linux | Linux Tips

I am otherwise engaged and I still want to get out an article every other day, so today I’m pretty much going to copy/paste a Wikipedia article and call it good.

If you’ve ever wondered where the Linux name came from, and how it got to be that way, then you’d have looked it up already! Well, if you haven’t and you’ve just made assumptions this entire time, you might be in for a surprise. Linux wasn’t originally called Linux – sorta.

Like I said, I’m just going to cheat and let Wikipedia do its thing. They wrote it better than I can, and I’m sorely lacking time today.

Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention “Freax”, a portmanteau of “free”, “freak”, and “x” (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, some of the project’s makefiles included the name “Freax” for about half a year. Torvalds had already considered the name “Linux”, but initially dismissed it as too egotistical.

In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvalds’ coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that “Freax” was a good name, so he named the project “Linux” on the server without consulting Torvalds.[52] Later, however, Torvalds consented to “Linux”.

According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds,[9] the word “Linux” should be pronounced (/ˈlɪnʊks/ (About this soundlisten) LIN-uuks) with a short ‘i’ as in ‘print’ and ‘u’ as in ‘put’. To further demonstrate how the word “Linux” should be pronounced, he included an audio guide (About this soundlisten (help·info)) with the kernel source code.[53] Contradictory, in this recording, he pronounces ‘Linux’ (/ˈlinʊks/ (About this soundlisten) LEEN-uuks with a short but close unrounded front vowel.

Source: Wikipedia

And, there you have it. That’s also the entirety of today’s article! Thanks for reading and don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter! (Don’t worry, I’ll write better stuff. I’m just really short on time.)

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It’s actually pretty easy to make your own dock with LXPanel, it has the ability to do so built right in. It’s not too difficult, takes only a little time. When you’re done, it can look something like this:

1. Right click on an unoccupied space in your existing panel, and click on “Create New Panel.”

2. In the Geometry tab, decide where you want your new dock. Your choices are either side or on the top, and the top makes the most sense to me.

As you can see, that’s also where you choose the width, height, and icon size. Note: You can adjust those “live”, meaning as you change them in the preferences menu and immediately see the results. My choices resulted in the dock that you see there.

3. Now, you want to make it work like a dock. So, click on the Advanced tab and tick the appropriate boxes. This is also where you can select to keep it minimized when not in use. To make the dock visible, just move your mouse cursor to the top of the screen.

4. At this point, you’re going to want to populate your dock. It’s meant to be a useful tool, and you can make it one. Click on the Panel Applets tab and add Application Launch Bar.

It should end up looking something like that, though you may opt for different applets or positioning them in different places. The choice is, of course, entirely up to you.

5. Click on Application Launch Bar, click on Preferences, and then start adding the shortcuts to applications that you’d like to have in your dock.

6. At this point, you can also add other applets by going back to the Panel Applets section. Clicking preferences while they’re highlighted will let you change their settings. Again, you get to configure these any way you want to. Yay! Linux customization!

7. Finally, you can click on the Appearance tab and set background color, font color, and font size.

At this stage, I’d normally write something willowy, flowery, and praising the wonderful world of Linux, but that doesn’t really seem like something I need to do here. After all, if you’re here then you’re almost certainly a Linux user already – and you could even know more about it than I do!

Still, this is something I’ve seen asked here and there and I was literally doing nothing better today. So, now you know how to make a fancy-looking dock with LXPanel, an often overlooked panel solution that is much more capable than many people think.

Note: The author will be moving to LXQt soon. Expect to hear more about that.

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Tag: linux

How Linux Got Its Name

How to Make a Dock in LXPanel