Ncurses and other terminal programming libraries need to know what capabilities your terminal supports, like highlighting, underlining, blinking, and colors. This used to be done with termcap but now everyone uses terminfo, which hold the specifications in a set of files. The first thing to do is make sure you have a 256-color terminfo file for your terminal:

 
$ find /lib/terminfo /usr/share/terminfo -name "*256*"

What you need is to see a filed named terminal-256color. For example, mine is xterm-256color. My first hassle was that Ubuntu doesn’t install this by default. I can’t guess what it will be named in your distribution (look for packages with ‘ncurses’ or ‘term’ in their names), but in Ubuntu it’s just a quick:

 
$ sudo aptitude install ncurses-term

Xterm needs a little more configuration, edit ~/.Xdefaults to add:

*customization: -color
XTerm*termName:  xterm-256color

To make this apply to new terminals (so you don’t have to log out and back in), run:

 
$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
# you'll also want to add this to your ~/.xsession so it happens every time you log in:
if [ -f $HOME/.Xdefaults ]; then
  xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults
fi

One tricky thing about xterm is that is supports 256 colors via ANSI escape sequences, but they won’t be available to programs without the right terminfo file. So popular test scripts will work while ncurses-based programs will fail. I spent a lot of time catching on to this one. This config file will tell xterm to enable 256 colors and set the TERM environment variable to ‘xterm-256color’ so the right terminfo file is used. You can test this with:

 
$ tput colors
256
$ echo $TERM
xterm-256color

At this point, you’re all set. Individual applications may need some configuring to use 256-color schemes. In vim, :set t_Co should now report that you have 256 colors available. Run locate vim | grep 256 to find the color schemes available, and :colo desert256 to use one. If none of those suit you, there are plenty more available. I put a little code in my ~/.vimrc to only load it when I have colors available, because sometimes I use different terminals.

colorscheme desert
if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
  syntax on
endif
if &t_Co == 256
  colorscheme inkpot
endif

GNU screen needs a hint to use 256 colors. You can add the following to your ~/.screenrc, or just wait for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex later this month to include it by default:

 
# terminfo and termcap for nice 256 color terminal
# allow bold colors - necessary for some reason
attrcolor b ".I"
# tell screen how to set colors. AB = background, AF=foreground
termcapinfo xterm 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'
# erase background with current bg color
defbce "on" 
# set TERM
term screen-256color-bce

This was all (of course) an hours-long session of yak shaving because I’m playing around with a secret project I’m not yet ready to announce.

1. By default, only root will be able to play with your new scanner. Run sudo addgroup `whoami` scanner. Log out and back in, and you’ll be able to scan without being root.
2. Download the iscan and iscan-plugin-gt rpms from the provider. By playing with the URLs on the file I was able to find version 2.5.0, but I don’t know that you need it or why the page hasn’t been updated.
3. Run:

    
   $ sudo alien iscan-2.3.0-1.c2.i386.rpm
   $ sudo alien iscan-plugin-gt-s600-2.0.0-1.c2.i386.rpm
   $ sudo apt-get install iscan_2.3.0-1_i386.deb
   $ sudo apt-get install iscan-plugin-gt-s600_2.0.0-2_i386.deb

4. Run sane-find-scanner to see your scanner detected, and scanimage -L to hear it whir a little as sane checks that it can command it.

That’s all the setup I had to do. You should now be able to use xsane or Gimp to grab images off your scanner. I don’t know how to make the buttons on the scanner do anything, even xev reported nothing.

If you have problems, you should post on the SANE mailing list, not here, because I don’t really know anything about SANE and can’t help you.

• Windows Vista Starter Edition
• Windows Vista Home Basic Edition
• Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
• Windows Vista Professional Edition
• Windows Vista Small Business Edition
• Windows Vista Enterprise Edition
• Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

There’s two answers to this question, one for the geeks and one for everyone else.

If you’re not a geek

Buy an Apple computer with OS X. Seriously. You’d have to buy a new computer for Vista anyways (this applies to you even if you bought a computer this week). The Intel-based macs are excellent machines, OS X is easy, reliable, and can do everything you want do with your computer. You can even set them up to run XP alongside OS X for that one last program you can’t get your files out of.

If you don’t want OS X because you’re a gamer, you don’t want Vista either. Just get a mac and a Wii.

If you’re a geek

You want Ubuntu Linux. It’s darn easy, it’s great on laptops, and you can make it sit up and do tricks. I don’t need to elaborate on this one: you know Linux is the hands-down best OS for geeks, and Ubuntu is a great distribution.

Either way…

I’m not going to be supporting Windows Vista for my friends and family. I’ve limped along with a little XP knowledge, but I’ve never used it for anything but testing and a few games so I’ve never really learned my way around it. I’ll put up with Vista professionally, but I won’t be able to help you solve the problems you’ll have with it.

And you will have problems. It’s built to have problems: the anti-piracy protections will have it lowering image and sound quality, turning off features, and disabling itself altogether if it decides you’re doing anything hinky, whether or not you are. Editing your home movies may trigger it to think you’re editing Hollywood’s movies, and it’ll lock down on you. You don’t want a product that’s defective by design anywhere near your important files.

Feast your eyes on the 1280×1824 goodness:

The division between monitors is that little gap just under the huge code window.

I keep what I’m working on up on the top monitor — a nice big vim code window (usually :split into multiple windows) and a browser for viewing the output. Down on the bottom is IRC, SIMud, mail, and any docs I need.

My desktop theme is deliberately very plain and subdued. I figure any time I notice how pretty my desktop is I’m being distracted from what I’m doing, so I have no animations, transparency, or other bits of frippery.

If you’re curious, here’s my xorg.conf. Of course, now that I’ve got it working I’m tempted to get a nice 23″ display (the 13″ Macbook can run an external display at up to 1900×1200).