The Linux Advocate by Scott Dowdle dowdle@icstech.net ICQ UIN: 15509440 Linux Advocate Column #54 July 9th, 1999 LOGIN: Greetings Linux fans. How was your 4th of July weekend? Mine was fantastic. The family and I drove to Great Falls for the weekend and spent it with the in-laws. Really enjoyed the city fireworks on the Missouri River although the wind was rather chilly. It was a fairly quiet Linux news week. What you see below is in no particular order. :) NEWS: Item #1: Mandrake 6.0: A First Look - I mentioned that I bought a copy of Mandrake Linux last column... and I've been using it since then. CPU Review put together a review of Mandrake that I concur with. My only gripe is that the build of Netscape that ships with Mandrake (and the updated package they provide on their web site) is rather buggy... and likes to close for no reason. It doesn't hurt anything and I just load it again... but it is annoying. I think I'll have to go to Netscape's site and download their build as I don't seem to have much trouble with it at work. Anyway, enough of my whining, go read the review already: http://www.cpureview.com/rev_mndk6_a.html Item #2: Donald Becker at NYLUG - A nice piece was put together about Donald Becker's visit to the New York Linux User's Group meeting. If you don't know who Donald Becker is, go read the article. He is a very productive member of the kernel development team and he was a huge part of Beowulf. You can find it at the following URL: http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issues/199906/DonaldBecker&page=1 Item #3: Linux is like a Chinese peasant uprising - Yeah, yeah... another story that compares Linux to some sort of social and/or political uprising. Perhaps, that because it is. Decide for yourself: http://www.salonmagazine.com/tech/log/1999/07/06/linux_china/index.html Item #4: Apple Open Source Streaming Server Now Supports Linux - Apple has ported their Quicktime Streaming Server to Linux. Supposedly it supports up to 2,000 simultaneous connections. Wow. Hmmm, I'll have to check that out sometime. I've actually setup RealServer before and it was VERY limited in the number of streams available. You want a lot of streams?... well, Real will charge you an arm and a leg... and that's no exaggeration. Don't believe me? Go check out their site. I guess Apple's strategy is obvious... they want more people to adopt their file format so it will become more of a standard. I hope it works. Read for yourself at the following URL: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1999/jul/07qt.html Item #5: iMac Linux - Speaking of Apple... there is an iMac Linux page. It happens to be distribution neutral too. Just how many different distros are there for the PowerPC based Mac? Last time I counted, I think it was five. Check out the iMac Linux site at the following URL: http://www.imaclinux.net/ Item #6: A whole new civilization built on Linux - While visiting Great Falls this past weekend, I happened to stop in at Hastings. They had a pretty decent Linux software shelf with 5 different distributions and two games. The games were Quake II and Civilization: Call to Power. I considered buying it but then I thought of the condition of my finances and decided not to. I'm not much of a gamer anyway... but for those that are, check out the following review of Civ:CTP at the following URL: http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-06/lw-06-civilization.html Item #7: Tera Rex: How supercomputing is roaring back - Yet another article about Beowulf Linux systems. If you haven't been reading this column for a long time, perhaps you don't know what Beowulf is. If you don't, or even if you do, check out the following URL. It is more of an introduction to Super Computing history from birth to present rather than a Linux Beowulf specific article but it is still decent reading: http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1999/June28/1c.htm Item #8: Cheap PCs based on Linux - More and more cheap hardware devices are coming out based on Linux. Is it any surprise? Not really. Check out the latest two stories: Sub-$199 PCs Coming http://www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=Cn4lqWbWbu0zxmdi5&FQ=Linux&SymHdl=1&Nav=na-search-&StoryTitle=Linux $199 Linux device in Prodigy deal http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,38767,00.html Item #9: Linux Don't Blink - Dave writes stories with attitude and the following URL is no exception. A must read for all Linux Advocates: http://davenet.userland.com/1999/07/linuxDontBlink Item #10: Reviews of VMware are out - Is this review week or something? I _HAVE_ talked quite a bit about VMware in the past... and I agree completely with the findings from the following two VMware reviews. What are those findings? I'm not going to tell you, you'll have to read for yourself: Linux Journal: VMware Virtual Platform http://linuxjournal.com:82/lj-issues/issue63/3458.html Test Drive: VMware for Linux http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issues/199906/vmware&page=1 SPOTLIGHT: Nedit, a fantastic text editor for X There seems to always be this big holy war that follows text editor of choice discussions. In fact, the text editor flamewar is so ingrained that there was a Emacs vs. VI paintball war at a Linux show once. Hmmm, I can't remember who won but what does that matter? Anyway, I've gone through a ton of text editors in my time... both on the console (text only) and the GUI/X variety. My favorite text editor for some time now has been Nedit although I do slink back to Emacs every once in a while and I use pico at work alot. If you'd like to give Nedit a try, visit the official nedit homepage at the following URL: http://www-pat.fnal.gov/nirvana/nedit.html I believe there is even a Windows version. Anyway... nedit is what I use to write this column every week. Yippie! Take a look at the various screenshots and the drop down menus. They are pretty self explanatory. The main main nedit screen - Notice that just for an example, I used the Split Window feature twice (found in the Windows dropdown menu) to show how you can look at different parts of the same file at the same time with ease. The nedit dropdown menus The Language Modes dialog box The Search and Replace dialog box Outstanding features? Columnar selection/paste - Well, one really awesome thing I like about Nedit is it's ability to use the mouse to select columns. What I mean by that is that if one holds down the Control key on the keyboard while click-dragging with the mouse, rectangular columns can be selected. This feature is especially nice to grab all of the white space at the start of every line for screen after screen... and delete it. It is also handy to cut and paste columns of numbers. Advanced search and replace - It is easy replace non-printing characters. Just type one in, highlight it, and paste it into the search for line. This features makes cleaning up files from other systems a lot easier. Shell commands - Nedit has hooks to several common system commands. Take spell for example. I use it every column... except for those with obvious spelling errors when I'm in a huge rush to get the column out. spell uses the standard spell system command. Programmer editor features - I don't use Nedit as a source code editor, mainly because I don't do that much coding at home, but if I did, I'm sure I'd love all of the Language mode features (see the .gif of the Language Mode dialog box). Conclusion: Nedit is one fantastic editor. It doesn't sacrifice power for ease of use and vice versa. Oddly enough, US Government tax dollars paid for the development of Nedit and I think it was money well spent... so get your tax dollar's worth by picking it up today. I've actually emailed the primary author, Mark Edel, with a question or two and I always got an almost instant answer. Mark was very nice and informative. Commercial software just doesn't compare. No, no... _really_. LOGOUT: Well, there you have it, this week's column. How was it? You tell me... and tell me you can via email or ICQ. I'd really enjoy hearing from you. As always, thanks for reading! Scott Dowdle

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