Dennis Felsing over at HookRace Blog has an interesting post on his Linux desktop setup. He’s a Vim user so he doesn’t have the advantages that Emacs brings for integrating common tasks into a consistent framework. Still, he has built a very nice environment.
One of the most interesting aspects of the post is his discussion of the tools he uses and how he fits them together. Even if you’re an Emacs user, you may find some of the tools he describes useful. One example of that is Unison, a sort of bi-directional rsync that is perfect for the intermachine synchronizing of files that you don’t want to keep in your version control system.
I must admit that I found his solutions for calendaring, scheduling, and TODO lists to be a bit clumsy but that’s doubtless because I’ve been spoiled by Org-mode. It’s easy to forget what a really great solution Org is. On the other hand, Felsing likes light weight tools that don’t consume a lot of resources so perhaps his solutions are best for him.
He’s also got a very nice home-grown backup system. If you’ve got a remote server anyway, his solution may be cheaper and more flexible than a backup service. Felsing likes to keep everything under his control so doing his own backups is a win for him.
If you’re looking to build a good development environment under Linux, you will probably find this post useful.