WinMin

Someone at Microsoft gave a talk the other day about the development of Windows 7 (Vista’s successor) and they discussed how they’re currently working on the Windows kernel. Its very heart and sole. They said, and I paraphrase, that Vista is extremely bloated but that “WinMin,”  a minimized version of Windows that only has core functionality is a very streamlined OS that only takes up a tad less than 25MB.

If you’ve ever compiled your own kernel on Linux you now that 25MB and streamlined don’t even belong in the same sentence together. If my memory serves me correctly the last time I compiled my kernel it was only like ~4-5MB.

Thats pretty sad. And to think that MS-DOS can’t hardly do half was what bash can do these days.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Paludis Updates

Two new versions of Paludis have been released recently. 0.26.0_alpha1 and alpha2. This brings a lot of good changes and EAPI 1 compatibility. As far as I can tell from the website thats something that pkgcore has yet to achieve. This is an Alpha update though so it still has some problems but they are being actively worked on. I can’t give any time frames but there are generally commits to the code everyday.

I do all my work on Windows at work so my Vim at work is really tricked out. But at home on Linux some things don’t seem to work as well. So I’m trying to figure how to make the Proggy fonts look normal on Linux. On Windows I don’t have any problems, but on Linux they look spaced funny. I don’t know, so for now I’m stuck with the default font until I get it figured out. Vim’s default handling of fonts is probably my only real complaint about the program.

Right now, I will not lie, I’m running Ubuntu. I’ve been waiting on 0.26 to come out before I reinstall Gentoo. Until then I’m just sort of hanging out waiting. Ubuntu is an excellent short term solution but in the long run its the kind of Linux I’d want to keep around. I can’t wait to get Gentoo back though. Temp installs kill me. The new version of Ubuntu is the best yet though. No reason not to try it really.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Updates

Well, a lot of comments and a little free time I’ve been doing some updating. I updated the About page here on my blog, check it out and learn all about me. I also updated my vim cheat sheet after several people left some comments and corrections on it. And finally after a very long time I have once again updated my Google Page. I removed a lot of empty pages I planned one day writing. I decided I was never going to write them so they are gone. I also removed a lot dead links and junk. I don’t know when the last I time I brought it up was, but I probably updated my vimrc too. Not major changes but ones that seem to help me a lot.

And according to the rumor mill, Paludis v0.26_alpha is set to be released soon. Soon of course doesn’t mean much as it could be tomorrow or a month from now, but which ever way you look at it, thats pretty soon. Also expect a lot of big changes. So the Gentoo community has something good to look foward to for once.

Enjoy the Penguins!

KDE Pervert Devs

You know, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Thank you KDE Potato Head dev, who ever you are.

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Vim Reference Card and Sabayon

First I’d like to apologize for posting on nothing but Vim for the past week or two, I suddenly became infatuated (or bored, whatever) with Vim and decided to see what kind of power I could truly harness out of it.

As a Vim user I find myself constantly hunting through documentation and various “quick” reference documents looking for what I needed. Well needless to say that is rarely a quick process so I wrote my own reference card. I’ve written it for newbies mainly. Experienced vim-ers might find it handy for brain freezes but other than that these should mainly commands you’ve already memorized. So, I’d love to see some comments on it and to tell me what you think, especially if your new to Vim, because that is who I really made it for as plenty exist for the accomplished.

G/vim Reference Card 

In non-vim related news I find myself fascinated by package managers. Facinated only in an observatory fashion. The developer(s) (there are only like three) of Sabayon Linux has been working on their own package manager named “Entropy.” I’ve spoken of this project before, the first time I did the source code was not available, the second I’m not sure if it was or not but that was when Lxnay made an ass of himself in #paludis.

Anyway, it was orginaly, supposed to be an 100% fully independent package manager. Much like Paludis is. Well, for what ever reason, though I have my suspicions, it has lost some of its glory and is now merely more like a pkgcore. Its basically become a superset of Portage. Yeah, needless to say I’ve now lost all interest in it. Oh well.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Being lazy with Vim

Although I’ve never actually written any software you’d actually use I do find myself writing a lot of pointless software mainly for own amusement. My current job only requires I look at software not write it. But anyway in my adventures every now and then I come across software that assists me as I do the piddling I do. So in my original quest to find a Vim plugin that completes braces, brackets, etc. I stumbled upon this. While its called, “Brace Complete,” it only completes braces for if and while statements. Which works really well in practice unlike automatic brace and parenthesis completion does in every situation. There are a lot of times in C/C++ coding you want empty parenthesis, which in turn makes their auto-completion annoying a lot of times. If you must have it though, you can find it here.

Enjoy the Penguins!

A new vimrc

After neglecting it for months I’ve finally updated my vimrc. It has changed quite a bit so if I suggest you take a peek at it if your a vim-er. Also if you haven’t noticed Ciaran McCreesh’s website is gone. I don’t know if it will ever come back or not but for now its gone. Until it comes back I’ve republished his vimrc here. Without his permission actually, but if he complains I’ll take it down. I actually had to goto Waybackmachine to get it. But it makes for a great reference because I got a considerable amount of mine from his. Either way both are great resources, mine more so for the newbies.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Vim for Windows

As is the case with most people I’m forced to do my work at work on Windows PC. In my case its Windows XP but either way its Windows. One thing I have noticed about Windows is that when you run programs originally meant for Linux on it things change. In my case Vim seems to not be able to do a lot of things. My guess is its because the binary I used was compiled with different flags, most notably its the “BIG” version as opposed to the “HUGE” version I’m used to. Which leads me to have to remove a lot from my vimrc file. The most obvious difference for me is my syntax highlighting. While inkpot works fine with gvim, it looks atrocious under DOS (as 99% do) so I had to revert to using the standard blue theme included by default with Vim.
Load colorscheme
if has("gui_running")
colorscheme inkpot
else
colorscheme blue " The best MS-DOS can do
endif
Another thing that has come up, is if you use the vimrc listed here on this page you’ll find a lot of its features don’t work, thus be prepared to delete a lot of that file. I’m going to list it all here because it would take to much, but be warned I had to delete a lot.

Finally, if your new to vim, you like myself, will find that the only way to learn vim is to use vim. Thus when you load up gvim you’ll need to get rid of a lot of the GUI features that ruin your vim skills, so don’t forget this tidbit either in your vimrc.
" No menu or toolbar
set guioptions-=m
set guioptions-=T

" Only rightscrollbars
set guioptions-=Ll
set guioptions+=Rr

" Nice copy'n'paste
set guioptions+=a

" No tear off menus
set guioptions-=t
I hope that helps some, especially if your new to the game.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Vim Question

I know my blog probably isn’t the best place to ask questions and expect a response but I thought I’d try it anyway.

• Question
  When I double click a file to open it, it opens a new instance of Gvim. Can I force Gvim to keep only one instance and instead open all new files I’ve double clicked in new tabs instead?
• Answer
  ???

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Nice programming fonts

At work I’m forced to do all my programming work on Windows XP, maybe Vista when I get my new laptop, but for now XP. Anyway I still use Gvim to do it all with but the default font for Gvim using Windows is hideous, though the default Linux font is pretty nice in my opinion. So I was looking for the command to set the font permanently in my vimrc and I ran across this thread on Vim’s tips site. This site eventually led me here, where I found something I’d actually recommend to other people. The first I found is Dina, I know little to nothing about fonts, but this one feels easy on my eyes thus far, so for now I’m going to stick with it. I haven’t tried all the fonts on that site, there are a lot, but I’d recommend it to any other programmer out there.

In other vim news I’ve been using the inkpot theme for G/vim. I like inkpot a lot but it appear to only work in my GUI. If you read this Mr. McCreesh could you please enlighten me on which terminals it works in? I noticed the header says it will only work in certain ones but none of the ones I have tried thus far seem to accept it. Those include Gnome Terminal, the default terminal emulator in Xfce call Terminal I think (real creative there), and the default terminal in KDE. I have not tried Aterm or Eterm yet though. Either way I ended up having to set up a “If has” statement in my vimrc to select pablo if I’m running gui-less. Oh well.

Enjoy the Penguins!