What small utility program do you miss?
 

I have been programming windoze for about 15 years, and have now been running SuSe for about a year. During this time I haven't been programming linux that much, but now I feel that it's time.

Do You have any ideas of a small utility program for Linux? I'd like to start something new, small, to learn the very basics. That's the way I learned the win32api and I think thats a very good way.

Just drop a line if you can give me any ideas...

I will be honest, I don't know where you are really starting, with true linux stuff, or with ppatches/plugins/widgets....

But in Windows I have some little widgets for Yahoo Widgets(formally Konfabulator) like a calendar than looks like a desk calendar which I cannot find in Linux for SuperKaramba or other Widget programs.

Other than that, in terms of small things, FireFox can't change the wallpaper in Linux, like it can in Windows, so if you are looking to do a little plugin, that option would be nice for Linux users.

If you are looking for a big program, a real one, for Linux, I also have a program that runs a virtual cdrom drive I cannot find anything like in Linux. It is great for loading ISOs so I don't have to burn CDs. Just so you know it can be configured to create a few drives at a time, bu t I just create one, and it is nice because I can change from CD to CDRW or DVD or DVDRW depending on my needs.

use the command:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/iso

to mount an iso - the files can then be handled like any other mounted device.

Heh, I was thinking the same thing :D

SteQve could write a wrapper script around that and give it more options, and possibly even a python gui something to make it even easier for a person unfamiliar/afraid of the command line to use it.

SteQve I think that maybe looking at the kernel source might be a good way to understand how Linux works, and then picking up a book or following one online about perl or C to see how programming works with those things in linux. Otherwise, yeah, it's a question of "where do you want to program" which leaves you with a billion options.

Cool

Really kwacka? That is awesome. I will defintely be trying that. Thanks. Guess you can cross that off my list, huh?

SteQve:

I think what is really missing in Linux is a "volume equalizer". For example, when you watch tv, during commercials the sound level shoots way up (the tv affiliates do that on purpose). Making the sound level restricted to a certain Db level will show'em :-)
I believe this is known as a "compressor" or such--I should know this as a music guy but I forget.

There are some code snippets around the 'net, but everything is quite old.

SuperKaramba calendars:
http://kdelook.org/content/show.php?content=23013
http://kdelook.org/content/show.php?content=20570
http://kdelook.org/content/show.php?content=24368

enjoy!

That last one has an okay mode I could live with...But I was really looking for this: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=36375

I use newsgroups quite abit and that leaves me always verifying rar integrity via par2cmdline. Windows has Quickpar to make this a simpler task. Actually Quickpar runs excellently for me with WINE. Even still I think it would be great to see a gui interface like Quickpar written natively for linux. Qith Quickpar you can have it monitor a directory for new files which it checks as soon as they are decoded, or you can set auto-repair to run on broken files as soon as possible. The biggest thing for me is that after checking the files, you can tell it to repair and it will just go over the broken files. With par2cmdline it reverifies every file again to find the ones that need repairing. I'm sure there's probably a way to enter the specific file on the cmmdline, but if 10 files are broken you don't want to manually repair each one...

So in short, I would like to see QuickPar for Linux.

I have a new one for you from the SuSE forums here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...60#post2037260

Specifically, it would be a little program that allows users to define sets of update servers via the little file that holds the list of all of them. It could write one set of files to this list for when wanting to update...KDE for example, and SUSE packages for another, and etc. Really it would be a fairly simple little tool for picking server sets.

Here's the closest I can find visually:
http://kdelook.org/content/show.php?content=16752