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TUX Desktop Watch -- August 29, 2006
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Welcome to the TUX Desktop Watch

This Week: The Quote Heard 'Round the Community

"No matter how painful, no matter how ugly, we must enable the
Linux desktop
to run Windows media, to support iPods. We may not want binary programs in
user-space, but we must have them." Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar" in a panel discussion at Linux World 2006.

I would encourage everyone to search for more information on the discussion
and the background. Of course, it is nothing new to readers of TUX and TUX
Desktop Watch. I've been talking all around the subjects which are the
foundation for his remarks. The Register was the first to break the story
and you can find their report here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/eric_raymond_linux_compromise/.

It's funny how we filter information. We each bring to every bit of
information every experience that makes us unique. When we add new
information to that unique mixture of experiences, it becomes like
chemistry. There are interactions between our experiences and the new
information, those reactions often form what we take the new information to
"mean".

So it is with Raymond's comments. We all read or heard what he had to say
and then like chemistry we arrive at our reactions (our conclusions). For
me, I think that Raymond is spot on some of this conclusions. Now I'll
admit his conclusions about the switch from 32- to 64-bit
technology and the
closing window for Linux are areas I've not considered. But I see in his
comments one critical conclusion.

In his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond documented his first hand
experience with what makes the Open-Source software development process
work. In my opinion, no one can begin to understand what makes Open Source
different, special, and mysterious without reading his book. So I believe
he is uniquely qualified to have voiced what he did. So I believe Raymond
sees a disconnect between what we all want Linux to become and what the
developers working on Linux want. For TUX and our readers, we want a Linux
that just works, but Linux developers don't really care what we want. Now
I'm talking about the vast majority of individual developers who contribute
to Linux and not the corporate interests of Linspire, Xandros, or Novell.
From the other perspective many within that same development community
believe that Linux represents everything that the ideals of the Free
Software Foundation proclaim. They believe that Linux should
always reflect
those ideals and should never be diluted with software that does not
guarantee the free software ideals. Many people first encountering Linux
ask questions like Raymond proposes,"does it work with my iPod?" After
telling many college students here in Puerto Rico about LInux,
a very common
question was, "does it run Windows Messenger?" To which I was like, mouth
gaping, saying to myself "don't you mean does it support connecting to the
Windows messenger service?"

From both perspectives we have a gap, (I know here he goes again with the
gap crap again...) that are uncrossable. So I believe that Raymond has
recognized that the two ends have no way to meet in the middle, so he made
his call to the Linux community to make the effort to meet the users where
it is most important to them. Whether that compromise is drivers, or
codecs, or whatever, the community must move the mountain to
where the users
are. It's the only way! Raymond knows it and whether everyone else cares,
it is the only way to reach widespread Linux desktop adoption.

Otherwise, we have a great deal of cool content for you this
week, which you
can find below. We have plenty of great Weblog entries, plus a chapter on
compiling and installing source code from the book SUSE Linux
by Chris Brown
from O'Reilly Media. We wish you much learning enjoyment!

With best regards,

Kevin Shockey
Editor in Chief, TUX Magazine


Feature Links of the Week

Package Management in SUSE Linux: Compiling and Installing Source Code by
Chris Brown by Chris Brown
http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000217
There is so much great free software for Linux out there in the world, but
unfortunately, sometimes that software is in source-code-only
format and not
in binary. This is an excerpt from Chris Brown's book SUSE Linux from
O'Reilly Media.

To Choose or Not to Choose by Kevin Shockey
http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000218
Kevin sorts out the advantages and disadvantages of the dizzying array of
choices we have in the Open-Source world.

Programming Options by Phil Hughes
http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000219
Phil offers a primer on where to start if you want to learn how to program.


From the Field

This is where you will find tech tips that come directly from you, our
readers. Please send us your fantastic desktop-Linux tips and tricks to
ed@.... If we publish your submission, we'll send you a free
t-shirt or other great Linux gear!

Here's a submission by anonymous from somewhere in cyberspace:

Backing up your Personal website.
Like many people you have one of those cheap personal web sites that don't
allow direct shell access or file access to the server. This is a real
problem if you want make a copy of your web site for backup or other
reasons. The solution is simple but requires using the command line in a
terminal.

The program wget allows you to make a copy of a web site with the command
line option --mirror. This allows you to download a complete copy of the
files on your web site to your home computer.

This is an example of how to do it:

wget -nv --mirror http://YourWebSite.com/

This should download all files on your web site except possibly the CSS
files. To find the CSS files you can view the HTML source of
your home page
by right clicking your mouse while you are viewing your web site in a
browser and then selecting "Source" or "View Source" in the
popup menu. The
location of the CSS files will be listed somewhere in the top of the
displayed source information. Search for .css to find it. You can then
(usually) add the specified directories and css file name to the basic url
of your website and view the css files in your web browser.
This allows you
to copy and paste the CSS information into an editor and save it on your
computer.

For more information check out the manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html


From our sister publication, Linux Journal

Do-It-Yourself Robots by Michael Surran
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9103
Michael is a teacher who works with his high-school students to build cool,
Linux-driven robots.


Last But not Least: Tech Tip!

Using Kate to help speed up repetitive tasks.

Kate version 2.5 and above has a template feature that can save you lots of
time if you have to create similar html pages, newsletters or emails on a
weekly basis. The template feature has to be turned on by clicking on
Settings >> Configure Kate >> Plugins and checking the box on
the right next
to Kate File Templates. Once activated you will have a new listing under
Files >> New From Template where you can load the templates and under
Settings you will have a new listing, Manage Templates, where
you create and
modify templates.

Manage Templates allows you to create new, edit or delete templates. It
also allows you to upload or download templates from a Kate supported
template repository. Managing existing templates is fairly
straight forward
but creating new ones can be frustrating. This is the method I
use and have
found to be the fastest but only because you rarely have to start over:

First create the contents of the template in Kate just like you would a
normal file. After this is finished it is time to create an
empty template.
When the empty template is finished you will paste in the content you just
created and save the template. Here is how you create the blank template:

In the Manage Template dialog box click on New. In the first window,
"Choose Template Origin" You want to check "Start with an empty document"
and click the "Next" button to go to the "Edit Template Properties" window.
In that window you will find the following choices:

Template:
This is the name that appears in the "Group" when you go to select a
template to load. The button on the right lets you select an icon
but I have not been able to find where it is displayed.

Group:
A Group is just like a folder. It is a heading for similar
templates. If you want a new group just highlight the text in the
box and type in the new name. The one you highlighted
remains, it is
not deleted.

Document Name:
This is the name that appears as the file name inside Kate -- until
you save the file. Handy for making sure you have the right
template.

Highlight:
This sets the files highlighting type, HTML, CSS, Ruby, Python,
etc... Click on "None" and search for the highlighting style you
want.

Description:
Since this only appears when you are editing the template file I
assume it is for information you might want to know when editing the
template.

Author:
This is your name and email address and is automatically inserted.

After you finish filling out the above window, click on the "Next" button
and in the "Choose Location" window select Template directory and enter a
Template file name. Do not spaces or special characters, it is the file
name that it will be stored under. When you are finished click on the
"Next" button and go to the "Create Template" window and check "Open the
template for editing" and click on the "Finish" button. This opens the
template file for editing but you will need to close the final
window of the
"Manage Template" dialog since you are through with it.

The katetemplate: header is at the top of this file. This is where the
information used to define the template is stored. It does not appear when
you open a regular template only when you edit a template. Here is an
example:

katetemplate: Template=Template Group=Email_Responses
Documentname=Documentname Highlight=HT&ML
katetemplate: Author=Keith Daniels <xxxxxxx@...>
katetemplate: Description=Description

Notice the & in HT&ML. That & is a bug in certain versions of Kate and you
need to remove it from the "Highlight=" specification, it appears in all
highlighting types. It should be just HTML or whatever highlighting type
you selected. You can not get to the "Edit Template
Properties" window when
you edit an existing file. You have to edit the template itself and change
the entries above. In creating the template I used the name of
the text box
and that is why it shows Template=Template, etc...

Everything else in the header should be fine and you can now copy and paste
in the "template contents" you created earlier, right below the header and
then close and save the file. To test it, open the template as
described at
the beginning and check that everything is the way you want it. If not go
to the Manage Template window and edit the file.

The main advantages of the Kate template feature Are:

* Finding templates is Fast! because they are built into the menu bar and
don't have to be searched for in the file system.
* The first time you save the template it forces you to
assign a file name
- it does not overwrite your template - which is what always happens
when you create your own set of templates.
* Highlighting works, even before you save the file and even
if you do not
give the file a standard extension like ".html" which helps prevent
errors when filling in the template.

Go to this site for more information:
http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeaddons/kate-plugins/filetemplates.html#k
atefiletemplates-menu

-- From TUX Webmaster Keith Daniels

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