Tweaking PopOS
I’ve been having a blast configuring Pop-OS! this weekend. The reason it’s been so much fun is that I’m getting pretty good at solving problems and getting things done.
I used vim to edit all the chapters of my book, The HomoSpeis Hypothesis. There are 16 Chapters in the book and I got a lot of practice using Vim. Then, I had to use Gnome Files and the default Text Editor, which I assume is Gedit, to copy and paste them into the WordPress editor. I learned a lot about moving around within Vim. I still have to learn how to move around between Vim and other applications.
The HomoSpeis Hypothesis is a little off topic for this website, but it does fit into the spiritual aspect of Holistic Home Office. The website is growing. It feels very much like tending a garden. It kind of has a life of its own, which I tweak every once in a while, to guide the growth and development of homoseis.studio.
I edit the story, or write the story like I am now, in Vim. Then save it in the appropriate directory. For now, I use Gnome Files and Text Editor to copy and paste them from my computer into the WordPress editor. Then, I tweak the story in the WordPress editor, to get it properly formated and checked for spelling errors and stuff like that. You know, one last go over edit, and then publish the story.
Using Vim to edit all those stories has taught me a lot about how to use Vim. I feel way more comfortable moving around. The repetition is developing muscle memory, within my brain and my hands.
Figuring out the copy and pasting is turning out to be a little harder. You don’t use the same keys as you do in the rest of your computer. You use y and p for yank and past, instead of ctrl-c and ctrl-v. I seem to remember reading that the dd command works like ctrl-x, but it hasn’t been working for me.
Copy and pasting into and out of Vim is a whole nother story. Apparently, there are two different sets of registers where your computer saves the text you copy. One works for vim, the other one works for the rest of your computer. You can make them work together, but, I guess that is the next project I need to learn.
I also spent some time working on my Pop-OS! configuration. I’ve got my tools set up with the same color scheme. I’ve got them all using my translucent green and silver color scheme. I’m using Alacritty, Zsh, Tmux, Vim and Vifm.
I’m just about finished with The Missing Semester video series. I’m pretty sure it is an MIT course about using these tools, like Alacritty, Zsh, Tmux and Vim. Then, I’ll go back and finish the MIT Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python. I definitely recommand that you sit through these courses. Harvard’s CS-50 is another great course you can observe for free.
You can literally sit in on Harvard and MIT computer science classes for free. You can’t ask questions and you miss all the labs and interaction with other students, but watching these classes, while you are exploring your own free and open source software is time well spent.
Once you get your settings set, copy them into a settings folder so you can easily access them, whenever you set up a new operating system. Then, make sure you copy the folder to your external hard drive. These are not your actual settings. They’re copys you are making, so you can copy and paste them into new operating systems.
I just found out you can install gnome-tweak-tool with sudo apt install. Then, go to Keyboard and Mouse and then, down to the bottom of the page and set, Mouse Click Emulation, to Area. This enables you to use right click to bring up a menu for the applications you are using. Now, you can easily rename files and folders, etc.
I found a bunch of documentation about change in Vim, so I’ll be studying that this week.
While I am using this blog as a kind of journal, it is not a good idea to write about what you are doing. You want your blog posts and articles to be addressed to your audience. They’re not really interested in what you are doing.
Everyone has their own agenda and that is the natural order of things. Think about your audience. And don’t ramble from topic to topic so much.
You can use Vim for writing blog posts and articles. It feels really weird at first, but once you get used to using Vim, you can zoom right along. I’ve got my 15 inch laptop set up with a named Tmux session. My first Window is divided vertically with Vim on the right. The pane on the left is split horizontally, with zsh on the bottom and htop on the top. The second window is a full page zsh.
By the way, I went into the htop settings at ~/.config/htop/htoprc and set delay=50 to slow htop’s recycling down, so I can actually read what’s going on. That’s what I’ve been doing, tweaking Pop-OS!. I’ve got a pretty cool system running right now. And I’m not even using KDE’s GUIs.
Save your posts by using your regular :w command with the path to where you want to save the file, like :w ~/HomeOfficeStudio/BlogPosts/TweakingPopOS.