Linux on /dev/urandom's dev site

on OS user interfaces

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of the time, our preferences for what an OS user interface should look like come down, ultimately, to either nostalgia or past experiences. Someone gets annoyed at a UI change and their instinctive reaction is to assume that whatever “the old way” was, was inherently better.

This especially applies to people who use Linux (or any of the BSDs, but for purposes of this page, I’ll refer to any of the “free desktops” as Linux), since it is rarely ever their first operating system – usually they started off with either Windows or macOS, and picked up habits and assumptions from that.

linux framebuffer palette switching

Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Just like graphical terminals such as urxvt, the Linux framebuffer has an option to change the built-in palette. Distributions like Ubuntu use it to make the palette look nicer during bootup.

irssi tips and tricks

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Recently found myself using irssi on a setup that’s slightly unusual, so I’m recording the information I found useful for posterity.

To switch windows, use Alt + number keys for windows 1-10, or Alt + top row (qwertyuiop) for windows 11-20.
Alt+Left / Ctrl+p and Alt+Right / Ctrl+n switches to the previous or next window respectively. It loops around from first to last or vice versa.
The script revolve is useful, since it compresses consecutive joins/leaves onto a single line. Useful for channels where there’s not a lot of activity.

vim hints

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

These are some of the useful settings and functions I use when working with vim.

midnight commander tips

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Assorted key combinations that are useful in MC.

freetype hinting settings

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I have a bunch of FreeType settings that I prefer on my systems, and these differ from the defaults on basically every Linux distro these days.

2026 update: This is a rather old post, made back when the monitors I used were pretty low-resolution, and saving every pixel of space seemed like a good idea. These days, high-DPI monitors are more common, and the old settings I preferred look absolutely terrible on these.

Alpine Linux

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This page will host an assortment of tips and tricks collected while using Alpine Linux.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst on Wine

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Occasionally I play the old multiplayer action-RPG “Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst”. On Windows, it works fine, but to make it work better on Linux (via Lutris), some extra steps may be needed.

assorted shell scripts

Sun, 31 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

shell scripts:

grab lines from dictionary, convert them into up-to-16-byte strings, do a binary dump

for x in `cat input_words.txt`; do echo $x | tr -d \\n | dd ibs=16 conv=sync 2>/dev/null | xxd; done

convert a .vgz directory to a .vgm one, along with updating all the playlists:

rename ".vgz" ".vgm.gz" *.vgz; gzip -d *.vgm.gz; sed -i "s/\.vgz/\.vgm/" *.m3u

(requires rename from util-linux and not from perl)

profiling utility hints

Sun, 31 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Some small hints for profiling utilities used on Linux systems.

shell parameter expansion

Sun, 31 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a small cheat sheet to remind me of how parameter expansion works in unix shells.