GentooNova

Monetizing Forum

2011-02-21T06:38:00.000-08:00

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eix - search tool for portage

2009-05-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

Eix is the right hand of Portage.

How to install eix on Gentoo?

#emerge -av eix

How to use eix?

$eix keyword
(where "keyword" is any part of the name of the package you're searching for)

And eix finds you all the packages containing that phrase in their name, telling you the versions available, separating stable from non stable, and telling you which version of the program you're having installed already, if you're having any.

How to update eix?

(after you update your portage, execute the following command)
#update-eix

For updating eix together with portage, you can make your own custom commands that will update both portage and eix together.

The Origins of Linux - Linus Torvalds

2009-05-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how Linus Torvalds started making Linux?
Why he ever started it and how Linux ever got so popular?
Here you can see him telling the Linux story, and answering bunch of questions such as many of you would've asked.

How to create your own commands in linux

2009-05-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

Why would you want to create your own custom commands?
To stop doing hard repetitive work and simplify the complex work that includes multiple commands, to a one simple command.

By default most of the commands you can execute are placed in the /bin folder. However, you can add another folder where your user will look for commands from. Lets do that ;)
(if in any of the following cases you get "permission denied" error, then do the same action, but logged as root.)

(first create that folder, in this example ~/.bin)
$mkdir ~/.bin
(next, lets add that folder to PATH via ~/.bashrc)
$nano ~/.bashrc
(in the ~/.bashrc file, simply add the following line)
$export PATH=$PATH:~/.bin

Great, you have your own folder in which your shells will look for commands whenever you type a command. Now we need to only make bash scripts for the commands in the folder. Note that we could have just made the scripts in the default /bin folder, but for neatness, it's good not to mix your own commands with the system's default ones.

How to make the scripts?
Simply create a file using your favourite text editor, named with the name of the command you want to create, in which you will put all the commands that you want to be executed, each one in a new line, and make that file executable.
So lets make a testscript file that will print out on the screen "it worked!".
Create a file named "testscript" in the .bin folder and put the following line in it:

echo "it worked!"

Save the file. To make it executable run the following command as root:

#chmod +x testscript

Now relogin, or just in a new terminal window test it ;)

$testscript
it worked!

Examples of useful things you can do with what you just learned.
Ever wished synchronizing portage and updating eix was simpler? Just make a script called synch, or whatever with the commands you wish it to cover:

emerge --sync
update-eix

Just make sure you edit root's .bashrc too, cause the above commands work for root users only. And don't forget to chmod +x it ;)

Ever thought that typing "mplayer -fps 15 tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/v4l/video0", or whatever command you're using for mplayer to use your webcam was too hard to remember?
Make a script called "camera" with that command in.

So you can simplify all your work you do often that includes multiple commands.
If you'd like to make more advanced scripts like this, I'd suggest you to learn some bash scripting.

How to upload files from terminal

2009-05-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Ompload - the swiss army knife of uploading.
Seriously, ever since I found it, my life got so much easier.
Ompload allows you to upload files with a simple command from terminal. It allows uploading images, which will return you a direct link to view the image(useful for sharing images with friends and posting on forums), and all kinds of files, which returns a link for downloading them.

How to install ompload on Gentoo?

#emerge -av ompload

How to upload files from terminal with ompload?

$ompload filename
(and in a couple of seconds a link to your file is returned)

There is also a firefox add-on for omploader.

Restrictions:

Maximum file size is 256MiB
There is no restriction of content, but they retain the right to delete it whenever they find it offensive, irritating, lame, wasteful, or whatever.
They don't like it when you use their servers to upload pictures for your high traffic websites, especially if you have ads :). Here is a list of websites they don't like you to post your images/files to.

Try it out, you'll love it.

Take screenshots in Gentoo

2009-05-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

Scrot is a command-line tool for taking screenshots.
Of course if you're running a DE like Gnome or KDE, they already have their own tools that are configured to take a screenshot and save you a file with it whenever you press the print screen key on your keyboard.
But for those who use simple window managers like dwm, awesome, fluxbox, and their work is terminal based most of the time, scrot is like a gift from heaven. It's great, simple, and combined with ompload really does miracles.

Lets install it:

#emerge -av scrot

How to take screenshots with scrot?

(to take a screenshot and make it a file named screenshot.jpg with it)
$scrot screenshot.jpg
(to take a screenshot after 5 seconds delay time. it can be set for any amount of seconds)
$scrot -d 5 screenshot.jpg

Here's a screenshot of me taking a screenshot :)
(note the command written on the terminal on the left)

That's all the basic stuff you need to know to use scrot effectively. It would be good if you configure the print screen key to execite a scrot command, or even combine it with an ompload command.

How to pastebin from terminal

2009-05-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

What is wgetpaste?
Wgetpaste is a command-line interface for various pastebins. With it you can paste the contents of a file, the output of a task, or anything you want to a pastebin service, with just executing a simple command from terminal.

How to install wgetpaste?

#emerge -av wgetpaste

How to pastebin from terminal?

$wgetpaste filename
(where "filename" is the name of the file which contents you wanna paste)

And in a couple of seconds you'll be given a link to where you can view your text.

How to pastebin the output of a command?

$ls | wgetpaste

Which pipes the output of the "ls" command to the wgetpaste command, and pastebins it appropriately, returning you a link for it. Equivalent for any other command.

Awesome WM

2009-05-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

Awesome Window Manager is a tiling window manager.
It's light, fast, and very practical. I'm personally using dwm, which is very similar, but with less fancy stuff, and more stable. Both of them do something that most other window managers fail to do: they manage windows! Seriously, ability to drag, minimize and maximize your windows around the screen isn't window managing :).
Anyway, here's how window managers for real men look like:

Gentoo 3D Desktop

2009-05-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'll be posting videos of Gentoo every once in a while, so you'd get more familliar with all the appearances Gentoo can have.
Note that Gentoo doesn't have any default appearance, and that you have to choose what desktop environment/window manager your system will use.
The following video shows a Gentoo system with mit aiglx,beryl,emerald,kiba-dock, for the graphicall effects ;).

Getting started with Gentoo

2009-05-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

So you've decided you want to try Gentoo out. That's great, you're just few steps away from making your computer experience beautiful.
The following tutorial is for x86 architectures, which most PCs belong to.
Before we get started, you should know that the installation will take you 2-4 days until you get to a fully working graphical environment if you're doing it for a first time. (it's worth it)
Because there are already some damn good tutorials of how to install Gentoo, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, but provide you with links to them, and write here only the things that need to be written. If you consider yourself to be an advanced user, and have at least basic linux skills, then you can just jump to the Gentoo Handbook link.

What do you need to get started?

Basic unix knowledge. Just the basic commands for navigation and file management. If you don't have it, you can get it here. You don't even have to go through the whole tutorial, just the first 3 chapters are enough for this. You can try the tutorial on any linux/unix, if you have none, you can get Damn Small Linux and try it there. Or you can try it directly on Gentoo's installation cd.
Gentoo Minimal Installation CD. It's 57MB and it has all the tools you need for the installation. You can get it from any of the following mirrors, located at releases/x86/2008.0/installcd/ directory. Download it and burn it.
Internet connection. The installation consists of downloading source codes for the different parts of the OS, and building them on your computer one by one.
Know your hardware. You should know what CPU your computer is having, how much RAM does it have, graphic card, general stuff like that.

What do you need to do?
Once you download and burn the installation CD, you will need to boot from it. Booting from it will take you to a non graphical Gentoo environment. Don't be afraid, if you haven't went through the tutorial I mentioned before, you can try it out now, on the cd's environment.

Now that we're here, you can continue with the
Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook
In there, you will find the whole process of installing Gentoo, as well as managing your system after the installation is done. Don't be afraid of its length. There's like half of it that that covers the installation process, and the other half is consisted of later administration. You can read the second part piece by piece, when you encounter the need to know the things that are written there. Even I haven't went through whole of it yet ;).

Tips during the installation:

While in the non graphical Gentoo environment, you can switch screens by pressing Alt + any of the function keys(example: Alt+F2, Alt+F3). This can be useful if you want to read the handbook during the installation. You can have links(web browser) opened on the one screen and having the Handbook opened or google, irssi(irc client) on another screen to ask the guys from Gentoo's channel for help when needed, and working with the installation on other screen.
Gentoo's irc channel is located at irc.freenode.net #gentoo.
During the installation, you'll be given many choices to make. You should use google whenever you encounter things that you don't know what they are, and make the choice after you get the idea. Especially when configuring the kernel.
You WILL encounter problems. At least 1 thing won't go as you expected it to. Don't give up, reread the explanation in the handbook, ask people on #gentoo, there's always a solution for everything.

That's it for now. If you have any questions or suggestions for the post, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Good luck ;)

What is Gentoo?

2009-05-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

What is Gentoo?
Gentoo is a free linux based operating system. It is one of the many linux distributions, and it is free as in freedom. That means you can get it for 0$, and you're free to do what the hell you want with it. You can edit the source code, change it the way you want, redistribute it, even sell it, but you can't stop other people from doing the same thing :). Awesome.

Why is Gentoo so cool?
An operating system is a tool. Its purpose is to be useful to its users. Generally, operating systems are designed to match the common needs of the majority of users. While most operating systems aim to satisfy the common needs the users have, they all lack satisfying all the needs of any single user.
Gentoo is different. Gentoo is designed to be highly configurable, making it able to satisfy every need of any of its users, but not until they configure it themselves :).That means that if a user doesn't have the needed knowledge of Gentoo, he/she won't be able to use it. But if one does have knowledge of it, one''s system will run exactly matching the one's needs.
Now to make it clear, you can configure _any_ operating system to work in any possible way and do whatever you want, but none as easy as Gentoo. Meaning, theoretically you can make the fastest OS in the world even by editing a Windows system(note that it would be illegal to do so), but you'd have to mess with registries and hex codes and it would take u a lifetime :P.

What comes from all that configurability?
Simply: top performances, practical environment, and ease of use(of course, for those users that has being configured for). So one Gentoo system will be perfect for one type of users, but hard/impractical or even unusable for some other type of users.

Who needs Gentoo?

People who want top performances
People who want to know what their system is made of
People who want highly configurable systems

Gentoo is a linux distro. Those who don't know why linux is better than windows, may read the articles on this page. We certainly won't, so lets see what's cooler in Gentoo than the other linux distros ;)
One of the most important differences, the hearth of Gentoo - Portage.

What is Portage?
We can say that Portage is the software distribution system for Gentoo. Its job is to make sure that the user doesn't care for finding the software needed, downloading it, and installing it(the things you'd have to do on windows). Most of the linux distributions out there have these 'software distribution systems' called "package managers". A package manager is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages from a computer.
The difference between Portage and the other package managers is that Portage(in most cases) downloads the source code of a software package, and compiles it locally, making customized builds specific for the hardware it's built for(if specified by the user), making them run faster and more stable. That's right, they run faster!
How does that look like?
Lets say I want to install xchat. Therefore I type in the console:

#emerge xchat

and voila, portage downloads the source code for the newest stable version of xchat(I can even order it not to care about stability and get the freshest version), builds it, and after a couple of minutes of careless whistling , I have xchat working. Isn't that great?
And if after a week(or month) I want to update all the programs on my system, I could just type in:

#emerge -uDN -av world

And everything on my system would get upgraded to its latest version. Lovely :)
Of course, there's a lot more of what Portage can do, and what people should know for effectively using it, but we don't want to confuse the newcomers, so I won't go in depth.
Now of course, a package manager that doesn't build the source code locally, and gets the already precompiled packages in binaries directly, would be much faster than Portage. And most of them are. It takes 15 seconds to installl xchat on ubuntu, and few minutes to do it on Gentoo. But the packages built locally with customized options for the architecture they're running on, DO run faster and more stable. Now you may say, what if some huge package like OpenOffice takes whole day to install on some computers, what if I'm not that much of a performance maniac and want my installations to be quick. Portage has precompiled binary packages for many programs already(usually big programs that would require lots of time for building locally), and gives you the choice of whether to build it locally, or download the already built packages. Can't get any better.

Gentoo is all about choice, performance, and freedom. If you're unsure of whether Gentoo is or isn't for you, don't be afraid to try it. You might love it ;)

Hello World

2009-05-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

#include blogger.com
#include gentoonova
introduction main()
{

Welcome everyone to my blog which I'll be filling with any info I find useful about the Gentoo Linux OS, to help people who are new with Gentoo find their way around. Many people think that operating systems like Gentoo are too 'hard' to handle for the everyday user, but I think that the everyday user just isn't encouraged enough to use Gentoo. One of the goals of this blog is to convert as many people as possible to Gentoo, and bring Gentoo to the people who need it, but just don't know it yet. With this post I launch this blog to its mysterious future, with hopes of making it useful and liked by its visitors. If you like the posts, I would appreciate if you tell people about it, and bring me some traffic ;)
Thanks for reading,
return soon ;)
}
Crow