Productivity

cs_student · 2010-04-24 22:42:27

My first draw to gnu/linux was the fact that it looked quite nice. As a junior in high school I cared more about impressing my friends with the operating system, rather than really learning how to use it.

Since then I have slowly learned how much more productive I can be on it. I came about being more productive through my curiosity of different programs, and the occasional chance of reading peoples conversations on IRC in which I would go "Oh, that's how I can easily do that."

Since then I have learned how to use vim (though I'm far from a master at it), cmake, git, autoconf, irssi, as well as how to navigate and do routine tasks via the cli. Gradually my interest in linux has shifted from aesthetics to my infatuation with being productive with my limited amount of time.

I was hoping maybe I could hear some of the ways you make yourself more productive with your time, be it bash scripts, configurations, etc.

Berticus · 2010-04-24 23:56:11

zsh instead of bash. I'm still building on it, so not a master by any means, it has much better globbing and tab completions. LaTeX only really started to become really productive last year when I started writing my own document classes. I have found tiling window managers to be absolutely wonderful. Doesn't matter if it's manual or dynamic, at that point it's just preferences. Bang commands require less typing and creates automatic stacks, which means less pushd and popd. Screen multiplexing, like a window manager for the terminal. Either tmux or screen, at that point it's just preferences.

pretty soon I'm going to write a script that'll give me the skeleton files when I need to write certain documents using a similar format that I have in the past.

In ratpoison, I've specified a special frame as a scratchpad that houses a urxvt client to launch programs instead of using dmenu. I used to like dmenu, but there are certain things that I should be able to do quickly without switching windows. I press Alt+Space, and It creates a small box at the bottom of my screen, and it has far superior tab completion that dmenu currently does. When dmenu gets tab completion as good as bash, I'll ditch the scratchpad.

Made my own wiki, longdef, and define functions in my zshrc so I don't have to use my browser. Similarly, with more sites using rss, I've put them into newsbeuter. Still working on mutt + fdm + bogofilter. Just sent 8000 spam messages my way, now going through them to teach bogofilter what is spam. tytter and tircd handles twitter for me. Will probably write another function to fetch me lyrics or maybe guitar tabs.

I'm still undecided about using tabbed or leaving that to ratpoison, and adjusting my ratpoisonrc file.

Boodler is great for creating noise when it's too quiet, and just use that with whatever music. I also need a little movement when I study, so I have a script that cycles through screensavers, except it doesn't lock up my computer, so I can still use it.

There's just a bunch of things you'll pick up if you hang around on the forums long enough.

Mardoct · 2010-04-25 06:47:27

For obvious reasons this isn't as good of an idea for sensitive information, but I find it's a lot faster to get information (school work mostly for me) from point a to b by just hosting it locally on an http server and needing nothing more than a web browser to get it on any computer anywhere else in the world.

I personally prefer tilda for all my quick terminal needs. Can generally do certain things faster, like a pacman -Syu, with a Quake style terminal.

StephenB · 2010-04-25 21:30:45

Ratpoison (tiling WM used by Berticus) is maybe a little extreme - it doesn't pay any attention to your mouse (i.e. ratpoison). I installed it as my first WM. It's really small and simple, but I gave up with it when I couldn't work out how to change the root key for its key commands (I'm sure it can be done, I just couldn't figure out how). I now use Xmonad (another tiling window manager), this one seems very configurable and has lots of useful docs on their site.

I have started to learn emacs and have since swapped my Caps Lock and Ctrl keys using xmodmap in my .xinitrc

Today I wrote my first bash script which will print a pdf as a booklet using acroread (Adobe Reader, available from AUR).

moljac024 · 2010-04-25 22:12:06

Also, be sure to try out emacs.
I gave it one more shot last week and now I officialy switched from vim.
It has so much functionality...they don't call it an operating system without a reason

cesura · 2010-04-25 23:50:35

moljac024 wrote:

Also, be sure to try out emacs.
I gave it one more shot last week and now I officialy switched from vim.
It has so much functionality...they don't call it an operating system without a reason

I find myself using gedit even though I use Awesome3. I guess it just stuck with me from my early Debian days. I can't stand emacs though.

moljac024 · 2010-04-26 00:46:34

itsbrad212 wrote:

moljac024 wrote:
Also, be sure to try out emacs.
I gave it one more shot last week and now I officialy switched from vim.
It has so much functionality...they don't call it an operating system without a reason
I find myself using gedit even though I use Awesome3. I guess it just stuck with me from my early Debian days. I can't stand emacs though.

I couldn't either. Just try it from time to time

cesura · 2010-04-26 00:48:12

moljac024 wrote:

itsbrad212 wrote:
moljac024 wrote:
Also, be sure to try out emacs.
I gave it one more shot last week and now I officialy switched from vim.
It has so much functionality...they don't call it an operating system without a reason
I find myself using gedit even though I use Awesome3. I guess it just stuck with me from my early Debian days. I can't stand emacs though.
I couldn't either. Just try it from time to time

I feel like I want to shove a fork into my ear every time I hear that annoying beep it makes.

pseudonomous · 2010-04-26 01:03:38

cron, at, and "while read line; do" pipes are great standbys. If you ever end up doing a lot of work on remote boxes w/ ssh you might want to look at writing expect scripts too ... actually expect is an enormously powerful tool that might be more suitable than bash for local jobs as well.

synorgy · 2010-04-26 01:12:03

Currently using DWM and two monitors (though I'm not a huge fan of how it handles the second monitor) and I have to say that the second monitor makes a world of difference in terms of how quickly I can focus on things. It's also much easier to compare two things or to do some simple web development (fullscreen webbrowsers, monocle view on one monitor and geany on the other). Currently I'm using the per-tag patch, but I'm also considering utilizing the bottom-stack patch to allow me to have a web browser open on one monitor with windows lined below it.

I've also got a script to control mpd through dmenu (it's pretty basic, but it allows you to choose an artist then grabs all albums by that artist and allows you to pick one of those, clears the playlist and adds that album - I can post it if you'd like).

I'm getting to the point now where I've pretty much settled on a window manager and a particular user interface. Because of this, I've started entrenching things into my system a litter deeper than I normally would by creating and exporting certain env variables in my .zprofile. For instance, I've got 3 or 4 scripts that rely on my $DMENU_{NORMFG, SELFG, NORMBG, SELBG, FONT} variables. This allows me to easily change the way dmenu looks and not spend hours hunting down a particular line in a particular script to change one color (yes, I'm that anal retentive about appearances)

In order to allow me to control media without switching windows, I've also bound my media and volume control keys. The exception to this is the 'stop' key, which I've bound to spawn urxvt with ncmpcpp started so that I can perform whatever action I need and get back to what I was doing.

All of these things seem pretty basic, I guess, but they help me out

Peanut · 2010-04-26 10:52:53

I would recommend that you try out zsh. My favorite feature would have to be suffix aliases, for instance I have defined how to launch my preferred browser, movie player, etc as environment variables, and added these lines to my ~/.zshrc:

for ext in html org php com net no; do alias -s $ext=$BROWSER; done
for ext in wmv mpg avi mkv; do alias -s $ext=$MOVPLAY; done
alias -s rar="unrar x"
(...)

This allows me to type google.com, ./filename.mpg or ./filename.rar and have my shell automatically open those files in their respective applications, thus making the shell a nice file manager.

zsh also allows the use of pipelines in aliases, so putting this in your ~/.zshrc:

alias -g L='|less'

will enable you to pipe things to less like this:

<command> L

If you haven't already, you should also check out Vimperator. It's a plugin for firefox that enables you to browse the 'net without touching your mouse, and unlike lynx, links etc, navigation on link-heavy pages is still hassle free. It may at the same time make you more comfortable with using vim-commands. Oh, and don't forget to put alias :q=exit in your shell configuration file

Another application suggestion would be PlotDrop, which gives Gnuplot a nice and simple user interface. It's very useful if you want to plot simple 2D graphs in LaTeX-documents.

Last edited by Peanut (2010-04-26 10:53:54)

Cyrusm · 2010-04-26 12:38:41

All of the above are great suggestions!

what I did on my box to increase productivity:
1) learn Vim (or emacs)
2) get a tiling wm (I prefer xmonad)
2) a) if possible, set up a second monitor! it's done loads for my multitasking! (now if only I could install a second keyboard and 2 more hands....)
3) set up ssh/sftp on your computer with a DNS so you can log in from anywhere, I also have a copy of some windows ssh client software on a flashdrive or
whatever, so you can log in from wherever you need to.
4) see if you can get access to ssh into your schools servers (since you are a cs student, I'd guess that you can) it's nice to be able to print off assignments,
and do lab work without having to show up in person. it's also good for backing up valuable homework imo.
5) oh yeah, and practice typing. I'm up to 60 words per minute now. little things like that can make a big difference.

6) also teach yourself to take advantage of workspaces. I'd say that's probably one of the biggest advantages to using
linux window management and desktop environments. when working on almost any project (whether it be a paper, circuit design, or program)
I usually use at least 4 of my workspaces, and sometimes up to 9 if I'm working on multiple projects.

these are just some things I think improve my productivity. take 'em or leave 'em

Last edited by Cyrusm (2010-04-26 16:19:56)

demian · 2010-04-26 14:29:55

I love the Openbox Hotkey functionality. You can easily wrap anything as hotkey. Same with zsh. Just rename a function as widget and you can bind it as hotkey in your terminal. Of course ZSH comes with many other benefits some of which have been mentioned here.
When it comes to real productivity though i find a second monitor to be invaluable.
I'm still just getting into it though and you guys made some very cool suggestions.

Last edited by demian (2010-04-26 14:30:28)

Peanut · 2010-04-26 20:24:56

Cyrusm wrote:

6) also teach yourself to take advantage of workspaces. I'd say that's probably one of the biggest advantages to using
linux window management and desktop environments. when working on almost any project (whether it be a paper, circuit design, or program)
I usually use at least 4 of my workspaces, and sometimes up to 9 if I'm working on multiple projects.

I have to second this one. Proper use of workspaces greatly reduces clutter on the desktop, and switching between workspaces is in general a lot faster and more useful than alt-tab'ing through open applications...

I've lately been experimenting with the Awesome windowmanager, and set it up to automatically open eg. firefox, evince and gvim/texmaker on dedicated workspaces - which I find to be a quite efficient system for a computer that is mainly used for browsing, LaTeX, reading and some programming in python. (I also have a workspace dedicated to GIMP/Xara LX/SMplayer/Wine, and quite a few that I can spam with terminals).

KimTjik · 2010-04-26 21:11:31

For most productivity tasks you save time by letting the mouse rest in peace. Good touch typing skill is key, and hence I recommend any serious computer user to invest some money in a good mechanical keyboard. The choice of software makes a difference, but without a really good keyboard you're still crippled. Personally I would recommend Das Keyboard with blank keys, or for a cheaper price get a new but old champ, IBM Model M, from Unicomp.

Awesome might be bloated for the "hard core" users, but for me it's one of the easiest ways - as already mentioned - to organize workspaces according to applications. To decide a scheme and follow it saves a lot of time, like when you know that your browser always is set to workspace 3 and mail-application to 1, and so on.

I'm a simple bash user, with low programming abilities, but using a logical set of aliases in .bashrc saves a lot of time. Sometimes I find some suggestions by more clever folks, like this little wiki search alias, utilizing bind tools: "wiki() { dig +short txt $1.wp.dg.cx; }"

LaTeX took me some time, or more precisely some attempts to bite the bullet and start using it. I'm not using it for difficult layouts, but in many cases I produce documents faster with a better final result. A nice addition to writing documents fast are applications for the console, like Wordgrinder (has options for exporting to LaTeX).

... I'll stop here because I'm probably just starting to repeat everything already said.

schen · 2010-04-26 21:20:22

My advice to increase productivity is to bind everything that you use - i.e web browser, terminal, etc- to a hot key. I use DWM, and I've changed root key to the Win key, and binded everything accordingly. Also, use a tiling wm. I personally use DWM, but from what I've heard, awesome, ratpoison, musca, stumpwm, i3, wmii, and ion3 are also good choices.

ngoonee · 2010-04-26 23:12:14

Multiple monitors is a huge time saver sometimes. Being able to compare information without having to switch workspaces/alt-tab or scroll a lot is heaven-sent for most administrative tasks.

steve___ · 2010-04-26 23:29:08

What I enjoy even more than two monitors is one 24" monitor. I'm all for making use of cheap, surplus hardware, but I'm very please with one 24" monitor than two 17-19" monitors.

For anyone who cares, I use only the grid-layout in dwm. This combined with a way to create shortcuts for "alt+tag#", "ctrl+alt+tag#" which I found on the mailing list has really increased my productivity. As an example, on tag 1 I have two terminals and on tag 3 I have two browsers. Assuming one wanted to "mux" those two together, one would: alt+1, ctrl+alt+3. With the shortcut I've bound this to alt+w. This give me four windows equal in size approximately 960x600.

Berticus · 2010-04-27 03:40:15

steve___ wrote:

What I enjoy even more than two monitors is one 24" monitor. I'm all for making use of cheap, surplus hardware, but I'm very please with one 24" monitor than two 17-19" monitors.

Or two 24" monitors...

Anyway, I've only got a 21" monitor and have no problems splitting my screen or switching windows or groups/workspaces. But two monitors would be great!

karol · 2010-04-27 13:03:47

I'm not good at multitasking, I'm like Atom 230: a single core, HyperThreaded cpu but w/ low power requirements. And I'm cheap ;P
I will take a different approach - one not focused on technology (I'm a business guy).

* Learn to prioritize, say 'no' to some things to have time to properly focus on other ones.
* Learn how you learn (and how you recall things). For most people spaced repetitions can work miracles.
* Small tasks can be taken care off in one go, but bigger ones require many iterations. Modularizing your workflow and then 'batch-processing' similar tasks can save you a lot of time cause it doesn't require so much mental gearshifting.
* Proper rest, diet, low stress etc. are invaluable in the long run (long run = about a decade).
* Always carry pen & paper (or a fancy smartphone ...).
* Organize your information: your code snippets, bookmarks etc. So that you know what know and you know what you don't know. Reuse instead of recreating each time.
* Don't trust other people too much: keep your own copy of the project you're working on - just in case the other guy kept his backup on the same drive as the working copy ...
* Run sth like 'history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | sed 11q' every once in a while and make scripts / aliases that automate the most common tasks / commands. A bonus: maybe you spot a bad habit developing before it takes it's toll.
* Have fun, enjoy life and vote Batman for president.

Edit: turns out Intel® Atom™ Processor 230 has HT.

Last edited by karol (2010-04-27 13:09:53)

rransom · 2010-04-27 14:11:56

itsbrad212 wrote:

moljac024 wrote:
itsbrad212 wrote:
I find myself using gedit even though I use Awesome3. I guess it just stuck with me from my early Debian days. I can't stand emacs though.
I couldn't either. Just try it from time to time
I feel like I want to shove a fork into my ear every time I hear that annoying beep it makes.

xset b off

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-24 22:42:27

Productivity

#2 2010-04-24 23:56:11

Re: Productivity

#3 2010-04-25 06:47:27

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