Computing

Software - GNU/Linux Software Projects

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| Software | Linux | Legacy |

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Listed below are some of the projects I have worked on or have packaged to make life a little easier.  Debian/Ubuntu users may add the following APT repository to their sources.list if they wish:

deb http://debian.russecke.net/ ./ deb-src http://debian.russecke.net/ ./

You may also browse the packages here.

Software

• notifier-applet - display notfication messages from UDP packets on the GNOME panel.
• site-upload - quickly upload website changes from the command line.
• SimpleWXR - import posts into WordPress using a simplified WXR XML format.
• helper-scripts - a set of tools to help with the maintenance of Debian-based system.
• synctree - a tool to synchronize two directory trees based on a set of rules.
• bup - yet another easy to use backup tool.

Packages

• lirc-modules - updated LIRC modules packages.
• keyspan - kernel module Debian packages for Keyspan USB to serial converters.
• nedit - my preferred graphical text editor.
• xbox - packages for the Microsoft Xbox.
• misterhouse - a home automation program written in Perl.
• sorune - a tool used to manage the database on the Neuros Audio player.
• cats2procmailrc - a tool generate a procmail recipe from a simple, human readable mail categories file.

Cinnamon Workspace Switcher Labels v6

Posted on February 07, 2025.

I recently switched back to Cinnamon from MATE on one of my machines and found I needed to reapply this patch again.  I've updated it a bit to support all three modes of operation (workspace desktop preview, workspace labels, and the original useless numbers), selectable from the configuration dialog.  You can also specify the button width in label mode, which can be nice if you want control over the aesthetics.

This patch works for version 6.x of cinnamon:

• workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org.v6.patch

Download it and apply it thusly on a Debian-based system:

$ cd /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org
$ sudo patch -p1 < ~/Downloads/workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org.v6.patch
patching file applet.js
patching file settings-schema.json
$

Then restart cinnamon with Alt+F2 and then "r" and enter.

Cinnamon Workspace Switcher Labels

Posted on September 16, 2015.

I've been using Linux Mint for years now.  Like a lot of people, I switched around the time that GNOME and Ubuntu set out to gaslight the world about how everything about their workflows have been wrong for all this time.  I tried GNOME Shell, but with each passing release they stripped more and more useful functionality from it.  Linux Mint kept the GNOME 2 torch lit and eventually offered both MATE (a GNOME 2 fork) and their own Cinnamon (GNOME 3 based) desktop variants.  I liked what Cinnamon had to offer, but it was a bit buggy and I so stuck with MATE instead.

Cinnamon continued to improve and at some point I decided to switch over to it.  I was able to recreate most of my workflows, but one thorn in my side was that at some point they replaced the workspace names in the switcher with these useless numbers.  It was either that or a tiny thumbnail of the desktop.  I use workspaces in a very specific way that helps me keep my trains of thought in order and the naming convention is a big part of that.  Thinking this was just temporary, I modified the JavaScript to bring back the names instead of numbers and kept reapplying the patch every time Cinnamon got upgraded.

Here we are years later and the silly thing is still broken! I sent the patch to dev that made the original change, but they didn't take it because it has a one major flaw: the width of the buttons is hard-coded.  I suspect this is the real reason behind why the simple view only shows the number.  It's tricky to know how to set the width, as it depends on the font being used, DPI, etc.  I assumed there was some "proper" way to do this, but I guess not?

Anyway, I'm posting the patch here in case anyone wants it.  If you want wider/narrower buttons, just change the constant at the top.

• workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org.patch

MythTV 0.26

Posted on March 10, 2013.

I had upgraded my MythTV back and front ends recently from version 0.24 and ran into some annoyances:

• The MediaMonitor has a new dependency on the udisks daemon, even if you don't use the Media Monitor feature.  Without it, Myth had very poor behavior when trying to eject optical media.  The eject option in the menu would just display a dialog saying "No devices to eject." Also, the physical eject button would get disabled after playing the disk even though I could eject it from a terminal with "eject" as the mythtv user.  The fallback in MediaMonitor::ejectOpticalDisk() seems to be useless.
• My carefully-crafted channel lineup for Comcast became non-functional.  This is such a tedious process that i still haven't gotten around to fixing it.  Right now, my digital tuners are recording programs that can't actually be tuned.

nedit_5.6~cvs20100114-rknize1 released

Posted on January 15, 2010.

Release a new CVS snapshot for nedit, mainly to ease installation on top of the snapshot that comes with Ubuntu 9.10.

notifier-applet 0.3-1

Posted on January 13, 2009.

Version 0.3-1 of notifier-applet has been released.

Changes

• Add length field to message format 1.
• Update notifier.pl example with message format 1 support.