After a long day of working in the yard, I sat down at my computer after the kids had gone to bed and decided that rather than falling asleep with my finger on the Z key while coding (which somehow leads to buggy code), I'd be better off doing something less involved. I opted to upgrade my Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon install to the newest Kubuntu Hardy Heron release.

I've been trying Opera on Linux these last few days, due to an issue with Firefox not redrawing the browser screen on new page loads unless something other than a page load triggers a redraw (like the user resizing the browser).

I have mixed emotions about Opera. I really want it to work, however I it's looking like there are a few dealbreakers.

But first, let's start with the "pros."

Pros

Need to check on how much of your system resources a certain program is consuming? (Maybe you left Firefox on over night and want to see how huge it is due it its famous memory leak).

In KDE:

Or on the command line:

After a few months of dual booting Windows XP and SuSE Linux 10.2, and feeling rather bifurcated by the workflow, I've finally hit upon my perfect setup.

I plan to make an ongoing series of posts regarding equivalent programs for designer/developers in OS X, Linux, and XP. Most of the comparisons will be between programs that provide a GUI (or Graphical User Interface).

So how about screenshots? I've recently updated the portfolio section of this site, and that act is fresh in my memory. I opted to use Linux for this, but have previously used XP for the task.

XP

Pressing the Print Screen button (or Print Screen + ALT to only grab the current window) copies an image of the screen to the system clipboard.

Over the course of the last few months I've moved from using Windows XP as my sole design and development environment to a mixture of OS X, OpenSUSE Linux and XP in various contexts.

Recently I wrote the following:

everything a person can do can be broken down into smaller units of action. It's a wax on, wax off sort of deal. If we can just remember that, and then simply seek to learn the vocabulary and identify the moving pieces...

...then we can build mastery. It's never really that hard. It just takes perseverance.

I'd searched high and low for the answer to this, and now that I've found it, I want to post it. I guess the real challenge, however, is getting a search engine to render up the goods: doing a Google search for "./" or "dot slash" didn't return much, and I don't have any bright ideas, other than spelling it out as dot slash.

So, that's the issue though - what does ./ mean in a Linux path?