DLN Xtend - Episode 4

In this episode we cover Weekly events, recap the first ever DLN game night, pine over the PinePhone preorder, Nate gives his account of being on the Ask Noah Show, Linux for Everyone’s take on Living Your Life to the Fullest and how the Linux community plays a part, openSUSE votes on a name change, Linus Torvalds says he’s no longer a programmer, and DasGeek’s intial take on the Pinebook Pro and software availability for ARM.

DLN Xtend - Episode 4

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Another great episode!!! Just letting @EricAdams & @CubicleNate know that I think this is a great show (based on several other great shows), and to keep up the incredible work!

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I’m very behind on episodes, still really enjoying it though. Thanks @EricAdams and @CubicleNate. I haven’t heard the conversation on the AskNoah podcast, though I have to say with all the other editors and IDEs already available for Linux, using anything by Microsoft makes me feel a bit squeamish, frankly. Of course we do what we have to if we have to, but given the choice, I’d go elsewhere personally. Talking of IDEs I don’t think Google are much better either. I’ve had nothing but trouble whenever trying to use their Android Studio. It really doesn’t inspire confidence. Maybe if I had far greater insights into Groovy and how various parts of their SDK fit together it would be better for me, though I wonder if they’re making it deliberately hard to enter into Android coding to keep it more exclusive. Ah well… Good to see all the enthusiasm for Pine here too. I’m definitely looking forward to more from them :slight_smile:

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I can understand any bit of hesitation about using an IDE from Microsoft. From my perspective, it is nice that the company for which I work has this tool and it synchronizes the efforts across the platforms. I do believe you have to do for what is most comfortable.

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I am a fanatical (Neo)Vimmer myself, but there’s always VSCodium.

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When I started looking at doing a build of LFS I decided it was about time I started learning vim, as I really do think it’s crucial for sys admin work. Since then I’ve also been using it for some Java coding. It’ll be a long time before I become a power user though!

vim is one of those programs that I learned as I went. I did vim-tutor years ago and got the absolute basics (yes, how to exit :roll_eyes:) and have learned many more things since then. I am by no means a power user and probably never will be, especially compared to some people I’ve seen use vim like playing an instrument. It’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed but if you consistently use it you’ll learn a little more each time. I love that the advanced features are there when you are ready for them.

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A very apt analogy, Eric - thank you for that! One thing I like about vim and it’s modes is that they do force a person to think about what they’re actually doing. Arguably having to type escape colon w enter to save a file (at least using the basics I know) is so much slower than typing control-s, but carefully having to think about what one is doing while editing code, for example, is probably not a bad thing :slight_smile:

Meh, this is true for a while, but eventually you try to edit a Word document and wonder why there are a colon, a “w,” and a bunch of “h’s” at the end of the line.

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I second that!!!

I use vim for all my editing and for note taking. I even write smaller texts with it, with colors, spellchecking etc. It is a fantastic tool. I open the terminal, even in tty, and I can begin to work.

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Apparently even Emacs had a vim mode…? Have to say when I’m using Emacs, I use Emacs shortcuts and much though I enjoy it, unfortunately it can’t really be expected to be found on all systems that might need going “under the hood” for emergency sys-admin work, for example.

I wonder if LibreOffice has a vim mode. That would be useful!

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Generally, it’s a better idea to use Vim to write in something like LaTeX, groff, or Pandoc rather than trying to add Vim-like functionality to your word processor. Since there are a bunch of text-formatting features in a word processor that you will never find in an editor, a bunch of existing keyboard shortcuts would have to be worked around.

I use Pandoc, and it is literally a matter of writing a Markdown document and compiling it. There is a vim plugin and an Emacs package (available through the MELPA!) for it. I did have to create my own template for MLA format, but that was basically a matter of putting a couple of variables into an existing LaTeX template and and saving it in the right place. The other two solutions are more flexible, but that does come at a cost of complexity.

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Also, if you want to try EVIL mode (vim keybindings for Emacs), you can install it from the MELPA or use an EVIL-focused starter kit like DOOM Emacs or Spacemacs.

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It’s been a very long time since I used LaTex, though of course it was extremely useful for writing papers. I’ll lookup some of tools you mention and see if they can work for me. Thanks :slight_smile:

I personally like Atom and Geany. I want to play with the git integration in Atom more, as I’ve been doing git adds commits and pushes just from the command line.

Should be pretty extensive, as it’s owned by GitHub. Isn’t VSCode sort of rebranded Atom?