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Do you ever find yourself running a command, pressing the up-arrow, then [Enter], then the up-arrow, then [Enter], then the up-arrow.... this is a great exercise that will get your fingers used to typing random odd key sequences without your eyes paying attention, but otherwise it's a complete waste of time. A command I have come to love helps me point my OCD tendencies to other pointless tasks while running commands over and over for me. Introducing 'watch', because Linux Just Does That.

For those cases where converting from Base64 encoded data to a hexadecimal output similar to what you get from other utilities this script may simplify your life. The script takes input and decodes it finally converting it to hex output for use in other applications.

In computing there are two terms which are often confused: encoding and enciphering. One of them, with 'cipher' in its name, usually best refers to something that is cryptographically enciphered which means it was mathematically mangled in a fashion that the result, regardless of the input, is fairly random, patternless nonsense to the un-key-assisted eye. The other term refers to simply changing data from one form to another at is basic level. One type of encoding is 'base64' encoding, which is used through many areas of computing and can be explained much more-simply than most cryptographic cipher functions (in my opinion). This article is to show how, on many levels, Linux Just Does That.

The Slab, aka GNOME Main Menu, (http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Slab) and its associated Application Browser and Control Centre have some good points and some bad points. This article describes tips for customisation, the aspects I dislike and what I have done about them. It is largely written with a view to a scenario where the users of a SLED 11 machine do not have root.

Are you one of those, who run custom scripts during or after an AutoYaST installation? Maybe you have been dreaming of getting this integrated into the YaST installation workflow and visible in the installation dialog? This article outlines the steps required to have custom scripts snap nicely into the installation framework including progress bar, messages about the individual steps being performed, logging and help text - just like many of the other installation dialogs.

For a while now I have taken for granted the marvelous functionality commonly referred-to as "workspaces" in the X window system. Anybody using a graphical interface with X already probably has this functionality present by default and in many distributions the feature of multiple workspaces is even enabled by default The idea behind this article is to show how efficiency in the GUI can be improved using this feature and the ease of adopting the technology to suit your needs out of the box, because Linux Just Does That.