What byobu really is is a wrapper script that that launches the GNU Screen application using the byobu configuration. The user will see a strip along the bottom edge of the terminal window that gives a real-time update on various processes. Let’s take a look at this handy tool and see what all it can do.

Installation

ISince this is a console based tool, I will show you how to install it from the command line. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install byobu (for Ubuntu) or yum install byobu (for Fedora). NOTE: For Fedora you will have to su to the root user prior to issuing the installation command.
3. Accept any dependencies that might be required.

Once the installation is complete, you are ready to begin using byobu.

Usage

Figure 1

To use byobu, just enter the command byobu from the command prompt. When you do you will see the small strip appear at the bottom of your terminal (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 does show the top command running in the terminal to distinguish between a terminal in use and the byubu portion of the screen. If you end the top command, you will be left with an empty terminal window save for the bash prompt and the byobu strip at the bottom.

Figure 2

The byobu interface will update in real time and can give you information regarding numerous systems or monitors. You can configure what you want byobu to monitor in the ~/.byobu/status file OR you can simply hit F9 while byobu is running. When you hit F9 you will see the byobu configuration window (see Figure 2). From this window you can configure a number of options. To set (or unset) the notifications you want, scroll down (with arrow keys) to the Toggle status notifications and hit Enter. When you do you will see a simple window that lists all the possible notifications for byobu. Move through the list with your arrow keys and then hit the space bar to select any option you want to include (or not include). Once you have completed this hit the Tab button to get down to the Apply “button” to save your changes. Those changes will be made as soon as you click Apply.

From the main configuration window you can also change a number of features such as fore and background colors, keybinding, escape sequence, and more. You can even add new shells (which are similar to tabs). Once you’ve added new shells you can more back and forth between the shells by hitting the F2 button to move backwards and F3 to move forward. You can  have any number of shells you want.

Final thoughts

The byobu tool is a very cool way to add extra functionality to the standard terminal window. If you are looking for a bit more from the standard Linux shell, byobu is just what you need.

Understand that GNOME 3 is not due out until late 2010, so it is currently very much in beta. You will be surprised just how stable it already is. Because of this stability I feel confident that, with the help of these (and more) tips, you can also become an early adopter of GNOME 3 and be ahead of the curve. In this article you will see a few more of these tips that will help you get used to what will replace the GNOME desktop that has been around since 1997.

Better use of the “overview”

Figure 1

The “overview” of GNOME Shell is what you see when you either move your mouse to the upper left corner of your desktop or press the “Super” (or “Windows”) key. When you open up the overview you will see a zoomed out view of your desktop with all the windows thumbnailed. Let’s tweak this a bit (for a good reason).

Remember the Linux desktop pager (that tool that allows you to have more than one desktop?) Let’s set our GNOME Shell up to have four desktops. To do this click the “+” symbol in the lower right corner (when you are viewing the overview) until you have four small squares in the bottom center of the window (see Figure 1).

Figure 2

Now that you have those four squares, let’s set the overview to show all of your desktops when you are in overview mode. To do this click on the small icon to the bottom left of the overview window (to the left of the menu) that looks like four small squares. Now when you view the overview you will see all four desktops at once (see Figure 2). Now it gets really cool.

When you are in the overview mode, with multiple desktops showing, you can open an application into a specific desktop. Let’s say you want to OpenOffice Writer to open up in desktop 2. To do this open up the overview mode and then click the OpenOffice Writer icon (from the menu) and drag it to desktop 2. This will then open the application up in the desktop you dragged the icon to, and only that desktop! You can also just drag a currently open window from one desktop to another when in overview mode.

Search

We can’t leave out the search feature. When you are in overview mode you will see a Find text area. When you use this feature you can search for just about anything on your machine. And not only does this search bring up files, it brings up applications as well. Say, for instance, you want to use one of your email clients. You can enter the string “mail” (no quotes) and see whatever mail clients you have (mine brings up Evolution, Claws Mail, and KMail.) This is a handy way to find applications quickly, instead of having to comb through menus or listings.

Final thoughts

There you have it, even more GNOME Shell tips to entice you to give this soon to be replacement for the aging GNOME desktop a try. GNOME Shell is one of those environments you might at first not like, but very quickly you will find yourself wishing your current environment had some of its features – so much so you’ll most like head back to GNOME Shell. And, of course, more tips to come.

Some services offer free SSH accounts, to edit and access files anywhere, host websites, use them as proxies (or IPv6 gateways) and some even let you run processes like IRC bots and compilers.

Generally, such free Shell accounts impose a monthly bandwidth quota of a few megabytes, so you don’t use too much of their resources. Some providers are more generous than others, though, and some charge for additional space and bandwidth.

Most SSH providers offer Unix-based hosting. Mitja Sladovic offers a very large list of such free providers.

The most popular service is the SDF Public Access UNIX System, established in 1987. Free users are offered email hosting (POP or IMAP), games, access to the text-based ‘Lynx’ web browser, web hosting, various network utilities and 80MB space. For access to gcc, php etc., one must pay a one-off fee of $36. In order to validate your account, and receive access to network utilities, one must send them $1 or €5 (in order to deter spammers).

Blinkenshell is another interesting option. Free accounts get 50MiB of space, access to several compilers, an IPv6 tunnel, hosting, email, IRC access and even the ability to have MySQL databases. One can’t use Blinkenshell for IRC bots, though. A few services do provide access to eggdrop, a popular IRC bot, such as Polarhome and aeshells.

Naturally, novices may struggle with such services as no graphical interface is provided. These services do, however, provide a rapid way to compile applications on different platforms (like Linux and BSD) and allow boring processes, like IRC bots, to run for you.

Update: Freeshell is still the number one destination for free remote SSH accounts.

The application will display a configuration window after installation which is displaying the shell entries that have been added by the application. This includes copying the path, opening the command prompt, running files with parameters or opening notepad or paint.

Not all of the entries are needed though. It is possible to remove some entries from the context menu entry. New entries – called commands in the application – can be added as well. Every entry consists of a title, program name, arguments, directories and other variables that can be defined during creation. Entries can be moved around to change their position in the context menu.

It is for instance possible to add any executable file to the right-click context menu including specific launch parameters. Another interesting feature of Open++ is the ability to use short path and prompts for arguments when pressing keys on the keyboard at the same time.

The application is running as a rundll.exe process with about 3 Megabytes of computer memory usage after installation.

A hash is just a string that has been computed with the use of an algorithm. That hash is always the same as long as the file that has been checked is not modified. This leads directly to many uses of hash values. They can be used to check that a file is still the same on one computer, that a file that has been uploaded to a remote computer is the same as the file on the source computer or that a download from an Internet website is not corrupt.

Hash Tab is a Windows shell extension that adds a tab in the File Properties window that is displaying has values of various algorithms like MD5, CRC32 or SHA-512.

One interesting feature of Hash Tab is the ability to compare hashes in the File Properties dialog. It is possible to select a second file on the hard drive and compare it with the first one or to paste a hash into one of the forms and compare the files that way. The second option is obviously thought for comparing files that are not located on the same computer. Helpful after downloading files on the Internet or transferring files to a remote computer.

Hash Tab is only one review that was posted by Demetris at his blog. He lists Fifteen useful shell extensions for Windows with lots of screenshots and information on his website.

Users installing the software need to have administrator rights to do so and should note that only NTFS drives support the creation which means that it cannot be used on partitions formatted with FAT file systems. It should also be noted that Link Shell Extension is compatible with 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The type of link that is created depends on the source that is picked by the user. Picking files will create hardlinks, folders will create junctions and a partition will create a volume mountpoint. The benefit of creating that file system is that files and folders can be accessed in multiple places instead of just the source location.

In addition to the three link types specified above the Windows Vista version of Link Shell Extension supports the creation of Symbolic Links which have been introduced in the operating system.

The creation of remote links within SMB mapped network NTFS drives is supported by the software program as well. The easiest way to get an overview of the capabilities of Link Shell Extension is to visit the homepage which lists all supported modes and functions.

Wherever Change Directory (WCD via Download Squad) is the name of a Windows script that is offering a way to change directories in the Windows command line blazingly fast. It indexes the directory structure of the computer system at first start of the application which takes a few seconds. After that it is possible to change directories with the command wcd directory, for example wcd desktop. The default search is to look for every directory name that begins with the search term that the user entered. Wildcards can be used to change that behavior.

WCD will display all directories with desktop in their name giving the user the option to pick one to change to. If only one directory with the name was found on the system WCD will immediately make the directory change.

Wherever Change Directory supports local directories, Windows LAN UNC paths, alias directories and subdirectories.

A user who has the intention to work regularly with the software program should either move it into a system path directory or add the new directory to the system path to be able to run wcd from every location and not only its source directory.

You could for instance sort through your files and move all files belonging to one group into a new folder using Piky Basket. The file operations available are copy, move and delete. This is actually another nice application. I sometimes download large image collections from sites like Flickr using an automated downloader. Instead of going through each picture I could simply add all pictures that I want to delete in the basket and delete them at the end.

I would not have to mark them all while still browsing through them. Its also great for creating a CD or DVD with files from different locations, a backup for instance.

Another option is to copy paths to the clipboard. Picky Basket can get the file paths of selected files and folders and copy them to the clipboard. Found at Freeware Genius (any news about my shoes Samer, hehe).

Update: Picky Basket is no longer offered by the developing company. The program functionality has been moved into the commercial program Copywhiz. Windows users who prefer a free solution should take a look at Smart Copy Tool which provides a similar functionality.

It can be used to display all or select files stored in a root folder and all of that folder’s subfolders. These files can then be moved, copied or deleted. The program offers additional functionality, like the ability to merge directories or to synchronize them.

The three items of Windows Media Player that I’m talking about are a) Add to Burn List, b) Add to Windows Media Player Player List and c) Play with Windows Media Player.

Do the following to remove the Windows Media Player menu items: Press Windows R, type in regedit32 and hit enter. Now navigate to the following keys in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Clsid\. I would suggest to make a backup of the keys before deleting them. To backup a registry key you right-click it and select Export from the menu.

a) {8DD448E6-C188-4aed-AF92-44956194EB1F}
b) {F1B9284F-E9DC-4e68-9D7E-42362A59F0FD}
c) {CE3FB1D1-02AE-4a5f-A6E9-D9F1B4073E6C}

Changes will take effect immediately and can be tested by right-clicking a multimedia file like a video. Another working method would be to unregister the wmpshell.dll which is used to provide the context menu items. This is probably the easier method.

Press Windows R, type in regsvr32 /u wmpshell.dll, hit enter

To register it again you do the following:

Press Windows R, type in regsvr32 wmpshell.dll, hit enter

Those changes take effect immediately as well.

Learning the shell starts with explaining the shell concept: “What is the shell ?”. After that it goes straight into navigating, looking around and a guided tour which explains the default directory structure. After that it´s manipulating files, I/O redirection, permissions and job controll. The tutorial uses lots of screenshots to visualise the paragraphs, great way for beginners I think.