I’m a big fan of three things that I get in X-Windows (on UNIX systems) which I don’t usually get in Microsoft Windows:
1. Middle-click pasting 2. Whatever I’m selecting automatically going to the clipboard. 3. Focus following mouse, allowing me to keep one application in the foreground while actually typing on the application in the background.
Usually wherever I’m contracting (at the moment, a software security company in Utah), I’m stuck using Windows despite how productive I am in Linux. Occupational hazard, I suppose. There are a few utilities I use to make my life easier when stuck using a legacy operating system such as Microsoft’s Windows:
* Cygwin. This gives me an X-Windows server (for easy interoperability with UNIX applications on remote servers which require X), a Bash shell, and most of the regular non-graphical utilities which I’m used to having on a UNIX system. * Putty. The only terminal emulator I’ve seen which surpasses Putty in usefulness is Konsole, and that is only available in KDE on a UNIX machine. It’s very flexible; if it only had tabbed windows and a more intuitive configuration dialog, it would be perfect. * Vim. I download the compiled version for MS Windows, and it runs fast and flexibly. I can gain equal utility using vim inside of an rxvt window, but sometimes rxvt seems a little bit slow when pasting a massive quantity of text. The W32 version of vim doesn’t seem to have that problem. * And now my new find for the morning: The True X Mouse Utility. You just drag this puppy into your Startup folder, and instantly you have really decent utility. The focus follows the mouse (so you don’t have to click an application in order to work in it), selection of text automatically copies that text to the clipboard (unless you middle-click while selecting, in which case it lets you select without copying), middle-clicking pastes instead of that bizarre “CTRL-C” thing, and overall it’s nifty keen. For a UNIX admin who frequently switches between X-Windows and Microsoft Windows, it’s a lifesaver. Your habits hold true for both operating systems.
Except now I have to find a mouse mod for regular X-windows which lets me abort a selection-copy using the middle button. That’s really swell.
Dig it. I have many pages up here which I mainly use as an archive to remind me of cool utilities which make my life easier. This is one of them 🙂
— Matt B.
autoraise troubles
I have been having a very peculiar problem that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere on the Internet; I have really looked. I am posting here b/c maybe people reading this article, know about this? The problem goes as follows: I enabled and disabled “Activation follows mouse” and “Autoraise when activating” in TweakUI 2.10, logged off and back on, played with these settings and used various combination thereof all to no avail. What is really the problem is that window Y pops to the front if my mouse goes from one window to the title bar of window Y. Is there any way to get rid of it? The only other reference to this kind of problem was posted about here (http://www.pcbanter.net/archive/index.php/t-723512-xp-window-raises-to-top-on-title-bar-mouse-over.html) but it doesn’t seem to lead to any kind of resolution. True X-Mouse Gizmo doesn’t address the problem either and I don’t think uninstalling TweakUI will address the issue b/c doesn’t it just change registry settings? To make matters worse, I don’t even know if installing and messing with the above mentioned TweakUI parameters affected this behavior in the first place. I.e. I don’t know when this behavior began, it could have been this way when I got the machine. Going crazy, please send help…jhb9149 at hotmail dot com