I used Linux as my operating system for many
years but since 2014 I've switched entirely to OpenBSD. (I
kept one laptop for Linux for a time because I occasionally wanted to
use Skype or Adobe Flash, but Flash is no longer maintained for Linux
and there are problems with Skype as well, so I'm not using Linux at all
at present.)
All the entries on this page work equally well on Linux and OpenBSD,
apart from the pptp vpn tunnel, which I've only tried on Debian.
There's a lot more about OpenBSD and why I use it on my blog. (Use the
bsd tag.)
1. Writing Greek on Linux & OpenBSD
I describe two methods of doing this, both of which allow the use of the
full range of accents and breathings.
Writing Greek 1. Using your browser
This is probably the easiest method currently. If you point your
browser at Type
Greek you will find Randy Hoyt's excellent site where you can
type Greek text (with the full range of breathings and accents if
you need those). The resulting text can then be pasted in wherever
you want, including into Libreoffice and LyX. (If you want to paste
it into vim you should take the steps described in the next section,
otherwise latex won't produce a correct dvi file.)
Writing Greek 2: Using vim and latex
In the past I've found it difficult to write Greek with vim and latex,
especially with all the accents, breathings etc., but things are a lot
better now. Here is a summary of the steps
I use.
2. Setting up a pptp vpn tunnel in Debian
I once spent 3 days trying to set up a tunnel to a pptp vpn server .
This is seemingly easy to do in Windows and the Apple Mac but not in
Linux. The internet is full of mostly contradictory information. I
report my experiences and what I did eventually to get it running here.
3. Making Word.doc files in Linux and OpenBSD
If you want to publish an ebook on Smashwords, you must submit it as a
Word.doc file. This is obviously a problem for Linux users. I have
written a small book on how to do this. It is available on Smashwords.
4. Tiling window managers
I'm an enthusiast for tiling window managers,
which seem to me to be preferable in almost every way to stacking window
managers. There's a lot about this on my blog; please use
the tiling WMs tag to find it. My favourite WM is spectrwm although dwm
is a fairly close second. There is a tag for spectrwm as well.
I have some information here about configuring spectrwm, xmonad, dwm. and i3.
5. Writing a book in LyX
I've written seven books in LyX. For details of the Preamble setting I
use for this, please see this page.
6. Older stuff
In times gone by I described my experience
installing Linux on various laptops. This information is now out of date
but I see that people are still reading these pieces so I haven't
deleted them. There are descriptions for the Thinkpad Z61M and Thinkad R40e. These contain
references to older versions of Debian; there should be no problems with
the modern Debian installer.