[sf-lug] notes from SF-LUG meeting of Sunday 5 December 2021

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 12/5/21 22:33, Michael Paoli wrote:
>> From: "Bobbie Sellers" <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com>
>> Subject: [sf-lug] notes from SF-LUG meeting of Sunday 5 December 2021
>> Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2021 17:12:18 -0800
>
>> Michael P. came in shortly.
>
> I (virtually) arrived very shortly ahead of meeting start time.
> There were I think two, maybe 3 folks, already there - including
> Bobbie.
>
>> Michael was doing upgrades and maintenance on the machines he is 
>> responsible for.
>> He did provide a couple of useful tips.
>
> Well, most notably, various random things were discussed / asked about,
> Including shell, vim/vi, EMACS, and the collection of various
> tips/information on Rick's site.
     That was me asking since I am have been having trouble with a 
printer driver.
>
> Some of the bits I included ... I've oft done presentations /
> training sessions on shell, and vi, I provided links to
> where I have most current versions of those materials:
> https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/sh/
> https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/vi/
> And, "of course", I also mentioned vim's annoyances:
> https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/linux/vim/vim_annoyances.txt
> ... though that might not be of so much interest to most.
> I also mentioned, at least approximately, that for the most part,
> vim is essentially an extension of vi - adding a whole lot of
> (not standard / POSIX) vi stuff.  vim does also have a
> "compatible" mode for vi compatibility ... but it's not all
> that highly compatible.  But those not so familiar with
> the more standard vi or nvi, may not particularly care or
> notice - and it may mostly not be important to them.
> I also mentioned that vi is highly optimized for use ... not
> learning it.  But also, in the grand scheme of things, for most
> users of vi (or vim or the like), what will you spend most of
> your vi(/vim) time doing?  Learning it, or using it?  Yeah,
> generally using it.  So, ... which makes more sense to be much
> more highly optimized?  Why using it of course, ... and so it is.
> Some folks also mentioned lots of vim tutorials being available,
> I think also it's own tutorial software/mode may have also been
> mentioned.
> There was also bit of mention of ed, pico, and nano.
> I also provide the link:
> http://linuxmafia.com/kb/
> which I believe was being sought after, asking about the
> collection of information/articles on Rick's site - and
> I also mentioned that it's linked from the site's main
> page.
> Oh, EMACS ... there was wee bit of discussion on that,
> including "of course" the old (semi-true-ish) joke
> that EMACS is a perfectly good operating system, that
> merely lacks a good text editor.  But EMACS is huge,
> and is exceedingly extensible - notably with lisp ... so,
> well, lots of folks do that.  It also ends up rather large
> as I'd pointed out:
> $ (cd /usr/bin && ls -lLs ed vi nvi vim emacs) | sort -bn
>    60 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    55424 Jan  3  2019 ed
>   472 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root   476312 Dec  4  2018 nvi
>   472 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root   476312 Dec  4  2018 vi
>  2648 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2704360 Jun 15  2019 vim
> 39036 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39926024 Jan 22  2021 emacs
> $
> (on the above example host of mine, vi is nvi rather than vim,
> hence they match).
> I also mention someone I know who used to be a quite regular attendee
> of BUUG.org, knew vi, and also quite taught himself EMACS too, at
> least well to the point of being quite proficient with both ...
> and used both quite a bit.  And after some time, he concluded that
> vi was the better text editor.  Most notably with EMACS, there's a
> whole lot of use of the Meta key - so it's not so
> efficient/fast/easy - nor quite as ergonomic - on keyboard usage.
>
> Oh, I also made mention of Aruba Wi-Fi access points still being
> available as free giveaways - while they last:
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_etc 
>
>
> Also was mentioned - perhaps after 1pm,
> if one would like to attend a LUG tomorrow/Monday:
> KWLUG - Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group
> meets (at least also including virtually)
> tomorrow (Monday).
> See, e.g.:
> https://kwlug.org/
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19#beyond_us
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19#timezone_conversion 
>
>
>> Victor has dug out an old 32 bit Inspiron installed with some variety 
>> of Linux
>> and is doing what he can on it.  He is doing what he called Creative 
>> Writing
>> on the device which went into a discussion of which text editor to 
>> use with
>> MaxEd as a new entry in the discussion which revolved basically 
>> around Vi,
>> Vim, gvim, and emacs with mentions of Ed and edit and line-ed.
>
     Two useful things for older computers are Puppy (many old versions)
and 4MLinux which has some 32 bit compatibility accrording to notes.

     I think that IBM has two versions of Linux out now one for the Cloud
and the other to run alongside Windows.,

     Aaron C. can make more informed recommendations than I since
he works on 32 bit computers frequently but i haven't seen one since
my Amiga.

     I know that Debian still has 32 but versions and so do other
distributions but people who want to run those 32 bit computers
should investigate for themselves using a reliable search engine
like DuckDuckGo.

bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS
                  and a minor case of hypergraphia