25 September, 2012

asian letters

I'd got quite used to my os x machine (at least in all its non-terminal windows) being able to deal with chinese (and related) scripts. which was neat because i can read a little bit of that shit. and its the future, after all, so i'd expect that to work. This new debian install though, they're back to being funny squares indicating unknown characters. like they were on the last linux desktop machine i just trashed from 12y ago.

gonna party like its 1999.

18 September, 2012

cut paste paste

I'm running desktop (well, laptop) linux for the first time since I left pygar.isi.edu behind in early 2005.

Trying to cut and paste from an xterm into firefox (actually iceweasel). I copy something (in as much as I remember how xterm copy-on-highlight works). Go to iceweasel and choose edit paste. Get something else completely different. Not random shit. Just some other paste.

A day later, after chatting on #lug, I realise ... *OF COURSE* ... the clipboard I get by pressing my new middle mouse button (I was on a mac before) pastes from a different clipboard than edit... paste does.

#lug also gave me this:

20:34 < philsnow> autocutsel should be installed by default
20:35 < philsnow> it will synchronize the primary and clipboard x selection 
                  buffers
20:35 < milki> but thats like losing a buffer
20:37 < philsnow> i don't know of anybody who _likes_ the separation of primary 
                  and clipboard in x
20:38 < philsnow> i generally use primary exclusively until i find some PoS 
                  site that uses some contrivance to not actually select things 
                  when you select them

I've been using linux since ~1995 and I pretty much have no fucking idea what they are talking about.

Truly this year will be the year of the linux desktop.

11 September, 2012

linux wifi

got a thinkpad x230.

put debian on it

the wifi doesn't work out of the box. grr. just like the last thinkpad I got in 2003...