Musings of a Nerd

Tech Stuff

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:29:43 +0100

Remove the fish greeting

The greeting text when starting the fish shell is friendly and nice. But after seeing it a couple of times you get tired of it. To remove the greeting set the fish_greeting variable to an empty list in ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

set fish_greeting

Alternatively create a universal variable:

set -U fish_greeting

Check out the fish documentation for more details.

Default desktop environment for Xorg in CentOS 8

According to /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients if there is a file named /etc/sysconfig/desktop it is sourced for a variable called PREFERRED. The Xclients file has support for the strings “GNOME”, “MATE”, “KDE” and “LXDE” by default. You can specify the path to the init script of other desktops in the PREFERRED variable. Let’s take XFCE as an example:

Linux and Software

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 01:26:10 +0100

Fast-forward a year and a half and I find myself using the Plasma Desktop edition of Manjaro on my main Linux computer at home. I don’t use a tiling window manager any longer. Not at home and not at work either.

Speaking of my main Linux computer at home, late 2022 I was on a short misson to find a good laptop for my new Linux computer. I ended up with a shortlist of a couple of brands. My decision was to go for a laptop from Tuxedo, TUXEDO Pulse 15 - Gen2 . Tuxedo has since discontinued the 15" Pulse series it seems. I don’t know the reasons, but I am a happy user of the laptop at least.

Linux Environment

Sun, 29 May 2022 01:23:26 +0100

For the most time I’m using tiling window managers on my Linux installations. It lets me use the screen real estate in a very efficient way and I also don’t have to use the mouse that much. Ever since the meltdowns of Gnome 3 and KDE 4 I’ve been wandering around trying different desktop environments. KDE 4 was even more horrific than Gnome 3. So for a very long time KDE wasn’t even an option for me. This weekend I tested out KDE 5. It was a lovely experience! It was far from the nightmare I remembered from KDE 4. In a way it felt like this is the way Linux desktop environments were supposed to go. It is very customizable, it ships with great applications and tools and it is a very pretty desktop environment. I tried out the Plasma Desktop edition of Manjaro. I normally enjoy the Manjaro themes and the Breath theme was no exception.

Never Ending GUI Search

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 01:22:25 +0100

My never ending search for the perfect GIT GUI client has continued since GitAhead stopped being developed. What I now use both for work and personal projects on all platforms is Sublime Merge (licensed to me of course). Currently it can do all I need. It works well with Gerrit after adding some custom actions to the command palette. Sublime Merge even has a built-in merge conflict tool that works great.

GitAhead

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 01:21:23 +0100

I recently learned that GitAhead is no longer under active development. That is very sad news for me as I really enjoy using it. The team behind GitAhead will release bug fixes so I will keep using it as long as it works for me though. But I suppose I have to revisit this topic in the future unfortunately.

Home Surveillance

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 01:17:59 +0100

Just a short update on my GIT GUI client quest… I ended up ditching Fork completely in favour of GitAhead (and Ungit) both for work and for personal use. It works great for my purposes.

Otherwise I’ve been looking into how to replace my Arlo cameras at home. I would really like to get rid of the monthly fee. I could use the free tier, but that would mean only one week of cloud storage and no AI object detection (persons, animals, packages). One week cloud storage would work just fine. But I would really miss the object detection.

More Git GUI Clients

Mon, 04 May 2020 00:58:57 +0100

My search for GIT GUI clients have continued for a couple of days. My last blog post sparked my curiosity once again and I have again checked what’s available on the market.

For my private stuff I have more or less decided to go with SmartGit. I like the client and I can use it on both Windows and Linux. I am also interested in Ungit. It’s quirky but fun.

Git GUI Clients

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:57:27 +0100

I like GIT GUI clients. It’s not that I don’t understand the GIT CLI commands. I do and it’s important to know what’s happening behind the scenes. It’s just that I enjoy using a good GIT GUI much more than using the CLI. I don’t avoid using the CLI, sometimes it’s more convenient. But most of the time I tend to do most tasks in a GIT GUI. It usually also gives me a good overview of the repos I’m working with.

X2Go

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:55:57 +0100

Instead of having to bother with guest additions and similar packages to be able to use full screen, copy-paste and shared folders, I’m trying out remote desktop solutions. I am fairly happy with X2Go . It only needs an SSH connection (with X forwarding enabled because of reasons). Just install the x2goserver package and some distros have a service that must be started after that. Then it mostly just works.

Manjaro Thoughts

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 00:49:12 +0100

My current go-to environment for development is the Manjaro Linux distro with the i3 tiling window manager and the fish shell. Other than that I tend to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux quite a lot. Especially since I am stuck with Windows at work and partly at home (I’m a gamer). It is quite easy to start a WSL session and get things done. I don’t have to bother with a virtual machine in that case. WSL2 is just around the corner. That’s good news since it will finally be using a real Linux kernel.