Episode: 1982
Title: HPR1982: Whats in my virtual bag
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1982/hpr1982.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 12:48:13

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This is HPR Episode 1982 entitled What's in my virtual bag and in part of the series What's in my toolkit?
It is hosted by Acho Jordan and is about 29 minutes long.
The summary is the usual program I use every day in my system.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
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Hi everyone and this is Nacho Jordi.
One more time broadcasting for Hacker Public Radio.
This is my second installment time.
I can't believe I made it here, I'm very happy and I'm happy this time I'm recording
in better technical conditions at the previous time with a mixer and an SM58 and all that
just so let's I'm going to cover an issue that is classic for Hacker Public Radio beginners.
It seems it's describing my system, what's in my bag.
In this case it's my virtual bag because the real one is always a bit embarrassing for me.
I think there's something in my family of the Dijon Dijon generous syndrome and we tend to
accumulate too much stuff and looking at my bags in the open for public can be a bit embarrassing.
In computers maybe the thing is maybe it's the same thing but it is more hidden.
It's like you can get away with it better I guess.
So what's in my virtual bag?
Well there's a couple of unpopular choices there I guess but it only comes to prove the power
of Linux, the plurality of choices you get in Linux.
To begin with my my operative system my distro of choice is Papilinux.
I have a few as I commented in my previous podcast I have a few scattered experiences with other
distros but first because of need because my former computer was so humble and so little I settled
in Papi and then as I upgraded my gear I stuck to Papi I tried other things I hadn't experienced
with Lubuntu for example because I had a problem with an audio program and I thought Lubuntu
someone told me in a forum that Lubuntu could be a solution but I didn't like the experience
it was a bit Windows-like to me I mean if I wanted my computer when I pour off
to give me a message saying waiting for updates are being downloaded and stuff and the
computer switching off when it wants to. If I wanted that I would have stayed in Windows
or seven I'd like my my computer to obey me so from the point of view of user experience I didn't
like Lubuntu besides the fact that you have to login as route and I grow used to the
this peculiarity of Papilinux that a lot of people don't like or feel afraid it started
runs as as route by default I really like it and when I try other distros I find a continuous
drag and very annoying to have to continually so do to do anything I want to do maybe maybe
I'm not too conscious of security risks and I need something terrible for me to happen but I
I have this idea I don't know if it's true or not but I feel like I'm at very too small
face in the pond and nothing can happen to me and and also the Papilinux community
very often assure that there's no there isn't any problem with running as route in Papi due to
due to the way it works honestly I've tried to get my head around that documentation and I have
never been able but I trust my community is one of the best forums in the world that I've tried
very friendly very helpful people so I guess there's a bit of convenience in my in my trust
towards them because I am really settled in my ways with Papilinux everything is at one or two
clicks of distance and I haven't ever found anything that comes close to usability in 29 seconds
I'm I'm browsing the web so so well I'm not saying Papilinux is for everyone but certainly I like
the a lot of people when I tell them I use Papilinux they feel like it's very Spartan or Papilinux
you just that but to me it's it's a country other other I find other distros bloated with too
much staff too much graphics I want to get to the point when I want to do something and Papilinux
let's me do that it's infinitely infinitely customizable and well maybe you
it looks the it has a horrible look and feel as as you as you download it because
it the Papilinux community I have a feel that they don't have a lot of
graphic designers but if you don't care about that stuff it's a distro that really
helps you get things done at least in my case for for my needs I don't know for other people
for document management and and recording staff with the audacity or door that kind of things which
are my main activities it's absolutely great the thing that it's it's so small that it can run
easily in in in RAM and it makes it super fast and you can configure a cache
a cache space if you want but for most of needs you don't need to so these are a few these are a few
the features of Papilinux maybe maybe I am talking too much about this maybe it's a good material
for a for a new podcast so I'll move on and speak they have a they omnipresent window manager
in my case after trying most of them maybe all of them because it's it's always funny to try
window managers and file managers too I settled for good a few years ago with Brad Poiton
it's a tiles window manager again it's not for everybody but they're
their sales sales the sales propositions so to speak really convinced me the the thing that
all that maximizing windows and moving windows around is not productive is not you're not
creating value when when you're doing that and if you you add how many hours in your life takes
that it amounts to a lot of time at the end of the year with attacking manager I also try
the WM dynamic window manager first and I think in fact dynamic window manager a
also allows being a tiling manager window manager also allows you to drag windows and maximize
on the other style but again I found in Brad Poiton everything I need
the it's customizable to to incredible extremes in a never easy way it's just a text text file you
modify the syntax is a bit tricky until you get it but I always have handy the the link to
to the to the official website where all the commands are explained and a long time I have to
customize it to get the things I like from another window managers for example I
by pressing function key and their space I get a mosaic it's it's an add-on that you can get
from the community I call it mosaic I don't I don't know if that's the exact term it's but it
seems it's like what in iOS is called expose or expose it it divides the screen equally
showing all the programs you have active and also I have two modes with it I configured one one it
it just shows all the windows in the in the screen and then you navigate to the one you want and
other gives you each window comes with a key that you can press to to move to that to that window
also I another add-on that you can use after some time of being full
after some time of of using the the usual window navigation I added a program bar at the bottom
in the style of more traditional window managers it's also a great addition because in that
that regard it's always great to have in in sight what's the everything that you have
open in the computer otherwise sometimes you can open a program twice and that kind of stuff
well there's also another configuration I've done it's using the beam navigation keys I've
got used to them and I use them whenever I can I think they in an ideal world they should
become a standard for all their programs because it's a way to a very efficient way of moving
along from typing stuff to moving a cursor in the in the screen without taking your fingers away
from the from the screen by the way rat poison I guess everybody knows but it's called like that
because it's intense to be anti anti mouse it's a even the documentation is written in an
ironic way against mice which is all well and good except for for one thing that some programs
are not keyboard friendly are are more mouse friendly and yeah rat poison sometimes gives
problems with with programs complex and with a lot of windows like like game but also and I think
great thing rat poison allows is that you can leave it and move to a different we know manager
and then come back as if nothing happened so it allows a lot a lot of flexibility
so rat poison my my configuration of rat poison I could write books about about it because
it's a it's very you always have for this what if and then you can try it in in minutes this idea
to navigate through my files it doesn't work it's okay it didn't it didn't take you long
okay moving on another staple of my system would be VIM the accelerator and everybody in the
Linux community mostly no and its emesis is a max I never I never
felt too too attached to VIM in that right reality I I choose VIM just by chance I was looking for
on that past text editor and then and say hey I'm going to try VIM first maybe if I have said
hey I'm going to try imax first I would be using imax now I mean I don't I haven't still tried
imax it seems it's a bit difficult to configure and to set up and I don't have that kind of time
right now but well and again to me it's a proof that the amount of possibilities are there
of people and stuff that you have in the Linux community so I use VIM and I use the mostly for
everything when you when I open my computer the first thing I put that pops out it's have VIM
a VIM screen with the VIMX extension I use VIM as a file manager VIMX starts for VIM Explorer and
most of the time you get you can do everything you want with VIMX when I when I have to do something
graphical on the on the contrary I use rocks filer which is the file manager that comes with
pop Linux and also I use VIM for as an outliner with another extension that it's called tvo the VIMO
liner and I go I've got so used to using the VIMO liner that in fact whenever I open a I create
a text file I do it with a dot otl extension which is all outline extension and it's
the extension the VIMO liner there uses when you open a dot otl file VIMX starts applying the
rules of the outliner to a text file and you can it gives a different color to the lines depending
on on their tabbing you can fold and unfold there's an option also call haste in which you can go
to a sub branch of a file and edit it separately in my computer it stopped working for some reason
but I don't know why that's a point broke but I use it for a whole time so that's how much I'm
happy with my VIMO liner VIM in general and you can do most of the work of everything there you
can split the screen you can get tabs it's endless what you can do with VIMO
another essential piece of equipment for any computer user in the 21st century is the web browser
in my case it's also an unpopular choice CMONKEI I don't know CMONKEI I've never known exactly
the story what's a story with CMONKEI I know it's a kind of indirect relation with Firefox
both are created by Mozilla and in my view CMONKEI gets a bit of a bad rap it's some people mock
and edit and a lot of people don't like it or find it too unconventional in my case again I started
using it by chance because it's shipped with pop units and at a time I get very customized
what I what I like about it mostly are a couple of things one of them is that you can take the
all the menus options garbage out of their site very not very easily you have to do a lot of
tweaking when you install the browser but the final result is that you get a menus reduced
to two lines of text on top that's to me it's a selling point because the rest of the screen is
content you don't you don't need that kind of visual noise that's visual noise when you have to
all the stuff all the time in front of your face in addition to what you are trying to investigate
and another another thing very peculiar and very friendly for me of the CMONKEI interface is
that it only has one one one text field to both for writing URLs or or terms you will do search
in a search engine my the way I see it is the computers I made to automate things for us otherwise
what's the point of using them so I don't get it why most of the browser have two two text fields
for that occupying the double of screen real estate one when you want to type a new error another
when you want to write search terms even to make things more absurd in Firefox I think you can
configure it so the text field when you write URLs can also accept search terms but you cannot
remove the other the search terms fields so it's because usually sun stupid and you don't get that
kind of of garbage fueling your your computer screen with CMONKEI and CMONKEI gets out of the way
and then leads me along with my content and to me that's a selling point maybe the only way I could
abandon CMONKEI is if I could make work some of the web brochures that work with
green key navigations again I love green key navigations I think they should be in a perfect
world they should be a standard for navigating computers with a keyboard because it's a very
efficient way of changing between between typing text and moving the cursor around
and speaking of being another recent addition to my system it was kind of accidental when they
had discovered that I had it installed in the computer I don't know if it shit with my
puppy expression or just I installed it somehow when I was doing something else
in those times when I didn't document things so I found that I have a GB installed GB means
GB stands for graphic beam and it's simply a green version that doesn't run in a terminal but
in a graphic environment when using it in the in the first moments I thought it was like a
redundancy that something that I didn't need and I kind of didn't like it because using a
graphic environment is like less than using the terminal but I've been using it more and more
because my beam regular version sometimes does funny stuff with copy and paste when you when you
want to copy for example some text you grabbed from my website and you want to put it in a text
document in green is one of those in situations that sometimes works and sometimes don't
and I find that kind of inconsistent see the the worst of the options I prefer it's not to work
I prefer it to not work all all the time then you know what to what to expect but this kind of
thing that sometimes work and sometimes don't it's like they drive you crazy so with GB
GB now allows better mouse and copy paste options and also the graphical interface it's
easy to configure when you want to change colors and fonts so I think I probably we progressively
moving to GB because another thing great that I love of GB and that makes it very easy to
transition is that both beam and GB share the same beam RC configuration files so any change you
making your configuration applies to both programs and also GB without any hassle I found I
helped the outliner and the file explorer and everything so I think I'll be moving more and more
to just GB instead of them and well another piece of equipment that is very essential and we all
have hours of choice of course it's a terminal emulator the one I used from a long time ago is
Sakura or Sakura to affair I also use our XVT which is I find it a bit limited but
I use it for certain certain activities only because it's graphically different
because that's the main hardware I found when when I was choosing choosing a terminal emulator
first of all I have to say that I went on terminal tourism terminal shopping let's say
short time ago and I got a bit surprised by the lack of options there were plenty of course but
considering that that it's a kind of program that is original from the unique style in the 70s
I thought there would be like millions and millions and millions and there were only thousands and
thousands and thousands so also well this my schedule limited to where I was able to install or even
to I was able to what I was able to understand the documentation sometimes which I know is proficient
that stuff so anyway I try to fill the up there and settle in Sakura because it's almost perfect
the perfect for me is that it allows that browsing and you can configure a false you get the
transparency a percentage you want you can also set a background for a terminal background image
you prefer but in my view it's like something that it would be essential for me and I haven't
to be fair I haven't either found me now in the other terminal emulators and I like to configure
the easily the background color of the terminal I'm using and with separately for any instance
I run of the terminal emulator why because this would allow it would make very easy to differentiate
in which file you are working on you could you could say like okay the red one I would use the
use it for the original file and the blue one I would use it for the copy and that way it's
impossible to make a mistake you sometimes when I have a lot of text files open it's easy to make a
mistake and edit something that you do in 10 and well this thing in Sakura cannot be done the idea
away to do it would be doing it through through terminal that you could create if you could open
Sakura terminal with that command dash color blue or dash color orange and then you get the terminal
in the color you want Sakura doesn't have that possibility to change the background color you can
do it but you have to do it with a once Sakura is open to do right click and you change the color
and it doesn't affect the terminal immediately but you have to close Sakura and then open it again
which makes it very difficult for these purposes I intended of having the colors
showing which file you are working on so one app I've been trying with that was creating some kind
of wrapper command to do to do this but I still don't know how to do it to be honest because you have
to work on the have to modify the Sakura configuration file which is a bit difficult to read for me too
much extra decimal stuff and it makes me a bit nervous tweaking around the Sakura configuration file
is not not I think it's a program that is it's not it's gonna save to be to be modified
graphically to be very friendly for the for the end user that is using a mouse and clicking around
but I don't I don't think it would tolerate well this kind of modification I don't know if it can
be done but anyways it's a small alliance in that right now terminal emulator that is pretty
powerful and now you see it everywhere also this thing of the colors
presents problems with vim's color schemes like weird interactions and some files look a bit
too colorful for my taste my work it's a minimum it doesn't it's in the disruption of your workflow
it's just something I think I'll get at some point my learning curve will be able to do that so great
so that's it that's in in brief what's my my basics in my build toolbox I hope you enjoyed
this podcast and thank you very much for listening and have a great day but
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