Key Combinations for working in Bash

These were taken from the Introduction To Linux Pdf which can be found here. Combination keys can make your life much easier when playing around in the bash shell.

Click Image To enlarge. Quick combination key shortcuts to use while working in Bash.

Yum local install localinstall

So you downloaded an rpm and need to install it locally. Download the file. Move the file to wherever you want to place your rpm files. I simply named mine rpms. In terminal, cd to your rpm directory.

cd rpms

yum localinstall whatever_the_file_name_fc18.x86_64.rpm

This comes in handy when you don't want to install an entire repository that you probably only need one file from. The downside is you want to make sure you already have all the dependencies, otherwise you need to download them and install them as well.

Update, what's up ! Information overload.

It's been a minute since I've posted here. Things have been pretty hectic and I've been suffering from a case of information overload. A couple people I know needed web design, so I decided to start a small web design company. I registered a domain, got my dba, and started New Aeon Design. If you're into graphic design and web design, I created a blog about design, just click on the blog link. If you stop by the website, it's a bit sparse. It's like the old saying about the mechanic, "he usually has the worst car" I've just been designing and haven't had the chance to blog, or work on my own site. This all came about right after I had my first Linux disaster. Actually it was probably more of a KDE disaster because the kernel seemed to be loading fine, and shell was working no problem. KDE just wouldn't load.

O.K. , so better late than never. I have no clue what happened with my first Linux disaster. It was a blessing in disguise, but like all computer crashes it was a pain in the ass and probably couldn't of come about at a worse time.

I clicked a link on the internet, when I went to the site my browser started acting weird. I opened and closed Firefox, nothing changed, rebooted the computer and KDE wouldn't load, went directly to shell, with a weird error message that I probably should of wrote down for blogging purposes. I probably could of repaired the installation, but was thinking about getting rid of Windows 7 and the whole dual boot computer anyway. So I opted to format the drive and upgrade from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18 and wipe Windows from the drive. I can only guess that I had something in Firefox settings not very secure, and the browser loaded something it shouldn't of.

Between external hard drives, cloud drives, and keyring usb drives, I had 99 % of my data backed up. I lost a template or two that I just started working on but nothing major. I spent the next couple weeks organizing my new drive, and going through about 12 gigs of photography, that sucked something fierce.  I then got a couple more web design jobs, which leads me to here.

Meanwhile, back at "Notes On Using Linux" and blogging in general. I've decided to try and come up with some type of blogging schedule. This has to be done, I currently have multiple Tumblr blogs which are easy enough to update every day, this blog, a new blog about design that can be found here, and my-amateur-photo which is also suffering from not having time to post too.

So to sum this long winded update up, I'm going to try and post here at least once or twice a week. I'll probably be posting a lot about open source graphic design, and web design software for a bit. As of late, that's what I've been using mostly. The Fedora 18 install is working out great, and I'm really happy to be a full time Fedora user now. On that note, thanks to all who are following on Google Plus, I'll be posting more news, and info over the week and thanks for following.

Software Review KColorChooser

After recovering from my first Linux disaster, I promise I'll post more on that in the next couple days. I wiped Windows from my system and did a minimal install of Fedora 18 KDE. So long Windows ! After the install, I played around a bit to see exactly what was pre-installed in my computer, removed the packages I had no use for, and found a couple interesting surprises. My favorite one is KColorChooser.

One of the things I love about Linux is all the great software available for graphic design, and web design. KColorChooser is another great example of some of the great software available for designers. This is a really simple program that allows you to select colors from either the color pallete, or anywhere on the screen. Now that I've been doing a lot of web design I've wanted to look for a program just like this. This is the perfect program to use when you're developing your color schemes on web pages, and graphics.

When you load the program a small color pallete opens and you can just mouse click on the color selection. KColorChooser then shows you the rgb values along with the html hex values. Now, one of the really cool features of this program is you're not limited to the color pallete. Let's say you download a really cool wallpaper and love a particular shade of blue found in the image. KColorChooser will allow you to select the color from anywhere on the screen. So, just click the color dropper icon your cursor will transform into crosshairs and click on the part of screen with the color you want and KColorChooser will give you all the color values you need. The same thing if you're surfing the web and come across a cool color scheme on a website, or web graphic. Open KColorChooser , click the color dropper, click on the part of the website that has the color you want, and voila, KColorChooser gives you all the info you need to use that color in your next design project. The program loads quick, uses minimal system resources and really couldn't be any more convenient !

Finding this in the graphics section of my application launcher really was a pleasant surprise. I've wanted one of these color choosers on my computer for a while now, but just haven't gotten around to it out of sheer laziness. Thanks KDE !

One more KDE program worthy of mention, is KCharSelect. It's a simple character map that comes with most KDE installs. When you need a character map, just open your terminal, type kcharselect, and the image map will load on your screen. Very simple to use, and comes in handy when working with different fonts, dingbats, and webdings.

Even if your not using a KDE desktop, these programs are available for most Linux distros. If you don't have these programs do a quick search of your repositories and see if they're available for install. Both programs save you time, are easy to use, and use very limited system resources. I give both these programs five penguins and a thumbs up !

Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf", line 9: reading configurations from ~/.fonts.conf is deprecated.

Installed some fonts the other night in the new Fedora 18 KDE, and today when I went to load kcharselect from terminal I got this message.

Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf", line 9: reading configurations from ~/.fonts.conf is deprecated.

I did a bit of Googling and it seems to be a common problem across many distros. I found this in an Ubuntu forum and it seemed to take the problem away.

mkdir .config/fontconfig

mv .fonts.conf .config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

When I ran the mkdir command, it said I already had the proper directory, so I ran the second command and everything seems to work fine since. I downloaded my favorite set of dingbats and they installed fine. Made this real quick to test them out.

Punk dingbats font downloaded at. http://fontzzz.com/font/13093_punk_dingbats.htm

Install Broadcom Driver Dell Inspiron 1750 Linux Laptop

So I had my first major Linux disaster yesterday. Completely crashed the system, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. More on that in a later post. For now , I had to reformat my computer and reinstall the dreaded Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g drivers. This was one of the reasons I was putting off deleting my Windows partition and making this Laptop a Linux only machine. Getting the wireless networking running on this machine was a complete nightmare the last time I tried to do this. I made notes the last time but what should of only took me a couple hours turned into a 5 or 6 hour affair because I had my notes all messed up with other information that confused me. Anyway, I thought I would post the process I used to get this wireless card working on a Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18.

O.K, This is what worked on my Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18 with KDE. When I run lspci from terminal this is what it shows as my Network Controller.

Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

After doing some research I decided I needed these drivers. Now I had earlier release drivers but this only worked with these specific drivers. You need the broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 drivers. I found mine here, and am told it's a safe site to obtain these drivers from. Scroll through the list, find your drivers and download them to your home directory.

Then open up your terminal program and ls to make sure the file is there. Then type in the following commands. I originally found this the last time I had this problem , I did change it around a little, but the credit should be given to its originator, however, it was found long before I had this blog, and I didn't notate my notes with proper credit. Sorry.

Type exactly as shown in terminal. Make sure to su or sudo, you need to be root.

first type:
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
next type:
tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2
then type:
b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.0


You're done. Reboot the system and on the restart you should now have working wireless. Hope this helped and good luck !

Youtube- Why Bloggers Don't Write About Linux

Thought this was an interesting POV. A quick discussion on why more bloggers don't write about Linux. The fact of the matter is , there just isn't enough of us using Linux yet. Contrary to this video though I think the numbers will be growing.

Although there are a ton of different distros right now to confuse a new user, it seems that with every new distro or even various releases, Linux becomes a little bit more user friendly. Not to mention brands like Fedora or Ubuntu who just seem to improve with every release (Well most releases) If you compare setting up a Linux box ten or fifteen years ago to now, it's night and day. I also think that the amount of software was limited for a long time for the average desktop user. Now, for every mainstream program like Photoshop, or Illustrator, someone creates a Gimp, or Inkscape. Linux has come a really long way over the years thanks to the multitude of programmers creating great open source software to share with the Linux community.

I just deleted my Windows partition and am using Linux full time now. There really aren't that many things I can't do with Linux that I could do with Windows. That certainly has changed over the last 15 years or so. If you're a gamer, I think Linux has a long way to go, but there seem to be a lot of developers working on that now, as well. We may be a small fraction of Desktop users, but I think once people really give Linux a fair try, it's kind of hard to return to Windows. If you're not a gamer I strongly suggest giving Linux a try. I think you'll be surprised at what a well configured Linux box can accomplish these days.