Recently in Text editors Category

Not that anything approaching brain-surgery-level thinking was in any way involved here, but I figured out why and how it's easy to get paragraphs to automatically indent when writing in the Geany text editor.

First of all, it's not called automatic tabbing or paragraph inentation. The correct term for what I'm enjoying so much is auto-indentation and it can be turned on and off under the Document menu in Geany. The defaults for auto-indentation can also be set in the Edit menu under Preferences--Editor.

When writing for print, where I don't need — and can't stand — having two returns between paragraphs. After transferring the file from this laptop to my newspaper's print publishing system, those double-returns demand that I delete one of them. That's because in most non-Web publishing, indented first lines make paragraphs distinct from one another, not extra linefeeds.

So having the indents on the first line of every paragraph helps me seen where each paragraph begins.

I know that programmers use indents to help structure their code. But when something so right for coding in C also helps hacks like me, making traditional word processing applications less needed, everybody wins.

I know I said in a previous entry that Debian's Xfce installation didn't exactly provide what I wanted, but looking at what I need, Debian rises to the top of the pack.

Top of my list: Installing Debian with encrypted LVM. Especially in a laptop, encryption is a must to secure your data from prying eyes, should the laptop be lost or stolen.

And any little utility that Wolvix has can probably be added in Debian. And Aptitude is very good. It's not graphical, but it represents the best of Debian.

And I still trust the security team for Debian more than I do most others — this despite the OpenSSL problem that has recently plagued every Debian-based distro in recent weeks. (At least somebody figured it out, and the whole incident should tighten up things considerably in the Debian Project).

And in Debian, I can easily install all of our little girl's educational programs, although she is fairly vocal about preferring to use the newer, faster $0 Laptop, a 1.3GHz Celeron-based Gateway laptop with 1GB of RAM.

The only "stopper" is Google's lack of willingness to easily let users install Google Gears in Mozilla-derived browsers not named Firefox. That means it's a pain in the ass to install Gears with Iceweasel, the Debian-derived, noncopyrighted equivalent to Firefox.

And I haven't tried Debian on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt since I boosted the RAM from 64MB to 144MB. Responsiveness in X could be a lot better with such a relative overabundance of RAM.

So as far as the Compaq goes, I'm down to running Debian or Wolvix on the hard drive and Puppy as a live CD. Like I said previously, I don't want to kill out OpenBSD just yet, so I'll need either a second hard drive or a 4GB Compact Flash card with CF-to-IDE laptop adapter (the latter available for a quite-reasonable $10 at LogicSupply.com). I might even spring for a second hard-drive caddy for the Compaq, should I be able to find one, to make swapping the drives that much easier.

Or I could bite the bullet, get rid of OpenBSD for the time being, try out Debian and Wolvix on the hard drive, and narrow things down. I'll continue to run Puppy, with a separate partition for its encrypted pup_save file.

I've taken to using the Leafpad text editor in Puppy (I'm using it now), and the Leafpad-derived Mousepad editor in Xfce is just as fast, if spartan. Xfce's Terminal app has similar attributes. And I have no problem running xterm or rxvt.

It's really about the text editors and browsers I use, the software my daughter likes to run, stability, security, encryption and ease of maintenance.

Moreover, it's about speed on old hardware. These things look very different on newer computers. My 2002-era Gateway laptop runs Ubuntu very well. I doubt I could even boot Ubuntu on this Compaq. Even the Xubuntu live CD won't boot. With Debian, I have no problem.

On the Gateway, Ubuntu's polish as compared to Debian makes Ubuntu a better choice. But on this older Compaq, Debian's flexibility and added speed (don't ask me why it's faster, it just is) are much needed.

Next moves: I need to get a PCMCIA Ethernet card since I don't have regular access to WiFi. While I'm at it, a PCMCIA card for USB is something I should also look into. Sure, I could transfer files over the network, but USB is ... easier. (Note: Since this post was originally written, I have gotten an Ethernet card for the Compaq).

Previously:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part I — Puppy or Damn Small Linux
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part II — OpenBSD or Debian?
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part III — Browsers and wireless
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part IV — Wolvix Cub is surprisingly strong
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part V — Where I'm headed
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VI — Younger Puppies

Coming up:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")

In the battle for which operating system runs best on the $15 Laptop, Puppy Linux has pulled out front as the fastest system with the most features I need and best functionality on this 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt.

In case you're wondering, here are the specs of the Compaq:

233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor
144 MB RAM
3 GB hard drive

I recently bumped the RAM from 64MB to the maximum of 144MB. Before this increase, running Linux or OpenBSD (which I have installed on the hard drive) with the X Window System was difficult at best.

Smaller applications like the Dillo Web browser, the Abiword and Ted word processors, the Geany and Beaver text editors ran pretty well in 64MB of RAM.

But the 500-pound gorilla of graphical applications is Firefox.

It would be nice to get by with Dillo, but many — if not most — of the things I need to do with a computer these days require a fairly modern browser.

Whether it's blogging, working on Dailynews.com, or on the Movable Type back end, it all happens in the browser.

And for that I need, at a minimum, Firefox 1.5.

Now that Damn Small Linux offers Firefox 2 (under the name Bon Echo, but for all intents and purposes an early release in the FF 2 series), that system is more than fair game for use on this laptop.

Unfortunately, while the browser runs great, other things in DSL have not been working so well.

For some reason, the desktop wallpaper doesn't work. Instead, I have a plain, gray X Window background. And while JWM (Joe's Window Manager) is the default in Damn Small Linux like in Puppy, switching over to Fluxbox in DSL has been problematic. Some builds have allowed me to use the Fluxbox menu, but others don't seem to work at all.

I could live without desktop wallpaper (or I could figure out a solution to the problem), but with Puppy Linux (I'm currently using version 2.13 but could easily upgrade to the newer 4.00 at any time) I get a nice-looking desktop, the Mozilla-based Seamonkey Web suite, Abiword (about as fast as DSL's Ted word processor but with the added ability to read and write .doc files), the Geany text editor, the ROX filer and quite a few other applications I've grown to like very much over the year and a half I've been using Linux.

And as far as speed goes, Puppy and DSL are quite equal on this hardware.

Coming up:

• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part II — OpenBSD or Debian?
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part III — Browsers and wireless
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part IV — Wolvix Cub is surprisingly strong
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part V — Where I'm headed
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VI — Younger Puppies
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VII — Debian with Xfce and Fluxbox calls
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")

If you've been reading this blog for awhile (or spent a few hours back in the archives), you know that I run Debian, Ubuntu, Puppy, OpenBSD and Damn Small Linux a lot.

I have had a Slackware box in the past, but I didn't stick with it. Still, one of my very favorite distributions is Wolvix, which is based on Slackware 11.

While I'm generally a GNOME fan, especially on faster boxes, and not a big user of KDE, even on faster boxes, there's a lot of software in the full Slackware installation. Since I'm OK using KWord (and not OpenOffice Writer or Abiword) for the few times I need to kick out a .doc file, I don't feel the need at this very moment to install one of the GNOME add-on projects for Slackware.

If I could, I would install Dropline GNOME, but since the box I'm using is NOT i686 compatible, I can't do that. GNOME Slackbuild looks like it will work, and I might install it, but since the default Slackware installation is working so well, I'm loathe to mess up a good thing.

Here's what I like about Slackware:

In the default installation, just about everything works

Easy-to-use console utilities make managing the box relatively easy. I'm talking about:

xwmconfig
netconfig
mouseconfig
pkgtool (surprisingly helpful when adding or removing packages)

A bunch of window managers, easily selectable before starting X with the xwmconfig utility. It may not have GNOME, but a full Slackware installation does have:

KDE
XFCE
Fluxbox
Blackbox
WindowMaker
Fvwm2
Twm

On occasion, I do use Fvwm2, which I grew to like from OpenBSD, where it's the default WM. Things really speed up on slow boxes when you use Xfce, Fluxbox or any of the window managers that are not KDE.

Other things I like about Slackware:

Long-term support. The Slackware team keeps the security patches coming for many of its releases. I still see updates for Slackware 8.1, which was released in 2002. Six years is pretty impressive. It's up there with the "enterprise" releases from Red Hat and SUSE.

Slapt-get. After using Wolvix and now Slackware itself with slapt-get, I'm a total believer. It makes maintaining a Slackware box much, much easier. Get it here.

Lots of editors. Slackware may not include my favorite (Geany) but nonetheless has tons of editors built in:

Vi
Vim
Gvim
Nano
Xedit
Kwrite
Kate
Kedit
Emacs
Jed
Joe
Mousepad
(and some I probably missed)

Three major Web browsers:

Firefox
Seamonkey (which also features a mail client and HTML-generating app)
Konqueror

I've grown fond of Seamonkey, which is the main browser in Puppy Linux. I usually use Firefox, but it's nice to have Seamonkey there in case I need the Composer app to do some HTML, or to use the mail client (even though I'm pretty much accustomed to Thunderbird).

I like a lot of choices, and while I'd really like Slackware to include Abiword and maybe even OpenOffice, I can add these packages later if I decide I really need them. But I probably don't and won't.

I haven't made the leap to Slackbuilds yet, but I have had success with Robby Workman's precompiled packages.

Great projects derived from Slackware:

Wolvix
ZenWalk
Vector
Slax

I'm VERY partial to Wolvix. If I need to set up a box quickly with all the software I want/need, Wolvix Hunter is the way to do it. Wolvix has one of the best, most flexible installers I've ever seen. You can run Wolvix as a live CD, or in a "frugal" or full hard-drive installation. All are easy to do.

Default fonts in Slackware look better than default fonts in Debian

I like to gave good-looking fonts right out of the gate. Slackware is as good as any modern distribution in this regard. Debian fonts look OK on an LCD screen, horrible on a CRT. I've gotten used to them, and I no longer change them, but I still prefer nice, smooth fonts.

If you're going to run KDE, Slackware's the fastest way to do it

SimplyMepis with KDE is simply unusable on this 2002-era box. It's too slow by far. Slackware makes KDE usable on this old PC.

Granted, KDE is just as fast in Debian, so that's another good choice for the KDE fan who wants to use their favorite window manager on an old box.

A little advice: If you use KDE in Debian, save yourself a lot of trouble and use Aptitude or apt; Kpackage didn't work for me. And conversely, in Slackware use pkgtool/installpkg/upgradepkg or slapt-get/Gslapt, not Kpackage. Maybe some of you have had a better experience with Kpackage. For whatever reason, I don't like it.

Coming soon: Things I don't like about Slackware

I'm back using the Geany text editor in Windows. I also use it in OpenBSD and in Linux.

I like applications that I can use across platforms. Things like Firefox, OpenOffice, Abiword, Pidgin, and other too numerous to name make life easier for those of us who use three or more different operating systems. The apps also showcase free, open-source software for those who are using proprietary operating systems and give them a reason to explore FOSS further, perhaps even trying something like Linux.

If you learn to love a bunch of free applications, why not try the OS that is just as free?

Anyway, I have a lot of requirements for a text editor, as I'm sure do most of us who use them heavily.

One thing that Geany doesn't do that I need is an easy way to rename files. It's easy enough in a Unix-like shell, or in the finder in Windows, OS X or anything else, to change a file name, but I like to be able to change the name of a file right in the text editor.

Sure, you could always do a "save as" and have the old file with the old name and a new file with the new name, but I like to save steps and have the application do it all for me.

EditPadLite, which isn't FOSS, has a "Rename/Move" function. I don't believe that Notepad++ has it, either.

At any rate, my life would be that much more complete if Geany had a "rename file" feature.

Now that I've got that off my chest, it's back to work.

After having problems with line spacing a couple of versions ago in the Windows build of the Geany text editor, I moved over to Notepad++.

While Notepad++ is a nice applications, I prefer Geany because I also use it in Linux and OpenBSD (especially in OpenBSD, where it's my default editor in X).

But the line-spacing problem was killing me. Using the default Windows linefeeds, I kept getting extra lines in my text files, which was a problem when it came to copy/pasting my text.

Today I downloaded the latest version of Geany for Windows, and the linefeed problem seems to have gone away. I looked in the release notes for the past two versions, and I didn't seen any reference to the problem, but the fact that I can now use Geany in Windows means that Notepad++ will fade to the background for awhile.

I don't use Geany to write hard-core code. I mostly just run it for general writing and a bit of text cleanup and HTML coding. There are probably better editors for heavy HTML coding, and that's something I'll have to look into.

To run Geany in Windows, you need the GTK+ runtime libraries. If you don't already have them, and chances are if you are unsure, you probably don't, download the version of Geany that includes them.

If you do have GTK+ — and I do because I installed it along with the GIMP image editor — use the "nogtk" version.

For Linux and BSDs, Geany is usually available as a package.

Go here for all info on Geany for Windows and Unix-like OSes.

I'll be using Geany in Windows rather heavily over the next week or so, and I'll write about it again in the near future.

I've taken a few days off from OpenBSD, and in the interim I ran the NetBSD live CD for the first time on the Gateway Solo 1450 (the $0 Laptop). Again, it looks great, but I'm so far from figuring out how to manage the CPU fan in any of the BSDs that I'm not optimistic about running any of them on this laptop. I wish it were different, but until the heavens open and the path forward is made much more clear, I'll stick to desktops (and my old 1999-era Compaq Armada pre-ACPI laptop) for BSD.

During that time, I booted into Debian Lenny on the Gateway and installed 141 updates. Debian Lenny is moving along very quickly. I'm ready to put an Etch install alongside it for comparison's sake during the wait for Ubuntu 8.04 ... which is two months at this writing.

The best text editor for the job: The other day, I needed to do some work at home, and I wasn't having a great time with the Gedit text editor in Lenny. I somehow thought that Gedit had a way to change the case of words, but the Lenny version (Gedit 2.20.4) didn't seem to have it. Was I imagining it, or did the Gedit in Ubuntu 7.10 have this feature? (See below for the answer.)

Anyhow, I need a better editor ... so I went into Synaptic and installed three: Geany, Bluefish and Scite. I'm going to try them all out. So far I can't seem to change the case of letters automatically in Bluefish, but there are so many features that can help with Web development that it's probably worth using. But for the level of work I'm doing, I'm relying on Geany the most at the moment. I haven't used Scite much, but I do plan to give it a try soon.

But ... GEdit does have the ability to change the case of words/letters. Under Edit -- Preferences -- Plugins, there's a Change Case plugin. I enabled it, and now I can change case via the menu with Edit -- Change Case. I prefer to use the keyboard to do this ... so I'll probably keep the other editors in contention.

Foresight Linux: The Foresight Linux booth at SCALE 6X was fairly busy. I could barely get near it during the show, and since I didn't really put 2 and 2 together and remember that Foresight is dedicated to presenting the latest in the GNOME desktop environment, I didn't linger. But I do want to give Foresight a try. It has separate install and live images, so I downloaded the live CD image and am m going to see what it's like.

I'll be your server: I've never set up a server, and all this work with OpenBSD makes me want to roll one myself. I'm going to try to do one on the local network with NFS, Samba, FTP and Apache. I'll probably try in OpenBSD and Debian as well as Damn Small Linux.

Two excellent Linux books: Since I'm not made of money, I got both of these from the library. The "Linux Administration Handbook, " by by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein and an army of more recent contributiors, is a hefty tome that's long on advice, Unix/Linux history and what people like to call "best practices."

While much of the book is flying right over my head, and I don't think you could really administer a system without a secondary reference that's specific to the Linux distribution you're using, this is a very valuable book that every serious Linux user should have. Especially when it comes to servers, there's a lot of information here.

"Linux Administration Handbook" is heavy on the philosophy of how to set up and maintain a system, and amid a sea of distro-specific how-tos that expire with every six-month release, that's a good thing to have. Still, what books like "Linux Administration Handbook" make evident is that at one level, most Linux systems are more alike than they are different, and the skills you develop using one distribution are very much transferable to the others. However, there are pointers everywhere in the book to specific instructions for Red Hat/Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu and Suse.

And if you want to see how professional sysadmins (or at least the good ones) go about their work, this is the book to get. It can't be the only book on your Linux shelf, but "Linux Administration Handbook" pairs very well with a doorstop-sized distro-specific how-to (like the "Unleashed" series of books, or Mark Sobell's "Practical" guide series) to help you get a handle on making Linux work for you.

The other book I got from the library, "Linux Administrator Street Smarts: A Real-World Guide to Linux Certification Skills," by Roderick W. Smith, is a great book for anyone who wants to figure out how Linux works from the command line. The book doesn't assume a vast knowledge of Linux or Unix. It offers many tips, instructions, and again, "best practices" on how to configure and manage a Linux system. This book is also not distro-specific; instead, it's one of the best command-line-centered books I've seen when it comes to basic system administration.

I don't know how good "Linux Administrator Street Smarts: A Real-World Guide to Linux Certification Skills," in helping you get actual "certification skills," but it will definitely help with the basics of setting up and maintaining a server or desktop.

Smith's style is clear and concise -- a rarity in these kind of books, which often leave me more confused than not. I definitely recommend taking a look at this "Street Smarts" volume.

So I had two winners here. I would probably buy both of these books, but that said, I still turn to Carla Schroder's "Linux Cookbook," which I'd love to see updated, and Michael Stutz's same-name-but-different "Linux Cookbook," which could use an update even more.

If I was in a buying mood, I'd get a more recent O'Reilly book, "Linux System Administration," by Tom Adelstein and Bill Lubanovic, and I really like Chris Negus' new "Toolbox" series of distro-specific books. They're fairly cheap and filled with good, timely tips, emphasis on the "timely" part. If only all of these great books were updated every couple of years instead of five years ... or never.

Click frequency: The "publish every day at 5 a.m." thing hasn't been working out so well of late. I just haven't had all that much time to do entries in advance, but I have had an entry every day ... just not prewritten to publish at 5 a.m.

One man's FreeBSD: I admire this guy, William Denton, for chronicling eight years of personal use of FreeBSD.

Debian ... ah, Debian: In case it's not evident, I still really enjoy using Debian. While I'm a great believer in the slimmed-down application mix in the default install of Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) -- with less indeed being more, on many levels I've had a whole lot more success with Debian.

I've done the default GNOME install of Debian, the Xfce and KDE installs, a "standard" install to which I've added X, and a few "standard" installs that were console-only. The flexibility of Debian is legendary, as is its stability and usability.

Some of my hardware has been supported better by Ubuntu at times, but I keep coming back to Debian. I'd love for Debian Lenny to support the Alps touchpad as well as Ubuntu Gutsy does. I'm hoping it'll happen before Lenny is frozen, and I will be trying Ubuntu Hardy when it comes out, but I'd love for Linux in general to get everything right for my Gateway laptop.

But since fan management has gotten worse, not better, over the past six months in the Linux kernels I've used, I'm only cautiously optimistic.

Yesterday I went on about the man page for fvwm, the default X window manager in OpenBSD.

It clearly says that, in the absence of a .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, fvwm will look in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/ for a file called system.fvwmrc:

During initialization, fvwm will search for a configuration file which describes key and button bindings, and a few other things. The format of these files will be described later. First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwmrc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm). Failing that, it will look for system.fvwmrc in ${sysconfdir} for system-wide defaults. If that file is not found, fvwm will be basically useless.

There's a file called system.fvwm2rc in that directory, but it doesn't control fvwm. I know this because I added a line to it, stopped X and restarted it. No change.

Since fvwm looks for the .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory, I decided to create one with the help of the system.fvwm2rc file mentioned in the man page.

I used the Geany editor, but substitute any text editor you wish (I'm just more comfortable in a GUI editor when it comes to things like copying and pasting. I don't use vi enough to be all that proficient).

Here's how to do it:

Log on with your user account, open an xterm window and do the following (again, substitute your favorite editor for geany, or install the geany package on your OpenBSD system with $ sudo pkg_add -i geany):

$ geany /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/system.fvwm2rc

Under the File menu in Geany, choose Save As, then navigate to your home directory and save the file as .fvwmrc (in other words, create /home/~/.fvwmrc, substituting the name of your user's home file for ~)

Now you should have a .fvwmrc file in your home directory that is editable by the user account. Modifying the menus is pretty easy. I've already added a category for applications and added all the apps I've installed thus far to it.

I'd still love to find out where the systemwide fvwm configuration file really lives. I don't have enough Unix or OpenBSD knowledge to do so at this point.

I've stuck with fvwm because it's the default window manager in OpenBSD, and it's pretty nice once you learn about it. I've got a long way to go, that's for sure.

Fvwm note: Changes in your .fvwmrc aren't implemented until you quit X and restart it.

Applications I've added to my OpenBSD box thus far:

Geany (text editor)
Dillo (lightweight GUI browser)
Firefox (heavyweight GUI browser)
Nano (console text editor; I just "get it" more than vi)
MC (console file manager)
Rox (the ROX-filer GUI file manager)
Abiword (relatively lightweight word processor)
Ted (even lighter RTF-format word processor)

I haven't added a mail client, and I might add Sylpheed or Thunderbird. I might also add mutt, fetchmail and msmtp and try POP mail from the command line for one account. Generally, though, the whole console e-mail thing baffles me -- and yes, I have done it before. I generally find a GUI mail client or Web mail interface so much easier that I don't need to spend days and days fiddling with mutt.

Essential OpenBSD reading: The OpenBSD Journal. I just found out about this, although I'm sure I've been here before.

Also: OpenBSD 101.

Ted on OpenBSD: I installed the Ted word processor -- an exceedingly light application that reads and produces files in rich text format -- which can be read and edited by most word-processing applications, including Microsoft Word.

Ted on OpenBSD ... how to actually run it:

This doesn't work:

$ ted

But this does:

$ Ted

Remember, Unix-like OSes are case sensitive, and in the case of Ted, it's really capital T, small e, small d.

I've been grumbling about Ted not working in Debian for an age, but Ted works fine in OpenBSD. I'll probably use Geany for most of my work, though. I got used to Geany by using it in Puppy Linux, and while I'm not crazy about its Windows implementation, in Linux/Unix, I still really like it.

So I think I'm "discovering" the NetBSD live CD, but I learn that Distrowatch announced the damn thing in 2006. All I can say is that I'm very, very impressed.

It's NetBSD, it boots on my temperamental test box, and not only does it have X, it has a full KDE desktop with tons of applications -- the full KOffice, Konqueror, Firefox, Abiword, K3b, Krita, the GIMP, Inkscape, JuK, XMMS, -- hell, just say it's got a full KDE 3.5.4 setup and then some, and NetBSD autoconfigured for my monitor (with the VESA option) and looks absolutely gorgeous.

If the NetBSD people could someday, someway, make this an installable live CD, they'd really have something here. So far, this looks and works better on my computer than DesktopBSD and PC-BSD. I guess the one thing this version of NetBSD is missing when compared to DesktopBSD and PC-BSD is graphical package managment, but the rest of it looks and works so well ...

While the NetBSD live CD attempts to configure a static IP address for you (ignore this if you use DHCP), it didn't work. To configure a static IP in NetBSD at a terminal -- and it is slightly different than doing the same thing in Linux -- here's how to do it (adapted from my similar tutorial for the FreeBSD-based FreeSBIE live CD):

My Ethernet interface, usually eth0 in Linux, is called rtk0 in NetBSD. If you're unsure, run this command:

$ ifconfig -a

That should output the name of your Ethernet interface.

To set the static IP in NetBSD I either used the same terminal window or opened a terminal window (Konsole in the KDE menu works fine) and became root:

$ su
(When prompted, for a password, the root password is root. If you signed on as root, you don't have to su, since you're already root).

At the # prompt, do the following (substituting your own networking numbers, of course):

# ifconfig rtk0 192.9.200.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.9.200.255

# route add default 192.9.200.254
(Note: don’t use route add default gw, like in Linux — gw is not needed. As above, enter your own router/gateway address)

I also set up my name servers in /etc/resolv.conf (I used vi because I knew it would be there. You can also use any of the other KDE text editors in the live CD environment. Use any text editor you wish in its place:

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

once in the file, I added these lines:

domain yourdomain.com
nameserver 192.9.200.4
nameserver 192.9.200.2

(as always, add your own search domain and name server IPs, then save and close the file; you should now be ready to start Firefox and begin browsing the Web. Note: my connection doesn't require use of a domain in /etc/resolv.conf)

And again, if you have a dynamic connection, ignore this completely.

Additional info: Look at this PDF, which looks like a PowerPoint presentation for some background on BSD live CDs.

Notepad++ is working out pretty well so far. The latest Windows text editor in my quest for a better, freer text-editing experience, Notepad++ is under the GPL license, so it's free and open-source. It's also not a port of a Linux/Unix editor like Geany, and the annoying Geany bug -- in which extra linefeeds (or carriage returns?) are inserted in Windows (CR/LF) formatted text files -- is thankfully not present in Notepad++.

In fact, Notepad++ allows you to set whether you want your text files to be in Windows (CR/LF), Unix (LF) or Mac (CR???) format. Since the files look the way I want (and cut/paste that way) in the default Windows format, I'm pretty happy. I like the way you can change the case of letters -- ctrl-U for lower-case, ctrl-shift-U for upper. I'll have to get used to it, because every other program I use does it a different way.

The search/replace function in Notepad++ is very good. It even keeps your previous search/replace words in a drop down so you can use them again in the session. I haven't yet figured out how to search for text and replace it with a carriage return/linefeed, but if I figure that one out, Notepad++ will become a must-have editor on my Windows box.

Notepad++ seems to remember the last directory I saved to, and all newly created files default to that directory. But I don't think it remembers the directory from the last time the program ran. EditPad Lite does remember, and it's a great help. I wouldn't be opposed to setting my "home" directory manually, but I'm not sure this can be done. If using the Notepad++ directory for files causes it to open to the same directory every time, that's a small sacrifice for me to make; I generally store all of my text files in one place, and it doesn't matter where that place is (though it's nice to be able to choose it in advance, though navigating to my text-file directory once per day isn't an insurmountable hardship).

Notepad++ remembers the last eight files I've opened, and they're available for reopening in the File menu. I think I can set it to remember more. For me, the more the better.

Why a text editor? I remember Jerry Pournelle, prolific science-fiction writer and long-winded columnist for Byte magazine way, way back in the day talking about the pre-IBM-PC machines he had set up for word processing in what he called (and still calls) Chaos Manor, and all the technical specs, trials and tribulations he went through. He's definitely an inspiration for this blog and its style, although I've never quite thought of it that way until now. (I used to love Byte back in the '80s.) Pournelle always talked about text editors, and at the time, I had no idea what a "text editor" was. I knew what a word processor was, but it took awhile for the concept of a text editor and what it can do to sink in.

And then came vi. Vi's great when it's the only game in town, as it was on the UC Santa Cruz timeshare Unix box I had an account on in the late '80s. Today I can fake it in vi, but I'm no master.

I still use word processors occasionally -- usually AbiWord, sometimes OpenOffice, occasionally MS Word on the Mac. But more and more -- with all the Web work I do -- text editors are quicker, more flexible, faster -- and most importantly, they give you clean ASCII output that isn't mucked up with extra crap.

End note: I Googled Jerry Pournelle to see if I was spelling his name right. I'm glad to see his Web site, which I'm going to explore at greater length at my earliest opportunity.

I've been changing text editors in Windows like some people change underwear -- clean people that is.

And every time I try a new one, I open a text file and choose the new application. Windows remembers what I chose the last time, and that is presented as the first choice when I open a new text file. I've gone from EdiPad Lite to Geany to Notepad++, and I appreciate Windows remembering the last text editor I've used. I get the same treatment with .doc files, which I sometimes open with OpenOffice but usually go quick-and-dirty with AbiWord.

Anyhow, it's a nice feature in Windows, this remembering the last app I used in a given category. Nice to hear me say something nice about Windows, don't you think?

In search of more Windows text editors, I started here, which led me to PSPad, which I will try next week. There's more info at PSPad's English-language site. I've just learned that PSPad was created by Jan Fiala of the Czech Republic.

While Notepad++ is under the GNU GPL license, I think PSPad is distributed as "freeware," with a request for donations. You don't have to pay, but I don't think you get the source code, either. I can't argue with "free."

Notepad++ is doing pretty well. But I have two problems: First, I don't see a function for renaming files. I prefer not to "save as" sometimes and instead change a file's name. Two, when creating a file, I had a little trouble naming it. I wanted the .txt extension to be added automatically, and for some reason my file had .txt in the name and the extension. The latter could be operator error, the former ... well, I'll have to work on it.

However, lack of a "rename" function is not a deal-breaker.

Since Geany in Windows can't manage to get the spacing between lines right without we selecting the LF mode (as opposed to the CR/LF mode) for every file I open, I decided to look elsewhere for my Windows text editor solution. (Note: this "setting" doesn't seem to make a difference in EditPad Lite -- things come out OK no matter which kind of line endings I choose.)

Next up: Notepad++, which unlike my former favorite EditPad Lite, is under the GNU license, meaning it's free and open-source -- a requirement for my new Windows text editor.

So far, Notepad++ is looking very good. I can open multiple files in tabs, I can wrap lines without the wrapping screwing up the file (the biggest detriment -- to me, specifically -- in Linux/Unix console editors -- is when word-wrapping inserts line-feeds everywhere they wrap; I just want to see the wrap, not have the wrap be permanent -- sorry, vi).

Confession: I opened up GVim for Windows, which I've had installed for a while. There's no way that would ever work. I'm just being realistic.

So I'll see how Notepad++ goes and report back.

I'm not saying I'm gonna stick with Geany in Windows, even though I've had nothing but praise for it as a Linux application. I'm not crazy about the paragraph I'm working on going from a white background to gray (and I haven't figured out how to turn this "feature" off), nor am I crazy about the cursor disappearing at times when I scroll down and it's a the far left of the screen ...

But I did figure out the solution to one of my problems:

When I copied and pasted my text from Geany into whatever Web program I'm prepping it for, I ended up with extra lines. I fixed it by going under Document -- Set Line Endings and switching from Convert and Set to CR/LF (Win) to Convert and set to LF (Unix).

(Note: Having to do this for EVERY file is a pain in the ass. Why can't I just set it and forget it?)

I also noticed that Geany -- mainly a text editor for programmers -- has a couple of features that might be useful: Under Tools -- Export, you can choose to output text as HTML or LaTex (the latter being useful for Linux/Unix typesetting but the former being useful for just about everything I do).