As using Arch Linux, the advantage is I can choose any Desktop Environment or any Window Manager. Recently, I have tried several Desktop Environments and Window Managers which are officially supported in Arch Linux. After trying, I learnt the differences and similarities among these Desktop Environments and Window Managers.

Desktop Environment

My primary Desktop Environment is Xfce4. Previously was GNOME 2. Since the release of GNOME 3, I chose Xfce4 as it is more conventional and there a lot of useful goodies (plugins). It is also lighter than GNOME.

又一篇用中文写的。因为这篇反正就是关于中文输入法引擎——RIME中州韵输入法引擎——而写的。这中州韵输入法引擎是从Arch Linux的维基那里看到的。它是一种非常奇特的输入引擎。因为它可以让使用者简单地自制理想的输入法。

在Linux，有好几种中文输入法，谷歌拼音、搜狗拼音、SunPinyin等。其它非拼音输入法也有，如五笔输入法、仓颉输入法。本人虽曾经想学仓颉输入法，但因为太难记难用，最后放弃。因为有些生字不晓得如何读，拼音是没用的，所以最后就学了五笔输入法。

五笔输入法，只要懂得字形就可以输入了。因此用五笔输入比拼音来得准确。比如输入名字，用一般的拼音会出现很多选择，而这些“候选字”要一一看过，是相当的累。而若用五笔输入法，就可以把“候选字”减少到一两个罢了。但本人因为不熟悉五笔输入法，尤其在跟朋友在线对话时，拼音会是基本的思考方式，所以本人用拼音会比五笔来得快。因此，五笔和拼音两种输入法一起使用的话，对我来说就会出现因切换输入法而迟缓和多余动作的问题。因此，最理想的方式就是将两种输入法融合，不需要切换，以五笔为优先，因为五笔输入后，候选字词会比拼音来得少。能够达到这种理想输入法的，就是这个中州韵输入法引擎。

这中州韵输入法引擎，在我用的时候发现有一个字，因为台湾繁体和大陆简体有一些差别，所以中州韵输入法引擎本身的有些字用了不太一样的代码，就是“々”和“𠚤”。但中州韵输入法引擎可以用简单的方法让我解决这个问题。不仅如此，我还借此机会加入“绘文字”。因此，我就先制作了自用的五笔输入法。用这个的话，就可以轻松的输入我要的表情绘文字了😁。

但融合两种输入法，说容易也不是很容易，因为没有完善的说明书。因此本人就在百度贴吧里询问了。经过高人指点，后来就尝试融合。起初有几个问题无法解决，但勉强还是可以使用。后来根据苍颉检字法的制作，终于完成“五笔朙月流”输入法了。用这个输入法，就可以拼音加上五笔，输入人名和跟朋友对话都不成问题了。而且还可以反查五笔代码，即在不知五笔的代码是什么的情况下，还可以反查，这样的话就可以同时学习五笔输入法了。强！

这“五笔朙月”和“五笔拼音”是不同的。五笔拼音无法用拼音输入句子，而这“五笔朙月”就可以做到这点。

源码可在此处下载。

Previously I posted about installing software/game with different CD/DVD ISO images in WINE. But this method does not work in some installation ISO images. Because these installation will detect for the CD/DVD. The method above does not solve the problem because the installation does not detect the CD/DVD.

Recently, I found a better solution. It is CDemu. It is similar to DAEMON Tools in Windows. It will emulate the optical disc drive in Linux. As a result, it will produce /dev/sr0, /dev/sr1, and so on. Because it is a virtual CD/DVD, thus we have to load the image. It can be easily loaded by using gcdemu.

Recently my friend mentioned to me that, Windows is good enough for him, as long as he can complete his works. Then I argued with him, saying Linux is better. Then he asked me, in what sense. I suddenly don’t have any concrete answer.

As Linux user for several years, I already forgot why am I using Linux instead of Windows. I only remember that Linux is more developer oriented than Windows. There should have some other reasons that convince me to remain Linux user and some reasons make me keen of it. Thus, I have to compare two OSes so that I can give concrete answers next time.

I always have a problem with terminal emulator when using bash but not zsh. The problem can be produced like this,

1. Open any terminal emulator (gnome-terminal, xfce4-terminal, etc)
2. Run any command with less, such as “ls |less”
3. Resize the window to larger size, such as maximize
4. Quit less
5. Type anything in the terminal, then the text will not wrap to new line if the text length beyond the window size before resie. And it will overflow to the same line and overwrite the prompt.

This problem can be solved by adding “shopt -s checkwinsize” in .bashrc.

From time to time, I always feel that I have to choose the “best” Linux distro. And I feel that, various Linux distros are somehow annoying, why not just combine all the best features into one powerful OS? (That is why I always struggle for the distro like Arch Linux and Debian.) With the recent trend of the technology such as LXC and Docker, I found that the varieties of the Linux distros is really a good way as it is diverging and exploring the new solutions for our daily problem.

Previously, in my post of the other blog, I mentioned that I have to use command-line to run multiple Firefox with different versions. Now, I found an easy solution to solve this problem. Please note that, running different version of Firefox should using different profile, just to avoid downgrading and upgrading the profile based on the Firefox version.

Assuming we installed Firefox Nightly version,

1. Firstly, using the command-line to create a new profile using ProfileManager,

Due to a recent Q&A from DistroWatch.com, I am considering the advantages of using the scheduled-release or fixed-release distros, especially Debian which is famed of its stability. The following is the quote from DistroWatch.com,

Rolling releases do tend to have their downsides though. For instance, it is difficult for third-party developers to create software for rolling-releases as a rolling-release distribution is a moving target. It is difficult to target and support an operating system which is changing on a regular basis.

I have come across with this problem for quite a long time. Whenever I elinks to a website, such as google.com or yahoo.com, it shows the message “Host not found”. I tried to google about the “elinks host not found”, “elinks resolve problem”, etc, none of them are relevant to my problem.

I thought it is the package error. But when I come across installation of the Arch Linux on a fresh computer, the elinks works fine.

Recently, when I was using TrueCrypt in Arch Linux to mount a truecrypt container file, it was very slow to mount the container. Furthermore, I also read that the TrueCrypt is discontinued.

Therefore, I decided to use the tcplay. However, it is a command-line. Arch Linux wiki page shows a good tutorial on how to use tcplay.

When using tcplay in Linux, unlike mounting the folder like encfs, tcplay requires losetup for loop device. Thus, it involves 3 steps to mount a truecrypt container: i) setup loop device, ii) setup device-mapper with tcplay, and iii) mount. Consequently, to unmount the truecrypt containter need to reverse these 3 steps.