Oyd11's comp-use-page

Stuff I use, to make my computer nicer/easier for me to use:

screen (gnu screen site): screen is very useful, it's a util that allows to multiplex 1 term/xterm/telnet-session or whatever.
ratpoison window-manager: (goto ratpoison site) ratpoison is a 'mouse-free' window-manager for X, inspired by 'screen' (or read their 'inspiration' post).
My ratpoison setup contains the following useful(for me) lines: [download-textfiles]
```
--from ~/.ratpoisonrc:--
alias rat exec rat
alias ! exec exe2rat
bind d exec ratpoison -c "echo `cat /proc/apm | awk  '{if ( $4 ~ /0x01/) {print \"On AC power\",$7} else {print \"On DC power\",$7}}'`"
-- ~/bin/rat --
#!/bin/bash
ratpoison -c "echo `cat $*`"
-- ~/bin/exe2rat --
#!/bin/bash
ratpoison -c "echo `$*`"
---
```
This very simple setup, allow you to write on the ratpoison ':' (colon)
```
:rat ~/*notes*
:rat /proc/int*
```
and get the output back. Similiarly typing
```
:! lapbatt
```
displays the laptop's battary state in a ratpoison frame. The contents of 'lapbatt' are ofcourse what's written above bound to 'd', using the linux /proc/apm interface. This is all very simple, but useful.
ViM (vim site) Vi-Improved, vi is a family of text-editors that work the way people (at least some people) think about text-editing. The concept is bit like a graphic front-end to 'ed'. ViM has many kewl extentions, like easy-to-write reg-exp syntax-highlighting, integration with 'tags', etc.

LiteStep (no-link) - an replacement shell for ms-windows, that makes windows env more bareable. Has a NeXT like dock, at the side (well, more-or-less). I've written 3 modules, I'll post them here with src (1: Blinks when a phone rings 2: shows win9x resource 3: analogue-clock)
cygwin - un*x like tools and compability lib layer, for win32, including gcc. Very recommended for everybody. The newer version even include an X-server.
PuTTY : (PuTTY site) - a *sane* Telnet/SSH client for win32! at-last!
wget - for win32 can be found here: (http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html
On win98 systems with 'low'RAM (that is 'windows' standarts 'low', ie anything below 64MB, even more!) you can add:
```
--- ... SYSTEM.INI ... ----
[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
```
It lowers swapping on 'general', I haven't a clue of to the original pub of this flag, or wherthere it's documented or not.
On my laptop (Digital HiNote 2000), I used to have keyboard input 'problems', the system appeared to be hanged after contiguous keypresses (most apparent when playing games, or typing fast). Apparently, I went to the control panel, and found an option under 'system/device-manageer/system-devices/Advanced-power-manangement' - an option called 'force APM 1.0 mode', which solved the keyboard problem like magik... so given latency input problems, you might try disabling APM support.

Internet browsing: on new(?) versions of Mozilla and Opera (maybe others I don't know), you can press '/' for search! The way it's done in sane programs, you can even press 'enter' to choose a link that was found that way! I found it by mistake, and couldn't find it in the docs. Browsers are a horrible interface to anything, but it's a step in getting them close to prompt-like things.
Blazing-white: To view PDF's or PostScript files without a blazing white background, you can use ghostview like this:
```
$ gv -fg green -bg black -noantialias (file.ps)
```
The no-anti-aliasing flag, must be used, because otherwise the results are simply not legible. or, on 'xpdf', you can 'select' with the background with the mouse in order to get reversed-video.