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Cool but obscure X11 tools

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Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#91

Post by eb0la »

microcolonel wrote: post #44
throwamay1241 wrote: post #10

For those looking for obscure-but-useful, checkout xdotool. `sleep 2; xdotool type "foo"` is super handy for typing passwords into virtual machines which don't support guest additions. I'd rather not elaborate on the filthy things I've made it do, but rest assured you can use it to do some quick and dirty automation tasks if you really need to :)

I suggest Sikuli, it does fuzzy matching on your screen contents to determine whether to continue with your dirty, dirty hacks.

I rememberdemoing Sikuli to the boss, when it clicked where we didn't expected just because the web we were trying to automate had a link we didn't notice.

Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#92

Post by buckminster »

II2II wrote: post #54
favadi wrote: post #25

How come gvim is obscure?

Guess 1: this page was originally going to be "Cool X11 Tools from the 1990's." Guess 2: perhaps the X11 version of vim is obscure. I usually visualize vim users working in a terminal, with those interested in a GUI text editor using something else.

I used some of these in the 1980's!

Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#93

Post by dahart »

Boy does that bring back memories of the 1990s!

Some of these are not obscure at all, but absolutely standard. Xterm was the shell, I’m not sure there were even alternatives in early X. Xbiff+Xload+Xclock used to be on everybody’s desktop. XV was the main image viewer on X for a long time.

Anybody remember xvacuum? I guess it’s truly obscure since it didn’t make the list. One of my favorite tricks to play on other people in the lab, before X security was a thing, was to run xvacuum on other people’s displays ... it slowly sucks everything on the screen into the mouse cursor.

If the page maintainer is reading, Xsnow has a calculator in the screenshot covering the snow. This one is a bit obscure, but I loved xsnow, so I think it deserves a calculator-less view! :)

Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#94

Post by BubRoss »

vnorilo wrote: post #72
coribuci wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity, Bill Gates is also a very prolific guy that people love to hate. I take some time every day to curse both of them for the amount of dispair that they cause with their offsprings.

I've always wondered about this sentiment about software you are free to use or not. Or is it the fact that a majority of others, or those that have the power, choose for you by making life harder if you deviate? Shouldn't you curse those people, instead of the creators of the software?

A lot of software can feel like a bait and switch. To keep compatibility you have to use windows, but the quality goes up and down. Bundled IE, windows ME, then XP which people loved, then Vista, then windows 7 which people loved again, then windows 10. There isn't nearly as much freedom of choice when it is an all or nothing game and things are changing underneath you. Windows 10 reverts your settings after doing forced updates. It forces Cortana to be on and Microsoft has been found to have employees listening in on voice commands. This doesn't apply to bill gates any more, but it does illustrate why people end up using software they hate.

Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#97

Post by randolando »

scrollaway wrote: post #76
craigsmansion wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget to thank him for `avahi' too. Avahi is a fun whack-a-mole game where your computer hides the network connection. You win the game by remembering to kill processes and setting up stuff manually, like most games produced by LP studios. edit: Other popular games include: SystemD: hack your way through a blob of intractability. Try it on Nightmare mode, where you're only given access to a empty bootscreen, f…

Lennart Poettering is a dev who has contributed massive amounts of code most people in this thread use every hour of every day. Code which, for most people, does work. It's not like free software has a shortage of talented contributors that people hate for a variety of reasons. At some point you have to actually point out the issues productively, rather than the boring character assassination, or just randomly saying…

The problem is the fundamental shift away from the long accepted design philosophy of software doing one thing and doing it well.

This means "grown adults" can't uninstall the software components that they like, because they aren't individual components anymore.

Systemd would probably not be hated on as much if it was only a "better" init. But instead it is an opaque and centralized system that is replacing a growing list of tooling ( init, ntp, cron, syslog, network config, to name a few)

Re: Cool but obscure X11 tools

#98

Post by jhallenworld »

kbrackbill wrote: post #96
jhallenworld wrote: post #95

xphoon is missing Also I seem to remember a multiuser 3d tank game, maybe xtank? I don't really remember.

bzflag?

Maybe, it worked on Decstation 2100s and 3100s (black and white) around 1992. Everybody in the computer lab was playing it.
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