Delay Line Memory...

sed -i 's/vampire/cannibalistic serial killer/g' /home/user/ebooks/vampireSTORY.txt

I like vim, I really do, but its not the text editor I use when I'm writing html/css or LaTeX or php... The editor I generally go to when I'm getting down to business is TEA. It is very fast, has great syntax highlighting, templates, and a built in image viewer. I love this editor. :)

Features from the Site:

Small size

Built-in MC-like file manager

Spellchecker (using the aspell or/and Hunspell)

Tabbed layout engine

Syntax highlighting for C, C++, Bash script, BASIC, C#, D, Fortran, Java, LilyPond, Lout, Lua, NASM, NSIS, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PO (gettext), Seed7, TeX/LaTeX, Vala, Verilog, XML, HTML, XHTML.

Multiply encodings support

In-text labels (markers) support

Code snippets and templates support

Scripts (Python, Perl, Ruby, Bash script, QtScript)

Hotkeys customizations

"Open at cursor"-function for HTML-files and images

Misc HTML tools

Wikipedia, Docbook, LaTeX, Lout editing support

Preview in external browsers

String-handling functions such as sorting, reverse, format killing, trimming, filtering, conversions etc.

Bookmarks

Morse code translator

Calendar/organizer

Drag'n'drop support (with text files and pictures)

Built-in image viewer (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WBMP, BMP, SVG, TIFF, TGA, etc.)

Built-in image converter and resizer

Built-in ZIP packer/unpacker with file names charset selector

RMS calculation for 16 bit PCM WAV's

Tea runs on Linux and Windows. It has a GTK and QT branch. And its fast, featureful and nice to use. Check it out here: 

http://tea-editor.sourceforge.net/

All of the Log Files on Linux are located in /var/log

If you type "tail /var/log/messages.log" you will get the last 10 messages on your system log file.

On my computer when I typed "tail -n 3 /var/log/messages.log" it shows the last 3 entries of my system log, which looked like this:

Aug 2 12:06:59 localhost avahi-daemon[1343]:New relevant interface wlan0.IPv4 for mDNS.

Aug 2 12:06:59 localhost avahi-daemon[1343]: Registering new address record for <my-ip-address> on wlan0.IPv4.

Aug 2 12:06:52 localhost dhcp[2964]: forked to background, chid pid 2990

Common Linux log files name and usage

/var/log/messages.log: General message and system related stuff

/var/log/auth.log: Authenication logs

/var/log/kern.log: Kernel logs

/var/log/cron.log: Crond logs (cron job)

/var/log/maillog: Mail server logs

/var/log/httpd/: Apache access and error logs directory

/var/log/boot.log : System boot log

/var/log/mysqld.log: MySQL database server log file

/var/log/secure: Authentication log

/var/log/utmp or /var/log/wtmp : Login records file

You can use these log messages to check up on boot errors, to see who's been logged into your system, or check on your cron jobs. 

Besides tail, you can also grep (search) your log files for specific terms. An example would be searching all the logs in /var/boot for the word "fail"

example: "grep -i fail /var/log/boot"

this would then list all the instances where boot failed. 

There are also a ton of 3rd party log viewers, both FOSS and Proprietary, available for linux. These log viewers often have features like log analysis, tracking, etc. Which can make finding issues a lot easier. 

Ksystemlog for KDE

http://www.kde.org/applications/system/ksystemlog/

Gnome log viewer for gnome

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-system-log/

AWstats for web servers (its pretty impressive and their site has a demo you can check out)

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

Cyclops, a CLI log analyzer (it only shows log entries with errors/suspicious behavior)

http://tam.hiddenrock.com/projects/cyclops/

There are hundreds more, and I would suggest you check out your distribution's software packages or start a forum thread for recommendations. :) 

Oh and one more extra tip: 

You can have your system log messages show up in conky - the desktop system information program. Just stick this entry into your conky:

Strace is a program that shows the system calls a program makes as well as signals received from the user or other sources. Each line in the trace contains the system call name, followed by its arguments  in  parentheses  and  its  return value. 

meskarune ~/Desktop $ strace echo hello

execve("/bin/echo", ["echo", "hello"], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0

brk(0)                                  = 0x8c04000

mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb78cf000

access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3

fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=140504, ...}) = 0

mmap2(NULL, 140504, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb78ac000

close(3)                                = 0

open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)        = 3

read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\220\223\1\0004\0\0\0"..., 512) = 512

fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1467012, ...}) = 0

mmap2(NULL, 1473000, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0xb7744000

mmap2(0xb78a6000, 12288, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x162) = 0xb78a6000

mmap2(0xb78a9000, 10728, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb78a9000

close(3)                                = 0

mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7743000

set_thread_area({entry_number:-1 -> 6, base_addr:0xb77436c0, limit:1048575, seg_32bit:1, contents:0, read_exec_only:0, limit_in_pages:1, seg_not_present:0, useable:1}) = 0

mprotect(0xb78a6000, 8192, PROT_READ)   = 0

mprotect(0xb78f0000, 4096, PROT_READ)   = 0

munmap(0xb78ac000, 140504)              = 0

brk(0)                                  = 0x8c04000

brk(0x8c25000)                          = 0x8c25000

open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3

fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1852464, ...}) = 0

mmap2(NULL, 1852464, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb757e000

close(3)                                = 0

fstat64(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0

mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb78ce000

write(1, "hello\n", 6hello

)                  = 6

close(1)                                = 0

munmap(0xb78ce000, 4096)                = 0

close(2)                                = 0

exit_group(0)                           = ?

If you spend a lot of time using your terminal, you might like to liven it up a bit. I'm sure you've all seen the custom bash prompts people have in screen shots of xmonad or awesome WM. It turns out that changing your prompt isn't really hard to do at all. here is mine: 

My bash prompt has a yellow user, blue directory location, and green dollar sign. (you can get much fancier than this, and have the date and time, uptime or number of process's displayed in your prompt)

To make your bash prompt look like mine for example, you would open /home/YOUR_USER/.bashrc in your favorite editor. In my case I would type:

vim /home/meskarune/.bashrc

then I commented out the regular prompt which looks like this: PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '

and replaced it with this:

PS1='\[\e[1;33m\]\u\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;34m\]\w\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;32m\]\$\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;37m\]'

Now every time I open sakura or stjerm or xterm, etc I am greated with a pretty bash prompt. :)

For a basic intro to colored bash prompts see:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt

For a list of all possible variables you can use in your prompt see:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-tip-prompt/

For a huge list of bash prompt themes you can use see:

http://gilesorr.com/bashprompt/prompts/index.html

And If you want to get crazy and have a bash with full of color graphics, transparency and different fonts check out bashish:

http://bashish.sourceforge.net/screenshot.html

and even if you don't want a super fancy bash prompt, you own it to yourself to click on the link above. I was seriously left speechless. 

Ok, I'm gonna cheat and give you ONE screen of bashish, but seriously, go check out the site.

If you are like me, and don't use standard gnome programs, you have a conundrum. Your gtk2 and gtk3 programs no longer have a matching theme. But now your problems are solved! here are 2 dark matching themes to make your linux pretty again.

Atolm:

gtk2:http://skiesofazel.deviantart.com/art/Atolm-191381339 

gtk3: http://thedeviantmars.deviantart.com/art/Atolm-gtk3-206663190

Click the pictures to download the fonts

Inconsolata

Andale Mono

Droid Sans Mono

Honorable mentions:

Dina - it is a great font to use for very small sizes (8 - 10 point) http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/

Gohu Font -  has very clear differentiations between characters, it looks a bit blocky to me, but it seems very usable.

http://font.gohu.eu/

For a large list of programing fonts, both free and non-free go here: