christopher

@christopher@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what caused you to get into Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My neighbor at the trailer park was a janitor at the university. I built my computer from parts he salvaged from the recycle bin, and put Redhat 5 on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Browse and Discover Manpages⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  On Debian, there is a package that displays system documentation including, if I remember correctly, man pages. I think I had to set up a local web server first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Browse and Discover Manpages⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  On Archlinux at least, the glibc package includes info pages for C functions. Just type info libc at the command line, or use info inside emacs. There are hyperlinks in info pages, it’s a nicer interface than man pages.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What got you into coding ? (aside from money)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My middle school algebra teacher sparked my interest in coding.

  Due to moving around a lot, I never learned any mathematics, not even basic arithmetic before middle school. In the seventh grade, I was put in a class where the teacher just handed out worksheets with arithmetic problems, and then usually left the classroom until the end of the hour. On the rare occasions when she stayed, I asked her to teach me arithmetic, but she didn’t believe I couldn’t do it, so she never taught me and I failed the class.

  But in the eighth or ninth grade, they allowed me to sign up for the Algebra for dummies class, which taught in two semesters what the normal class taught in one. My new teacher taught me arithmetic the first day, and I was his star pupil from that point.

  He invited me and some other students to stay after school to learn FORTRAN. We did not have a computer at the middle school–it was at the university. We didn’t even have a card punching machine. So we had cards that looked like punch cards, but instead of punching holes in them, we coded the Hollerith code in them by filling bubbles with a number 2 pencil. Then we sent the cards on a mail truck to the university and got back a printout a week later.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What software do you use to edit markdown?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have any need to edit markdown, but I sometimes use Marker: “Simple yet robust Markdown editor made with GTK” as a viewer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to create a menu entry for booting into the command line from GRUB.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It might be possible to boot into a bootable image from grub so you don’t need to set up another bootable partition.

  Or you could disable your display manager in systemd. This will start in console, then if you want X just run startx.

  Or you could change your display manager to Lemur, which supports X, Wayland, and TTY sessions.

  Or you could just press control-alt-F2 at the login screen to switch to a console.