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Five Ubuntu Features You Didn't Know About Ubuntu
Written for byobu by Dustin Kirkland on 2010-02-16
Byobu: A Better Screen
Do you like screen? For the uninitiated, screen is a terminal screen window manager that allows you to multiplex between several different virtual terminals. Each screen session is independent of all others and can run applications or processes in each session allowing you to multitask without switching terminals.
If you’re familiar with screen, you know the power of it already. If you aren’t familiar with it, you’ll fall in love with byobu and gain an understanding of screen and its capabilities.
To invoke byobu, simply type byobu at the command line. Do not use the “&” since it must remain a foreground process.
Byobu is a group of python and shell scripts that enhance the screen program, making it easier to use and expanding its features into a true management interface. Each of the function (”F”) keys has significant keybindings for byobu. For an extremely well documented Help system, press the F9 key while in byobu. Here, you’ll find all aspects of byobu and its configuration and operation.
Byobu also provides you a constant system status at the bottom of your terminal window showing you name and number of virtual terminals, Ubuntu version, uptime, load average, memory used, date, time.
Running Ubuntu 9.10 under Amazon's Elastic Cloud
Written for byobu by Dustin Kirkland on 2010-02-01
How Can I Figure My Costs, Exactly?
It's rather tough to nail down cost for an EC2 instance, as it depends on things like bandwidth. However, there is a small dashboard-like application you can install that can help you track your costs. The package byobu (formerly known as screen-profiles) can help. After apt-getting byobu and running byobu, you'll get a screen session with a small two-line dashboard at the bottom of your terminal window. To add the EC2 information, press the F9 key to bring up the byobu menu, select Toggle Status Notifications, then select the ec2_cost notifier, and press Apply. Then you'll have a neat little running total of the approximate cost for your EC2 instance, as shown in Figure 2. You can see this particular run cost me 40 cents! Byobu has all kinds of other useful little widgets too; check it out if you do a lot of management via a terminal.
byobu: A shortcut to a prettier screen
Written for byobu by Dustin Kirkland on 2010-01-03
I spend a lot of time using screen, whether it’s on my main machine, or through ssh to another. It’s an amazing tool that really deserves more attention, but starts off rather droll. So in that sense, customizing screen is more or less necessary.
As a shortcut to hand-editing configuration files, byobu gives you a decent screen arrangement and nicely coordinated colors, along with configuration menus, window management controls and an interface to the underlying screen program. By default, it looks attractive; this is the AUR conversion.
Byobu Featured in Linux Identity Magazine
Written for byobu by Dustin Kirkland on 2009-12-17
Table of contents
* DVD contents
* 9.10 vs. 9.04
* Installing Ubuntu 9.10
* Your first steps after a fresh installation
* Compiz, the Linux eye candy project
* Ubuntu directory structure
* Virtualization under Ubuntu
* Security in Ubuntu
* From carrier Pidgin to Telepathy
* Setting up your first site with Drupal
* Byobu – the Ubuntu Server Window Manager
Magazine properties: title line: Linux Identity Starter; issue: 4; pages: 52; DVDs attached: 2; price (US): $14.99
Byobu Mentioned in Lucid Alpha1 Review
Written for byobu by Dustin Kirkland on 2009-12-14
"...And last but not least, there is a new tool called Byobu Window Manager, which offers a set of configuration utilities and profiles for the GNU screen window manager..."
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