[PLUG] Ubuntu (& Debian & Linux) rule

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

I just had to share this.  Twice today I've run into issues where I 
needed to add a feature to my Gutsy workstation.  It took literally < 1 
minute in each case to identify the problem, search for a solution then 
install it and get my work done.  For me, it would have taken *far* 
longer than that on Windows.  Sure you can Google or use a third-party 
Windows repo, but that's risky for quality, stability, and malware 
reasons; and time consuming for finding, downloading, installing and 
testing reasons.

The first one was a simple tool for reassembling MPEG clips (since cat 
didn't quite work :):
	$ apt-cache search join mpg
	$ apt-cache show mpgtx
	$ sudo aptitude install mpgtx
Done!

The second was the ability to read and write the clipboard from the 
command line for use with things like grep | cut | sort -u [1].
	$ apt-cache search clipboard
	$ apt-cache show xclip
	$ sudo aptitude install xclip
Done!

And just for fun I did similar yum searches in CentOS-4.  I got nothing 
for the first and nothing appropriate for the second.  Debian & Ubuntu rule.


Oh yeah, then I had to rename 100+ files.  On Windows I'd use Excel to 
write a batch file to do it (unless the data was saved on my Samba 
server, which it usually is).  On Linux, this trivially did the trick:
	$ for i in ?.MPG;  do mv $i "00$i"; done
	$ for i in ??.MPG; do mv $i "0$i"; done

Later,
JP

[1] Full disclosure, I already know how to read and write the clipboard 
on Windows four different ways, but if I hadn't, solving this would have 
taken a lot longer than < 1 minute:

i) The 4NT commercial shell replacement I use from jpsoft.com has the 
special clip: device for use in STDIN|OUT redirection

ii) You can use gclip.exe and pclip.exe from 
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

iii) use Win32::Clipboard; in Perl (which I do in most of my CLI tools, 
code available if anyone cares)

iv) I know I've seen other free/shareware tools that do this, but never 
noted them since I already use [i,ii,iii]
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
Microsoft has single-handedly nullified Moore's Law.
Innate design flaws of Windows make a personal firewall, anti-virus
and anti-malware software mandatory. The resulting software arms race
has effectively flattened Moore's Law on hardware running Windows.
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