Ubuntu: small amenities for a web developer

    I installed Ubuntu on my second system about six months ago. And a couple of weeks before the release of 10.04, she refused the double-boot and transferred Windows with Photoshop to the virtual machine. Because photoshop is the only thing that, unfortunately, is not enough for full-fledged work in Ubuntu. But there are a lot of nice little things in it that I have always missed in Windows. It is about these useful little things that I want to tell.
    This article never claims to be an exhaustive description of all the advantages and disadvantages of Ubuntu from the point of view of a web developer.
    In no case do I claim that in nature there are no similar devices for Windows. But I am a lazy person, but for Windows everything, even Putty, needs to be searched, downloaded, installed ... and for a lot of what I’ve found, I also have to pay. While in Ubuntu, all this is available right out of the box.
    I have not yet reached a deep study of the delights of the console and configs. I am still fascinated by its capabilities graphical interface.
    It is unlikely that this article will be useful to Linux connoisseurs who use the console with their eyes closed. Rather, it is for beginners like me, as well as for those who still decide - "Do I need it?"

    Convenient work with files directly on the server


    In order to open files for editing directly from the server, you can configure bookmarks in Nautilus. We select the option “Connect to the server” in the “Transition” menu, select the type of connection (SSH, FTP, Windows resource, WebDAV or “other address” for possible connection via other protocols), fill in the required fields (address, username, remote folder ), set the “Add Bookmark” checkbox, enter the name of the bookmark and click “Connect”. When prompted for a password, select "Remember forever." Everything, from that moment on, your folder on the server at any time is available to you from all programs from the "Open File" menu. Here, for example, is a screenshot of the Gimp menu with the option to preview the deleted file.



    The ability to edit even graphics directly on the server is very convenient, to say nothing of ordinary text files (php, html, etc ...). Naturally, in the same way, you can create a new file (in Gimp or Geany) and save it directly to the server.
    In Geany with the “Browse Files” plugin installed, all files of the current directory will be visible in the plugin panel, and you can open them from there simply by double-clicking:



    And of course, you can easily and easily copy-paste-delete files in Nautilus itself. It is as if you are working with a folder on your computer, and not with a remote machine. If you copy files from a non-NTFS disk to the server, all rights to the files and folders will be saved. It is very convenient to carefully set all the necessary rights locally and then transfer to the server the already fully prepared directory of the future site.

    Disk usage analyzer


    (Applications - Standard - Disk Usage Analyzer)

    This wonderful analyzer is in itself a thing immensely necessary and useful, which helps to understand easily and visually - “Where is the place on my new terabyte library going at such speed ?!”
    But the real delight is the ability to analyze deleted folders in it!
    Press the button “Scan Remote Folder” and get the familiar “Connect to Server” window. We enter all the necessary parameters, and after a while (the scanning speed depends on the speed of your Internet connection) we get the result, which can be displayed in the form of a pie chart or in the form of a tree map











    - and it immediately becomes clear where the server space suddenly “evaporated”: did the logs grow due to some kind of system errors or errors in the scripts, or is it a friend kindly allowed to “live” with his “small, purely html- nym! " by the site, I uploaded a quietly couple of gigabytes of porn and distributes it to everyone ;-)
    When you hover over any area of ​​the chart or map, the name of the folder and its size are displayed, and when you click, you will automatically go to this folder in the folder tree on the left. The appearance of the visual representation on the right will also change - only folders inside the selected one will be displayed. So you can dig deep into and see what exactly takes place.



    Multiple desktops


    As I always missed this on Windows ... instantly switching between tables using hot keys or "hot zones" is not even all ... Thanks to Gimp’s multi-window interface, you can split several images into different tables and put the panels on a separate table - and they still criticize him that he’s supposedly uncomfortable ... this is the only thing that is not in Photoshop, unlike Gimp!

    Image processing


    When I first had to deal with RAW photos in Windows, I had to break my head a bit - what is it and how to open it? I don’t know if there is a native tool even for viewing “equal” in Win7, and in XP even for this I had to look for third-party programs. In Ubuntu, even the most primitive F-Spot installed out of the box can watch and minimize RAW. However, for a little decent processing it, of course, is not enough. And then another Ubuntu “trick” comes to the rescue, which seems like a miracle to a newbie after Windows - Synaptic! We type in the synaptic “RAW” in the search - and we get an assortment of different free (!) Programs for working with “raw” images. I chose UFRaw - along with the plugin of the same name for Gimp. Windows users can only dream of a free RAW processing program with such functionality ... Gimp



    - a favorite theme of holivarov :-) Getting used to it is not difficult at all. With those simple layouts that I do myself, he copes well. He also has some "tricks" that over time begin to seem even convenient - for example, saving effects in separate layers, or the ability to choose how to apply the last filter again - with the previously selected settings, or with a call to the settings window. Convenient windows of settings for rotation, scaling, selection with the ability to enter exact numbers. In Photoshop, of course, all this is also there, but for my taste - in Ghimp it is more convenient, more convenient. With Gimp, it is also easy to make friends a graphic tablet. Perhaps I could completely abandon photoshop if the layouts in psd were not the “industry standard”. What is really very sorely lacking in Ghimp compared to Photoshop is the developed Save for web dialog. In an additional plug-in installed with this name, there is neither a palette setting for 8-bit images, nor the ability to fine-tune dithering for them, nor compression parameters for jpg. The developers of this plugin, in my opinion, did not understand at all what the Photoshop dialog of the same name is used for.

    Highlighted text editors


    This good is always in bulk for any OS, including a free one :-) The backlight quite sufficient for work is also available in the Gedit installed out of the box. Gedit also has additional modules that may be useful for the developer: impressed with the interactive Python console, quick tag insertion, time-date insertion are not quite usual features for the default notepad.
    I'm not a fan of complex IDEs (although there are ones for Ubuntu), so I chose Geany as my regular editor, although I often use Gedit for quick edits.

    Scripts!


    "I'm not a wizard yet, I'm just learning." However, the ability to jot down a script and process a couple of gigabytes of photos in one fell swoop for posting on the site is fascinating! Or hang an rsync synchronization script on the crowns and always have fresh backups of all accountable servers and shared hosting services on your home computer.

    Morality


    Ubuntu is much more convenient for a person who constantly works on the Internet than Windows. It does not need to be “connected” to the Internet - it is part of it. Even a beginner who pokes at the interface at random - has “out of the box” more convenient features and tools that you do not need to look for and buy.

    small request


    Please share in the comments other amenities that I did not mention - which means that most likely I do not know about them.

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