Gitk on a netbook

Further to yesterday’s post, “Rails on a netbook”, i found everything went well except Gitk. The fonts were too big to be useful, and the settings dialog box was too big for me to change it. But look now:

(Yes, that is the MyChores repository, now cloned on to my netbook! Yey!)

I plugged into an external monitor in order to access the settings, but for anyone who does not have that option, i’ve since found out you can edit ~/.gitk configuration file. My font settings are thus:

set mainfont {helvetica 7}
set textfont {courier 6}
set uifont {helvetica 7 bold}

There are also many other settings that you could tweak if you wanted to.

Tip of the day

When using a package manager it is helpful to know how to search for available packages. You can search for part of the package name, so that mysql- returns both mysql-server and mysql-client …

On Debian-based systems:

sudo apt-cache search mysql-

On Fedora-based systems:

sudo yum list "*mysql-*"

On Mac with MacPorts:

port search mysql-

Rails on a netbook?

I am here today to ask a question and then answer it. The question is: Can you run Ruby on Rails on a netbook? Specifically, an Acer Aspire One. My motivation is … since buying my netbook, i have completely fallen in love with it, and much prefer it to the desktop computer. I want to do as much as possible on the netbook. I don’t think i’d spend a whole day coding on it, but just for quick little things it could be wonderful!

Now that MyChores is open source i really like this idea of code anywhere. Wherever i have my netbook and an internet connection, i can code! If there’s an emergency bug needs fixing on MyChores, i could make the fix and push it. Or if i’m feeling lazy one Saturday morning there can surely be nothing better than a cup of coffee and coding in bed! ;)

So without further ado, let’s see if you can put Rails on a netbook …