Tag: tutorials

Vim adventures

Vim is quite famous for being the best text editor in the world.  However it has quite a learning curve, especially for people who don’t touch type and who aren’t much interested in their own productivity.  Over the years, there were a few efforts to help the newcomers learn the basics.  But, I think, nothing came close to the amazing game Vim adventures – a maze navigation game, that uses Vim controls.

Screencasting in Linux

I came across an excellent tutorial on how to do screencasts in Linux.  The original article is in Russian, so I just grabbed the important bits and translated them below.

  • Install screencast recording application.  recordmydekstop is available via yum install recordmydesktop and comes with a simple and straight-forward interface for both KDE and Gnome.
  • Record a screencast.
  • If you want to edit the screencast (cut out mistakes, add music, etc), install a video editor.  These came recommended: Pitivi, Kino, Kdenlive.
  • Edit your screencast.
  • Convert to AVI if needed (recommended before uploading to video hosting services, such as YouTube, as they don’t always work well with Ogg).  ffmpeg -i screencast.ogv screencast.avi should do it.  ffmpeg is also available in most distributions.  You can play more with parameters, or prepare the video during the editing stage.
  • Upload the video and share.

This is the kind of a guide that I need once in a while, but which I can’t seem to find when I need it.  Hopefully now that I have it blogged, it’ll come handy.

Finding files in Linux

Many beginning Linux users experience difficulties getting used to the filesystem structure. Indeed, there are many files and directories, the structure of which are not as obvious as it could be. Choosing an appropriate location for a new file or directory is difficult and many choose to follow their own instincts.

With more experience, the file hierarchy becomes clearer and old concepts of placing files and directories start to fade out. When it happens, finding things becomes difficult. It is than that users learn that Linux has many tools for finding things. And it is than that they become confused once again.

Read on for a quick introduction into searching tools available in Linux.

Continue reading Finding files in Linux

Managing RSS subscriptions with Bloglines

While trying to convince the administrator of Cyprus Forum to add RSS feeds, I’ve wrote this rather long post that explains what is RSS, why one would want to use it, and how to use Bloglines to manage one’s RSS feeds.

Nothing new and fancy – just a simple explanation for RSS newcomers, with a screenshot of my Bloglines interface. You might find it useful. Or you might find it not. I’ll leave that up to you.