My productivity Workstation.

2004-03-01

I am constantly seeking ways to improve productivity and look around for tools and techniques, which can do a little bit of magic.

Here I decided to share my findings and hope to hear back about your productivity tools, techniques and tricks. Please send them at kgignatyev@yahoo_dot_com.

On the photo above you can see my workplace, it consists from Dual Screen Linux workstation and Windows XP notebook.

Linux workstation:

SuSE 9.1

P4 - 2.4 1GB RAM , Dual head ATI video card.

The trick : X-Window works with Xinerama support, so program windows can be freely moved between monitors or extended from one to another. Working with such big IDE window is VERY convenient. And of course X-Window works with multiple virtual desktops.

Note : setting up Xinerama on dual-head cards is a bit tricky and not very well documented. My ATI card required setup virtual cards on the same bus, which is not obvious from Xinerama`s documentation. With multiple video cards Xinerama works like charm.

Trick : Give virtual desktops meaningful names. It helps organizing tons of open windows. I have:

• " Desk1", "Desk2 " - for stuff I use constantly;
• " Other Hosts " - for terminals and X-Window programs working on remote hosts;
• " Servers " - for server log windows ( Tomcat, JBoss, etc. ), real-time SQL Trace, and server management utilities and commands ( psql, sqlplus, etc.)

Cool stuff : there is a nice little program called Synergy that allows keyboard, mouse and clipboard sharing between different machines and OSes. So, I can move mouse between my Unix station and Win notebook, use the same keyboard and mouse, and copy-and-paste text between them!

Software :

• IntelliJ-IDEA - the best Java IDE;
• JEdit - very good text editor;
• Kate - text editor;
• Ant;
• Shell-scripting;
• Vqwiki - as a groupware and project documentation;
• Mozilla browser;
• OpenOffice;
• Synergy - server;

Windows notebook: P4 2.4 - 512MB, WinXP-Pro

Using Windows GUI is the great pain, but the tools worth it:

• DeZign - database modeling tool;
• PostgreSQL Manager - excellent Postgres DB management suite ( has MySQL, MS SQL, and IB versions );
• WinCVS - CVS client
• Dreamweaver MX
• Skype - IP phone
• Cygwin - Unix environment for Win;
• Synergy - client;