Pithy Nothingness

[Don B. Cilly]

From the "Taurocoprography and other idle pastimes" chapter:

- See, my young apprentice, when I was your age, we didn't use no GUIs, it was all black-and-white text.
Some commands being a bit long and complicated, we used aliases.
One of the first aliases I made on my servers was "ll" for "ls -la".
Not because it was long or complicated, but I just used it so often... of course now that alias is a preset default on most distributions.

So now I change it to "ls -lah". Where the h is for "human readable". It returns the size in KB, MB, etc, instead of just bytes.
So instead of having, for example:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user group 450560 Jan 1 2000 somedata.db
you would have:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user group 440K Jan 1 2000 somedata.db
which is easier to read... for humans :·)

[Don B. Cilly]

From the "Keyboard gypsies of Southern Europe" chapter:
"Well, somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Ibiza, I met a young guy called Ricky Teaspoon.
He had a little pop-up terminal in the dock. Looked like this:



I said, man, why would you want that when you have a KRunner just an Alt-F2 away?
He said, well that won't let me do aliases and stuff..."

[Don B. Cilly]

True but... even though it's not strictly "useful information", I try to sort of "strike a balance"...
Look, I got it to "look good", it prints the header at the top, and if I mount other partitions it doesn't make a mess - the other hack did (it was a late-night hack).



True that I "lose" the line again, but... it's not too bad ;·)

I could have just:
/dev/sdc2 96G 13G 78G 15% /
/dev/sdc3 101G 9.2G 87G 10% /media/not/K20

etc., without the header, but I'd have to think :·)
Wasted energy... ;·)
And, especially in cases of seldom-mounted partitions, it's not a bad thing to know what the size and actual use are, so just having the % is a bit... poor.
I have the horizontal space anyway, and it would look a bit... blank.
About the horizontal space... it's also true that things like /media/not/K20 become /media/not , but... striking balances with font sizes, alignments and all... it's good enough for me.

[EDIT] The whole shething looks like this, so... it does "fit" :·)

[kubicle]

a) doesn't look quite right, but
b) it does get the maximum amount of useful information in the least (reasonably) possible space. (it actually saves one line)

Why do you need the "title" line at all, the numbers are kind of self-explanatory? (You could even trim it down to showing only the "use%" of the filesystems, that's basically the only "useful info" in it).

[Don B. Cilly]

From the " Peripheral obsessions in conky-space" chapter:

The infamous Donald Brian Cilly, mainly known for clogging up nice forums with useless information, had this rather absurd fixation for "optimising" his conky every time the fancy struck him - and it did so pretty often.
Now, his main goal in doing so was to get the maximum amount of useful information in the least (reasonably) possible space.
So far, so good... but sometimes he got these wild manias...

He had a "disk space" section that looked like this:



For some unfathomable reason, the /boot/efi entry annoyed the skittles out of him.
Maybe it was because it was plainly useless.
Maybe it was the fact that it was "the wrong size" and he didn't want to go and resize it, FAT32 partitions not being resisable and all...
Maybe he was just plain bonkers.

So what he did...



Which
a) doesn't look quite right, but
b) it does get the maximum amount of useful information in the least (reasonably) possible space. (it actually saves one line)

[Don B. Cilly]

But the KDE logo is what I posted in #6.

If you neofetch from neon - which, even though it's practically identical to Kubuntu - except for some Plasma updates, is a distribution and not a "flavour"... :



Which is the same logo.

[chimak111]

The neofetch dev is pretty responsive. I guess if someone converts a KDE logo to ASCII art he may consider including it?

[Don B. Cilly]

OK, I agree that is a win.

But, it doesn't even show Kubuntu in the logo, you almost expect Unity to jump up and bite your... ankle, at least with the blue K-logo it's somewhat reassuring ;·)
And, come on, those guys went to all that trouble with the ANSI and all... :·)

[chimak111]

alias myneofetch='neofetch --stdout' FTW!

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes. That's a little more complicated. But, as stated there, the OS is Ubuntu, Kubuntu is the "flavour"...

[kyonides]

$ neofetch --ascii_distro Kubuntu
`.:/ossyyyysso/:. edwin@kurshesde
.yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo:` ---------------
-oyyyyyyyodMMyyyyyyyysyyyyo- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x86_64
-syyyyyyyyyydMMyoyyyydmMMyyyyys- Host: Sensitive data
oyyysdMysyyyydMMMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyo Kernel: 5.6.11-050611-generic (even if it might be sensitive data)
`oyyyydMMMMysyysoooooodMMMMyyyyyyyyyo` Uptime: 43 mins
oyyyyyydMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMysssssyyyo Packages: 2996 (dpkg)
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy- Shell: bash 5.0.16
oyyyysoodMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo Resolution: Sensitive data
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyysosyyyyyyyy DE: Plasma
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy WM: KWin
oyyyyysosdyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo WM Theme: Breeze
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy- Theme: Breeze Dark [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3]
oyyyyyydMMMysyyyyyyyyyyysdMMyoyyyoyyyo Icons: PlasmaXDark [Plasma], PlasmaXDark [GTK2/3]
`oyyyydMMMysyyyoooooodMMMMyoyyyyyyyyo Terminal: konsole
oyyysyyoyyyysdMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyyo CPU: Sensitive data
-syyyyyyyyydMMMysyyydMMMysyyyys- GPU: Intel Core Processor
-oyyyyyyydMMyyyyyyysosyyyyo- Memory: Sensitive data
./oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo/.
`.:/oosyyyysso/:.`

Yeah... it still says Ubuntu...

[Don B. Cilly]

I have the same version.
neofetch/focal,focal,now 7.0.0-1 all [installed]
Shows Linux System Information with Distribution Logo

They must have seen me coming at the repo and made a special edition just to annoy me... :·)
... oh I see. You are talking about the man page, I was quoting the config file...
~/.config/neofetch/config.conf

[Schwarzer Kater]

Well, surprisingly mine does mention Kubuntu. :-)

From the neofetch man pages:

[…]
--ascii_distro distro
             Which Distro's ascii art to print
[…]
NOTE: Ubuntu has flavor variants.
NOTE: Change this to Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu-GNOME,
Ubuntu-Studio, Ubuntu-Mate  or Ubuntu-Budgie to use the flavors.
[…]

kater@PC-Kubuntu2004:~$ apt search neofetch
neofetch/focal,focal,now 7.0.0-1 all  [installiert]
Shows Linux System Information with Distribution Logo

[Don B. Cilly]

From the "Mildly annoying trivialities in peripheral software" chapter of the same book.

Neofetch displays an Ubuntu logo with Kubuntu. The config file says:
# NOTE: Ubuntu has flavor variants.
# Change this to 'Lubuntu', 'Xubuntu', 'Ubuntu-GNOME' or 'Ubuntu-Budgie' to use the flavors.

No mention of Kubuntu... :·/
Still, if you tell it ascii_distro="Kubuntu"

it does display:

     `.:/ossyyyysso/:
  .:oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo:`           ------- 
-oyyyyyyyodMMyyyyyyyysyyyyo-         OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x86_64 
-syyyyyyyyyydMMyoyyyydmMMyyyyys-       Kernel: 5.4.0-29-generic 
oyyysdMysyyyydMMMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyo     Uptime: 1 hour, 58 mins 
`oyyyydMMMMysyysoooooodMMMMyyyyyyyyyo`    Packages: 2363 (dpkg) 
oyyyyyydMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMysssssyyyo    Shell: bash 5.0.16 
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy-   Resolution: 1920x1080 
oyyyysoodMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo   DE: Plasma 
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyysosyyyyyyyy   WM: KWin 
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy   Theme: Breeze Dark [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] 
oyyyyysosdyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo   Icons: breeze-dark [Plasma], breeze-dark [GTK2/3] 
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy-   Terminal: konsole 
oyyyyyydMMMysyyyyyyyyyyysdMMyoyyyoyyyo    CPU: Intel Celeron J1900 (4) @ 2.415GHz 
`oyyyydMMMysyyyoooooodMMMMyoyyyyyyyyo     GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 
oyyysyyoyyyysdMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyyo      Memory: 1888MiB / 7925MiB 
-syyyyyyyyydMMMysyyydMMMysyyyys-
-oyyyyyyydMMyyyyyyysosyyyyo-                                 
  ./oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo/.
     `.:/oosyyyysso/:.`

[EDIT] What it actually displays is:



But only oshunluvr can have colours here ;·) and anyway the code bit is "ovalised" :·)

[jlittle]

I guess I could... but this way it's just... simple.

Simple is good, but I would begrudge the space.

I use zsh, and it remembers the run time in the history; -D adds the running time to history listings, for the odd occasion where I want to know.

(To get cilly, I also get the shell to write to a log every command I run, with a timestamp and running time, to .1 ms precision, so I can tell you the send/receive backup of /home on the 1st of November 2018 took 98.0090 s.)

Actually, it's not silly to recommend logging of the command line. Some people load the logged lines into a database, but a text log is nearly as good. I imagine there's high-powered shell/emulators that can do it. Sure, you can crank HISTSIZE up to a large number, but that makes using the line number to rerun commands tedious, and that's written when the shell exits, so that command that killed your system, or what you were doing when the power went off, is forgotten.