useful features for sysadmins and other users."

These quotes are from Terminator's man pages, and from http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator.

I think that if you use the terminal window enough, you will find Terminator a very valuable tool.

For more information, I suggest you go to Chris Jones's website, http://www.tenshu.net/.

Their is a Terminator button right on the top of the page.

If you are interested in installing it, in Ubuntu you can do so using the command sudo apt-get install terminator. You can also get it by searching for it in Synaptic or Ubuntu's new Software Center.

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