How to properly start compiz in Gnome
In virtually every compiz tutorial you read on the net you will find the following advice on starting compiz when you log in:
Open System -> Preferences -> Sessions and add “compiz --replace” to the startup programs list.
That is wrong and it should be expunged from the internet IMHO. If you do that, your GDM will first start metacity, then start nautilus (desktop) and gnome-sesssion-manager, which in turn will start compiz. So you’re starting one window manager only to replace it with another shortly afterwards. You can see this clearly because it takes a while for compiz to start up and load your window decorator (like emerald) after replacing metacity.
The proper way to do this is to tell Gnome to use compiz as your default window manager and not use metacity at all. Simply put this in your ~/.gnomerc (create that file if it does not exist yet):
export WINDOW_MANAGER=/usr/bin/compiz
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T-DOSE 2008 in review
by Sander MarechalThis year was the third installment of the Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE). Just as last year it was held at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven. This years speakers included Arnoud Engelfriet (European patent attorney) and Ywein van den Brande on GPLv3 compliance, Roy Scholten (Drupal), Bas de Lange (Syllable), Jean-Paul Saman (VideoLan), Jörn Engel (logfs), Bert Boerland (Drupal), Tim Hemel (TMTTD) and many, many other speakers. Unfortunately your editor was only able to attend on Sunday, but the talks were great. Here are the details.
This article was originally posted on LXer Linux News.
Setting up dual monitors system-wide with XRandR on Debian Lenny
by Sander MarechalI have been playing with my monitor setup again on my Dell D530 laptop. The internal monitor of the laptop is 1400x1050 pixels, but I usually use a 19" external monitor set to 1280x1024. With Etch this worked flawlessly. When the external monitor was hooked up and the lid on my laptop was closed, then my desktop would be 1280x1024. When I booted with the lid open and no monitor attached, the desktop would be 1400x1050. When I upgraded to Lenny this stopped working. I had to change the resolution each time I changed from external screen to internal screen and back. I reported a bug about this but the answer came down to “It’s not a bug but a feature. Use XRandR to change your displays if you don’t like it.”
So, I dove into XRandR. I wanted this to work for all users, so simply sticking some XRandR commands in the gnome session startup wasn’t going to suffice. At the same time I also got interested in trying a dual-head setup instead of only an external monitor when one was connected. I was going to need completely different layouts depending on the external monitor. It took a while before I figured out how to do it, it took a little longer to fight GNOME into submission, but here is how to make it work.
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Who Are The Real Friends of Linux and Free Software? Or, Linux Is Still a Dirty Word
Carla Schröder has an excellent editorial over at Linux Today:
[Ken Starks] was the fly in the soup at the big important Linux Foundation-sponsored IBM-hosted Second Annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit.Ken stepped up to the mike at the panel discussion and asked a simple question that visibly discomfited the panel: “My customers can turn on their cable television and in 30 minutes watch five Microsoft Windows commercials. When are IBM and HP going to put the same things on? When are my customers going to be able to see about Linux? Television and radio legitimize the product.”
The responses, in my occasionally-humble opinion, were worthy of Redmond itself. […] It all comes back to the same old story—don’t trust the suits because their business models are based on exploitation, and even when they profit handsomely from Linux it’s shameful and not mentioned in polite company.
The real friends of Linux and Free Software are people like Ken Starks […] who are not afraid to take a stand and say plainly “Linux is good, Linux is a superior choice, and yes, you really do have choices.” Why is it that only the little people are brave enough to say this?
From: Linux Today
Tags: linux
Fixing one-to-many relationships in SugarCRM 5.1
by Sander MarechalUpdated 2008-12-12. With the release of SugarCRM 5.0 came the new Module Builder that allows administrators to easily create new custom modules. But it was quite buggy and there was no way to create one-to-many relationships between custom modules. Then came SugarCRM 5.1 that promised to resolve the issues. Besides the Relationship Editor in the Module Builder there are also the “Relate” and “Flex Relate” fields. Two different (and incompatible ways) to create relationships. Not to mention that the Relationship Editor in the Module Builder works differently from the same editor in Studio. The former creates relationships in code, the latter in the database. And there are still heaps of bugs*.
The biggest problem I have had is with one-to-many relationships, the most common relationship type when you’re creating modules. If you use “Relate” fields then no real relationship is created and you won’t get a subpanel in the parent module. If you use relationships created in the Module Builder then the related fields show up badly in the Edit and Detail views, and you cannot use them at all in the List view, subpanel or search panels.
After much agony, hair-pulling and cursing I have finally found a way how to resolve the latter issue: Here is how you can repair your layouts when using one-to-many relationships.
My list of must-have vim scripts
by Sander MarechalI love (g)vim! I've been using a lot of different text and code editors over the years. When I started with Linux my first editor was Anjuta. After that I've tried BlueFish, Screem, SciTe, (X)Emacs, Gedit and many more until I stuck with Kate. But in the end, every Linux programmer eventually drops whatever editor or IDE that he or she uses and switch to either Vim or Emacs. I switched to Vim.
Vim is great all by itself, but there are a ton of scripts that you can use to expand vim make your life easier. Here are the vim scripts and settings that I use every day.
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