ncdu is short for NCurses Disk Usage. In addition to being able to visualize disk usage by directory, it lets you sort on different parameters, delete files, show hidden files, and a few more stuff that you’ll miss if you go back to plain du. Most importantly it acts as a file manager, so you can simply enter the directories to see a more fine-grained breakdown of file sizes. As an added bonus it has Vim keybindings along with normal arrow key movements.

Screenshot of ncdu + help popup

Installation:

brew install ncdu # macOS
sudo apt-get install ncdu # Ubuntu/debian

How do you split a text file by two, though? With a quick hack using head and tail of course.

head -n 1000 input-file > output1
tail -n +1001 input-file > output2

The + in the tail command tells it to count lines from the top, instead of from the bottom which is the usual case of tail.

Source: unix.stackexchange

But how do you connect with a dongle when you don’t have a GUI? azeemigi’s blog has the solution. I’m reproducing it here just for the sake of my own future reference.

First determine the name of your broadband connection using the command nmcli -p con You will get the list of network interfaces in your computer and among them might be a row corresponding to your dongle. It’s easily distinguishable. In my case it was,

~ » nmcli -p con
 =============================================================================
                                                   Connection list
==============================================================================
NAME                      UUID                                   TYPE         
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wired connection 1        cbd369e1-b2fa-46a6-83b1-fbfdc9d28e0f   802-3-ethernet
Dialog GSM Postpaid       bb06d9f7-772c-4b4b-851a-4564503c3798   gsm       

Obviously it’s the last row.

Now download the following gist and copy/paste the name and the UUID of the connection in the relevant lines.

It goes without saying that you need to make the script executable with chmod +x mbb and add to a location in your $PATH.

Now you can connect to the internet with mbb start, disconnect with mbb stop and check the status with mbb status.

1. sudo apt-get install ttf-sinhala-lklug ibus im-switch ibus-m17n m17n-db m17n-contrib
2. rm -f ~/.xinput.d/* ; im-switch -z all_ALL -s ibus
3. Logout and login again.
4. ibus-setup
5. Choose the Wijesekare layout from the Input Method tab and close

Now you can switch between English and Sinhala using the key combination Ctrl + Space.

That’s the way it should be! That’s what I’m after: Transfer rates. File sizes. A proper progress bar and percent complete, with a second readout for overall progress, as needed.

Just follow the instructions on the site to apply the patch and compile coreutils. Then alias the resulting cp and mv binaries to, well, cp and mv. Make sure to add a -g flag to the aliases to get the progress bars.

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-irc

There are a few other plugins that do not come pre-installed. You can view them using,

apt-cache search account-plugin

What do you do when you need to find an alternative to a software? Check out AlternativeTo.net of course. It led me to this free and open-source tool called pdfbook that lets you do exactly the same. It works in Linux only though (it may work on Windows but will need some work). Also, the tool has some dependencies which need to be installed. In Linux this is usually not much of a problem thanks to package managers. If you’re on Ubuntu/Debian, the steps to install pdfbook is as follows:

1. sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-recommended
2. Download the pdfbook tarball from here and extract
3. Go to the extracted directory and install using make install

Now pdfbook is ready to use. The following command will create a booklet:

./pdfbook -2 original.pdf destination.pdf

The Ubuntu Geek article on this reports,

Few days back, CodeWeavers started a campaign ‘Flock the Vote’ announcing that they will release CrossOver for free if 100,000 Americans pledge to vote in the 2012 Presidential elections.
CodeWeavers failed to reach stated goal of 100,000 pledges. However, CEO Jeremy White has now decided to give away CrossOver for free anyway.

This CrossOver package usually costs $59.95.

But the best thing is that Everpad is in active development. We badly need a good Evernote client for Linux, something better than NixNote. Everpad is on the move.